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current weblog Friday 28 February
A bizarre report on Reuters about a woman who received a delivery of the leg of her late husband. She opened it thinking it was a lobstergram! (from Grr..)
Thursday 27 February
Evidence of Spring Well, we enjoyed it, the cat and I in the garden, in a watery sun.
It made a change from trying to get my head round the "premature end of script headers" that I've been getting trying to install the Open Journal script on the Unix hosting.
After 3 and a half years of tortured struggle CIX have succeeded in producing a new.....set of Terms and Conditions. I hope they can concentrate on technical advance now but I'm not unduly optimistic.
Wednesday 26 February
Spent all day yesterday reading up on cgi scripts. I keep coming across blog tools that use them and I've been hitting trouble trying to install them on my hosting provider's machine. Printed out a few reams of documentation from places like webmonkey which will help as soon as I can get my brain into a receptive enough mode. I can see that eventually it will be better for me to set up a server here to try the scripts out before trying to get them installed in webspace.
Anyway - I managed to tire myself so completely that I felt completely drained of energy by the end of the day.
Monday 24 February
This aggregator is a useful way to scan blogs from the UK.
And, from the memepool, something completely different - pencil carving.
Pat's Shubukin
Sunday 23 February
Interesting responses from Richard Dawkins .(found via linkmachinego .)
The Tory party offer us another pantomime to take our minds off the war - jolly good show chaps. Nice to get away from politics sometimes.
Pat arrived back from a couple of days in Montpelier at 2:30am so we sat around a while and had an early morning rather than a late night.
My Flashpath smartmedia reader needs 2 CR 2016 button batteries before it let me copy any more photos over. Here's one taken yesterday of Gnutty tackling a hazel nut.
Saturday 22 February
The Steam Cleaner cometh...
Yes - to be sure - yesterday I walked up to Argos and bought a steam cleaning kit. These things are great news and I wish I'd got one a long time ago and saved myself a lot of energy and cleaning materials. I've been removing crud from sink, cooker, utensils, paintwork and floor covering. I haven't yet experimented with the carpet and upholstery cleaning or with wall paper stripping but my expectations are high. The real clincher when it came to the buying decision was the prospect of defrosting the fridge in 5 to 10 minutes.
Friday 21 February
My take on "The conman, his lover and the Prime Minister's wife" for a new CIX conference for the most jaded and cynical of viewers...
Crocodile Foster
Crocodile Foster (who apparently got his name from wrestling plastic
crocodiles in the bath) is a naive Australian backwoods fraudster who
arrives in the big city of London eager to make an impression.He does not reckon on falling in with a gang of professional lawyers,
public relations consultants, politicians' wives, lifestyle gurus and
media hacks. They all set upon him at once until the poor fellow doesn't
know his up from his Antipodes which is where they send him when they're
finished with their sport. Poor old Crocodile is in such a tizzy that when
the News of the World offers him £200,000 for his story the poor sap turns
it down under instruction from the lifestyle guru who cleverly sells her
own once he's safely packed off out of the way.Poor Crocodile returns to Australia a muttering about an autobiography. A
man brought even lower and well and truly outclassed in his own speciality.A morality tale with no morals. Avoid.
Wednesday 19 February
Just to show I'm serious about this music thing...
I've got the puny Cyrix based computer up and running Wordpad so I can type this out without having any detrimental effect on the performance of Wavelab2 which is busy digitising some of my songs from 2 track cassette.
A mixed bag but I'm quite into salvaging the odd sample here and there. Maybe even resuscitating some of the material if I can persuade VST to co-operate with me.Coryn has just sent me a picture of his flatmate's kitten called "Misdemeanor".
Some bumf comes through the door. We are about to have a CPZ in the local area. As a keen Robot wars observer I had visions of Matilda patrolling the street outside catching the unwary (as if there are not already plenty of things which do that in this neck of the woods). But I digress. This CPZ is a controlled parking zone for cars so if I ever acquired one of those beasties again I would have to pay £95pa to park outside my door. Hmm. And this is the "consultation" exercise. I've had plenty of experience of these with Islington council but in this particular case I have no strong feelings on the matter. Closing date for comments is 10th March if anyone in the Mildmay area does have concerns. London is an unpleasant place to drive in any case so I'm not planning to get transport here unless circumstances conspire to demand it. And that is a real possibility...
