Cock up your beaver

This is my favorite Burns poem...

"When first my brave Johnie lad came to this town,
He had a blue bonnet that wanted the crown;
But now he has gotten a hat and a feather,
Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver!

Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu' sprush,
We'll over the border, and gie them a brush;
There's somebody there we'll teach better behaviour,
Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver!"


Now that you've read this, read it again and remember, a beaver is a soldier's furry hat and cock up your beaver means keep your chin up or something similar.

Copyright law due for change in UK

The government have responded to an e-petition urging them to change the law with regards the shifting of formats. Here's their response:

"As you may be aware, in December 2005 the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced that there would be a review of the intellectual property framework in the UK, led by Andrew Gowers.

The findings of this review have now been published and recommend the introduction of a private copying exception for the purposes of format shifting. This would allow individuals to copy music which they have legally bought on compact disc onto an MP3 player without infringing copyright.

The Government welcomes this recommendation and is currently considering how such an exception should be created in UK law.

A copy of the Gowers report can be viewed on the HM Treasury website (opens in new window) "

A copy of the petition can be seen on this weblink.

Woman dies after Wii contest

All the stories about the damage people have done with flying Wii controllers that I've read over the last few months pale in comparison to the damage for the desire to own a free Wii I read this weekend. A woman in Rancho Cordova, California was found dead at her home after drinking an unspecified amount of water in a radio station contest 'Hold your wee for a Wii'. She complained of a headache and went home only to be found later dead. Preliminary reports suggest that she died as a result of electrolyte imbalance consistent with drinking too much water. Here's a link to one UK press story. There were several over the weekend. Here's a better coverage from a boing boing link. I suggested this story to boing boing as they hadn't posted it when I looked at work, by the time I got home they already had it up there. It's such a tragic story.

Drug related death associated with MDMA (ecstasy) is often the result of electrolyte imbalance from over drinking rather than anything else, like hyperthermia, where too much of a stimulant like cocaine or it's derivative crack or ecstasy results in overheating.

RAW RIP

Robert Anton Wilson died at 4.50am PST today.

Rest in peace, uncle Bob.

You can read his final words on his blog from a link on the sidebar.

EvE Online is down

Not sure what's going on but EvE Online has gone down. The website has also been effected as it's only partially loading. Also when you click 'news' on the login screen it gives the message apologizing that something has happened to their Planck bubble stabilizer. I do remember a message that there would be extended downtime for hardware maintenance, maybe that's what's going on, they broke their state of the art server tech.