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2476

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 17, 2015, 10:30 AM »

I have added a ringed image below the invisible cat picture above, so that you can spot the tabby cat there.
The image of the cat is not the clearest, but it is more easily seen with a magnifying glass (as opposed to digitally enlarging it). Sharpening it also helps, but that also distorts some of the image.
@crabby3: You must have copied and saved the image, resulting in some lossiness, so you can barely discern the cat in the lossy image.

2477

Mini-Reviews by Members / Recalibrating the temperature sensor on a hard drive?

« Last post by IainB on January 16, 2015, 11:54 AM »

I wondered whether any of the wise denizens of DC might be able to offer some advice.
I am trying to figure out the best method and thermometer to use to recalibrate the temperature sensor on a hard drive. My drives are all 2.5" format drives, either housed in a laptop or in a USB-connected device enclosure, and some of the latter are sealed plastic enclosures and thus difficult to gain access to without risking breaking the enclosure.

I have come to the conclusion that the reported temps on some of the drives I use are inaccurate. Some feel hotter to the touch than others that HDS says are running at a higher temp.

The HDS Temperature report tab says:

It is recommended to calibrate the temperature and set the temperature offset on the S.M.A.R.T. page. This way later the correct temperature value will be displayed.
____________________________________

The HDS Help document says:

Temperature calibration
The temperature sensor built in most modern hard disks may give improper results. The difference between the measured and the actual temperature can be 7-9 Celsius degress or even more.

To fix this problem, it is possible (and recommended) to measure the actual temperature of the hard disk by using an external infrared thermometer or a front panel with temperature sensor and set the difference between the measured temperature and the temperature displayed by Hard Disk Sentinel (reported by the drive itself) as temperature offset. This is called calibration.

After the real temperature has measured (by the thermometer or other external temperature sensor), the offset can be calculated by subtracting the value reported by the software from the measured value. This offset can be positive (the software reports smaller temperature than the real) or negative (the software reports higher temperature than the real).

This offset can be specified on the S.M.A.R.T. page of the hard disk, after selecting attribute #194 (hard disk temperature) and using the + / - buttons (by clicking on the number between the icons, the offset value can be entered directly in Celsius units).

(Diagram: S.M.A.R.T. attributes, details and trends)

Hard Disk Sentinel will automatically increase (or decrease) all hard disk reported temperatures by the configured offset value. This way the correct (real) temperature will be displayed and used in all cases (for example, when checking hard disk temperature against a threshold and when saving reports etc.)

It is recommended to perform the temperature calibration on all installed hard disks if possible. Same type of hard disks may require different temperature offsets.

Note: if the calibration is not possible (the computer chassis cannot be opened), an estimated offset value can be determined by checking the first displayed temperature immediately after starting the computer and comparing the value with the environment (room, office) temperature. At this time, the CPU, video card or other components are not too warm and they do not affect the temperature of the hard disk. Of course this is true only if the computer had enough time to cool down to the environment temperature (it was not powered off for at least 8 hours).

For example, if the hard disk temperature is displayed as 17 Celsius degrees (immediately after starting the computer) and the room temperature is 22 Celsius degrees, +5 can be configured as offset value (because the hard disk cannot be cooler than its temperature). This offset is better than nothing but of course an external thermometer is needed to determine the proper temperature offset value.

Note: the temperature offset should be specified in Celsius units, regardless of the selected temperature unit (Celsius or Fahrenheit).

Note: the unregistered version automatically resets all offset values to 0 when the user restarts Hard Disk Sentinel.

2478

Mini-Reviews by Members / Hard Disk Sentinel PRO - now up to version 4.60 (7377).

« Last post by IainB on January 16, 2015, 11:17 AM »

Update 2015-01-17 0614hrs: Hard Drive Sentinel is now up to version 4.60 (7377). I forgot to post about this when it updated a short while back.
In the OP, I have made minor updates to version number and supported OSes.

