No, people can't tell who have been viewing their profile. I think there's an app you can get that will tell you, but the viewer has to click a button for it to register. There's also an app called trakzor, but that can only identify you if you are also signed up with it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 3:55 AM on September 4, 2008

My chin and lower lip tingly-numbness post-wisdom teeth extraction has lasted 2 years and counting. It kinda sucks, but it doesn't significantly detract from my quality of life.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:39 AM on August 26, 2008

Visit your local hardware store (some stationery stores have them as well) and see if you can find some of the sticky hooks which can be attached and removed from walls/doors without damaging the paint/wallpaper. Attach two at person height, add some string between them and you should have a method to keep your door shut that can withstand cat force without the landlord-angering drilling of holes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:25 AM on August 12, 2008

Assuming firefox v3

in the menu bar - go to Tools, options, privacy tab

Click the Settings button in the Private Data section and make sure Saved Passwords is checked, then click the Clear Now button
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:18 AM on August 9, 2008

Development of a particular persona is one of the basic elements of clowning. If you're not too terrifed of clowns, that might be a good topic to look at. From what I recall, from a lot of it is just You written large. Shy? A shy clown might take that and develop an act of physcially hiding behind people so as not to be seen (and failing outrageously). NB IANAC
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:08 AM on August 4, 2008

Is there a way to get the script to run on page_i_want_script_to_run.html automatically on page load, without putting it in the BODY tag of main.html? If so, I would probably go that route.

If you put the code in a SCRIPT tag at the bottom of page_i_want_script_to_run.html, it will only run if that include is loaded and only when the other HTML code on that page has been read. If you want it to run just as if it had been included in the body ONLOAD... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:40 AM on July 18, 2008

Roger Zelazney, Lord of Light has an uber-caste of technological 'Gods' based on hindu mythology. Its main protagonist assumess the role of Buddha

David Zindell's Neverness and its sequels deals with various paths to goodhood and the religions that spring up in their wake.

The recently late Thomas Disch's book The Word of God has Mr Disch deciding that he's God.

Bonus: C3PO amongst the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:09 AM on July 18, 2008

First off - don't do anything to the coins themselves for preservation aside from put them in an airless container, preferably one that does not allow them to touch each other. You can damage the value of coins by putting foriegn substances on them to make them shiny/protect them, and anything you can to to stop them getting scratched is useful.

I don't know much about the new york scene, but the word to google for is 'numismatics'.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 9:44 AM on July 16, 2008

Happy Dave comes closest, IMHO. I wouldn't say it was an accurate portrayal of anyone in particular, but an example of a tendency in British comedy sketch shows to take one everyday attribute (in this case the ability to take a quite mundane anecdote and treat it as if it was the best. story. ever) and exaggerate it to the point of ridiculousness.

While the initial premise is, indeed, a mildly satirical jab at certain everyday types, much of the humour comes from that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:51 AM on July 15, 2008

I too get this. Also with cold, leftover potatoes. Perhaps it's a reaction to starchy stuff. (Does OJ have starch?)
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 7:03 AM on July 8, 2008

And what are the exceptions - last few peas, non-sticky rice, anything like that?

If you're hanging out with people posh enough give a toss about which way you hold your fork, then they're posh enough to think people who eat the last few peas are obviously hungry proles.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:45 AM on July 3, 2008

Speaking as someone who left there a year ago before he got too old and comfortable, NZ is a kick-arse, sociable place and you will find it hard NOT to make new friends. I had exactly the same panicky reaction before I bit the bullet and decided to stay in the UK, but it all worked out tolerably and, in some ways, extremely well. Of course, I haven't gone back yet, so I can't tell you how it all ends - but that's kind of the point.

And besides, if you stayed, you'd... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 9:39 AM on June 25, 2008

One thing to check might be your drive cable. The fact that it's happened twice could mean there's a physical problem there, and it's passing garbled bytes into storage. A similar thing happened to me with an ill fitting cable that would work itself loose and slowly corrupt my system until I got that message or similar, and was unable to boot up.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 7:01 AM on June 20, 2008

'Deportment' would be the term I'd look under. How you find one depends on your area, I suppose, though deprtment coach and training both bring up ze googles.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 6:21 AM on June 16, 2008

French Cricket was a big one for me. I must say it's pretty awesome the wikipedia has the rules for things like that and Bulldog (or Bullrush as we called it in NZ).
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:22 AM on June 14, 2008

John Crowley (_Little, Big_, _Aegypt_ and more) has his moments when he gets going.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 6:45 AM on June 11, 2008

Bad News did a similar schtick at around the same time AND their album was produced by Brian May. Suck on that, Spinal Tap.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:20 AM on June 6, 2008

1 and 2) I don't think it's will make a huge difference to your frame rate, but loading software and playing it will be a smoother experience. If you always get mildly annoyed that sometimes the game 'sticks' for a second while there's a lot of stuff going on, like flying from orgrimmar to um, that place with cows, this will definitely help. For framerate, your GPU is doing most of the work already.

