flanerie.org

Police are investigating a disgruntled eBayer who took online revenge after finding a laptop he paid £375 which, he said, did not work.

The buyer recovered the hard drive from the malfunctioning notebook, finding it full of personal details, allegedly including access to email accounts, 90 voyeuristic leg shots taken on the London Underground and gay porn. He posted the material on a website, naming and shaming Barnet 19-year-old Amir Tofangsazan as the seller.

[blah, blah, continued]

check out the revenge site, it might not be up for much longer but it rocks.

Here is my walkthrough of Submachine 2: The Lighthouse

I have presented it fairly sequentially so you should be able to find the bit you are stuck on without learning stuff you don't want to yet.

Also see my walkthroughs for:
Submachine Adventure
Submachine Adventure Extended Edition
Submachine Zero: Ancient Adventure
Submachine 3: The Loop
Submachine 4: The Lab


And a bunch of other games and walkthroughs are at: http://flanerie.org/games

Start - The Red Cellar
Go Left (gramaphone), Left, Left and there is a weird lamp stand thing that is wired up. Place the wisdom gem between the two terminals and an arm will rise up out of the box on the floor. On top of the arm is what looks like a pearl. Click it and it will rise and fall back and you will hear something moving.

Go Right and you will see a ladder has appeared.

You can go up the ladder and then left or right but that is all, so before you do that we need to get another ladder to appear.

From the bottom of the ladder go Left (wisdom gem), Left, Up to a room with an armchair. Pick up the cog wheel on the floor.

Go Down, Right (wisdom gem), Right (ladder), Right to the gramaphone. Click on it to zoom in. On the front left of the machine is a hole - please the cog wheel in that. You hear a click. Now press the button on the right and the arm comes off the gramaphone and the sound of critters stops.

Back to the ladder, Left. Then Up and you see a second ladder upwards. This will take you up into the lighthouse - the game has begun.

Secrets
Back on the first screen is a video game machine. Click on it to zoom in then look to the right of the machine and there is a small red pearl. Click to pick it up - this is the first of 20 secrets. I will list the locations of all of them at the end.

Get to the sewer
From the bottom of the ladder, go Up, Right and you will see an electrical junction box. Click on it to zoom in and you will see something like "C=2", although it could be a different number. Make a note.

Next go back Left, Up and there are two sewer entrances, one covered with bars. Enter the other one - you will see a key but can't get to it. Never mind. Go Left and Left again. It is very dark but you should be able to make out another key. Pick it up - it is a room key.

Head back, Right, Right, Right. Then go Up the main ladder. Here is another sewer entrance with a padlock. Your new key doesn't open it. Not obviously, there is a room to the right here, towards the top. Go there and enter the small opening. You will find a fork. Pick it up.

Back to the main ladder and Up into the tiled lower floor of the lighthouse.

There is a ladder up here which leads to a crawl space. You can take a look but you can't do anything with it yet. Instead, head Left. Another left reveals a camera. Again, nothing to do with this yet, so instead take the doorway in the centre.

After going through the door, go Up and Up to reach the first floor.

Go Right (doorway), Right (light), Right, where you can pick up a pamphlet. There is a picture on the wall - of some use later.

Go back Left, Left, Left (the stairs down), Left. Two doors. The right one is locked. Open the left. A small room where you can collect the cat note from the bookshelf.

Back out and now open the right door using the key you found in the sewer. A bathroom in which you find a sewer key. Bingo.

The Sewer
Head back down the stairs to the lower level, then down the ladder to the sewer entrance that is padlocked. Use the sewer key then dive on in.

The sewers are a little maze like, and I won't bother mapping them. Instead I will tell you what there is to find. All the way left (9 Lefts) is a secret.