2479

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2015, 04:34 AM »

Not sure whether this has been posted before.
I and my 4 ½ y/o son just spent about 10 minutes trying to find this cat in the photo. I had forgotten where it was.
I used a magnifying glass in the end, and that did the trick. Superb camouflage. The image is a bit bigger here, so that should help.

2480

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2015, 03:40 AM »

Grandpa gets an I-Pad ...
While a daughter is visiting her father and helping in the kitchen, she asks,
"Tell me dad, how are you managing with the new iPad we gave you for your birthday?"
This clip is spoken in German but it's easily understandable in any language.
 
http://www.snotr.com/embed/8965
http://www.snotr.com/video/8965

2481

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2015, 03:37 AM »

Do any women here get fe-mail?

-Arizona Hot (January 14, 2015, 06:48 PM)

I dunno, but some of them probably get hotmail...

2482

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 13, 2015, 11:56 AM »

Blasphemy is a victimless crime...https://www.youtube..../watch?v=-u6XXOELs_s

2483

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 12, 2015, 08:17 AM »

And this also at funnyjunk, for @Renegade and his trigger-happy ilk: Norwegian Pride

2484

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 12, 2015, 07:56 AM »

My 13 y/o daughter Lily was laughing uproariously and had tears streaming down her face watching some vids in possibly bad taste on a website, so I took a look and couldn't stop laughing. I thought the best was the parachute jump.
Check it out at: Bonus dank WebM compilation - "ISIS"

I found the scientific one about matter/antimatter especially funny. Made me cry laughing.

2485

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 12, 2015, 06:50 AM »

Very good Apple spoof by IKEA: Experience the power of a bookbook™

2486

Living Room / Stretching the "peer reviewed" brand until it snaps.

« Last post by IainB on January 07, 2015, 07:30 AM »

I'm not sure whether the term "peer review" carries any real weight nowadays - or whether it retains any scientific credibility or has any real meaning for science.
Interesting review of the state of affairs:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

DSHR's Blog: Stretching the "peer reviewed" brand until it snaps
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Stretching the "peer reviewed" brand until it snaps
The very first post to this blog, seven-and-a-half years and 265 posts ago, was based on an NSF/JISC workshop on scholarly communication. I expressed skepticism about the value added by peer review, following Don Waters by quoting work from Diane Harley et al:

    They suggest that "the quality of peer review may be declining" with "a growing tendency to rely on secondary measures", "difficult[y] for reviewers in standard fields to judge submissions from compound disciplines", "difficulty in finding reviewers who are qualified, neutral and objective in a fairly closed academic community", "increasing reliance ... placed on the prestige of publication rather than ... actual content", and that "the proliferation of journals has resulted in the possibility of getting almost anything published somewhere" thus diluting "peer-reviewed" as a brand.

My prediction was:

    The big problem will be a more advanced version of the problems currently plaguing blogs, such as spam, abusive behavior, and deliberate subversion.

Since then, I've returned to the theme at intervals, pointing out that reviewers for top-ranked journals fail to perform even basic checks, that the peer-reviewed research on peer review shows that the value even top-ranked journals add is barely detectable, even before allowing for the value subtracted by their higher rate of retraction, and that any ranking system for journals is fundamentally counter-productive. As recently as 2013 Nature published a special issue on scientific publishing that refused to face these issues by failing to cite the relevant research. Ensuring relevant citation is supposed to be part of the value top-ranked journals add.

Recently, a series of incidents has made it harder for journals to ignore these problems. Below the fold, I look at some of them.

In November, Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch reported that BioMed Central (owned by Springer) recently found about 50 papers in their editorial process whose reviewers were sock-puppets, part of a trend:

    Journals have retracted more than 100 papers in the past two years for fake peer reviews, many of which were written by the authors themselves.

Many of the sock-puppets were suggested by the authors themselves, functionality in the submission process that clearly indicates the publisher's lack of value-add. Nature published an overview of this vulnerability of peer review by Cat Ferguson, Adam Marcus and Oransky entitled Publishing: The peer-review scam that included jaw-dropping security lapses in major publisher's systems:

    [Elsevier's] Editorial Manager's main issue is the way it manages passwords. When users forget their password, the system sends it to them by e-mail, in plain text. For PLOS ONE, it actually sends out a password, without prompting, whenever it asks a user to sign in, for example to review a new manuscript.

