I have been to Womad every summer so far this centaury, so I was pretty peeved when it moved out of Reading. Being a hard core Womad fan, I had been considering going none the less, until a few weeks ago when I had a change of heart. I have been pretty stressed recently and decided I would rather spend the money on a relaxing holiday for a week then camping at a festival for the weekend with no option to pop home for a shower\nap\dump.

I am extremely pleased to say that, according to the Reading Post, Womad was shit. The field was a quagmire, cars had to be pulled out by tractors, they had to close one of the stages and the toilets where questionable. As one regular Womad going was quoted to say “it lacked the Womad buzz”, which is really the thing that you go to Womad for.

So for all of the hippy-for-the-weekend Womad hardcore that went even thought it is no longer within walking distance of Waitrose, I am very sorry if you had a rubbish time. Personally, I am just glad that I don’t have to kick myself about missing my favourite festival when I am sleeping until 3 in the afternoon, relaxing all day and partying all night in a Greece.

Labels: real world, soap box

There has been a lot in the news recently about how Google and other search organisations are going to have to disclose records of which searches have taken pace to various government agencies if required. On the face of it, this sounds like a good idea, you can identify people searching for bomb making kits and researching suicide bombings and the like. The negative side to this is that, of all of the groups of people in the world that I wouldn’t trust to use this kind of power in an ethical way, it’s a government agency, and we live in a comparatively free country at the moment, think how litte I would trust them is if we where somewhere a little more like Russia or China.

Here is a vision of the future, it sounds very Orwellian, but you can imagine a world where you search for some sort of shocking\unusual (but not illegal in itself) content and the next thing you know, the thought police turn up at your door and cart you off to Paddington Green police station to be held for 90 days for being a suspected terrorist.

In the past, I have searched for information on the KKK because I find their organisation bizarre\funny, this dose not make me a red neck, white supremacist. I think it would take a very clever person to be able to identify threats via what people put in to a search engine without stamping on all of the other no-threats that are going about their daily business and who may be curios about the world outside of which celebrity is too fat\skinny.

The trouble is, you use Google all the time, using the web without using search engines would be pretty difficult, so it raises the question, short of becoming some sort of luddite, how do you keep your personal searching habits out of the hands of government agencies. I was thinking that some sort of distributed, peer 2 peer search engine where rather then having a massive server farm full of computers, you use computers in peoples homes (much like the SETI@home project).

I’d like to see the government subpoena an unknown number of home computers from around the world.

Working on the theory that I never have an original idea, I had a quick search on Google (hope no government spook was watching) and it turns out there are some project that are looking in to exactly this.

YACY. This project is pretty far along, they even have a demo search page where you can try it. It requires special software to run, but it also runs in your browser using Java. I have had a little go and Google this aint. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Wikia Search. This is being set up by one of the guys who created wikipedia. It s wiki based search system that looks like it could fit the bill at some point.

If these systems ever did take off, my next worry would be; What if those geeks who have this search engine running on their home computers care see what I am searching for!!!

Better then a government agency, but still….

Labels: geek, real world, soap box

I have a well documented and well known blind spot when it comes to dates and times. I never know what is supposed to be happening when. Recently, I started using the calendar feature of my yahoo mail box to keep track of this which has helped a lot. But after a little research, I have pimped out my calendar system, an as such should never forget anything again. This is how it works.

Central Calendar:
For my main calendar I use the one that comes built in to your Google Mail account. Its light-years ahead of the Yahoo system, I think its as good as any groupware system such as Microsoft Exchange, except its free, and it runs in your web browser. I have set it up to e-mail me to remind me of people’s birthdays and the like.

Desktop Calendar:
I my main desktop computer at home I use the Linux Microsoft Outlook knockoff Evolution. You can synchronise your Google calendar with it, follow these instruction. If you use outlook, you can do it too, follow these instructions

Mobile Calendar:
I recently got myself a new phone. It’s a Nokia N76 smart phone running the Symbian operating system. Any Symbian phones can have their internal calendar synchronised with the Google calendar by following these instructions.

