April 2005 Archives
[Moozik: The Smiths - Hand In Glove]
Like to put stuff on your cats? Well, you're not alone.
[Moozik: Rosetta Stone - Deeper]
I wish these guys were around when I was a wee nipper.
‘Air Guitar Heaven’ is an opportunity to help turn your room into your own ‘Virtual Rock Concert’, using our selection of ‘Virtual Air Guitars and Massive Posters’. Our Massive Posters, which can be used either singularly or as a set, create an awesome Rock Concert feel in any room. This can be achieved by hanging 3 giant posters creating an approximate 6 by 8.5 ft image of over 150,000 Rock fans – All Worshipping You!! To enhance the atmosphere even further, our massive Speaker Stack posters help deliver the power that you deserve!Of course, I participated in my fair share of air guitar in my bedroom. My 'weapons of choice' were my knackered-in tennis racket and my hockey stick. To be honest, I actually participated in air synthesizer and air drums more than air guitar. To this day I will say I'm the best air synthesizer player in the world. And I also play a mean 'steering wheel drums' when I'm stuck in traffic :-)
You know, every single time I see Dubya at one of his 'press conferences' I have the exact same impression: a man in way over his head. Last night was absolutely no exception.
All criticism regarding the stammering and stumbling over his words aside[0], it was a textbook example of how not to answer questions. He didn't answer one. He sure told us what he wasn't. "I'm not a lawyer" and "I'm not an economist". But you are the bloody President of the United States though mate. You should have a rudimentary understanding of the legal system and the economy.
Oh, the economy, yeah I almost forgot. Did you catch his answer to the "I'd just like to ask simply, what's your view of the economy right now??" question?
I hope we can get an asbestos reform bill out of both the House and the Senate. There are some positive noises on Capitol Hill as to whether or not we can get an asbestos reform bill.Huh? What's that? An asbestos reform bill? WTF?
Anyhoo, don't just take my word for it, read the transcript. Of course you don't get the 'cringe factor' when you read it. For that you actually have to hear him stumble over his words.
[0] Let's be honest, after 5 years in the White House, you'd think someone would have coached him on public speaking. Shouldn't he be a teeny bit better at this sort of thing by now? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a crap public speaker. But then again, I'm not the 'leader of the free world' either...
Two men remain in hospital after a bizarre accident in which a car smashed into the top floor of a house.Police are investigating exactly how the car managed to "take off" from street level and crash into the house in Basingstoke, Hants, on Wednesday.
Al Gore layeth the smack down once again.
Former Vice President Al Gore says the GOP push to dismantle the filibuster is part of a larger movement to undermine the founding principles of the United States.The speech is quite long but it's certainly a worthwhile read.
In order to cut down this occasional refuge of a scoundrel, the leadership would cut down the dignity of the Senate itself, diminish the independence of the legislative branch, reduce its power, and accelerate the decline in its stature that is already far advanced.Two-thirds of the American people reject their argument. The nation is overwhelmingly opposed to this dangerous breaking of the Senate's rules. And, so the leadership and the White House have decided to call it a crisis.
In the last few years, the American people have been told on several occasions that we were facing a dire crisis that required the immediate adoption of an unusual and controversial policy.
In each case, the remedy for the alleged crisis was an initiative that would have been politically implausible at best -- except for the crisis that required the unnatural act they urged upon us.
First, we were told that the nation of Iraq, armed to the teeth as it was said to be with weapons of mass destruction, represented a grave crisis that necessitated a unilateral invasion.
Then, we were told that Social Security was facing an imminent crisis that required its immediate privatization.
Now we are told that the federal judiciary is facing a dire crisis that requires us to break the rules of the Senate and discard the most important guarantee of the deliberative nature of Senate proceedings.
And today in scary Republican religious nutjob news...
WASHINGTON — Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.(get the LA Times registratation info from BugMeNot)An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.
The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts.