In December, Oransky pointed to a study published in PNAS by Kyle Silera, Kirby Leeb and Lisa Bero entitled Measuring the effectiveness of scientific gatekeeping. They tracked 1008 manuscripts submitted to three elite medical journals:

    Of the 808 eventually published articles in our dataset, our three focal journals rejected many highly cited manuscripts, including the 14 most popular; roughly the top 2 percent. Of those 14 articles, 12 were desk-rejected. This finding raises concerns regarding whether peer review is ill-suited to recognize and gestate the most impactful ideas and research.

Desk-rejected papers never even made it to review by peers. Its fair to say that Silera et al conclude:

    Despite this finding, results show that in our case studies, on the whole, there was value added in peer review.

These were elite journals, so a small net positive value add matches earlier research. But again, the fact that it was difficult to impossible for important, ground-breaking results to receive timely publication in elite journals is actually subtracting value. And, as Oransky says:

    Perhaps next up, the authors will look at why so many “breakthrough” papers are still published in top journals — only to be retracted. As Retraction Watch readers may recall, high-impact journals tend to have more retractions.

Also in December, via Yves Smith, I found Scholarly Mad Libs and Peer-less Reviews in which Marjorie Lazoff comments on the important article For Sale: “Your Name Here” in a Prestigious Science Journal from December's Scientific American (owned by Nature Publishing). In it Charles Seife investigates sites such as:

    MedChina, which offers dozens of scientific "topics for sale" and scientific journal "article transfer" agreements.

Among other services, these sites offer "authorship for pay" on articles already accepted by journals. He also found suspicious similarities in wording among papers, including:

    "Begger's funnel plot" gets dozens of hits, all from China.“Beggers funnel plot” is particularly revealing. There is no such thing as a Beggers funnel plot. ... "It's difficult to imagine that 28 people independently would invent the name of a statistical test,"

Some of the similarities may be due to authors with limited English using earlier papers as templates when reporting valid research, but some such as the Begger's funnel plot papers are likely the result of "mad libs" style fraud. And Lazoff points out they likely used sockpuppet reviewers:

    Last month, Retraction Watch published an article describing a known and partially-related problem: fake peer reviews, in this case involving 50 BioMed Central papers. In the above-described article, Seife referred to this BioMed Central discovery; he was able to examine 6 of these titles and found that all were from Chinese authors, and shared style and subject matter to other “paper mill-written” meta-analyses.

Lazoff concludes:

    Research fraud is particularly destructive given traditional publishing’s ongoing struggle to survive the transformational Electronic Age; the pervasive if not perverse marketing of pharma, medical device companies, and self-promoting individuals and institutions using “unbiased” research; and today’s bizarrely anti-science culture. 

but goes on to say:

    Without ongoing attention and support from the entire medical and science communities, we risk the progressive erosion of our essential, venerable research database, until it finally becomes too contaminated for even our most talented editors to heal.

I'm much less optimistic. These recent examples, while egregious, are merely a continuation of a trend publishers themselves started many years ago of stretching the "peer reviewed" brand by proliferating journals. If your role is to act as a gatekeeper for the literature database, you better be good at being a gatekeeper. Opening the gate so wide that anything can get published somewhere is not being a good gatekeeper.

The fact that even major publishers like Nature Publishing are finally facing up to problems with their method of publishing that the scholars who research such methods have been pointing out for more than seven years might be seen as hopeful. But even if their elite journals could improve their ability to gatekeep, the fundamental problem remains. An environment where anything will get published, the only question is where (and the answer is often in lower-ranked journals from the same publishers), renders even good gatekeeping futile. What is needed is better mechanisms for sorting the sheep from the goats after the animals are published. Two key parts of such mechanisms will be annotations, and reputation systems.

