Over by year

Our financial year runs from the beginning of December to the end of November. Now it is the weekend we won't be issuing any invoices before Monday.

A quick analysis reveals that 2012-13's turnover represents a 40% increase over last year.

I may have a drink tonight.

Wigging Out

Telegraph:

Sony has filed a patent for a "SmartWig" that would include ultrasound sensors, a camera and a laser pointer. The device is not necessarily intended to replace absent hair, as with traditional wigs, but to be worn as a sort of mobile computer.

The patent describes a "plurality of natural and/or artificial hair pieces" which will hide within them a range of sensors and communication devices. That artificial hair could be wool or horse hair, or just synthetic fibres, suggests Sony.

They are not stopping at the PS4 then. Dr Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht has reminded me that I will need to take off my SmartWig whenever I schedule an iGrow laser session.

Culture Blast

How reassuring to see that my Council Tax has gone towards paying an exhibitionist to ponce about in pancake make-up and a silly hat rather than being frittered away.

How many people work at Pornhub?

How many people work at Pornhub?

We have over 150 employees across the world, with about half of them being engineers. Keep in mind, we are an IT company.

The ACA website totally fumbled upon launch, leaving just a select few (including yours truly) able to access the site—but millions more unable to even get pages to load. How complicated is it to create a website that millions will use a day?

Hosting a website that over 35 million people a day flock to is no easy task. To create a website that can handle this type of traffic has to be done in steps, first building a scalable model, and continue adding capacity as the traffic volume grows. Everything must be done step by step. You can’t take any shortcuts.

What could you offer the Obamacare / ACA site?

Overall, I’d offer to lend them our engineers. We work very hard to train everyone to be able to handle any challenge. It’s no small task to accommodate the traffic volume they intended to. Since we specialize in high traffic websites, we are one of few companies who would have been able to get the site back on track. That’s why we made the offer -- we have the utmost confidence in our teams to accomplish anything.

For all that I am chuckling, there is a strange sort of logic to this.

Schools Rugby

I saw Ben playing for the school for the first time on Saturday. They got beaten 29-10 by Whitgift but it was a good performance as they only had fourteen men. Saadiq got a try in the first half and Ben struck in the second.

I may be a Corinthian of the old school, but I would have thought considering that Whitgift had a full team and plenty of replacements that they should have lent Rutlish a player. It was only a friendly after all. There were some heavy legs out there towards the end. Poor old Kieran was playing full back but switching to flanker whenever they had an attacking scrum. He was forever having to run practically the length of the pitch to join the pack and then scramble back again when play broke down.

Whitgift's a good rugby school. They've won the Daily Mail Cup a few times and Danny Capriani got a scholarship to play there, so to go down by five tries to two when you are man short and they are not only playing with fifteen but running rolling substitutions is no disgrace.

Knowledge is not for knowing

The bar keep in the 'Nonce has read Sean's book The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida.

I don't think I have ever been as surprised at anything in my life.

It's a slow Saturday night when you can have a sufficiently discursive conversation with the guy behind the jump for subject of Michel Foucault - French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic - to be broached if I'm honest.

Garlic Roasted Salmon & Brussels Sprouts

Roasting salmon on top of Brussels sprouts and garlic, flavored with wine and fresh oregano, is a meal that is simple enough for a weeknight meal yet sophisticated enough to serve to company.

That's lunch sorted then. It really is remarkable where my determination to eat everything in my weekly veg box leads me. I had mashed swede and carrots yesterday. I loathe swede. I will try and hide the rest in some spuds Monday or Tuesday.

