Much to update... but for now just a code snippet...

A lot's happened since my last post - but for now I'd just like to share this line of JavaScript I came across a moment ago. It even comes with a helpful comment!

// Please, don't change below this line

// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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In order to preserve the layout of this page, I've added line breaks; that was, literally, a single line of code. A single, 9,911-character, line of code.

And that just about sums up the state of the codebase for this particular website...

Goodbye, Stargazer

"General Stargazer" is a man I knew through Eve. The character name might be made up, but the illness very sadly is real

The HMS Horizon was taken out for her final flight today to meet up with the HMS Burning Sun in honour of the loss of General Stargazer, a long standing member of Eve University for the past 4 years. It is with great sadness to report that the General has been inflicted with an illness that has been reported as life threatening, and although a cure is possible, the chances for survival are low. This very untimely and unfortunate loss coincides with a number of other high profile losses within the corporation and has deeply affected all of those involved.

The Generals benevolence and kindness is known throughout the University. In one last act of tearful kindness has seen the donation of a number of Carriers to it's cause; to give selflessly without expectation or compensation. General Stargazer embodies both the spirit and inspiration for which the University was founded and still thrives on to this very day. It is men like these who's personal struggle for their own life do not even take them away from their own dedication to serving others. It is men like this who make us strong, proud and free to survive in the harsh realities of New Eden. Men like this are rare, often true and seldom glorified in their humbleness. It is men like these who we all look up to with pride and honour. It is men like these, who all other men wish to become. It is men like these who brings great sadness and tears for their loss.

It is with these values and many more, that his brother, Super General, saw out the final flight of General Stargazer with Eve University. With an escort fleet comprised of current and ex-E-UNI members, the group travelled to Maila in The Forge, where the General Stargazer swapped to the HMS Burning Sun.

The fleet then witnessed the final jump activation of the dreadnaught, as it left for destinations unknown, beyond the edge of charted space.

In memorial,

-- M. Dawn, EUNN

From Maila local chat:

[ 2008.08.16 19:57:19 ] EYEDOLL > o7 GS, you'll be missed..
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:22 ] Aurea SIbylla > YAAAARRRRRRR!!!!! o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:24 ] Muscaat > o7 General
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:27 ] Racki Dumatre > 07 GS
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:32 ] Karii Ildarian > o7 General
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:33 ] Vor Kosegan > o7 GS
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:36 ] Kaldor Mintat > o7 General
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:38 ] Theon Aidelius > o7 General Stargazer!
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:40 ] Eleasan > o7 GS
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:40 ] MGMT > 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:40 ] Kelduum Revaan > o7 General Stargazer, you will certainly be missed.
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:41 ] Korr'Tanas > o7 General Stargazer
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:41 ] Silvey Vorick > o7 General Stargazer
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:42 ] Xar Khan > 07 GS
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:44 ] Oli Geist > o7 General Stargazer. Fair winds and following seas.
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:50 ] Ceragor > o/ General! Really appreciated the time with you!
[ 2008.08.16 19:57:52 ] space gator > o7 GenStar, will never forget o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:58:01 ] Kawasemi > o7 General Stargazer
[ 2008.08.16 19:58:11 ] Freyr Bibhorr > O/ GS! good speed
[ 2008.08.16 19:58:18 ] Lorl Rofeller > o7 general
[ 2008.08.16 19:58:33 ] Icchan > /emote salutes > G'bye Gens
[ 2008.08.16 20:00:19 ] Kasandra Mae > o7 General
[ 2008.08.16 20:08:27 ] Karii Ildarian > o7 General Godspeed
[ 2008.08.16 20:08:56 ] Acacia Incana > Bless You GS <3
[ 2008.08.16 20:09:06 ] Dee Carson > o7 General!
[ 2008.08.16 20:09:10 ] Muscaat > Goodbye, General
[ 2008.08.16 20:09:16 ] Aurea SIbylla > o7 General!
[ 2008.08.16 20:09:37 ] Kaldor Mintat > 07
[ 2008.08.16 20:09:38 ] EYEDOLL > o7 GS
[ 2008.08.16 20:09:50 ] Kelduum Revaan > fly safe, General Stargazer.
[ 2008.08.16 20:10:57 ] Silentbrick > 07 General and Godspeed

