A British Dream [brit]

The last few weeks have effectively destroyed my already tenuous belief that the Labour Party under Blair was capable of achieving great things. Regardless of whether or not you believe the veracity and authority of the Hutton report findings, I can come to no conclusion other than the simple fact that our top levels of government are incompetent self serving faceless suits, led by a man more keen on securing his footnote in history than anything else.
Over the next months we will watch our Intelligence Services tear themselves apart, with every mud slinging and blame laden exchange reported instantly across our burgeoning 24 hour media and tabloids; the net result will be (I predict) that any electioneering profit the Hutton report may have imparted on Number 10's incumbent will be washed away by a brutal tidal wave of public distrust.
To focus briefly on what is now becoming something of a Damocles Sword for the Ministry of Defence, MI6 and Downing Street, the '45 minute' claim has now been comprehensively shredded in terms of it's inferred meaning and those that committed the United Kingdom to a second Iraq conflict are shown to be complete imbeciles; incapable of either providing, or asking for, information which any member of Joe Public asks time and time again - '45 minutes? what does that mean exactly?'.
So I look to the opposition to provide balance, redress, and forward thinking suitable for these difficult times; and am pleased, if not a little dubious (policy is after all only finalised after the soundbites and surveys are tallied) at the Conservative's 'A British Dream'.
You may remember back in blog 551 I drew your attention to the possibility that in Michael Howard, the languishing out of touch 'old boy' Tories may finally find a man capable of presenting the electorate with a real choice come polling day; and it's with no small amount of pleasure that I read today his vision to create A British Dream.
The American Dream (aka 'Rags to Riches') is well known, after all their history is littered with ordinary folk ending up as the very greatest Americans at the top of their game; but as Michael Howard points out - in the USA, whilst the ability to achieve is there, those that do are generally the exception to the rule.
I suppose it's worth pointing out blog 621 by Houmous, regarding the often unpalatable and indeed sometimes uncomfortable notion of patriotism; or rather, the fact he is (like I suspect a lot of people) actually proud to be British. In America, such notions are embraced unashamedly, in fact often to a degree which is cringeworthy and bordering on embarrassing; but in Britain, to declare yourself a patriot, is to declare yourself anything from a xenophobe to a small minded fascist - certainly if the often raving left wing press are concerned.
I feel this is where my tentative support for the Conservatives is starting to come from; in defining such a bold vision as a 'British dream' and yet instill the notion of practical achievable goals (which in fairness, boil down to money and success) we have the possibility that they are moving the idea of openly expressed patriotic feeling into mainstream politics; outside of course the traditional pomp & tedium of state 'celebrations'.
Of course, there is an enormous way to go before press calls and soundbites resolve into anything concrete; but for now, I have to say that Michael Howard has put his best foot forward and let's hope continues to do so.

Restoring my faith in TV (Angels in America) [brit]

Last night saw the final part of the 6 hour long (2 * 3 hour episodes) HBO epic, 'Angels in America'.
Quite simply this film - an adaptation of Tony Kushner's play of the same name - was awesome; absolutely stunning, and had us hooked from the very start.
Set in New York during the mid 80's AIDS epidemic, it looked long and hard at difficult questions, rolling the unhappy bedfellows of politics, religion, relationships and sexuality around with enormous skill; and setting against it a cast which couldn't have been any better.
Al Pacino produces what is already (and I agree completely) being known as his best ever career performance, as one of the two principal characters heading towards a 'hard death' with a syndrome which swept almost unchallenged through predominantly gay communities for the best part of a decade.
It's being shown again on Film Four and will undoubtedly be released on DVD, if you get a chance to see it, do - it's quite simply the best bit of TV drama to hit the airwaves in a very very long time; kudos to HBO.

