Aw, let’s do this again
The big version isn’t very big on this one, but I loved the look on her face.
Contrary to some of my cherished commenters, I’m confident in saying this woman will never, ever be president. Any chicanery big enough to put her in office would probably result in a civil war.
It’s like when people ask me if I’m comfortable taking dual citizenship. And the answer is — I realize it’s possible the US and the UK would go to war with each other and I might have to make an unpleasant choice, but the conditions necessary to make that happen within my lifetime would be so catastrophic and huge that I probably wouldn’t survive them anyway.
There, now. I’d better get busy. I brought some work home with me, and it’s not even fun work — it’s proofreading an Honour Roll of the local WWI dead. The most horrible of horrible wars, I hate everything about that one.
December 13, 2016 — 8:42 pm
Comments: 13
I will never get tired of this
Click this bit right here to see the whole thing.
I will never get tired of this.
If you have emailed me in the past few days, I probably missed it. Our host moved our various domains to a different server, and British Telecom decided all that email coming from a single source had to be spam and bounced it all. For, like, four days. I think we have it sorted now. Our mail is mostly going into the spam bucket, but at least it’s reaching us first.
If you haven’t had a reply, hit me up again.
December 12, 2016 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 17
Be part of a crowd (maybe)
This came across my desk today. It’s a map of the 1,100 known wrecks along the South Coast of England between 1914 and 1918.
Whoa.
It speaks to the brutal efficacy of the u-boat blockade that very nearly starved Britain in the Great War.
The Maritime Archaeology Trust has gotten a grant to work with diving clubs to crowd-research identifying some of these wrecks from the bzillions of artefacts they’ve brought up. I haven’t looked at the particulars, so I don’t know if it’s something a Yank might be permitted to join from the comfort of his favorite armchair.
The project’s main website is here (the site is well worth a browse even if you don’t want to participate).
If you just want to look at cool pictures, the Maritime Archaeology Trust’s Sketchfab site is here. Sketchfab is for 3D, so you can make their models go ’round and ’round.
RimrockR wins the dick! John Glenn dead at 95. What say ye — is there time to queue up another Dead Pool for tomorrow, or would you feel rushed?
The ‘ayes’ have it — new Dead Pool Round 92. Tomorrow. 6WBT. Be here!
December 8, 2016 — 8:50 pm
Comments: 18
Heh.
Spotted on the bulletin board of a local store earlier today.
Bought our tree. Haven’t put it up yet.
Chickens really, really not happy with quarantine.
That is all.
December 7, 2016 — 9:42 pm
Comments: 4
QUARANTINE!
Well, hell. It’s not going to be a very Merry Christmas for my girls, looks like. DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has today issued a 30-day no-free-range order across England (other parts of the UK have their own separate governing bodies).
The Government Chief Vet has declared a Prevention Zone introducing enhanced biosecurity requirements for poultry and captive birds, helping protect them from a strain of avian flu circulating in mainland Europe. The zone covers England and will remain in place for 30 days.
Keepers of poultry and other captive birds are now required to keep their birds indoors, or take appropriate steps to keep them separate from wild birds.
Outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N8) have been confirmed in poultry and wild birds in several countries across Europe. No cases of H5N8 have been found in the UK and this order is a precautionary measure to help prevent potential infection from wild birds.
There’s no keeping ours inside, and it’s impossible to keep them entirely separate from wild birds. We live in an incredibly birdy area — by design. We’re a designated habitat for all sorts of birds, particularly ground-nesting waterfowl. They pay the farmers around here to make conditions hospitable (and when you pay a farmer for a thing, you’re bound to get a hell of a lot of it). But I’ll have to put a crimp in their free ranging for a miserable month. Poor little pecker-heads.
If you want to know more from DEFRA about the outbreak, click the link above or here.
Anybody know where I can get some xylophones?
December 6, 2016 — 9:56 pm
Comments: 11
So this is a thing, apparently
I found this while looking for something else. There ought to be a word for finding something when you’re looking for something else online, but I can’t think of a good one.
Zeus tattoos. The style is called gray and black, I gather. There’s a lot of it out there. When it’s good, it’s at least interesting. When it’s bad, it’s pretty awful. Have a browse.
This particular example is by an artist called Chico Morbene. I can’t get over the subject had a little gray fuzzy cloud tattoo’d on his right nipple. Dude, the composition would have been just fine without that. Ow.
I tried to work out what led to such a surge of interest in Zeus allofasudden among muscle guys. Turns out, I was way overthinking it. It means “Greek god” and there are plenty of Mercuries and Herculeses.
Though (surely in a case of hilariously mistaken identity) several of them are recognizably Michelangelo’s Moses, horns and all.
Guys, guys — I don’t think Moses is the dude you want all over your naked body.
