Category Archives: Updated 2021

UT2004: ONS Map – Crossfire

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http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/march04/ut2004maps/crossfire/20.jpg


I have spent a lot of time playing this map in UT2004, it is a truly stunning map and very difficult to play.

Update:

I’m no longer able to play this (MacOs 64bit is incompatible). So here’s some gameplay to give you a taste of what it was like.

Enjoy.

First Of The Gang To Die

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http://www.bigyawn.net/cdreview.php?id=97

Update: an alternative review of the album:

https://drownedinsound.com/releases/6257/reviews/9931-


First Of The Gang To Die

You have never been in love, Until you have seen the stars, reflect in the reservoirs
And you have never been in love, Until you have seen the dawn rise, behind the home for the blind

We are the pretty, petty thieves, And you’re standing on our streets
Where Hector was the first of the gang with a gun in his hand
And the first to do time, the first of the gang to die, Oh my
Hector was the first of the gang with a gun in his hand
And the first to do time, the first of the gang to die, Oh my

You have never been in love, Until you’ve seen the sunlight thrown, Over smashed human bone

We are the pretty, petty thieves, And you’re standing on our streets
Where Hector was the first of the gang with a gun in his hand
And the first to do time, the first of the gang to die, Such a silly boy
Hector was the first of the gang with a gun in his hand
And the bullet in his gullet and the first lost lad to go under the sod

And he stole from the rich and the poor and not very rich and the very poor
And he stole our hearts away

Morrissey’s lyrics are a cross between the inane and the sublime.

Sniggle.net the Culture Jammers Encyclopaedia

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snig·gle (v) — To fish for eels by thrusting a baited hook into their hiding places.

Felch definition

http://sniggle.net/plants.php

Update: Visually rather old fashioned – this is how websites used to look at the end of the 20th century. A few nuggets to be found here although I’m not sure how active it is nowadays. I particularly enjoyed the pseudoscience section.

It describes itself as the Culture Jammers Encyclopaedia. Many subjects are covered from cryptozoology , Jello Biafra, Trickster Gods and Commerce Jamming.

Also very pleased that sniggle.net has been on the web since 1997.

The Corner of the World – Home – History & ICT

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http://thecorner.org/history.htm

Update: on the waybackmachine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080303020012/http://thecorner.org/history.htm

Informative articles about History from 1789 – 1960

Update: quite a lot on 19th and 20th century Chinese History too. The sections on ICT and History education and History resources are out of date.

The site went offline sometime in 2015.

Beer not fattening: official • The Register

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 “beer in reality has less calories than wine, milk or orange juice
– 41, 77, 64 and 42 per cent per 100ml, respectively.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/09/beer_not_fattening/

From the web site:

“Those of us who like a few pints already know that beer fights cancer and is an absolute life-saver in an avalanche emergency situation, but what about the apparently proven effect of ale on the old waistline, eh?

What actually causes the beer belly is the overwhelming desire to partake of an enormous kebab or plate of curry after a particularly robust session, the BBPA says. This is true, although the BBPA is not taking in account something else all beer-drinkers know: that doner kebabs combat male pattern baldness and curry increases attractiveness to the opposite sex.

Which is why people who prefer wine are invariably bald and single – despite having a waistline like Calista Flockhart.”

‘Red Carpet of Death’ scuppers Gates’ knighthood

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http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/03/07/gates-knighthood.html

Updated:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070701153302/http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/03/07/gates-knighthood.html


‘Red Carpet of Death’ scuppers Gates’ knighthood

“Palace courtiers battled with software for more than two hours during the ceremony, with the waiting audience of be-hatted sycophants growing increasingly restless, as Her Majesty repeatedly failed to knight Mr Gates. After two false starts, the Keeper of the Royal Disks (more affectionately, if warily, known as Hard Rod) was forced to reinitialise the Monarch’s ageing boot drive, reinstall Microdaft Monarchy.

Several onlookers who knew-a-thing-or-two-about-computers thought that a virus may have been to blame, the most likely candidate being the infamous “Camilla” Trojan. If left unchecked, this wicked little filly of code can cause fatal system errors in any Royal lineage, and has even been known to lead to full Republic status in a matter of weeks. A palace IT manager said later that “Camilla is an absolutely lethal Worm which can leverage outage disruption in mission-critical architectures, whilst further impacting substantive legacy systems… blah blah blah…”

The Royal honour was to have been bestowed at the personal request of the British Prime Minister, a known technophobe, in recognition of Mr Gates’s regular help with “sorting-out his Hotmail account”. More cynical observers have suggested, ridiculously in our view, that Mr Gates’s stupendous wealth may also have entered into the equation: World-Dominating Technology + Very Rich Guy + PM = Third Term. Absurd.

Following his eventual knighthood, as an American citizen Mr Gates cannot of course be referred to as “Sir Willy”, as this is an honour that can only be bestowed upon British subjects in a bizarre “RubbaDubbing” ceremony. However, since software patches were added in 1997 and 2001, the UK now runs remotely on a networked operating system based in Washington, so it seems likely that provided Mr Gates returns his original program disks, and agrees to the installation of a UK-registered dongle, he will be automatically upgraded to a full “substantive” knight in due course.”

