Not sure what I’m going to do with this site yet, maybe a change of direction.

Previously I’ve cut and paste text and put it on my ereader,  I’ve written scripts to scrape the text automatically and I played with greasemonkey scripts to create simple versions of a few sites I read regularly.

Recently though I’ve found TidyRead which pretty much does exactly what I need. It works as a plugin or bookmarklet and for any web page you wish it will try and strip out all the extra information just leaving you with the main article text and images in a clean easy to read single page with options for colour and font sizes.

TidyRead renders web pages with better readability as an-easy-to-read manner, similar to eBooks, by accurately extracting the context text and removing the cluttered materials. Read what you should and nothing else.

I’ve been reading the quite excellent Clarkesworld Magazine with this and have found it far more pleasant with larger text, a dark background and light grey text which is easier on the eyes.

Partly this is because it’s not immediately clear how best to use the thing and partly because I know very few people using the thing which seems to be the key if you wish to collaborate.

This free ebook/guide can at least help with the first part of my problem and let me work out what I want to use it for and how to use it.

The plan is to sell the guide as a DRM-free PDF but the contents will remain freely available at http://completewaveguide.com. It already looks pretty comprehensive and being a collaborative document itself it should remain up to date as more features are added and documented.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a collaborative user manual for Google Wave written and edited by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. Launched one month after the Google Wave preview release, this guide is the most current, comprehensive, independent user resource for the most ambitious (and confusing) web application ever created.

In the spirit of Google Wave, this guide is a bold experiment in collaboration and public iteration, as well as independent book publishing.

I read a lot of ebooks but I’ve been suffering a bit staring at bright screens so I’ve finally invested in something with an e-ink screen which is much closer to reading off paper.

I spent quite a while hunting around and was tempted by the Sony Ereader and it’s stroke-able shininess but I wasn’t so keen on the proprietary format and lack of support for other formats. Finally decided on a BeBook which is a rebranded Hanlin V3 from China which reads just about anything but has the added bonus of a load of developers creating some nice custom firmware for it at OpenInkpot.org.

Played with the factory firmware for about half an hour before flashing OpenInkpot.

I might write a review once I’ve had a little more time with it.

Service will resume shortly.

Why do I keep hearing variations on that vacuous statement, even from people I thought were rather more rational.

Political correctness where it even exists is basically a way of stopping bigoted twunts (and those old people who don’t mean to…bless ‘em) from calling people names. It hasn’t “gone mad” and in fact if you scratch the surface of most of the stories you’ll probably just find a hole in your copy of the Daily Mail which seems to spend most of it’s time thinking up new things to be afraid of.

“Baa Baa Black Sheep has been changed to Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep”
Really? Did they update the big book of official nursery rhymes? I sang it recently with my daughter and nothing appeared to happen. We sang it at her playgroup and no PC Brigade crack squad stormed the building.
Go on, you still believe the story about the EU and bananas as well don’t you? It’s great when some story makes you feel ok about your xenophobia isn’t it? Go on shout something about foreigners you know you want to!

“They’ve banned christmas havn’t they”
Well “they” are doing a shit job at banning it whoever “they” are. You can’t get away from the bloody thing at the tail end of the year. Honestly people can stand in the highstreet with shops full of sparkly crap, lights on every lamp post and hateful christmas muzak being pumped out in every supermarket claiming that offended foreigners have somehow affected their mundane excuse for a christmas. I recommend beating them with their own gargantuan turkey whilst screaming “Is this christmassy enough for you!”

“This is a christian country”
This one usually has nothing to do with political correctness and is generally followed by some inarticulate rant about muslims or just vaguely brown looking people. Firstly this is not a christian country it is by and large a secular one which just has an odd cultural love affair with it’s christian past. This is evidenced by the people usually making the above statement who generally don’t look like the sort to be drinking tea with the local vicar. Funny how people suddenly find religion if it means they can shout about foreigners.

Aaargggh it’s annoying, anyway here’s Stewart Lee making more sense than me:

Hammaad Munshi, who was taking his GCSEs when he was arrested, was part of a cell of cyber-groomers which set out to brainwash the vulnerable to kill “non-believers”. He was convicted at Blackfriars Crown Court of making a record of material likely to be useful for terrorism over a guide to the manufacture of napalm.

For nearly a year the teenager, whose grandfather is a leading Islamic scholar, led a double life, the court heard. By day he attended lessons at the local comprehensive, and did as he was told. But in the evening, he spent hours surfing jihadist sites and distributing material to others as part of what the Crown branded a “worldwide conspiracy” to “wipe out” non-Muslims.

The court heard that that material contained included instructions about making napalm, other high explosives, detonators, and grenades, and “how to kill”.

Whilst the British media greedily salivates over the juicy headlines they can run, I know I’m not the only person sitting here thinking “What terrorist?”.

I’m not for a minute going to defend any beliefs Hammaad Munshi has or his intentions,of which I’m sure I would disagree with entirely. I disagree with lots of people but simply holding views is not and never should be a crime.

However he has effectively been given a custodial sentence for possessing information which anyone with an internet connection could easily obtain. I could type a recipe for napalm here, does that make me a terrorist? I read the Anarchist’s Cookbook when I was younger, am I a terrorist? I doodled a picture of someone I didn’t like being killed in an amusing way , am I a terrorist?

There is little doubt that this young man has been groomed by extremists and had the potential to commit a crime but we can’t start locking people up for crimes they might commit. What happened to innocent until proven guilty or have we all watched too much Minority Report?

