FoxBoom!

Responsible behaviour at IRC parties.

I just enabled statistics and referral collection on my Flickr photos, and the most interesting thing has been that one of my photos was used on england-seiten.de for a while.

I know my photos have been used on a bunch of websites (and I’m totally happy, since all that I’ve seen always link back to the original gallery), and this new statistical view should be great for keeping tabs.

“Profile“, by Jon Eccleston.

Time for a new emo profile photo… and, look! A phishing link in the first comment! Now I feel popular!

I’ve reported the link to Flickr, and I’ll delete it as soon as they’ve looked at it.

The HijiNKS ENSUE store is selling Laura Roslin campaign t-shirts.

My vote always has and always will be for SparkleNinja.

I just created “foxboomdotcom” on AIM, so y’all can get rid of “joneccleston@mac.com”.

I used to have “joneccleston”, but I forgot the password and its associated e-mail address is long gone…

I’m sorry my Christmas gift to you all is a bit late, but here’s something I know all ma peeps want.

You can now watch FoxBoom! on LiveJournal by adding foxboom_rss.

To summarise tonight’s Dr. Who Christmas special, “Voyage of the Damned”:

• Yes, I hate the opening theme.
• Yes, the plot was a smooch bland.
• Yes, the special effects blew my mind.
• Yes, I did blink and miss where most of the characters went. Like, what happened to the dude in the purple suit? And on that same note: Yes, I did lose count of how many characters fell to their deaths. Did they get a special deal on the wire rig or something?
• No, the trailer for Catherine Tate’s season did nothing to alleviate my fears.

Is Christmas finished now? It was good to catch up with Orona.

And OH MY GOD I’ve had a cake in the fridge now for three days and I haven’t had a chance to eat it yet. TOMORROW.

Hey guys, if any of you have got me on your AIM lists, can you let me know what AIM names you have of mine?

“joneccleston@mac.com” is going to expire, and I don’t know whether to create a new AIM name or go back to a previous forgotten one.

My first choice for IM is still foxboom@googlemail.com on Jabber (i.e. Google Talk, LJ Talk, etc.), but AIM is a close second-choice just because I don’t have to launch anything else outside of iChat.

Oh my God… they’ve… redone the theme? With… electric guitar?

Oh God…

It goes without saying this post has a few Portal spoilers, but I just want to put to rest some misconceptions about the demise of your Companion Cube.

“All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin.” [GlaDOS]

Okay, we all know GlaDOS tells a few fibs, but we have to at least assume that the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device can survive that heat. I’m happy to assume that if Aperture Labs can (and have good reason to) build a portal gun capable of withstanding 4000 kelvin then it’s no great stretch of the imagination to see a storage cube surviving the same.

But this raises the question, why the pretence of euthanising the Companion Cube if it’s known by the test’s designers that the cube will survive? I think it’s clear that the experiment is testing Chell just as much as the portal gun itself, and I believe the forced perception of incineration of the Companion Cube is to invoke an emotional reaction in order to influence the upcoming tests (i.e. to change Chell’s perception of the experiment’s handlers, to invoke feelings of revenge or determination, or potentially depression). Following on, I believe it’s possible that the Companion Cube’s re-appearance at the end of the testing could be a helpful component of the test subject’s counselling.

“I’m not even angry,
I’m being so sincere right now,
Even though you broke my heart and killed me,
And tore me to pieces,
And threw every piece into a fire,
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!” [GlaDOS]

But we know those euthanising fires aren’t totally harmless to all Aperture Labs technology. GlaDOS herself admits she died when you threw her components in the fire, but if she’s “still alive” then how can this be?

We already know that GlaDOS tried to kill the human inhabitants of the lab, but rather than dismantle her, it was decided to keep her alive and working, but to also fit a “morality core” to stop it happening again. GlaDOS proved herself to be a dangerous machine, but for one reason or another, it was worth keeping her alive.

