Lazy Solri

I was feeling stressed out and knew the best thing for me would be to do some t'ai chi. But instead I dug out an old photo of me doing t'ai chi and made an icon out of it.

Signs that I'm bored

I rarely get bored unless I have to do something that is inherently boring (invigilating/proctoring exams being the worst) but when I do, I can see the warning signs:

1. I add books to my BibTeX database for no obvious reason
2. I put my Mozilla bookmarks in alphabetical order (these days that doesn't takelong, just hit Ctrl-N for each folder)
3. I watch the BBC News for the second time in one day
4. I visit the homepage of a program I use to see if there's a new verison due out soon
5. I hit the "Get messages" button on my email client even though it downloads messages every ten minutes anyway
6. I regularly hit the reload button on my LJ Friends page
7. I look at my LJ friends pages to see if they have any interesting friends, then click on links to their friends.

Recursive plagiarism

This is rich. Lawyers for J.K. Rowling, the author of the least original bestselling series ever, the Harry Potter books, are considering legal action against Dmitry Yemets, the author of a series of books featuring the a heroine caled Tanya Grotter. The aim was both to parody the Potter books and popularise Russian folklore. If this is plagiarism, then surely the original Potter books are not above suspicion - doesn't anyone remember Jill Murphy's "Worst Witch" series?

This looks like an attempt to move copyright law into patent law, as is happening in the case of software. I once described the absurdity of software patents by comaparing them to a crime writer trying to patent the idea that the butler did it, but it looks like that may soon be less far-fetched than I'd imagined.