"There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17 session. The tape was provided to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
DeLay has spoken generally about one of the ideas the leaders discussed in greater detail: using legislative tactics to withhold money from courts.
"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said at an April 13 question-and-answer session with reporters.
Yep, that's my weekly reminder that I went to sleep and woke up in the bizarro world.
Sigh.
[Moozik:The Smiths - Sheila Take A Bow]
God Of War might actually be the best game I've ever played. Yes it's *that* good.
[Moozik: The Mission - Tower Of Strength]
I know, I know, I know. Never read slashdot comments. But hey, every once in a while there's a comment that makes me chuckle. From the Google Adds Search History Feature story...
Wait.. so I can search for a search that I've searched for before?!?and perhaps others can search through the searches that I've searched? Will I be able to search their searches of my searches?
whoa. my brain just exploded.
[Moozik: Kraftwerk - Computer Love]
So if you've upgraded to MT 3.16 and you originally installed MT in your web server's DocumentRoot, and you just so happen to remove the cookie from your browser's cookie cache, prepare to wander down grief road for a while.
I upgraded to MT 3.16 last week and everything was going fine. I accidently removed my MT cookie today and as expected MT forced me to login again. Hmm, so why is MT now forcing me to login everytime I click a bloody link? I can see the cookie is being set so WTF?
So, seeing as I didn't have time to pour through the MT source code to figure it out, I wandered over to the MT forums and found the answer right away.
This has been identified as an issue with a new application method ("app_path"), which attempts to derive the path from the request rather than basing it off the CGIPath configuration setting. This method was added to provide plugin authors with a way to refer to their plugin CGI's path which is different from the CGIPath setting.And that did the trick.Unfortunately, it strips off the trailing slash off the URL, causing a login cookie problem when Movable Type is installed in the root folder of a domain. The current workaround for this is to install Movable Type in a subfolder instead.
After moving the relevant files & directories from my DocumentRoot to a new sub-directory, all is well in the world again :-) That was all rather irritating but at least the fix is quick and easy.
Random musings.
The FlickrLand April 2005 photoset is quite nifty.
Mental note to self. Never ever ever ever read jwz's blog at work. And I mean ever. Of course some might call him a wanker for being the only person on the fucking internet that doesn't apply the 'not safe for work' label to some of his, er, not safe for work posts.
That is all.
[Moozik: Apoptygma Bezerk - Kathy's Song (Victoria Mix)]
So, if you had to choose, would you be a regular stormtrooper or the bloke who rides the speederbike?
Me? I'd be the speederbike bloke.
[Moozik: Curve - Doppelganger]
All over the blogosphere already but I want to make it known that Flickr officially rock. In the ol' email inbox this morning:
Hi vek!You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to
reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in
the early days. Well, it's true! And since you're one of
those lovely people, here's a little something to say YOU
ROCK!1. Double what you paid for!
Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to
2 years, and your new expiry date is Oct 26, 2006.2. More capacity!
Now you can upload 2 GB per month.3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
This won't be activated for a day or two, but when it
is, you'll see a note on your home page telling you
what to do.Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth
is and supporting us, even while we're in beta. Your
generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are
today.Kind regards,
The Flickreenies.
And if this shows up, we can consider the upgrade to Movable Type 3.16 a success :-)
Not just for the USA anymore. Yes, Google maps now includes the UK as well.
Via Nicholas.
[Moozik: Skinny Puppy - Incision]
Forecasting the weather on the local TV news has the easiest bloody job on the planet. Tonight on our local news, the trying-oh-so-hard to be funny anchor lady got involved in some light hearted banter with the weather bloke asking him about the "chance of rain" this coming weekend. He then made the jovial retort that she had just "put a lot of pressure on him and made his job harder". Make your job harder mate? How could it possibly be harder?
Let's be honest, to be a local TV weatherman you don't need to be a genius. Just go on the internet about 10 minutes before the broadcast and Bob's your uncle. You're now a weatherman. As for calling yourself "Chief Meteorologist", I presume that means you can type www.weather.com faster than the other lackeys in the office.
