Ape::Tracks

Vision of Christ

I'm trying to avoid posting stuff like this if I can, but the easily amused/Fortean researcher parts of me are profoundly impressed by this simulacrum, where the image of Christ appears on a dog's bottom.

Link: Get Behind Jesus

Friends of Platt Fields

The Friends of Platt Fields have produced a new and rather good website of information about the park. Although many old features of the park have been lost (I miss the little zoo) it seems to be having something of a renaissance, with lots of improvements and community activities going on. Manchester doesn't have enough open spaces and Platt Fields is a very welcome expanse of green in an otherwise brown and grey city.

We enjoyed the Diwali festival that was held at Platt Fields last year, and I'm rather pleased that some of my photos have been used in the new site (they are all Creative Commons licensed).

Ecto and Wordpress 2.1

Ecto looks like a convenient way to update weblogs, so I'm giving it a try. (If you can't get Ecto working with Wordpress 2.1, try upgrading to Wordpress 2.1.1, which fixes xmlrpc problems fetching categories for entries - Ecto would hang with 2.1)

On the other hand Ecto seems unable to save any of my settings at the moment, which diminishes the convenience somewhat...  Update: It saved settings after I posted this.

Free wifi in Manchester city centre

My personal recommendation is Earth Cafe, where you can get free wifi plus excellent organic vegan food, in a pleasant, friendly little room under the Buddhist Centre. I think the wifi is only available off-peak, as Earth can get rather busy at lunch and dinner.

Mancubist has created a Google Maps page listing other free wifi providers in Manchester city centre.

RISC iX

I own an Acorn R260, an early Archimedes designed to run a BSD variant called RISC iX. The installed OS is broken and I've not got round to fixing it. I've occassionally tried to find install disks on the net so I can reinstall from scratch.

Now I've discovered why. There were no install disks.

Legal versions of RISC iX either came pre-installed on a R140 or R260, or were installed by Granada Microcare. Acorn did not supply distribution media to customers (although in 2006 a set of 14 floppy discs with an installable copy of RISC iX 1.14 were sold on ebay). If you ordered RISC iX, Grenada Microcare would make an appointment, come along and install it from a tape drive, taking the tape away afterwards.

From Chris Acorn's RiscIX

Thank goodness for Linux and FreeBSD.

MSX -> Wii

My first computer, after years of hoping for a C64 (or anything really - I tried begging for a ZX81 at one point) was a Toshiba MSX. And it was good. The hardware itself was excellent, and the games were great: typically European games on tape and Japanese games on cartridges. Konami carts were particularly good but almost prohibitively expensive - £20 was an awful lot to pay for a game back then (most tapes were about £8 I think).

I've been hoping that MSX would join the old systems on the Wii's Virtual Console service, and it seems I'm in luck - it's going to happen. As well as giving the opportunity to play Penguin Aventure on a TV, the MSX will also be the first home computer on Virtual Console. Maybe we'll be seeing BBC Model B games appear next :-)

Link: News: New formats confirmed for Virtual Console - ComputerAndVideoGames.com

(Beyond the rosy glow of nostalgia I have to admit the MSX standard wasn't perfect: the built-in BASIC was full of useful, easy features but was horribly crufty and slow (thanks Microsoft!) All MSX systems (even the low-end Goldstar model) were much more expensive than the c64 and ZX Spectrum. Lower initial sales and uncopyable cartridges meant much less of the playground piracy that drove sales of Spectrums.)

DRM-Think

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. DRM is unprecedented choice.

It’s the dog’s scrotum

Apparently there are people, librarians no less, who think that children between the ages of nine and twelve should not be exposed to the word "scrotum" in a book. Even if it's a dog's scrotum.

Link: librarian.net » scrotum! I originally rambled on here about the daftness of all this, but I've deleted it - Neil Gaiman has covered the whole topic very well in these three posts, so if you're interested, read on:

1. An Absence of Scrota -- your guide to quality literature...
2. A Special Obligation...
3. The last last word

It's not easy to be a brave librarian in areas where book burning mobs can camp outside your door.

Year of the Golden Boar

Happy New Year!

Rabbits Show Jumping

Right, that's enough messing about with nasty PHP stuff tonight. Time to relax and watch rabbits jumping over things.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNPOdffkkLo]

Link: YouTube - Bunny Show Jumping