From Eve University corp chat:

[ 2008.08.16 19:47:52 ] Ceragor > i wanna see a SALUTE for GS in chat!!!
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:04 ] Ceragor > SALUTE
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:04 ] Erhina Asseba > 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:04 ] Mackers UK > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:07 ] Trell Bruntelan > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:11 ] Karma > *salute* o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:15 ] T'Alana Ferri > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:15 ] Shadow Prowler > o/
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:16 ] Ceragor > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:16 ] Cambata > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:17 ] Trachnar > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:19 ] Talisma > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:20 ] SZ Rota > o/
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:23 ] Ivaanette > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:25 ] MGMT > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:26 ] Yosihimoto > /emote salutes sadly 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:28 ] Zarici > 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:31 ] Aelia Aelita > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:38 ] Vor Kosegan > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:47 ] * Hiroyuki Fujita spins up the Rokh for a 8 railgun salute
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:50 ] Freastro Comfix > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:48:53 ] Kasandra Mae > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:49:17 ] Khalidos > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:49:26 ] Trian Kalart > 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:26 ] Lecctin Gor > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:36 ] Muscaat > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:36 ] Oli Geist > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:36 ] Lorl Rofeller > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:39 ] Karii Ildarian > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:39 ] Korr'Tanas > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:41 ] Xar Khan > 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:41 ] Spellcheker > o7 GS
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:41 ] Eleasan > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:42 ] Theon Aidelius > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:45 ] Aurea SIbylla > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:46 ] EYEDOLL > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:48 ] Racki Dumatre > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:50:49 ] Kasandra Mae > o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:51:01 ] Kelduum Revaan > o7 General Stargazer
[ 2008.08.16 19:51:18 ] Kaldor Mintat > o7 god speed
[ 2008.08.16 19:51:27 ] Freyr Bibhorr > O/ GS
[ 2008.08.16 19:51:39 ] Freyr Bibhorr > fly safe
[ 2008.08.16 19:51:39 ] space gator > o7 my friend - you were the first person to help me in UNI o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:51:53 ] SZ Rota > o/ o7
[ 2008.08.16 19:53:53 ] Silvey Vorick > o7 GS was always kind and was always willing to help you out. You will be missed
[ 2008.08.16 19:54:41 ] Holub > o7 General , first person to invite me to a fleet
[ 2008.08.16 19:54:53 ] Gavinvin1337 > 07
[ 2008.08.16 19:54:56 ] Ceragor > same for me :(
[ 2008.08.16 19:56:22 ] PewPew Stew > he was awesome, he talked to me for a couple hours one day just answering my questions

The fleet was some thirty strong. Eve might be an internet spaceships game, but the Eve Uni family is real.

Fly safe, General.

A new member of the family is en route...

My new baby... Just ordered one, and it should be arriving tomorrow.

Suggestions for names (to fit in with my canonical naming scheme using names of Imperial Star Destroyers) welcome!

29th July: Virgin Media won't give us a phone line

Well, many things have happened since the last post on this blog. I'm no longer an Oxford student, for one! In fact, I'm now living with three good friends a short walk from the centre of Oxford and from the software company I now work for. But all that can wait...

For pretty much the last five weeks, we've been trying to persuade Virgin Media to install our phone line as we asked them to. The story here is copied/pasted from our house wiki.

Installation

Originally scheduled for 22nd July, this was rescheduled and took place on Saturday 28th June. Two engineers came to install cable TV and internet access, but had not been briefed to install a phone line. I was assured they would check this for me (separate installation is not uncommon). They left with a big hole in the wall between my room and the living room (with co-ax through it).