Labels: geek, real world

Labels: picture, real world

Labels: b3ta, I made this

Apologies for banging on about sexism, but I find a lot of it quite confusing. My subject this morning? This news report:

UK gender equality 'long way off'

I heard it on the radio and have been trying to find out exactly what the report means. They are saying that its going to be many years until women and men get paid the same. I know that they can’t mean that women don’t get paid the same for the same job, because that is against the law. So I am going to have to assume that women get paid less, in general, because of the types of work that they do. This would be backed up by this news story from the back end of last year:

Women 'stuck in part-time jobs'

Now, I am a big fan of flexible working. One should work to live, not live to work. As clichéd as it is, it’s true. But the injustice they are talking about isn’t a work force specifically targeting those with an XX chromosome for low pay due to barbaric employment policies, it’s because they are doing lower value jobs. They can, if they wish, go for the high value jobs and get the big bucks, unfortunately, that is not very compatible with taking chunks of time off or work and being a primary care giver.

If we where to try and turn this on its head, we could write a news story about how socking it is that, so many years of after the dawn of equality of the sexes, that so few men get the opportunity to be stay at home dads. It’s criminal that men are forced to go to work and be the primary bread winners and miss on so much of their children’s development.

This would, of course, be nonsense. In most circumstances, no one is forcing the husband to go out to work, in the same way that no one is forcing either party in to low or high paid jobs. It’s a matter of personal choice.

I would love to work a three day week to have more time to spend doing things that I enjoy rather then being at work. I don’t, because if I did that I wouldn’t have very much money. It sucks, and I would love to see a change in society where we would be able to live like this, but until that day comes, I don’t expect some sort of shared responsibility of guilt that the world won’t bend itself to fit in with my particular requirements’.

Now, I think a common response to my last paragraph would be to say that “you wanting to take time off to swan about and do things that you like is not the same as having a baby, having a baby is important and it is a right of all humans”. I would question this. Having a baby is something that you do because you want to do it, you don’t *need* to do it, even if you want to do it really, really badly, it’s still only a want. And before you say that we have to have babies as a species, I don’t think we have to worry too much about the continuity of the species for a while yet. Our little planet (and particularly our little island) is massively over populated.

So, I can say that I totally agree with some of what this reports states. I think we should all be in a situation where we can work how we see fit, and receive sufficient payment to live a fulfilling life without being a 9 to 5 wage slave.

I don’t agree that this should be painted as some sort of anti-women strategy by big business and men in general, all this succeeds in doing is generating friction and re-enforcing that “original sin” type of guilt that men are forced to bare for the wrongs that have been done to the farer sex since god pulled out one of Adams ribs.

Labels: real world, sexism?, soap box

Labels: b3ta, I made this

Labels: real world

I had another comment about the race for life thing, which I will put here to make sure it gets the exposure it deserves

Cpt Numrot said...

Er...Duh, it's not discrimination if it only bars men.

Didn't you get the memo, in the same breath the PC brigade are denouncing male only golf clubs they are championing female only beaches in Italy, female only trains in Japan, and female only car insurance everywhere.

A spokeswoman for Cancer Research UK said "It has remained a women-only event because of its huge popularity and its non-competitive atmosphere."
That may sound like a gynocentric sweeping generalisation to you, but that's because you're a sexist pig. Dumbass.

Suck up that air while you're still allowed it!

Labels: real world, sexism?, soap box

Labels: b3ta, I made this, picture

I had an anonymous comment on my post below about how the “race for life” charity event was a XX chromosome thing. It went like this:

what you're looking at there is "positive discrimination". i.e. not letting somebody who is either white or male partake in a given event. it's actually surprising that white; able bodied men are the worst possible kind of person considering (as you rightly point out) they are:

1. stupid
2. lazy
3. compassionless
4. never grow up
5. obsessed by cars
6. obsessed by women
7. obsessed by football
8. sexist
9. stupid
10. generally useless and need women to help them get their pants on the right way round.

thank heavens for pretty girls eh.