[Moozik: Nine Inch Nails - Sin]
Ever wondered what your chances of success would be if you wanted to destroy the world? Well, wonder no more.
Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.Personally, I like number 9.You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.
Fools.
The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.
9. Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument.You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it... perhaps Mars
Method: Criminal, really, that this blindingly obvious method was overlooked for so long. Essentially, anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. ANYTHING. The concept is simple: find a really, really big asteroid or planet, accelerate it up to some dazzling speed, and smash it into Earth, preferably head-on but whatever you can manage. The result: an absolutely spectacular collision, resulting hopefully in Earth (and, most likely, our "cue ball" too) being pulverized out of existence - smashed into any number of large pieces which if the collision is hard enough should have enough energy to overcome their mutual gravity and drift away forever, never to coagulate back into a planet again.
I was reading an article about the Republican Senator who might vote against the confirmation of John Bolton as the US Ambassador to the UN. The interesting piece from the article for me is not the fact that there might be a Republican who would vote against a Bush nominee. The interesting piece is the point regarding US credibility.
"What happens when our ambassador has to stand up and make the case on intelligence relating to Iraq and North Korea?" Biden added. "Do you think John Bolton is going to be believed? … I think it matters a great deal whether or not they have credibility as we move into these most dangerous moments with Korea and with Iran."Unfortunately, the Bush administration in general has a bit of a credibility problem and Bolton or not, I think any US ambassador is going to have their work cut out trying to get future intelligence reports taken seriously.
Boy who cried wolf and all that...
[Moozik: Lead Into Gold - Faster Than Light]
Coming from a country that doesn't allow you to obtain guns legally and which doesn't have a gun shop on every street corner, the fact that so many Americans love their guns is a concept lost on me.
HOUSTON - With an assault weapon in each hand, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent urged National Rifle Association members to be "hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense."What? Why the fuck would you ever need an assault weapon fer crissakes? These people truly scare me. Oh, and good old Ted doesn't stop there.
"Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em!" he screamed to applause. "To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."So, he's not a nutjob then? What a total wanker.
That is all.
[Moozik: Killing Joke - Eighties]
We're not making progress in the war on terror? Not to worry, we'll just change the rules so that no-one knows about it. Brilliant!
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism."Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report
[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Shame]
I don't care what you say, the sandcastles I made on the beach when I was a wee nipper were way better than these sand sculptures. Or, er, you know, maybe not :-)
[Moozik: DAF - Kebabtraume]
After giving Spurl a try I must admit I've found myself back using del.icio.us again. While it's true that the del.icio.us UI isn't the nicest looking thing on the planet, it's quick, easy to use, and it just works dammit. Actually now that I'm using the foxylicious firefox extension, I really couldn't care less what the del.icio.us UI looks like :-)
[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Two Minute Warning]
Not that I got bitten by this or anything.
For example, if you sayHmm, I dunno, maybe it's late and I'm a little grumpy but I like to replace 'above-board and honest' with 'a little bit crap and annoying'. But that's just me."ab" =~ /a(.*)b/;
The pattern match succeeds, and $1 is defined, despite the fact that it matched "nothing". But it didn't really match nothing--rather, it matched something that happened to be zero characters long. This is all very above-board and honest.
[Moozik: In Strict Confidence - Open Skies]
The Revenge Of The Sith trailer with l33t subtitles is quite amusing.
[Moozik: Yazoo - Nobody's Diary]
For those of us that live in the US, this is quite amusing.
As I'm well aware, the current price of Petrol in the US is nothing compared to, say, England for example. I rang my Mum & Dad yesterday and my Dad told me that it cost him over 60 quid (that's about $113 for those keeping score) to fill his car up.
[Moozik: Visage - Fade To Grey]
More on those April reissues by The Cure.