Initial Contact

Sent via their web form 07/07/08 19:06:

Hi, I recently ordered your 3-for-£20 offer. Broadband and television
were installed without problems (though I was left with a sizeable hole
in the wall) but I haven't heard anything about when the phone line will be
installed. Please could you verify that things are correct at your end, and
confirm when the phone line will be installed?
Thanks in advance.

First Reply

Received 10/07/08 17:18

Our reference:
Account Number:

Hi James,

Thanks for your email to Virgin Media about your services.

I do apologise for the delay replying to your query and any
inconvenience this may have caused.

I do apologise but we have a record that everything was completed on
28th June. Can you please advise what part of the telephone was not
completed. Do you have telephone sockets in the house, is it the inside
or outside part of the install that wasn't completed?

I hope this helps, but if there's anything else we can help with, please
send us a letter, email or call our team free on 150 from your Virgin
Media phone. Or on 0845 454 1111* from any other phone. You can call us
Monday to Sunday from 8am to Midnight.

Kind regards,

Becky Devoy
The Customer Concern Team
Virgin Media

Second Contact

Thinking I'd then be corresponding with Ms Becky Devoy I addressed my reply to her...

Sent 10/07/08 18:48

Hi Becky,

The engineers that came round said that they had not been asked to
install a phone line, just internet and TV connection points. There is a
single co-ax cable running through the house branching to the modem and
to the set-top box for the TV, but nothing phone-related at all to my
knowledge. There are no sockets (of any kind, as it happens) but just
the single co-ax.

If you need any more information from this end to figure out what's
going on, do let me know!

Yours,

James

Second Response

...but I figured not for the IBM KANA system... Received 14/07/08:

Our reference:
Account no:

Hi James,

Thanks for your email to Virgin Media about Telephone line installation.

We can make the changes to your account or can provide any account
related information only when we receive the correct customer
verification password (CVP) from you. But don't worry -- to get things
moving as quickly as possible, just resubmit your enquiry by clicking on
the link below. Then simply enter your password again, send us your
question, and we'll get straight on the case:

[long URL snipped]

You can find your CVP on the Virgin Media welcome letter or on the
Digital Service Agreement (contract copy).

You can also call our 0800 183 1234*. We’re on hand from 8am to 8pm,
Monday to Friday, and from 9am to 6pm on Saturday, from 10am to 4pm on
Sundays.

If you've forgotten your password or cannot find your CVP on the above
mentioned documents, just send us a letter signed by you or call our
team free on 150 from any Virgin Phone. Or on 0845 454 1111* from any
other phone. You can call us Monday to Sunday from 8am to Midnight.
We'll ask a couple of quick security questions and reset your password
for you.

Kind regards,

Sonali Yadav
The Customer Care Team
Virgin Media

Incidentally, the link (as you'll note) points to a page that no longer exists, and none of the literature we have received even mentions the initials "CVP" much less gives one...

Calling Customer Services

26/07/08 17:20 - After being bounced from "customer care" to "faults" and back, Gary from India arranged for someone from the "tolls" department to call back within 48 hours... Call lasted 10 minutes on 0845 454 1111.

First Bill(!)

29/07/08 18:46 - Well, no phone call from Virgin but instead a bill for £41, including at least £11 (likely £22) for phone line rental that we are not receiving. (2 months at £20/month clearly = £41 in the Virgin Book of Maths.)

My next actions? I'm phoning my bank tomorrow to instruct them not to pay the bill, and as soon as I can (realistically Saturday) I'll be paying their new Cornmarket store a visit.

What about the services we have received so far? Well, the internet access has been decent enough (though the upstream bandwidth is pitiful). We haven't yet received a letter from them accusing us of being criminals, which is nice. The TV - well, it works. iPlayer on your actual TV is remarkably useful, even if the video is compressed to death (even more than the regular channels - admittedly I notice these things more than most, but next to the Freeview picture on the laptop courtesy of MythTV, the difference is striking). However, we're not prepared to pay £22 of line rental for a line that we don't have.

Watch this space...