Buddhist Extremist Cell Vows To Unleash Tranquility On West

WASHINGTON—In a 45-minute video posted on Tibetan websites Thursday, Tsuglag Rinpoche, leader of the Buddhist extremist group Kammaṭṭhāna, threatened to soon inflict a wave of peace and tranquility on the West.
Speaking in front of a nondescript altar surrounded by candles, burning sticks of incense, and a small golden statue of the Buddha, Rinpoche did not specify when or where an assault of profound inner stillness would occur, but stated in no uncertain terms that the fundamentalist Buddhist cell plans to target all Western suffering.
“In the name of the Great Teacher, we will stop at nothing to unleash a firestorm of empathy, compassion, and true selflessness upon the West,” said Rinpoche, adding that all enemies of a freely flowing, unfettered state of mind will be “besieged with pure, everlasting happiness.” “No city will be spared from spiritual harmony. We will bring about the end to all Western pain and anxiety, to all destructive cravings, to all greed, delusion, and misplaced desire. Indeed, we will bring the entire United States to its knees in deep meditation.”
“Wisdom and virtue to America!” continued Rinpoche. “Wisdom and virtue to all living things on earth!”
According to reports, Rinpoche stressed throughout his address that Kammaṭṭhāna soldiers would continue waging a tireless holy war on Western feelings of emptiness and negativity for as long as necessary, noting that “a jug fills drop by drop” and that “it is better to travel well than to arrive.”

It's been too long since I nicked a post from The Onion.

Christmas comes early

Hello,

We’re going to deliver your order, containing the item(s) listed below, today.

"Xbox One Console: Day One Edition (with FIFA 14 download code)"

If there’s nobody in when we arrive we’ll post through your letter box if possible, leave with an available neighbour or in your preferred safe-place, if you’ve previously provided us with those details.

If there’s anything we can help you with, please contact Customer Service, quoting your tracking ID : http://www.amazon.co.uk/contact-us , or visit our Help pages: http://www.amazon.co.uk/help.

Warmest regards,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk

We're in Wales at my Mum and Dad's on Christmas Day. It is cozy enough but there's no broadband, and - thus - the Bomber's getting his Christmas present early. Today in fact.

Blood Orange

I know that this is essentially just noodling around but I think it is great stuff. Wasn't there a time this sort of thing was Prince's job?

Steady as she goes

U13 League 2
Team P W D L F A Diff B Pts Pts Adjust Old Rutlishians U13 2 2 0 0 60 12 48 1 11 0 Reeds Weybridge U13s 1 1 0 0 27 19 8 1 6 0 Camberley U13 1 0 0 1 5 15 -10 0 1 0 Sutton & Epsom U13 A 1 0 0 1 7 45 -38 0 1 0 Effingham & Leatherhead U13s 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Haslemere U13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Old Reigatian U13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Guildfordians U13 1 0 0 1 19 27 -8 0 0 -1
Last Updated: Nov 19 2013 11:19AM

The boys are still top of the league after the weekend. It turns out you need to score four tries to get a bonus point. Thank God I didn't know that when Ben put Silas away in the last minute of the game but the ref called him back for a forward pass. I just shrugged my shoulders thinking we were comfortable as we were ten points up with the clock run down.

Ben with Silas in support

The Story so far...

U13

I looked at Camberley's website this morning.

The U13A home page is http://www.camberleyrugbyclub.co.uk/j/team-latest-101320.html.

They had won all their games this season before they came up against the Ruts yesterday.

They beat Henley 43-0 on the 22 September, Cobham 21-8 on 29 September, Esher 36-14 a fortnight ago, and Dorking 57-12 last week.

It adds glister to Sunday's win I think.

A good weekend

Wales 40 Argentina 6
Old Ruts U13A 15 Haslemere Camberley 5

joining the dots

I have finished reading Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature and started Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography by Mike Tyson.

I can't see any pattern either. (The oldest piece of print was found in a cave. It’s a speech by the Buddha, and it asks the reader to imagine all the grains of sand in the River Ganges, and then to imagine a world in which there were as many Ganges as grains of sand.)

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

I'll be focused on rugby this weekend. Wales play Argentina on Saturday, and then on Sunday Old Rutlishians U13 A clash with Haslemere U13A in the Surrey League.

