I’m going to spring clean the backend server that hosts CreationRobot. It’s long overdue and the latest spanner that the server has thrown me is preventing me from editing old posts. Pretty frustraiting.

While I do this I’m going to update pretty much everything, including the theme. I’ve already done this with WordPress. It’s a good idea to keep that patched at all times. I’ve also done it with my plugins, so the theme is my next big step.

I use a modified version of Cutline, so I’m going to have to take the modern version of Cutline and hack it to work with CreationRobot. This will take time so please bear with me if you see some oddness or Cutlines default graphic at the top of the page here. The title graphic will probably be the last thing I change.

Anyway, lets blow off the digital cobwebs and get going.

Cutline 2.2 is UGLY. I’m going to investigate other options because I’m not using that terrible theme. Grey URL links? You thought that was a good idea? Really?

Just installed intense debate, a plugin that connects your blog to other social sites, facebook, flickr, twitter and so on. Has anyone used this plugin and seen if it is effective?

My profile on intense debate is http://intensedebate.com/people/jackdaw.

You still don’t believe in UFOs? Well I do, in the literal sense. As in, a lot of stuff we just cannot identify, which means in simple terms it is undentified. If the unidentified object happens to be flying, then it is a UFO. OK, so now in the literal sense you believe in UFOs? Good. On with the posting:

“On February 21, 2006 (the paper was only published recently), the venerable space telescope spied a UFO in an area of space where there should have been nothing at all.

Stranger still, the object disappeared almost as mysteriously as it arrived, about 100 days after the initial observation. It got very bright over time, to the 21st magnitude, then faded just as fast. Kind of like an explosion… Not much else is known about the celestial phenomenon, and it hasn’t reappeared since 2006.” Gizmodo.

The mystery object did not behave like any known kind of supernova. It is not even in any detectable galaxy. “The shape of the light curve is inconsistent with microlensing,” say the researchers. They recorded three spectra of it — and its spectrum, they write, “in addition to being inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database” of vast numbers of objects. “We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class.” Sky and Telescope.

Some deep space explosion? Star wars? Bueller? Who knows.

Via Sky and Telescope.

Space is screaming – It’s some 6 times louder in space than anyone predicted.

In the words of Alan Kogut from the Goddard Space Center, “The universe really threw us a curve. Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming ‘noise’ six times louder than anyone had predicted.”

Of course, there is no sound in space. What NASA’s ARCADE system received was actually deafening cosmic radio background, and the source is completely unknown at this time. Normally radio telescopes pick up electromagnetic chatter in the 10 MHz and 100 GHz, coming from what are known as “radio galaxies.” But according to our existing models and theories, the signal shouldn’t exist, as there are “not enough radio galaxies to account for the signal.”

As detailed by Jesus when this story initially broke earlier this year, NASA said that to create this signal, “you’d have to pack [radio galaxies] into the universe like sardines. There wouldn’t be any space left between one galaxy and the next.” That’s obviously not the case.

The discovery, while amazing, also carries with it a substantial negative. Remember all that cool stuff about dark flow and the edge of the universe from earlier? Well, the BOOM complicates our efforts to detect it more accurately.

Originally via Gizmodo.

Really nice post over on Wired today, covering art and encryption all in one. I may be strange but that is a nice thing to run across first thing in the morning. Read through it, it’s worth it.

The most celebrated inscription at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, used to be the biblical phrase chiseled into marble in the main lobby: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” But in recent years, another text has been the subject of intense scrutiny inside the Company and out: 865 characters of seeming gibberish, punched out of half-inch-thick copper in a courtyard.

It’s part of a sculpture called Kryptos, created by DC artist James Sanborn. He got the commission in 1988, when the CIA was constructing a new building behind its original headquarters. The agency wanted an outdoor installation for the area between the two buildings, so a solicitation went out for a piece of public art that the general public would never see. Sanborn named his proposal after the Greek word for hidden. The work is a meditation on the nature of secrecy and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code.