December 5, 2016 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 19
Bank of England Governor declares new tallow fiver “delicious!”
“Try it with the mac and cheese!” Mark Carney enthused.
Eh. Just kidding. He says, “shit, bruh, we didn’t know there was animal shit in this shit.” They’re looking for a way to make these awful plastic fivers without animal products, somehow.
I wonder if that means they’ll recall all the haram bills already in circulation.
Okay, now. Ding dong, Fidel is dead! Not only is that spectacular news for the free world, but it means Deborah won herself some dick! See you all back here tomorrow, 6WBT for DEAD POOL ROUND 91!
Are you ready for Friday? I’m ready for Friday.
December 1, 2016 — 8:32 pm
Comments: 11
Pen porn
The 1670 Inks collection celebrates the life and adventures of J. Herbin, a famous French sailor.
On his travels, J. Herbin gathered formulas for inks and sealing waxes. The inks in this collection pay homage to this history.
Each bottle contains 50ml of finest quality Herbin ink in colours only available in this collection, and include tiny flecks of gold; whilst these give another dimension to the ink and to your writing, we recommend that you don’t leave this ink unused in a pen for a prolonged period of time. The gold flakes do make it an ink that deserves extra care.
When writing with Stormy Grey ink, you’ll notice that the ink will go down a deep grey colour and dry to a slightly lighter grey with an intense gold sheen. The gold sheen tends to linger at the centre of your writing, taking on a grey shadow effect.
The Ocean Blue and Rouge Hematite inks seem to give a more consistent sheen of gold all through your writing, adding a little sparkle to what’s usually more conservative colours.
New colour for 2016, Caroube de Chypre is a deep golden brown colour, with a green sheen when laid down very heavily, and a warm gold sparkle.
£14.59 a bottle, if you please.
I’m sure I must have mentioned Cult Pens before. Their monthly newsletter is chock full of pen porn.
I don’t go in for super expensive fountain pens. I have a nasty habit of performing life-altering surgery on my pens (generally by grinding the balls off (!)). This doesn’t always work out so good, so I can’t afford to experiment on the best. But they have really good cheap pens, too. And all kinds of unusual things.
Like Herbin, the guys who make the hoity-toity ink above also do handmade, all glass dipping pens. Nib, barrel, the lot.
Here it is plain, spiral and marbleized. They sure are purty, but. I dunno. Does this sound like it would work to you?
You sharpen them with sandpaper.
November 30, 2016 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 13
Meet our new plastic fiver
This thing is our new plastic five pound note. They’ve started appearing over the last month or so. For a little while, there was a gold rush of currency collectors buying up notes with AA serial numbers for stupid money on eBay, but that seems to have passed. Then there were all the people stress-testing them to see if they’d go through the dryer or catch fire.
Now the thrill is gone, and shopkeepers are finding that plastic notes, once folded, never again lie flat in the cash register. Two of them together in the pocket slip around in the most unpleasant way. I start every month drawing £50 in cash in £5 notes for mad money, so I’m getting a big, irritating dose of it.
We have been assured that plastic banknotes have been used in Australia and Hong Kong for ages without any problems so quit your bitching already.
So everybody did. Until today. Today it leaks out that animal fat is used in their manufacture, and the vegans and vegetarians are having a hissy. I can understand a conscientious bunny-hugger of a vegan being upset, but honestly, vegetarians — just don’t put them in your stupid mouth.
Phun phacts: y’all probably know that every color copier and image manipulation program has a built in currency detector to prevent counterfeiting. We were warned about this when our office got our very first color copier in the Eighties (back when they cost a quarter million dollars and were the size of chest freezers). If you try to make a copy of a bill, you get a blank page or a scary warning message. If you persist, you eventually get a visit from the Feds.
We had a routine copier service at work the other day and I got to chatting with the technician. Apparently this is still true. He said you get three tries to copy a banknote and then your copier seizes and has to have a service in person.
I mention this because I right-click-and-copied the image from this article, tried to paste it into Photoshop, and got a scary warning and no image. I’d do it again to show you the scary warning, but I’m skeert. In the end, I did a screen grab and then cropped it down to the note, and we’re just waiting for the knock at the door.
Don’t try this at home.
You’re going to try this, aren’t you?
November 29, 2016 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 22
Never let ’em know you have Photoshop
I’m sulking. This is my sulky face. I’ve spent most of my evening trying to P’shop our office building into a snow globe for the company Christmas card. Sometimes, that picture idea just ain’t going to work.
Or, at least, I ain’t the weasel to make it work.
Yes, dear friends, the Christmas season is upon us. And, while I keep Christmas as enthusiastically as the next post-visitation Ebeneezer Scrooge, I admit that the early prep sometimes gets me down. Particularly the Christmas card thing.
November 28, 2016 — 10:59 pm
Comments: 14