A Welsh View

Thanks!

Thank you to all the encouraging comments that I received. I wasn't expecting so many! The exam went well, probably really well. I answered everything that was required and I answered everything to the best of my ability. To me, that's the best that I could do.

Where do I go from here? Well, I need to finish the final project that I have been working on. If you're interested you can read about it here, although I haven't worked on it for a while and it doesn't cover the written work that I am currently working on.

Besides from the dissertation, I have got two more modules to cover (Distributed Systems and Advanced Databases) and after that I'm on my own.I have got a job lined up and I will see how things go.

Wish Me Luck!

I've got an exam today. It's Systems Analysis and Design which I'm not looking forward to but should do ok in it. I've done 5 days solid revision and I'm still not confident. After the exam, I'm going down the pub to unwind so I won't be updating the site until later on this evening.

Ricky Gervais To Woo Marge

The Sun: Ricky 4 Marge

Ricky Gervais will romance Marge when he appears in The Simpsons, TV Biz can reveal. The David Brent star has written a love song to sing to Homer’s long-suffering wife.

Ricky — the first Brit to write an episode of the show — has sent the song to Simpsons producers and will record it in LA this June.

Ricky also revealed he will be voicing a new character instead of appearing as himself. But he refused to say if he succeeds in wooing Marge away from Homer.

Gran Feeds Friends Cannabis Cakes And Casseroles

The Sun: Hash cake gran faces jail

A granny faces jail after feeding her neighbours casseroles and cakes laced with cannabis. Grey-haired Patricia Tabram, 66, started taking the drug to relieve pain following a car crash.

The retired restaurant boss then discovered the effects lasted longer if she used it in cooking. She used to make soups, cheesecakes, hot pots and pies which were a hit with neighbours.

Tabram first bought the drug from a pub, then started growing her own. But police raided her country cottage after a tip-off. She was let off with a caution. But when cops called again they seized cannabis worth £850.

Now Tabram faces up to five years in jail after admitting one offence of possession to supply at Newcastle Crown Court.

Anatomy for Beginners Part 2

The second installment of Anatomy for Beginners was about the circulation

Here are some highlights from the show...

The female life model ;o) (Don't worry Kirsty, the male life model will be back tomorrow)

Removing the rib cage - Watching some of the observers cringing as the professor tries to remove the rib cage with a hefty pair of scissors

Bringing the body 'back to life' - Inflating the lungs by blowing air into them. I was half-expecting the professor to blow them up using his mouth!

Filling the body with 'blood' - Aritificial blood (looked like paint) was used to fill the bllod vessels of the stomach.

Tomorrow, the digestive system - "from the tongue to the anus".

More Weird Google Ads

Whilst Google has fixed the African Slaves eBay ad, there are still some weird eBay ads to be found, including great deals farts and victims. [via]

Peculiarosities

I Was Told To Feed Man To The Lions, Says Farmworker
Man Sues KFC Because He Can't Have Sex Anymore
Would You Let Your Daughter Wear This Prom Dress?
Undelivered Postcard Returned To Sender - 37 Years Later
Woman Hospitalised By Tiger Painting
Company To Advertise On Man's Forehead
Canadian Ghost Town Sold
Man Gets Impaled By 2x4 Board After Car Crash, Can't Be Airlifted To Hospital Because 2x4 Wouldn't Fit In Helicopter
Vodka Saves Man's Life As He Falls Out Of A Window

Decorated Cow's Head

What's with the tinsel stuff and the rose? [via]

Anatomy For Beginners: The Web Site

Channel 4 have a web site to accompany the Anatomy for Beginners series. The site shows annotated screenshots from all 4 shows (that is the one shown yesterday and the three remaining shows) along with a detailed description. I'm off to watch the next installment, 'Circulation'

Who Created The First MP3 Player?

Eliot van Buskirk clarifies just who released the first mass-produced MP3 player. If you think that it's the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300, you're wrong. If you just don't know, after reading the article you will. If you just don't care, please move on.

Did You Know...

Tons of 'Did you know's'. [via]

2-Headed Lamb Born In China

A two-headed lamb has been born in China. This two-headed lamb was born on a farm in Yantai city, China /Freelance Farmer Han Dianrong, 74, of Yantai city, Shangdong province, said he had never seen anything like it. The lamb, one of four born to the same ewe, has four eyes and two mouths. Mr Dianrong says both heads bleat together when the lamb sees people approaching. - Ananova

The Chav Test

Take the Chav Test and find out your chav rating. Mine is 35%, which is a bit too high for my liking. I think it's because I have a 'PAYG mobile phone' and eat 'Pot Noodles' for 'tea'.

Software Engineering Proverbs

A collection of software engineering proverbs such as...