Desert Combat 0.7 [lurks]

After a heck of a lot of farting around, I managed to get our server set up with Desert Combat 0.7 well enough. Vaped punkbuster (don't see this as a cheating game and the on-screen spam and start-game lag is bloody annoying) and sorted new remote admin version which works with 1942 version 1.6. Had a bit of a run around in DC and I thought I'd report on the new version.
Seems draw distances are huge now. As an example, on El Alamein as coalition, you can grab a Bradley and pound a T72 on the mountain ridge near the south flag. This has gotten a bit weird because they have also increased the projectile drop on the MBTs so at range, they're fair game for light tanks. The light tanks have had their cannons significantly upgraded too - in particular the turret angle seems to have been increased.
Apparently C4 is toned down so two are needed for a tank. I don't think that'll make much difference really. Other than this, so far I haven't noticed much but then this was supposed to be essentially a performance booster. There's a fair number of little tweaks I noticed too, crosshairs - that sort of thing.
There seems to be a fair bit of changes made to the balance of weapons but I think we'll need a lot more play to tell.

Souperb! [lurks]

I've been making soups a bit over the last few months, every coupla weeks sort of thing. I think there's another recipe of mine here but last night I made what I consider to be the finest soup I have ever tasted. It's not hard to make and even though you're all wankers that eat frozen pizza and Tesco ready meals, I thought I'd share it with you anyway.
This is what I call Lurk's Carrot and Coriander 'Bradley' Broth. Here's the stuff you're going to need;

• Bag of carrots
• One big potato
• One red onion
• One leek
• One tomato
• Few cloves of garlic
• Fresh coriander
• Cream tub
• Wedge of butter
• Salt and Pepper
• Vegetable stock crap
• Garam Masala powder

You can use a regular onion if you must. The key is the fresh coriander though, you can buy this from most green grocers and increasingly supermarkets in little plastic hanger. If you prefer a slightly more tangy soup, you can substitute the cream for plain yoghurt.
Peel carrots, chop roughly and slap in a pot just covered with boiling water and let it rip on the heat. They need more cooking so get them on first. Get a big ass pot out and slap in your dollop of butter and bring up to medium heat. Bung in the chopped leek until it's mostly broken up, then the onion and chunky chopped peeled garlic cloves.
When they're all soft and stuff, bung in the cubed peeled potato and then remove your carrots from that vigorously boiling water you've got them in and chuck them in the big ass pan too. This leaves your water that the carrots have been boiling in. Now bung in a vege stock cube or better yet that Swedish organic shit you get in the health food shops, that stuff is the nuts. Vegetable Bullion or something.
When your vege stock is all dissolved and rocking, bung that in your big ass pan. Slap in the tomato and almost all of the chopped fresh coriander. Leave some of the coriander spare for garnish later on.
Now you wanna get your big ass pot on a low heat, cover it and have it sit there gently bubbling for 20-30 mins or so getting stirred every now and again. After that, everything will be soft but the carrots will probably be a little firm still, this is good. Then pull that off the heat and get in your blender widget and set to work blending it like a bastard. Bang in the cream at this point and more water so it's at the desired consistency. As standard it'll be a thick broth but it's up to you. This ought to make enough to serve 4-6 people.
After that blending, it'll be looking like a wicked soup now. Bang it back on the heat, slap in some salt and pepper and maybe a half teaspoon of garam masala powder. When it's nicely warmed up again, you can serve. Don't boil it! Chuck a few coriander leaves on top of your servings to garnish and utter something suitably chef-like such as 'Voila!' and you're done!
I'd chow it down with lightly toasted olive oil based bread like foccacia or ciabatta. You wont believe you made it.

