A brain too muddled to tell

This picture:


My brain keeps trying to see it as a real photo. Then as this counterstrike map:


(original picture courtesy of e_apraksina)

Can Has Fireworks Tickets!

I have tickets to the Edinburgh Festival Closing Fireworks. Which I haven't been to see in a while, so I'm really looking forward to going with Julie.

No thanks to the godawful Hub Tickets website, which started off telling me that I wasn't eligible to buy tickets before the 11th of May (which was a little odd), and then after 11am (when the tickets went on sale) gave me a mixture of "The website is experiencing problems" and "All tickets have been sold" for 25 minutes straight, before suddenly announcing that I could have two tickets, taking my money, and sending me a receipt.

For God's sake people - it's the third millenium. If you're going to sell tickets to people then invest in a website that can handle the maximum load that you get every sodding year, rather than having it collapse under the strain, as it does _every sodding year_.

Mind you, I heard a rumour that the film festival site didn't collapse in ruins when it launched this year, so there's hope for us yet...

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-26-2010

• Rape charge anonymity pledge dropped after protests
  (tags: rape law anonymity uk)
• Fast-track deportations from UK 'unlawful'
  (tags: law uk)
• Why are lesbians invisible on TV?
  (tags: lesbians lgbt tv uk)
• How to stage the Olympics on a shoestring. The 1948 Olympics, that is.
  (tags: olympics history)
• Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation
  Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.
  (tags: afghanistan war wikileaks)
• Cow Clicker: The making of obsession. A satire on social "games".
  (tags: facebook games social gaming satire socialmedia)
• We're happier when busy but our instinct is for idleness
  (tags: happiness psychology research productivity science)
• Inside the World's Most Advanced LCD Factory
  (tags: robots technology lcd)

A complete lack of security

I just registered with the website for the Scotsman newspaper.

And they emailed me to confirm my email address. Including my password, in plain text.

How on earth do people get away with that kind of thing nowadays?

All of this has happened before

Compare

One of the leaked logs, for example, describes an incident on the night of 11 June 2007, as a joint night operation at night between Coalition Forces and Afghan Security forces hunted a Taliban commander called Qarl Ur-Rahmanin, in a valley near Jalalabad. The log describes how Task Force 373's efforts led to the death of seven friendly Afghan police officers, catalysing local resentment.

with this, from an 1841 diary:

"Last night as the cavalry videttes went their rounds at Siah Sung, a party of men rushed out of a cave and fired at them; some were taken prisoners; part of them were Affghans, but four were Hindostanees, and one of them was a Chuprassy of Capt Bygrave, who endeavoured to excuse himself by saying, he fired at the party supposing them to be Affghans, but could give no reason for being there himself."

From