7th Week: XP Service Pack 3 and IE7

So, I finally got around to updating my seldom-used XP installation to Service Pack 3 (which took about twice as long as upgrading my laptop from Gutsy to Hardy). Microsoft are now pushing Internet Explorer 7 as a "high-priority update" for SP3, and it will install itself the next time you do an Automatic Update.

Here's the supplementary license blurb:

PLEASE NOTE: Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates) licenses this supplement to you. You may use a copy of this supplement with each validly licensed copy of Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 software (the "software"). You may not use the supplement if you do not have a license for the software. The license terms for the software apply to your use of this supplement. Microsoft provides support services for the supplement as described at www.support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.

Hmm, what's missing from that? Could it be, um, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3? Are Microsoft pushing out an update that they themselves have disallowed? Or could it be that actually, nobody pays the least bit of attention to these EULA-like pieces of crap - not even the software companies themselves?

(This reminds me of when Apple released Safari for Windows before realising it was against license terms to install it on anything but an Apple...)

Oh yes, and exams are happening.

1st Week: Java VM for Palm

A couple of months ago Palm stopped offering the IBM Java VM for Palm OS devices. Irritatingly, this happened the day before I had to hard-reset my device...

Anyway, cut a long story short: I see nothing forbidding me to do this, so you can get a reasonably recent version of the VM here.

9th Week: Audacity, ALSA and Ubuntu

So, the Aldate's Student Weekend (powered by Linux) had one technical problem: Audacity refused to work on my laptop. Looks like the culprit is something to do with the version of portaudio that Audacity was compiled against; changing the settings to use Jack for audio IO has solved all our problems. If you're getting "Expression 'ValidateParameters( ... ) failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1142" then, until someone gives a better answer, install Jack and use that to talk to ALSA.

6th Week: A stream of consciousness on hunger and chains

What does it mean to be hungry for something?

OED: "Having or characterized by a strong desire or craving [for something]".
And craving, "Urgent desire; longing, yearning."

If, in a room full of hungry people, you announce a feast, the expected response is one of elation.

If you claim that you are hungry for something, yet let that very thing pass by with barely an acknowledgement - are you really hungry?

If not - why not?

"Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" Romans 8 v2

To borrow rather heavily from Mary Mary: the shackles have been taken off your feet. Why do you choose, rather than dancing, to continue shuffling in lines like prisoners?

5th Week: Learning a New Language

"And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days." -- Joel 2:27-29, The Bible

I've been running visuals for the Late Service at St. Aldate's. In an "ordinary" service this would mean getting the words of songs on screen at the right time, and keeping the speaker on-camera - straightforward stuff and all things I've done so often, they've become reflex. (Watch me during a service I'm not on AV, if you don't believe that...) The Late Service has gone beyond that, using video backgrounds behind the song words to aid the worship.

"Uh-huh, what's so special about that?" you may (or may not) ask. There is the ever-present danger of doing it for the sake of doing it, for the technical challenge, or even to "liven up" the worship - to which you might well reply "So what?". Background visuals can be just a "nice touch" but I always strive for more than that; to become as much a part of the worship as each instrument in the band, as each heart of the congregation. What I do behind the sound desk is my worship to God, my offering laid out on the screens that everyone can see. (That, by the way, is why it upsets me when I have to put up things that I know are low-quality. I want to give God more than that.)

Tonight, as Owen was playing and singing "For greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city" I felt God say, "Look outside. Outside the doors." Outside? How could I do that? The collection of loops we have is limited and there wasn't what I wanted to show. I went for the only "outside shot" I had available to me: across the entrance foyer and out through the front doors. And someone promptly walked across the shot and out of the building.

It struck me (as I walked to hand in work to the comlab at 1.15am) that what I was doing was learning a new language. As with any language, when you start you have a limited vocabulary - and when you want to express a specific thing, you can be scrabbling for words, hoping vaguely to get your point across. Here, the language was pictures, the point was God's heart, and my attempts to communicate were in desperation the closest thing I could get to the picture in my head. But that's OK - any language takes time to learn. And I know the point was gotten across (thanks Emily).

