It's So Easy.

So, I finally upgraded from Ubuntu E (edgy eft) to Ubuntu F (feisty fawn).
The discussion boards were filled with all the chat about how easy and relatively trouble free the upgrade is, and how Linux finally had it's very own 'Wow' factor.

Makes you wonder if the Uber-Linux race has shit for brains or if they are just trying to stifle dissent by forestalling it.

They would put shit in a Mars Bar wrapper, eat it and say "Yum, real smooth!"

I tried for ten days to use every form of upgrade; the online version never manged to download most of the files, and the 'alternative CD' was useless and now seems to be unavailable.
At least the system wasn't broken though.

So yesterday, reading stories of how Mono finally works with feisty fawn, I took a deep breath and downloaded a clean install which I burned to a CD.

I installed feisty.

The Grub booter wouldn't install, which meant I lost access to my other systems.
I tried Lilo, which just goes straight to Linux.
Again, no other systems.
So I tried the re-install twice.
I obtained more and more errors,; apparently, fantastically, the CD had become corrupted.
I hash-summed the download; it was fine, so I burned another CD and reinstalled.
This time consolidating all my old partitions into one(except NTFS); Grub loader installed.

Then I went for the Desktop; this broke three times.

After 6 hours, at 0130 hrs, I gave up.

At 830 in the morning I finally used the '-f' command-line argument to make a good desktop installation.

The way Ubuntu suggested this was actually good!

Then I did all the old tricks from edgy eft to get the Video drive set up, and with another session in the afternoon, had a functioning, properly scaled desktop working.

Then the music player failed.

After research, I discovered that this is a feisty bug which they haven't fixed yet.

It is 2030 on Sunday.

I am going to make a cuppa, then see if the MonoDevelop package really does work now.

I'm not holding out any great hopes.

Meanwhile my old 2000Pro with Realplayer 10 is storming out the Leningrad Symphony;not much trouble there.

Now You See It, Now You Don't!

I've only got one thing to say to the 'ethnic' Russian implants placed by the Soviet colonisers; if you don't want the Estonians to tear down your war memorials, don't conquer their fucking country, don't annex it, don't subject it to two generations of ruin and slavery and if you don't like it, fuck off back to Russia.

Didn't think so.
Outside the influence of the EU in Russia, right?

All Singing From The Same Hymnsheet.

Or-"Why isn't this wheel square?"
I'm an atheist.
But I respect the Christian churches some of the time.
Today the BBC reported on the jailing of a Church of England choirmaster for abusing young boys, three of them, between 1985 and 1990.

It was suggested that the C of E staged a 'cover-up'.

All at once one of those 35-going-on-15 activists who confuse aggression with 'being serious' in their quest to have their useless views taken seriously, started judging the entire church of England in his own terms(which he was sure were our own and those of the ruling bigotry of today) for 'attempting to deflect justice' or some such bowdlerised ignorance.

Now I'm not a god-boy and I don't like physically adult men trying to obtain sexual gratification from children, but I have to say this.

The enduring role and strength of Christianity for 2000 years has been the investment of its energies in the domain of god, not state, not law, not prejudice, right or wrong.
The followers of Jesus do not judge.They render unto Caesar that which is Caesars and unto God that which is God's.

To suggest that this or any other Christian church becomes an instrument of man's 'justice' is an apostacy, a fundamental abuse of freedom, religion, and particularly religion as a repository of human dignity.

These bastards won't be satisfied until every good little citizen concerns himself with the actions of every other good little citizen, until all establishments are slaves to the persecution of the human spirit.

These people are ignorant filthy scum who wish to destroy all privacy, dignity, and happiness.

Shun them.

Canadian Confusion?

On one hand, the Conservative government of Canada has voted to ban incandescent light bulbs, in a Cameron-esque move which violates the right of free trade in Canada.

On the other hand, the Canadian government has broken off talks with the US Department of Homeland Security, after the Americans demanded the 'right' to fingerprint travellers at a proposed forward customs post being mooted for the Buffalo Peace Bridge.

The Canadians said that the Canadian Bill of Rights forbade the fingerprinting of people who had not been charged with a criminal offence.
That's better than Britain, better than America.
Good one, Canadians.

