Salad Fingers 5 is out! (by alaric)

Salad Fingers is a very disturbing and strange Flash cartoon.

If you've already seen episodes 1-4 then you can watch episode 5 - otherwise, view them all!

Collecting postnominals (by alaric)

I've been collecting letters after my name. I reckon this is a noble goal; I hope that one day software development will be regulated by strict codes of conduct, like other skilled professions upon which lives and careers rest. Also, I think it's important that the IT profession have a voice of its own in politics, as opposed to the sometimes all too loud voice of IT companies.

Anyway. It all began when my degree earned me associateship of the City and Guilds of London institute.

However, all this seems to entitle me to is the postnominals "ACGI" - unlike the professional bodies I joined later, it doesn't seem to have any other benefits. Then again, they're not asking for an annual membership fee, and compared to the others it's a truly ancient institution, being based around engineering in general rather than software or electrical engineering.

Noticing that having "ACGI" after my name clearly made me highly attractive to the opposite sex, I decided I'd see if I could join any others.

After a few year's of work experience, in which I tackled some pretty interesting projects, I became a full member of the Institution of Analysists and Programmers, thus adding "MIAP" to the mix. I like the IAP; they're very helpful and friendly. They encourate networking, putting members in touch with each other, publishing a directory of members who are available to do freelance work, that sort of thing.

The next step has been joining the British Computer Society, thus adding "MBCS", too. These folks seem a lot more widely recognised than the IAP, and are involved in things like helping the ISO set IT standards. I'm hoping to get involved on their forums; I think the world will be a better place with more teamwork in the computer industry. However, they're a bit less personal than the IAP, and they cover a broader field, so I'm glad to have both.

The next step with the BCS will be to apply for Chartered IT Professional status - the IT world's equivelant of being a chartered engineer. This will involve some probing interviews and background checks, so I will leave it until I'm a little less stressed.

I wonder what to join next after sorting that out... IEE, IEEE (famed for their standardisation work), or ACM (famed for their meetings and SIGs)?

Pod Belt (by alaric)

Well, I've had a busy month, with nothing interesting enough to blog about for a while...

However, today a nice parcel arrived: my Pod Belt.

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Information of use to a terrorist (by alaric)

Ok, in the UK, I've heard of "posessing information of use to a terrorist" as being a crime.

Google can't find me much more detailled information about this, which is nagging at me.

Now, as somebody with a broad interest in the fundamental forces that bind the Universe together (y'know, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, and that sort of thing), and their manipulation to enhance the human frame's limited powers in order to make us godlike beings able to shape planets in our own image, and just because huge glowing balls of plasma are fun to play with, I know lots of stuff that may be of use to terrorists. I suspect, for variosu reasons, that I'm probably on some kinds of watch lists somewhere.

Therefore, I try to be SQUEAKY CLEAN. I don't partake in the minor petty crimes many people do; software piracy, breaking speed limits, and so on. I suspect that I'm probably being watched, and such things logged. If the UK takes a paranoid turn, then somebody in power might ask the intelligence services to start taking down "potentially dangerous" people on whatever minor charges can be found, "just in case". In which case, I'd probably be in for it.

However, yesterday I was browsing the welding section in Foyles, when I wondered accross (in the adjacent metallurgy section) a translaction of "The Pyrotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio: The Classic Sixteenth-Century Treatise on Metals and Metallurgy". It contained lots of practical instructions on metal melting and casting without access to super-high-tech equipment - perfect for my casting experiments, and historically interesting.

So I bought it. However, when reading it on the train, I saw in the contents that it has chapters on "The manner of making metal balls (that burst)", "The methods of making tongues of fire", "The methods of making fire tubes", and "Concerning the fire that consumes without leaving ashes, that is more powerful than any other fire, and whose smith is the great son of Venus" (wow).

First thought: "Cool! That sounds like crazy alchemical summoning-and-harnessing-the-great-element-of-Fire stuff. What fun!" Second thought: "Bugger, if the thought police break down my door and rifle my bookshelves, they're gonna look dimly on all that. For at the time, that was the height of military technology (it includes detailled instructions on the construction of cannon, for example)."

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The association between flourescent green materials and radioactivity isn’t just the domain of comics and movies (by alaric)

Uranium can be added to give glass a fluorescent yellow or green color

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Overview

...it's official! Glass containing uranium is actually coloured flourescent green/yellow!

After all my irritation at radioactive wastes always being portrayed as a glowing yellow/green liquid, that little point has made my day. Thankyou.