The Lair

Possessing fingertips which are impervious to all fingerprint scanners.

Since fingerprints and other personal information is gathered when you need to ask to travel to some countries; I submitted myself to the indignity of being treated a tad like a convicted felon. Only, try as he might – the operator simply could not get my fingerprints to take, as it were.

I cleaned my fingers with some antiseptic smelling solution, washed them thoroughly – the guy even cleaned the surface of the scanner – but to no avail.

And it was just my fingers. He almost accusingly placed his own fingers on the scanner and triumphantly showed me as they scanned cleanly the first time.

And this is hereditary, to boot – my dad apparently has the same problem. If you want to call it that, of course. Now, if we can only figure out how to do this for the iris scanners, we’ll be all set.

If the title of the post is not a word, well … it should be.

FMyLife – because someone, somewhere out there, has it much much worse than you do. I love the idea, actually… and some of the stories in there are cringe inducingly hilarious.

And in the grand tradition of postsecret, Secret Tweet.

Farside reenactments. Oh, internets. There is never an end to the amusements that you throw up every day. Now if only I could figure out a way to retrieve my complete Farside collection gathering dust in an attic (currently 8000km away).

Also, apropos of nothing – TV Tropes. Someone should do this for Hindi movies. Seriously. I hear there is a good market for stereotypes in that particular movie industry.

Someone has convinced me that my life would complete if I purchased one of those newfangled iPod things. You know, touchscreen. Exactly like my trusty PalmOS device had for the last … uh … decade, but cooler? Yeah, one of those. It apparently allows someone to listen to music too, but I wouldn’t know about that – I’d be too busy holding it up so that all the laydeez can see how hip I am (and simultaneously dodging all the would-be muggers out to wrestle the fancy toy out of my sweaty palms).

This could be the fabled slippery slope, people. The point where I start paying money for software like this instead of using the perfectly serviceable (and free! for my use via the corp) alternative on a much stodgier computer.

But seriously – Omnigraffle seems to be very very cute. If only they had something that worked on Winders or Loonix… Alas. Maybe I need to try Balsamiq instead, since I have been pressganged into that line of work for now.

In other news – Tintin could have been written by a racist after all. We’ve had conversations about Tintin in Congo before, with inconclusive results. Also, I never quite figured out how so many kids in my neck of the woods were exposed to Tintin and Asterix growing up when it allegedly isn’t all that popular in the UK.

And these photos are eerie, since I know the places, but find the streets unrecognizable without a constantly bustling foreground of people and vehicles.