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This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Entries for week beginning November 5, 2006

November 11, 2006

アップル - Macをはじめよう - TV CM

The Japanese versions of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads. They’re entertainingly precise copies of the originals.

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November 10, 2006

NPR : New Windows Has New Sound

NPR segment on the history of the Windows startup sound.

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Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Alarmingly prescient story from January 2001. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”

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November 9, 2006

Elite Beat Agents

Splendidly silly rhythm-em-up game for the DS.

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Judgment Night: Music From The Motion Picture

CD Purchase: Living Colour & Run D.M.C. - Judgment Night: Music From The Motion Picture

November 8, 2006

Office Space Re-Cut

Office Space as psychological thriller.

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Flickr: The Wallpapers (1024x768 minimum) Pool

Just the thing to spruce up your desktop.

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THE BEATLES - Love

Login as “foo@example.com” to hear four tracks from the forthcoming old-rope-remixed disc ‘Love’. It’s not as bad as you think.

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The Santorum Family

Creepy in so many ways.

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Ned Batchelder: Subversion branching quick start

Handy guide to understand the purpose of branching in source control, and examples of how it works in Subversion.

November 7, 2006

Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

“The American people have spoken, and they have unanimously declared: ‘We want elected officials to lead this nation.’”

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No taxation without representation

I’m a political junkie. Election night is like my Superbowl—Watching the results trickle in, cheering on my “team”.

Which makes it odd that, aged 30, I have only twice in my life cast a vote in a political race, and the only time I did so by visiting a voting booth was in a referendum rather than an election. (In 1997, I was a student in Edinburgh, and cast my vote by proxy for my hometown MP whose seat was more marginal.)

Shortly after moving to the US eight years ago, I attempted to get my name onto the British electoral register as an overseas voter, but due to a screw-up by the registrar in Stirling I failed. Since then I haven’t bothered trying again as the new rules for registering as an overseas voter are too much hassle (involving finding a British citizen to whom I am not related). Besides, overseas voters can only vote in General Elections, not local or Scottish ones, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much and have just resorted to trundling along as a disenfranchised soul, grumbling occasionally about taxation without representation.

But today, I was looking at the US Immigration Services site, and realised that I will be able to apply for American citizenship in January of 2008. The naturalization process reportedly takes an average of six months so, theoretically, it is possible that I will get to have a say (beyond trying to convince Joy how to vote) in the 2008 presidential election.

(As an aside, only a true child would be amused by the fact that the final page of the official Guide to Naturalization, in an appendix giving examples of the kind of sentence you might have to write in your citizenship test to prove your English-speaking abilities, includes the sentence “The colors of the fag (sic) are red, white and blue.”)

But for now, I’m sat on the sofa with a beer, refreshing CNN.com every so often and cheering as the Democrats steal seats in the Senate, and just enjoying waiting for the victory speech from our new Governor Elect, the splendid Deval Patrick.

UPDATE: And today is my extra innings. The bases are loaded, and Webb‘s at the plate. Fantastic!

Massachusetts elections 2006: Voters report polling places out of ballots

Proof that Massachusetts don’t need no stinking electronic voting machines to disenfranchise its citizens. We can disenfranchise them the good ol’ fashioned way: with paper.

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'Office' Works Overtime Online - 'Producer's cut' will stream after Thursday's episode - Zap2it

NBC will stream an extended version of The Office on their website this week after the normal-length episode airs on TV. Considering how good (and plentiful) the deleted scenes are on the DVDs I’m watching, this’ll be worth checking out.

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YouTube - Grand Theft Mario

Quality clip from Robot Chicken.

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November 6, 2006

Extra Virgin

CD Purchase: Olive - Extra Virgin

YouTube - Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Oooh

Man, this is the best sliver of pure P!O!P! gold I’ve heard in a long time. I’m going to have the chorus engraved on my tombstone.

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Eddie Izzard voice for TomTom SatNav

Cool — I was getting bored of the bad Sean Connery impression on mine.

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TEH INTERNETS - a photoset on Flickr

A “teh awesomes” field guide to internet forums.

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November 5, 2006

WiiSeeker

Mashing up the “leaked” (and possibly true) information on how many Wiis each branch of Target will be selling on launch day with Google Maps. I might try the Everett Target instead of the Somerville one — they’re looking to be getting almost three times as many.

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Smokey Robinson’s ‘The Soul Is In the Bowl’ Red Beans and Rice

Smokey Robinson’s ‘The Soul Is In the Bowl’ Red Beans and Rice

New in the freezer section at Stop & Shop. "Diana Ross & The Temptations' Salisbury Steak Dinner" not pictured.


About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.