So, Rage Against The Machine's song Killing In The Name Of beat the X-Factor's Joe McElderry who has released his version of the Miley Cyrus cover Climb. And beat it by 50,000 copies, selling half a million copies and raising money for the charity Shelter.
This is Sylvie's favourite. We have to watch it before bed every night. She nearly knows all the words.
Blergh.
Recently I've been diving into High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Initially I used Bracketeer to combine three photos that had been taken with different exposure (-2, 0, +2 stops). But very quickly I became unsatisfied with the output from Bracketeer. After a little research, it turns out Bracketeer only fuse photos with different exposures. Whereas other HDR software also perform tone mapping. After listening to a TWiP podcast about HDR and read through the HDR tutorial by Trey Ratcliff, I decided to try Photomatix Pro last week to see what different result I would get.
it all starts with a warning letter and then proceeds to a court of law and finally you end up in a place like cipinang where the only food you get is rice - you do like rice dont you? keep a check on your mail miss idle and have a happy christmas at home sweet home
Since my first iPhone, I've never had any issue with its battery life. As long as I get access to the charger by the end of the work day the battery life on the iPhone 2G or 3G have been perfectly adequate. That is until I started working on a project down in Atlanta and my weekly commute now extends to around 6-8 hours, depending on flight delays.
Of course I'm thankful for family and friends but God's mercy and grace are freshest in my mind. Without knowing God I would almost certainly still be lost, guilty, ashamed, and self centered. So today I'd say that I am most thankful for the painful course of events that put me on my knees - a necessary and life saving humbling no doubt. This is my first Turkey day as a believer and it rocks!
-Thanks, Jon Marler (via BlackBerry)
I've got a presentation to do on the 30th for work. It's talking about the kind of work my little department does and how it could help another department in my firm.
And I am cacking myself.
I was watching a film at the cinema a couple of nights ago and in between concentrating on the film, I noticed that I was feeling v. nervy and getting palpitations and traced it back to the fact that this frigging presentation is really freaking me out. I even started thinking about calling in sick on Monday and landing someone else in it at the last minute to cover my presentation.
The last time I did a presentation was 6 years ago - that's how much I hate doing them, I've managed to stick my head in the sand, avoid and totally ignore them for 6 glorious years.
But it's just my luck that the TWO other people who could've/should've been doing this presentation have BOTH got annual leave booked that day.
FFS - I've given birth to two babies, so how the hell can a 10 minute presentation be freaking me out so much?????
But it is.
So many people I know - husband included - give presentations with such ease; they don't bat an eyelid, filling their presentations with witticisms and funny stories and totally comfortable in their own skins.
And me?
My presentation is just going to give it to them straight in the hope that 10 minutes won't really feel like 10 hours and I won't somehow fuck it up.
My short story Reboot has been published by the webzine Short-Story.me.
Here’s how it starts:
A quantum worm uncoiled itself out of the machine being restored, suddenly collapsing into a specific state and wreaking havoc within the operating system. Alarms sounded and the graphs scrolling across Tom's screen spiked wildly. His laptop was plugged into a large black box of qubits, the liquid hydrogen coolant vented slowly in quietly dissipating clouds. Inside, beneath the desperately stylish matt black metallic exterior, beneath the ultra-cooled chamber, inside the electron traps, sat a countless number of electrons, reduced to acting as quantum bits. The qubit box was plugged into the local network, copying its state carefully in a safe, isolated, two-phase restore of the destroyed machines.
Go and read it and tell me what you think.