3) I suspect the difference would be negligible for all but the hardcore.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:15 AM on May 30, 2008

urgh - I don't think it will, I mean
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:16 AM on May 30, 2008

Neverness and the proceeding Requiem for Homo Sapiens trilogy: The Broken God, The Wild and War in Heaven. Epic Transhumanist Space Opera. Not everybody likes the style, but those who do love it completely.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 6:46 AM on May 22, 2008

I had one of these - and it explicity told stories in the Von Danikin mythology. It wasn't a comic book in the marvel/dc sense of the word, but a self contained 64 pagish comic album.

Ah! My google-fu is unstoppable:

The Gods from Outer Space .
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:17 AM on May 15, 2008 marked best answer

I did find another cover. I distinctly remember the helmet design of the 'gods' with the rounded earpieces.

I agree that, yes, that first cover isn't as good as I recall, but also that the art style had this form of pointillism to indicate shading (as opposed to crosshatching or somesuch) that gave it a really unusual look.

Memory fails as far as plot, though, except that I thought they were the awesomest when I was six.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 3:24 AM on May 16, 2008

I learned to read a watch at 100% accuracy at 6 , I think. It was definitely after I learned to read words.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 3:18 AM on May 8, 2008

"Have a cigar", Pink Floyd (and sung by Roy Harper) on Wish You Were Here.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:23 AM on April 28, 2008

You should go for a lighter type of cigarette - while luckies and camels are perhaps a better stylistic choice, they're disgusting unless you're a pack a day person already. No point giving someone a fag if it makes them regret the experience.

I'd go with Silk Cut, because, although they are a bit girly in the UK, 1) They're eminently smokable and 2) John Constantine smokes them (the real comic one, not the Keanu abortifacient) and 3) I smoke them and if I wanted to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:25 AM on April 15, 2008

The 13th Floor.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 6:44 AM on March 28, 2008

In a nutshell, and bearing in mind you are using fairly colloquial terms:

A zen priest is merely someone who has gone to a temple, wears the robes and meditates. There's no particularly strigent criteria for this, so it implies no actual merit aside from having made the committment.

A zen 'master' could mean a lot of things. In the sense that I think you mean, it's a teacher who no longer has a teacher themselves. Zen has an idea of direct... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:36 AM on March 25, 2008

Unixrat: While that undoubtedly does the job, it also removes the navigation, which would become tiresome after multiple pages.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:07 AM on March 21, 2008

Thanks for all the help, hive mind. Kryptondog did exactly what I needed, but zsazsa has made it into my favourites for being generally super useful.

Shade and sweet water to you all...
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 1:38 AM on March 22, 2008

Job: a comedy of justice, by RA Heinlein

Desolation Road, Ian MacDonald (magical realism on Mars, Satan appears as a pool player)

AngelHeart, film starring Mickey Roarke before his plastic surgery disaster.

The common thread in these is that Satan is just doing the usual tempting thing. I can't tell you if he wins as that would be a spoiler.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:33 AM on March 21, 2008

For the record, Alt+F9 will toggle field codes/fields and stop you having to select all etc.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 9:16 AM on March 20, 2008

Another suggestion. As Long as He Needs Me, from Oliver. Female - a bit bi-polar in theme, and chronologically appropriate.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 7:06 AM on March 18, 2008

Scum
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:27 AM on March 17, 2008

For the purposes of narratives involving a female, having an existing love relationship diminishes the value of the discovery of the new one (be it princess/prince, mermaid/prince, beauty/beast, doe-eyed animal/other doe-eyed animal). The father is acceptable in this role as it re-inforces a 'family values' scenario where the female is property that is given away from father to romantic lead, but to have two such relationships reduces the amount of inital pathos available for the female.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 6:01 AM on March 12, 2008

Buy a scrabble dictionary - long lists of words organised by number of letters - and look out for interesting shorter ones and easier longer ones, then extend as her skills grow. Plus it helps for scrabble.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:06 AM on March 6, 2008

Wizard and the Princess, by Sierra Online (1980). Also known as Adventure in Serenia. First colour graphic adventure game ever.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:40 AM on March 6, 2008

Specifically thinking about language rather than ideas...

