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Got an email today from our admin with the title Plasma TVs in the Conference Room. My first thought was that they were giving away plasma tv’s in the conference room but when I opened the email it was just a reminder not to leave them switched on. I felt pretty stupid for thinking that anyone would be giving away such a thing.

I’m sure I’m way behind discovering this site but Google Fight lets you pit one search term against another in a battle to the death! Well, perhaps not death but lets you make pointless comparisons at least. For example….

• east coast rap vs west coast rap
• football vs baseball
• mac donalds vs burger king
• clothed vs naked

It struck me this evening that almost every Hot Dog on a Stick vendor I’ve ever seen has babes working behind the counter. I don’t think that its neccessarily that employ above-average looking girls, I think its the uniforms that at once glance are pretty gaudy and dorky, but on closer inspection seem to do a lot for the wearer. Or maybe its just the idea of meat on a stick.

(Ok, I can’t get the image to reduce in size no matter what I try)

Thanks to the good folk at Boing Boing for drawing my attention to this. Get your hands on all of the plagues! Including, but not limited to:

• A Giant Lice for lice.
• An icky boil on a piece of flesh!
• A spooky eyed drop of blood
• Black Locust for locusts

The frog, lice, cow and locust wriggle and roll their eyes, quiver, buzz and move when you pull their string.

One of the perks of the new job is that I can receive a free CD of my choice every month; any title from the Sony catalogue is up for grabs. I got my first form today and realised that choosing a CD is quite tough – how do I know which CD to get? The full catalogue is on the intranet in a PDF – its over 400 pages of tiny print long! By accident I stumbled upon the fact that Matisyahu is on Sony BMG so this month’s order is for his latest album, Youth.

Future months are going to be tough and so, dear reader, look out for requests for suggestions; the more interesting the better. Just remember it has to be on a Sony label….

On Wednesday this week, at two minutes and theee seconds after 1am, the time and date will be

01:02:03 04/05/06.

Thats pretty cool.

Its been rumoured for a long time that Apple is going to celebrate its 30th anniversary on April 1st by announcing some cool new products. Maybe it will be the new Intel iBook or, as most people are salivating for, the true video iPod. Guess we will have to wait and see but I hope I have enough pennies in my pocket to buy one or, if not, maybe the current iPod will get a price reduction and I can replace the one that was stolen.

We don’t record many programs on our TiVo but I hadn’t realised just how much I’ve come to take for granted the ability to pause or rewind live TV. I’m staying in the San Diego apartment and I keep going to pause the TV to get a drink or use the toilet only to find that I can’t.

So today we have snot-nose students protesting the latest plans for immigration reform. Now, students will protest anything of course – I remember being part of a sit-in at UEA when some ‘facist’ speaker came to visit – but I become increasingly fed up with the “illegals are not criminals” mantra.

Of course the very term illegal immigrant is now supposedly racist but, by definition, if you do something illegal then you are a criminal. If I burgle your house I am not an undocumented visitor, even if I am desperate and only trying to better myself and my family.

At work today one of my new colleagues has been waiting 3 years to make progress on his Green Card application; $000s have been spent on his behalf to prove his value to the country. Why then should someone who has no interest in paying taxes or contributing to our society get a free pass? Make the process easier for all (note I said all, not just Mexicans) so that those who genuinely wish to belong can come; punish those who wish not to go through the process to the maximum.

Something that always amuses me – we all know that when people talk about illegal imigrants they really only mean Mexicans (and maybe Europeans). If the government was to propose real reform, say invite 75,000 Iranians and Syrians (I bet many of them are as desperate to live here as the Mexicans) I bet today’s protestors would be out again saying how the country is letting too many people in. Finally, let all the illegals who want to stay, stay, but they have to live in the same neighbourhoods as the protestors, paying no taxes but using all social services, refusing to speak English in schools…. Whats that I hear? Oh yeah, silence.

The Game Developer Conference in San Jose this week saw an important keynote speech from Sony Coumpter Entertainment President Phil Harrison unveiling more of the forthcoming PlayStation 3. You can read a good summary of it at Gamespot.

The real big news was the announcement of the PlayStation Network Platform A rival to XBox Live, this service will allow users to download games, content, extras directly to their harddrive. It will also allow VoIP for free as well as, of course, multi-player online gaming.

You might be asking why I care. Well, it seems to me that this must be the project that I am going to work on at Sony, that no one was allowed to tell me about until it was announced. Sounds very cool to me.