Be Lambic or Green

Some good news from the UK today, apparently NHS trusts are rejecting homeopathy. This is despite people like Prince Charles trying to stick their nose into the debate; maybe when he’s King he can make a royal decree, but until then it’s a downhill slope for homeopathy. Only 37% of NHS primary care trusts still offer homeopathy services and at least 8 major homeopathy contracts have been canceled in the last year.

Homeopaths are saying they will survive, and maybe they will, but only as an insignificant service preying on the weak and gullible.

If Aidan is doing anything like this when he’s 10, I’ll be a very happy Dad.

In moments of boredom over the past few days I’ve been going through all the blogs on yulblog.org to see what blogging platforms people are using. The result is the graph below.

Notes:

I didn’t visit every single site. For example most of the blogger/blogspot sites I determined just by looking at the URI, so some of them are probably old or broken.

There are three Chatelaine blogs on yulblog. Apparently Chatelaine uses WordPress.

Apparently I can spot a WordPress blog with a fair degree of accuracy, even without any “Powered by WordPress” hints. DotClear had me confused occasionally though, they are suspiciously similar to WP blogs.

There are some very beautiful blogs in Montreal, but there are some hideous ones too.

This guy uses the same theme as me.

Someone still uses Xanga. Amazing.

I got tagged by that guy, which means I don’t have to agonize about what to blog about today.

The rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

So here goes:

1. Ever since Blork blogged about “try to” (correct) and “try and” (horribly wrong) I’ve become slightly obsessive about it to the point of making strangling noises every time Pullman makes the error in his Dark Materials.
2. I like port. And single malts. But I don’t smoke cigars or read the Financial Times.
3. I have a scar on my right knee from falling out of my bed onto my etch-a-sketch as a boy. I left the removed stitches in a small plastic vial on a table in a pub garden.
4. I have an Avenging Unicorn on my desk at work.
5. When I sleep, my right foot has a mind of its own. My son has inherited this trait. It drives my wife crazy.
6. I have been strip searched by UK Customs and Excise.

I tag her and him and her and him and double tag her.

Science or “Biblical Science”, you decide.

At the end of December, my sister embarked on a racearoundtheworld a leisurely trip around the world starting, slightly perversely, in Australia. I’m very envious, but I’m living the trip vicariously by reading her travel blog. She hasn’t been gone a month yet and she’s already climbed a bridge, hiked mountains, canoed, scuba dived, and done a jeep safari, with plenty of stops for beer along the way. We obviously need to find some extreme sporting activities in Montreal for when she finally arrives here. And buy beer.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.” – Mike Huckabee

Please don’t vote for this man.

My Mum bought me a GP2X for Krismas. Well actually she just sent money, I used it to buy a GP2X. This is my review after playing with it for a couple of weeks.

The GP2X is a portable media player, similar to a PSP or Gameboy, except it’s linux based so the platform is completely open. It’s slightly cheaper than a PSP.

The hardware seems to be well built. It’s bigger than the iPod I got used to carrying around, being slightly smaller than a PSP but that’s to be expected as it’s more than just a music player. It runs on two AA batteries which bulks it out a little bit more but means I can take extra batteries on long trips.

The screen is a good size and the buttons are well placed. I got the new F200 version, which has a direction pad instead of a joystick and also has a touchscreen display. The touchscreen seems like a strange addition but maybe it will come in useful for something.

The only thing missing is a switch to lock the controls, which I realise can be done with software but a hardware option would take the onus off the developers.

The machine has various orifices: SD card slot, headphone socket, USB port, EXT port, AC adaptor socket. These are all “protected” by little rubber things, which don’t fit quite right and are just terrible. I’m guessing I’ll end up chopping them off.

There is no hard drive in the device, so I had to go buy an SD card for it. I picked up a pack of two 2Gb cards for $50 which is enough for a big chunk of music plus all the software I want to install on it. Despite dire warnings I found on various websites, the SD card was “plug and play” and connecting the GP2X to my laptop via USB caused it to be mounted as a drive.

The software that comes with the machine is fairly basic. You get a movie player, a music player, an image viewer, an ebook reader and some built in games. I’ve only really used the music player and image viewer so far.

The music player plays MP3 and OGG formats, which is good because most of my music is in OGG format. Unfortunately it doesn’t play AAC format, and I have some of those downloaded from iTunes. A quick hunt around got me OMMPC, an alternative music player which has a very cryptic interface but does play AAC files (non-DRM of course). The biggest problem with playback is the volume; the minimum volume setting is still very loud. Unless I find a solution for that I will have to buy some new headphones with built in volume control.

As for other software, because the F200 model is so new, the community is still playing catch-up so most software out there is still for the F100 but will still work with the new model. As with most open source software the quality varies, but I haven’t found anything really terrible so far. The biggest problems I’ve had have been knowing which buttons to press to make things go, as documentation is often lacking.

I’ve just started exploring the games available. So far I’ve concentrated on games written or ported directly to the GP2X. The other option is emulation, as it is capable of emulating many popular gaming systems as well as some of the good old favourites like the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro. I’m looking forward to playing with some of those for the nostalgia.

Many of the native games are silly little puzzle games which can be amusing for a little while but I soon lose interest. There are a few platform style games, and I’ve been having fun with Cave Story and SuperTux. I also discovered Sqdef, a tower defense game which is fairly unique and fun to play on the metro.

Overall I’m very happy with the GP2X. There are a few minor annoyances, and it is a little rough around the edges compared to more proprietary devices, but if you enjoy a little bit of hacking around it’s a lot more fun than an ipod.

I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.3.2 and added Gravatar support to my comments. Gravatar was recently acquired by Automattic, the people behind WordPress and Akismet, so I’m now even more dependant on Mr Mullenweg and his team.

Everything seems to be running smoothly, but if you notice any problems, let me know.

This little planet of ours managed another sweep around the sun. It’s done it about 4.5 billion times before, despite what those silly young earth creationists will tell you, so it’s getting quite good at it.

Here’s hoping the next lap will be filled with happiness, peace, rationality, good racing, interesting travels, delicious food, and chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

Happy new year everyone!