For your clicking pleasure, I bring you the second Sunday Roast of 2006. If you fancy a snack afters, there are always the leftovers

Good Film, Shame About the Helvetica – New York Times. Clearly, a slow news day in the NYT Movies office.

The Cute Factor – New York Times. I’m really not sure if this article makes me more resigned to being classed “cute” or less. Laps and cuddles are more fun than pedestals though…

BBC NEWS – Mental health overhaul demanded. I’ve been fortunate this time around that I am at a University with a competent counselling service to pick up the slack. Last time when I had to go through my NHS practice, it was much harder. What care you get for mental health issues in this country really is too hit and miss, so I applaud this report.

The WEB 2.0 Quiz. Shocking, especially considering I side with the people who say that Web 2.0 as a term should be put out of its misery, but I couldn’t resist. 6 out of 10. Eeek. I have much to learn, Obi Wan!

EchoEcho.Com – Complete Web tutorials . One more tip garnered from Liz at Successful Blog. It’s amazing what you forget after a year of blogger and wordpress lets you get lazy.

The Best Gaming Mouse Pad You’ll Ever Make at PaulStamatiou.com – You laugh, and then you think on it a bit, and realise that this is actually rather a clever little idea. Only to be recommended if you own your furniture (or think your landlord won’t mind sticky marks left on his desk).

Firdamatic: the Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers. I’m currently playing round with a design for part two of the Grand Master Plan for Bright Meadow, and I stumbled across this shiny little tool. As Firda says, “you’re not lazy, you’re just uninspired”.

BBC NEWS – Sony Reader targets book lovers and the Gizmodo take on the same thing. I’ve always maintained that the only thing keeping me from my (legally, I stress) downloaded e-Books is the reading format. The laptop just isn’t working for me in that respect. Whilst this Sony product looks like a great leap forward, I am going to be dubious about this sort of tech till it passes the Cas-Test – namely, can I read it in the bath without fear of (1) destroying an expensive piece of equipment and (2) death from electrocution.

And finally, this week we learned that traditionally, the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent does not include Sundays. This incensed Moose’s sensibilities. As she quite rightly points out, Lent is supposed to echo the time Jesus spent in the desert being tempted. He didn’t pop home for a Sunday lunch with Joseph and Mary each week now, did he? (At least, I can’t remember being told that he did in Sunday school). As a Christian I am so lapsed that I am starting to approach it from the other side, so I am (of course) not up to date on the latest theological thinking, but until I am told otherwise, I am just going to add this to my growing list of bits of religious thinking that make me blink in sheer incomprehension.

I just can’t save this till the regular Sunday Roast. I have to share it now.

War On Error – Twisted animations by Mata

Ever since the day back in… oh, far too long ago… that I was introduced to Snowdrop and Mittens, I have had a soft spot for Mata’s animations. Time and again, with each new offering, I am reminded why. So funny, so twisted, so true.

I can smell your brains.

Well, you had to do without a SundayRoast last week, what with it being Christmas an all, so I hope you have a hearty appetite for today’s main meal. Seeing as how it is a new year, I have decided that from now on the SundayRoasts will be smaller, but more perfectly formed. Truly the best of the best. For other things that caught my eye, but that didn’t quite make the grade, keep an eye (as always) on the leftovers feed.

Boing Boing: Couple spends 28.5 years repainting baseball, now 119″ circumference – You do have to ask yourself why…

DIY Metal Chess Figures – oh so pretty! I didn’t get a new chess set for Christmas this year (despite dropping hints the size of that big painted baseball). Perhaps I can make myself one like this to make up for the lack?

Customizing K2: Part 2 at PaulStamatiou.com – Most of this stuff I already know, and most of the rest of it I actually enjoy working out for myself (I am sad like that), but there are one or two very handy tips in this article, and other articles that Paul writes. Yet one more case of “I could write a how-to myself, but why bother when someone else has already done a much better job of it”.

