Long late shifts at work just now, dealing with Glastonbury, which is fun in a kind of flaily way. We know vaguely which artists are going to be on the BBC programmes, sometimes, and we try and prepare subtitles for their latest and/or biggest hits. And then we try to recognise them when they play them. Today I have been mostly using Twitter to find out what songs bands like Spinal Tap played, so that I could prep them - new media for the win! Fewer people were twittering about what Crosby, Stills & Nash played, sadly.

So, anyway, linkspam:

I didn't know who Ed McMahon was before he died. Farrah Fawcett reminds me more of a couple of lines of Buffy dialogue than anything else. I was never that into Michael Jackson. The only "celeb" death that's really affected me this week is that of Steven Wells, an ex-NME writer. He died of cancer: this was his last column, a couple of weeks ago, for the Philadelphia Weekly. ( Quote and more links under the cut )

(Vaguely related aside: watching Lauren Laverne presenting Glastonbury makes me want to look out my Kenickie CDs. She's one of my only girlcrushes.)

I've mentioned the Lord of the Rings re-read and discussion on Tor before, but I'll take the opportunity of them starting The Two Towers to plug it again - totally geeky, utterly fantastic conversation. Put aside a day or two and read the whole thing from the start.

If anyone hasn't read cereta's post On Rape And Men yet, please do, especially if you're a man. And read at least the first couple of pages of comments. I've been meaning to link to this and post about it for a while - I might still do a post. But I've been reading through all 17 pages or so of comments, too.

On a lighter note, blankets with sleeves! We saw these on the Big Bang Theory, and I looked them up because I Need One. Totally. Sometime before winter.

The Nieman Journalism Lab tells us that the New York Times has data on which words its readers look up in the dictionary. Interesting. And it also has an article about the Guardian's crowdsourcing experiment on the MPs' expenses claims.

An overview of the gay marriage debate, in chart form.

The best optical illusion I've seen in ages, and another illustration of why no, you shouldn't believe the evidence of your own eyes.

HTML Playground seems like a good way of relearning html and CSS by example, in a very web 2.0 stylee.

Jesus And Mo is always entertaining, but I particularly liked the latest one.

I thoroughly commend and recommend this How To Meet A Nerdy Girl post, if only because point #9 made me laugh out loud.

Tip #9: Embrace her collectibles.

That is not a euphemism for something pervy. It’s just a fact. When you walk into her apartment for the first time and notice a glass cabinet filled with a miniature TARDIS, a sombrero-wearing Giles, a 17-inch Han Solo and a two-foot long replica of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D, do not say, “What the hell is all this stuff?” Instead say, “What the hell? Why don’t you have MORE of this stuff? And may I mail order something for you?”

(Yes, I have a three miniature Tardii. And a sombrero-wearing Giles. No Han Solos, and no Enterprises, but I do have a Starbug.)

And finally, in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Buffy meets Edward from Twilight. With inevitable consequences. One of the best mashup videos I've seen.

Huh. Heroes seems to be threatening to get good again, which is unexpected. And Dollhouse starts on Friday - I have no idea whether to get my hopes up or not.

Something that IS good is The Big Bang Theory. Geek sitcom glee! I can't believe I managed to miss this somehow, but I happened to work on one of the second-season eps the other day, and now I'm racing through watching the first season. It's very funny - especially if you know a lot of geeks, probably. Most of my friends ARE Sheldon and Leonard. (So am I, for that matter.) Nice to see Johnny Galecki again - I always loved him in Roseanne - and to see him working with Sara Gilbert again. YAY.

And the theme song is by the Barenaked Ladies and is great. ( Video: )

I was playing Worms 4 last night too, which was "interesting", since I've only ever played original, 2D Worms. Although I have played that a lot. Once you get the hang of the 3D-ness and camera angles and things, it is still Worms, so it's obviously awesome. Oh, the fun you can have with a sentry gun. And I didn't lose as badly as I might have, since laerad and mind_expander were too busy attacking each other to notice me, mwahahaha.