Two decades after The Cure helped launch the alternative rock movement with SEVENTEEN SECONDS, FAITH and PORNOGRAPHY, Rhino Records revisits the band's textured mix of dark atmospheric pop with a deluxe, two-disc edition of each album loaded with previously unreleased tracks. SEVENTEEN SECONDS, FAITH and PORNOGRAPHY will each be available April 26 at regular physical and digital retail outlets and at www.rhino.com for a suggested retail price of $24.98.These albums continue Rhino Records' revitalization of The Cure catalog that began in December with the release of the band's 1979 debut, Three Imaginary Boys. Each title will be remastered and released as a deluxe double-disc set featuring the original album on one CD and numerous rarities on the other. Each release will come with a lavish booklet filled with lyrics as well as photos from the personal archives of vocalist Robert Smith, and track-by-track commentary and notes by U.K. music scribe Johnny Black.
[Moozik: The Sisters Of Mercy - Fix]
Every single year I make the same bloody promise to myself that I won't leave filing my taxes until the last minute. Ahem, so, er, yeah that worked out well again this year I see.
So, without further ado, I shall go down to the front of the class and write on the board.
I will not leave my taxes until April 10th
I will not leave my taxes until April 10th
I will not...
Well, you get the idea.
[Moozik: Lights Of Euphoria - Shadowland]
The Flickr Related Tag Browser is really quite good actually.
Update: The Flickr Postcard Browswer is also veeeery nice.
[Moozik: The Cure - Charlotte Sometimes]
One thing that I've learned from living in the US is that because I'm from England, people sometimes incorrectly assume I'm a bloody expert on all things British - particularly the Royal family. My latest reminder of this came yesterday when I had two people come up to me at work to ask me various questions about Charles and Camilla getting married.
I was asked about the legal ramifications of the wedding considering his possible future role as head of the Church of England. Why would she be called ‘princess consort’? What did I think about the whole thing? Was I excited? Would my family tape it for me?
They both seemed quite surprised when I politely informed them that not only am I not a bloody walking British legal encyclopedia, I really couldn't give a toss about Charles marrying Camilla.
You know, I think they were really disappointed :-)
They joys of an American teaching Japanese school kids.
Ok, so I'm an assisstant teacher in three Japanese middle schools. The grade levels are ichinensei, ninensei, and sannensei. Translated this just means "1st years", "2nd years", and "3rd years", and it's equivalent to American 7-9th grades. So the kids are about 12-15 years old....
Let me introduce you to a game Japanese kids like to play called "Kancho."
Actually, it's not so much a "game" as it is kids clasping their hands together, sticking out their first fingers, and shoving them up your butt. I'm really not joking.
You know, before we come to Japan, they tell us a lot of ultimately useless stuff. What kind of computer to bring, if our DVD's will work, clothing sizes, that kind of nonsense. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in the 3-4 months of orientations did anyone ever mention that at some point, a Japanese kid may try to stick their fingers up our butt. That's something I would have liked to know, personally.
Trac looks like quite a spiffy little issue/bug-tracking app. I'll have to remember to have a play with it next week.
[Moozik: Nitzer Ebb - Getting Closer]
Blimey, that Dubya bloke isn't exactly very popular outside of the US is he?
When Bush's face appeared on giant screen TVs showing the ceremony, many in the crowds outside St. Peter's Square booed and whistled.And, er, it would seem he's not that popular back at home either.
The public's dissatisfaction with President Bush and the Republican-led Congress is growing, with ratings dropping amid record high gas prices, war in Iraq, the Social Security debate and the emotional Terri Schiavo case.Via Mac.The Republican president's job approval is at 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. Only 37 percent have a favorable opinion of the work being done by Congress, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.
[Moozik: Informatik - Physical Education]
With the wall-to-wall coverage of the Pope's death and the really big deal it is for pilgrims to go and see him, Sally reminded me last night that we'd actually seen the Pope. Twice in fact. Both times were about 9 or 10 years ago during the same weekend trip we took to Rome when we lived in Italy. The first time was in St Peter's Square and he was in his bullet-proof Popemobile. The second time was inside St Peter's Basilica.
