It looks like the entire United Kingdom… or at least the percentage involved in property… needs Emergency Remedial Mathematics lessons.

The UK economy leaps out of recession, like a grasshopper trying to jump on Jupiter, triggering a mass hallucinatory episode amongst real estate agents whom, I can only guess, come to the incorrect conclusion that “0.1%” is somehow a fraction representing “1 percent”, and consequently re-list all their properties using a multiple of that figure.

Optimism abounds. :-]

This is cool – SWFK was the top voted comment (option?) on a recent stack overflow discussion about programming for 11 year olds:
stackoverflow.com/…/which-programming-language-is-manageable-by-an-11-year-old-kid

There’s finally a German version in progress:
code.google.com/p/swfk-de/

Here’s a news group discussion about SWFK being used (at least in part) for a course on teaching Python:
archives.seul.org/schoolforge/…/msg00041.html

And finally, the book also made the list of beginner’s tools on the sugarlabs wiki:
wiki.sugarlabs.org/…/Resources

Chuffed.

Here’s a judge who has completely lost touch with reality:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6811239/Businessman-jailed-for-attacking-intruder—who-goes-free.html

Quote:

It’s difficult to believe that this outcome reflects the thinking of the public, or the interests of justice.

I would say not difficult… more like impossible.

So, cross the US back off the list of places I want to visit any time soon…

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

Don’t know if he actually wrote it, but under the assumption he did, this is brilliant:

http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2009/11/mandelson-censors-jeremy-clarkson.html

I was updating the SWFK project page with the total number of downloads (since I last updated it in March), and discovered that I’ve miscalculated the figure. I use awstats for my site, and usually just go through all the swfk-*.zip links for each month, using a calculator, to work out the sub-total, then add the downloads from the Google Code project page. However, this time I used a spreadsheet, and it appears as if I’ve previously missed a few thousand downloads. So while I thought the the grand total was around 16K, it looks like it’s actually in the region of 19K. Which is something like 18-20GB worth of data — a reasonably impressive figure, when I think about it.

Perhaps I’ll throw myself a party when I hit 20K…

So, I’ve just finished Batman: Arkham Asylum (almost twice), and currently playing GTA IV. Does anyone else wish that someone would take the Batman gameplay mechanics (and voice acting) and merge with a world the size of GTA?

Gotham City instead of Liberty City.

Imagine glide flight from the top of a skyscraper, rather than just a few storeys up on a gargoyle. Tracking criminals from building to building. Remote driving the Batcar or Batwing for a pickup. Using the “real” Batcave facilities to investigate crimes.

The possibilities are endless…

…and I want that game!

…is that you’re forced to sit through the semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent.

And I thought having to sit through multiple viewings of The Wiggles was bad…

If you’re a regular visitor, you may have noticed my rather ill-fated attempt (IMO) at using a magazine style theme on this site has now been replaced by… well… very little theme at all.

This is not the only change. After much internal cogitation, I’ve decided to dump the forum, and use Google Groups for further discussion on all my projects. Along with moving the hosting of those projects elsewhere. In short, this blog now becomes more of a blog. The distinction makes sense in my head anyway.

While the old forum messages can still be found here: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/forum, check below for where you should submit comments from now on.

YAK for WordPress
The main project page will now be at WordPress: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yak-for-wordpress/.
General discussion will now be held at: http://groups.google.com/group/yak-discuss.
Bug reports can be posted to: http://groups.google.com/group/yak-bugs.

stomp.py
The main project page is at Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/stomppy/.
The discussion group can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/stomppy.

Proton Template Engine
The project page is at Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/proton-te/.

Snake Wrangling for Kids
The project page is still here: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kids/.
The discussion group is here: http://groups.google.com/group/swfk

More to come…

Apple shows Microsoft how to really do an “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” advert:

http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/getamac/2009/apple-mvp-elimination-us-20090512_480×272.mov

Awesome.