links of the week

On the basis that I've had these in my browser for far too long without getting round to posting them...

papersky explains what happens when the letters on your keyboard get rubbed off with age. Funny, silly, inspiring.

baxil explains his friends list policy, which is almost identical to mine. I'm too busy to write mine out in detail, but it basically is "I put people on my livejournal friends list because I trust them to read my friends-filtered posts. Whether or not they have a journal interesting to me is irrelevant." I'm mentioning it because of this thread, where it seems as though people think it's rude to have someone on your list and not read their journal.

katyha writes a disturbing short story. It's very well-written, and twisted, but most of her stories are. (I still remember the one about pulling wings off fairies).

I need more memory for this computer. Running Kaleidagraph and Exceed and Opera absolutely pushes it to its limits. I've gone from having to reboot Windows every 2 or 3 days to having to reboot at least twice a day. I need Exceed and a web browser for work purposes, even, so it's not that I can easily close down frivolous applications to have more space.

antilactose and sleepy wuzzies

There is a new LJ community called antilactose. Bizarrely, it's for people who love dairy but are lactose intolerant and for people who hate the entire concept of dairy. Now, is it me, or are those two entirely different groups of people? Oh the one hand you've got the "Waah, want milkshake! Want tummy that can have milkshake!" lactose intolerant dairy lovers and the "Cow milk is not meant for consumption by humans" militant vegans. I'm not even sure that it would be terribly helpful for both groups of people to be sharing information about new products, because presumably the dairy-lovers-but-can't-have-it will want non-dairy things that taste as close to dairy as possible, whereas the dairy-is-evil people will want non-dairy things that taste nothing like it? (I suppose it depends on your reasons for thinking dairy is evil).

I need to get Richard out of bed so he can go to the coffee shop behind the ticket barrier at the station to see whether they have delicious cinnamon pretzels. I refuse to buy a train ticket for a journey I don't want to make just so I can buy my own pretzel (if they even have any!), and at this time in the morning I wouldn't dare confuse the ticket office staff by asking whether platform tickets still exist (the last time I got one of those was when I was 13, iirc).