It Was Bulldozed in 1992

So we just had a long bank holiday weekend (ie Monday is a bank holiday, ie we don't work!). As the weather was cool I thought I'd take everyone to Windsor Safari Park. My memories of it as a kid were great, and everyone I asked here in Colchester thought it was a great idea.
The day before I was trying to plan the trip on my TomTom, and it couldn't find the park. So I thought I'd check their website and get the address from there. I googled "Windsor Safari Park" and I got http://www.windsorsafaripark.org.uk/ and I'm greated with the following message:

Come back to Windsor Safari Park in Berkshire just one more time. Although the park CLOSED in 1992, this site is dedicated to it's legendary animals!

yeap! the damn thing was bulldozed in 1992, and I'd been wanting to go there for the last 5 years. Why-oh-why didn't anyone tell me this before. So instead, I find Woburn Safari Park (alot more inferior I must add) and take everyone there. It was a great day out, but the best thing about it has to be in the picture :)

And so it's back to work tomorrow. Oh well, let's hope things aren't too bad. Patients tend to get sicker when left for 3 days in a row. I'm sure they'd be delighted to see their favourite doctor back in action, eh?

20q

I've been lounging around at home for the last 3 days. On Tuesday, I woke up with a rip-roaring sore throat (it must've been that guy that lives alone with his wife). As I had to do a 12 hour on-call, I went to our staffing co-ordinator an hour before duty and coughed and spluttered on her so she could get someone else to cover. It worked, and I've been home since. Yesterday was a shitty day, with lots of headaches and muscle aches etc etc. Today hasn't been too bad still, but feeling grotty now.
Anyhow, back to topic. firebox.com kindly send me a quaterly magazine with all their latest cool stuff, and something that caught my eye was a ball called 20q. It claims to find out what you're thinking of in 20 questions, and you could be thinking of ANYTHING. hmmm, BS I think.
A quick google 20q took me to www.20q.net an online version of the same. It turns out that 20q is an on-going and learning AI that has about 10 million neurosynapses (we have about 100 billion in our brain), that learns the more it's used. Interestingly, someone has shrunk it all into a small toy.
OK, so i gotta outsmart it. How about "WAR", it'll never get that. At question 18 the damn thing said "Are you thinking of a war?". OK, how about "light bulb". Again, round about 17 or 18 it guessed it right. Me and a friend spent nearly ALL of last night trying to outsmart the damn thing, and it just kept getting it right!
The only thing it can't get is specific places, things or people. Everything else it can. By asking simple questions like "is it bigger than a microwave", "will it break if it falls", "can you wash it" it'll effectively figure out 90% of things right (providing you give honest answers). The damn thing is simply amazing. I was even thinking of it and it guessed "Are you thinking of 20q.net?" I kid you not.

Here's an example of something that it guessed right in 20 questions. I won't tell you what I was thinking (answers in comments if you fancy), but it managed to guess it right using just the answers below...

19.Does it use numbers? No.
18.Does it make noise? No.
17.Would you find it in an office? Yes.
16.Is it usually visible? No.
15.Is it a synthetic material? No.
14.Is it straight? No.
13.Does it come in a box? No.
12.Can it be washed? No.
11.Do you hold it when you use it? No.
10.Is it something you bring along? No.
9.Can it fit in an envelope? No.
8.Does it contain a lot of water? No.
7.Is it found on a desk? No.
6.Is it square shaped? No.
5.Does it play music? No.
4.Is it smaller than a loaf of bread? Irrelevant.
3.Is it a common household object? Yes.
2.Does it help accomplish tasks? Yes.
1.It is classified as Other.

I've ordered the 20q ball (from amazon actually, sorry fireball) as it'll prove a good party game to just put on your tea table when someone pops in. Head over to 20q.net and experience it yourself (it even speaks a few more languages, eg German and Spanish!)
Oh, and before I forget. To cash in with the latest StarWars craze, Burgerking and Lucas have made an animated version of 20q. The Sith Sense is the same as 20q but with a very real animated Darth Vader doing the guessing, and playing his force mind games. Good for a laugh, but not as fast as the original site.

"Can you find it in an Church?"

LRTI ---> Sepsis

Ok, so I was on-call the other day. A middle aged man was refered with a nasty chest infection. The bug (and all it's toxic products) had made it's way into his blood, which made him quite hot and confused. I like to call this Lower Respiratory Tract Infection (LRTI) with secondary Sepsis.
So why do I mention this here? Our man was so confused that he gave me one of the funniest replies I've ever heard to a question before (not intentionally, he had no clue what he was saying)

ME: So, do you live alone?
PATIENT: Yes. I live alone with my wife!