Leeds Scenes News Forgot.

Above was the scene at the Total Station in Armley last week.
The flowers were for a Latvian economic migrant beaten to death one night.

Unlike the British Citizen who was shot in Roundhay at the weekend, he didn't make the national TV channels.
But somebody remembered.
Further down, the street was littered with English Party literature suggesting that 'foreigners be sent home to put our people back to work'.






You may remember from about a year ago I reported on the brawling at a Middleton school(South rather than West Leeds).
Then, I took pictures of the massive police presence.
One year on, the gates are padlocked, the grass is growing and the lower windows are covered in steel sheeting; the school has been removed from existence, new buildings and all.

That's what passes for solving the problem.

I Shouldn't Flatter Myself..

but maybe somebody else does.
It's getting on for two years and I've had lot's of interviews, no joy.
Subtle hints, and an apparently endless attempt by various 'professional' people to 'prove', especially to me, that I don't know what I do, and can't do what I can.
C? We'll try and prove you can't do it.
C++? If you can't do our test, we'll show you the door; if you can, we'll smile and show you the door.
VB?We'll go straight to .NET and ask you about 'Attributes'
C#? We'll come out with the standard stumper about Generics, 'cos that's the boring bit.
If I was paranoid I'd think that somebody was trying to tell me something.
As I'm not, I can only assume that mediocrity is rife in Britain.

But what's this?
My agent couldn't get e-mail to me with the client details.
Sometimes my mobile works and sometimes it doesn't.
The client received no information either, and eventually got the wrong CV.

Is placing obstacles supposed to win friends and influence people?
Or am I being gratuitously persecuted just because 'somebody can'?

Sorry.

Boris is dead.
Boris didn't necessarily understand what it meant to be free.
But the picture above shows he could try.
Boris didn't necessarily understand the essentials of financial good governance.
But he knew what was needed to sweep slavery away.

Boris was the Mayor of Moscow.
He was not the head of the Politbureau.

But when he was mayor, and the Red Army mounted a putsch, he did this.

He rallied support. Five light tanks grouped around the Duma. Boris stood on top of one of them, gathered a crowd of 'freedom loving people' and shouted defiance at the forces of repression.
He inspired a generation of Russians inspired by the West.

Putin?
Too bad.

Rest well Boris.

Veeve La Fronce

It is, as Mme Valvoline has just said, a clear choice on May 6th.
She thinks it is a choice between her and M.Sarcophagus, the candidate from the 'right'.
Or was that the 'centre-right', rather like the fairly secret ambition department of a foggily rheumy-eyed apology for a little bit less of tax, eventually, one day, if the republic doesn't collapse completely under pressure from the union hold-outs?

Usually all they have to do is hang on long enough for a significant part of the staggered French government to go down in a wave of unpopularity and then nothing happens.

Mme Valvoline on the other hand, only has to oil the machinery and grease a few die-hard palms with state indulgences and the beleagured people of Fronce will be positively bowing with gratitude at the lack of bloodshed and property damage and ushering in a new golden age, one without gold where everyone is aged by teatime and wishing they were on 'gronde vaconses'.

As they soon will be when early retirement and an anticipatory collapse of patriotism prevent further generations of the French from making their lives a 'fraternite' sacrifice, and go for a little 'egalite' instead.

No.

The clear choice is only whether or not to vote, and the problem is that more people have voted today than for forty years, so appearing to validate the 'grand guignol' of the French state.

This time they have the prospect of a woman to rejuvenate interest.
But this could be the last time.

The delay will last, oh, another ten years, like a shot in the arm for a heavily botoxed child of 1968.

Then again, looking at the pictures above, it could be a choice between somebody whose expression reminds me of someone about to swear vilely while brandishing a knitting needle at my groin(for my own good of course), and somebody who has just farted in a lift and is now sauntering insolently down the street to take a little Pernod.

Ha ha ha! I'm Weeping!

Blair called the Conservatives 'lacking in political ideals'.

Oh Christ!
I think I'm going to piss myself!

