The ghost of Ayn Rand is haunting me

I was chatting to one of my colleagues on the bus, and we got talking about finding time in our busy schedules for recreational reading. I confessed that I spend almost all the time I'm not working on the Internet, and for this reason get through books at the rate of one every three months. She, in contrast, always makes time for reading.

"For example, I've been reading this really great book - in fact I've been recommending it to all my friends."
"Oh yeah, what's it called?"
"The Fountainhead"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! [cue special effect of Solri spiralling into a dark void]

Another meme

I can't understand why I'm doing this, but what the hell ...

Top ten fictional characters I would shag (not really in order, and not counting Turkish films).

1. Faith (BtVS)
2. Fred (Angel)
3. Lieutenant Ripley (Alien)
4. Vianne (Chocolat)
5. Niobe (Matrix)
6. The archer in Mad Max II
7. Leaven (The Cube)
8. Death (The Sandman)
9. Halo Jones
10. Kuan Yin (The Monkey King)
Come to think of it, that last one is rather blasphemous.

Geeks-only post

I've just had a load of e-mails from students complaining that they couldn't upload their essays. Puzzled, I go to the course website and upload something - no problem. Sometime later, I get an idea.

[robin@lists]$ cd public_html/102/
[robin@lists 102]$ ls -l 
[robin@lists 102]$ drwxr-xr-x   3 robin    robin        4096 Jul 26  2003 upload

As Homer would say, "Doh!"

26 things

Thanks to blorky for this mind-teasing meme.

Alien is better than Aliens.
Buffy seasons which are divisible by 3 are better than the others.
Capoeira has better music than karate ;-)
Dennis the Menace is better than Roger the Dodger.
Eclecticism is better than purism.
Fried is better than boiled.
Gorbachov was better than Putin.
Highlander is better than any of its sequels.
Irish music is better than Scottish music.
Jack Daniels is better than Jim Beam.
KDE is better than GNOME.
Linux is better than Windows. (OK, that was a no-brainer!)
Mad Max II is better than Mad Maxes I and III.
Nerds are better than jocks.
Open Source is better than proprietary software.
Perl is better than Java.
Queen were better than Roxy Music.
Rakı is better than ouzo.
Seinfeld is better than Ally McBeal.
Technics is better than Sony.
Untermenschen are better than Übermenschen.
Vivaldi is better than Wagner.
Wittgenstein is better than Russell.
Xander is better than Riley.
Yello were better than Blancmange.
Zelenka is better than Janacek.

That probably says more about me than any quiz I've done.