OK, everyone seems to be doing the damned thing...

Feminine You scored 46 masculinity and 66 femininity!

You scored high on femininity and low on masculinity. You have a traditionally feminine personality.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 23% on masculinity You scored higher than 65% on femininity

Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I read Go Flock Yourself for refreshment from hype and bullshit. Sure, I use web apps that have been inflicted after the event with the "Web 2.0" label; I even write web code using XMLHttpRequest and the like: I still cherish any snarky skepticism I find about the latest XML-empowered folksnonomic web, life and world transformative paradigm that lurches briefly into the light.

Imagine my surprise then, when, amongst all the deconstruction of empty pseudo-technical rhetoric, they posted Web2.0 is the anti-open source which nicely expresses my own discomfort about and ultimate distrust of flickr, del.icio.us, Amazon, Google and all the other closed-source, proprietary web apps out there, for all that I use them. Publishing an API is not the same as opening your source; what grounds (other than naïve optimism) have you for trusting, say, flickr? Or Yahoo!? Or Yahoo!'s shareholders? (trust me: no public company has any loyalty to its customers whatsoever; it's a one-way transaction).

Cynicism isn't always a bad thing: when you pass your data out of your control to a third party in return for the synergistic power of social networking and, real or illusory, community, just be aware that you're doing so.

You might recall that the BBC offered the concerts broadcast in its Beethoven season for download, and many, many people did indeed download them, to the horror of the music industry. Never mind that the extra exposure and publicity and enjoyment certainly resulted in a net increase in classical CD sales. Never mind that these concert seasons are paid for out of the licence fee that we (pretty much) all in the UK pay.

It's the same mindset that regards stopping even one "fraudulent" or "undeserved" benefit payment as infinitely more important than making sure that all those who actually need that benefit get it, even when the control measures, bureaucracy and enforcement required cost hugely more than any conceivable "overpayments" they avoid. It's power, resentment and control - against generosity of spirit and what should be common fucking sense.

Anyhow.

Because of the Cartel's bleatings, the BBC are planning to restrict availability of downloads during the forthcoming Bach season. If like me and like the Open Rights Group you think this is a foolish, short sighted, counterproductive, mean and cowardly policy, you might like to mail rufus [at] openrightsgroup [dot] org to add your signature to ORG's open letter to Roger Wright, the controller of Radio 3.

Unaccountably, I missed two sections off the jobs and aspirations meme yesterday, so here they are, FWIW:

I have also spent a lot of time as a...
social cripple and generally disfunctional human being; also, a lot of time, as they say, getting my head together - by myself, in healing and therapy workshops, and being whacked about the head with a wet fish by people who, unaccountably, didn't give up on me (thanks!). I carry my past still, of course, but it's a lot less heavy these days :)

I am happy/hideously disappointed with my career choice...
It works for me. Programming, in the broadest sense, really is my one outstanding skill and getting paid to do what I love is not in any way a bad thing.

The one thing I most wish I could do that I know not how is to articulate my thoughts and ideas well and clearly in words. There are many, many subjects about which I think deeply and hold ideas and opinions that I wish I could share, whether is writing or in speech: I just seem to be unable to translate concepts, thoughts, castles of internal abstraction, into coherent sentences such that I can actually communicate what's in me to you out there.

It's frustrating.

It's ramtops' birthday today - my best friend, business partner, fellow catslave and wife.

...bread machines work a lot better if you remember to put their paddle in first.

That's all.

This posting is a relocated answer to lproven here on the subject of spraying pigs' blood at Muslim terrorists.

Liam said: They want to kill us and in return you want to /understand their motivations and cultural context?/ I sit amazed.

"They" are people. Just like you and I. The idea that "terrorists" and "rapists" and "cabinet ministers" and all other identifiable subgroups of humanity that do evil and (apparently) incomprehensible things are somehow different from "us"; that we, living through similar events, placed in equivalent situations wouldn't react in a similar way is a nice, comfortable illusion. It's "them" that are bad'n'wrong, not "us". "We" would never behave that way.

Sorry.