A Consuming Experience: Backlinks etc: links to Delicious bookmarks of your posts . Some more handy snippets of code if you don’t want to faff around working it out for yourself.

turquoise & diamond quartz stone chunky ring. So far out of my price range it might as well be on Mars, this ring is just to die for. Thanks to Kim for finding it, and other, beautiful things to look at.

BBC NEWS – Post service opens to competition. This is NOT, I repeat NOT an excuse to send your post, business or otherwise, via TNT. TNT suck. Every single item I have ever had delivered by TNT has (1) been lost – when this is a £2000 PowerBook it suddenly becomes not funny, (2) delayed, (3) broken on arrival, and (4) necessitated me dealing with their customer service staff who think that customer service is a rarely visited village in Outer Mongolia. Don’t, if you value your sanity and post, use TNT.

Working at the PC Isn’t So Lonely Anymore – New York Times. I have one or two issues with the tone of this article, mainly the one that bit that implies this piece of software does something new. It doesn’t. There are many other programmes and applications out there that do exactly the same thing, better than NoteShare. Still, I guess it brings all such things to the attention of general readers, not just the geeks, so I’ll get off my hobby horse now.

Interactive Nature of Browser Colors Past and Future. This one’s been sitting in my research and need to read delicious queue for a while now, so you might have already seen it if you subscribe to them. (Does anyone subscribe to them? Links can be found on the Links page if you are interested). This is an article I think I am going to be going back to a few more times yet, just to work out the kinks in my brain. Not exactly indepth, but a good starting point, and poses some questions.

Archive the year | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com. Some good tips. Now all I need is to get me a dvd burner 😛 I think it would just be easier to get that external harddrive I’ve got my eye on…

Shiny Shiny: Thermometer Earrings. They dangle. I’m hooked!

Halley’s Comment: Touchy Subject: Guest Bloggers. I feel pretty much the same way. I go to blogs because I like how the blogger writes. There is too much good content out there to put up with it being badly written. There will be someone else writing about the same subject better. I am fine with multi-author blogs, so long as it is clear that a blog is multi authored. If it’s normally just you, and you get a guest in, do as Halley says and make it clear who they are and how long they are around for! Please!

ThinkGeek :: Set Of Circuitboard Coasters. I never understood coasters until I had to live in rented accommodation with a Nazi-in-training landlord who’s pet hate was water marks. Coasters became my new best friend. Even now, when it’s my own furniture I’m trashing, I still find myself using coasters. (There is no hope for me, I will end up the little old cat lady). My inner geek is thinking that these pretties are really rather, well, pretty!

Ok, a really really short Roast today. It’s just been a slow news week is all.
To pad things out a bit, here is what else I have learnt this week – webcams are evil (but good, if that makes sense), skype is great, Yahoo!IM is probably one of the most infuriating programs I have ever had the misfortune to be forced to use, MSN Messenger 5.0 for Mac isn’t much better, and wikis are really starting to get on my tits. That’s it.

The Aikido FAQ: The Aikido Dojo Guide. Thanks to Minion Neko for this! (trust me, funny!)

Lifehack Your Books: Dogear, Writing In Books, and Apologizing to LIbrarians.

A Christmas Carol – Episode 1podcast. I mentioned this before, but I don’t want you to miss it 🙂

John Spencer, who played Leo in The West Wing, died on Friday of a heart attack. (This story doesn’t have a particular link, because all the news sources I have found give spoilers, and that’s just not fair. )

Decentralised Information Group Breadcrumbs – So I Have a Blog. I am such a geek. Discovering that Tim Berners Lee (the chappy who created the WWW in the first place) has a blog just made my day. As I said, geek.

The best of the rest

Cas is currently… at life

Today’s Sunday Roast. Small, but perfectly formed – rather like myself actually.
Enjoy, and forget not the leftovers.

Good Gifts Catalogue – transcribe books into braile. Please help: £25 buys a Braille book, £100 buys a book with giant print. And £725 actually provides transcription and master copying of a new title. And the name of the Good Giver (or receiver) is entered on the flyleaf. What a nice place to be.

Gizmodo Gift Guide. For the gadget freaks in your life (ie me!)

