A dirty fan is a noisy fan. As dirt builds up around the blades of the fan, and between the plates of any heat sinks the fan might be attached to, the smooth air flow gets disrupted, which leads to turbulence, which leads to noise. Compressed air is your friend.
DVD rentals by post
I’ve just signed up for ScreenSelect, a postal DVD rental service. From no such service being available at all in the UK in mid-2001, there are now a couple of dozen to choose from. I chose ScreenSelect because they have one of the largest collections of DVDs available (including lots of TV series), and their prices are good. (CompareBox helped whittle down the short list.) £14.99 a month allows unlimited rentals, and three discs on loan at any time.
I’ve been having a great time browsing through the service and adding films to my rental queue. So much to choose from! And unlike buying DVDs, or renting them from the local Blockbuster, I don’t have to restrict my selection because of how much I can afford, or how much I can watch in a single weekend. I can just add and add, and my queue just gets longer and longer…. I’m up to 67 at the moment, but I’m sure I can bump that up to well over a hundred in no time! Woo!
(Hmm… John Woo… Which of his films have I not seen yet?)
Archive changes
I think I’m going to make some changes to my blog archives. I use SSI to show the same sidebar on all my home page and all my archive pages. One of the side effects of this is that a typical archive page is not static. If you go to a typical archive URL, say “http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archives/2003/12/28/oliebollen/“, the blog entry the page relates to is static (although the comments may change over time), but the sidebar information varies on a daily basis.
This means that when a search engine indexes a given archive page, the information it registers at that time may not be there at some point in the future. This is a bad thing. I know that I get frustrated if I follow a link from Google only to find that the information I was expecting to find at the other end isn’t there any more. I’m sure other people do, too.
On the other hand, not including things like the Quick Reviews in the sidebar of archive pages is going to decrease the number of people who will read them. Looking at the server logs, it is not uncommon for someone to find an archive page through a search query, and then browse around the reviews for a bit. So the question is: do I want more eyeballs, or do I want search engines to index me more accurately?
Seeing as I’m not trying to generate revenue from this site, the answer has to be: more accurate search results. Although the quick reviews feaure links to Amazon, the click-through rate is very low, and the conversion rate even lower. In the time I’ve been with the Amazon affiliates programme, I’ve earned just enough from referral fees to buy a single book. And I have no intention of running Google Ads any time soon.
Another benefit for readers and searchers is that removing extraneous information from the archive pages will reduce page download times. Basically, it sounds like a good idea all round. It’ll be interesting to see how the server logs change in response.
Being a Haive
Alex role-plays a lot of the complex issues in his life. Very often these games involve him turning the tables on us. For example, he sometimes tells us it’s time to go to bed, and he will lay down a pillow and a blanket for us. Other times, he will say that he is angry with us, and that we have to be sad.
Last week, he told me that I was being very naughty, and that I had to go to my room until I was a better boy. I obediently went through to my room and sat down on the bed, while Alex closed the door on me. He then went through to his own room to giggle and play.
A few minutes later, I stood up and walked to the door. Alex heard me making a noise, and he rushed through to greet me. “No, you caaaan’t come out of your room,” he said, gesticulating with his expressive hands. “You’re not being a haive.”
I wasn’t being a what? A haive? (It rhymes with “slave”.) Was this a new word he had picked up at nursery?
The explanation hit me a moment later. We often tell him that he has to behave. What he has been hearing, however, is us telling him to “be a haive.” His brain had figured out that this strange noun “haive” was equivalent to “good boy.” Which, idiomatically, is mostly true–it’s the grammatical fineries he got mixed up.
Yet another fascinating and funny insight into linguistic development. Our days are filled with them.
Redeeming Bill
This post concerns the last half hour of Kill Bill Vol.2. It contains MAJOR SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen both films, I recommend you turn back NOW.
Rands on Bugs
“Heinous means bad. Really bad. Horrible sky-is-falling bad. Grossly wicked. Jack the Ripper bad. Are you getting this? Good.
“Heinous is the word to describe the type of bug you will not ship with. As a responsible parent for your product, you think you will ship with no bad bugs and that’s where you’re loopy. You’re going to ship with tons of bad bugs. More than you’ll be comfortable with. You’re, however, not going to ship with Heinous bugs because these are the bugs which, if found AFTER YOU SHIP, the presses would stop. People would run around screaming about the building. Money will be lost and heads will roll.
“I’m not talking crashes… I’m talk massive data loss… horrible operating system hangs… exploding computers. I’m talking Heinous.”
There are some people I need to show this article to….