Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler

Funny old world, eh?

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— orudge @ 06/01/2005 11:19 pm

Hmm, can’t be bothered to write anything myself today, so I’ll post this which I nabbed from The Orcadian web site…

It’s a funny old world – it says so on the Internet

It’s time for Bumpkin’s end-of-year review of some of the stories from around the world that you may have missed over the past 365 days. All of the following have appeared on the Internet so they must be true – mustn’t they?

The Kirkwall Ba’ game is not for the faint-hearted but it is, perhaps, somewhat tame compared to the sporting tradition in the town of Todos Santos in Guatemala where the 3,000 inhabitants take part in an annual horse race.

Competitors drink non-stop for eight days before the race (and abstain from sex).

The racecourse track is 400 metres long and at the end of each lap, riders have to drink a tankard of rum before they continue.

The contest ends, usually after about eight hours, when only one man remains on his horse. Eight people were killed in last year’s festival. Two were murdered, one drank himself to death, four died from injuries sustained from falling off their horses – and one was run over by a bus!

Salt Lake City has proposed a change in the aviation code that would end Santa Claus’s exemption from low-flying.

The unseasonal storms in the Atlantic ocean during August sucked up a load of fish from the sea and then dropped them on the small town of Knighton — 60 miles from the sea on the English-Welsh border.

An American newspaper had to publish a correction to a caption to a dinner party photograph after a lady called Mai Thai Finn was inadvertently described as one of the items on the menu.

It was a shock for mother-to-be Julia Paul when she was told that she would have to make a 130 mile trip by ambulance from Essex to Leicestershire when she went into premature labour.

It was an even bigger shock when the ambulance men had to borrow £40 from her boyfriend to pay for the petrol.

Men in the Italian village of Campodimele live, on average, to the age of 90 – compared to the European average of 74, and just 69 in some areas of Glasgow.

Don’t accuse the authorities in China of lacking urgency. A fire has been burning in a deep underground mine in that country since 1975 and has so far consumed 20 million tons of coal. The authorities have now set a target of 2018 to extinguish the blaze.

Ducks have different regional “accents�?, according to a research team at Middlesex University. Cockney ducks make a rough raucous sound that can be heard above the noise of the traffic (much like their human counterparts) while country ducks quack with a softer tone.

Princess Anne was to make a visit to Caithness and, in advance, her senior protection staff explained that there would have to be a radio – tuned to Radio 3 – to drown out any noise in case Her Royal Highness needed to use the badly-insulated lavatory. A week later, another section of the security forces said they would have to blow up the radio to make sure it did not contain a bomb.

An Italian court has ruled that a prostitute, aged 73, can continue to provide her personal services, operating from a camper van parked in a lay-by.

A mother, on her deathbed, called her children around her to make a final confession. Their father had not – as she had told them – perished in a car crash in 1990. In truth, he was lying in a freezer at Planet Self Storage in Somerville, Massachusetts. They checked – and she was right.

Spare a thought for Mr Udaynath Dakshiniray, from India, who has had 90 wives (at the last count) and now “wants to complete his century.�?

The world’s cleverest woman, according to Mensa, is Daniela Simidchieva, a qualified industrial and electrical engineer and a teacher, with an IQ of nearly 200 and five masters degrees from universities in Bulgaria and Britain. Ms Simidchieva, one might think, would be a certain target for employers. In fact, she’s been on the dole for two years.

Patricia Pattison, a 54-year-old grandmother from Leicester, phoned her local benefits office. After joining the telephone queuing system, she stayed on hold for more than six hours. “They said they were busy,�? said the forgiving Ms Pattison.

Washington State schools this year stopped children celebrating Hallowe’en “because it may offend witches.�?

There are ways of proving that blindness is not a handicap other than by becoming Home Secretary. A Romanian called Alin Popescu was so determined to prove that his lack of sight was no obstacle that he decided to steal a car. He managed to break in, start the ignition with a screwdriver, and even drove half a mile. Then he encountered a tree!

Birmingham mother Christina Cooke went on the Internet to book a family holiday. She booked a week in the Avalon Hotel and flights for all the family to the Costa Del Sol. All went well until their arrival in Spain when Mrs Cooke discovered that the Avalon Hotel was 1,000 miles away in Konigslutter, Germany.

