I woke up at about 4ish today, which was late even for me. And I was still tired, so I think this means I will have to go to bed earlier. Which isn't as bad as it sounds because Andromeda's not on tonight. On the down side, I believe Angel's on channel 5 which Julian reminded me about. And if I remember correctly, we also have Hitch Hiker's on the radio, but that's much earlier.

I tried watching 'Two and a Half Men' on Paramount (I think it was) yesterday. It had some mildly amusing bits, but not enough to make me come back. Which is a pity, 'cos I liked Charlie Sheen in Spin City (and of course I liked Michael J Fox before him), but it just didn't seem to get much more funny than 'amusing'. Oh well.

I'm watching 'Extra 2: En francais' on channel 4. Which is some programme for learning French (for 14 - 19 year olds... hmm). It's quite funny. And it's made more funny by my understanding that it's funny. And even still, I'm missing about 80% of it . So it seems I'm enjoying watching a kids romantic comedy in French. Now there's a sentence I didn't think I'd say this side of school.

The laptop crashed this morning (another graphics driver fault) when coming out of hibernate. Which meant that I had to load Opera again, and that the page I was looking at containing the Salt Lake City aviation limits is now marked as being updated. So, with some fear that Santa might not be delivering to Salt Lake City this Christmas, I followed the link.

The new text is only slightly different; yay! On the down side, the publication date is in the future.

16.16.180 Flight over the city-Minimum altitude. A. General Restrictions. Except as directed by FAA air traffic control, aircraft flown over residential or business areas of the city shall comply with minimum altitude as specified in regulations promulgated by the Federal Aviation Administration. B. Exemption for Flying Reindeer on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve only, flying reindeer and any cargo they may be towing shall be exempt from the provisions of subsection A of this section. (Ord. 92-85 section 1, 1985; prior code subsection 2-3-8, 2-3-8(e)) [ Updated reindeer flight exemptions; Salt Lake City, Title 16, section 16.16.180, amended 29 Sep 2004 ]

Those keen eyed observers (who have scrolled to the September 15th entry) will see that the changes are to remove the particular reference to FAA regulation (which means that the clause doesn't have to be updated every time the FAA change their regulations), and to remove the 'two-thousand-foot height restriction' from the reindeer clause. The latter exemption was probably removed as redundant because the following statement which exempts clause A would cover that that.

So 'yay' for flying reindeers!

Pair of tracks that lead into one another nicely - Ocean Drive (Lighthouse Family) and Full Of Grace (SarahMcLachlan). A little bit melancholic, though.

Ooh, and you can follow that with The Drugs Don't Work (The Verve).

Although by this point you might not be feeling too great. And if you were really desperate to continue the theme, I'd suggest that Tears In Heaven (Eric Clapton) might just do it.

Here's a thought for you ...

Which is more impressive ?

A million or so little wires connecting a small chemical circuits.

OR

Firing a constant stream of electrons at a million individual targets accurately 70 times per second.

What do you think ?

The former is an LCD display; the latter an average CRT monitor. The LCD is really just a matter of scale - it's clever, but it's just small clever - but that the CRT is genuinely a feat of impressive engineering. It's all just controlled by two magnets and a bulb... I mean... come on you've got to say that's pretty cool, haven't you ?

How about modifying the permanent magnetic field of an individual section out of a couple of hundred billion sections of metal in a space 5 inches wide, without adversely affecting the others which surround it ? Oh, and the tiny section you're trying to change is travelling at around 170km/h.

That's the case in your average hard disc (well, a modern, big-ish one running at a reasonable speed).

A little musical sequence that seemed to work...

1. Tasmin Archer - Half way to Heaven
2. Dido - Take My Hand
3. Anastacia - Left Outside Alone
4. Evanescence - Going Under
5. Alanis Morissette - All I Really Want
6. Madonna - Like A Prayer
7. Lacuna Coil - Falling Again

I'm watching 'The Day The World Ended' (having watched Truely Madly Deeply just before) and there's something familiar about it. I'm sure the policemen (yeah, I'm only 5 minutes in to it) is the Mayor on Buffy The Vampire Slayer - you know, the only that turns into a huge dragon-snake-demon thing ?