From there you can mooch around and find:
- A room with a big horizontal metal cylinder with a glass panel on the front. This will be opened when you complete the puzzle in...
- A room with a big vertical metal cylinder with a 4x4 grid of lights on it. The puzzle is to get all 16 lights on at the same time. It doesn't take too long to figure out
- Inside the first cylinder is a switch handle
- The key you saw a lot earlier, called 2nd floor key
- A red alcove, accessed from beneath containing a letter to liz
- A positive coil

The 2nd floor
No point having a key without using it, so off to the second floor. Up to the first floor, then Right and there is a silver doorway. Go through and pick up a negative coil. Now go up twice to find a locked door. (Going up once more finds a dead end. For now.) Use the key on the locked door and go through. There are doors left and right.

Take the left and look closer at the typewriter to get Diary 2. At the bottom it says "M=[number]". Mine says 822 but it is different each time. Go left again to get a movie memory, whatever that might be.

Go back out and through the right door. There is a green glowing cupboard with some kind of combination lock. Leave that for the moment and go right again to find a 'Note to myself'.

Back to that green combination lock. The answer is back at the picture of the lighthouse on the first floor - you need to zoom in on the picture twice to see it. Inside you will find a lightbulb.

The Lower Floor
Back to the turquoise tiled area above the red cellar. There is a camera to the left. Insert the movie memory, then insert the lightbulb. Now switch it on by flipping the switch down. You can now see something when you zoom in on the camera - a desk with a range of objects on it. If you move you cursor around the image it changes to a hand over one of the object - click on it to pick it up. An ID card will fall out of the camera.

Head Right, Right to the place you entered from the red cellar and take the ladder Up. Enter the crawl space Right, go Right again and you will see a pile of dirt and a switch on the wall. The switch is incomplete and can't be used. Use the Switch Handle to complete it and then flip the switch down - this will rotate the ladder that is above the second floor door.

The Tower
Head back upstairs and up to the second floor door and then up again to where the rotated ladder can now be climbed. There are entrances left and right. There is also a switch which doesn't work because there is a gap in the cable. Place the fork in that gap and flip the switch down. A ladder drops down.

Head Up, Up, Up, Up and Up to enter the portal room. Pick up the Portal Note that is on the wall, and notice the five red lights. As you should know by now, red lights need to be green so we need to complete five separate circuits.

Go Left in the portal room to find a unit with a slot in the top and a red light on it. Insert the ID Card. The light turns green and the fourth portal light is now green. Go Right in the portal room to find a unit with a hole in the top. The coils look like they would fit, but don't. There is a key here - pick it up. It is the digout key.

Head back down to the first floor and head way left to the wall panel that is padlocked. Use the key to open it and head inside and go Left Left Left to find a Fuse.

Now go back to the portal room, go right and insert the Fuse into the unit. The light turns green and the second portal light is now green.

Head back down from the portal room to the point on the ladders where you placed the fork. Take the Left entrance and go Up the ladder. There is a 4-digit combination switch here, with the letter E scratched onto it. Above the switch is a red light.

Early you saw "C=3" or something similar. On Diary Page 2 it says "M=773" or another number (the numbers are different each time you play.) In the notes you find there are references to Einstein the cat. Einstein's most famous equation was E=MxC[squared]

Multiply M by C by C (ie multiply by C twice) to get a 4-digit answer. With my numbers of 773 and 3 I get 6957 (773 x 3 x 3). Enter the answer in the combination switch and step back. The light above the switch has turned green. The first portal light is now green. Two to go.

Head Right and Right to find a mirror image of the left-hand room. Go Up the ladder to find a strange switch with a big red light above it. On the switch itself are 4 red lights and eight buttons. You need to use the buttons to move the arms around until they touch the centre and turn the lights green. When they are all green you have turned the big light green.

This is about trial and error. When you press a button two of the arms rotate, but one will rotate faster so it is possible to complete a few revolutions and have then arrive in the centre at the same time. My personal preference is to use the two buttons top left.

Once you have completed it, the third portal light will turn green.

Back to the central ladder and head up towards the portal room but stop where the room is a cone shape. If you look carefully there is something odd about two of the panels on the wall, one left and one right. They are crawl spaces. Head Left to find nothing at all. Head Right to find a room with a broken circuit and positive and negative terminals on the wall.