:) made my day I tell you. I saw him yesterday and he was fine, so I reminded him of it. He didn't have a clue what he'd said, but worst of all he had no idea who I was. Oh well, goes to show that sometimes being a medic is a thankless job after all.

Over, and out.

Wait for Episode III, I can't....

A month ago, not more than that, and if you asked me what the Millenium Falcon was, or who killed Obi Wan Kinobe and I would've thought you were rambling mad.
It all started in the doctor's mess one day. I remember watching one of the Star Wars movies as a kid (Return of the Jedi I think), and I was trying to remember the events. I foolishly asked the doctors that were lazying around and was met with responses like *GASP!* YOU DON'T KNOW WHO HANS SOLO IS?!!! or YOU DIDN'T KNOW LUKE IS DARTH VADER'S SON??!!
And since every monkey under this sun knows all about Star Wars, I thought I'd see what the fuss was all about. I "acquired" the DVDs for all 5 released episodes, and watched them as they were relesed (ie 4,5,6,1,2). And I gotta admit, the Star Wars universe is brilliant! I like the badies most (who can resist Darth Vader's kickass presence), but all in all I'm happy I decided to watch them all, in preperation for Revenge of the Sith.
I think I disagree with the critics of episodes I and II. I really enjoyed I, and even though the guy that plays Anakin leaves alot to be desired, I still enjoyed episode II. Natalie Portman can be my senate any time, that girl rocks since the excellent Leon.
Oh, and isn't it shocking that Frank Oz (aka Miss Piggy, Fuzzy bear, etc) is Yoda!!
So, I can't wait to see Episode III. The trailers look great and it'd be cool to finally figure out how Anakin gets into the most famous mask in the world.
Finally, thought I'd end this post with 2 trivia facts about Star Wars
In Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back), the story starts with Luke being attacked by a snow monster (forgot it's name), and that slashes his face and scars him. That had to be put in the movie cos between episodes IV and V Mark Hamill had a car accident that scarred his face :)
And alot of the light sabre fighting scenes with Ewan McGregor in had to be redone, cos Ewan had the knack of making the sound fx himself (ie going woooo and wooooosh and so on) while they were filming, and this mucked up all the sound engineering. Can't blame him really....

Till later, when I'll finally blog about the excellent XBOX360, which I hope I can afford come X-mas.... the console war is beginning, and it's all for the better. I'll do them all justice in another entry.

May the force be with you.....

And you thought you knew how to play Tetris

didn't you?
everyone has played tetris. Whether they admit it or not, we've all had our moments with THE daddy of all modern age puzzlers.
But, we're note all Tetris Masters, like the guy in this video. Totally insane stuff, from some sort of tournament.
Fake or not, you decide... but pretty damn impressive!

