March 2005 Archives

Reggae? Sinead O'Connor? Say it ain't so.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Sinead O'Connor is in Jamaica recording a reggae album with some of the country's leading musicians.

Sinead O'Connor Recording Reggae

Woohoo, you've no idea how long I've waited for a decent Sinead O'Connor reggae album. I was just thinking the other day, you know what reggae needs, a bloody good Sinead O'Connor rendition of the classics. I mean really, how could she go wrong?

I was listening to Panic by The Smiths as I wrote that last blog entry. So, I decided to outline it.

• Places where Panic is:
• Streets of London
• Streets of Birmingham
• Streets of Carlisle
• Dublin
• Dundee
• Humberside
• Things I wonder to myself:
• Could life ever be sane again?
• Person who is not safe here:
• Honey pie
• What honey pie can do about that:
• Run down to the safety of the town
• City in which you slipped down the side streets:
• Leeds
• Things to do while slipping down those side streets of Leeds:
• Burn down the disco
• Hang the blessed DJ

[Moozik: The Smiths - Panic]

So this whole outlined songs thing is quite amusing. My personal fave is Jane Says although Billie Jean is really quite good too.

[Moozik: Apoptygma Bezerk - Kathy's Song]

Mental note to self. Next week, install MySQL 5.0 and have a play around.

Funny, I think I get more coding done on vacation days. And airplanes, I get a lot done on airplanes.

So, its day two and I am controlling the urge to work on MySQL, which I have only passing success on (aka only wrote maybe 70 or so lines of code... adding a cute little last minute bit to 5.0).
Know that it went beta?

Yep, Triggers, stored procedures, and views.

That is right, this post is not about MySQL.

Saturday Afternoon, Stupid Pet Tricks (Asterisk, wiring, removing rooms)

[Moozik: Happy Mondays - Wrote For Luck]

Jason Kottke assumes Doogie Howser. Then again, in hindsight...

...and J. Curtis believes that Captain Kirk was one of the first audio bloggers (or perhaps podcasters?) for doing his captain's log each episode.

Bloggie Howser, M.D

[Moozik: Trans X - Living On Video]

Ahem. From the "too much time on my hands" department comes penny structures. Actually, credit where credit is due, some of them are quite good.

Via Stupid Evil Bastard

Nat Friedman's demo of Beagle and F-Spot at Novell's Brainshare keynote is quite entertaining. Skip to about an hour into the keynote for Nat's turn.

I've never really had a need for a desktop search app but I must admit that Beagle does look rather impressive. Now, F-Spot on the other hand I do have a need for. I installed one of the earlier versions of F-Spot a while back and after playing with it for a while, I decided that it rocked. It's the best Photo management tool I've used on Linux so far.

So, just how cool are these transparent screens anyway?

Via FlickrBlog

Er, or not as the case my be. So, it started out with two. Now there are five wide open wireless access points within range of my laptop's wireless card. There are another two that are in range but are secure.

It's just a shame that Joe Public is so eager to run down to their local Best Buy and get the latest wireless network gear without even considering that the signal doesn't actually stop at the walls of their house. Maybe that fact isn't written in a big enough font in the user manual. YOU MUST SECURE YOUR NETWORK - YOUR WIRELESS SIGNAL DOES NOT STOP WHEN IT REACHES THE WALLS OF YOUR HOUSE.

At a minimum, at least setup a bloody WEP key. Foolproof WEP is not, but at least it's a start.

So I've just finished a decent amount of Perl hackery for work and it's relaxation time. So, here I am with my corporate winders laptop and I'm listening to my fave shoutcast stream and I seem to recall a Perl module that can manipulate winamp.

Yes, Winamp::Control is the module I was thinking of. So after downloading the httpQ plugin, I'm on my way.

c:\code\perl>cat.exe winamp.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Winamp::Control;

my $winamp = Winamp::Control->new();

if ($winamp->isplaying()) {
   my $song = $winamp->getcurrenttitle();
   if ($song =~ /1. (.+) \(Digital/) {
      print $1, "\n";
   }
} else {
   print "er, did we forget to actually run wimamp?\n";
}

Right, here we go then:

c:\code\perl>perl winamp.pl
VNV Nation - Legion

Excellent , it works then. Crap and pointless code, but it works and it amused me for about 3 minutes :-)

Excellent, the new Moby album comes out tomorrow. Hopefully it's as good as 18. I've lost count the number of times I've listened to "In This World" off that album :-)

I first heard '18' a couple of years ago when Sally and I were last in England. We were traveling down to Stonehenge on our way to the Isle of Wight in my Dad's car. My brother in law had brought that album along for the trip and we ended up listening to it quite a lot as I recall. I bought a copy of the album as soon as we got back to the US and have played it over and over again.