2487

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature request: automatic OCR of captured images.

« Last post by IainB on January 06, 2015, 07:05 PM »

Yes, the ABBYY software seems really rather good at what it does.
As described in EPSON Perfection V330 Photo Scanner + ABBYY and ArcSoft software, I first came across it in the bundled software that came with that scanner.
The last time I had Acrobat was in its version 7, but I don't use it now and currently get .PDF OCR processing via a FREE software - see PDF-XChange Viewer ($FREE version) - Mini-Review.

My thought with the ABBYY ScreenshotReader was that it might be worth exploring to see whether it could be incorporated into the CHS process somehow, to meet the requirement for automatic OCR of captured images (those captured by CHS). This could be (say) upon the capture of each individual image, or perhaps as a post-capture batch process, or something. I had effectively been doing the latter - albeit manually - using OneNote, but the OCR capability of ABBYY ScreenshotReader seems to be superior to OneNote's OCR capability.

Added note: By the way, this is not to forget the very relevant point that any images in .TIF/.TIFF format can be automatically  OCR'd for text and indexed/searched by Windows Desktop Search, if you have the .TIFF iFilter installed. In my view, for client-based databases, this in itself could be a good reason for duplicating text-bearing images into .TIFF format.
Similarly, I gather that any/most images - i.e., not just those in .TIFF formats - which are stored in the Evernote "cloud" are OCR'd and indexed for searching, and .PDF imaged documents stored in Google Drive can be OCR'd and the text searched/extracted.

2488

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Abbyy screenshot reader

« Last post by IainB on January 06, 2015, 04:52 AM »

Not to labour the point, but please do note that the comparison of OCR'd table data that I posted details about (above) - and much to my pleasant surprise - definitively contradicts/refutes my earlier statement:

...
I recall that Abbyy disabled (couldn't support) the thing at some point because it was not compatible with Win7 or something. Didn't bother me anyway, as I was already using OneNote by that stage, which has OCR integrated and a much better OCR clipping function in Send to OneNote. ...

-IainB (December 20, 2014, 05:19 AM)

So the recommendation from me would be to get the ABBYY Screenshot Reader giveaway, as it is very good at what it does, if not better than most. That is, assuming one can forget about the apparent extra bloatware and the licence server phoning home.

2489

Mini-Reviews by Members / IsoBuster Pro - today only on BitsDuJour 50% discount - US$19.97 (17.5 hrs left)

« Last post by IainB on January 05, 2015, 08:32 AM »

IsoBuster Pro - today only on BitsDuJour 50% discount - at time of posting this.
I reckon this is probably a worthwhile piece of emergency recovery software to have in your back pocket.

IsoBuster - Recovery Software - 50% off Discount for PC
Flash drives, SD cards, CDs, DVDs, hard drives, and Blu Ray discs are great for offline storage. That is, of course, until they're damaged! Then the panics sets in, with fruitless trips to the geek squad, frantic internet searches, and the lingering feeling that you'll never see those photos, movies, documents, emails, or crucial powerpoint presentations again.

Never fear, IsoBuster is here to save the day!

IsoBuster is a data recovery tool specifically designed for retrieving data from just about any damaged storage device or disc. This powerful, flexible recovery tool supports countless optical, image, and storage formats, including CD, DVD, MMC Media, Micro SD, ISO, USB flash, mobile phone memory cards, Blu Ray, SDH, IMG, and HD DVD, and much, much, MUCH more!

Check it out folks! Data recovery from physical media is only part of what IsoBuster can do. It's also a one-stop source for opening and extracting ISO, IMG, and other disc image formats!

Using IsoBuster is so easy. Just insert a disc or drive, select it, and let IsoBuster mount the media. In seconds, you'll be looking at all of the tracks and sessions located on the disc, along with Explorer-like file access.

With IsoBuster's improved error handling, you'll be assured of recovering the data that you're after. Just copy the ones that you want to save to a secure location, and BAM, you're a hero!
Today's promotion includes the following:
IsoBuster PRO - Personal ($19.97)
IsoBuster PRO - Professional ($29.97)

2490

General Software Discussion / Re: unitypdf project will be ended at the end of January 2015 !!!!

