Was walking around the 'Wharf today and saw a black van which was as dirty as fuck and had a usual finger-etched piece of random grafitti. Now usually this is something incredibly imaginative like "Clean Me" but this was something I haven't seen before which made me laugh out loud; picture it - totally dusted and grimed van with in two foot high letters;
"My bird is this filthy"
Well got a snort out of me. Set me thinking of a couple of others which are some of my favourite film titles ever;
Shaving Ryans PrivatesAnal Kommando {.. I think it's all to do with the K. So heroically, germanically...Arnold...}
and these two from top C-grade movie house Troma;
Surf Nazis Must Die
and the all time classic;
Die Screaming With Sharp Things In Your Head
Tuesday, 30 August 2005
Thursday, 25 August 2005
Shoot Bikers in the face [Slim]
So, Clarkson said motorcyle riders should be shot in the face. He's an opinionated shite, people should be used to that by now. Thing is, the leather clad gay deniers have well and truly spat the dummy out and have organised a petition for his dismissal from the bbc. I'm here to say don't sign that sign this instead. Free speech, yay.
Fontopia EX71SL review [Slim]
While I brought closed cup headphones to AmLan, I quickly realised I was missing out on some quality bleatage from the room, so I plugged my ipod earphones into me lappy instead and blew the fuckers. Doh.
Am I bovvered? Face? Bovvered? They were shit anyway. I still wanted in ear jobbies, so I went a pair of Sony Fontopia isolating jobbies, ex71SL makeashorterlink.com/?C3E352DAB . Instead of sitting in your lugs like regular phones, these things sit in your ear-ole, making an airtight connection. This means that unlike most in ear phones you actually get bass. You get lots of bass in fact, perhaps even a little bit too much if anything, but stuff sounds very nice indeed. Another couple of nice side effects from this in-ear-ole design is that noise is blocked which is ace for walking/biking around heavy traffic and sound leakage is minimal, brill for playing Motorhead in the library.
Couple of downers, first is they're more fragile than regular phones. The in ear stuff is sort of condomish rubber to get a good grip of your ear, and this simply isn't going to be as tough as the hard plastic of regular earphones. Sonys recognised this by shipping em with a hard plastic case plus a soft bag to carry em in, but that's all a bit faffy, I like to wrap me headies around my ipod and pocket it. Second, the sealed ears means you hear quite a bit of your own nose, its like the way your bodies sounds are amplified when you've got blocked up ears, you can hear your feet hitting the ground, stuff like that. Oh they do the sony thing of looping the cable under your chin, which pisses me off too.
Thing is, they sound ace, and I'm prepared to put up with some pain for that, so they get the thumbs up for me.
Monday, 22 August 2005
Panorama vs MCB [Lurks]
I've got to hand it to them, after viewing last nights Panorama show on the tele, it seems like the BBC did the unthinkable. They grew some balls and tackled the thorny issue of the muslim community in the UK following the apparent rise of extremism that lead to the bombings.
I watched it and near as I could tell, they bent over backwards to allow the boss of the Muslim Council of Britain the right of reply on a whole bunch of thorny issues. As the picture built up, it became clear that the MCB isn't in a position of leadership which has a chance of steering the muslim community to deal with extremism. Rather it sees itself as a body that has to right wrongs of the oppressed muslim etc.
Now the latter point is fair enough, and maybe they do need some body to act as a voice whenever the inevitable ugly face of racism appears. However, I think the show adequately called out that there is no actual logic applied to when it is appropriate to step up and beat the drum. Two cases rammed home the point to me; the first was the female student that demanded to be allowed to wear an ankle length dress on religious grounds. This is blatantly a cultural and not a religious issue, no one else has problems with the attire but the MCB turned it into a huge issue, apparently being a case of discrimination.
More recently, in the aftermath of the bombings, they were highly active in criticising the police concerning how they dealt with acts like searching homes and so on. You would have thought that would have been a good time to be helpful but apparently it needed some firmer encouragement to begin the process of getting leaders together to denounce the bombings and so on.
For whatever reason it is, the politically inclined arm of the muslim community (as opposed to the silent majority who view Islam as being a personal and spiritual relationship for them) is capable of some remarkable demonstrations of double standards as was very skillfully demonstrated in the in interview of John Ware (the interviewer and narator of the episode) and Dr Bari, deputy secretary general of MCB and so on.
When taken to task about various highly offensive views that some of the Islamic organisations have that are represented by the MCB (things like no Kaffar can be your friend, the West is generally corrupt etc etc you know the sort), he downplayed all of that saying that these are views and these organisations are entitled to them and the MCB cannot influence them.