Intervention at some sort of social services level surely would have been far more effective than locking up some teenager who’s mind has been poisoned at a very impressionable age.

But who cares about justice when we can feed the fearful masses a momentary bit of relief because we haven’t caught any real terrorists lately.

Are you a slow-moving zombie who likes chasing injured people whilst groaning, searching for that fast-moving zombie with missing limbs and a taste for brains? Then ZombieHarmony is the best and quite possibly only place that will meet your needs.

…Braaaaiiiinnnnssssss…

Boiled them up in some salted water for about 6/7 minutes and they were delicious. Thought they might taste a bit muddy out of the river but once the gut is removed you are left with lovely clean tasting flesh.

Yummmmmm…I like free food.

The river near us is teeming with the American “Signals” so it didn’t take to long to grab some little monsters.

Our high tech equipment inculded a plumb line I found in a draw with some bacon tied to it, plus a cheap fishing net we bought Sophie. They really are quite stupid and will hang on for quite a while until you net them.

It’s quite strange seeing them appear from the depths, grab some bacon and then head back into the gloom with it like little freshwater lobsters. They really don’t look like they belong in an English river (and I guess these ones don’t), especially when you pull them out as the big ones really are very large.

Anyway, Sophie’s patience was wearing thin so we stopped short of getting a decent meals worth but I may well stick them in the pot tomorrow and see how they taste.

The New Yorker currently has a fascinating article about elevators/lifts called “Up and then Down”….trust me it’s more interesting than it sounds.

The article also tells the sad tale of Nicholas White who was trapped in a New York elevator for fourty-one hours, including an interesting time-lapse CCTV video of his ordeal.

First up is the Berkely Groks Science Show which I’ve listened to on and off for quite a few years now, looking at the archives it appears they have been broadcasting the show (at least on the radio) since 2001.

It’s a great show, well presented and if you are interested in science and technology then it’s up there with the best of the science podcasts.

Berkeley Groks is a weekly science radio program produced at KALX 90.7 FM in Berkeley, California. Each week, the hosts, Dr. Charles Lee and Dr. Frank Ling, take an in-depth look at recent events in the world of science and technology, and examine the effects of recent discoveries on our daily lives.
Each episode features an interview with a leading scientist, researcher, or industrialist discussing stimulating work in their field. The show often includes a humorous and entertaining segment; plus the world famous question of the week!

You can find all sorts of course material, podcasts, video lectures, exams, and just about anything you would need to educate yourself to university level (apart from the will power) online for free.

Whilst you won’t receive any certification, it is amazing to think that this knowledge is there for the taking for anyone who is able to access it. The “internet as the new Gutenberg press” analogy is not a new one but becoming closer to the truth as our collective knowledge is shared so simply in so many different forms.

I am as you can probably tell, very interested in learning, often for the actual act of learning itself. The pursuit of knowledge used to be a goal in itself yet it is now so often just a means to get a better job and little else…but I waffle far too much…

MITOpenCourseWare is my latest stop on the internet for a bit of not-so-light reading. Started in 2002 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now provide educational material from over 1800 courses taught to their graduates and undergraduates.

There is a ton of interesting stuff here, more than you could ever possibly digest so I’m sure you can find something to interest you and maybe even something useful..I know some games programmers are using these sorts of materials to help with the stupidly hard maths now needed for 3D games design.

So after a bit of hunting around I found the free Wordpress theme Maximum Adsense 02 here.

I quite like the look of it so I’m going to run it for a while and have a fiddle with it to see if I can make some adjustments. If it is causing any really stupid problems feel free to let me know but from a brief test it seems to be displaying correctly in Firefox and IE apart from a few minor post formatting issues.

I’m particularly liking the cthulu-esque picture of octopi hung out to dry.

Found this one whilst randomly stumbling about the other day and it’s a superb little resource for some bloody photoshop fun.

When I was a kid, I was a compulsive painter of punched eyes, missing teeth and bloody scars on almost every magazine or newspaper photo I found.

Time passed by and I didn’t become a special effects makeup artist like Tom Savini or Rick Baker, but I still enjoy a nice horror movie with some decent gore and splatter effects.

Lately I’ve been noticing that many Photoshop artists are mastering the horror makeup techniques and believed that it was time to gather a nice (er, sort of…) list of Photoshop tutorials filled with gore, splatter and blood. Some previews have been blocked just because the final effect was too explicit. Have some fun with your photos, but don’t scare your kid brother too much, please

The great priest of the old ones of R’lyeh he of abject terror, horror and revulsion spoke of in the Necronomicon is quite cute in soft toy form.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

The site contains a lot of few tutorials on drawing and drawing techniques plus a very friendly community of artists and beginners.

If you are interested in drawing or just fancy doodling a few pictures, you can probably find something of use here.

As its that day again, a short documentary for your viewing pleasure.

Its a rather disturbing collection of short stories tied together with an overall plot about writers being invited to a three month writing retreat. I’m not convinced by the plot holding it all together but the short stories are genius, if a little sick in places.

Strangely it along with several other copies was found in each of the children’s sections. I can only assume it has either been shelved wrongly or (the option I hope is true) placed there in some sort of Tyler Durdenesque prank to upset small children with books containing rather graphic stories.

The best site for interesting torrents. If I know you and you ask me nicely I’ll send you an invite.

Very beautiful it is too although slightly damp and cold due to some unseasonal weather

Matlock Bath is utterly bonkers. They appear to have created a seaside in the middle of a load of hills, next to a river. Time stopped there around 1950. Nice but odd.

I love the old pulp scifi magazines. Go and read a modern version at Ray Gun Revival