At last! A use for the coils. Insert the coils as appropriate to complete the circuit and that will light the fifth portal light.

You can now flip the switch on the portal to complete the game, although first you should try to complete your collection of secrets. Scroll down for a list of them.

Secrets

Red cellar
1. To right of video game machine
2. Far left and upstairs, on the armchair
3-5. Red alcove, accessed from sewer - 3
6. W

A door to door salesman knocks on a door.

A boy about eight years old answers, dressed in stockings and suspenders, with a fat cigar in one hand and a large glass of red wine in the other.

"Is your mum in, son?" says the salesman.

The boy replies, "Does it fucking look like it?"

Firefox pushed out an update overnight, taking the version to 1.5.0.4 and Norton decided to remind why I should have uninstalled it months ago.

The Norton personal firewall decided to automatically block Firefox - no message, no option, no warning. But looking in the firewall settings it was still showing firefox as 'permit all', so it was even lying about blocking it. Tosser.

90 minutes of my life later, I had it all fixed. If you are similarly afflicted, here is what you need to do:

- Go into Norton Internet Security, click on Personal Firewall and click configure.

- Go to the Programs tab

- Click ctrl-A to select all the programs, then click remove. When asked if you want to remove from all locations, click yes

- The list may or may not be empty now. If it is not, repeat the last step until it is.

- Although you click yes to all locations, Norton might not have done it, so cycle through the locations drop down at the top of the page and repeat the remove step until all locations are clear of all programs.

- Now do a program scan, at the end click all and add to all locations

You should now be good to go. For the next couple of days Norton will ask you if you want to allow certain programs as it rebuilds its firewall list.

If you have Skype it might get autoblocked by Norton - I selected the automatically configure option when Norton asked me about Skype and it decided to permanently block the application and I needed to go back into firewall settings to fix that.

My next step is to find a firewall that isn't so lame. That shouldn't be a difficult task.

AXE ATTACK shouts the headline from the front page of the local newspaper this week.

On further reading, and to quote the police, "The man... was not hurt or threatened during the incident"

More of an axe incident than an axe attack then, or perhaps even an incidental axe. The gist of the story is that 20 men, all carrying axes, broke into a workshop and asked the foreman, who was working alone, where the manager was. He said he didn't know, so the gang left. All very pythonesque.

The local rag does have a history of trying to make much out of little, including their campaign against the shooting of cats with air rifles. The evidence of such attacks was patchy at best and there is the lingering suspicion that the editor was going out at night in full camouflage gear to shoot cats and keep the story running.

But their best effort, for which you need to know that we are a very long way from the sea here, was "Wooburn man attacked by shark!"

Mechanics who examined a car after the owner complained of a squeaking noise found a kitten hiding in the wing.

Italian motorist Vincenzo Frustaci eventually pulled over and called for help after a 900 mile trip to the Austrian capital Vienna.

He told the Austrian equivalent of the AA that he had heard the strange sound throughout the drive from Avellino in the Campania region of Italy.

It was only when he reached the capital that a mechanic found the problem - a young kitten trapped in the wing.

Mechanic Hans-Juergen Heindl said: "I could hear the sound coming from above the wheel, even when the car was not going, which was strange for a start. I couldn't believe it when I saw a kitten in the wheel bearing."

The young cat was handed over to a local vet who said it was scared but amazingly unharmed.

----

I vaguely recall a gag at school about a 90 mile an hour cat. It was probably hilarious at the time and not so now.

Any road up, tomorrow I will be in Brussels for nefarious purposes. While there I will be looking out for sprouts and Jean-Claude.

As I walked through Brussels airport this morning I was reminded of an incident in 2000. While I was thinking about how I would describe it on these very pages I was reminded of an incident in 1980 and in a tangential move I then remembered something from 1985.

I then started thinking about memories and how my blog has become a trigger for memories and anecdotes. I have entered my dotage, but with me it is an anecdotage.