I tried to jailbreak my iPhone 3G earlier. No go. Not sure why, it just looped at the Apple logo while the software, pwnage, declared happily all was well. It wasn’t well. So now what. After a google I found some easy to follow instructions on how to recover your iPhone and get it working again if it appears to be bricked. So here we go:

Recovering your iPhone

You need -

iTunes installed and working (Windows or Mac)

iPhone USB connector cable

A bust iPhone

Internet

Nice to have –

A backup of your iPhone from before you tried jailbreaking it.

1. Make sure your iPhone is NOT plugged into your computer, run iTunes.
2. Press and hold the top button for a few seconds, hold the home (bottom) button, now wait for your phone to turn off and keep holding the home button.
3. Connect your iPhone to the computer with iTunes running. Keep holding home until the connect/ed to iTunes graphics come up.

That’s it, now follow the onscreen instructions from iTunes. This will recover your iPhone. Be careful out there kids!

Monty you terrible cunt! For sale for just(!) 145K GBP is the long abandoned property where Richard E Grant and co were filmed for Withnail and I.

Sounds like an amazing place. If only I were rich.

Isolated Sleddale Hall near Shap, will be put up for sale by water giant, United Utilities, with a starting price of £145,000.

The ramshackle building, known as Uncle Monty’s Cottage in the cult movie, still contains many of the original features used during filming.

It will come under the hammer with Savills on 16 February.

The farmhouse has been unoccupied for many years and is only accessible via a dirt track, it is almost two miles from the nearest public road.

1. Coupon Mountain offers “free coupon codes, bargains and sales from more than 2,000 online stores.”
2. Coupons.com allows users to browse current grocery coupons and then print them at home. US Centric.
3. DealCatcher “is updated daily and features coupons and deals for online merchants as well as printable coupons for local stores.” Again, US Centric.
4. Currentcodes.com “has a full-time staff of trained individuals whose only job is to find new coupon codes and discount codes and verify the accuracy of the existing database.”
5. FatWallet You can find online coupons and compare prices. But the heart of this site is the discussion forum.
6. The Absurdly Cool Freebie Finder, an automated free-stuff aggregator.
7. RetailMeNot is another smart source for online coupon codes.
8. mygrocerydeals.com. Want to learn what’s on sale this week at your local grocery store?
9. The Grocery Game is a for-pay site designed to maximize coupon savings.
10. Prescriptions Discounts
11. The Coupon Clippers is “the nation’s largest online grocery coupon clipping service, offering more than a million national-brand coupons at any given time in our warehouse and shipping center.”
12. Ben’s Bargains tracks deals, coupon codes, rebates, and freebies.
13. Coupon Cabin provides up-to-date online coupons.
14. Flamingo World is yet another online coupon code aggregator, but this one offers a UK version
15. Deal Locker offers a treasure trove of online coupons.
16. Slickdeals.net “the most frequently updated and complete deal site on the web.”
17. Dealio is “your source for the best deals on anything, anywhere. Search for deals directly from our Web site or use our arsenal of FREE deal hunting tools to find the best deals while you’re on the go.”
18. Hot-Deals “a collection of websites and RSS feeds built by deal seekers. This website is updated continuously…We only post deals that we truly feel are hot deals, which is why our users call us the most trusted deals portal site on the Internet.”
19. Techbargains offers a human-generated collection of links to “the best deals in tech”.
20. Woot, an online store that sells “cool stuff” for cheap.
21. http://www.antirebate.com/
22. http://dealhack.com
23. http://dealmac.com/
24. http://dealnews.com
25. http://eDealInfo.com
26. http://www.clipfire.com
27. http://www.couponmom.com/
28. http://www.dodtracker.com
29. http://www.mrcheapstuff.com
30. http://autobrag.com Car Specific
31. http://clearlycontacts.ca Contact lense specific, Canadian
32. http://www.diyplanner.com Free planners
33. http://123deals.com
34. http://www.hotcouponworld.com
35. http://www.promotionalcodes.org.uk, UK centric

Some of these (1-20) are from Get Rich Slowly. The rest are from all over the place! I will be adding to this list as time goes by.