perlmonger | Recent Entries

ramtops and I just had a... well, row would be a gross overstatement: a failure of communication, caused by a peculiarity in my mechanisms of perception. The details are unimportant (an iTunes migration issue to her new G5), but I wanted to check what was in a specific directory. She told me, but I still needed to actually see an ls output for the data to register properly in my mind. The upset was that she (understandably!) perceived this as my not trusting what she told me, which I do.

What this highlighted is that I process information I hear very differently from that which I see: I knew what was in that directory, but I - in some way - couldn't process that information in the context of our iTunes configuration problem without visual confirmation.

Left brain / right brain issue, I guess. Or maybe I'm just peculiar.

bradhicks points out how the events of hurricane Katrina demonstrate how deeply ingrained racialism is in US society. Read it.

And in UK society.

And in me.

Being aware of a problem, acknowledging it openly, is the first step in dealing with it; it's not the last step. Also, while I'm at it, what's your first reaction to the word "Muslim" as contrasted to, say, "Christian"? How about "woman" and "man"?

[via

flickgc if anyone cares]

Well, there's a thing.

Contrary to the Truth as expounded by Pat Robertson, it seems that statistically, natural disasters could be averted by Baptists coming out as gay.

[Many thanks to

nostalgia_lj for this revelation]

Home Office junior minister Andrew Burnham MP turned up in Bristol, at the Galleries this morning, as part of the stealth government biometric passport tour. "Stealth" because they don't announce their schedule and, indeed, refuse to release it if anyone has the temerity to enquire. NO2ID found out about it anyhow and let the non-innocent (like me) into the secret.

About a dozen of us turned up to present a viewpoint contrary to the database state, with two large banners that (with any luck) will show up on at least the local TV news tonight. More to the point, we failed to get the minister to answer any difficult questions (there's a surprise) and handed out leaflets to a largely receptive passing public - it was quite gratifying how many peoples' first reaction was to thrust yet-another-leaflet aside but who, on spotting the title, took it with genuine interest.

As to what happened to a selection of Bristol LibDem luminaries who promised to turn up and didn't, I know not. Eaten by proponents of Orange Book, perhaps.

Cops moving in behind Cindy Sheehan
Originally uploaded by AnomalousNYC.

I've not blogged anyone else's photo from flickr before, but this is something that likely won't be picked up by mainstream media so no apologies.

Monday afternoon in Union Square, Cindy Sheehan and several members of the Gold Star Families For Peace, a group of parents who have lost children to Bush's War against Iraqis. Cindy has become something of a national celebrity over the last year.

Several people came with Cindy to the city to speak out against the war. They spoke at Camp Casey NYC, a 24-hour vigil going on in Union Square for the last 5 weeks.

In the background you can see a group of NYPD Captains rushing into the crowd, grabbing one of the event organizers and pulling him out of the group by the neck - 3 others around him are holding tightly onto him to keep him from being pulled away. You can't see a wall of another two dozen cops standing furher behind. The cops proceded to get very rough, shoving and pushing people, and the scene got a little ugly, with a lot of cursing and screaming at the cops. They quickly unplugged the microphone and hauled away the sound equipment along with the event organizer. This morning at 6:45 a.m. they came back and attacked the group at the site again.

and people wonder why I don't have any "loyalty cards"...

TotH to

ramtops for the link.

Courtesy

codepope elsewhere comes the latest whizzo wheeze for club entry control. It's more of the same of course, and any venue that insists on anything like this won't get my patronage: I don't trust club owners, I don't trust who they'll sell the data to and I sure as fuck don't trust the gummint or its organs of security and enforcement.

Some of the comments attached to that link make the scariest reading though: it's the "I don't really care; I'm not doing anything wrong" attitude. Not that they don't care - it's their privacy and personal data after all; their business - it's that they don't care that other people care. It's not important to me, therefore it's not important. A charming and truly frightening attitude.

John Scalzi, reviewing, amongst other things, The Road to Dune parenthetically ponders the following:

A China Mieville Dune novel -- now that would be fun

After my head finished imploding, I actually agree: what would Miéville, from his socialist perspective, do with the politics of Herbert's 'verse?

New monitor! 1920x1200!!

Wheeeee!!!!

(ok, so it's only an extra 320 pixels per scanline, but replacing my trusty-but-hulking old 19" Iiyama with this Dell calls for a small w00t!, I think :)

Now to see if I can fit one of

ramtops's old 1280x1024 NECs where my current (1024x768) monitor monitor sits on the shelves, and use that to replace the server monitor on the KVM next door.