Is this what we become? A collection of memories? Or perhaps it is the linkages that matter - what is a memory if it is never fired by synapse and dendrite?

We are each the product of a million moments, but are we lessened if those moments are not remembered? Does the person fade with the memories or are we distinct, with the memory being merely the filing cabinet in an office - disorganised if the filing cabinet is lost, but still an office.

And exactly why, as a portly Belgian with a walrus moustache walked by me, did I remember bananas and custard?

My Granddad died in the early hours of this morning after kidney failure.

The granddad that used to give me piggy-backs up the stairs, call me 'little chico' (my sister was 'big chico'), keep bees, tell awful jokes and drive badly. At Christmas he would take us to the panto, where we would sit in a box and feel like royalty.

His was the house where there were always treats to be had - ribena pop, sweets and hot milk at bedtime; a home office with its strict order, rubber stamps and an old typewriter too heavy to lift; slide shows of holidays; sugared almonds on nested tables; and a wooden rabbit, a blackbird called Peggy, a gall stone in a jar and an outside toilet.

Over the last few years Alzheimers has slowly taken his mind and it is some time since he was the granddad I remember so well. Then again it has been some time since I was the person that laid down those memories.

But my granddad, and my interactions with him as a child, are as much a part of the adult typing today as they ever were. He is gone now, but he lives on within me and I am a richer person and a better man for having been his grandson.

The World Cup has started and England has collectively lost the plot.

The greatest sporting nation on earth is, and is pains me to say it, Australia. A land of convicts and sheep-shaggers is world champion in more than 50 different sports.

But the greatest sport-supporting nation on earth is England. At the Athens Olympics the biggest group of supporters there was, of course, the Greeks. The second biggest was the British. In Rugby Union, when the British Lions played Australia, in Australia, there were more red jerseys than gold in the crowd. When the English cricket team tour in the West Indies the England fans outnumber the locals.

Home field advantage counts for a lot in sport and the English have exported the concept. When truly playing at home the impact is magnified - pity the poor Australians (for once) who played eleven men against 50 million in the cricket last summer.

And so on to the World Cup, the greatest show on earth. England is awash with flags, banners and football shirts. Even dogs are being dressed in the cross of St George.

The English don't normally do patriotism, certainly not overtly - it is all rather undignified. But sport is the glorious exception; the excuse. It is now okay to say it proud and say it loud - England, our England. Dressing head to toe in red and white is perfectly fine, and all the better if you can have a dozen flags attached to your car.

And now, on the quiet morning of a white-hot day, is the time of greatest expectation - the hours before our opening game. The time when people are daring to whisper that we can win this year. The time for buying beer, barbecue supplies and St George sun hats. The time to stop worrying about Wayne's foot, Stevie's back and Sven's taste for the ladies.

This is the time for faith to conquer nerves, for love to conquer fear, for nation to conquer individual.

This is the time.

I was in Costa Coffee a couple of weeks ago, ordering my usual. Readers outside the UK only need to know that Costa is the UK equivalent of Starbucks. Well, Starbucks is the UK equivalent of Starbacks but over here they are utterly inept and Costa are better at being Starbucks than Starbucks are.

I once went into a UK Starbucks and ordered a triple grande latte.

'Three grande lattes?,' replied the cretin behind the counter.

'No, a grande latte with an extra shot,' said I.

So he gave me a grande latte and a single espresso.

That is what Starbucks is like here.

But I digress. As usual.

I was in Costa and the manager, Rick, was giving the staff a thrashing for not giving out numbers when customers order food. In the US this doesn't seem to happen often - the servers remember what you look like - but in the UK they give you a number then holler it when your food is ready. The staff were trying to show US-style efficiency but Rick was not at all happy.

As soon as he turned his back there was much eye-rolling and mouthed expletives and, since my server was the cute one, I joined in with a conspiratorial eye-roll.

Fast-forward to this weekend and I am back in Costa reading the newspaper, having uneventfully negotiated my drink, when the fat one came out of the kitchen and shouted 'number 8'. I looked up as the appropriate customer made himself known and I returned to the sports section.

