Yesterday the Microsoft Office 2003 installation at my work PC was updated to its 2007 incarnation. But when starting the new and shiny Outlook to check my calendar, I was presented this little gem of a dialogue box:

Outlook being a little jealous.

Click it to see it the way it was intended. I had to scale the image to make it fit this page, but it is in Dutch anyway. Here’s what it says:

“Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is damaged or is of a wrong version. This might be because you have installed other software for e-mail communication. Install Outlook again.” (emphasis mine)

MAPI32.DLL is part of the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI), which is a Windows API  that allows applications to handle e-mail and other message-based communication protocols. That fact that it is a Dynamically Linked Library (DLL) means that it is like a Shared Object (.so-) file in Unix: a library to be used by several programs, not just Outlook, I’d think.

I remember back in the late nineties when my friends and I entertained conspiracy theory notions about Internet Explorer (3?) trying to damage Netscape Navigator installations on the same computer. How it did this we didn’t think of and we obviously never found any proof. Occam’s razor would suggest that Netscape was unstable by itself.

Still, in the screen shot above you can see that I have Mozilla Thunderbird installed as well. So could the dialogue box be telling the truth? Is Outlook giving me the cold shoulder because I am cheating on it with Thunderbird? In any case, a sentence like that in an error message raises more questions that it answers.

According to the Geek Zodiac, I am an Undead, since I was born in 1976. I am apparently soulful, transcendental and know the value of all life. I am also haunted, tormented and have difficulty connecting to humanity.

Obviously, this is utter nonsense. I am clearly a Robot: law-abiding, dedicated and logical as well as stubborn, intractable and cold. But apparently I was born in the wrong year for that.

That proves it. Astrology is bull.

A couple of years ago, when someone in my neighbourhood’s Windows XP laptop became frustratingly slow and unstable, I convinced her to install Ubuntu. Using Ubuntu she could again perform all of her computing needs comfortably. Her laptop was fast and stable again and easy to maintain.

Since then, two times a year, we go through the same predictable and frustrating motions:

1. The distribution upgrade button appears in Ubuntu’s update manager.
2. Usually a few weeks later, when her dependency on her computer is temporarily somewhat lower, we do a backup of her home directory and click the upgrade button. After all, new and better versions of all installed software packages are waiting for her.
3. After the upgrade has finished, she tries to restore her previous set-up and colour scheme in the new Ubuntu, insofar as it will let her.
4. The next weekend we decide to do a fresh installation of the new Ubuntu, because it is less hassle than trying to fix all the odd quirks that have surfaced since the upgrade.
5. She now has to fully recreate her previous set-up and colour scheme.
6. She decides to learn to live with what seems to be the new set of bugs for the coming six months.

This morning I read The Register’s review of the latest Ubuntu beta. Apparently Ubuntu is no longer fast or stable. If it is any indication, Ubuntu won’t be very fast or stable. I think I should try to convince her to install Arch. It’s either that, or buy her a Mac.

I have a wrist watch, which runs pretty accurately, but for five times a year I have to set back the date one day, because the date dial has 31 positions, and it’s not a very smart watch. That however, doesn’t make me think that each month in the year has in fact 31 days, that there is a conspiracy going on involving the American government, and that anyone who doubts me is an ignorant fool.

I find it odd how Roland Emmerich can produce exactly the same movie over and over again, but still manages to make each one worse than the last one.

I saw 2012 yesterday evening, and I’m starting to see a pattern. A pattern of a scientist who stumbles on something impossible, authorities keeping things under wraps, a heroic American president, a couple finding back their lost love, a moralistic speech toward the end, and an anti-hero or weirdo for comic relieve. First all the characters are introduced, while the danger starts to loom (most of them don’t care/believe/notice yet). Then the danger turns out much worse than expected, cue massive CGI, in which the characters survive or die, and in the end everybody is cheering, despite general destruction.

But in 2012 we are presented with much more off-the-shelf plot elements. We had astronomical alignments in Tomb Raider, The Biggest Solar Flare Ever in Solar Crisis and trouble with the Earth’s core in The Core. Emmerich finds a combination of all three in some bizarre Maya calendar inspired doomsday theory, and produces a movie that, after the aforementioned introductions, presents us with hugely awesome CGI in which entire countries are flipped upside-down, an aircraft-carrier crashes onto the white house and Yellow Stone Park simply explodes. This part of the movie is fun, despite the repetitive nature of the frightening bits.

But as soon as our heroes arrive in the Chinese Himalayas (their plane ran out of fuel, but the mountain was brought to them) the fun is over. From that point onwards the viewer has to sit through tedious arguments about who gets to be saved in the bible-like arks and who doesn’t (apparently the giraffes do). There are a few actions sequences left, but all of them are completely predictable and therefore totally boring.

I could go on and say that the neatest recent planetary alignment occurred already in 1998, that doctor Phlox should know better than to confuse a magnetic pole with a geographic one, or that to repopulate a species you need considerably more than two specimen, but I guess that if this was a good movie, I probably wouldn’t have complained about it being utter crap, science-wise. But as it is, this is a predictable, mostly boring and just plain stupid movie.

It seems like a cow has been born with some shape resembling a cross on its forehead:

You’ll note that to its Christian owners, the cross has obvious religious meaning, which makes them think that they have received a sign from their deity. I don’t think a divine being would be so bad at drawing, but the cross is obviously there.

At the end of the clip, the commentary says that the cow won’t be eaten, which made me think of a particular episode from the documentary series Cosmos, in which is explained how a certain type of crab from Japan became known as the Samurai Crab:

Now if this cow is permitted to reproduce, it seems to me that any of its offspring which is also blessed by a cross on their forehead, won’t be eaten either, maybe leading to results comparable to the Samurai Crabs.

Come to think of it, maybe the farmers were already favouring ancestors of this animal with shapes on their foreheads resembling crosses, thereby helping the selection process create this shape. After a few generations, the cross  probably had matured enough to call the press. It would be interesting to see the foreheads of any of the of the other cows on that farm and neighbouring farms. If none of them has anything white on their forehead, it will be much easier to claim that something must be going on, than if many of the cows from that area display similar shapes.

In any case, this cow is demonstrating natural selection based on adaptability right in front of the eyes of its Christian owners. Excellent.

Yesterday, many Dutch news sources reported that a group of fifty physicians recommended further study into the harmful effects of radiation from cell phones and other wireless devices and a moderation in the usage of such devices. They observe a raise in unexplainable complaints and a raise in the use of such wireless devices, and somehow infer a causal relationship. You can ask yourself what kind of doctors these fifty people are.

Today, the Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij reports that, first of all, the list only contains 49 people, some of which are no doctor at all, and most of which are known pseudo scientists, like homeopaths, astrologers and the like.

The Vereniging explains that the only known effect of these types of radiation is a very slight raise in body temperature, much less in fact than for instance the natural daily variation in body temperature. It is not the radiation itself, but the supposed effect that causes the complaints. As they put it, “there is no reason to take these people seriously.”

Excellent.