With less-than-ideal strategic planning, I have arranged to run my experiment in the middle of the University’s inter-semester break. This has severely reduced the supply of undergraduate students wandering around the building waiting to be measured.

Would anyone out there like to be a research participant? The experiment takes about 45 minutes, and involves clicking on things with a mouse in the Special Research Annex of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, in the Erskine building (Maths and Computer Science). It requires some letter-rearranging and colour-distinguishing, so it may be unsuitable for people with a history of dyslexia or colour-blindness. You will get a keen plastic card. I’m told that the people at the Warehouse are unable to distinguish it from a ten-dollar note, and will accept it in exchange for items to that value.

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In a milestone for humanity, another technology that was once the domain of science fiction has come to fruition in reality. We all remember how Buck Rogers and Dan Dare would fly their spaceships across the universe, doing battle with terrible alien threats, while operating their space radios with their futuristic techno-dentures. Well now you too can control an iPod with your teeth.

(via Engagdet)

I made an appointment today, and they gave me 2:30. I hope the dentist doesn’t do an embarrassing racist Chinaman routine.

Let it be acknowledged that some bits of it were funny. They were all in the first twenty minutes or so, but they were there. And let it also be acknowledged that some bits of it were written funny but spoilt by bad timing, for which you can’t really blame the writers as such. Let it further be acknowledged that the cinema was mostly empty, so the crowd effect that can sometimes make sub-par comedy work was not working in the movie’s favour on this particular evening. And let it finally be acknowledged that the other people I went with liked it more than I did.

Bearing in mind our acknowledgment of these facts, let us admit, frankly and honestly, that the Simpsons Movie was a train-wreck of a film.