Just a quick post to share something I found today. It's a site full of free (downloadable) books, tutorials and lecture notes on various computer related topics. It's well worth a butchers... http://maththinking.com/boat/specialGameBooksIndex.html Enjoy!

This weekend saw the first "Febfest" beer festival in Bury, obviously I had to check it out ! I think everyone has an idea of who goes to beer festivals. We're talking beardy, hairy-bellied blokes who like nothing more than sitting on wooden benches eating tepid meat pies and getting gently poached drinking potent urine coloured liquids. The more cynical minded would also suggest that said liquids probably tasted like urine, and were most likely sourced at the previous weeks beardy gathering. But that's by-the-by, and considering I did drink a few half's I'd like to think that the stuff in the barrels had come from a far better place than the dodgy portaloo's outside the main tent. Yes, beardy blokes were there, it was to be expected, nay, required. They added a certain ambience to the place, helped complete the picture as it were. The whole setup of the festival seemed a little odd, you had to pay admission and buy "beer tokens" for a pound a go at the old railway ticket booth then you had to wander over to the tent to pick up your glass. It wasn't until I actually entered the tent that I discovered why the "beer token" method of payment was chosen instead of the cold hard cash approach. Those serving the beer were quite rightfully also enjoying the odd half, and while none of them were staggering around I got the impression that performing any correct change calculation above and beyond 1 token=1/2 pint could cause a little trouble, especially when the customers were also well on the way to the "hangover hotel". Once inside the tent you were greeted by what can only be described as an "Ale'ing wall", around 100 barrels of various alcoholic mixtures sat in rows three high across the longest side of the tent. Infront of the barrels were the defenders of the kegs, beardy blokes who have sworn to protect their precious from anyone who doesn't brandish the sacred token of pintage. Most of the beardies gathered in nodding herds, to each herd was appointed a female, who suprisingly didn't have a beard, well, not a publicly visible one at any rate. It was only after half an hour did I realise our little group was forming its own herds, quite spooky. After tasting my way through several ales, and a rather weak tasting (yet highly intoxicating) cider I came to the conclusion that my favourite ale was the Black Witch from Moorhouse's -- please follow the link for locations of stockists and pubs where you can find this fine beverage. For those living in the Bury area I'll save you a click-though, the nearest pub is the Dusty Miller, Crostons Road.

Whadaya mean there's no such word as unfortunatecy? Yes, I could have said misfortune but where's the fun in that? In the tradition of laughing at people, events, etc. I present to you the worldwide craze of Doing A Lynndie (the full list of rules regarding this can be found at http://badgas.co.uk/lynndie/ NSFW) Why not try doing one yourself?

These days it's hard to go anywhere or do anything without someone watching you and here on the internet is no different. When you visit a webpage it's possible for that page to 'see' where you came from. For example, before visiting this page you were looking at www.bootylover.gov.us/belinda13.jpg (shame on you!) EDIT: Our solicitors have asked us, for the sake of any visitor without a sense of humour, that the above web link is in fact totally made up and it was just a joke... haha :D Now then, on to the point of this post - it's now possible to hide where you came from by using this handy little website... anonym.to is a free and easy way to block the referrer when visiting websites. It works with every browser and all you do is add http://anonym.to/? in front of every http:// link. Obviously you'd only do this if the webpage you wanted to view wasn't from the website you were currently on. So for example if you didn't want us to see where you came from you would use the url http://anonym.to/?http://www.devinebydesign.co.uk/ ... simple eh?