Credit for todays Roast title goes to the godhead, who deserves eternal props for recent road-trips. I can’t remember the exact sequence of events that led to such a quote-worthy line, but it did have something to do with five archaeologists being stuck in a car for a total of 11 hours, listening to a surreal mix of death metal, 80’s classics, Destinies Child, and singing loudly (and surprisingly tunefully) along to Ah Ha. One of those weekends that don’t sound funny when described but, to those that lived them, were priceless. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. It was a bit of a come down to go back to the office on Monday and the 9-5 grind. I enjoy my work but if nothing else, the conference reminded me that I really need to do something that stretches my brain a bit more.

Still I have a cunning plan in that direction, so all will be well 😉

Since I failed so dismally to bring you a roast last week, let’s see what I can do to make this week extra special, shall we?

And to start, one of those items I wish I could tag as “you couldn’t make this stuff up” – a Texas mayor resigns because she stole her neighbours dog

The British Library is digitising a raft of 19th Century literature to make it more accessible. Great. Lovely. And DRM’d from here to kingdom come thanks to the partnership with Microsoft, unless I miss my guess

Bill Thompson does a great job, as always, explaining the prevalence of surveillance in our digital world. I’m starting to get the knack of his articles as well; the first four/five paragraphs are the ‘news’, but it’s the later half where the stuff actually gets interesting and prompts a healthy reality check.

Something to persuade my mum that tattoos aren’t that bad? They could be used to deliver more effective vaccines. Thanks to the closing line that there may well be a role in the “routine vaccination of animals”, I have visions of Fido and Tiddles displaying some pretty ink…

The BBC has announced that their iPlayer will work on Macs in 2008. Finally! It has been bugging me to the point of yelling at the screen each time they show their bloody advert saying “iPlayer: making the un-missable, un-missable”. Grrr

The British sent 57bn text messages last year. That is a lot. For me, I blame Twitter. My bill last month was a whole £19.18! :O

As anyone who’s tried to get a digital map out of the Ordnance Survey will know, unless you’re in an academic setting (and to a less extent, even then), the licenses are fiendishly complex and expensive. Seems that finally the government is throwing its toys out of the pram over this. At last! I understand the OS is a company and has invested a lot of time, money and effort into these maps but do they have to be so damn trixy?!

British troops in Afghanistan are to blog their experiences. I find this interesting in how it ties into museum exhibits about the war. I’m less clear on the appropriateness of it.

Seeing as how pointless crass commercial hallmark holiday Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us once more, here is how geeks work. It’s not stalking, it’s an expression of devotion 😛

One of the many gems shared at ArchCamp 4 last week: Strange Maps. There’s a whole research topic right there on how people represent the world in which they live…

You don’t realise quite how busy the British waters are, till you see it displayed graphically (and in real time)

Two differing POVs on Google’s new Social Graph API. Both pertinent, both well argued, and both from people whose opinion I respect.

I have linked to these guys before, but when we got sharing links down the pub the other week, Neko reminded me about Temple ov thee Lemur, and in particular urban fox hunting. Tee hee hee…

I woke up this morning with a craving for pancakes. Not just any pancakes, but Scotch Pancakes. I always like the idea of pancakes, but the British kind just don’t work for me some reason when I cook them myself, and American style ones also don’t float my boat. Don’t me wrong, they are nice, just not… right. So I figured I would revisit my heritage and try my hand at Scotch Pancakes, which are more correctly griddle cakes… This is the recipe I used and damn, but they’re good! So stupidly easy and tasty. Mmmm, it might become a Sunday morning tradition, me thinks

Neil Gaiman is going to make one of his books available, online, for free (for a month). Which book? You choose. I’m torn between American Gods which was a book I adored but think might be just too big and weird for people new to Gaiman, Stardust (which is much better than the film, of course), and one of the other titles I am less familiar with and, consequently, think could benefit from some free-book-love.

This Flickr set is great – tattoos that people have relating to their (science) research. I’d be intrigued as to a similar pattern in Archaeologists. My experiences from Liverpool would indicate that at least the Egyptologists could be relied upon – getting tramp-stamped with an Eye of Horus or an Ankh was practically a rite of passage. Even my foot tattoo has thematic roots in the doodles I used to draw in direct response to the rock art of Megalithic Europe.

