Peter Reavy › Comments

Congrats! - Joel Kotarski

that's awesome, man. you changed my and many others' life, right here! I personally owe you a lot. - Ahmet Alp Balkan

"From Proculus to his kinsman Maecianus, greeting. I have taken one hundred maidens from Sarmatia. Of these I mated with ten in a single night; all of them, however, I made into women, as far as was in my power, in the space of fifteen days." He boasts, as you see, of a foolish and very licentious deed, thinking that he would be held a brave man if he grew callous through repeated acts of crime." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Prolific underwater photographer Luis Marden was heralded for his photos of fish, coral reefs, and archaeological finds, such as this 1,000-year-old pre-Columbian jar being retrieved from the bottom of a Yucatán cenote in Dzibilchaltún, Mexico. Marden’s strength lay in color photography, however, and it wasn’t until he met and collaborated with ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau that his underwater artistry took off." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Rohmer jangles the small change of wit with such unfailing mastery that, just as his characters are persuaded they are making clever remarks, so most of the audience are persuaded they are hearing them." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Governments, as silent shareholders in every banking business, must now overcome the City and Wall Street, the last bastions of Marxist workers’ control." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Annoyed to hear I missed Shaky's Ballymena gig. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"What would have happened during the financial crisis if the euro had not existed? The short answer is that there would have been currency crises among its members. The currencies of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain would surely have fallen sharply against the old D-Mark. That is the outcome the creators of the eurozone wished to avoid. They have been successful. But, if the exchange rate cannot adjust, something else must instead. That “something else” is the economies of peripheral eurozone member countries. They are locked into competitive disinflation against Germany, the world’s foremost exporter of very high-quality manufactures. I wish them luck." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Sarah Jessica Parker 'kicked by cow' on film set." The 44-year-old added: "But I sympathised with the cow. I didn't belong there and she knew it."" - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

I also sympathise with the cow. - Peter Reavy

A more conventional version of Der Nussbaum (English tr. in description on page). Joseph Cornell was obsessed by Victoria de los Angeles. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Klaus Nomi was new to me. One of Morrissey's Desert Island picks - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Hmm... initially posted this on its side... how annoying. - Peter Reavy

I went to the Abram Games exhibition this lunchtime. His work, mainly posters but also product design, evokes an era which has now gone but it's far too effective and memorable to be classed as nostalgia. I really enjoyed this one-room exhibition and recommend it strongly. Naughton Gallery at Queen's until 11 October. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

""People from the village," he says, craning back over that shoulder, "come up to me and tease me, 'We hear you've started drawing on your telephone.' And I tell them, 'Well, no, actually, it's just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad.'"" - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Pointless but great, works perfectly in Cygwin - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Charity Shop Hop, rummaging through boxes of records" - been a while since I took part in such activities myself; great discussion topic though. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Named for their lack of interest in sex and their preference for quieter, less competitive lives, Japan's "herbivores" are provoking a national debate about how the country's economic stagnation since the early 1990s has altered men's behavior." - Jon McAlister from Bookmarklet

"Office lechery, which had been socially acceptable, became stigmatized as seku hara, or sexual harassment." Seku hara! - Peter Reavy

"In a nutshell, Opera Unite is a web server within a web browser. Instead of just browsing the web, Opera now lets you share files and photos, communicate with other users, chat, and host your web site directly on your own computer. To understand what this means we have to go back and remember why people aren’t doing this in the first place. After all, everyone has a connection that lets you download and upload stuff to the internet, right? Therefore, anyone can locally host a web site. Why, then, is everyone paying for web hosting? Well, there’s a couple of technical reasons. First of all, lack of bandwidth, especially on asymmetric (like ADSL) connections to the internet, where download bandwidth is often much greater than upload bandwidth. A popular web site can suck a lot of bandwidth, and most home connections simply couldn’t deal with it. Secondly, you need a dedicated, powerful computer (web server) to be able to handle all the database requests. This web server also needs to... more... - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

I would run a web server in my house on my normal broadband if it wasn't for the fact it would consume power and emit heat and a humming sound. I would sign up to a full web hosting service just to mess around on if it didn't cost money. So Opera Unite is a really interesting idea. OK, you switch your PC off and your web server goes down, but due to the friendly tier of services they're offering, to your friends it might seem more analogous to you being offline in IM. - Peter Reavy

Looked him up after seeing him on http://photemera.blogspot.com/ - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Someone has managed to get a ZX-81 on the internet as a webserver. Awesome. - Alasdair Watson

"Remember the progress that came into our life with ZX81." http://www.zx81.de/english... - Peter Reavy

"In times past, it was said that once a kukri was drawn in battle, it had to "taste blood" - if not, its owner had to cut himself before returning it to its sheath. Now, the Gurkhas say, it is used mainly for cooking." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

I only knew of him from his excellent book "On being a photographer" with David Hurn, and the archive of his pieces on his web-site, but he was clearly someone to learn from. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Alaska - Dave Winer

Amit, I get it. Maybe you should have a synchronous mode as well. The only alternative, if you want to publish something where order matters, like an essay, or a top 100 list, for example is to put a delay in the posting loop and hope for the best. - Dave Winer

By my records, the 18th Handel opera I've listened to this year thanks to R3 and the iPlayer. Some are more lively than others but all are worth the time. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

I like the design and spirit of this commemorative stamp. I linked to the gallery where I found it. It's the last image. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher's help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it's highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn't much fun." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"that sense that the lens has cut like an especially sharp knife into the light and drawn out a radiant fact" - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"The biggest of Echelon's global network of listening posts is at Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, where about 30 "giant golf balls" called radomes litter the landscape. The system also boasts 120 American satellites in geostationary orbit." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"A standard diagnosis of autism requires three things to be present in an individual. Two of these three, impairments in social interaction and in communication with other people, are the results of autists lacking empathy or, in technical jargon, a “theory of mind”. In other words they cannot, as even fairly young neurotypicals can, put themselves in the position of another being and ask themselves what that other is thinking. The third criterion, however, is that a person has what are known as restrictive and repetitive behaviours and interests, or RRBI, in the jargon. Until recently, the feeling among many researchers was that the first two features were crucial to someone becoming a savant. The idea was that mental resources which would have been used for interaction and communication could be redeployed to develop expertise in some arbitrary task. Now, though, that consensus is shifting. Several of the volume’s authors argue that it is the third feature, RRBI, that permits people to become savants." - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

"He claims that São Paulo in Brazil is mutating into a real-life version of the film Blade Runner (1982). The city now has 70 heliports with the rich travelling on another level to the poor." A stimulating charlatan. - Peter Reavy from Bookmarklet

Yes really - Peter Reavy