To which I respond:

Ah, “positive discrimination”, the oxymoron to end them all. It’s like calling the death penalty, “positive murder” or the war in Iraq “positive invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation” (well, perhaps not) or to some extent, calling Stella Artois 95% alcohol free.

Labels: real world, sexism?, soap box

In the post below I make reference to the state backed eugenics program in the USA, I have been reading this a little further, its such shocking stuff that I feel compelled to comment on it further.

I use the term eugenics here, when I should probably use the term forced sterilization, for that is what it is. It was done for one of three reasons.

-A bizarre belief that sterilisation was good for you

-A punishment for criminals (bare in mind that in the USA a protection from cruel and unusual punishments are written in to their constitution, I cant see w what part of having a doctor force you to be infertile isn’t cruel or unusual) .

-Eugenics, the process of weedling out trait’s that you don’t like in your master race by sterilising those that show them.

Now, you cant talk about eugenics without talking about the Nazi’s, I even used the phrase “master race” in a line or two back. Lets have a look at who the evil and villains Nazi’s forcibly sterilised for the benefit of the blond haired blue eyed Übermensch, here is a quote from the Wikipedia:

he law was signed in by Hitler himself, and over 200 eugenic courts were created specifically as a result of the law. Under the German law, any doctor in the Reich was required to report patients of theirs who were mentally retarded, mentally ill (including schizophrenia and manic depression), epileptic, blind, deaf, or physically deformed

Gosh, how evil, I bet Americans are glad they live in a country that is not evil and can police the world from villainous schemes such as this one.

Oh, hang on, lets have another read of the Wikipedia:

The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, the epileptic, and the physically deformed. Native Americans were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge, while they were in a hospital for some other reason (e.g. after giving birth). Some sterilizations also took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative minority.

So in America they even sterilised their indigenous people because, I guess, they where undesirable for some reason. To wrap this up, lest look at some statistics:

Nazi Eugenics program

Started 1933
Ended 1945
Total years 12
Total sterilisations 400,000

USA Eugenics program

Started 1907
Ended 1981
Total years 74
Total sterilisations 65,000

It looks like the Nazi’s win on points, but hey, they where the most evil organisation in history, so I guess the USA shouldn’t be too ashamed of its score which equals twice the population of Wokingham.

Labels: real world, soap box

I was just reading this story in on the BBC News page:

Police plea on genital mutilation

Female circumcision is a terrible, misguided kind of child abuse that should absolutely be stopped wherever possible. But what puzzles me is why it’s OK to mutilate the genitals of little boys.

I am not so stupid that I can’t see the difference between female and mail circumcision, one is a two minuet job on a baby, the other is a lengthy and painful ordeal on a much older girl. But my point still stands, I don’t understand why it is so acceptable to take a pair of scissors to a baby boy for non-medical reasons.

In America it was and still is routine for most boys to be circumcised, in the 40s and 50s something like 70% of boys where circumcised, even today it runs at about 50%. I find this baffling and scary (but then, they only stopped their government backed eugenics program in 1981. Land of the free?)

I would like to see a culture where, in apparently developed nations, this kind of genital mutilation is unacceptable for boys and girls regardless of the social, cultural or religious reasons (this includes Islam and Judaism), but then, I would also like to see an end to organised religion, so I guess you will have to call me a dreamer.

Labels: real world, sexism?, soap box

I have just got off of the phone form Virgin Media. I phoned up asking when the sales monkey I mentioned in my previous post would be calling me back, it turns out he wont. On the positive side, he did manage to sort out my billing problem for me.

It turns out it was a “system error” that wouldn’t allow him to add the discounted package on to my account. He got an e-mail from the customer services person yesterday at about 12:00 and somehow managed to fix the system problem and correctly add the package to my account and provide me with a £12 credit for this month.