Have a dose of Google Horror

And to cleanse the palette, some movie trailers from the last couple of weeks:
Son of Rambow

Stop-Loss

Smart People

Dark Knight (in lego). Definitely one of those “some people have too much time on their hands” things, but genius none the less!

And now, as I’ve endured, and finally finished, Stargate: Atlantis (season one) I am going to go watch Stargate: SG1 (season 9). Yay for yummy Michael Shanks and Ben Browder!

So why a Roast on Monday instead of the, by now, Sunday? Because yesterday the CCM descended upon Southampton for a flying visit and whisked me off to Southsea for the day. We had a lovely time walking the Front, going round the Aquarium and eating food in the smallest cafe I’ve been in in a while (room for two tables). We had a slightly less lovely, but still instructional, time walking round the D-Day museum and looking at the Overlord Embroidery.

And then it was home in time for toasted teacakes. Yum, toasted teacakes.

Not exactly a Roasting day, really. Hence writing it this evening instead. I’ve been wandering round like a Grizzly with a migraine all day today, snapping at my poor hapless colleagues for no reason other than I’m unaccountably grumpy. Sorry everyone! As I’m still feeling grumpy, even after Chish & Fips and several episodes of Stargate: Atlantis, I expect my customary humour might be in short supply in this roast. Who knows – the only way to find out is to read on…

And the first item in the folder is a piece all about how wonderful 3G working is. GRRRR! I’ve been fighting for over a year to get our laptops with 3G capability… GRRR!!!!

Excuse me while I go and lie down in a darkened room for a moment, will you?

I don’t care what he said. He was a fricking hologram! How cool is that!

The CCM said something interesting as we were going round the D-Day museum yesterday. During WWII in the UK, our government had more control over us than Hilter had over the Germans – the difference was we succeeded our liberties voluntarily. I then ended up looking at an ID card in a display case. Not one of the proposed new ones, but the old fashioned paper kind you had to carry at all times during the war…

On the impact of technologies

Most of the time I’m not sure why I still subscribe to the NYT, but then an odd longer piece like this one on the possible future of US international relations crosses the reader and I remember. On occasion, they’ll publish a piece that makes you think.

Sadly, the EDLO’s birthday buns weren’t this funky. Maybe next time?

I was going through some old pictures on Flickr the other night, and was struck how things are still depressingly the same.

Should blogs be peer reviewed?

Let me introduce you to marvelous web comic, Geek and Poke

Scary, what happens when you hit publish

And a movie trailer to enjoy:
Penelope – I might have linked to this before, but I’m going through a mild James McEvoy thing at the moment, so forgive me

So another week has ended, thank the dear and fluffy lord. Not that there has been anything exactly with the weeks lately, but I will be glad when January is over, as it is dragging so. You might have caught onto the fact that I’ve been voiceless lately. Well, I went see the specialist on Monday and at least now I know why my voice keeps going AWOL. For the curious it’s because my vocal cords are damaged (we think because of evil laryngitis a year or so back, on top of the old friend Chronic Fatigue) and no longer close properly. This means whenever I talk I am (1) straining them and (2) opening them to more infection. Lovely. The cure is speech therapy which I start whenever the NHS machine lumbers to the point I get the referral. Hopefully before I leave Southampton! So that’s where I stand. It would have been nice if I could have been prescribed a pill or something that would work like that because I am heartily fed up of the pain and the croaking, but c’est la vie. If as a side effect I get to the point where I can sing again, I’ll be pleased 🙂

And pretty much that’s all. It was the EDLO’s birthday the other day which led to a nice late-night baking fest making fairy cakes and then posting the recipe. As Moose pointed out, I’m being about as subtle as a brick through a greenhouse roof, but I’ve given up caring. Plus I sincerely doubt he actually reads the blog 😛

Now it is time to be on with the Roast for this gloriously gray Sunday…

The news came in this week that Oscar Pistorius has been banned from the Olympics. So what? Well, he’s the Paralympic world record holder for 400m and has been campaigning to be able to compete alongside able bodied athletes. Is the IAAF right to ban him as his prosthetic limbs are “mechanical aids” or are they discriminating against him? It could go either way in my head. You’ve got to trust the scientists who have determined that he uses less energy etc than an able bodied athlete, but… My gut says he should be able to compete, but then my gut also says the guide-runners who run with blind athletes deserve the medals as much as their disabled partners.