I am having more thoughts than I can transfer to text today. Thoughts about categories - like musical categories - each represents a "world". There are magazines around that make this explicit - PC World for instance. So people inhabit onhabit one of these "worlds" grouped around a shared interest. Why do I find this thought so intriguing I wonder.
And why is it that the level indicator on a kettle is the first thing on it to fail? It's not a big thing I know but it's a sign that something's wrong with the world. I've thought this one or two times in my life.
And why am I saying this anyway. Who would be interested? Is the world a better place for the cyber presence of this musician's nest of thoughts or is it a matter of profound indifference to cosmic harmony. Who can tell eh?
Meanwhile here are the words to an improvised and previously untranscribed song recorded in 1988.
One more life's journey
one more life
one more memory
join the others
more feelings are stored
the day I saw you
my heart gave a leap
the day i saw you
my heart knocked sideways
I saw you then a few times,
learning about my views of people
everythings moving,
everythings changing
everything's doing something
unexpectedly
out of the blue into the sea
out of the blue into the sea
small faces along the way
say
"you might halt a little while
you might stop a little while
you might think you have,"
something's moving just the same,
something's moving just the same
beneath the waves of sound the people
wave or stand around
to synchronise their application
to the themes.Makes a change from posting pictures of cats anyway.
Tuesday 18 February
I've been putting some work in cutting out the links that didn't work properly. My current dilemma is that after firing up Cubase and all the midi eqipment, I suddenly found myself reading about cascading style sheets and doing a little experimentation. It seems that my head is more orientated towards web mechanics than music creation at the moment. This concerns me because I don't want to to get too far away from the music making process in case I lose my connection altogether (and it's already pretty tenuous).
I'm having trouble getting a new Barclaycard delivered. The old one expired at the beginning of the month. Barclaycard use a firm called SMS to deliver the cards by courier. The problem is that SMS seem incapable of arranging appointments and keeping them. They also seem to have a chaotic automated email system where no-one bothers to read the mail or keep a copy of it and to be incapable of using the telephone. As a result I'm still waiting a month after they initially tried to deliver it without checking that I was in. Even the helpful Mrs D from customer services admitted that she could not raise them on the phone for over an hour and that their explanation seemed confused and inadequate. It sounds like a man, a dog and a motorcycle operation to me and Barclaycard should just use the registered post.
Slightly embarrassed to find that I had forgotten to update the year at the top of this page - slightly mollified to find that the webcounter reads over a thousand visits now (and only a % are mine:-).
Monday 17 February
Involved in a vaguely clerical enterprise to integrate the outlines of my old notebooks into the bio part of this site. Somehow my brain gets overwhelmed by the sheer amount of personal history that's available via my own mishapen scrawls and diagrams and I can only allow myself the odd day to delve into all this stuff otherwise I think it would tend to take me over. There are enough problems in the present without my wrestling with 20 year old dilemmas.
Listening to: Curtis Mayfield - If there's hell below
Yesterday I tried to set up a good photo of the squirrel by leaving some nuts about with the window open and adopting a crouching position with the camera ready. Of course, for the first time ever, the squirrel decided not to come back for any more nuts and an icy wind was blowing through the window, so after a while I closed the window and turned off the camera...only to look round and see a beautiful fox wandering around the garden in mid afternoon. He was gone half a minute later. A pity I did not have a minute's more patience as it would have been a great shot:-)
Sunday 16 February
"This site is best experienced with your mouth open to equalise the pressure on your eyes" - judge for yourself.
I am vaguely thinking of building a new PC for myself. It comes as somewhat of a shock to find that I've had this one for four years now - and the motherboard was s/h even then. So I've been trying to update myself with hardware developments. I was surprised to learn that there are 3 different standards for AGP slots - outlined in this page from the ATI website.
Saturday 15 February
Walking up in Kingsland Market this morning I was surprised at the lack of activity and wondered briefly if it was due to the anti-war march. However I soon realised that a more likely reason was the live broadcast on BBC1 of the FA cup match between Manchester United and Arsenal.
Plenty of people went to Hyde park anyway. I showed my ambivalence by staying at home. I notice that Blair has now reversed the rhetoric by pointing at the misdeeds of Saddam. Quite right too but very late in the day...and at odds with the UN too who have had their focus on WMD. Blair could easily turn out to be an ex-PM if a war supporting the US goes badly. I've often wondered lately whether he might be ready to jack in the job anyway and walk away, or whether he has aspirations to serve a long time.