I really want to develop this further - I want to take a camcorder out and just walk around Oxford for a day, for one. The more words you have in your vocab list, and the more you learn them, the more expressive you'll be in the language. And the more new words you add, the less likely you are to fall back to the very basics - "Bonjour, je m'appelle James, j'ai vingt ans, j'habite a Oxford..." has a certain equivalence with those time-lapse clouds. They have a place, but there's so much more to French (right, Jenny?)

Oh, go on then.


And as for my vocab list? It'd be really useful if the thumbnail menu we have actually linked in with VLC to select what video was playing. And seamless looping in VLC would be nice, too... The former, at least, I've already prototyped.

4th Week: Space is a harsh mistress

It was only a machine.

No - it wasn't even that. It was a computer simulation of a machine. A machine, created by a machine. How perverse.

It was just a lump of Tritanium (which doesn't exist). It didn't even have a Tech-II tank.

But we went through some good times. It never let me down. Even that time when I left a mission in 20% structure, hull on fire - it kept going, it got out at the last minute, to fight another day. We've been halfway across the Eve cluster together. On war operations with Eve Uni. Even (on the test server, anyway) to 0.0 space.

Last night was just too much... Warp-scrambling frigates and jamming cruisers conspired to trap me in a mission I couldn't tank. Eventually it lagged out so much that one frame, I was just in structure; the next, I was in a pod staring at the remains of the Anakin's Fall.

50 million ISK later, its Tech-II-tanked replacement (which I named the Vader's Fist) is flying... but it's not the same. It just feels... different. Sure, it can take even more punishment. Technically it's handling is the same; same speed; same everything. And yet it's different, somehow.

2008.02.08 17:39:00
Victim: Muscaat
Alliance: Ivy League
Corp: Eve University
Destroyed: Drake
System: Poinen
Security: 0.6
Damage Taken: 70334

Involved parties:

Name: Juggernaut Torpedo / Guristas Pirates (laid the final blow)
Damage Done: 70334


Destroyed items:

Small EMP Smartbomb I
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 1262 (Cargo)
Shield Recharger I
Warrior I (Drone Bay)
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Qty: 5
Type-D Power Core Modification: Shield Power Relay
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 150
Hammerhead I, Qty: 2 (Drone Bay)
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Invulnerability Field I
Hellhound F.O.F. Heavy Missile I, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
R.S. Officer's Passcard (Cargo)
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I
Exotic Dancers, Qty: 10 (Cargo)
Core Defence Field Purger I, Qty: 3

Dropped items:

Shield Recharger I, Qty: 2
Heavy Missile Launcher I
Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 388 (Cargo)
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction, Qty: 2
Type-D Power Core Modification: Shield Power Relay
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 24
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Kruul's DNA (Cargo)
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 962 (Cargo)

7th Week: Whoops...

So, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have lost two discs containing records for every UK family claiming child benefit in the post. Sky News emphasises this point: "It means that the personal details of every family in the country with a child under 16 have gone missing."

And this is the Government that wants to create a central database containing personal and biometric data for every single person living in the UK.

The Government that claims such a central database will be "in the interest of national security".

Why were they even sending the records by post? Has nobody told them of "the Internet"?

So apparently the discs were "password-protected"... what on earth that means, nobody knows (certainly not the Government). Thank goodness the BBC know some computer 'experts': "Experts say such data should normally be sent in encrypted form." Oh really?

To close with an Internet nerd-ism: Epic fail.

7th Week: Why Is Firefox Blocked?

There seems to be a bit of a hoo-hah going on with some websites blocking Firefox due to the AdBlock Plus plugin. For the uninitiated, this is a plugin that will automatically prevent adverts from loading and displaying on websites you visit. PC Plus last month ran an article with the headline "Firefox killing web". The rather militant Why Firefox Is Blocked even goes so far as to say that "blanket ad blocking in general is still theft".

Woah, woah, back up there...

Since when has it become a crime to not display part of a web page - a page that is freely given out by a web server? Indeed, some web browsers are incapable of displaying some parts of a web page - try your phone's browser, for example, or the text-based browser Links. Is it, therefore, a crime to use such browsers?