Seeing as Sally and I are not exactly believers in the big bloke upstairs, the religious significance of seeing the Pope up close was totally lost on us. We were there doing touristy type stuff, and it just so happened that the guided tour we were taking ended up going to the Vatican at the same time the Pope was out and about doing 'stuff'. Complete fluke really.
[Moozik: KMFDM - Juke Joint Jezebel]
My dog Foster has been to the Vet's clinic more times in the last 3 months than my other dog has been in her entire life. Last Saturday I had to take him in without an appointment because he was having, er, issues (I'll spare you the gory details). Long story short, I received some worrying news that they had found two "growths".
So, you can imagine that this scared the crap out of me. They sent some samples off to the lab to see if the tissue was benign or something a little more serious. All week I've been a bloody nervous wreck, they must have been sick of me ringing them everyday "did you get his test results back yet?", "no Mr Spencer we're still waiting".
The Vet finally rang today to give me the good news that the tissue was not malignant. Talk about weight being lifted off the mind :-)
[Moozik: Skinny Puppy - First Aid]
Ok, this is the time of year where I complain about those people who keep their dogs outside. I think my rant from two years ago sums it up quite nicely.
Today was the hottest day of the year so far: 96°f (35°c). When it gets this warm, I always think about those poor bloody dogs.
Well, what a crap idea that turned out to be. Mental note to self, don't blindly alter the config settings without understanding what they actually do. While some pages did indeed load faster, some didn't load any faster and some didn't load correctly. One of which was an intranet app at work. Bugger.
So, I just reset all the settings and I'll try and pretend I didn't recommend the changes in the first place :-)
[Moozik: Curve - Already Yours]
I'm subscribed to quite a few Google news alerts, one of which is to look for articles with the word 'Perl' in them. So tonight I happened to check my email and noticed an alert which also mentions CodeZoo which appears to be a Java code repository. A Java version of Perl's CPAN? Hmm, too early to tell but I've added a bookmark and have made a mental note to check it out in the next couple of weeks.
[Moozik: Fixmer/McCarthy - Through A Screen]
You get to see the odd thing or two while out walking the dog. Gather round for Uncle Kev will give you his tip of the day. If you have a big screen TV and it faces your living room window, after dark you'll probably want to close your curtains before popping in that porno DVD. You know, just a thought.
Want to improve the speed of Firefox? Run, don't walk, over to the Firefox On Steroids page and get tweaking. I've seen a noticable improvement.
Via Rafe.
Blimey, I hope they're graffiti proof and virtually indestructible. Something tells me that this isn't such a good idea.
In a few weeks, Viacom Outdoor plans to install in the London Underground video posters with changing text and animated images. The Digital Escalator Panels are made of liquid crystals that realign under electrical stimulation.
So yeah, I decided to get out of the dark ages and upgrade Movable Type from 2.65 to 3.15. Seems to have worked like a charm. I also installed the latest version of MT-Blacklist and that too worked like a charm.
Blimey, my faith in software upgrades has been fully restored. I imagined untold hardship and pain. Turns out I, er, received none whatsoever.
Hmm, so why do I have that voice in the back of my mind telling me that I forgot something?
If we can see this entry then the MT upgrade was a success. If not - bugger :-(
[Moozik: The Killers - Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine]
Just finished watching the season finale of the best show on television. Wow. It rocked. Thankfully we only have to wait until July for season 2.
[Moozik: The Sisters of Mercy - Nine While Nine]
Robert Smith appearing on Billy Corgan's solo album singing backup on a Bee Gees cover eh? Yeah, I'll give it a listen.
Most bizarrely, the 11-track record apparently includes a cover of the Bee Gees' ‘To Love Somebody’ featuring The Cure’s Robert Smith on backing vocals."The Cure is one of my favorite bands of all time," Corgan says. "Robert is a good friend of mine, so it's a dream come true. That song's sort of a gem that not everyone will know."