Wonderland

Fairytales

Foe's posted an excerpt from Rumpelstiltskin, which has reminded me about a current quest. I am desperate to find a copy of the Baba Yaga tale that I read as a kid; it was part of a set of tales that had beautiful illustrations, black silhouettes against ink-swirl coloured backgrounds. Really graphic. Absolutely no idea who printed or illustrated them. I just remember a house on chicken legs.. and a flight of stairs, and Prince Vassili.
Born in 71, I probably read these when I was about 6, so late 70s.
Any clues?

UPDATE 28/11: Found it!

Finally

I've uploaded the pics from Digital ID World 2003.
I have to warn you.. I was lazy about taking photos, and then "Naughty" Nat Torkington nicked my camera while a group of us were at the bar one evening, taking more photos that night than I have for most of the month.
I had to delete the various bum and cleavage shots, although I left Pete's in.
Muahaha.

..see 'em here.

Doing some games research..

.. at the mo, as on Thursday I have to demo games to some high-ranking BBC folk. During my rummaging to support a "you helped start all this once, anyway" angle, I found this:

Beautiful.

Windoze

All year I've had Mac weenies whispering in my ear about Panther this, and TiBook that. No, I said, I like being challenged by Windows, I like fixing things, hahaha! and anyway, Macs are so cultish now that Sony will be the new Mac.

Except then my computer died, and I've spent days since reinstalling this and updating driver that.

But this is the last straw:

"An error occurred during the installation of the device. The INF or the device information set or element does not match the specified install class."

Now. With much, much searching I would probably EVENTUALLY figure it out. What I really want to know is, what kind of software designer (coder or otherwise) a) came up with that error message (or any Windows messages really) and b) thought it was actually useful to phrase it like that?

If Longhorn doesn't fix this stuff, Microsoft will be the real minority when I'm in my fifties. User Centred Design (via Ant) may take a while, but boy is it worth it.

Sim = Credit Card

Sony/DoCoMo cobble together a sim/chip that can handle micropayments which presumably you pay via your monthly bill. This won't be limited to Japan - some credit cards already carry smart chips (the French call them 'fleas' and have had them forever), same as a SIM.
Which doesn't stand for Subscriber Identity Module for nothing.

"Big scrotum pouch is a rare item"

..I'm sure it is.

Get your Kangaroo scrotum pouch here. "Scrotum pouch is a great sign to attract an opposite gender. Just place it on your car mirror" says Australian dating convention.

Fear breeds failure?

The Grauniad is carrying a story about how the movie giants are losing perhaps £150k a day simply through not providing official (and legal) digital movie downloads. Some nice factoids and projections in there, and really illustrates the question: does the time and cost involved of implementing DRM actually lose you money?

Read it here.

GameBoy teevee...

Well, not quite. But GameBoy owners in Japan will be able to hook up to the 'net and play along with televised games.

If they'd just slap in a telephony chip, you might have an n-Gage that worked.

Fans for sale

Recently, BBC America decided to pull EastEnders from the viewing schedule, as the only people in the USA who can understand/stomach the accents/characters are a minority. Said minority has decided to tout itself as a purchasable audience and is selling itself on Ebay. Brilliant.

Of course, the iMP would solve this issue, assuming the rights are negotiable.

iCan is live!

..but a little empty.
Here's the blurb:

"This is to let you know that we have gone live with BBC iCan - our new website to help people participate in democracy.

Please have a good look around the site. And get back to us with anything that occurs to you. We’d really love to hear from you.

Remember that, as it's a community site, it's the users who make it. So it's a bit of an empty shell at the moment. You might want to check back to see how it develops.

The site allows people to make the step into the world of politics through local issues that directly affect them. It is targeted at those who are dissatisfied with mainstream politics but nonetheless interested in issues in civic life.

iCan is an online community in which people can share tips and advice on how to get things done. They can use iCan to:
- find out how to get the best out of civic institutions
- make contact with others who share their concerns about issues in their neighbourhood
- get together with others to organise campaigns

iCan is a pilot project. The nationally available website is running in conjunction with broadcast initiatives in five BBC regional centres - Bristol, Cardiff, Sheffield, Leicester and Cambridge. It will be launched publicly in a couple of weeks. Between now and then, we are inviting local campaigners around the country to list their campaigns and events in the system.

We hope you enjoy looking around iCan. Please do let us know your impressions. And do forward details of iCan to any local campaigners who may want to list their campaign on the site."