Alasdair Watson – Page 42 – Unreliable information since 1972

Links for Thursday November 8th 2012

Pentametron: With algorithms subtle and discrete / I seek iambic writings to retweet.
An automated sonnet-generator, scanning twitter for iambic pentameter tweets, and combining them, complete with rhyme.
Migrating from Kindle to iBooks – zacwe.st
This is definitely esier now that it was the last time I looked at it. Must do this.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM « Martin Bekkelund
This story, if true, is just mind-blowing. Amazon have contacted a women to tell her that her account has been closed, because it has been linked with another account that has be closed "for abuse". The woman protests that she has no idea what they're talking about – she has only ever had one amazon account. Amazon refuse to tell her any more, tell her it's against their policies to divulge any further information, and inform her that if she opens any future accounts, they will be closed at all. In closing her account, they have deleted everything from her kindle, with nothing she can do about it, because they will not enter into any dialogue at all about it.

The Good Night Lamp
This is a very lovely idea.
Index of Jon Boden, John Spiers & Bellowhead’s Songs
This is a superb resource for the history of the songs performed by the above named. Proper English folk history.

AutoMicroFarm
If this lives up to the hype, this is fucking amazing stuff, and I want it. Not that I have anywhere to put it. Damn.
Reminder: Write eBay By Nov. 9 To Opt Out Of Restrictive, Anti-Consumer Clause – The Consumerist
NTS: do this, if only for the principle of the thing.

Monty’s World – Mapping the life and work of M.R. James
Oooh, this is nice.
iOS 6 ad-tracking opt-out | jwz
Two useful (and rather buried, tsk) advertising/tracking opt-outs for iOS 6.

Bash script to parse Apache log for a count of RSS subscribers and email it to you — Gist
Exactly what it says. I use feedburner to provide me those numbers at the moment, and need to stop. Well, when I say "need to stop" what I mean is "it's evaporating in the next month".

human.io
Oooh, interesting. Gaming applications abound.
HAUNTED ALTON: HISTORY & HAUNTINGS OF THE RIVERBEND REGION
A coincidence of name, nothing more, but this looks interesting and I want to come back to it.
Alton Estate – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Just a bit of research for a vague idea. Ignore me.

Laurie Penny, on her rape.
This probably doesn’t need any sort of signal boost, but I thought I’d do my little part to keep it circulating, because the topic means something to me. This is an important post, because it really makes something clear: until we let go of the illusions that a) nice guys don’t rape, and b) anyone who commits rape is totally incapable of being a nice guy in other parts of their life, we will never be able to have a proper grown up conversation about the topic. We must be able to understand that rape can be as much accident as malice, and that does not diminish the pain of the victims. We must let go of the urge to say “This person wouldn’t do that, he’s too nice, the girl must be lying”. It is possible for a person to be nice, *and* to have done that. Rape does not obliterate niceness, any more than niceness excuses rape.