A minute later the routine is repeated with 'number 9', the table next to mine.

Then another minute and 'number 8'. I looked over to the previous number 8 but it wasn't him, it was someone way over the other side. Hmmm.

Next, 'number 9' - a table outside this time.

And then 'number 8' again.

At that point I left because that sort of thing can seriously mess with your head.

A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.

The 33-year-old woman told police she had taken the puppy to a veterinarian, who said it was only 4 weeks old and needed to be returned to its mother. But before she could return the puppy, it died.

Early Wednesday, the woman went to the breeder's home, pushed her way inside and began fighting with the breeder as she tried to make her way to the basement to get another puppy, police said.

The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.

As the woman drove away, she waved the dead puppy out of the car's sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said. She later called the breeder and threatened her and her family, according to court records.

Police said they are considering felony burglary charges and misdemeanor assault charges.
[from sfgate.com]

Ten cats in search of owners will spend the next 10 days in a New York store window, their every move caught on camera for a reality TV show on which they will compete for best sleeper and mouse-catcher.

The show is the creation of a petfood company and will be shown on cable channel Animal Planet, as well as on a website where viewers will be asked to vote off one feline contestant each day.

The cats, chosen from shelters around the country, will compete for loudest purr, most prolific sleeper and who can catch the most toy mice. Kitties who get the boot will be adopted into permanent homes.

Meow Mix, owned by Del Monte Foods Company, hopes the show will promote cat adoption - as well as their products, which will be the only thing on the menu.

Passerby taking a gander though a specially rented storefront on Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan can watch the cats lazing about a luxuriously outfitted cat-sized house that includes scaled-down sofas, beds, a fish tank (with fake fish), kitchen and a porch, all put together by an interior designer.

"It's a Disney World for cats," said Meow Mix's Ryan Reed, in charge of ensuring the cats are well-cared for and well-behaved. Volunteers from The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are also on hand to attend to the needs of the kitty stars.

Enjoying their final day of obscurity today, the cats seemed unfazed by attention from visiting media - most of the cats were asleep on the set, which was to be unveiled to the public.

A cat named Sam, from Dallas, Texas, stood guard on the home's welcome mat while Romeo, a Los Angeles native, lazily stretched out his six-toed paws before swatting a toy.

In the tradition of reality shows, the company will hire the top cat as "Feline Vice-President of Research and Development," responsible for taste testing and product feedback.

Biographies of the cats play up their personalities, but in reality, they're all pretty mellow, if not a bit dazed from all the attention.

"In real life they're all very sweet," said Meow Mix's Keith Fernbach. "But we try to give them a personality for TV."
[from stuff.co.uk]

Hello Mr Bank Manager

Please can I have a bigger overdraft facility?

No, you can't.

At least that's what I think he said, but he kinda mispronounced it. Time for plan B then.

You couldn't make this shit up!

Er. Actually they probably did make this shit up.

--

A tortoise that "did a runner" after 55 years with the same partner has been found safe and well.

Daisy was discovered after 12 days away and had made it almost a mile from her Devon home, reports the Sun.

The pet went missing after owner Jonathan Bradley let her and fellow tortoise Bert out to chew on some clover.

Daisy was found in the back garden of a farm in Combe Martin, Devon. To get there, she had scaled a steep hill and crossed a road and tractor trails.

It was the first time the tortoise had been away from pal Bert since the early 1950s.

Jonathan, 55, who cares for the pair with wife Anne, 50, and daughter Albany, nine, said: "The lady who found her had seen the stories about her disappearance and called us straightaway.

"Now she's back Bert hasn't left her alone all day. And she clearly has a good memory, as she knew where she was back in the enclosure."

[ripped from ananova]

At 10am today, Norton Internet Security was executed for crimes against flanerie.

It has been replaced as Grand Vizier of laptop security by ZoneAlarm. Thanks to those who suggested it.