« Last post by IainB on January 05, 2015, 08:08 AM »

I had never come across this software before, but managed to find this: UnityPDF [Review]

2491

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Abbyy screenshot reader

« Last post by IainB on January 05, 2015, 04:59 AM »

The previous FREE ABBY Screenshot Reader "RETAIL" (Christmas giveaway) also installed a licence server Service (you cannot seem to run the ABBY software without having that service running). One more overhead.
Presumably this is probably still the case with the latest Christmas giveaway.

-IainB (December 20, 2014, 04:05 PM)

is this license server service still present in the newer versions?

-lanux128 (January 05, 2015, 02:25 AM)

Looks like it. There is a process called the ABBYY NetworkLicenseServer.exe running:

2492

General Software Discussion / Re: editor with built-in column or tiling facility - (Listhings comes close)

« Last post by IainB on January 05, 2015, 12:10 AM »

Something along these lines was Microsoft MS Labs Sticky Sorter (Affinity Model) - I think v1.0.1908.0 (Rev.No.: {EDE23986-7C05-42F7-9187-FB07AF83DBD3}) was the last - see: Create Affinity Diagrams with Microsoft Sticky Sorter

Website was: http://www.officelab...r/Pages/default.aspx

Website now is: http://web.archive.o...r/Pages/default.aspx

File was: http://officelabs.vo...tickySorterSetup.msi

File now is: http://web.archive.o...tickySorterSetup.msi

Refer DCF discussion Re: lightweight software for organizing notes? (not web-based)

Nifty feature: You could output/edit the stickes' contents in an Excel or CSV file.

2493

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Abbyy screenshot reader

« Last post by IainB on January 04, 2015, 10:43 PM »

Thought I'd cross-post this relevant item from: Re: free ABBYY Screenshot Reader.

This relates to the above discussion and some separate discussions:
As a result of pursuing the idea of getting OCR data out of any text-containing images in my CHS database (per this request here: Feature request: automatic OCR of captured images.), I "Ducked" (DuckDuckgo) for things relevant to the subject, and happened upon this interesting post:

FREE OCR software: a survey of desktop and online tools - freewaregenius.com
Jun 18, 2013 By Priit 35 Comments
...
16. ABBYY Screenshot Reader
ABBYY Screenshot Reader is a screen capture software that can do screenshot OCR on the fly. Excellent recognition quality, amazing number of 160+ input languages can be selected, also multiple languages at a time. It can nicely handle data tables. ABBYY Screenshot Reader is reviewed here.
...

Out of interest, I downloaded and installed the free ABBYY OCR clipping tool (it is now v9.0.0.1331) and then ran a comparison between it and OneNote's OCR clipping tool using an image containing a table.
The result? Very interesting. A hands-down win by the ABBYY tool:

2494

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature request: automatic OCR of captured images.

« Last post by IainB on January 04, 2015, 10:41 PM »

Thought I'd cross-post this relevant item from: Re: free ABBYY Screenshot Reader.

This relates to the above discussion and some separate discussions:
As a result of pursuing the idea of getting OCR data out of any text-containing images in my CHS database (per this request here: Feature request: automatic OCR of captured images.), I "Ducked" (DuckDuckgo) for things relevant to the subject, and happened upon this interesting post:

FREE OCR software: a survey of desktop and online tools - freewaregenius.com
Jun 18, 2013 By Priit 35 Comments
...
16. ABBYY Screenshot Reader
ABBYY Screenshot Reader is a screen capture software that can do screenshot OCR on the fly. Excellent recognition quality, amazing number of 160+ input languages can be selected, also multiple languages at a time. It can nicely handle data tables. ABBYY Screenshot Reader is reviewed here.
...