A financial adviser living in middle England received a letter from Prudential which promised to save him money on his home insurance. Curiously, the letter began: “Dear Mr Shagslikeadonkey.�? This, apparently, is not quite his real name.

A German pensioner was arrested after fitting a chainsaw engine to his wife’s bike and riding it down the street at 40mph.

Beryl King, the boss of two Hampshire recruitment agencies, claims that her advertisement seeking “hardworking�? warehouse packers was rejected by the local jobcentre because asking for “hardworking�? staff would discriminate against those who are not blessed with the presbyterian work ethic.

A naked man found in the ladies’ lavatory of an American synagogue explained to the court that he was “waiting to catch his rocket ship.�?

I salute Marjan Camber who, according to his local paper in Bosnia, has just consumed his 400,000th bottle of beer – a total he has reached by drinking 30 a day for nearly 40 years. He is quoted as saying: “I once drank 80 bottles in one day to see how far I could go. I still didn’t feel drunk.�?

An unusual case for social services in Fiji who are trying to rehabilitate a man reportedly raised by chickens. According to the authorities, the orphan was locked in a hen coop by his grandfather at the age of six. When he escaped four years later, he could not walk or talk but could peck and perch while making clucking noises. A local hospital, believing him deranged, then kept him chained to a bed for 20 years.

It’s a man’s life in the Royal Air Force, obviously. One of our pilots was temporarily grounded – after clipping a lamp post in a street in Cyprus at 600mph.

Commentaries on this year’s Olympic Games brought the usual cases of “foot in mouth�? disease – including the American TV presenter for the NBC channel who reported from the equestrian events: “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.�? Incidentally, one of the pigeons released at the Olympic opening ceremony in Athens apparently turned up in Romania.

A lottery ticket seller from Vietnam, Vo Hai Dao, is claiming to be the world’s smallest living man. He suffered a serious illness as a child and now, at the age of 22, is just 2 foot 10 inches tall.

Keepers at Berlin Zoo put a log into the pen of Juan the bored bear. He playfully rolled it into the moat surrounding his enclosure and used it to float to the other side — into the children’s playground, where the adventurous creature had to be shot by a tranquillising dart.

An Indiana army officer’s reputation for bravery in pursuing terrorists has taken a nose-dive. Colonel H. S. Kohli has been dismissed by a court martial after an investigation discovered that photographs of the dead terrorists actually showed members of his civilian staff, lying very still and covered in ketchup.

An Indiana congressman is campaigning to have the name of the American interstate highway 69 changed on the grounds that I-69 has sexual connotations that might give rise to unclean thoughts.

Another local sporting tradition to rival the Ba’ comes from Simla, in north east India, where an annual stone-throwing festival is held. Two teams of youths pelt each other with rocks until they’ve had enough. The team with the fewest injuries wins.

The authorities called to investigate a blocked waterway in Florida discovered that beavers had built a dam with $40,000 of discarded stolen banknotes.

They’re tough on crime in the USA as illustrated by the case of a Dallas woman, aged 90, recently fined $200. Her offence? Putting out the rubbish a day early.

Patrick Deuel weighed more than half a ton in June but has since lost 26 stones thanks to a diet regime of just 1,200 calories a day in a South Dakota hospital. He is obviously still a big eater compared with Simon Carr, a journalist on The Independent newspaper, who lost 52lbs in six weeks on a diet of just 200 calories of salad and an exercise regime of 300 sit-ups a day.

Staff at a remote Indian school have been sacked after Government officials discovered they have not had a pupil for 23 years.

Luckless Pavel Banaszek was beaten unconscious in a fight in a bar in his home town in Poland. His attackers then dumped him on a local railway line where he was later run over by a train, leaving him paralysed. However, the state railway company then claimed compensation from him for causing a delay to its services. He was ordered to pay £322 in weekly instalments. Unfortunately, Mr Banaszek’s house has now burned down.

The death has been reported of Yang Huanyi, the very last speaker on earth of Nushu, a unique language only spoken by women in remoter parts of China. She was 98, and as The Independent newspaper commented: “It is possible that she’d been trying to tell someone she didn’t feel well for some time.�?