Last night I made the mistake of watching VH1 before going to bed. Of course that meant I woke up humming that bloody 'Rich Girl' song by Gwen Stefani.

To make matters worse, it seems that my wife has got a copy on her computer and is playing it rather loudly at this very moment. So, I'm going to wake up tomorrow humming the bloody thing for the second day in a row.

Someone make it stop :-)

So after taking a 2 month hiatus from gaming (which is almost unheard of for me), the addiction is well and truly back :-) I polished off Sly Cooper 2: Band Of Thieves last night after a week of intense playing. Bloody good game if you like platformers. Killer gameplay and some of the slickest graphics I've seen on the PS2 yet. Sucker Punch did a great job with this game.

Now I'm back to playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within which I started just after Christmas but never really got into.

So, a while ago I experienced the uptime from hell and this morning I had the pleasure of experiencing the load average from hell.

load average: 165.39, 164.04, 164.10

Ouch. Yes that would explain why I'm getting paged in the wee hours of the morning :-)

After something works so well, it becomes easy to rely on it.

Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Then you realize that it is still in beta afterall.

I was flabbergasted to learn that Congress held an emergency session today specifically for the Terri Schiavo case. Josh Marshall sums it up quite nicely for me.

In other words, this is pure political exploitation of a private family conflict that's become a media sensation, even though it involves a very common, if, for the people involved, agonizing event.

Or not as the case maybe. Oh yes, here's the weekly evidence that I went to sleep and woke up in the bizarro world.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

A New Screen Test for Imax: It's the Bible vs. the Volcano

You should really go and read the entire article.

I really try and respect the religious beliefs of others. I really do. I don't share those beliefs but, you know, whatever blows your skirt up. If you want to shun scientific evidence in favour of made up stories in a book, who am I to stop you eh? What I do find really bloody annoying though are the fundamentalists who get up in arms because a film or a book may not agree with the bible's view of events. When they start to exert enough pressure to ensure a film is banned from a cinema, something is clearly wrong.

Sigh.

Phew, long, long week. Well it just so happens it's Friday night. So, with glass of wine in hand, I'm off to watch Battlestar Galactica and Bill Maher.

Sci-fi and politics, good Friday night combination eh?

In preparation for the trip, tonight we played the "dig out the passports" game, quickly followed by the "oh shit, Sally's passport expired last year" game.

So we download the form off the Department of State website. Panic because it says that it may take six weeks to process before reading that we can pay to get it done in two weeks. Fill out form; go out to Target to get the photos done. Put everything in envelope. Write the cheque for $115.

And we’re done.

Now, hopefully there are no problems and it arrives before May 15th.

Woohoo, in exactly two months I'll be at a nice cruising altitude of 35,000 feet crossing "the pond" on my way to England. Can't wait. Even though it's been 10 years (what? wait a minute, where did those 10 years go eh?) since I've lived in England, I still find myself getting homesick from time to time so this visit is probably long overdue.

Laptops made out of wine cases you say? Oh yes.

The legnatile was built out of an old case of precious sicilian wines, given to my father years ago by the Baron Antonio Pupillo di Contrada Targia near Siracuse. Other materials use were leather, pine wood, oak and beech veneers, mahogany, shammy leather, silk and iron and brass screws, every element of which has a story to tell. The colouration was created with handmade walnut tinctures diluted in spring water applied in three layers. The transparent topcoat was created with 7 layers of special boating varnish, knowingly diluted with pine spirit with threee days' drying time for each layer, followed by sandpapering and polishing. Every single wooden part is signed and numbered.

Wooden Laptop

And yes, it runs Linux.

Schweet.

The fact that news agencies aren't questioning this is mind boggling.

The Bush administration has produced look-alike news propaganda clips and then persuaded television stations across the country to air them uncritically and, often, uncut. As many as 20 government departments have produced fake news which stations broadcast as though they had produced the segments themselves, according to The New York Times.

The phenomenon - known to its detractors as "covert propaganda" and to its advocates as putting out video news-releases - is deeply troubling in a country that prides itself on media independence.

Last month, the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, issued a damning report on the Bush administration's use of the practice, concluding that their clips were intentionally deceptive. "Prepackaged news stories can be utilised without violating the law," wrote US comptroller David Walker, "so long as there is clear disclosure that this material was prepared by the government department".

Here is the news... from President Bush

As each year goes by I become less immune to allergies (or hay fever as they call it in England). With the sudden onset of 80°F temperatures following some record breaking rain, everything is blooming. Trees are starting to bud; my back lawn has well and truly woken up after its annual winter snooze, growth growth everywhere.

While it all looks rather pretty, I'm getting my arse kicked by the bloody plants :-) Today my eyes felt like they'd done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson and were soooo itchy. This year seems to be particularly bad. I've felt the symptoms come and go in previous years but nothing like the past couple of days. Yuck.