Rt Hon Tony Blair vs Benjamin Franklin

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http://www.sundayherald.com/48034

From the page:

“In my judgement, said Tony Blair at Prime Minister’s questions last week, considerations of national security have to come before civil liberties, no matter how important those civil liberties are.”


It’s official: protection of the state is now more important than the freedom of the individual.”

Update: I don’t really do politics anymore, there’s much more important things to do

Thumbs down review: stopUSA.be

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http://www.stopusa.be/home/index.php?langue=3

Update:

One of the things about StumbleUpon was that you could give a thumbs down negative review – which I did here. To be honest back in 2005 we didn’t have all the non-stop bat shit insane conspiracy stuff like we do now. The self righteous do love to be self righteous though and this site was a non-stop exercise in virtue signalling.

From the page: “It is very obvious that the American forces are committing crimes of genocide every day in Iraq.”


This site is one long anti-american rant.

… so a thumbs down review for stopUSA.be

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway

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Time travel back to the age of steam.

http://www.kwvr.co.uk/

Update:

A Yorkshire tradition, the KWVR has been in operation since 1867.

If you want to visit Haworth and Bronte country then the KWVR is the best way to get there.

You’ll have seen it already though in movies and period TV dramas including the Railway Children, Peaky Blinders, Testament of Youth and many more.

Rockall Times: UK Residency Language Test

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Warning: Snowflakes and those easily offended please don’t read

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/02/21/linguistic-test.html

More NSFW humour from the pages of the Rockall Times

Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060203135838/http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/02/21/linguistic-test.html

Update: this is way more offensive than I remember it

Universe today flickr pool 3,000+ members, 76,000+ photos

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Universe Today Group Pool on Flickr

http://www.universetoday.com/am/uploads/2005-0218planet-full.jpg

Update: Originally this was a hotlink to a particularly impressive photo which is no longer available.

I’ve replaced it with something far better. A link to the Universe Today Flickr Group. Some truly amazing photos taken by gifted amateurs.

One of the great things about astronomy is the way that ordinary people make significant contributions.

Quick link: https://flic.kr/go/gi2Cq

A Dozen New Planets Discovered: Universe today

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Exo-planets – in 2005 they were still quite rare

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/12_new_planets.html?1822005

Summary – (Feb 18, 2005)

In the last month planet hunters have uncovered 12 new worlds orbiting other stars, bringing the total planet count to 145. Two European planet hunting teams have discovered 6 gas giants as part of the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Search (HARPS), and an American team uncovered 5 more using the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii. And a single, Pluto-sized planet was discovered orbiting a pulsar by Penn State’s Alex Wolszczan and Caltech’s Maciej Konacki.

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1642 – 1658

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Cromwell at Marston Moor, by Victorian artist Ernest Crofts

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/war/

Update: Original no longer accessible so here’s an alternative full of material about The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1642 – 1658, particularly the English Civil War.

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/the-english-civil-wars-history-and-stories/

English Heritage give plenty of links to primary source material

Lock up, Light up, Be secure

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Haven’t been able to post recently because my house was burgled and the buggers stole all my computers (x2 laptops and my beloved Mac). So I’ve had to set up a new (temporary) system. Hopefully, things will return to normal soon as I backed up my bookmarks and most of my work related files were either on a spare machine at work or existed in hard copy.

The three rules of computing are:
1) Back up your files.
2) Always backup your files.
3) Never forget to backup your files.

Good advice, but I wish I had been more diligent.

Burglars? String ’em up, it’s the only kind of language they understand!

Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA); True IRA

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http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/nira.htm

From the web site:

“Suspected of receiving funds from sympathizers in the United States and of attempting to buy weapons from US gun dealers. RIRA also is reported to have purchased sophisticated weapons from the Balkans.

In May 2002, three Irish nationals associated with RIRA pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to cause an explosion and trying to obtain weapons following their extradition from Slovenia to the United Kingdom.”

Update: Glad to see this site is still with us and archived properly. The full site (The Federation of American Scientists: Intelligence Resource Program) is well worth a look:

https://irp.fas.org/index.html

I like the concept of Open source Intelligence

The war on terror – American double standards

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http://www.usni.org/Seminars/AnnualMeeting/04/annualmeeting04LehmanQA-2.htm

No longer available but the quotation stands on its own…

From the page:

“Finally, there are places in the world, not very far from you, that are very friendly with you, that have accepted terrorism as the norm for 30 or 40 years. And yet, I have been to bars in Boston where I have seen collections for more aid with “Would you like to put a dollar in here to kill a British soldier?” And as far as I can see, the response of your organization has been to accept that. Even as powerful as you are, you are going to need friends in the future. You’ve needed friends in the past. And the best friends that you have, in this country, are the United Kingdom. I’d just ask you to remember that.”


Whenever I hear Americans go on about the ‘War on terror’ I remember this and I remember those who died at the hands of the IRA.

Foodhub, recipes, cooking and baking

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Chocolate muffins made by moi

http://food.hubcom.net/cgi-win/recipe.exe?1

Who needs to buy cookbooks when there are sites like this?

Update: back in 2005 `Recipe sites were a lot less ubiquitous than they are today. To be honest I can’t remember the last time I actually used a cookbook and not a website.

My personal go to website is the BBC, the rest I just bookmark into a folder if I like them.