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Welcome to the weblog, which gets updated whenever I have time to do it.

Saturday 16th March

Cyanide in the Chicago subway system: what was ‘Dr. Chaos’ up to?

Ironically, I had just read an article on why Google is by far the best search engine when I heard the news that Google was being targeted by "link bombers" trying to improve the ranking of web sites. There’s some more information on how this works at Corante.

Browser Wars II: Microsoft’s sizable chunk of the current browser market could take a sizable dent as AOL is now planning to switch its browser from being based on Internet Explorer to using the Gecko rendering engine (as used by Mozilla and Netscape 6). AOL is also planning a major internal switch to using Linux on its servers.

It looks like BT’s attempt to claim the patent on hyperlinks has been dealt a serious blow — possibly even a fatal one.

When you see the headline Wales to be Terraformed?, you know you’re looking at another humour site. This one’s called John Fanzine, and it’s quite amusing.

Monday 11th March

It is exactly six months since the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

This is not a joke. Britain — Britain — is storing weapons grade plutonium in what are, basically, sheds:

Tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium are stored in insecure buildings that are ‘not much more than a shed’ at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, warn the Government’s own security experts.

The two stores holding the 71 tonnes of highly toxic material on the site in Cumbria are unable to resist attack or ‘even a fire’, they say. Government advisers recommend that a new, secure store be built quickly. A fire or explosion at the plant could send lethal plutonium clouds across most of Britain, Ireland and the Continent.

It’s staggering that it took the World Trade Centre attacks to prompt the Government to consider whether or not the plutonium was stored safely. What makes matters worse is the vulnerability of the site to aerial attack:

One independent evaluation of commercial flightpaths showed that air traffic control would be unable to see a plane deviate from its planned route in the area until it was four minutes away from Sellafield — too late to launch RAF jets.

Still on a nuclear theme, the Shrub’s administration, having dumped the old commitment not to use nukes against non-nuclear foes, is working out plans to cover the possibility of using nuclear weapons against various foes. These foes include the "axis of evil", plus possiblyl China and Russia. Do you get the feeling Bush misses the Cold War?

The plans are to cover the possibility of using nuclear weapons in retaliation for chemical or biological attacks, as well as the worryingly vague surprising military developments. The most worrying aspect, though, is that the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis.

That’s one way to bring peace to the Middle East.

If you were the biggest media mogul in Europe, what would you be afraid of? Would it be a street singer?

Isaac Asimov apparently died of AIDS contracted from blood transfused during CABG surgery:

Janet Jeppson Asimov has published a biography of her late husband Isaac Asimov ("It’s been a good life", ISBN 1573929689), which is reveiwed [sic] in the March 2nd issue of New Scientist (print edition only).

It turns out that Isaac Asimov died of AIDS — contracted during bypass surgery in 1983. (The information was withheld from the public on his doctor’s advice at the time, but is now presumably not considered likely to damage his reputation).

I may not like Java, but I can certainly understand why Sun are pissed off with Microsoft for dumping Java support from XP. Pissed off enough to sue Microsoft for a billion dollars.

A few weeks ago I noted that the Bloggy for Weblog of the Year had been won by Wil Wheaton Dot Net. Wil Wheaton, of course, is cursed forever for having played the godsawful, geeky, shove-him-out-the-nearest-airlock Wesley Crusher in ST:TNG. Not as cursed as we were having to watch the little bastard, though.

Anyway: Something Awful have produced a fairly sharp parody of Wheaton’s home page.

What happens when you drop an $800 digital camera in a pond? Well, when it happened to Farrell Eaves, he spent days drying it out then ended up with a camera which took surreal and intriguing pictures.