I am starting to feel a pull in my gut towards looking more deeply at Facebook and how it is impacting on peoples lives. I just re-read this diatribe against it and had that little tickle in the back of my mind which bespeaks of a good idea in the offing. Rhetoric of the article aside – and you’ve got to admit that Tom Hodgkinson doesn’t exactly paint an unbiased picture – there are a few interesting points buried deep within. I found myself going “so what?” to a lot of it. Who cares what the ethics of the creators of a tool are, right? You can use it for what YOU want. A tool is just a tool; it is the user that determines whether it is a force for good or evil? Or should you care and try to lead a morally pure existence which could lead you to boycott Facebook. At what point do the users of a tool take it and make it more/different to what the creators intended?
– as you can see, my brain is still a smoosh of ideas at the moment.
And to address the first point the author makes, about Facebook disconnects people, I disagree totally. I don’t use Facebook to meet new people; rather Facebook is another tool I use along with sms, email, phone, talking down the pub, to connect to my real-world friends. For the chunk of my mates that live in other cities, Facebook is just one more way of keeping touch. For those that live in the same city as me, Facebook lets us and to coordinate our socializing.

Zac Effron has had his appendix out (poor lad). But that’s not why I’m linking to the article, oh no, it’s the news that there’s going to be a High School Musical: 3. Dear lord, am I never to escape those films? (Yes, I have watched both 1 and 2 on DVD and damnit, but I find myself curiously compelled to watch 3 as well… Save me).

Leaving aside the whole censorship of the internet deal (and it’s not a small concern either), why does any talk of terrorism mention the Muslim community and no others?

And again with the Facebook/Privacy stuff.

On xkcd and sibling synchronisity – you could count the things my brother and I have in common on the fingers of a couple of hands so it amuses me that we both read the Redwall xkcd comic, giggled, and emailed each other relevant links.

Much though I love the laptop stand the CCM made me, this one just looks so sexy!

People who say Archaeology is boring are silly. Yes, a lot of it is digging through different sorts of grey clay on the Somerset levels, occasionally unearthing the skeleton of a farmers pet cat, but every now and again you get to unearth cool things like this! (Alternative title for the video could be “how many archaeologists can you fit in a hole?”)

On the use and misuse of prologues. This is one of those articles I read and go “oh…” not just because I’m guilty of it myself (doh! Time for a hurried re-write me thinks) but because now I’m noticing it every where I go. Seriously, I was in the library just yesterday having a quick browse through the SF/Fantasy section (woefully small in the local library) and five of the six books I perused had prologues. Bad prologues at that which now just annoy me. Hey ho, that’s one more guilty little pleasure spoiled for me!

I rarely (never) read Boing Boing comments, using the posts instead as a jumping point to the original material they link to, but this post on muting users in comments stopped me in my tracks and made me read the comments. There’s some good points made. My first reaction was “how rude! Censorship!” then as one of the commenters pointed out, Boing Boing aren’t censoring the comments, you the reader are. It’s the digital equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly. Now if only someone would come up with one so I can avoid all the silly Facebook requests I keep getting!

One more ebook reader for the mix.

If they could get away from Windows, perhaps oqo could solve my mobile computing needs?. Or maybe the Axiotron Modbook (seeing as how it’s already Mac…) Then there’s the Cloudbook (though it’s less sexy than the Modbook).

Why youth workers should blog.

I blame Moose entirely for this trailer. As she said “I watched it with a ‘they CAN’T be going there…’ disbelief”.
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

Leatherheads – George Clooney at his suave and funny 40’s best.

And now I’m off to watch Battlestar Galactica: Razor because that’s always a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon 🙂