Another nation has agreed to ratify the international Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Well done, Liechtenstein – you’ve made the world a safer place.

A most unfortunate occurrence in Malaysia: a 70-year-old man looked out of his window and saw what he thought was a monkey stealing fruit from the mango tree at the bottom of his garden. He took his gun and shot the creature. Sadly, it turned out to be his wife.

A Canadian, identified as having died in a train crash, telephoned his family during the funeral to say he’d arrived back from holiday.

An 11-year-old Chinese boy thought it would be fun to give his grandmother a present of one of those joke severed heads made of plastic. Unfortunately after removing the gift wrapping, the old lady died of shock.

A family in Cheshire has apparently become so enamoured with the soft drink, Vimto, that an underground tank has been installed in the garden to enable members of the family to pipe the drink, on draught, directly to the kitchen.

When the little old lady rented the car, she was told to drop it back at the airport in Boise, Idaho. So, came the day, she drove up to the terminal, through the automatic double doors, past the check-in counters and the baggage reclaim areas, and proudly came to a halt by the car rental desk.

The authorities in China have refused permission to a father who wished to name his son ‘@’.

Australian doctors have come across a case that gives new meaning to the term “street walking.�? They have diagnosed a woman as suffering from the rare disorder of sleep sex. Apparently, she would leave her house in the middle of the night, accost strangers and have sex with them – all whilst still asleep.

A Portuguese shepherd barricaded himself in a garage in protest at his friend who reneged on a deal to swap him 15 goats for a new wife.

According to the Australian bureau of statistics, 31 Australians have died since 1996 after watering their Christmas trees while the fairy lights were plugged in. Another 19 have died after eating Christmas decorations they mistakenly believed to be chocolate, while three breathed their last after testing if a nine volt battery worked on their tongue.

Oops!

A Happy New Year.

More spam

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— orudge @ 05/01/2005 9:55 pm

Hmm, more spam is coming in, but now in the form of blog TrackBacks, although for some reason they aren’t being displayed (luckily). *sigh*

Been working on “Repository 2.0” tonight, the new version of The Ultimate Transport Tycoon Game Repository – the old version isn’t really all that ultimate though. The new version will be. 😉

Grrrr!

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— orudge @ 04/01/2005 1:42 pm

This stupid JervHost server has gone and filled its hard disk AGAIN! I’ll probably move it to Zernebok soon, but I’ll have to figure out why Zernebok doesn’t like the .htaccess stuff, which is annoying, as I use it quite heavily on owenrudge.net. *sigh*

Argh, spam!

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— orudge @ 02/01/2005 12:45 pm

Hmm, last night, from about 11pm or so right up until 6am today, there was a constant stream of spam attacking this blog. 🙁 Most of it was caught by my spam filters luckily, but a chunk of it (well, 200 chunks of it) managed to slip through… I’ve put a few more words into the filter now, so we’ll see if any more spamming happens. If it does, I might have to take further measures, we’ll see.

Welcome to 2005!

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— orudge @ 01/01/2005 8:56 pm

Yep, it is now 2005! Happy new year everyone!

OSPlus Text Editor 2.1 has been released. If you’re interested, go and download it. 🙂

Happy Hogmanay!

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— orudge @ 31/12/2004 11:24 pm

Quick blog tonight… Planet Age of Mythology has a load more information on Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery (official title), and it’s looking good. 🙂 OSPlus Text Editor 2.1 should be out tomorrow. TTDAlter 4.3 will be out sometime in 2005. And that, my friends, is that. Have a happy new year. 🙂

Happy Almost-Almost New Year!

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— orudge @ 30/12/2004 10:57 pm

Happy December 30th everyone. Today is the day the new Apple Store launched. Check it out, it’s full of interesting and innovative new products. 🙂

Ensemble Studios is about to announce Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery (or so the title is rumoured to be) – today they had a teaser image from Age of Kings. They’ve had all sorts of teasers dating back from Roman times to 1995 (ES founded), 1997 (AoE), 1998 (RoR), 1999 (AoK). The Conquerors will presumably be the next, then possibly AoM/The Titans, and likely enough: 2005: Age of Discovery. We will see. Keep an eye out on Planet Age of Mythology if you’re interested.