Yes "we" would.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't protect ourselves against attack from anyone and anywhere that attacks us: what I am suggesting is that we maybe look at longer term preventive measures by seeing why some people feel so (otherwise) powerless and angry that they want to attack us and maybe, just maybe, see if it's at least partially because we've backed them into a corner after a couple of millenia of political, military and commercial (to the extent that those three things can be separated) violence.

In what way is using someone's own insane beliefs to prevent them from committing a crime a "lynch mob mindset"?

By dismissing another world-view as "insane", you implicitly dismiss those who hold that world-view which, in turn, renders them "other" and safe to insult, abuse, incarcerate and kill as a collective group. That sounds to me very like the state in which black people were (and to an extent still are) in parts of the US; the state in which gay people are to a significant (but I hope) minority of people in this country; the state in which, increasingly, anyone of a Semitic (or, indeed, Brazillian) appearance is in this country.

Oh, and leaving aside for a moment the spraying of pigs' blood, it would also be nice if the measures taken by our government purportedly to counter the "threat of terrorism" (1) did so, rather than increasing that threat and (2) weren't just more steps to screw down the rest of the population and, as far as they can get away with it, abolish the rule of law using external threat (enemies are necessary to government) as a handy covering excuse.

ramtops, kalunina (who's staying here with us for a few days while doing some studio work further down in Deepest Zummerset), agc and I went to see the "League of Gentlemen are behind you" tour at the Hippodrome last night. I can't really say much without giving things away (it was, as far as I can make out, the opening night of the tour), but jolly fine it was, yes, with full exhibition of the essential underlying tragedy that gives their comedy its form and structure. It was quite rude too.

You won't need telling that sitting near the front of the stalls is a risky proposition will you? I thought not.

Anyhow, that fine event was sandwiched between food (excellent) at Budokan and wine (pretty good too) on our return home, sans agc who had to go East to be prepared for werk today. A good night.

Bristol flickr meet last night, at the Bell off Jamaica Street. On my birthday it was, too, and I certainly had a good time.

I think there must have been something wrong with the beer though, as I feel distinctlyblurrily unwell today. Fragile, even.

Oh well. Chickie shoop for lunch has helped a bit; the Dexter sirloin steaks thawing in the kitchen meat safe should complete the job tonight.

This morning ramtops and I went to the monthly slow food market in Bristol; well, we nearly didn't, as pretty much all of Bristol and, yea, the arteries leading thereto were closed off with essentially sod all in the way of prior warning or indication of alternative routes for the half marathon. Not got any problem with people staggering around the streets and (likely) expiring in worrying quantities as such, but a bit of planning and information for those of us uninterested in such things would have been nice.

Anyhow, we bought quantities of good bread, vegetables and an organic chicken (of which more later), oh and two more jars of the truly wonderful rhubarb and chilli jam that we had thought we'd seen the last of for this year.

Home, and a waiting agc, who was lurking outside our front door armed only with a UPS and a wodge of cash to exchange for ramtops' old G4 power mac. We were also waiting for a guy heading over from Wales to look at our Mitsi FTPO which we're selling and I spent a few interruptions of our lunch (2nd iteration of our beef, barley and veg soup, wth rye and caraway bread from the market. Verr good) trying to guide him and his partner from Clifton, where he'd ended up being squirted out of the chaos that was Bristol, to Long Ashton. Took him for a spin in the car; they went off to look at alternatives at an import dealer, and we've so far not heard back from them. So we've likely not unloaded the thing yet. Know anyone who'd like a black FTO Mivec? :)

Visitors gone, I went to the gym and ramtops set dinner in motion. Hence the cognitive dissonance: we ended up eating roast organic chicken, new spuds roast in olive oil and asparagus whilst watching Supersize Me on DVD. Good film; excellent food; only the barest of connection between the two. The DVD is worth checking out BTW, even if you've already seen the feature: there are a wodge of interesting extras on there, including an extended interview - or, rather, discussion - between Spurlock and Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation.

And so to bed. UPS to cable up tomorrow and, hopefully, ramtops' 2GB will arrive so I'll be putting that in her G5. Oh, and customer werk of course...