WFIB also makes the claim that "Ad Block Plus... also prevents site owners from blocking people using it". Come again? I think what they mean is "it is non-trivial to identify users with this plugin enabled". To suggest it actively prevents such detection is plain wrong. Mind you, such detection is not exactly very complicated which suggests to me that the (anonymous) authors of WFIB simply don't know what they're talking about.

This point of view is reinforced when they claim that "Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending". Inexplicable capitalisation aside, no source (or even any concrete figures) for these mysterious "demographics" is cited. I'll cite my own here, then: in the last month 44.88% of visitors to www.oiccu.org.uk used Firefox compared to 48.96% using Internet Explorer. I'm not a statistician, but 45% doesn't seem "somewhat small", and certainly not in the context of the market leader having a 49% share. (Usual disclaimers apply: not representative, only one site, but no, they weren't all me - Google Analytics ignores requests from my (static) IP address). As for online spending, I certainly don't trust entering my card details into IE any more. Perhaps these demographics came from the same place as the BBC got their figures for Linux users?

Furthermore, if a web designer does not take reasonable steps to ensure his content is accessible to as many browser technologies as possible, then surely not displaying some of that content is a consequence of their actions, rather than a crime on behalf of the visitor? I would count "reasonable steps" to include making sure that your page is valid HTML; the very simple WFIB homepage fails validation on 15 counts. Perhaps that has something to do with it being knocked up in Microsoft FrontPage 4.0.

And I haven't heard anyone object to the small text adverts that Google adds to search results...

4th Week: Song projection...

So, I'm going to try OpenSong and/or Lyricue at the OICCU central meeting on Wednesday. Neither of them, though, let me do as I would like to and run the lyrics with a transparent background over a video window.

Lyricue has an experimental transparent display... but to get it working I've had to hack in Perl a couple of times, and the flicker makes it simply unusable in a production setting. I also don't think Lyricue handles verse transition well at all (it's actually hideous unless I'm missing a trick); OpenSong at least lets you jump from verse to verse as you need to. With the keyboard.

It took me a little while to get Lyricue's Gnome2::Canvas display working... for some reason none of the deb packages I tried had the right Perl bindings as a dependency.

Writing my own song lyric projection software has been on my "to-do" list for a while now, but realistically it's not going to happen before Wednesday at 5pm! And there's only one central meeting after this at Wes Mem, we move back to St. Aldate's next term (thank goodness) where looped video backgrounds are fast becoming the norm. I wonder what OICCU will make of them...

3rd Week: I'm Not American...

...which means Amazon don't want me to pay money to download MP3s. I don't run Windows or Mac, which means iTunes doesn't want my cash. I'm not going to "upgrade" from what Walmart thinks is Windows 98, so they won't accept any finances from me. Neither Virgin nor HMV have heard of Chris Tomlin, PuraShop doesn't do downloads, and I don't see the point in paying vast sums of money for things I won't use (eg a physical CD) and don't need (the packaging, shipping costs etc).

Does the music industry still wonder why people use torrents?

1st Week: SJC MCR Fire

You heard it here first*, folks...

On Friday night an electrical fault with the dishwasher in the MCR kitchen caused a fire at St. John's College. Several fire appliances were in attendance and at one stage seven firefighters were reported to have entered the building in breathing apparatus. The fire had been put out by 11.30pm; MCR members are waiting to be allowed back in to the building to collect possessions, it is hoped within the hour.


*Or maybe second, depending on if you've heard it elsewhere first.

1st Week: From absurd to absurd-er

The ITV-F1 website reports that an FIA scrutineer is to keep an eye on McLaren during the final Grand Prix of the season in Brazil next weekend, due to pressure from the Spanish motorsport federation.

WTF?? Alonso can't hack it that a rookie driver might beat him to the title, and has already thrown his toys out of the cockpit several times this season. And now the FIA are joining in?