I had something else I wanted to say, but I’ve forgotten what it is. Good night.

Anyone want a fairly new Firewire PCMCIA card?

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— orudge @ 29/12/2004 3:52 pm

Clickity-click. Grab a bargain, only 99p at the moment. 🙂

Yay, USB2/Firewire card arrived

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— orudge @ 11:49 am

Well, after the Christmas period and 20 days after it was originally ordered, my USB2/Firewire card I ordered from eBay (it was located in Hong Kong, of course) finally arrived. Hopefully my MP3 player should be waiting at the hostel for me, too.

Hmm, had a monthly lifeguard training session last night, was kind of fun. What else? Not a great deal to talk about. My Win32

We wish you a merry Boxing Day!

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— orudge @ 26/12/2004 11:01 pm

And another festive day over… I’m quite chuffed as I got the OS/2 port of OpenTTD working pretty much perfectly today – multiplayer, file selector, the lot. Expect to see a new version whisking its way to SourceForge very soon.

As for other business… well, it’s been quite quiet. Night all.

Merry Christmas!

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— orudge @ 25/12/2004 11:11 pm

Friends and colleagues,

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all…and a financially successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Britain great (not to imply that Britain is necessarily greater than any other country or area of choice, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual orientation of the wisher).

This wish is limited to the customary and usual good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first. “Holiday” is not intended to, nor shall it be considered, limited to the usual Judeo-Christian celebrations or observances, or to such activities of any organized or ad hoc religious community, group, individual, or belief (or lack thereof).

Yours,

Owen

Note: By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all. This greeting is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. This greeting implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for the wisher her/himself or others, or responsibility for the consequences which may arise from the implementation or non-implementation of same. This greeting is void where prohibited by law.

Yes, well, Merry Christmas anyway. Hope you had a good day. I didn’t have too bad a day, actually. Got money and chocolate this year, which is fine enough. 😉

Watched The Snowman again today – as I do every year. Brought a bit of a tear to my eye as I thought about my lost childhood… *sigh* At times, I feel old, even though the best/worst/whatever is still to come…

Also watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone tonight, which I hadn’t seen since December 2001 when I saw it at the cinema – it introduced me to the Harry Potter series of books and films. Before then, my brother had read all the books and so on, but I thought it was just some kiddie rubbish… then I saw the film, and it made me want to read the books. So I did. And the rest as they say were history. Until I saw “Fellowship of the Ring”, of course… I then read those books, and saw those movies, and argued with Ken as to whether it’s one book or three, and whatnot. Yes.

Anyway, got some stuff to do just now, so I’ll just wish you a safe after-Christmas and a happy new year!

“Down in the workshop, all the elves were making toys”

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— orudge @ 24/12/2004 10:39 pm

Merry Christmas Eve everyone. How are you today? I’m not so bad.

The proper, non-animated Mr Bean was back on tonight… classic – it was the one involving the turkey. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. 😉 There are two more Mr Beans on this Christmas… looking forward to them!

I ended up spending much of today playing OpenTTD multiplayer over the Internet. It really is quite addictive.

Anyway, ta ta for now.

Bizarre

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— orudge @ 23/12/2004 9:03 pm

Must just link to this image that Ken made…

I find the “mouth” particularly disturbing… 😉

“Dear Santa, I wrote to you but you still ain’t callin’, …

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— orudge @ 22/12/2004 10:36 pm

… Christmas is just around the corner and snow is fallin'”

Finally, it’s the Christmas holidays. Took long enough, eh? It being the last day today meant there were end of term activities… I’m on the Activities Committee this year, so I was partially responsible for setting up the Computer Challenge in the morning. I went to Battle of the Bands in the afternoon though, which was very good. Tug (Richard)’s band was rather, um, interesting, and delivered a great performance. But it was Via Tomorrow who won, also with an excellent performance – when Rory gets up on stage, he is quite something. Tom’s site (Tom being one of the members of the band) has a bit more on their victory. 😉

So… holidays. What to do? Well, on my computer-related todo list:

• OpenTTD for OS/2: get it working a bit better
• TTDAlter – get version 4.3 finished and out
• Hmm… other stuff which I can’t actually remember right now

On my non-computery-todo list:

• Tidy room! It needs it.
• Relax
• Get through all the ROTK commentaries
• Eat
• Unwrap presents
• Eat presents
• Watch TV
• Go to yon Entertainment Evening. That reminds me, must practice a magic trick for it…
• Lifeguard training at some point
• Likely other stuff too

(notice how I put everything on a new line, making the thing look much bigger? :))

And, on that note, I will sign off.

