Man Gouges Eyes After 1 Hour of Reading ./ V3. The +/- buttons were missing on the front page, but I voted it up on the story page.

I'm not a huge fan of the new layout, though I like v3 better than v2. Still pretty buggy.

One problem: I normally keep several Firefox tabs open to Slashdot pages, and Firefox is now running 50% of CPU usage (dual-core Xeon, three year old machine). Memory usage also appears to be higher.

(That's Merry Christmas in Irish)

All the blessings of the season to you and yours.

Cad é Nollaig, gan tú?

Deora ar mo chroí...

        Maidin 's tús an lae
        's fágaim mo bhaile
        Tá mo chroíse go brón
        Is fad ar shiúl m'óige

        Oíche 's mé liom féin
        Spéartha dubh go domhain, a choíche
        Ag cuimhneach ar laethanta a bhí
        Gan ghá agus gan ghruaim
        Éistim leis an ghaoth
        Uaigneas mór, go deo, a choíche

        Deireadh an turas mór
        Táim brónach, buartha 's briste
        I mo dhiaidh nach mbeidh níos mó
        Ach, tá sé i ndán dúinn, a pháistí
        Tá sé i ndán dúinn, a pháistí

        Is fada anois an lá
        A d'fhág mé mo bhaile
        Níl áthas i mo chroí
        Níl ann ach an marbh,
        Níl ann ach an marbh.

                                -- Eithne Ní Bhraonáin

What the heck is in that museum? If it had not been for the dog, the guy might well not have been caught.

https://slashdot.org appears to be unavailable this morning. The regular address (http://slashdot.org seems to be working as usual.

(SSL access is available to subscribers, and generally provides a more stable Slashdot experience, such as it is.)

World Suicide Prevention Day. Story worth reading. Learn about causes and warning signs.

It may well be closer to you than you think. And you can make a difference.

Although he has admitted covering up sexual abuse, Cardinal Sean Brady, archbishop of Ard Mhacha (Armagh), will not resign. He ought to be in jail. The continuing record of the Catholic Church on this is shameful - going right up to the Pope. No one in the hierarchy really seems to understand.

It's interesting to note that despite its modest size (a population of just under 15,000 in 2001), Ard Mhacha is the seat of the primates of both the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

        Look at my face I can hear you
        Just how I feel I will tell you
        Wake up and start feel emotions
        When you're dancing on the club

        We are the kings of the music
        I wanna be your illusion
        Wake up and start feel desire
        When the beat is coming up

        The beat is coming up

        Look at my face I can hear you
        Just how I feel I will tell you
        Wake up and start feel emotions
        When you're dancing on the club

        We are the kings of the music
        I wanna be your illusion
        Wake up and start feel desire
        When the beat is coming up

        And sometimes
        I wanna see the sunshine
        The night is cold
        I can freeze so hard

        And sometimes
        I wanna see the starlight
        The moon is dark
        We can see the stars forever

                                        -- East Clubbers

I would be the warmth in your coldest night...

        i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
        my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
        i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
        by only me is your doing,my darling)
                        i fear
        no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
        no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
        and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
        and whatever a sun will always sing is you

        here is the deepest secret nobody knows
        (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
        and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
        higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
        and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

        i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

                                        -- E. E. Cummings

As ever...

        From you
        I don't want anything new
        no more gifts
        nor the scent of landscapes
        rising to fill us,
        no bouquets of insight
        left by my head
        in the tenderness of morning,

        no intoxication
        of thoughts that open horizons
        where rooms are low,
        nor the sever of spring
        under the grid of old words
        that has set on our skin,
        nor my favorite blue,
        the cobalt
        colour of silence.

        No.
        All I want
        is your two hands
        pulsing in mine,
        the two of us
        back in a circle
        round our love.

                                        -- John O'Donohue

Thee, now and always.

Beannachtaí leat, anois agus go deo. Tá mo chroí agat i gcónaí.

Front page article that looks to be interesting reading.

I just saw that Martin Gardner died a week ago this past Saturday. Slashdot covered the story last Sunday.

I read his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American every month for many years, and own several of his books. He will be missed.

One of my early programming experiences was inspired by his column about John Horton Conway's game of Life. I coded it in Fortran for a Burroughs B-1700 (IIRC) in 1975, for my high school programming class. We wrote our programs on punch cards, and the teacher took them to the computer at city hall to run. I had coded what I thought to be a modest twenty-five by twenty-five cell array, for a run of fifty iterations. I learned the next day that I had brought the city computer to its knees, forcing a hard restart. I did not know at the time that Fortran stored its arrays in column-major order; apparently the machine had been thrashing its minuscule memory something fierce. :-). Of course, I could probably get arrested for that now.

Thanks, Martin, for many hours of enjoyment and great memories.