Here are the two starting line ups:

Wales
1 Gethin Jenkins
2 Richard Hibbard
3 Rhodri Jones
4 Bradley Davies
5 Alun Wyn Jones
6 Sam Warburton
7 Justin Tipuric
8 Toby Faletau
9 Mike Phillips
10 Dan Biggar
11 Liam Williams
12  Scott Williams
13 Cory Allen
14 George North
15 Leigh Halfpenny

Old Ruts
1 Tom Dolan
2 Zac Rabanal
3 Daniel Binks
4 Saadiq Theophilus
5 Pablo Santiago-Davies
6 Joseph Muldoon
7 Bill Eustace
8 Joe Bennett
9 Charlie Julian
10 Luke Saitch
11 Daniel Young-McHugh
12 Sid Daniels
13 Jonnie Hendrie
14 Silas Bobb
15 Ben Browne

One thing and another

I am gradually concluding that I have strained my left elbow and wrist by doing horizontal cable internal and external rotations in an attempt to nurture my rotator cuff.

No good deed goes unpunished. I will try replacing them with shrugs.

Move B

In an unsettling development I find that, while I can live without the video, I rather like the new Little Mix single Move.

Move is also a song that we wrote with our fabulous vocal coach Meg. We all sat in the studio together and vibed and made little noises…

So now we know.

After ours

We won the quiz last night after a brief fallow period, but I won't be able to guzzle the £50 bar tab prize next week as I have promised to go to Mark's Cocktail Hour bash.

@BritishMonarchy

TIME has crunched the numbers to see how much any account is worth to Twitter now it has been floated.

In its IPO paperwork filed to regulators last month, Twitter stated its 230 million active users are producing 500 million tweets per day, noting, “We deliver more than 200 billion Tweets per day to our users.”

Twitter appears to define a “delivered tweet” as any tweet seen by a follower of another user. If the 200 billion figure is to be believed, then each of the 500 million daily tweets is delivered to an average of 400 people.

A $24.9 billion value divided by 200 billion tweet deliveries a day comes out to 12.45 cents per daily eyeball on the site.

We know how many times per day a person tweets on average. We also know how large each user’s audience is. That audience may not be the world’s most engaged. At least one study suggests that around three-quarters of tweets are ignored. To estimate a user’s current number of daily readers, we reduce the potential audience by 75%.

The size of this daily audience times 12.45 cents gives you your share of the Twitter largesse.

This suggests that Twitter owes $190,792 to @BritishMonarchy.

(16,594 tweets over 1,658 days on Twitter averages 10 tweets per day, so 612,987 followers generate 6,129,870 potential eyeballs per day. Even if only 25% of those are paying attention, that is stil 1,532,468 estimated eyeballs per day at 12.45¢ each.)

Berendal

The teaser trailer for Gareth Evans latest movie is online. The Welsh/Indonesian action genre (see Icons passim) appears to remain in good hands,

Here we go again

A look back at the last time we played South Africa, (amd Argentina, and Tonga and Australia) ahead of today's game.

meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no"/

format-detection

Enables or disables automatic detection of possible phone numbers in a webpage in Safari on iOS.

Discussion

By default, Safari on iOS detects any string formatted like a phone number and makes it a link that calls the number. Specifying telephone=no disables this feature.

Availability

Available in iOS 1.0 and later.

Support Level

Apple extension.

So now you know. Fascinating isn't it. IOS 7 on iPAD and OSX Mavericks tries to detect telephone numbers in web pages. Utterly pointless and ruins a lot of our code.

The Decameron

In one story, the merchant Giannotto di Civignì tries to get his Jewish friend Abraham to convert to Christianity. Abraham says that he must first go to Rome, to observe the clergy and see if they lead holy lives. This worries Giannotto. He fears that Abraham will discover how debauched the priests are. And that is exactly what happens. Abraham, returning home, reports that the Roman clergy are all sots, satyrs, and sodomites. Then he invites Giannotto to go with him to church, where he intends to be baptized. If the Roman church survives, he says, despite the debauchery of its representatives, then it must be endorsed by the Holy Spirit, and he wants to join the winning team.