And yet... the same chap lead the fight to ban Salman Rushdie's book the Satanic Verses and when quizzed directly, still believes that the book should be banned. So it's fine to ban a view so long as it's anti Islam (even in the case of that, it's a work of fiction) but of course if there's any anti secular, anti West, anti Christian etc view points then those are just 'views' which they are powerless to influence.
I found the combination of the obvious making politics out of Islam and this rampant double standards are being quite disturbing because the programme left the viewer with the real sense that in the first instance, muslim leaders were in denial of extremism and in the second instance, that there was no real chance of the MCB (or anyone like it) doing something collectively about it because it didn't serve their political agenda.
I was also touched by the comments from many of the other muslim representatives being interviewed - who offered insights which you were highly enlightening. Explaining the backdrop of the MCB and, perhaps most worryingly, the claim that there's generally one set of language for the public (promoting cross-faith tollerance) and quite another behind closed doors (promoting isolation from the Kaffars etc).
I came away from the show worried. It seems obvious that the MCB will do nothing to assist the issue but instead will continue their agenda of portraying muslims as victims at every turn. This view was reinforced by reading their statement today, responding to the Panorama show. Here's an extract from the Media Guardian story:
"It was dishonestly presented and mischievously edited to present a pre-conceived view. We are absolutely disgusted with the clearly Islamophobic agenda of this programme," the spokesman said.
It's hard to comment about how it may have been mischievously edited but I didn't get that sense at all. Whatever the programme was, it was certainly not Islamophobic. I guess it's hardly surprising to see the MCB attempt to equate any attack on it as an attack on Islam but it's clearly not going to wash with any thinking viewer.
Make your own mind up by reading the transcript for yourself.
The danger here is that if a representative body for muslims in the UK cannot (or more accurately will not) help to deal with extremism in the ways it needs to be dealt with, then it'll be left to legislation and police who will be galvanised by a generally unsympathetic public following the right-wing agendas of the tabloid press. That treatment might very well lend factual weight to the victim mentality that desperately needs to be dismantled to tackle extremism for real.
I watched it and near as I could tell, they bent over backwards to allow the boss of the Muslim Council of Britain the right of reply on a whole bunch of thorny issues. As the picture built up, it became clear that the MCB isn't in a position of leadership which has a chance of steering the muslim community to deal with extremism. Rather it sees itself as a body that has to right wrongs of the oppressed muslim etc.
Now the latter point is fair enough, and maybe they do need some body to act as a voice whenever the inevitable ugly face of racism appears. However, I think the show adequately called out that there is no actual logic applied to when it is appropriate to step up and beat the drum. Two cases rammed home the point to me; the first was the female student that demanded to be allowed to wear an ankle length dress on religious grounds. This is blatantly a cultural and not a religious issue, no one else has problems with the attire but the MCB turned it into a huge issue, apparently being a case of discrimination.
More recently, in the aftermath of the bombings, they were highly active in criticising the police concerning how they dealt with acts like searching homes and so on. You would have thought that would have been a good time to be helpful but apparently it needed some firmer encouragement to begin the process of getting leaders together to denounce the bombings and so on.
For whatever reason it is, the politically inclined arm of the muslim community (as opposed to the silent majority who view Islam as being a personal and spiritual relationship for them) is capable of some remarkable demonstrations of double standards as was very skillfully demonstrated in the in interview of John Ware (the interviewer and narator of the episode) and Dr Bari, deputy secretary general of MCB and so on.
When taken to task about various highly offensive views that some of the Islamic organisations have that are represented by the MCB (things like no Kaffar can be your friend, the West is generally corrupt etc etc you know the sort), he downplayed all of that saying that these are views and these organisations are entitled to them and the MCB cannot influence them.
And yet... the same chap lead the fight to ban Salman Rushdie's book the Satanic Verses and when quizzed directly, still believes that the book should be banned. So it's fine to ban a view so long as it's anti Islam (even in the case of that, it's a work of fiction) but of course if there's any anti secular, anti West, anti Christian etc view points then those are just 'views' which they are powerless to influence.
I found the combination of the obvious making politics out of Islam and this rampant double standards are being quite disturbing because the programme left the viewer with the real sense that in the first instance, muslim leaders were in denial of extremism and in the second instance, that there was no real chance of the MCB (or anyone like it) doing something collectively about it because it didn't serve their political agenda.
