I want to learn how to play Go. I therefore need to find someone else who either can already, or who wants to learn too. Anyone?

The obvious question is, why? Well, I’ve read about it so many times, mainly involving search-space problems and other geeky stuff like that, and I want to try out the game that nobody can design a computer program which can beat people. But apart from that, I like board games, especially sophisticated, simplistic ones, and I think Go meets that requirement. Andif I ever get stranded in the middle of nowhere, I’d rather not have to carve chess pieces to keep my sanity – at least Go is just pebbles.

So, any takers?

So Microsoft are flip-flopping and have now decided to release Internet Explorer 7 after all. It’s going to be a security-orientated release, focussing on “even stronger defenses against phishing, malicious software and spyware”. (Hopefully there’ll be some improved CSS handling, but I doubt it.)

Whilst it’s all “yay! Firefox is so successful that it’s proded the slumbering dragon into action” and stuff, there was just something about the announcement that left me with a feeling of “umm, so?”, even more than you would expect from me about a Microsoft product. But from another recent topic on the intarweb, Cornelius Schumacher summed it up for me nicely.

“Being useful doesn’t include protecting the operating system from viruses, spyware or dialers, helping to move around files between the internet and home or defragmenting your harddisk. These are all solutions to problems I never would have had if I wouldn’t have started to use a computer [...] I’m really fed up with this kind of software that only addresses software-related problems.

It’s nice to see that, as an anticipated general election looms, both Labour and the Conservatives are in a fight-to-the-death to see who can be more prejudiced and racist than the other when it comes to immigration. The Tories have today announced that they plan health checks on all these disease ridden scumbags who come here only to sponge off of the likes of you and me. Not that we Brits need any kind of health checks – that’s why we don’t need a functioning National Health Service either. I’m sure we’ll be tagging immigrants next as well. And locking them up. And putting them under house arrest, and so on.

Have a look at the graph in this Economist article. So why the hell is everyone* so obsessed with immigration? I hereby demand that politicians start talking about important subjects, or else I’ll be mildly miffed. So there.

(*Everyone, that is, who is a Local, and lives in a country for Local people. Of course)

So everyone is going wild over the new Google Map. It’s pretty cool, but only held my attention for about 20 seconds yesterday – because I went wild over a similar thing I saw last month. map.search.ch is a satellite photo equivalent, with a street map overlay. And it’s of Switzerland, which is so much more pretty. More info here and here. Hackable URLs – nice.

I’d never realised how much of the States is a grid-iron pattern of roads – I’d love to go and build a new town in Kansas either on a NW-SE and SW-NE axis, or maybe just squiggly roads everywhere. That’d keep the locals at bay – they wouldn’t know what’s going on.

Finally, I wonder if we’ll ever get something like this for the UK. Currently Multimap’s adverts go skitz every time you click on the map, and boy is it boring waiting on the adverts to reload each time. If we had just one sensible politician, I’m sure the government could spent a few thousand quid buying the rights to some satellite photos (or strongarming the MoD…), and then release them to the public domain. But that’s not going to happen now, is it?

Being not a student, and therefore not having to move house twice a year, was supposed to cut down on the number of times I moved house. But my landlord yesterday ‘confirmed his plans’ (first I’d heard of it) to move back into the place that I’m renting, so I once again am looking for a room/flat/home to call my own. Which is a sod, since I’ve already moved twice since I came back from my travels, and it’s only been 9 months.