Listening to - Curved Air, Blossom Toes.
Friday 14 February
On the eve of the UN inspector's report do I have anything coherent to add to the Iraq debate?
One certainty. The "fog of war" has descended well in advance of any actual action. Governments have been plugging their own agendas which have varying degrees of detachment from the real situation. But it seems doubtful that anyone's got a handle on what the real situation is.
If, (and it's a big "if"), there is a second UN resolution to go ahead with military action then this action could well be justified in the same way that action against Milosevic was. Who can really argue against the power that releases the people from an oppressive dictator? The opponents of action against Afghanistan were weakened by the daily oppressions wreaked by the Taliban on the people of that country.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that the US and UK have consistently tried to invoke fear to support their case rather than the moral case for united action against a renowned and unloved oppressor of humanity. When all is said and done it's a bit of a mystery to most people why this war is being pursued with such vigor. There seems no outstanding reason. Attempts to link Iraq with Al Queida have seemed as strained as the attempts to portray WMD as almost ready to fly. The US didn't waste any time finding out if this week's broadcast was really from Bin Laden before leaping in with an assessment that he was an ally of Iraq. Dossiers constructed from student essays haven't helped credibility either
It seems unlikely that oil is a critical factor. If that were so the easiest thing would be for the US to cut a deal with Saddam - he'd love to be able to sell his oil in an unrestricted way.
Looking at Blair it seems obvious enough that he is driven by a passionate conviction in the rightness of his approach. Is he participating in a major bluff with GWB where Saddam is supposed to back down in the nick of time and the US/UK will gain kudos from their "tough talking approach"? Again, not too likely. The logisitics involved in shipping 100,000 fighters and equipment to the immediate area go well beyond the normal military exercises. Is it a Western movie where the son avenges the father who was well outlived in office by his defeated opponent? Is it a conspiracy of Christian fundamentalists actually pursuing a modern crusade? The ideas inevitably grow bizarre because no-one really seems to have an explanation for why this thing is going on. Can it really just be a symptom of species madness? A lemminglike desire to fulfil the times by striking the enemy? Or are there really some very good reasons why this action is being pursued which can't be told for some reason...
The anti-war coalition seems almost as confused about principles as the world leaders. Each faction doesn't want war for a different reason. Given the huge anti-war majorities in the polls, support seems curiously "soft". People seem to be making judgements borne out their views of Bush and Blair with little attempt to address the complex perspectives of the total situation.
Thursday 13 February
After a week of dampness we have a cold, sunny, crisp day here in London. I have been working on some archeology of myself. Digging out bits of history and wondering how they all fitted together to make the life I once had but which now seems like the ghosts of ancient half-remembered dreams. I am occasionally bothered by the thought that this exercise makes my life more complicated than it needs to be, by making the past present.
Billy felt frisky enough to climb a couple of trees while I pruned a few shrubs.
Tuesday 11 February
"Whatever you do, don't mention the war!"
But hey, I've had my attention drawn to an article by Noam Chomsky in Al-Ahram which purports to show how the US imperialists are intent on taking over Iraq in order to further their global domination dance routines. Noam is a clever man and he's been in this game a long time. A solid academic achievement through his work with language acquisition thirty years ago has given him the intellectual credibility to act as a respected advocate of the peace movement. Whilst there are several pertinent observations in the article it's rather sad to see much of the same old polemic trotted out.
"..millions may be at very serious risk in a country that is at the edge of survival after a terrible war that targeted its basic infrastructure -- which amounts to biological warfare -- and a decade of devastating sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and blocked any reconstruction, while strengthening the brutal tyrant who rules Iraq."
Excuse me, Noam, that war was undertaken by a large coalition of nations under a UN resolution in the face of aggressive action against a neighbouring state (and UN member). How come you can diss the UN when it suits your case whilst at others it becomes a matter of regret that members have not complied with resolutions.
In Noam's world Chancellor Schroeder's widely satirised stand against military action in Iraq is transformed from a grubby election device into a noble venture of daring to listen to the people.
"Evidently, the likely increase of terror and proliferation of WMD is of limited concern to planners in Washington, in the context of their real priorities. Without too much difficulty, one can think of reasons why this might be the case, not very attractive ones."
Why am I not surprised? Well I am actually. Are we to assume that the US leaders don't worry too much about a dirty bomb in the heart of Washington or anthrax in the post? I happen to think they must just be, you know Noam.