It seems to me to be perfectly plausible that, beyond that “morality core”, a simple fallback method of destroying her would also have been implemented. And given her total control over all the computer systems in the lab, I’d expect that termination procedure to be entirely physical… say, the physical removal and destruction of her core components? Say, by making the core components easy to remove and fitting a euthanising tube in the room? And not one of the “fake” tubes used for emotional and psychological testing… one hot enough to even destroy Aperture Labs materials? And isn’t it possible that GlaDOS could become aware of this contingency, and personally arrange for some backups to be kept in a quiet little storage room somewhere…?

“There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn’t come because you murdered him.” [GlaDOS]

But of course, there was a party! And there was a companion cube there… but was it your Companion Cube? I say yes!

Let’s assume your Companion Cube survived the fire. He sits and waits, and is plucked out by a robotic transporter, like the ones seen placing turrets… and the one at your party, with your Companion Cube?

As I said earlier, I believe it was the designers’ intention to rescue the Companion Cube and re-unite you with him. The mechanisms for retrieval (i.e. survival capability and transport devices) are present.

Companion Cube is still alive.

It’s time again to raid the web logs and pull out my favourite search phrases used to hit the site in November/December!

• “do you see what i just said”
• “aperture labs coffee mug”
• “portal ending lyrics”
• “lol andenanden an den hepuditin indabox andenhe eeted it lololol!”
• “westward bound shop”
• “westward bound the barbican plymouth”
• “im so excited and delighted today”
• “cloverfield evangelion”
• “pete darkfox”
• “terrorists”
• “lesbians”
• “my dreams are all dead and buried sometimes i wish the sun would just explode”
• “cbeebies”
• “feedghost setup”

This year’s Christmas cards from Jon were this selection of photos printed by Moo.

These Christmas cards are different.

Bad news, everyone. Santa is dead.

I got to play with an Ases Eee PC this weekend, and bloody hell, I’d recommend it to anyone.

If you haven’t handled one, you wouldn’t believe the construction quality you get for your money. I played with a Sony Vaio sub-notebook a couple of years ago, and I can’t tell you any difference apart from the Sony’s marginally-better screen quality. That’s not to say the Eee’s screen is anything less than great; for the money, it’s amazing. If I had a problem with anything, it was the trackpad’s sensitivity being a little slow, but I suspect that’s a setting which can be changed.

The thing has Mozilla Firefox, so all your normal web applications will work, and I used rdesktop to log into my work PC. It even has Skype installed, with headphone and microphone ports! And there’s a built-in webcam, though I didn’t catch how it can be used. I wonder what the state of video in Jabber is?

If you want ultra-portability and web access, it’s difficult to beat!

I just got a 700 GBP/1400 USD tax bill, payable by the end of January.

Two insane things happened to lead us to this:

1. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs apparently e-mailed me earlier in the year to tell me to complete a tax return. I never received it, and I spent the rest of the year assuming that they were happy with my employer handling my tax for me.
2. In my panic, I ticked a box saying I’d been repaying my student loan for a year, but it’s only been since this summer.

Once I spotted that mistake, the bill went down to 1GBP, but if we start today with Jon getting a letter saying “you owe us some money, and we don’t know how much, but you need to pay it by the end of January”, you see why I’m mildly upset right now.

PIZZA + BEER IF THE SHOPS ARE STILL OPEN. IS IT CHRISTMAS EVE NOW? OH GOOD.

The Aperture Science Enrichment Centre website has a webcam feed of the Holiday Vault!

When I got home from my work’s Christmas Party last week, there was a letter from Plymouth City Council concerning trash collection…

Artist’s impressions of the weighted refuse collection cubes are here and here.

I love you, weighted refuse collection cube!

“What did the traffic lights say to the car?”

“Fuck off, I’m busy?”

I just don’t know about Sony… their PS3 advertising is awful, but man, can they ever advertise TVs.

The “Play-Doh” rabbits ad is just stunning. I love stop-motion!

“The NHS just more or less said take the pills and live with your wheelchair and crutches for the rest of your life.

“I just kept saying: ‘There must be something you can do. You put a man on the moon, you must be able to do something about my back’.” [The best £20,000 I have spent"]

Bzzz… I’m sorry, but the answer we were looking for was “NASA”.