And waddaya know, IMDB says that he is. Aren't I clever ?

Coo, he's in The West Wing too (series 4, apparently).

And oh my god, he's in Charmed too! In the 'Primrose Empath' episode - AKA 'Charmed plays at The Matrix', a fun episode but too silly to be a real part of the story in my opinion.

And Caroline In The City. And Voyager. And The Next Generation. And Quantum Leap.

And the Judge looked familiar a second ago so I looked him up - Voyager, DS9, Frasier (amusingly playing a Judge).

Interesting story of... well, yesterday actually. Some bright graffiti artist decided to spray the chemical symbol for one of the four components of DNA outside the building where it was discovered, 50 years ago.

Birthday today, too. A few DVDs from people and a CD, and a cute little Mogwai . The CD (Anastacia) is actually very good - I wasn't expecting it, but I'd mentioned that I'd liked it. The oddest thing, though, is the Orange 'Cadbury Snaps'. Imagine a pringle shape, but made out of the same stuff that makes up a Matchmaker. Odd ? Yes, but hey, it looks nice .

A recent Register article (yeah, I know it's trash, but it keeps me mildly amused) referenced a Salt Lake City ordinance regarding reindeer flight limiations on Christmas Eve. A load of other news sites also reported the same story, but none actually pointed you at the 'evidence', so I was sceptical that this was even real.

So off I wandered and as part of the Salt Lake City Information center, under Ordinances and Codes, you can find Title 16 covering airports, chapter 16 covering General Flight Regulations, section 16.16.180 covering 'Flight over the city-Minimum altitude'.

In case it's removed in the future, this section is...

16.16.180 Flight over the city-Minimum altitude. A. General Restrictions. Except as directed by FAA air traffic control, aircraft flown over residential or business areas of the city shall comply with minimum altitude and as specified in FAA-FAR 91.79. B. Exemption for Flying Reindeer on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve only, flying reindeer and any cargo they may be towing shall be exempt from the two-thousand-foot height restriction and other provisions of subsection A of this section. (Ord. 92-85 section 1, 1985; prior code subsection 2-3-8, 2-3-8(e)) [ Reindeer flight exemptions; Salt Lake City, Title 16, section 16.16.180 ]

Don't you just cry when you see the phrase 'British Comedy' associated with the names 'Absolutely Fabulous', 'Monty Python', and 'Fawlty Towers' ? Don't get me wrong - the latter is a work of genius, the middle is pretty good and the former... well, even Julia Sawalha can't bring it from it's "please the Americans" depths that it sinks to. They're hardly indicative of British Comedy; there's a whole lot of other stuff out there but which (apparently) doesn't seem to move across the ocean.

Oh and I tried not to say it, but both thelatter pair really are quite old now.

I'm back from my holiday.

Edit: (13 Mar 2007) I've added a small comment about visiting the Minack Theatre to the 13th March 2007 entry. A little belated, but still at least it's there!

It's holiday time. Golly. See you in a week.

Interesting site whose purpose appears to be to provide logos for TV channel logos.

Once in a while you come across a '404' that's really good. It doesn't happen often. Drobe has a few interesting 404 messages (which is actually partially based on a 404 message I wrote). But the one that got me today is the Greenpeace 404 message.

It's a 404 page that has content. It's amusing and relevant content. It's actually helpful content. And it's perfectly true to the whole spirit of the site.

In other news, I had to explain to Dad tonight why the Alliance and Leicester website was being rejected by Opera and yet was fine in Internet Explorer. This was because IE was silently ignoring the fact that the certificate for the site was registered for the domain name, rather than for a host name, but Opera was complaining about this security violation.