Initially I was going to use the free version of ZoneAlarm but then decided to pay for it. Why? Well, I think that basic software should be free for everyone. One way to help that come about is for some people to choose to pay those companies that offer a decent free version.

I guess that's software socialism combined with market forces.

I have finally got around to sorting out my safari photos, and they can be found over here at flickr.

The Gomo Gomo Lodge is in the private Timbavati reserve which borders the Kruger National Park. There is no fence between the two so they share the same population of animals.

We were there two nights and one day and the daily routine was:
- Up at 5.30
- Game drive 6.15 (3 hrs)
- Breakfast 9.30
- Bush walk 11.00
- Lunch 13.00
- Game drive 15.30 (3hrs)
- Dinner 19.30

Which was pretty exhausting and didn't leave much time for anything else. You wouldn't want to spend you entire holiday there - three days and nights would be plenty, and our stay there was a little too short.

The game drives are what it was all about - up to nine people in a Land Rover on raised seating with a Ranger (Arend) and a tracker (Oscar). The drives either started in dark and ended in daylight or vice versa and the ranger did his best to find the animals we requested and threw in a few surprises.

What I wasn't expecting was how the animals totally ignored the vehicles. My photos are with a regular 3x zoom digital camera and are mostly uncropped, so you get the idea how close we got.

The highlights were the lions, more on which in another post, and the elephants.

I was desperate to see a leopard and we spend almost all of our last 3 hour drive tracking one, never to actually see it. At least they said they were tracking one - all those footprints look the same to me.

As a first safari experience Gomo Gomo was ideal, and now I am hooked and can't wait to return to Kruger.

A thief who stole a World Cup ticket from a woman's handbag was caught after sitting down to watch the game next to his victim's husband.

The 34-year-old mugged Eva Standmann, 42, as she made her way to the Munich stadium for the Brazil-Australia game at the weekend and discovered the ticket in her bag.

But as he took the woman's place in the stadium he was met by her husband Berndt, 43, who immediately called security.

A Munich police spokesman said: "The thief found the ticket in the bag and decided to watch the game, not expecting to sit next to his victim's husband, who immediately informed officers on duty at the stadium."

[from ananova]

Hooray, hooray, the sequel to the submachine is here at last! It is here and it is very good.

And because I am dorky I have written a walkthrough, which is here, and is about 75% complete so far.

Tomorrow I fly.

Before Tuesday the last funeral I attended was 6 years ago and the difference could not be more striking.

Funerals are for mourning losses and for celebrating lives. The balance between the two often depends on the nature and timing of the death.

Martin was 28 and died after an 18 month battle with bowel cancer. My Granddad was 93 and died after many years with Alzheimers.

Both were mourned, but when someone is taken so early in a life it is almost impossible to celebrate anything. How can a life so short be celebrated when there was so much still ahead? It was a painfully moving funeral, full of a sense of waste and helplessness in the face of disease.

For Granddad, the end was expected - not precisely but in general terms. There is no certainty like death - I will die and everyone I have ever known will die. Perhaps in millenia to come death will be the stuff of human history, but for now our universal truths are love and death.

When the life has been lived fully and the end, for the true person inside, came some years ago, it is a time to bring those two together and show that death does not conquer love, it reaffirms it.

If there is such thing as a good funeral, Granddad received one. A gathering of the clan to give a very warm and affectionate farewell. Gentility and dignity in a very English way.

Afterwards, thoughts turn to the inevitable - I wonder who will be at mine. Again, timing is the key. The earlier you go the more you get. Working life keeps the numbers up, as does procreation. Making some assumptions about my full term, my offspring (none, damnit, none!) and the life expectancy of my own generation of relatives, I reckon I will struggle to reach double figures.

Which should keep the cost down.

A safari park is warning visitors to remove England flags from their cars after a group of baboons began stealing them.

Knowsley safari park is warning visitors to remove England flags from their cars because baboons are stealing them.

The animals have built up a huge collection of flags in the monkey enclosure at Knowsley safari park in Merseyside.