A couple of OMG WTF things to complain about:

You may or may not remember that Amanda Palmer had trouble with her last single - her record label wouldn't promote the video because she had a stomach. You know, like a normal person. She's got another single coming out, Oasis. This time many radio and TV stations in the UK are refusing to play it because it's a chirpy, upbeat song which mentions rape and abortion. Apparently you're only allowed to mention these things in a minor-key ballad, or something. According to the record label, "All our TV outlets have refused to play the video due to it “making light of rape, religion and abortion”." Er?!?! I disagree anyway, but what the hell is religion doing in there? Amanda has a great blog post on it, where you can watch the video too. (Might be slightly triggery for rape/abortion issues, but nothing )

On a completely different note - and this seems to be old news, but I'd missed it completely - Bletchley Park is being left to rot, and requires your fundraising and petition-signing efforts, pls. Because Bletchley Park is AWESOME, and needs to exist. (If you don't know it, it was Britain's main codebreaking establishment in WWII, breaking the Enigma machine code among others; one of the earliest digital electronic computers was built there in 1943; Alan Turing (of the Turing Test fame) worked there; and at one point they hired people by setting a Daily Telegraph crossword competition and offering a job to anyone who completed the crossword in under 12 minutes. I told you, AWESOME.

1. After watching the twitters about it all day, I have sent my money via paypal to the scary puppet man off Heroes, and will - shortly, I hope - have a DRM-free copy of Wil Wheaton's latest audiobook, read and annotated by Wil. Hurray! Also, weird. The scary puppet man off Heroes turns out to be David H Lawrence, whose intelligent, geeky, technical blog (he's something of an internet entrepreneur, it seems) is at http://david.typepad.com/ I left that address out in full, because, whoa. Early Adopters R Us.

2. Hal Duncan has a hilariously ranty post about religion (when I say ranty, I mean sweary, hyperbolic and offensive to almost everyone) to go with his recent project - to "rearrange" the book of Revelation so that, using exactly the same words, it tells the story with God as the bad guy. (Which, as he admits, isn't that much of a stretch from Revelation anyway...) It's called violent eRa. Heeee.

3. Christmas week at work! Given that a normal week at work involves cakes and sweets and biscuits in the kitchen, this week means CAKES AND SWEETS AND BISCUITS BY THE BARREL LOAD. Hurray. There were about 12 of us in today, and we had a tin of Celebrations, a box of Quality Street, a box of Maltesers and a box of chocolate Christmas biscuits. And some leftover prawn crackers, for some reason. (Other things I haven't yet figured out: how my work year appears to have had 53 weeks. I suspect it's some leap-year-esque issue to do with always starting our weeks on Saturdays, but I still object to working on "Week 53" stuff.)

4. Via andrewducker, 40 Inspirational Speeches in two minutes. From movies, and nicely cut together. Made me laugh.

5. Still picking up great stuff by actually reading my RSS feeds. Today's haul so far: LOLworthy Queen of Wands comic strip (text possibly NSFW); an interesting article and comments thread on The Age Of Mass Intelligence, from The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine, which looks like it could be worth keeping an eye on; Alan Cumming writing in the HuffPost about Rick Warren and Obama; and the news that EA Games have abandoned the SecuROM for Spore - they're using Steam instead - and have launched a de-authorization tool for those who have already bought the DRM'd version.

Saddies 1: David Attenborough is ill in hospital after falling and hitting his head. Don't panic at the Daily Mail headline and first few paras, though - apparently he's out of the coma, the doctors aren't worried, and they're just waiting to hear when he'll be allowed home.

Edit: Happies 6: I changed all the music on my phone yesterday, and realised tonight that I'd taken my current ringtone (Bark at the Moon) off it. So now my phone, by way of ringing, is going to announce "I wanna do bad things with you". This amuses me more than it probably should. (The version of the song I have actually starts off with the "I wanna do bad things with you", rather than the musical intro.)