I was also touched by the comments from many of the other muslim representatives being interviewed - who offered insights which you were highly enlightening. Explaining the backdrop of the MCB and, perhaps most worryingly, the claim that there's generally one set of language for the public (promoting cross-faith tollerance) and quite another behind closed doors (promoting isolation from the Kaffars etc).
I came away from the show worried. It seems obvious that the MCB will do nothing to assist the issue but instead will continue their agenda of portraying muslims as victims at every turn. This view was reinforced by reading their statement today, responding to the Panorama show. Here's an extract from the Media Guardian story:
"It was dishonestly presented and mischievously edited to present a pre-conceived view. We are absolutely disgusted with the clearly Islamophobic agenda of this programme," the spokesman said.
It's hard to comment about how it may have been mischievously edited but I didn't get that sense at all. Whatever the programme was, it was certainly not Islamophobic. I guess it's hardly surprising to see the MCB attempt to equate any attack on it as an attack on Islam but it's clearly not going to wash with any thinking viewer.
Make your own mind up by reading the transcript for yourself.
The danger here is that if a representative body for muslims in the UK cannot (or more accurately will not) help to deal with extremism in the ways it needs to be dealt with, then it'll be left to legislation and police who will be galvanised by a generally unsympathetic public following the right-wing agendas of the tabloid press. That treatment might very well lend factual weight to the victim mentality that desperately needs to be dismantled to tackle extremism for real.
Wednesday, 17 August 2005
The Living Hell That Is Other People's Code [Spiny]
Right now, just at this moment: I'm really, really glad I have a holiday coming up. I just had to add a method to someone else's class that was written to manage settings in an XML config file. This stuff is already built into the .NET framework of course. As you know dear reader being a highly intelligent superbeing. The method I was forced to add essentially duplicates ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig(). With slightly different behaviour of course.
THAT MAKES ME MMMMAAAAAAD.
Checklist [Am]
Right boys, it's time to check;
Testicles, spectacles, wallet and watch?PC?All leads?Monitor?GAMES?Clothes?A towel?Deoderant (no Newbury racecourse at my gaff)?Soft stuff to sleep on?Soft stuff, at least, to cover you up?Special medicines?Passport?MONEY?Camera?Directions?Phone numbers?Axe?Duct tape?Lube?
If yes, pass GO and collect £200 which is co-incidentally the entrace fee to what I am now calling "G2". You get a 4ft wide "station" in a super heated room, no prospect of a shower for a weekend and I get to sell you warm beer at £4 a pint.
It's gonna rock!
Testicles, spectacles, wallet and watch?PC?All leads?Monitor?GAMES?Clothes?A towel?Deoderant (no Newbury racecourse at my gaff)?Soft stuff to sleep on?Soft stuff, at least, to cover you up?Special medicines?Passport?MONEY?Camera?Directions?Phone numbers?Axe?Duct tape?Lube?
If yes, pass GO and collect £200 which is co-incidentally the entrace fee to what I am now calling "G2". You get a 4ft wide "station" in a super heated room, no prospect of a shower for a weekend and I get to sell you warm beer at £4 a pint.
It's gonna rock!
Sunday, 14 August 2005
The best keyboard evah? [Brit]
This blog might possibly be properly categorised as "computing heresy", but the fact remains that after years of searching, I've finally found a keyboard that actually feels right, looks good, and is a joy to use.
Yes dear reader, the Apple Mac keyboard simply, utterly, rocks.
Believe me when I say, I've tried 'em all - from cabled, to wireless, from el-cheapo to keyboards that require a second mortgage - and none comes close to touching this puppy.
How much does such an object cost? (I hear you cry) - well, to you sir, £20 from PC World, so probably considerably less anywhere else.
I'm a confirmed PC user - I cannot stand the Mac platform as a rule, but when it comes to peripherals, Jobs et al just seem to get it. The keyboard ticks all the right boxes...
a) it looks the business.b) it has brilliant key transport, and good sized keys to boot.c) the slight curvature, the ergonomics if you will, make it extremely comfortable to use.d) it has two inbuilt USB ports, so I whack the mouse in one, and have another spare thats easy to get to (no fiddling round the back of my PC to plug things in).e) at £20 its stonking good value.f) it works with a PC instantly (including the built in vol +/- and mute keys above the numpad).g) if you want to use the extended keys (F13 and the special Apple key) then you can grab a free Apple keyboard -> Windows functions installer that handles existing and custom mapping.
I personally cannot ask for more than this from my keyboard, and so must simply blog about this revelation and recommend to all of you - if you want a new keyboard, and want a right good 'un, a Mac job is a five star winner.
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