Grrr, postal service!

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— orudge @ 21/12/2004 5:47 pm

Hmm, ordered some stuff from Hong Kong a bit over a week ago, it’s still not arrived yet. Some of it was ordered to home but some of it to the hostel, and the stuff to the hostel isn’t here, which is annoying as we break up tomorrow, and if it doesn’t arrive tomorrow, then I won’t get it until January 10th – if it arrives tomorrow.

Oh well, last day of term tomorrow, at least. 🙂

Last week of term!

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— orudge @ 20/12/2004 5:47 pm

It’s the last week of term, at long last, and a third of it has already gone! It was an interesting day, actually… we were watching a DVD in biology about Jersey Zoo, very interesting in fact. Then we had to do a load of questions in History – nothing new there, then, but in English we were just reading. There were only two of us in French, and then I had a free period, during which I was invited to a party in the Advanced Higher Maths class, which ended up involving karaoke. Ahem.

Probably going to see “Birth” tonight at the cinema. Until then, toodle pip!

Comments

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— orudge @ 19/12/2004 2:51 am

Proper comments (ie, non-spam comments) should now not need moderation by me to appear, unless you use a bad word (eg, “poker”) or have excessive URLs in it. I’ve also installed a more intelligent spam filter… whether it’ll work or not, we’ll see, I guess.

Good night, moon.

It’s really gr-owen on me

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— orudge @ 18/12/2004 8:22 pm

This annoying thing is one of those irritating yet addictive Flash things that one can find scattered across the Interweb. Credits to Ken for the title of this post, which owes itself to a long bus trip from Inverness to Scrabster one wet Wednesday morning. It also provided a variety of other things, such as “Rudge, you Creally got me Owen”, and more. (You have to know that my name is Owen Creal Rudge to get this, I guess). It’s amazing how many songs you can stick the words “Owen”, “Creal” and/or “Rudge” into… 😉

Who loves the chocolate? Everyone loves the chocolate! Nobody hates the chocolate, because everyone loves the chocolate!

Not long until holidays now! I did fairly well at getting OpenTTD working under OS/2 today. I downloaded Open Watcom 1.3 last night, which works much better for compiling OpenTTD due to some changes made since 1.2. I got it to build, and to a point, it works. It crashes almost immediately, but it does work. The dedicated server also works to a point… it gives an error 4 from recv() when it tries to receive a connection, but apart from that, it’s not so bad – it advertises itself via UDP on a LAN, for example.

Nobody hates the chocolate, cause everyone loves the chocolate!

Have fun.

Funny LOTR stuff

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— orudge @ 12:25 am

Was just watching one of the DVD commentaries for ROTK, and for some reason I ended up typing “Smeagol wouldn’t hurt a fly” into Google. From there, I discovered a whole load of funny sites, including this one. If you’re even vaguely interested in LOTR, read it, it’s really rather funny in places. I’m quite interested in Star Wars, so I found this one where LOTR and SW are mixed rather entertaining. This fake press release was also quite amusing, as was this extra-extended DVD preview – including such deleted scenes as “The Silmarillion”!

Fun stuff indeed. 🙂

Oh, for anyone interested, I did manage to get my Specialist Study finished for yesterday. The maximum number of words was meant to be 4,500… I somehow ended up writing 5,275 words, but it can be cut down in future versions. We’ll see how it goes. 😉

Hmm

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— orudge @ 17/12/2004 10:21 pm

Hmm, it appears someone knows something I know someone would end up knowing but didn’t know if they knew it or not. Yes, that makes sense.

Oh well, I’m currently working on trying to build OpenTTD on OS/2, mainly for fun. Think I might temporarily give up and go to bed (after watching a bit of an ROTK commentary) soon, though.

Have a proper crimbo.

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