Let's all rasterbate

Having a quick look around my flat (read dump), noticed that I'm missing a printer. Last one I owned (was also the first one I owned) was a cheapo canon that sucked big time. It broke and I just threw it away a long time ago. As it was the wireless age, I thought I'd get a network enabled printer. Went on froogle and typed "network printer". Alot of responses came back, but the HP deskjet 6840 from ebuyer caught my eye. Ordered that, and also 512meg of RAM for good old powerbook.. The printer is a good inkjet that has a few tricks up it's sleeve. It can autodetect paper quality (very useful), it can print borderless (even more useful if you're rasterbating. See later), can print double sided automatically, and finally is wireless 802.11g enabled, and it connected to sobnet in no time at all. I can now print from PC or MAC from anywhere within my HUGE flat ;)
Then it dawned upon me.... How about printing labels for all the *cough* backup *cough* CDs I have, especially DivX, XviD, (S)VCD, DVD-R etc. So off I go to PC world and get an Afterburner. Essentially, printer prints on special labels and the afterburner applies them flawlessly to the CD. After a few hiccups calibrating the printer to the labels, everything is now fine and the majority of my backups look nearly original. Funny that, as I've lost most of the originals I backed them up from... Those of you that backup like me and have yet to witness the wonders of self-labelling, do give it a spin, you'll be amazed at how fun it all is, and looking at the cds with labels is quite satisfying.
Not been doing much gaming lately... I've got SO MANY games I really have to do that I've just given up. Till now I've only clocked Doom III Resurrection of Evil, and that's it! I am though having a good time playing a great PSP game called Mercury. Created by the ever-amazing Archer Maclean (old timers, remember things like dropzone, IK+ etc), the game follows the Super Monkey Ball formula of tilting the world to move a blob of mercury, around a series of difficult mazes/tasks/etc. It's a great great game, with lots of clever gameplay. Some levels involve races against the clock, others involve strategic puzzle solving, while others require you to finish the level with a minimum percentage of mercury left (it falls off the level you see, if you're not careful), and combo levels are the most devilish, combining all the above. The gfx are great and the physics are as true as you'd imagine a blob of mercury would do. Great stuff and well worth everyone's pennies.
As I said before, watch SIN CITY. Also, while I'm on that note, do yourselves a favour and instead of reading this boring blog, get a copy of Kung Fu Hustle (thanks INDIA for the tip!). A great Chinese comedy about some very unlikely kung fu masters. Nothing special here in terms of direction etc, but a great movie with slapstick comedy and great fights to boot. Don't expect another Crouching Tiger, but more of a better Jackie Chan. Definitely worth the watch!
The Rasterbator is most probably the coolest website to grace the net in a long while. I'm surprised I haven't mentioned this before, as I've known about it before G-D was even born! In essence, pick a cool picture you have, upload it to the rasterbator and watch it turn into a work of art! The image is converted into custom-sized posters (printed on A4 pages) while being stylised into large dots. It's a bit difficult to explain without seeing examples, and there are some great ones on the page. The possibilities with it are endless. After getting deskjet (remember? from this same blog a long time ago.... it's amazing you're still around!) I decided to revisit the rasterbator and create my own piece of art. I found a cool picture of superman and rasterbated it on to 16 pages of photo paper (from the era of crappy canon). The result was so good I actually went and bought 2 frames and framed it all lovingly. It's now hanging proudly on my living room wall.

Go visit the site and come up with your own funky ideas. It'd be cool to see what you guys come up with.
Finally, decided to get a new set of headphones yet again. Remember a while back I mentioned the Seinnheiser PX100. A great piece of kit that lacks one thing: sound isolation. Now to achieve that publicly means either wearing some big-ass motha fucka headphones that only people with large 'fros or shaggy hear wear, or getting some in-ear phones. Looking already like a retired pimp, I went for the latter. Shure e2c is what I decided to go for, after researching the massive head-fi.org. Looking more like hearing-aids than anything fun, I bought mine from the apple shop in London. As it was a weekend Oxford Street was perhaps the busiest place in Europe. With cars, people and other wonderful noises around, I unpacked my e2c nervously and wore them as the manual explained (yes you do need to read the manual about how to put them in, and with 6 sizes of pads to choose from, it's not an easy task at first!). Lucky for me I've been taught how to stick things into people's ears succesfully, so I gave myself a taste of my own medicine (terrible cliché!).

Withouth the ipod on, it felt exactly like sticking your little finger in your ears. I turned on the pod and shuffled the tracks to see what would randomly come out. As the first mysterious song loaded, I walked out of the shop into the raging street. The sound of life around me was loud enough to reach me even with these foreign bodies in my ears. And then she sang! Alanis Morissette was singing JUST FOR ME. In a private session, complete with band and all, but me and only me there. Her voice more beautiful than I'd ever heard it before! She was telling about all she really wants, and I could hear every darn syllable, every breath of emotion, every little noise coming from her band! I was literally walking down the street dumbstruck. I couldn't hear a single thing from the monster outside, and it was only me and Alanis. A quick hit of next-track and along came Jarre, with his Bells. Not a favourite track but one that greatly showed me that even after all these years of Jarre fandom, I haven't really heard his music as he made it in the studio! The details in his music were amazing, and I'm sure I heard at least 2 new instruments I hadn't heard before in the same track!
And thus my journey to audio nirvana was getting shorter. If you like music, and if you really want to hear your tracks properly, get shure e2c. Even better, if you like to listen on the move then these babies are ESSENTIAL. problem is, they'll set you back around £70 = €105 = $133. Well worth it if you ask me, but I'd say that cos I just blew so much dosh on such a small thing!

Time to sleep now I guess. It's 01:35 now, meaning it took me 40 minutes to type all this crap. Amazing really, I'm sure a monkey with a typewriter could've come up with better stuff alot quicker.
SoB from Good-delicious HQ2