The Death Of Pleasure

Coming home today through a rough neighbourhood I saw some guy coming out of the Fish & Chip shop.
Now I sometimes do this; I eat my chips and I find them satisfying.

This fellow was dressed in clean, new casual clothes.
He walked a few feet and stopped with the packet open, and began shovelling chips into his distorted mouth as though he hadn't eaten in a month.
But he was well-fed.

The expression on his face was one of slightly belligerent invisibility, as though frightened that somebody would spoil his hurried moment of physically crude gratification.

And that is what passes for a life in England.
That is the sole gesture towards moral existence, the refuge of a retarded 12 year old from a background of abject poverty, but projected onto prosperous middle-age.

The mental holocaust in this country is such that only the most trivial of (guilty) pleasures are allowed, and then crudely and fearfully, as though the gods that do not tolerate will appear at any instant and not-tolerate even a bag of chips.

Think of this desperate debasement, self-imposed by a lifetime of habit, next time you hear the miserable middle-class female pretence of obssession with chocolate.

Is this what people have come to?

The End.

These pictures were taken at the main entrance to the former Kirkstall Forge in Leeds.
Until 2002 the forge produced axles for heavy goods vehicles.

The site is a large one adjoining the Leeds-Liverpool canal and the River Aire.

It has been a forge since the early 12th century, about 900 years.
The forge was started by the monks of nearby Kirkstall Abbey, and survived the dissolution of the abbey by Henry VIII .

But apparently in 2002 some suited daleks from some college or other decided to shut the place down, and now it is being demolished.

Thanks boys.
Buy yourselves another mortgage, maybe a sports car if you're feeling a little mid-lifey.
And if the wife has left you, go and stay in Ireland at a gutted, sorry converted castle to 'find yourself'.

Don't mind us.
We'll just carry on struggling in the world you're turning to shit.

Sorry.

Chinese shit.

Care Of Samizdata.

This is Iowahawk!

Used Car Salesman

I think Doh-Boy will make a jaw-droppingly different Prime Minister.

(I use the term 'Prime Minister' very loosely).

Used Car

The pinnacle of British engineering in the sixties, this vehicle lived on in the atrocious Marina.
The Morris 1800 became the basis of the Citroen range of the seventies, after Issigonis was kicked out of BMC for being 'too radical'.

Pathetic bunch of bums.

Anyway, I have been watching their descendents on TV adverts today.
They usually appear as adverts for spectacles;
you know- short, greying hair, eternal simper, oblong spectacles, fashionably unshaven.

Perfect bromide for the modern age.

Eyes as cold as snot, with the trace of smile-wrinkles from manipulating oysters from the shell of humanity, all to go up in flames on the funeral pyre of honesty.

(Vomit).

All Citizens Of Mongo Will Rejoice

...on pain of death!
Today is my 46th birthday.

Open-Source Scientific Progress.

Granted they have been working on the Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxfordshire for decades;
granted that the Torus uses magnetic containment to keep the fusion plasma away from the vacuum chamber walls.

The JET can now produce enough energy for a small town but only for a few seconds.
80% of the fusion energy is expelled as Neutrons, at a velocity that the magnetic bottle cannot contain, which means that the vacuum chamber walls must be replaced every five years.

This is a problem.

Now.

Where else is there a vacuum chamber? With walls a hundred miles thick that never wear out?

Space.

Put a magnetic bottle in space.
Harvest hydrogen from the near vacuum outside the bottle. Or send it from Earth, or the Moon, or Titan.

The energy would be virtually unlimited.
Getting it down would be a problem, except that we already have an established method for getting fusion energy to Earth-it is called daytime.

However, artificial solar energy would cause the planet to warm up.
So another means is required; beaming down energy by microwave is something I would consider risky.

What about non-visible laser?
Atmosphere.

Tethers?
That might work.

So, the biggest problem is the creation of orbital tethers to transmit the power down; granted that many people see the solution as mining Helium3-rich minerals on the Moon(less Neutron emissions) it might still represent an advantage to place the fusion reactors in orbit, to reduce the expense caused by bringing the stuff all the way down to Earth and getting it to power-stations.

Pardon?

