Move along...

Broadband tax?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:17:44 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8270772.stm

How does a tax per telephone line count as a "broadband" tax?

Attacking the NHS is "unpatriotic"?

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:27:08 GMT

How very American to use that put-down. It's somewhat odd to observe America emulating an aspect of Britain I strongly agree with, while (in connection with the same matter) Britain emulates an aspect of America I quite dislike.

Looking for a new machine

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:46:29 GMT

The display on my laptop having gone pop (to go with the battery and keyboard) I might finally need to get a new machine. What to get, what to get...

I don't want a big monster, small and quiet would be nice. The mac mini looked nice, but the nvidea graphics (and associated binary drivers for linux) aren't appealing. Intel graphics would be much more attractive.

The ASUS EEE-box seems nice too. Had been aiming at Core2 duo, but don't really need a super fast machine, what are the Atoms like? Downside: only available with windows in the UK. I know I could just suck it up and buy that and install linux, but I've just spent easter sunday dealing with windows crap on my aunt's machine, right now I'm *really* adverse to giving Microsoft money for something I won't use.

Any suggestions?

Dear Harriet Harman,

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:09:29 GMT

This is how your beloved "court of public opinion" tends to work. I wouldn't like to be associated with it myself.

Spam from ICSTIS?

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:33:48 GMT

I appear to have received a spam to an address I would only have given to ICSTIS. Disappointing, and I'm not sure how to respond. Feels like the address tagging thing is slightly pointless, except possibly as a means to revoke them.

Two minutes' hate

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:29:47 GMT

"The prime minister has said that it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted,"

All rise for the worshipful dictator Brown...

I haven't been paying much attention to the news, so I may have missed bits. My current take is that it's £16 million out of £24 billion, which seems to be a tiny enough proportion for there to be little real financial incentive for recovering it. Was there a fraud involved in giving a false impression that it was contractually binding in October? Maybe, and if so that should be pursued. But the whole furore seems to be backwards and not about that, instead being driven by outrage at the idea of the large pension, not actual wrongdoing.

Do I like that somebody can be so irresponsible yet walk off with so much money? No. But is it much different from the vast salaries/bonuses other bankers were paid? Are we going to rewrite the law (!) to claw these back? Does "the court of opinion" really drive legislation so directly?

It feels to me like a big distraction. Forget about looking at the real problems, we can have our 2minute/48hour/(how long has this been in the news?) hate and everybody will feel better. I got the same impression of the coverage of the treasury committee questioning 4 bankers, or whatever it was that came up a few weeks ago.

Somebody reply telling me how I'm entirely missing the point, please.

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:53:12 GMT

Arrived back to Langley station
this evening to find that some
little shit had broken my bike
(bent rear wheel, presumably bent
frame) trying to lever it off the
fence it was locked to. Joy.
About an hour ago the backlight on
my laptop went pop. Also joy.

Some evenings just don't go well.
On the other hand, I've spent the
weekend visiting lovely people in
Cambridge... you win some, you
lose some.

Apparently the internet has everything...

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:04:23 GMT

...but I can't find a copy of the "Days like this" peace ad from the Northern Ireland Office in the mid-90s. Anybody know where I might find it?

Badgers

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:54:33 GMT

badger <script>quine="document.write(%22badger %3cscript%3equine=%5c%22%22+quine+%22%5c%22;%22+decodeURI(quine));%3c/script%3e";document.write("badger <script>quine=\""+quine+"\";"+decodeURI(quine));</script>

I get 102 badgers. How many do you get?

Christmas in Narnia

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 01:24:32 GMT

Watched "The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe" today... quite like the film, but what's the deal with Christmas in it? Seems to me that Narnia hasn't had Christ, and so wouldn't have Christmas. Maybe I'm being picky, but this is CS Lewis after all, it seems odd. Is there some simple explanation I'm missing?

Post titles redacted

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:31:55 GMT

Why are all the post titles on my friends page blacked out? Selecting them reveals all, but they seem to be black-on-black, and I can't remember changing anything...

Tired

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:05:06 GMT

Motivationless.

Meh, that's about all I can be bothered writing right now.

Freeze at "Freeing init memory"

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:52:15 GMT

Today I was prodding a machine and the Linux kernel on it got as far as "Freeing init memory: 64k" and seemed to stop. Googling didn't help... the eventual explanation was that I'd created /dev/console as a block device instead of a character device. That exact issue is unlikely to help anyone else, but the general issue might: if you see this, something about the output is probably stuffed..

What does web2.0 mean for me?

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:02:42 GMT

I need to wait for web pages to boot.

Gmail - boot progress indicator. Gmaps - boot progress indicator. Friend's blog with flickr photostream bar - no progress indicator, but appears to need to boot, freezing my browser while it does so. Slashdot - similar to friend's blog.

Am I alone in feeling that this isn't progress? Given that most of these things seem to involve my fans ramping up in speed, I strongly suspect it's javascript and not me just me being impatient at slow-to-download files.

Windsor castle

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:23:44 GMT

Had friends visiting from Belfast over the weekend. London on Saturday, despite the pouring rain, and Windsor castle on Sunday.

I'd certainly recommend going to see the castle, it was an amazing place to see. Maybe I'm a bit too anti-monarchist at the core, though I don't generally care, it's mostly an amusing anachronism to me, but the thing that struck me was all the weaponry. Roughly my thoughts seemed to be "we got our power through beating the hell out of you, and next time (if you try to take it away) we won't even have to, we'll just pay others to do it for us". Like I say, it doesn't generally bother me (though I'm not too impressed that the bar on catholics is still in place), but that's still what kept flitting through my mind.