Fox News gets Fair and Balanced on the Beeb [shinji]

I'm no great fan of much of the British media, particularly our tabloid newspapers and the 'tabloid of the airwaves', Sky News. I find it pretty worrying how these news sources, rather than sticking to what they're actually good at - namely convincing Laura from Milton Keynes, 23, to stick her chest out, and devoting two page spreads to the mundane lives of soap stars - attempt to cover serious issues like the Hutton Report or the Iraq War or the cloning debate by dumbing them down into a few hundred words and a 'hi-larious' headline in five-inch high letters.
However, my trips to the USA have convinced me of one thing; when it comes to dumbing things down, the Americans lead the world, and we can but stare in awe at their magnificent abilities in this regard.
The best example of this yet is Fox News - a news channel which came from being quite small prior to September 11, 2001 to being one of the largest and most influential in the USA right now. They accomplished this by being relentlessly patriotic (often overstepping the mark into the realms of jingoistic propaganda, in my own opinion) and right-wing, political leanings which appeal to a lot of current thinking in the USA. Throughout the second Gulf War, Fox played like a true propaganda channel - with a flapping stars and stripes in the background at all times, and American soldiers referred to at all times as 'heroes' and 'liberators'. That's fine; you always support your own soldiers in a war. Putting the caption 'March Madness' underneath images of the million-odd anti-war protestors in London last year, well, that grated a little more - especially from a station whose tagline is 'Fair and Balanced'.
You can probably imagine, then, how Fox News reported on the Hutton Report. Or at least, you probably think you can. However, this video clip - a genuine clip of John Gibson, who presents a one-hour news story each evening on Fox and always rounds off with a short opinion piece such as the one you're about to see - left me absolutely aghast, even as someone who's pretty cynical about the American media in the first place.
[Fox's Fair and Balanced take on Hutton]
It's worth bearing in mind, when you watch this, that millions of Americans use Fox as their primary news source - and will have taken this item as gospel truth. After all, how could a man with such an architectural miracle of a haircut be speaking a word of a lie...?

Designing the ultimate lair [am]

Hush and speak not the word 'gazump' cos I don't wanna hear it. (Note for foreigners and other aliens, this is the word used for when you've already got an offer down on a property and you think you're going to buy it and then some other b4stardos over-bids you even though you've agreed the sale and you lose out and then you lay waste to them, their prodgeny and their lands and consequently wind up doing a fifteen stretch with a twenty two stone armed robber who wants to be addressed as 'Glenda'). But & however, on the basis that things do go ahead as planned, me, the missus and Nipper Jim are moving down (alright mostly across) to the coast in Whitstable.
Now, as previously babbled about on some EED London drinkorage (you should try it, you'd like it), I am threatening to use some of this newly aquired space to host a spring or summer lan. Given that we have now rejected public lans having utterly monstered the i-Series with HouLan(TM), the edition of AmLan will add up to a really very cool private lan series agenda for EED. This should come as no surprise since you are already on the homepage of the staggeringly leet. However on the other hand (there are also some fingers), the impending move leads me to a bigger fish to fry and a burning question I must ask our blog community (which I do so now because I can nearly hear the Lurker shouting 'Thank Minter for that! Get to the point man!');
What would you put in your ultimate lair?
Yes, in this new gaff there is a room built into the top of the house which runs along a the roof and consequently provides me (until I'm kicked out by a younger generation in future years) with a 22 by 14 foot lair! So basically I can fill it with what I like and have plenty of space to play with. So what would you have in your dream lair and how would you design it? Any resources you've seen with cool lairs / boys rooms or 'dens'? Pour yourself a strong voddy and tonic from that lemonade bottle you keep under the desk and let your imagination roam.....

The lite(s)-on [spiny]

In an attempt to avoid drowning in CDRs I've slapped in a DVD writer, specifically the LiteOn LDW-811S. It's far too late of hour to contemplate a full review but my initial impressions are:

• It's small, a good few cms. Could be handy if you're building a shuttle system.
• Seems to work, haven't had a bad burn yet.
• Build quality isn't up to my Aopen CDRW & no where near a plextor. Treat it gently.
• Backs up protected CDs very nicely.
• CDR writings quick too, 40x

All in all, a nice drive. Not sure if it's really worth the extra over the 4 speed one, especially as this one is only 8x on DVD+ and not DVD-.