The political fight, while usually adding extra tension to a season, this year has overshadowed the real fight on the track. The constructors' championship has been decided by an FIA hearing (which resulted in a completely unprecedented fine for McLaren). The reigning world champion has been acting like a seven-year-old brat being forced to share his toys, and nas asked his bigger friend in the year above to protect him from the "bullies" of his team. And the FIA have shown themselves to be at best incompetent, and at worst corrupt.

Which is a shame, because we've had some of the best races since I started watching Formula 1.

I really hope Hamilton can win at Interlagos. Not because he's British, not because he's been the best driver, and not because it would be the perfect end to the completely unprecedented run of success he's had - let's not forget, at the start of the season we were all amazed he had three consecutive podium finishes! I want Hamilton to win because it would be the perfect two-fingers-up to everyone who's smeared F1 with dirty politics this year, while he's just done his job: get in the car and drive damn fast.

1st Week: From Kubuntu To The World

OK, so after my last post I was feeling a little fed up with the world according to Mark Shuttleworth and the rest of Ubuntu. I decided to take a peek at what else was out there...

I'd picked up a copy of Linux User & Developer magazine, with a cover CD of Sabayon Linux (based on Gentoo). I plugged the CD in and booted my (non-work-critical) laptop, and saw what I could see...

First off, it plays music while it boots. It's an interesting quirk, and not one that gets repeated with the installed version! Incidentally the DVD also came with live options for Tor web browsing plus a handful of games. The CD prompts you to set up Compiz Fusion graphics when X first loads - the first distro I have tried that has integrated such eye-candy from the off. The app package selection was good, and even for a live CD it was very responsive and fast.

Then I decided to see if there are packages to update.


Following instructions found somewhere on their site, I did the "do this after new install" thing... and waited.

And waited.

And then, after three hours of thinking, it came up with a non-error message, telling me to run a different command to find the real error message.

I ran this command. It told me that the package that it was trying to update didn't exist, apparently.

I like Sabayon. I like their attitude: forget finnicking about this license or that license, people want to be able to play MP3s, dammit! A whole lot better than Ubuntu's left-hand-vs-right-hand approach, not including proprietary drivers yet writing a whole lot of code to simplify installation of the same. But I really don't have the time to hunt through pages of documentation just to get at an error message! Not giving the user a useful error message at the off isn't just bad design - in this day and age, it's just rude.

So, Sabayon was out. A mate of mine raves over Fedora (no-longer-Core) 7, so I thought I'd give that a go. They have a KDE spin now. I like KDE, so I tried that.

For some obscure reason, it installed both KDE and Gnome despite me only selecting the former, and ensuring the latter was deselected. I'm fairly certain amaroK doesn't depend on Metacity, the GNOME window manager... The GUI package tool was more clunky than Adept or Synaptic, and the package selection more limited. Beryl was installed by default but not running by default. With it running, it had a tendency to forget to draw parts of the screen, a problem I had not experienced running it under Kubuntu Feisty or with Compiz under Sabayon.

Fedora is known as a good distro in terms of art, and indeed it looked gorgeous for the most part; though the login screen truncated the words "Username" and "Password", and try as I might I couldn't get the fonts to render just as I like them (it reminded me, in fact, of MS ClearType).

Niggles though they were, they were minor ones, and if I had to I could probably get on very well with Fedora. However, I simply just don't have the time to learn all those little differences between RPM and deb-based distros...

Tryint out Gutsy now, a week before launch. Let's see what happens. From Kubuntu, to the world, only to find out I'm back where I started...

1st Week: Gutless Gibbon beta...

GutsyGibbon/Beta/Kubuntu - Ubuntu Wiki

"Kubuntu 7.10 now includes Dolphin as the default file manager.
Dolphin has not replaced Konqueror, but was chosen as the default file
manager to introduce new users to file management a bit easier than
what Konqueror could do. The main focus of Dolphin is usability with
the following features:

• a navigation bar for URLs allowing quick navigation through your file system

  
  

• split views

  
  

• and more...

  
  

Dolphin, unlike Konqueror, does not provide browser support as well as some of the advanced KIO slaves and options that Konqueror provided, therefor easing the use of the application."