Wexelblat's Scheduling Algorithm:

Choose two:

* Good
* Fast
* Cheap

So true, and applicable to more than just software engineering. [via]

How To Get Fired

Here's the clip of the Rob Blair's last weather report. Here's the story behind it. [via]

Inbreeding Caused Susceptibility To Diseases

According to research, the human race owes its susceptibility to many diseases such as cancer to widespread inbreeding early in our evolutionary history.

Analysis of the human and chimpanzee genomes by British scientists has revealed that damaging genetic defects accumulated in both species because both are descended from a common ancestor that existed in very small numbers.

The small population of “missing link” apes, from which people and chimps ultimately evolved, effectively made it impossible for natural selection to weed out potentially dangerous genetic mutations.

[via]

Krispy Kreme To Pay New CEO $760 An Hour

The SFGate are reporting that Krispy Kreme's new CEO is going to paid a whopping $760 an hour, PLUS expenses (and doughnuts). That's a week's wage to most people.

Gates Donates Record £400m To Charity

The Sun: Gates £400m to charity

Billionaire Bill Gates has donated a record-breaking £400million to charity.

The world’s richest man handed over the whopping cheque to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation to help kids in developing countries get life-saving medication.

And he said the cash — the biggest private handout to child health — was just a “down-payment”.

Reverse eBay

Limbo is kind of like a reverse eBay. Instead of the highest bidder winning like in eBay and other auctions, with Limbo, the lowest unique bidder wins. This sounds like a good idea until you realise just how difficult it is to guess that lowest bid. Plus, it costs 50c a guess, so when they sell that iPod Shuffle for a few cents, they have actually made hundreds or more on it. [via]

Anatomy for Beginners Part 1

Just finished watching Anatomy for Beginners. Very educational and not that gory. I was amazed at how some of the audience observers were squirming during some parts. Didn't they know what they were going to see when they agreed to watch it?

Here are some highlights from the show...

Removing the skin - thicker than I thought and quite easy to remove. I supppose it's just like skinning a cow.

Removing the brain - Watching as Professor Gunther von Hagens attempts to remove the brain. First a knife is used to try and cut the skull, followed by a chisel, then a saw and finally a good few whacks of a hammer.

Describing the brain - 'It has a consistency of blancmange.

Slicing the brain - Slicing up the brain into neat slices using a good ol' butchers meat slicer.

Removing the spinal cord - I never knew that it was so long. It runs from the brain to the toe.

Tomorrow, a look at the heart. For those that didn't see it, it should be available here to download sometime tomorrow. The site requires you to register.

Update (25/01/05): Download the programme here.

Peculiarosities

CDs On Tsunami Horror Beat Bollywood Movies In India
Giant Frosted Flake For Sale On eBay
Man Jailed For Faking Heart Attacks To Avoid Paying For Meals
L-test Snap For Identical Twins
Firefighters Free Woman From Foot Massager
Brit Jailed For Tsunami Emails
Demolished Building Accidentally Falls On Pub

Air Cadet In Training

[via]

Let's See Burger Girl Eat This

I have no idea what it is but I wonder if Kate Stelnick can eat it? [via]

Only 1 In 6 Users Can Identify Sponsored Search Results

Wired: Users Confuse Search Results, Ads

Only one in six users of internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.

Google marks such ads as "sponsored links," Yahoo terms them "sponsor results" and Microsoft's MSN uses "sponsored sites." Such ads are placed to the right and on top of the regular search results, in some cases highlighted in a different color.

But only 38 percent of web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half --47 percent -- say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all web searchers knowing when a link is paid.

I'm a little surprised by these figures. I would have thought that more people would have been able to identify sponsored links, particularly when using the more popular search engines.

Newspaper Sacks Reporter Over Fake Yahoo Baby

A Romanian newspaper reporter has been fired after inventing a story of a couple naming their baby Yahoo to celebrate meeting on the Internet. The paper published the story along with a copy of the baby's birth certificate which turned out to be the reporter's child's birth certificate. Apparently he did it so that he would look good. The story was published around the world and was even picked up by Reuters. I also got duped by the hoax story. [via]

eBay Branches Out Into Slavery

Need an 'African Slave'? eBay has a big selection of low-priced ones. [via]

Thousands Of Phones, Laptops & PDAs Left In Taxis

According to Pointsec, who conducted research in nine cities worldwide, thousands of mobile phones, Pocket PCs and laptops get left in the backs of taxis. In Chicago, a staggering 85,619 mobile phones, 21,460 PDAs/Pocket PCs, and 4,425 laptops were left behind in just 6 months!

However, the research shows that 80% of phones and 96% of laptops/PDAs were returned to their owners with, in most cases, the taxi driver tracking them down. Still, as the article points out, with devices being able to store more and more data, there is a huge issue of data ending up in the wrong hands. [via]

13yo Boy Sets Up Con Website

Mirror: King Con...At 13

A boy of 13 allegedly conned online shoppers out of £20,000 after setting up a fake website company in his bedroom.