Keepers at the park say the 120-strong troop of baboons have been known to help themselves to windscreen wipers but have now turned their attentions to the World Cup flags.

Safari Park general manager David Ross told the Liverpool Echo: "Many people are wisely removing the flags before they set off on the safari drive.

"But if they forget, the baboons usually take them and they've now built up quite a collection."
[from ananova]
---

One might be tempted to wonder whether there is much difference between a babboon with a flag and a regular football fan...

Well, no, not me. Those guys in Miami.

I am in Miami now, hence the eratic posting, and seven guys have been arrested for planning to blow up a big piece of chicago. Presumably not the musical.

Their (alleged) plans were a little half-assed or possibly even quarter-assed - they had got as far as deciding they wanted to cause some fireworks and then tried to find al-Qaeda for some assistance.

Finding al-Qaeda is not easy and has defeated the $500bn a year US military machine. Fortunately for al-Qaeda hunters, the FBI, CIA and the rest of the governmental alphabet soup have set up a ton of fake al-Qaeda types.

I always wondered, when watching the A-team all those years ago, why the feds didn't pretend to be them to take out their customers, or at least pretend to be the single mother with a nice rack facing trouble with loan sharks, or whatever it was that the storyline required.

Twenty years on the feds are so up to speed with this that you only need to wander along the beach asking to al-Qaeda to find yourself surrounded by a forest of turbans carrying badges. The next step is to open an al-Qaeda store in Aventura mall.

So now, if you have a problem terrorist plot, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... al-Qaeda.

Four pelicans suspected of being drunk on sea algae were being tested at a Southern California wildlife centre on Saturday after one of them crashed headlong into a car.

Three of the California brown pelicans were found wandering dazed in the streets of Laguna Beach after another pelican struck a vehicle's windshield on a nearby coast road.

It suffered internal injuries and a long gash in its pouch and was undergoing toxicology tests.

Officials at the Wildlife Care Center said the seabirds may have been under the influence of algae in the ocean that can produce domoic acid poisoning when eaten.

The other pelicans were rounded up after assistant wildlife director Lisa Birkle warned the public to be on the lookout for birds acting "drunk," disoriented or being in an unusual place.

Shellfish tainted with domoic acid was thought to be the culprit behind a 1961 attack of seabirds on people and cars in the oceanside California town of Capitola that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's horror movie The Birds.

[from stuff.co.nz]

After contacting getitfree.net I managed to convince them that I have done all that was necessary to have my sign up status confirmed.

Now all I have to do is get five of the eight people that have signed up beneath me to do that same and I might (possibly, maybe might) get myself a free ipod.

Another update once I have harassed the magnificent eight.

My trip home from Miami was far from simple. A one-hour boarding delay at Miami, due to a thunder storm, was followed by a two-hour weather closure of Washington Dulles. With Dulles closed we weren't allowed to take off.

Meanwhile another thunder storm passed over Miami and made for entertaining viewing while we remained seat-bound and earth-bound. The 747 alongside us took repeated lightning hits and the wind got so strong that our plane started rocking from side to side.

I finally got to Dulles three hours late and had missed my connection, with the next available seat two days later. Yikes! I was placed on the standby list, with around 50 other people, for the 10pm flight.

I was nowhere near the top of that list but they finally called my name only to then discovered that the plane was full. Either that or they just wanted to mess with my emotions. They then closed the flight and I thought it had actually gone when the gate was reopened because they had found one empty seat. That would be mine then!

I landed in London only four hours later than planned and even managed to sleep for a few hours en route, probably due to nervous exhaustion.

My bags weren't so lucky and are currently missing in action.

A retired US judge is himself before the beak in Bristow, Oklahoma, "on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others", AP reports.

The trial of Donald D Thompson, 59, has reportedly provoked much courtroom merriment as the jury has been entertained by both a defence attorney and prosecutor indulging in "pantomime masturbation" and a former juror in Thompson's court identifying the sound of the pump because "he had seen such devices in Austin Powers and Dead Man on Campus".

[continued on El Reg]
---

Erm...