Moving Day

Yo,

I'll now be blogging over at http://blog.christopherwilcox.com. Just one of the exciting new things soon to be found at http://www.christopherwilcox.com.

Yay!

Actual Content From My Actual Life

So, whilst looking forward to heading down to Melbourne next week I send my supervisor (who's in China at the moment) an e-mail just to make sure my leave is fine.  She sends this back in response:

There has been some new development in the department you may not aware of. Originally the department agreed to hire you for our project. Recently some new rules have been set up which requires  the project to pay for the cost of hiring you. Based on the new situation, I have informed the department as from the 2nd of April that the project will not be able to afford you and they should direct you to new tasks which are not our project related.

What a load of crap!  Apparently it's all part of some battle for control of the matching funds resultant from the grant we are funded by.  Still, I've signed a five year contract with the project so if worst comes to worse I just get paid to read a novel until they decide what to do with me.  What really annoys me though is how ready my boss is to sacrifice me at the first sign of any budgetary trouble (especially when I created the projections that made it apparent in the first place).  It really makes one feel appreciated...



All job offers considered!

Papillon D'Amour

Amazing video.



(Discovered via Neil Gaiman's blog)

Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy...

Fish tank/deep fryer from a restaurant in Japan:







I'm sure this can be interpreted as a metaphor for something, aren't we all just one wrong move away from boiling oil in some sense...



(via Boing Boing)

3D Desktop in Windows XP

Okay, so it's a bit of flash with not much substance, but if you're into that sort of thing, you can get a snazzy desktop manager that uses a 3D cube effect to transition between 4 different desktops for free at this site.

An example:

Race and Gaming

An interesting, if somewhat brief, article by Clive Thompson examining the role of race in fantasy games can be found over at Wired. From it:

"In the real world, defining someone by his or her race is considered a
classically illiberal act. But in games, racism -- making snap judgments about someone based solely on their skin and ethnic identity -- is absolutely central to gameplay."

(via Wired)

Dave McKean

The Art of Dave McKean

Mark Ryden

www.markryden.com

Speaks for Itself Really...

(via boing boing)

My New Audio Player

This new foobar2000 based audio player is soooo cool. It takes a bit of time to set up but it's definitely, definitely worth it. Check it:


All the stuff you need to download is given on this page (it's all free). The component that I guess is meant to make the top menu bar conform with the rest of the theme isn't available for download at the moment for some reason but when it is, it'll be even more awesomer (I choose to believe that awesomer is a word).



(discovered via lifehacker)

Teslalicious

A really cool article on Nicola Tesla has just appeared in the Fortean Times for those who are into that sort of thing (and I love a man with a good moustache).



There's a bit of a sign up hassle to go through to read the whole thing but I think it's worth it.



(via Boing Boing)

The Dumbing Down of Life

A very nice article rant by Lore Sjöberg about the dumbing down of things appeared on Wired last week.



From it:



Really, though, I blame the handheld calculator. If you can't figure
out the cube root of 187,092 with a slide rule, you don't deserve to
know it.



link

Saucy Tea Girls

The title says it all really...



(via Boing Boing)

Oh Hell Yeah!

I need one of these in my house, stat!
















Yes, that's right - it's a giant gaming ball!!!

User can move in any direction; walk, jump, roll, crawl, run over virtually unlimited
distances

(via Cribcandy)

Mathy, Nerdy Goodness

This is a pretty cool site giving a list of natural numbers together with what makes them 'special'. For example:

2484 is the number of regions the complex plane is cut into by drawing lines between all pairs of 18^th roots of unity.

7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that is not constructible by straightedge and compass.

So very, very nerdy but so very, very cool!

(via Boing Boing)

Peer Pressure

Righto, that previous comment has stung me into action. Today is my November 8th - I'm back in the blogging game!



No guarantees as to regularity or content however...