Working from his grandmother's home, it is claimed he tricked people into buying cheap plasma TV screens - but never sent them out.

And his "business" became so big, he even rented swanky offices and hired two employees - plus a bodyguard to protect him from customers.

Anatomy For Beginners

Tonight, and for the next four days, this is what I will be watching. Anatomy for Beginners is supposed to be more educational than shocking although I'm sure many people would disagree. The show 'stars' Professor Gunther von Hagens who caused controversy when he performed the first public autopsy in Britain for over 170 years--live on TV--back in 2002. I'm not sure if the dissection of the three cadavers will be live.

City Population

City Population contains the populations for all the countries in the world as well as major towns and cities. [via]

2005 Bloggies

The nominations for the 2005 Bloggies have been posted. Unfortunately, I'm not liste, but I should be bitter. The usual suspects are there with a few surprising ones. And congratulations to Lee from Tokyo Times for being nomiated for Best Asian Blog.

Peculiarosities

Tsunami Survivor Found After 25 Days
100 Dogs Removed From House
Husband Commits Suicide, Then Wife Wakes from Coma
Passengers Allowed To Haggle With London Cabbies ... If They Dare

Storm Chaser Photos

An impressive colleciton of 'storm chaser' photos. [via]

Google Dog

Googledog is the the dog that blogs. Each day a new hat, and sometimes some goggles. [via]

The Hidden Windows Copy Option

This one's new to me.

Do Bunnies Commit Suicide?

A site full of cartoons of bunnies commiting suicide. There are lots of funny ones including this one (here & here) [via]

Crazy Weatherman

Yesterday I posted about a crazy weatherman in Boston. Well here's a video of a crazier one in North Carolina.

Games Compendium

Blazin Squad
Stackopolis
Hoops
Takajyo - Bird of prey game
Whack The Dead

Is There Anything That XML Can't Do?

The Inquirer: XML Smell language developed by university

A researcher at Huelva University in Spain claims to have created a version of XML that can transmit smells. Or fragrances if you prefer.

The university said that it's worked with researchers in both computing and chemistry to come up with the concept of the XML Smell language.

It said the initial idea was to print smells on paper using laser and inkjet printers, but the fragrances degraded over a short period of time. And so the boffins claim to have developed a dual pass printing system, using two polymers which degrade by light and by touch, so that the niff only niffs when a document is read.

But the researchers said they quickly realised that smells could be propagated over networks and the Web. And so they have created XML Smell, which they claim can define in universal and standardised way the transmission of smell which allows the transmission of fragrances by email, by SMS to a mobile phone, or via a TV show.

The World From Space

This site allows you to view practically anywhere from space. Simply click on an area of the world and you will be presented with a list of areas that have been photographed. Here's a bird's eye view of my home town (in the center of the screen). [via]

Disco Tutorial

A slightly aged video guide to disco. Personally I prefer to have a few beers and dance like an idiot. [via]

Misc Videos

Take a ride in an F18 - Just watching this make me feel sick.
Electrical Repair Man In Training
How To Land A 747 - An oldie but a good one (I think it's in Hong Kong)

Error Message Generator

Create your own Windows error messages. [via]

Man Gets Lost In Cave For 5 Weeks

BBC: Man found after weeks in cave

A man who went missing five weeks ago in south-western France has been found alive in an underground cave system where he had got lost.

Jean-Luc Josuat-Verges, 48, told police he survived by eating wood and clay.

He was found thanks to some teenagers who had been exploring the caves, which are normally closed to the public.

Happy Pie Day!

Today is National Pie Day! At least it is in America.

Created by the American Pie Council, National Pie Day is dedicated to the celebration of pie. As part of our American heritage, this day is a perfect opportunity to pass on the love and enjoyment of pie eating and pie making to future generations.

To celebrate National Pie Day share the warmth of the ultimate "comfort food" by giving the gift of pie to a friend or neighbor. Your generosity will be long remembered.

The site offers a 'bakers dozen' of ideas for what to do on Pie Day. And if you are really serious about pie, why not compete in the annual 'Great American Pie Festival'?

Michaelsoft Binbows

Does anyone know if this place still exists? Here's another picture of it. [via]

The Vending Machine With The Personal Touch

Only in Japan would you find a vending machine like this one. [via]

Google Search Limit Raised To 32 Words

Google has silently upped the limit on the amount of words that you can use as a search query from 10 to 32. Whilst many people won't need the extra words, power users, who used to have to use hacks to around the limit, will welcome the change. According to Zmarties, the limit hasn't been raised on all parts of Google. The old limit still applies to Google Groups and Google News. [via]

How Not To Park A Car

[via]

Mountain 'Road'

Does anyone know where this 'road' is? I want to know how someone managed to build it. [via]

Update (23/01/05): Here are some more pics of scary mountain paths. [via]