I have no argument to his conclusion to the article -
"I think a realistic look at the world gives a mixed picture. There are many reasons to be encouraged, but there will be a long hard road ahead."
Er...yes
I came across this on http://binkley.blogspot.com/
"The choice now is not between war and peace. It is between a credible 21st Century multilateralism and a return to pure Great Power unilateralism. Ironically, the British and Americans and East Europeans are the multilateralists in this instance; while the French and Germans and Chinese and Russians insist on wrecking the credibility of the U.N. To put it in terms that the Old Europeans might understand, the French and the Germans are the cowboys in international relations right now, treating U.N. resolutions as so many fictions to be dispensed with when they seem to wound national pride, or worse, might actually empower the United States."
I think this is where the nub of the question really is at the moment. The present divisions in NATO could presage a stand against American domination by Russia, France and Germany in the security council. If American then goes it alone (with the UK) it could mean a return to the Cold War situation where UN vetoes were the order of the day and the Great Powers pursued their individual agendas almost unchecked.
If any concept of law and regulation of anti social human activities is to make any sense then it must operate for the global village as much as it does for any village with a local policeman and magistrate. A UN which cannot come to agreement is like a village with a magistrate, but no policeman to bring an offender to justice. The "Old Europeans" should consider whether they are wise to wash their hands of the messy side of this affair and thus let the Bush Administration act without being tied into any international agreements. Neither course is particularly attractive but the unravelling of international institutions will play right into the hands of Al Queida.
commentMonday 10 February
When your image of the other disappears...
Scanning activities, more cats added.
Sunday 9 February
Bremner, Bird and Fortune seems sharper tonight than it has been for some time. Impending war giving satire a new edge I suppose - and there is a lot to satirise in the present setup. Even I gasped at the revelation that the Govt agency had been cutting from ten year old student essays and pasting into the official dossier on Weapons of Mass destruction (WMD).
I'm beginning to like The Grateful Dead homepage design.
Some people have sent me the satirical page where the names of the oil companies are cleverly embedded into a Bush utterancer. I can't help but think that it's slightly missing the point. The trouble is that it's also potentially misleading in my view. I haven't seen anyone put a logical case for the thing being about oil without making the Bushoids seem more Machiavellian than the reactive, divided, barely competent nature that they usually display. At times like these do we have to seek the security blankets of tired old slogans?
Of course there's got to be an oil related component as Bush is an oilman. But basically to me it looks like it's just a Western where the son tries to get a posse to go after his dad's old enemy. And isn't everyone, everywhere shitting a few secret bricks about the WMD? Al Q showed the way that central institutions in our kind of society are vulnerable to small scale operations and I can't help thinking that it is kind of important for the world to get on top of the problem of uncontrolled WMD being distributed around the globe. Maybe it's just wishful thinking to hope that this is acheivable anyway...Personally I haven't ever felt as vulnerable to terrorists since I've been living in London as I do now. Even at the heights of the IRA campaigns.
Couple of additions to cat pages and I've re-organised them into a more logical structure.
Saturday 8 February
A slight redesign going on - the archives will be made monthly for the while and listed down the left hand side of the page.
Friday 7 February
I've felt tired this work. Less than optimal performance.
I don't wish to be altiloquent or to involve you in unecessary cachinnation but if you should need a few bon mots to add to your vocabulary dribbleglass might help.
There is an even bigger current political question than the decision to go after Saddam and that revolves around the status and future of the UN. It could revert back to being the talking shop that it became in the seventies and eighties or it could be on the verge of becoming an embryonic World Government where the US (as main decision takers) would be effectively President. Nations generally seem to do best if they have adequate systems of Government, law and security. Is their really any reason why we should not welcome an equivalent for the World itself, or are we always to be at the mercy of dictators and terrorists? One thing we can be sure of is that, terrible as the weapons that toppled the World Trade Centre were, the ones that will be available in an unregulated future will be more terrible and lethal.
Wednesday 5 February
There's a freezing wind and I can't seem to get warm today no matter how many layers of clothing I wear. Run down?
Big ideas to the fore on BBC TV in the evening with Attenborough in the Life of Mammals demonstrating the thin line between a chimp cracking a nut with a piece of wood and the fall of the Mayan civilisation which built great cities, the demands of which apparently reduced the fertility of the surrounding soils to such an extentt hat the cities themselves could not be sustained.
