What was number one?

... when you were born.

This site recons Clair by Gilbert O'Sullivan, whereas others recon "Mouldy Old Dough by Luitenant Pigeon.

I share my birthday with Roy Wood, Bonnie Raitt, Ken Dodd, Gretchen Mol and Jack Osborne. Only everyone except Gretchen Mol was born in different years.

(De)Motivation

A few weekends ago I went on a weekend at a Scout site in Derbyshire. On one wall of the main room of the building were a series of motivational posters. You know the sort, a striking photograph on a black back ground, with a single word underneath followed by an aphorism. Unfortunately many of us (especially Andy N) felt some of these were just plain weird.

For the cynical among you may I introduce Despair.com, a website dedicated to selling spoofs of the exact same type of motivational images. The sad thing about Despair's posters are that they are a lot better that the motivational posters that inspired them. They're certainly a lot funnier, anyway.

Acting responsibly

I received an email through one of the local Freecycle list

Yuu might be interested in this website, which is
offering to organise us all together in order to increase our power when
buying petrol!
_http://www.pipelinecard.org/_

I disagree fundamentally with the central premise of this site that all motorists need to use their cars. Some people because of where they live and the jobs they do need to yes. Most people do not. Most people could get by with a small amount of inconvenience without a car. The public transport system hasn't completely fallen to pieces, and many journeys are of less than a mile which can be walked easily. With a little bit of planning most of us could get around "needing" a car. Just that most of us simply don't want to. I don't claim to be any kind of saint myself, I just accept that I use my car because I want to, not because I need to.

The problem with people complaining about high fuel prices is that we want a high quality and convenient lifestyle. Many people are, however, reluctant to accept the cost of that lifestyle and that much of the things we do are luxuries, not necessities.

Bye bye metronet (Broadband part III)

Well as part of my preparations for moving house I've checked out how to move my broadband. Answer: I can't I must cancel my existing service and take out a new order for my new property. Complete with new connection charge of £69.

So I will be leaving Metronet, it was a good service, but not as cheap as they make out.

Edit 11/12: Actually perhaps I was unfair, Metronet seem pretty open and honest about how their service works and how it is affected by BT's broadband licensing and their (lack of) service. A quick call to BT confirmed it was BT who were the problem over the transfer.

2 Weeks to go

I need to organize how I am going to move to Steeton from here, there is a van hire company locally who charge the same basic rates as the one we used to use in Leeds, and the cheapest over in Manchester. So if anyone's available on 3rd December or anytime in the week following please let me know and I will be gratefull. I will probably be only moving small items on the 3rd.
The precice day of moving the big stuff is dependant on when the electrician can do his bit, if I have time to let him fix the consumer unit and kitchen before I move in fully, I'll do that, otherwise it'll probably be the Monday.

I have been doing further maintainace on my PC, the Firefox plugins were causing me some problems, but I fixed it by changing some registry values.
Suffice it to say its been a real learning experience in how Windows XP/2000 works, which on top of the virus that AVG and Spybot combined couldn't fix... I am looking for a free development environment which will allow me to write programmes for windows. (OK non-technical types can now continue reading).

Other maintenance done includes having fixed the curtain rails, one of the brackets had broken and several runners were missing. I ended up putting all the runners I bought back on as someone in the past has used the wrong ones, which was what was causing the curtains to snag.

Friday was children in need and we got a filler scene from the Doctor Who team. I enjoyed it and was assured by my sister Anna that non-fans also thought it entertaining. If you missed it, go to the BBC Doctor Who website and click on the link. Oh and give some money to Children In Need while you are there. It's a good job they weren't soley relying on the standard of the entertainment to raise the cash, which typically consisted of actors you don't know for their singing doing a musical number and later on west end shows doing a few songs to plug their existence, I mean entertain the masses.

Everything in moderation

As I've turned on the moderation feature I've turned off word verification, as for the small amount of spam I have to moderate it's a bit of a faff for people making comments. Partucularly since some of the words are nearly as illegible to humans as to computers.

Now if only I could automoderate comments from a list of friends...

Sick

On the way home I put some petrol in my car, and spotted the headline on todays "Daily Express", complaining about the Dianna memorial fund giving money to asylum seekers and gypsies. This is furthering the myth that asylum seekers are freeloading scum, and not refugees fleeing from persecution. As far as I remember Princess Dianna was a supporter of the marginalised and disposessed in society, famously taking her sons on visits to homless shelters. The suggestion that asylum seekers don't fit with this is outrageous, more about the right wing press' image of them than reality. The article dismisses the fund as paying out to "fringe groups". I think that term could describe most causes Dianna supported.

Fortunately I can't find the same story in the online edition, but know I'm being too optimistic in thinking that's beacuase they're embarassed of making such statements.

Prompted by will I have elaborated on this post.

Broadband Part II

My parents have been talking about broadband for ages. I went with Metronet as I could not be certain I could commit to a 12 month contract. But my parents have much more stable lives. They have email through talk21 which won't be affected by the transition.

Who can I suggest they get for broadband? Metronet has a high set-up charge, but I'm not aversed to buying them their own modem rather than rely on one from the ISP.

Last week's news round-up

So last week. The BBC unveiled the new face of the cybermen. And Billie Piper is rumoured to have handed in her notice on Doctor Who.

On and the Prime minister lost a vote.

Forgive me for being dismissive of the 40-odd Labour MPs who caused their leader a headache by standing up for democracy rather than their party, but life will go on. I mean if we're really making a song and dance about MPs standing up for the intersts of the people of this country we're in deep trouble. My new (Labour) MP voted alongside my current (Conservative) MP, and the ones I helped get elected in Leeds and Manchester. Perhaps some people will learn that there must be more people running the country than one man at the top.

What did go almost unnoticed was a few weeks ago when Claire Short drew to our attention just how much power is in the hands. A few years ago the King ruled by Royal prerogative. Now we have a parliamentary democracy, and the powers have merely been transferred to those in government. Claire Shorts private members bill attempted to put just one of those powers under proper scruitiny, the power to ignore parliament and take the country to war. The bill was defeated by lack of time of course, but brought these powers to the fore. The main problem is that with an uncodified constitution, we have no record of the extent the powers the Government has under the Roayl Prerogative, or who is qualified to wield them.

Over a lovely evening meal, one Sunday evening in Blackpool, some nice people tried to convince me of the importance of this issue, and as "homework" we were asked to write to our MPs. Well I can't help but hope this is one issue our elected representatives have a chance to return to.

Operation Christmas Child

This article is a few years old but makes interesting reading, particularly given it's from a member of the clergy.

It also echos a lot of what I feel about extremist Christians, of the sort often described as the American Christian Right.

Anyone who uses a belief in Christianity to support intollerance or hate is missing the entire point and looses the right to call themselves Christians IMHO. Not that I would stop them doing what they do (that would be intollerance in itself) just... not in my name please.

I'm not alone in being worried by this, at work the other day someone put up a polite note describing the other side of the story. I thought it was nicely written. However it was torn down not long after.

I signed the contract today- quite an impressive birthday present to buy myself.

AMIBIOS Beep Codes

"8 beeps
indicates a memory error on the video adapter. Replace the video card or the memory on the video card. "

So basically my dodgy video card is finally knackerd. Oh dear. The instructions on how to get to where I'm going tonight are on that PC!

Legal stuff

Just come back from my solicitors who has told me everything sorted ready for me to sign the contracts on my new house. Just those Is and ts to be dotted and crossed.