So, Sally gave me one of her allergy (hay fever) pills and I'm all back to normal. Bloody good stuff whatever it was :-) So, I'm going to see how it goes in the next couple of days and maybe I'll pay the Doctor a visit next week to get some of those pills of my own :-)

So, the fact that it is 86°F (30°C) outside right now and it's only March 11th does not bode well for the coming summer.

And in today's 'Fish Flatulence' news.

If it seems bizarre that serious scientists in Scotland should publish a study of farting in herrings, how improbable is it that they were almost beaten into print by a team of Swedish researchers who had discovered the same phenomenon? But that's great minds for you.

Farting fish fingered

I don't care what you say, I think studying the farts of fish to be of paramount importance. No, it's not a complete waste of time. Someone does not have waaaay too much time on their hands.

Farting fish, bloody hell, next you'll tell me someone is studying necrophilia among ducks. Oh wait.

So, they're going to give Georgie an award eh?

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas is receiving a "galactic-achievement award" next week at ShoWest, an annual convention of theater owners in Las Vegas.

"This unique award celebrates the enduring popularity of the `Star Wars' movies and the enormous impact and influence they have had on audiences and popular culture," Mitch Neuhauser, co-manager of ShoWest, said Tuesday.

"No other movie series has been so successful for so long, and no movie is more eagerly anticipated this year than `Revenge of the Sith.'"

George Lucas Receiving Achievement Award

While there can be no doubt that the Star Wars movies are successful, I don't think anyone should be giving Lucas an award after the crapfest that was Episode 1 and the equally appalling Episode 2. To say I was disappointed with those two movies would be the understatement of the year.

So why am I eagerly awaiting 'Revenge Of the Sith'? Dunno. I think I keep giving Lucas the benefit of the doubt because somewhere in the back of my mind I'm thinking that he must get it right this time. He can't screw up three times in a row right? Right?

Why is everything personalized now? Things that are clearly not 'mine' are being labeled as mine. Why do TV and radio presenters keep insisting this is so?

'And that's the latest on your Phoenix Suns.'

Ok, just so that we're clear, they're not *my* Phoenix Suns, they're *the* Phoenix Suns.

'And that's your traffic report on your Monday morning.'

The traffic report this morning was not *my* traffic report it was *the* traffic report. It's not *my* Monday morning, it's just Monday morning.

'It's just another way your Safeway is working for you.'

No, no, no, it's not *my* bloody Safeway, it's just Safeway.

I must say, I do like the FickrBlog as you get to see all kinds of spiffy photos. My fave of the past week has to be American Star. That photo is pure genius. Ghost Ship anyone?

So the GNOME 2.10 default splashscreen contest is now over. The winner is, er, not really very good is it? Luckily they can be changed quite easily. I'm running GNOME 2.8 on my Ubuntu box which has an Ubuntu splashscreen and looks quite nice so I haven't wanted to change it.

Do you get a good night's sleep these days George? You know, seeing as your lies are the reason American soldiers were sent in the first place.

The U.S. military in Iraq announced the combat death of a soldier in Babil province and two more in a roadside bomb attack in central Baghdad, bringing to at least 1,502 the number of deaths of American troops and Defense Department civilians announced by the Pentagon.

The war began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein, with President Bush citing Saddam's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as a primary justification. No such stockpiles have been found, and the United States called off the search for them in December.

U.S. Military Death Toll in Iraq Tops 1,500

Now this is a bloody great opinion on Tony Blair's proposed new anti-terrorism law, which would allow the government to detain suspects without trial.

The real issue here is one that everyone seems to be ignoring at the moment because it is a little distasteful. What blood price are we prepared to pay to ensure our freedom? 100, 1000, 50,000? How about 144,000? The number of men and women who died in the defence of this country in WW2. Did they consider any sacrifice too great to protect us from a government that imposed arbitrary punishment? If the terrorist attacks come, it will be terrible and we shall grieve, we shall also rebuild. Ask east enders alive in 1940 if they felt the horrendous death and destruction caused by the Luftwaffe ever made them want to cave in and accept Hitler as our fuhrer. Today's ragtag band of terrorists can kill many thousands of people and they can destroy great buildings. What they cannot do is stop us being free Britons, there will be no invasion, no militant Islamic ruler of Britain, they cannot directly influence our lives unless we let them do so indirectly through our government. The government's current anti terror legislation will be a victory for terrorism, they will have achieved something that Hitler tried and failed to do, they will stop us from being free men.

In a typically New Labour piece of doublethink Tony Blair tells us that this law will protect freedom and that the greatest freedom is to live a life free from terror. He is wrong, freedom is nothing if the government can punish men at will, we knew it in 1939 and the sacrifices of those great, decent people who fought that war will be for nothing if we cave in now.

John, by the grace of God King of England

Via Dave.