Color palette creator v1.6. This from LIz, over at Successful Blog. If you are on the lookout for a new colour scheme, but can’t think of where to start, just keep hitting the “random base” button till you find one you like. Cool.

Official Google Blog: Public transit via Google. Yes, Google are taking over the world, but this is a good idea! Can they do one for So’ton please 🙂

Thinking Negative. Funny, but insightful.

Carpetbagger. The NYT’s Oscar run-up blog. You might need to login, you might not.

Gmail Clips. An intriguing idea and one I will no doubt be playing around with at some point. Just, not now.

When Christmas Falls on Sunday, Megachurches Take the Day Off. Christmas day, the day you would (if you were devout) go to Church to celebrate the birth of Christ). You would think. I present this to you in the spirit “you what now?!”, my on going series of disbelief at the things Americans do.

del.icio.us: y.ah.oo! One more favourite site of mine swallowed in a giant gulp by Yahoo!. Humph. Ah well, this could be good. I’m reserving judgement.

new Mittens and Snowdrop. The perfect early Christmas present.

The Penguin Podcast: a Christmas Carol. Subscribe to this, do. A free narration of a Christmas Carol, read by Geoffry Palmer (who has a lovely voice)? Got to be good.

Map of the world scaled to population. Note how small Canada and Australia are!

Cas is currently… at life

Mesdames et messieurs, pour le déjeuner aujourd’hui, je vous apporte le “Sunday Roast”. ^*1*

Science ‘must teach experiments’. I was very fortunate in my schooling and had the opportunity to do lots and lots of experiments. Three lessons a week in each science, one of those three being a ‘practical’ lesson where we got to mess around with things that might (and frequently DID) go bang. The experiments were easily the best part of the week (apart from when we had to use elodea in Biology. Elodea hates me) and have given me a love of science I hold to this day. You have to like something to do three A levels in it!

The Artful Writer: Set Lingo For Writers. A handy list of slang you are likely to encounter on-set when you’re next working with Spielberg.

Ishbadiddle: RSS Hack – for when sites annoyingly don’t have RSS.

2005 Holiday Gift Guide – New York Times. Might require registration seeing as how it is the NYT, but some groovy gift ideas, seeing as how it is coming up to Christmas an all.

Ishbadiddle: The Anxiety of Getting Things Done. In my ever continuing quest for ways to get me working again (this thesis will just not die!), I stumbled across this. Some good ideas in there. Some things I already implement, other things that I really should, office supplies I can get all excited about buying (yes, I am one of the people who will happily browse around Staples if they have an hour to kill). I know a quick fix won’t really help, but just occasionally, a quick fix makes you feel better.

BBC NEWS | Government sites ‘fail disabled’. This, whilst it saddens me, does not surprise me. Just take a look at Southampton City Council’s website for a site that is not only hideous and complex to use, but is broken on *ALL* Mac supported browsers (even Mac IE) and is slightly bent on any Windows browser bar IE. Grrr! What gets me is that they spent money on this new design, lots of money, and the old design was really rather good. I repeat, grrr.
(In a related note, I do find it mildly amusing that the government’s own report on this subject is ever so slightly broken in Safari – just a few floating table/div alignment issues that can happen to the best of us, but still…).

Jabberwocky. I used to love this poem – we had to write it so many times when we were being taught pretty handwriting in primary school that you couldn’t but absorb chunks of it. The Crazy Canalman’s rendition of it has to be heard to be believed (very very good). I think my favourite bit has to be “the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!”. GREAT line.
And, though I’m not totally sure how accurate they could be seeing as half the words Carroll used don’t even exist in English,
Jabberwocky in French
Jabberwocky in German.

Sketches… Set on Flickr. Mindbendingly pretty digital art. All… swirly. As I said, pretty.

Nose cells that may help the paralysed.

Time travel on the tube. Funky.

Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar – NYT.

A Consuming Experience: Feeds: partial or full? How to have both. More how-to goodness from Improbulus.

Antartida – a photoset on Flickr. It was midweek, I felt drastically in need of some penguins to cheer me up and, as always, flickr came through 🙂

Now, don’t forget the Leftovers!