Obviously Minister this is a disaster! We can't have entire units of Royal Navy personnel, with officers, being rounded up by a few crazed Arabs in Dhows and taken to Iran!


So we have to play it down, Humphrey?

We have to deplore it! We must ask for their return in no uncertain manner!

And when we get them back? Courts Martial?

Er, no minister.

What, you ,mean keep it quiet?

Indeed no minister. That would imply that we had something to hush up.

You mean something to be ashamed of?

Yes, minister.

Suppose we let them tell their side of things. Give them permission to talk to the press, even make some money?

An inspired decision, minister!

Even build them into heroes?

Well that would certainly take courage. But not theirs.

Ha ha! No Humphrey. Perhaps we can just talk up the horrific Iranian brutality?

Indeed, yes minister.

Pavlov's Pressmen.

This was the article in the Times of London; rules to be changed? Would people in the Armed Forces now be allowed to fight back?

No.

The rules to be changed are those concerning individual profit from approved manipulation of the press.

Pathetic.

Iran

Called for a goodwill gesture.

I've got one, en passant.

But Come Mein Herren...I Have Chastised You Enough..

This dusky-looking pint is truly pint-sized, only 3.6%, but the flavour is knockout.

It is full of burnt malt and smoked chocolate flavours.
It won't knock you over, it will simply seduce the senses and leave a faint buzz behind.

I forgot the brewery(!) but the beer is called 'Bunny Boiler' and is reminiscent of a more subtle and refined Moorhouses 'Black Cat'.

Truly delicious.

Education, Education, Education.

"The government has failed..."

Has it hell.
The government is succeeding beyond it's wildest dreams (and our deepest suspicions) in what it aims to achieve.

What the government wants to do is create a world in which people like you and I are absolutely extinct, a world in which we perish, either by 'random' murder or by succumbing to social pressures or by succumbing to the utter futility of trying to make a living in a world which has no place for us.

The means to this is 'Education, Education, Education.'

It doesn't matter if they get a few technical facts and targets wrong; these are utter irrelevances designed to confuse us about what the government's motives and concerns really are;
no.
The government wishes to produce a nation of little co-dependent, linked-in freaks that automatically exclude from 'society' anybody who doesn't seem to fit the bigot's bill of regularity.
They have had years to perfect their putsch-terminology, the linguistic abberations needed to fulfill their goals.

So, when Maggie demolishes the old shibboleth 'Society' and replaces it with 'Community', the present-day exploiters attack freedom in exactly the same ways as the enemies that Maggie outraged, but by saying 'Community' every time; so now we have a legion of initiatives, all carried out in the name of communities, that localised, untraceable, unreported and invisible unit of social governance, something that we see just enough of to make us believe, vaguely, that something exists and it's for our benefit.

How the government must chortle with glee, at the quality of this new tool.
No more 'Us and Them' of society.
Only the 'Us' of community, and let's face it, to rail against 'community' requires a whole new raft of explicitness in philosophical realisation, no no-brainers fall to hand.

And who in the world is equipped for that kind of expose?

Well, for one, I am.

Please Release Me...

Let Me Go....
Cause I Don't love you anymore!
Apparently the 'hostages'(little scamps) are to be released, complete with new suits made in Iran.
Ah.
That's all better then.
We've had our medicine, now wash it down with some sugar-suiting.

If...

If anybody knows how to access HTML in the new blogger, let me know.

If anybody tries to sign up with MySpace (a place for friends!) don't tell them who you are or where you live. It's none of their damned business and I am not here to be a victim of the Patriot Act.

If anybody knows a place where we can blog in freedom (without recourse to setting up our own servers), let me know.

Please.

Mad-Mood Dinner-Jar

How the hell are ya mate?
So I says to me missus, I says....

The Last Mimsy

Let's all cash in on the (dead) poet, and make a film called 'The Last Mimsy'.
We can also cash in on Spielberg and we can also cash in on any number of 80s 'kiddy' adventures like ET or the Goonies; we can have a tag-line about the 'adventure of a lifetime', and a load of convenient crap effects produced by CGI.

Then again, why the hell would anyone bother?

Poet's Corner-Lewis Carrol

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.