Offmessage

They called off the search for poor little Gordo the Monkey.

I never would have imagined that you could register domains in 1985. Here’s a list of the 100 oldest .com domains. Most of them are obvious (sun.com, ibm.com, intel.com and the like) but some of them are a little odder (like toad.com and rosetta.com) – registered at the dawn of the Internet and site designed at at the dawn of the web, by the looks of it.

Thanks to Doug for pointing out that the Dutch presidency is trying to get the software patents approved on the quiet, without discussion, at a fisheries meeting.

And thanks to Will for pointing out that it’s hardly the plaice.

Seriously though, it would appear that despite this having been thrown out of the European Parliament it may still get introduced through manipulation of procedure and essentially crooked politics. Nice.

I’ve just got the new Douglas Coupland novel (Eleanor Rigby – you should buy it – it’s really rather good, though not as good as Hey Nostradamus!) and was sparked to start thinking about a throwaway comment from the main character that the “close door” buttons in lifts don’t actually do anything, but are in fact mechanical placebos. Just starting out as I was to see if there were any more such things I discover that today’s things is already musing about the same subject and refers to this MeFi thread (among others). How bizarre. Clearly we’re all reading the same book at the moment.

Good old Martin Amis. Sometimes massively enjoyable, most of the time not. I first came across him (if you’ll excuse the pun) in a volume of short stories where his story (How Can I Count The Times) had me in absolute stitches. I was then lucky enough to read London Fields, before sinking into the mire of the rest of his work. To be honest I wouldn’t even have looked at Yellow Dog, having written him off completely nowadays, but Claire brought it home and I was short of books….

Yellow Dog is another one of his massively multi-threaded novels. 5 or 6 different stories intertwine throughout the novel, occasionally touching on each other as they make their seeming unconnected way through the book. The Royal family, a tabloid journalist, a renaissance man for the TV generation, old lags, porn stars and an aircraft all have their own tale to tell.

This is a book about sex – uncomfortable sex*. It’s about all sorts of taboos and forbidden love – incest, hardcore porn, paedophilia, closet homosexuality, drugs, small dicks and premature ejaculation all make a showing.

In his dealings with the subject matter Amis has managed to write quite a funny novel, but the underlying themes are fairly dark and oppressive. It is a return to form though – the language is fresh and snappy rather than moribund and each storyline has a tale to tell. I generally enjoyed it but I found myself disturbed by the subject matter for some time after I finished reading. This is clearly the mark of a good book but it doesn’t necessarily make for a truly enjoyable one.

Overall the plot is clever and engaging, the characters well developed (although all of them are entirely unpleasant) and the language witty and entertaining. Ultimately though it was dark, seedy, and I wasn’t entirely sure what the actual point of exposing all these taboos really was….

* no, not in the back of a Volkswagen

Anyone wondering where I’d got to? Currently I’m up to my ears in plaster dust, paint and wallpaper paste – normal service will resume when I’ve finally finished off the living room (probably next Monday). At the time it seemed like a good idea to commit to finishing before Christmas….

It is true, apparently, and there’s a website dedicated to it at harvardsucks.org. In retaliation some Virginia Tech hackers ambushed the site (it’s fixed now). Handbags at dawn, everyone!

Porn peddler sues google for returning results when searching for perfect10.com password. How about better security instead, eh?

Gloriously geeky, but apparently there is a way to ride a bike on square wheels.

…and found. Previously thought unfinished a complete first draft of Truman Capote’s first novel – Summer Crossing – is found.