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“The tickets to the show sold out in 11 minutes,” ZZ told me sadly on the phone. “If we really want to see them, we need to travel somewhere else…”
And so the idea was born. When a legend such as AC/DC go on a tour, there’s a good chance that it’s their last one – and one you really don’t want to miss. So the decision was made – it doesn’t matter where in Europe we get the tickets, we go there…
Municipality police of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, has come forth with yet another breathtaking initiative to keep us all safe and free from the evil oppression.
This time, it’s a campaign educating the public on how to spot a terrorist, urging them to report people who would seek to destroy our liberties.
Continue Reading…
Who wouldn’t want a perfect partner with looks that could be envied by Maxim cover gils, mental stability of a rock, and house-keeping skills that could put your grandma to shame? And the best thing… she never ever nags. Meet Aiko, the first step on the way.
She would read you newsfeeds every morning after she fixed you a breakfast, she could read a map and navigate, and her daddy, Mr. Le Trung, even believes that she can even be “tweaked” to turn into a sexual partner, and one that’s blatantly easy to turn on, for that matter. ;-) Le gleefully explains that “her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm.”
Seriously now, I do hope she’s open source. :-D Here’s a toast to bright future, and stable relationships. At least now I know I won’t be sad and lonely when I’m sixty-four. ;-)
A US teenager murdered his mother and shot his father in the head, in revenge after they took away his copy of Halo 3 video game, a judge has ruled.
Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant “had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever.” Of course, it’s all video games’ fault. 
Jolly. :-D I do hope parents have long respawn timers…
—-
However, on defense of video games, they are very educationary. A six year old kid stole a car, drove it around, and eventually crashed, claiming that he learned that stuff playing Grand Theft Auto.
Sweet. I can’t wait till I learn some cool swordsmanship and magic from Warhammer Online. :-D
Every once in approximately 31 556 926 seconds the Earth completes its orbit around the only star around for almost 1.29 parsecs. Apparently, the fact that Earth is yet again located in the same relative angular position from the Sun as the day you were born, is a reason to celebrate. And there’s more. As Sheldon has eloquently put it, some people even participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun’s apparent position relevant to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.
Be that as it may, I’d like to share with you some of the greatest and most witty birthday wishes I ever got, and treasure them so much that it would be a pity for them not to be shared… I won’t be explaining the mechanics behind these in detail, because this could spoil the fun for the geeks reading this, and the rest of you don’t care, anyway, or probably have stopped reading by now. :-D
All of those were created two years ago, when Fox started this on our discussion forum, although his wish is so otherworldly, that I’ll keep it for the end. ZZ used unix shell to write a clever pipe of two commands, which looks very cryptic at the first glance, but is in fact very simple.
echo pTaalqbirtARTlqtoqloyhqATaalqbirtARTlqto\
qloyhqATaalqbirtARTlqRXTrqfXvXrXzRhqATaalqbir\
tARTlqtoqloy.qsqIonqxXqzTIqzXoDXr\!|tr fTaplb\
iqMthRtoyhDAmXsInxzr RapHybi\ rthdtou,zhDeAmcsnr
It translates into Happy Birthday song lyrics, along with a suggestion that I shouldn’t get too wasted partying that night. Nick immediately created a very smart contra in C programming language:
#include<stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
long long int L = 729987139091064141LL;
while (L) { putchar(L&0xFF); L >>= 8; }
return 0;
}
If compiled, this gem prints out nothing more than “Me too!”. And finally, Fox, who started all this, used Brainfuck language for this jewel of code:
>+++++++++[< ++++++++>-]< .>++++++[< ++++>-]< +.>+++[< +++++>-]< ..
>++[< ++++>-]< +.[-]>++++++++[< ++++>-]< .>+++++++[< +++++++++>-]< +++.
+++++++.>++[< ++++>-]< +.++.>+++[< ---->-]< .----.---.>++++++[< ++++>-]< .
[-]>++++++++[< ++++>- ]< +.[-]++++++++++.
Lovely. It even made me code a simple Brainfuck compiler, to sate the curiosity. One of my friends adorably described this piece of code as: a dead fish without a head, followed by a dead fish without head and a tail, followed by random chopped pieces of dead fish.
So that’s it. :-D Thanks a lot guys, it was a load of fun… Have any more clever geek birthday wishes to share?
It is by accident that I’ve noticed this exactly today, because it certainly doesn’t feel that way, but I’ve been exhibiting my obviously unsurpassed graphomaniacal phase here for a whole year exactly today. :-) I h
ave to admit I’m pleasantly surprised, because I didn’t think I would post often after a month or two, nor did I think that people would still be actually reading this after such a time.
A little statistic is in order to summarise: on average I’ve written more than one new post each week (58), received over 28 hits each day (10500!) produced three and a half megabytes of hypertext, linked hundreds of images… and thanks to this blog (and having a fairly uncommon surname, of course :-D) I am now officially #1 Hinca on the web. ;-)
And while, naturally, creating something and having my thoughts and photos online in one place is a sort of motivation for me in itself, it wouldn’t be worth it without all of you participating, and maybe appreciating it with an occasional word of praise. :-) So thank you all, and I hope that the coming year is going to be just as good!
It is perhaps due to my ignorance that I am noticing this now, or maybe I just dismissed it as impossible, but I was pretty shocked by a finding that struck me tonight
Especially after 9/11, it is a common occurrence that Europeans pity citizens of the United States, because their privacy is invaded at every corner, and all that newspeak and fear-mongering really remind us of Orwell’s 1984. My father is even so concerned about his privacy and personal information, that he turned down an opportunity to go to the post-2001 USA several times.
In fact, when I was about to leave for the Land of Freedom to spend a semester there last fall, I even had to pay for being watched and tracked. My visa request would not be granted unless I paid a $100 fee to SEVIS, an organization whose very purpose is to spy on foreign students and visitors.
I always thought that compassion is all that we had to offer in this context, but it turns out I was wrong: Obviously, an agreement between US and EU [NY Times] is about to happen, that will give the US government access to personal data of EU citizens. Am I the only one who feels this is an outrage? Any reason we should trust Team America with this?
Of course, they claim they will only “look for suspicious activity”, but just consider how the FBI abuses the Patriot Act. Do you remember that sweet pot of honey they were feeding everyone prior to the Patriot Act vote? This is a binding agreement, and indeed is a big deal. If the EU will have to turn over any such information US would ask for, I think I have yet another reason to move to Norway.
Continue Reading…
…and we got the best! The hottest band in the world, KISS!!
It was with mixed feelings that I’ve decided to pay twelve hundred crowns for a show of a band I hadn’t been quite that huge a fan of… at least until now. But hey, I said to myself, they indeed are a legend, an aging one, actually, and they might not come here again. You better go and see them now that you’ve got the chance. Well, that may just have been my best decision recently. :-D
I’ve been planning to blog about this topic for ages, and now the mighty security guru Bruce Schneier did that for me in a Guardian newspaper essay:
What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are?
Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.
Just look at this bastard. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t hesitate to kill a kitten. :-P
Except that it’s nonsense. Continue Reading…