Yay: I have (finally) caught up on my friends list. Well, the people bit. Skip -940, anyone?

Boo: I have had time to do this because I have an Evil Cold and am therefore sitting around feeling sorry for myself. I can't quite figure out whether it's a normal cold and I'm just being crap and ManFluey about it, or if it is actually Evil. *sniffs* *coughs* *looks vaguely pathetic*

Links I've picked up (hat-tip to you if you linked to any of these, I really can't remember. The cold is eating my brane.):

• Neal Stephenson talks about FSF readers. ( Quote )


• Stephen Fry on the Wii, from his Dork Talk column
  
• This Feminism 101 blog looks interesting
  
• Fabulous Doctor Who cosplay at Dragon*con
  
• Article about the Large Hadron Collider, where Dr Brian Cox says "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat." Hee.
  
• Some utterly gorgeous pictures of London from above. I want prints. Mostly of the financial district ones, oddly.

Also, yay for a female winner of Big Brother. Only the second or third in nine years, depending on whether you count Nadia. And I realised due to a timely text from a friend who's watching Heroes S2 that Kensei might be the reason I vaguely fancied Rex. Thank God there's a reason. Heh. Since I was working Friday night, I also discovered there's a hidden core of Big Brother fans at my work. Hee.

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

While the legal battle between the two firms is being contested in the US, it is thought the ruling will apply to YouTube users and their viewing habits everywhere.

Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has alleged that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement.

Q&A here.

Hmm. Looks like it's probably still safe enough to watch copyrighted clips (which includes fanvids and so on as well as TV shows and films) as long as you've got a dynamic IP address, but a little worrying nonetheless.

Conspiracy theory department: The chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee ("Britain's top spy") is unconscious in hospital with an unknown illness. Curious, the fates that befall people involved with Iraq investigations and dossiers. Probably just coincidence, though.

So today is Towel Day, in remembrance of Douglas Adams. I forgot my towel, unfortunately.

It's also the Glorious 25th of May, Pratchett fans, and I've deleted and lost my How Do They Rise Up? icon. But I'm thinking of it anyway. And, er, not wearing lilac. For next year, I think I'll find a lilac towel.

(Thinking about it, I have a lilac towel. Hmm.)

Today is also the 30th anniversary of the opening day of Star Wars. Here's Carrie Fisher talking about it at Time magazine.

More geekiness: sovietkiki linked to tons of Heroes T-shirts on Cafe Press. I want the I'm comfortable with morally gray one. (And I totally mistyped that as "morally gay". Hee.)

And the Heroes DVD is out on August 28th. Only three months! (Um, only on Region 1, probably.)

Someone linked me to the Atheist Rights and Responsibilities page, which made me laugh. ( Noncommandments here. ) I followed the links through to the I Am An Atheist blog, which looks pretty interesting - I'm reading an argument about whether just making up the above list makes atheism almost a religion.

And to finish, cutest kitty video ever. Seriously.

I'm working on tonight's episode of Imagine, the Alan Yentob culture thingy, and it's about teh internets. Five minutes in and I've just seen a shot of LJ. Yay! dickon_edwards is going to be in it, too. So, recommended, I think.

I have (somewhat accidentally) introduced my co-workers to the joy of Giant Microbes. Now they're contemplating things like "Can I buy syphilis for my daughter, or would that be weird?" (Answer: "Buy it for her boyfriend.") They like Thinkgeek. A related question: would Bluetooth handsets from the US work in the UK? I've said I think so, but I don't really know.

Also? Titanium Spork. World of yay.

The Guardian did a poll of geek novels. Lots of people are memeing it, so here goes!

( Under the cut... )

Various interesting discussions going on about the list, notably cassiphone's post asking for nominations for geek novels written by women.