It hadn't occured to me, but September 11th 1973 was the date of the US-orchestrated overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected government in Chile.

My reminder came via a wonderful remembrance of that particularly ignoble moment (in a long history of ignobility) of US foreign policy at Creek Running North.

Read it.

And maybe put a wager on how long before the same happens in Venezuela.

^{[ETA: typo corrected]}

Looks like the wingnuts are closing in on flickr; it's not just AnomalousNYC who's been hit by "may offend" trashing, cobalt123 has been hit as well.

I wonder how many others.

"Interestingness" is IMO a bad idea (or, at any rate, it is with the current algorithm that's used to calculate it), but whether it is or no, that any three random people can have any photo they disagree with pulled from public tag searches is wrong wrong WRONG.

ephemeral
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

I spent this morning on a focus group deconstructing the ontogenic paradigm of the redevelopment and extension of Colston Hall.

Bizarrely enough, I (and my fellow enfocussed beings) thought the plans were pretty much a Good Thing, with caveats that they not make the place only attractive to white, middle class, constipated arts drones and likewise don't make the interior an entirely sterile plate glass and chrome wedding cake of a platform game.

I returned home, clutching a £50 note, a bunch of spring onions and a bottle of concentrated apple and blackcurrant juice to find a dying, now dead, dragonfly on our patio.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

...but even so, why did I dream about Kirsty McCall guesting on stage at a Hawkwind gig? I mean, leaving aside that the woman's dead, it's about as unlikely as Rolf Harris singing a Led Zeppelin song.

Errm.

and convert them to the One True Way.

Thanks to Pharyngula, some Righteous durum wheat from the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Current Mood: hoping Arnold isn't watching

I've just been reading (on cix:bikers if anyone cares) that the UK Official Line on learning to drive now is that using engine braking or even, Pry Mincer forfend, changing down to get more engine braking is bad, wrong and generally verboten.

I can just see all these new, approved drivers coming down a hill in Wales or the Highlands or the Pennines or anywhere not in Lincolnshire or East Anglia happily controlling their speed in 5th with their brakes until the magic smoke exits from their poor overstressed brakepads and they end up performing a graceful loop over a drystone wall followed by a plummet to a reservoir 500 feet below.

Still, their clutchplates won't wear out, so that's ok...

Can I just say that cold Pilsner Urquel is a Very Fine Thing after half an afternoon in the sun taming the post-Leylandii East edge of the garden?

We might even get something we want to grow there now there's a remote chance of light, and three less groundwater-suckee triffids consuming their resources.

more plasma, stat
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

OK... The last 24 photos from Team Waste Summer Camp I'm bothering to upload are there on flickr now. You can start at this one if you're so inclined.

It occurs to me that TWSC is a sort of British, slighly scaled down, Burning Man festival, only there isn't much in the way of desert in South Wales. Burning we've got though. Oh yes.

Maria
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

Two days on, two vile days of fighting DDoS while trying to meet a client deadline, and most of the destressing from the weekend has gone. Ho hum.

Still, that was I think the best Summer Camp yet; had an excellent time right through from Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon when we finally left. We had

ramtops's daughter

kalunina with us too and I fear she has been assimilated into the madness: she's already making plans to turn up again next year.

I only wish I could remember more... I had long and involved conversations with Maria (WINOLJ) on Friday night, and with

mmcpoland and

kjersti on Saturday night, but sadly little detail remains. I do seem to end up talking to women, though; I wonder if that's because I identify more easily with them, because they're more into the sort of drunken conversations I favour, or because men in general aren't? Probably all three.

Anyhow, as of now, I've got as far as 5:30pm on Saturday with photo uploads. You can see mine thus far, and

etriganuk has sent up a Team Waste photopool where you'll find a good few more.

Yes, it's another bloody meme, gacked from

ixwin on this occasion. I wasn't going to bother posting it, but the idea of ( khaylock/kjersti OTP OMGWTFBBQ!!!11!eleventy!! changed my mind... )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

dead brains don't dance

beyond the last visible dog

channels of perception

"...but some of my best friends are black"

FWIW...

CRP0

the innocent have nothing to fear...

NYPD Red

consumption

ostrich

Hmmm...

bounce

9/11

flickr politics

"Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."

OK, so I'm odd...

Smite the Godless with your Noodly Appendage!

madness

blessed relief

more plasma, stat

Summer Camp

strange... very strange...

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July 2013

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