Nthing Vonnegut, SlaughterHouse 5, Sirens of Titan, and Breakfast of Champions, although he always has an out in that he uses SF as metaphor.

Lem does both wild, adventurous journeys into wierdness and linguistic novelty like Futurological Congress or Memoirs found in a Bathtub, where you truly feel for his translator, or musings on a theme where not much really happens, like Fiasco or... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 9:24 AM on March 4, 2008

The Sparrow is not good. It is terrible. It gets off to a promising start but alas, turns out to be made almost entirely of puerile Mary-Sueism alternating with a torturously slow build up to an utter anticlimax. Weak tea. Do not recommend.

I know exactly what you're saying here - but I included it my list because I was focussing on interesting use of language in SF. As SF, it's nothing new, and, as someone pointed out, the typical SF reader is used... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:28 PM on March 5, 2008

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa41.htm covers most of the reasons why this would occur, but to my knowledge it's not particularly avoidable, alas.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:59 AM on February 24, 2008

Dodgy as, Mr Spleen. WRT the second part of the question: Make your client think of the site's 'message'

Is the 'related links' page branded by the retailer's brand and/or on their actual domain? It sounds like it is if the SEO requested upload access. If so, point out that it is, in effect, ceding control over site content to an outside party, with your client having no say in the matter and with whatever unknown implications those other sites will have. I can't... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:37 AM on February 7, 2008

Thinking further: If the SEO counters with the ability to moderate 'related links' - point out what a waste of someone's time that would be to do research for every link.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:41 AM on February 7, 2008

Here's a good list of physical benefits of meditation. In some ways it's like going to the gym. It can be pretty dull and results aren't immediate, but it's definitely worthwhile, even devoid of an overtly spiritual component. Hunting through PubMed for 'meditation' is quite enlightening (arf arf)
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 7:59 AM on February 5, 2008

Here's an interesting thing. I looked at the site in FireFox with flashblock on and couldn't get the effect - but when I ran the flash to see the tattoo, it kicked in. This would suggest it's the Flash actionscript that's having the effect, using its system.setClipboard method
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 6:59 AM on January 28, 2008

My Quick and Dirty suggestion is to start looking at business computing magazines. Many office environments have them lying around. You don't even have to read them if you don't want (I find them stupendously dull) but you can actually learn quite a lot from seeing what's advertised - especially since things like WebLogic are just brand names. You'll get a bit of breadth of knowledge, nothing deep, but if someone starts talking about a server type you don't actually have on your site you'll be... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:35 AM on January 9, 2008

Friday night at Canary Wharf is actually fairly populous (as all the suits get out from work and go to one of the many waterfront bars), and is quite good for taking photos in a modern, brushed metal and plastic kind of way. But there's not much to really do besides drink and look in expensive shops...unless you like ice skating, because they have a rink up at the moment.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:14 AM on January 4, 2008

One thing to beware of is to make sure your contacts etc are saved to the sim card rather than phone memory. Some phones make this distinction - usually it's a detail in the individual contact settings.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:23 AM on December 14, 2007

The OS does indeed ship with drivers, but no executables that I have seen to utilise the hardware and they are not on the net in abundance. Yawcam worked great for single frame stuff (really good, thanks for that), but not so good for recording video/audio cap, which was the other factor. Any suggestions?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 4:13 PM on November 26, 2007

I wonder if you have a program but don't realize it.

I have hunted though my system and found nothing meeting the description but the Drivers. First thing I do with a new system out of the shop is eradicate boring stuff like MSWorks in favour of OpenOffice, and install various bits like firefox and spybot. All I found for this camera were drivers, which, as I say, work with skype downloads out of the box, but I had to download skype to ascertain,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 5:44 PM on November 26, 2007

My bet is that you deleted the appropriate app by accident

Good point - I checked this out via the manufacturer and, nope - the software it's supposed to support is MSMessenger :-p (which is one I did clear out, but, still, same problem with the video recording). I may have to pay for something! Ah well. Thanks for your help, folks.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 7:13 AM on November 27, 2007

Seconding brewers yeast tablets. Remember to hold them so they can be licked rather than give them away - and watch for sandpaper tongue!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sparx at 8:20 AM on November 20, 2007