The more positive thing was seeing a room full of paintings of the major leaders in the conferences held after the Napoleonic wars ended. Or I think that was it, I'm vague on the details. Anyway, it was just the realisation that... these were just people. Now it feels like they're just paintings or statues or military strategies. But behind that they were people, with hopes and presumably fears and insecurities. I don't know anything about the time just after Napoleon, but presumably while to some degree they were jockeying for position, they were also trying not to screw the world (or their bit of it) up. Or maybe I'm just optimistic.

Should Brown stay or should Brown go

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:23:40 GMT

I can't say I have much opinion one way or the other on whether Brown should stay or go. This sort of thing from Geoff Hoon (on "Straight Talk") bothers me though:

I think the timing is completely and utterly wrong. I think that the public will expect their government to focus on the issues that are affecting people every day, ah, problems in the housing market, problems with energy, perhaps problems with their savings. I don't think they quite understand why even loyalists, if that's what they are, should be questioning the leadership of the prime minister at this time of all times.

That's a really sucky reason to discourage debate about his suitability to lead. It'd be sucky in any case, just to say "oh, it's a bad time", but this isn't going to be a two week problem. The finance world is in turmoil. The politicians are claiming that it's not an economic crisis yet, I don't know. However, this is *exactly* the sort of time that I want to be damn sure that the right person is running the country. Maybe that's Brown, maybe it isn't, I don't know. But don't brush it aside as being a bad time. Yes, if change were necessary, it'd be awkward, but the problems you're using as excuses not to debate it aren't short term ones.

Mild shock

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:45:13 GMT

I think the US ambassador to the IAEA has just uttered "The [UN] security council, which sets the supreme law of the land" on BBCs Hard Talk.

Really? *really*?

Dear Jehovah's Witnesses,

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:59:18 GMT

You would not believe just how much less I would disrespect you if you didn't bring small children around with you on your rounds.

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:45:25 GMT

I maybe whinge a bit too much about this, but I couldn't ignore this quote that I caught on BBC parliament:

[Mr. Speaker:] you know full well that every hon. Member in the House has their own vote and their own conscience— [Interruption.] Order. And no one will ever censure a Member of Parliament on how they vote, especially one of their own.

( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080611/debtext/80611-0020.htm#st_o450 )

I don't quite get the context of that, did Mr Gale shout something that wasn't recorded (I find Hansard quite difficult to follow)? Presumably the rules do say that every member has their own vote and conscience, but in practice, ha bloody ha.

Weekend filmery

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:50:49 GMT

Some colleagues decided that there are too many classic films I've missed (based on me not getting references to them), and that this needs to be remedied. As part of this, one of them lent me "Blazing Saddles" and "12 Angry Men". Somehow I landed up watching a lot more films this weekend, not all classics.

Friday night: The Shawshank Redemption. I've seen it before, and just caught it part way in while channel-hopping. An *excellent* film.

Saturday afternoon: Wargames. Again, caught while channel-hopping. Ok enough that I kept watching, but more than anything because I can't remember when I saw it or much of the detail. Entertaining enough though.

Saturday evening: Blazing Saddles. Fun, but if "classic" is meant to imply "excellent" in any way, it fell short in my mind. Not a bad film at all, just doesn't stand out for me.

Saturday night: Braveheart. TV again, was advertised while watching Shawshank, somehow I've never seen it. It felt too long, but I enjoyed it a lot nonetheless.

Sunday evening: 12 Angry Men. I watched the other DVD first because this looked a bit boring, and while I know it's silly I'm a little put off by black-and-white. It was excellent though. All in one room (bar the very beginning and end), which is a bit odd, and very well done.

Sunday night: Little Nicky. Another TV one, another I've seen before (though I don't think all of it). Very silly, but fun.

That's more than I realised before listing them... Out of them all I'd highly recommend Shawshank and 12 Angry Men. Braveheart just if you haven't seen it (does that apply to *anyone*?). The rest, meh, not a waste of time, but wouldn't go hunting them down.

This subject intentionally left blank

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:03:13 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7545484.stm

I didn't know Guantanamo cases were being treated as war crimes... I thought they were unlawful combatants, which surely would make for criminal cases? Whatever, expecting sense is probably too much.

Anyway, were any of Hitler's drivers convicted of war crimes? Or was Hamdan accused of something more than just enthusiastic driving?

Overcautious columnists

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:38:40 GMT

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/26089374.html

I asked the doctor how I was going to print that.

"shit". It's not that hard.

Napoleon Dynamite

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:15:41 GMT

Watched this on Film4 last night. Depressing in parts, boring in the rest. Reminded me a bit of "You and me and everyone we know", but I liked that better.

The cake is not a lie

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:36:17 GMT

I've just followed the instructions at http://www.dizzy-dee.com/recipe/chocolate-cake-in-5-minutes , and mm... it was good. I do worry slightly about a variant of http://xkcd.com/418/ looming though.

Phone competitions

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:37:57 GMT

I have a strong dislike of the TV premium rate phone competitions that are basically a lottery, but get away with it by asking an easy question so it counts as a game of skill. Five US stretched it further than usual today though, asking "What was in the envelope the NCIS director received from Gibbs?" (or similar) no more than 15 seconds after she'd been shown opening it to find a photograph. I know that even easier questions have been asked, but to me that managed to seem even more blatant than usual.