Out of interest, I downloaded and installed the free ABBYY OCR clipping tool (it is now v9.0.0.1331) and then ran a comparison between it and OneNote's OCR clipping tool using an image containing a table.
The result? Very interesting. A hands-down win by the ABBYY tool:

2495

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: free ABBYY Screenshot Reader

« Last post by IainB on January 04, 2015, 10:30 PM »

This relates to the above discussion and some separate discussions:
As a result of pursuing the idea of getting OCR data out of any text-containing images in my CHS database (per this request here: Feature request: automatic OCR of captured images.), I "Ducked" (DuckDuckgo) for things relevant to the subject, and happened upon this interesting post:

FREE OCR software: a survey of desktop and online tools - freewaregenius.com
Jun 18, 2013 By Priit 35 Comments
...
16. ABBYY Screenshot Reader
ABBYY Screenshot Reader is a screen capture software that can do screenshot OCR on the fly. Excellent recognition quality, amazing number of 160+ input languages can be selected, also multiple languages at a time. It can nicely handle data tables. ABBYY Screenshot Reader is reviewed here.
...

Out of interest, I downloaded and installed the free ABBYY OCR clipping tool (it is now v9.0.0.1331) and then ran a comparison between it and OneNote's OCR clipping tool using an image containing a table.
The result? Very interesting. A hands-down win by the ABBYY tool:

2496

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: How to edit a saved image in CHS, using Screenshot Captor?

« Last post by IainB on January 04, 2015, 03:59 PM »

^^ Thanks @mouser. That's just the sort of info I needed to do what I was intending - i.e., it's apparently already built-in to CHS, with the image editor being an optional variable setting. (I mostly use SC for image editing anyway.)
I had not realised that, nor that the the toolbar was displayed in content-sensitive fashion like that.    
Quite nifty.    
Now that you have pointed it out, I shall be able play about with the possibilities.

By the way, I had realised that SC does not update a clip image preview automatically after you edit it, and so in paranoid fashion I have generally tended to use Ctrl+S to force it to save/update the image file with the latest changes. Though it's extra key depressions, it's not necessarily something that I had perceived as an avoidable delay, but I suppose every little bit helps.

2497

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 01, 2015, 12:20 AM »

Iain, did you just succeed in annoying the *entire world*!?
   

-TaoPhoenix (December 31, 2014, 11:44 PM)

_________________________
^^ Well, the intention was not to annoy, but to amuse!
I hadn't seen that joke before. A mate of mine sent it to me today. I thought it was quite punny.

2498

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on December 31, 2014, 07:36 PM »

Ethnic joke:
An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, several Americans (including a Hawaiian and an Alaskan), an Argentinean, a Dane, an Australian, a Luxembourger, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Ni Vanuatu, a Nepalese, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Mongolian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, a Uzbek, a Cypriot, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, a Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, an Iranian, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Syrian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a Hungarian, a Canadian, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Aruban, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahaman, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Finn, a Canadian, a Slovenian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Malagasy, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Jamaican, a Filipino, a Ukrainian, a Dutchman, an Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian, a Zimbabwean and several other Africans,  all walk into a fine restaurant.
 
"I'm sorry," said the Maitre D', after scrutinizing the group, "but you can't come in here without a Thai."

2499

Living Room / Re: Happy New Year! =D

« Last post by IainB on December 31, 2014, 05:05 PM »

Happy New Year to all.
My big resolution is the same this year as it's been for the last twenty at least. I resolve to seek clarity in all my thoughts, and through all my deeds. That's a pretty tall order. But each year I feel I'm inching just a bit closer to actually pulling it off.

-40hz (December 31, 2014, 03:21 PM)

Someone should probably counsel @40hz on the advisability of pulling it off.

Happy New Year to all!    

2500

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by IainB on December 31, 2014, 06:59 AM »

Last night I watched:

• 1. the SF time-hopping paradox movie Loopers. I thought it a very good story/film.
• 2. the James Bond 007 movie Skyfall. Not bad, though formulaic. I wish they wouldn't make Bond's lips do that effeminate pout all the time though, it's a bit off-putting even if it is a campy joke.