Then an interesting programme "The day I died" on Out of the Body experiences (OOBE) during periods of clinical death. Some research now indicates that these are due to the quantum computers we have in micro-tubicles which are the latticework of the neurons which make up the brain.
Tuesday 4 February
On Saturday and Sunday we had an informal celebration of Chinese New Year by eating stir fries and spring rolls. We also had fortune cookies. Looking for sage observations upon the course of life, two of us were somewhat startled to receive this stark message.
"If you are disappointed with your superior report him to the higher authority"
Is this a subtle plot by the Chinese to subvert our culture? Will millions of people who have sampled the delights of a chinese meal start forming street corner committees for the re-education of corrupt officials and demanding bosses?
Monday 3 February
Clean up after a weekend of food and drink. Organise.
My bicycle has had a puncture for 5 days.
12noon - listening to Alan Partridge on BBC 7 featuring France's 2nd best racing driver.Wash up, take front wheel off bike and wipe off some oil. empty compost bin, have a bowl of Ready brek, wipe a few surfaces, wash my mousemat, re-address a letter, make a list of things to do, hunt for tyre levers....
1pm - listening to: Fairport Convention selection.
I found a small cage full of peanuts in the back garden and hung it up for the squirrels and birds. Hunting for tyre levers in all my collections of small tools, tidying up as I go. Eventually I find them in a drawer with (a bonus) the puncture outfit. However as soon as I get the tyre off I see that it's damaged where the valve is located so I need to go out and get a new inner tube. I'm rung from work - Would I come in to fix a flickering fluorescent tube? No thanks. Tomorrow.
2pm Brilliant sunshine helps everything. Drilled, drained and opened a coconut. Walked to Dalston and bought a new inner tube, a front tyre and some brake blocks. I'm feeling guilty because I haven't done any serious maintenance on the bicycle for at least a year.
In the bike shop I said my hellos to Owen who used to play guitar with a group called Ocean who used to rehearse in the Mayville about 14 years ago when I just started working there. He once amazed me by playing "All around the watchtower" on my Spanish acoustic which was strung right handed. Owen normally plays a left handed guitar.All this took place in the little office where I used to spend hours of infinite leisure between intense bursts of activity. But I digress...
Checked email (95% spam as usual), blinked to CIX and tried to provoke a bit of banter in cix:ambridge by letting "Kenton" have a good whine.
3pm Listening to "Moneybox" - radio 4.
What is the astute investor to do when nobody knows which way the market is going to go? Listen to programmes like this and get even more confused probably.
4:30pm Listening to: John Martyn selection
Tyre and front brake blocks fitted and then the quickest of spins down the road to test it before darkness falls. Sitting down for a rest and checking through a few PC Plus cover discs for useful web software. I came across Cold Fusion express which might be an interesting program to run.
5:30pm Posted a letter. Sat and thought about a number of things. Checked my finances - could be better but certainly could be worse. Enough to upgrade my PC if necessary anyway so that's alright then. I've gathered quite a bit of affection for this old PII that I use for 90% of activities. Washed and dyed my hair which now has a darker appearance appropriate to a person of my mental age (about 25-35 I should think). Then I tried a a few photographic experiments trying to get a good shot of myself. Hey - give me a chance - I'm nearly too old to be a satisfied narcissist!
6:30pm Listening to Keith Jarrett.No Farscape on TV because the beeb prefers to fill up its schedules with snooker instead. Photoprocessing a few snaps in Irfan view.
The I came over all tired and had a nap with the cat.
Just a hint to myself of the exciting lifestyle that might be achieved if I updated my writing every hour - and just how centred on the computer I'd have to be. Bear in mind that (by popular demand) I didn't include either the refreshment breaks or the performance of certain bodily functions in the above accounts. Credit where it's due.
Sunday 2 February
Listening to some Curved Air with Chris - a great combination of silky guitar and violin. We watched the cat and the squirrel playing combative games on the back roof.
Last night we had a bit of a play on the instruments but were not getting much co-operation from some of the music equipment. I need to make some notes to enable a quick setup for such rare occasions.
Saturday 1 February
More snow falls in the early hours
Chris is visiting from Leicester. We looked at hurdy gurdys on the web and the range of instruments available from the Early Music shop. I printed out all my account details from the hosting company in order to try and get some sort of handle on running a more sophisticated website in that space.
Chris and Jane and Pat and I managed to slip down to Old Henry's pub for a quick drink in the evening. Pleasant enough - not so loud that conversation was out of the question.
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