System error eh? Sounds more like fucking bullshit to me.

He was just hoping I was a typical mug who didn’t look at my bill or if I did, just assume that I didn’t understand what I had signed up to. I imagine that is why he didn’t call me back, coward.

On top of this, my bill for last month (which is recorded on this months bill) came to a whopping £68 (this includes the install change for the phone and telly (which incident I had to largely do myself because the NTL (sorry Virgin) man had no idea what to do with my media centre setup)), after a bit of encouragement, the customer services rep managed to get me a credit on that too.

On the positive side, I have by £24 back and I will now be charged at £30 per month. On the negative (and not in the least surprising) side, Virgin Media are just as big a load of, at best, useless and incompetent, at worst, lying and cheating, bastards, scum and scoundrels as NTL ever where.

Labels: my life, real world, soap box

Me and the missus (and the dog, obviously) went for a long walk on Sunday. Because of the rainy weather, Griff hasn’t had much of a chance for a long walk so we thought we would go all the way to Sonning. Once we go there we said “lest just keep going and see where we turn up”

We turned up in Twyford.

This is the route we took.

Labels: my life, real world

Apparently not a virgin any more, they fucked me good and proper.

I get my internet service from Virgin Media (I can’t believe it’s not NTL), I do this because it’s a 20Mb pipe, and I don’t want to have to pay line rental on a phone line that I just use for DSL. This was costing me £34 a month when it was 10Mb. They upgraded it to 20Mb and upped the price up to £37, a pain in the arse, but what can you do.

A few months back I got a cold call from Virgin asking me if I was happy with my service. I said I have a few concerns about the real world download speeds that I was getting, which he didn’t care about. What he did care about was selling me products that I have made clear time and time again that I don’t want when they have called me in the past. It goes a bit like this:

VM “would you like our telephone service, its really cheap”
ME “no thanks, I use the internet for that, that’s why I have such a big pipe”
VM “ OK, would you like our TV service, its got loads of channels”
ME “again, no thanks, I don’t watch a lot of telly, and what I do watch comes off of the internet, hence the big pipe”

I would have this conversation about once a month. I even made a point not to be rude to them, thinking this was the correct way to behave. The last time they called me I got a new response:

VM “we can do you a deal where you get a phone line, digital TV with the freeveiw channel set and your 20Mb pipe for £30 per month”
ME “well, I am not bothered about getting the TV channels and the phone, but I am interested in saving £7 a month. Lets do that, I’ll make sure that I am at home on the afternoon the come to install it”
VM “brilliant, I’ll sort it out for you”

And sort it out he did. Unfortunately, he forgot to do an evil laugh down the phone after he said it, otherwise I may have been able to work out he was taking me for a ride.

So the phone line got installed (there is not and has not been a phone plugged in to it) and the TV got installed (I have to admit, I do like watching the infomercial channel and I now want a “Nicer Dicer” the “Little Giant” ladder and this rotisserie oven thing the name of which escapes me) and I waited for my next bill to fell all smug and clever when I see the amount I was saving. It came the other day.

£42.95.

Hang on, my maths isn’t all it should be, but I am pretty sure that £42.95 is more than £37. And I am really sure its more then £30. I am paying £3.95 line rental for a phone that I don’t want or use (and was told I wouldn’t have to pay) and still paying £37 for my broadband. So I phoned them up today and said “make it cost £30, or take it all away and give me my money back”. They said “not much I can do in customer service, let me get in contact with the Winsor- knot-tied-silly-pair-of-shoes-wearing-stupid-£70-haircut-sporting-shiney-suited-sales-monkey who purposely miss-sold you this to increase his commission and I’ll ask them to call you” (I may have paraphrased them a little bit there).

So I now await my call to liste to the richous indignation of a professional liar about what product I had purchased and how I had not understood what I was getting.

I cant wait.

Labels: my life, real world, soap box