I enjoyed the book ‘The Next 100 Years’, and thought the arguments about what would happen in the future made some sense.

I got the book because I’d read a few Stratfor briefings - the briefings are normally very expensive, but permission was granted to John Mauldin to pass a few specific ones on last year, and they were very interesting.

Now I find they have their own ‘channel’ on YouTube. The video briefings are quite short, but they still have a bit more insight than you see on the news. (Or, perhaps, a lot more insight than you see on the news, depending on what news you watch.)

The videos are worth checking out, but I feel the need to embed this one in particular, where the author of ‘The Next 100 Years’, George Friedman, describes some of the topics the book covers.

‘I Heart You Online’

Just got a link to these ‘Do The Test’ videos, and they’re pretty good.  After the first one, you know you’re supposed to be paying a lot of attention…

Test Your Awareness: Whodunnit?

 

 

Test Your Awareness: Cyclist Test

 

 

Test Your Awareness: Phone Joke Test

 

 

Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

I’m especially impressed that that last one has already inspired a parody:

Brunette Awareness Test

Subtitle: ‘Can you find the brunette in this video?  I've seen it many times but I'm still looking...’

Apparently “The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968”

Now, what really intrigues me about this isn’t that they stopped looking for it. What really intrigues me is that I’m sure I’ve seen this in a film plot somewhere.

The idea is simple – you want a nuclear bomb, you steal it from the plane before it takes off, then you crash the plane where they can’t find the wreckage.

It wasn’t Thunderball (you want a nuclear bomb, so you crash the plane and then dive to the wreckage to get it).

It wasn’t Firefox (that was a plane, not a nuclear bomb, but it did sink below the ice).

Nope, can’t remember the film.

The article has interviews with some of the people involved, but the main question on my mind (which, as usual, wasn’t asked) is: What evidence do they have that the missing bomb was actually on the plane when it took off?

I’m sure they asked that question internally during the investigation.  It’s a shame the BBC reporter didn’t think to bring it up…

Now, what was the film that this reminds me of?  Anyone?

OK, I’ve started using Twitter.

Like lots of folks, I’d heard of Twitter but never bothered signing up for it.  This blog is updated irregularly (in both senses), so why would I bother with yet another distraction.  Plus I didn’t know anyone else who Twitted (Twittered?), so what would be the point?  It would be like the man with the first fax machine – who could he fax?

But a couple of weeks ago at Belfast’s very own OpenCoffee I got chatting to some folks who recommended it and I was persuaded to give it a go.

It’s fun.

People are either telling you what they’re currently doing, pointing to something on the internet they’ve just seen, or generally just passing comments.

It’s like email, only it’s more immediate.  Except it’s not like email, because it’s sent to people who have ‘subscribed’, so maybe it’s more like the old Usenet.  Except it’s not because people subscribe to individuals rather than a newsgroup – it’s entirely possible to see only one side of a conversation, so maybe it’s like blogging.  Except entries are limited to 140 characters, so maybe it’s like IRC, only with a lot more granularity over who is involved in group conversations.  Except…

It’s not really any of those things.  It’s different enough to be useful and fun in its own right, rather than trying to be something else.

Getting a Tweet from another coder who’s getting frustrated is a slightly weird form of companionship for someone like me, currently working from home on his own.

I’m ‘following’ (in the parlance) a bunch of folks, some of whom I met at OpenCoffee, some of whom I’ve seen others following who look interesting, some of whom I recognise from Ye Olden Days of the internet here in Norn Iron, and a few others.

But one big surprise is Stephen Fry.  If you’ve been following his blog, you’ll know his love of all things gadgety, so it’s probably not a surprise that he’s a Twitterer.  You might even be up-to-date enough to know that he’s in Africa shooting an update of Douglas Adam’s Last Chance To See.  Given both all of that, you wouldn’t even be surprised to see Tweets like:

“Spent morning squirting dye at brown lemurs (there was a reason) and the avo watching Fady ceremony. Marvellous x”

No, the big surprise is that, a little after I clicked the button to Follow Stephen Fry, he started Following me!

Wow.

Now, OK, if you look at his profile you’ll see that he pretty much Follows everyone who Follows him, but even that surprised me.  We’re used to seeing people in the public eye try to distance themselves from their smelly fans, but here’s someone not just happy to use Twitter to keep fans up to date, but allowing them to connect back.

I like the idea.  I think it’s nice.  It’s a real shame I have nothing useful to say to him.

Heh.  Remember I mentioned someone thought I was putting hacking tools up on this site?

Well, the wonder of pingbacks meant that he (or she - it's entirely possible the script kiddie is a girl) was notified of my post.  He (or she) put up another post that lists a couple of other web forms that do base64 decoding - "incase (sic) that guy takes down his tool so we can't use it anymore (sic)".

Now, really, go read all their posts.  I think the site's brilliant.

It is the best parody of a 12-year-old script kiddie I've ever read.  The typos are great ("peices of advice"!), the syntax and overuse of exclamation marks is just wonderful, and the overarching theme of mom ("you can�t hack sites with too much of a fire wall and I said we must have this because it is my moms credit card so we must spare no cost") is the icing on the cake.

It's great.  If it wasn't for things like getting the apostrophe right in "can't" I'd be completely fooled.

In any case, I've no plans to take the base64 decoder down.  I trust that most people will grasp the difference between an encoding mechanism used to transfer binary data over an ASCII channel and a top-secret encryption device.

But just in case - sorry, 'incase' - these proto-hackers really are concerned I'm going to take away their favourite base64 tool, here's a link to the standard for base64, the Wikipedia entry for base64 (which has a bunch of online and offline base64 tools), and, hell, even my source code for how to do base64 decoding in VB or C#.  They might learn something if they wrote their own decoder.

It's not like a cat has been let out of a bag here, it's all publicly available information.

I've grown my pile of books to read, so I'm not in any immediate need for recommendations.  But when I run out of books, I'll be checking out these three URLs:

• Good Reads.
• The New Classics from Entertainment Weekly.
• 50 Best Cult Books from the Daily Telegraph.

I'm not entirely convinced the Entertainment Weekly list is a good idea.  It's never been something I've had much interest in reading, so I'm not sure we share the same taste in many things.  Also, of the books on that list that I've already read, I thought about 50% of them were drivel.  But the other 50% were pretty good.  So I reckon I've a 1 in 2 chance of getting a decent book to read if I pick something from it - and those odds are better than a random purchase from Waterstones.

From low production values to ridiculously high production values (for an internet video, at least).

You have one day left to watch Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible online, free.  And it's very good.

I've been watching these guys for a couple of months now.  I like the idea.

In a nutshell, it's a series of locally-developed short films.

"Something happened during the summer of 2007 in Northern Ireland. Strange lights were seen in the skies. People started to disappear. Strangest of all, no one seemed to notice they were missing."

I like the intrigue, and I like the way clues are littered around, that you have to think and research a bit.  (The low production values and dodgy acting aren't great, but are bearable.)

Unfortunately, it's all been a bit quiet lately.  I think for this sort of thing to work, it needs a snappier schedule.  The wait between episodes just means I forget what's going on (hey - I'm getting old, 'K?).  Plus, the obvious plants in the forums are a bit cringey.

But maybe with a bit of encouragement from all of you they'll pick up the pace a little.

The same friend (Hi, TallPaul) who told me about Wired's six-word stories mentioned that Jim Butcher has a couple of free-to-read short stories about Harry Dresden (of The Dresden Files fame) up on his site.

I haven't read them yet, but soon...