Typo aside - removing features != ease of use. I'm sorry, it just doesn't! Grammer desaster as this entry is, it otherwise seems rather flawed...

• Hiding the file tree from new users simply means they do not know that their filesystem is a tree. The locations seem disparate and unconnected. (The exact opposite of Windows' infinite-loop thing, I guess.) Most users will (should) be familiar with hierarchical file trees anyway from Windows (though I admit I don't use it often enough to be able to say for sure).
  
• Konqueror has split views. The Kubuntu devs disabled that feature by default. Go figure.
  
• So being able to just drag files from a local directory to (say) an FTP server, an SFTP server, over infra-red or Samba is more difficult than navigating to your local directory (without seeing the tree), then thinking, "Ah, that *is* where that file is... now what app do I need to load to transfer it using method x?", loading the app, navigating AGAIN to the directory...

But it's OK, they haz sexy graf1x! (Yes, I'm falling out of love with this distro.)

A Thought From The Wilderness

Enough already.

Nothing can dull the pain of those still grieving? Maybe not. They say time is a healer, and God certainly is.

Can anything justify what happened that day? Certainly not.

But is every single year, re-opening that old wound that has already marked and shaped the 21st century, going to help?

I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories - the idea that "9/11" was constructed by the Bush administration is patently absurd. But now it's all Bush can do to drag people's minds back to the day America was attacked, because nothing but the raw emotion of that awful day can shroud the disasters his policies are making in the Middle East. Only by ensuring the wounds are fresh, the pain is still strong, have his warmongering policies survived six years.

Now, should someone criticise US "foreign policy" (or rather, military operations), Bush just needs to pull out the "9/11" card and he's won the argument.

And what _really_ gets to me, is that the whole thing is framed as some sort of good vs. evil, Christian vs. evil-terrorist-guys battle. A year after the WTC attacks, Bush quotes from John 1: "This ideal of
America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this
harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the
darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it." But note something very significant yet missed by most of the media at the time : Bush has replaced Jesus (the 'light' John was referring to) with the American Dream, a fact that seems to have been overlooked by Bible Belt America. (Stephen Chapman commented on this in more depth, in November 2002.)

I submit to you: America's response to the attacks on September 11th 2001 is not just un-Christian, it is anti-Christian. Bush himself, Sept. 11 2001: "Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America."

There are many in America who are not Christian, both supporters and opponents of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't seek to preach to them; my plea comes from Scripture.

Paul writes in Romans: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." (Rom 12:14 NIV). And from Jesus himself:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that
you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5: 43-47 NIV)

That is the true Christian response. Nobody said it was the easy response. The easy response was to fight back; if someone strikes you on the cheek, strike him back with your cruise missiles, right? That's human nature. Wait a sec... "Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of
human nature."

We can't escape the fact that we are human, imperfect, even evil. But for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that is all we would ever be; but we as Christians are called to be perfect, as God is perfect - something only possible by God's grace. America chose to listen to America, and not God; and I believe that only God can clean up the mess that this first decade of the 21st century has left.

I hadn't planned to write such a long post tonight; this has been on my heart for a long time. What triggered it was a forum post by "Silentbrick" (a player of the MMO game Eve Online):

Never Forget

Never Forgive.

I'm not going to voice my opinion here. This isn't the place for it.
But the four words above are the ones that will always be tied to this
date for me.

There is still so much anger, hurt and grieving over that day, not just in America but around the world. But I believe there is also a loving, healing God who is waiting for His children to turn to Him for comfort, and through Him and Him alone finding the strength to not just forgive, but to bless those who have persecuted them.

7th Week: London 2012 Logo

Here's a pleasant break from revision... One of these logos is the real London 2012 logo. It cost (apparently) £400,000 and was designed by Wolff Olins (WARNING: Flash-based site, and the little HTML they use is buggy too). The other two were cooked up in about 10 minutes by readers of the BBC News website. Can you tell the genuine one? You may be unpleasantly surprised.