An anthropology themed blog. Lots of interesting stuff. I enjoyed studying anthropology, oh so many years ago… Ten years ago in fact, eurgh.

Ethno::Log

“the kind of job that nobody notices if you’re doing it well.” A good interview with someone who certainly seems to have a good attititude and know what he’s doing.

I tried to start a traditional sysadmin beard this Christmas but it’s just not quite right yet, so I’ve reverted to cultivated perma-stubble. I can’t manage the long hair at all, so the Alan Cox hacker style is forever lost to me.

Life in the trenches: a sysadmin speaks

Greenpeace: “In a stunning example of corporate insensibility, Dow Chemical, the worlds largest chemical company, and new owners of Union Carbide is to sue survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. While the site of the disaster lies covered in toxic waste and survivors struggle with continuing ill health and deadly pollution from the site, Dow has decided to add to their woes with a Indian lawsuit.”

Link: How low can Dow go?

Possibly the simplest useful client/server network app still going, although barely. A new Fingerbob version with stupidly good features is on the way too.

Link: Finger History

MS are accused of exploiting a ‘partner’ company again. The irony is that at a press conference to annouce the partnership, a journalist asked Sendo if they were worried that MS might just take their information and then dump them, Sendo’s spokesman said there was no possibility of that.

Now they say “Microsoft gained Sendo’s trust and confidence through false promises”.

Link: Sendo sues Microsoft over ‘secret plan’

We needed a new printer - our (at least five year old) Canon BJC-610 was not at all happy working with Mac OS X via Linux. As Arteth needs to print stuff for her course, and she works on a Mac, we decided to upgrade.

I originally chose and ordered an HP 995c, an unusual printer with Bluetooth networking and a duplex unit built in. It was recently discontinued, and I couldn’t get hold of one without waiting until February, so after some very last minute research I ordered an HP 6127 instead.

This seems to be the official replacement for the HP 995c - it has a similar spec, but most importantly, it’s got better features, it looks nicer, and it’s cheaper. It also arrived the next morning, despite me ordering at 4.30pm in late December. Thanks Simply Computers.

Key features - Nice print quality. Aimed more at office use (charts etc) than photos. - Very, very easy to set up and use. - Not a bad speed, but pretty quiet. - A duplexer. It can print on both sides of each sheet paper, if you want. - It has excellent drivers for all almost all operating systems. Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, etc. - No Bluetooth, but instead it has full 10/100 ethernet and a web-based user interface built in. This is very nice.

At work I last year I ordered some networkable printers from Epson. This HP has much better features for half the price.

On my experience so far, I thoroughly recommend it as a home network or small office printer.

My plan for the Yule break was to dedicate three days to each of my “main” projects, and try to get a new version of each ready for release. This hasn’t happened. Instead I’ve been working 4 to 12 hours a day on Hippo.

It’s been very educational and a lot of fun, and Hippo is now considerably bigger and better than I’d planned. I’m now months ahead of schedule, which is nice, but thanks to ‘feature-creep’ I’m now not writing a simple client app. Hippo has become an unusual community ‘information management’ system.

When Anne Widdecomb said “Jesus Christ said suffer the little ones to come unto me, not that they should be eaten for public entertainment” she was right, but her god isn’t completely against the eating of babies. Far from it - baby eating is something he seems to have a thing about. Deuteronomy 28:53, for example. Or Leviticus 26:22, 29, Lamentations 2:20, 4:10, Kings 6:28-29, 33, Isaiah 49:26, and maybe a few more.

Disturbing.

Link: DEUTERONOMY 28:53 Products

Someone has made a working replica of a Gameboy which is over a metre tall.

Link: Gameman

In my humble opinion, the best Flash animation of the year:

Link: Fly Guy