| Thursday 31st March 2005 21:30CST | → 0 Comments |
Yesterday bf found himself in the midst of a tornado. Actually it was about a mile or so away but that’s apparently close enough to do some damage. He made for the basement of his apartment building, which doubles as the storm shelter (after trying to pacify his cats). The only casualty has been his barbeque which got blown away. I’ve asked him to send me pictures of the aftermath.
Received the quote for my private dental work. Just a shade under
| Tuesday 29th March 2005 21:16CST | → 0 Comments |
My Thinkpad Port Replicator (a rather snazzy name for what is essentially a docking station) arrived today. In fact, five arrived today! I did wonder why the box was so heavy. I’ve only been charged for one so I could make a packet selling the rest on eBay but I’m too honest (read: dumb) so I’ll just tell the supplier to come and get them, as I’m not lugging the remainder all the way to the Post Office myself.
Annan cleared over oil-for-food. One hopes that will silence all those neo-con wankers who called for his resignation under the guise of wanting to turn the UN into a ‘legitimising front’ for their imperialism, but I doubt it.
Latest read: Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century.
Some pictures of radio and television transmitters, if that sort of thing floats your boat.
| Sunday 27th March 2005 13:28CST | → 0 Comments |
I have come to the conclusion that irony is dead, now that I’ve seen a review of Resonance 104.4FM in none other than Country Life. Understandably, the reviewer seemed lost amongst all this ‘modern’ music. So tragic it was laughable - what were they thinking?
Now I’m off to have lunch with Valentina, as provided by her. Rather cheekily I asked for lemon tart for dessert.
| Wednesday 23rd March 2005 20:54CST | → 0 Comments |
Coming to you free of wires, courtesy of my new wi-fi broadband router. It was incredibly easy to configure. Just plug in the ethernet, call up a set-up page, define a few settings and we’re off. There wasn’t any pain in getting
Fedora Core 3 to talk only to the wireless ethernet either. Most satisfying.
BTW Apologies to any war-drivers in the vicinity - I’ve switched on encryption.
This (bank holiday) weekend I may be seen wandering around outside with my laptop to see how far I can stretch the signal. It would cool to be able to hack and surf outside on the grass during summer.
Yesterday I went for a consultation at a local private hospital for some specialist dental work on my wisdom teeth. My dentist recommended it. All very pleasant and friendly and it’s going to take place in a month from now. When the doctor suggested doing it under a general anasthetic, I nearly freaked - I hate the idea of being knocked out. I’m not sure why but it just makes me feel really uncomfortable. The dental work is involved but not complex so he agreed to using local anasthetic instead. Another advantage is it’s considerably cheaper, though I’m still not looking forward to the bill.
| Monday 21st March 2005 19:18CST | → 0 Comments |
So Howard, in relation to gypsies and travellers and the planning laws, states that:
Many travellers accept this, living happily in neighbourhoods across our country. Sadly, a small minority of travellers do not. They are openly abusing our planning system.
… but despite it supposedly only being a ’small minority’, he feels the solution is to scrap the Human Rights Act, which brings defined and easily accessibly rights to tens of millions of citizens.
You could talk about sledgehammers and nuts but the reality is that Tories have always hated the principle of universal rights that the great unwashed can not only point to but exercise. It threatens their idea of the ruling classes handing down freedoms as a privilege rather than a right. After all, he says:
This is one of the reasons why the Conservative Party is reviewing the Human Rights Act. And if can’t be improved we will scrap it.
In other words, we’ll amend it so it says ‘you have such and such right, so long as you are white, middle class, straight, rich and are a member of the Conservative Party’.
| Saturday 19th March 2005 15:37CST | → 0 Comments |
My new laptop has arrived and I’m hacking on it now. The only gripes I have are that the screen powersave facility (essentially dims it when the battery is used) makes a low ‘buzzing’ sound and that the power supply gets surprisingly hot. I may quiz either Inmac or IBM on these issues but I can live with them (so long as the power supply doesn’t burn my house down).
Otherwise, my next task is to dynamically partition the drive and put Linux on it.
The weather has changed out of all recognition over the past few days. It’s gone from irritatingly cold and overcast to beautiful summer weather. Now I feel motivated to go walking outside and accelerate my weight loss. I might even take the new laptop with me and do a bit of war-driving.
| Sunday 13th March 2005 22:36CST | → 0 Comments |
Some good news at last. Apparently bf has had flu which, combined with pills and jet-lag, knocked him for six. He’s getting better now and only just phoned me - before he left I insisted he got his phone reconnected so I wouldn’t have to rely on his (often unreliable) friends to keep me informed of any ‘issues’. Ironically, he did get a flu shot before coming to stay last year but I wonder if British flu is a different strain to US flu?
With a little help from the ‘montage’ app in ImageMagick, I’ve created a contact sheet of all webcam images captured on 3rd March. It’s quite cute, though does prove that there’s little to see out of my window during the day (or any day, in fact).
| Friday 11th March 2005 19:13CST | → 0 Comments |
I wonder if the Government in their headlong charge to stomp on civil liberties would consider pausing to listen to Kofi Annan’s recent statement on ways to defeat terrorism:
| Tuesday 8th March 2005 21:22CST | → 0 Comments |
I don’t have anything to add in relation to former Met chief Sir John Stevens’ recent oh-so-timely (and, despite what has been claimed, highly political) comments on the need for draconian anti-terrorism powers, as the excellent analysis by SpyBlog says it all.
| Monday 7th March 2005 22:51CST | → 0 Comments |
Some consider that one of the arguments against the sweeping powers this government is trying to introduce in its anti-terrorism legislation, where a future government could use it against those it doesn’t like for political reasons, to be somewhat abstract. It suddenly becomes less abstract when you hear that Tony Blair has refused to rule out using controversial new anti-terror laws against G8 protesters when Britain hosts the summit of world leaders in July. However, this wouldn’t be the last time anti-terror legislation has been
misused to target legitimate protesters.
Currently reading The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
… and yesterday Valentina baked me a cake (for no specific reason).
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