What can  tell you? It made me laugh.

The Ticktockman

The Bomber played at number eight for the school on Monday and bagged a try. The referee scouted him for the Harlequins after the game, he tells me. I don't know exactly what that means, an email will be sent to the relevant master at the school. It will be something to do with the Academy I imagine. All very exciting.

Training at the club is cancelled tonight as the pitch is sodden and needs to be rested so that it is fit for the weekend games. This is no bad thing as he is playing in a schools tournament on Thursday. This all seems a touch intense compared to when I was a kid, though it may just have passed me by as I was no good.

Transformer

When Lou Reed left the Velvet Underground in 1970, it seemed rock and roll's loss was accountancy's gain - he found employment with his dad's accountancy firm. What's more the minute sales of his debut solo album were hardly likely to trouble balance sheets at his record company.

It no doubt came as a relief to Lou when David Bowie, then at the peak of his Ziggy success, offered to produce a new album. Transformer was aptly named - it would change Lou Reed from shadowy cult figure to (albeit unusual) pop star, and also become possibly the best album ever inspired by New York, even though it wasn't recorded there.

In July 1972, Reed moved to London and rented a house in Wimbledon, an area not renowned for its abundance of low life cross dressers and drug users. Recording commenced at Trident Studios, overseen by Bowie and his trusty guitar sidekick Mick Ronson, who also lent his trademark crunch to several of the tracks. Also involved where Beatles associate Klaus Voorman and ace session man Herbie Flowers, whose double tracked bass line on Walk on the Wild Side practically made the song, even if credit was never fully given for his contribution beyond the standard session fee.

RIP Lou Reed, late of this parish. I wonder where exactly where he stayed in SW19.

Back to school

The Bomber is back in school today. They are playing Ernest Bevin College at rugby this afternoon.

He stayed with me over half term. I was pleased with that.

Valley Girl

Since leaving Facebook, the older Zuckerberg has launched a media company, written two books—Dot. and Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives, both out November 5—and created a TV show. George Wayne checks in with the digital darling to talk start-ups, online etiquette, and Sheryl Sandberg.

Randi Zuckerberg is interviewed - sort of - in Vanity Fair. She was the inspiration for our "anyone will come to your meeting if it is in Buckingham Palace's Yellow Drawing Room" rule, doncha know.

SA

Tension rises ahead of tomorrow's Cardiff/Swansea derby.

This gets my goat.

Here's a simple fact: Beard stubble can and will scrape the soft face of that nice girl you've been hanging out with. And even if she doesn't mind the scratchiness, we doubt she'll appreciate that a make-out session comes with a side of blotchy skin. Which is what that short, coarse hair growth that covers the lower portion of your face just a few hours after shaving can do to a woman after some time spent getting up close and personal.

Traditional beard oils and conditioning agents are made to soften the longer hairs of your beard, but don't necessarily work on stubble. That's a job no cream or lotion can handle. You need a real kick-ass weapon, so turn your attention to sandpaper.

Yup. Sandpaper. By rubbing abrasive paper over the stubble, the prickly edges get rounded down — not unlike what happens when two pieces of sandpaper are rubbed together. It's a concept pioneered by a company called The Soft Goat, which has just launched the first ever stubble-softening pad that works in just this manner. In an nutshell, it's high-end sandpaper. But in more detail, it's an hypoallergenic foam pad that the makers have layered with abrasive paper that they've spent a few years honing to find just the right texture that will soften stubble but won't rip your face open.

I know its Movember 'n all, but I seem to detect the hand of Dr Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht in Esquire here.

The Soft Goat; ho ho very satyrical. Geddit? See how I put a y in there instead of an i. Hilarious eh?