A while ago, a work colleague (JPh) who knows a lot about education technology, physics, and grant proposals, wrote a grant proposal for us to develop some software. After a lot of messing about we came up with an idea for a software project that would involve me writing code for three days a week for the next eight months (ie cutting down my current job to 2 days a week). The aim was to produce some GPL code for use within the education sector. Lots of people were applying for the same grant and so it was very unlikely we’d win it.
Only we did! This is due to JPh’s ability to, in the words of our director, “write a dandy grant proposal”.
This is great news, but a tad scary: I never imagined we would! I’m very excited because it’s going to be something I can concentrate on without being interrupted with stupid stuff about passwords, user quotas, forgetful support staff, moronic requests and badly specified (if specified at all) web projects. It’s scary because…well it just is…

Another work colleague, “Sue”, who is extremely intelligent and generally lovely, came to chat to me about jobs etc this week. She is wasted in her current position but doesn’t believe it. We talked about all kinds of stuff but by the end she had decided to teach herself about PHP/SQL. I’ve never met anyone who is more capable of learning complex stuff in such a short period of time than Sue. After our chat she:

• Installed PHP and MySQL on her TiBook
• Configured both of them
• Learned how to write PHP
• Learned about MySQL and SQL
• Exported her movie database from FileMaker Pro (yuck)
• Imported it into MySQL
• Worked out how to design an HTML search form and implemented the search in PHP

…in less than 48 hours…She should be running the department, not just working in it.

The noble history of the “Free Speech Zone” (for the hard of thinking: it’s satire).

After “Mad” Frankie Fraser did panto with Chaz and Dave, I thought the celebrity gangster market was cornered. Wrong.
Dodgy Dave Courtney has a blog. In his own words, “I’m a proper twenty-first century c#*t now, aint I ?”

Brodie decided that he should mark his birthday with a visit to the Great British Beer Festival. The usual deal: lots of cartoon character beardy fat blokes getting pissed (yes..again I have to include myself). John Otway was there, but, sadly, not performing. Instead Wild Willy Barrett was on show and of course we missed the gig. One of our number had a chat with Mr O, making me very nervous. You see, I have a real problem with meeting my heroes. Not famous people, (most of whom can fuck right off), just heroes.

Brodie buggered off early and we still don’t know why, but me, Steve, Mike, Grant, and Dick had a good time nonetheless…we left when Dick started smashing glasses 😉
Goodnight folks…

Took the day off work, wrote some Java. Watched telly, Brodie’s birthday tomorrow. Good night.

Good old Mark Dz has got crossblogged on El Reg. Hi Mark. Much as I think you are one of the world’s most righteous dudes, WTF are you doing using MT ? Mark my words, spam blogging (especially related to trackback) will be rife within a few months. Enjoy DNS;)

As a result of last night’s storms, 900,000 tons of raw sewage…I’ll say that again: 900,000 tons of raw sewage…poured into the Thames and the London streets, killing massive numbers of fish and generally filling the place up with, well, shit.
The last time this was a news headline was in the middle ages. So why’s it happening now ?
Another question: why is our postal system no longer the envy of the world (as it was 10 years ago when Michele first arrived), and instead the laughing-stock of the world ?
Here’s another one: why is British public transport worse now than it has ever been…well at least since the invention of the train ?
What about the health service – why is it so crap these days (a value judgement that I can back up wih some pretty bloody convincing stats ) ?
Well, I don’t know. But one piece of evidence that is common to all of the problems is…privatisation.

Let’s just take the floods/sewage.
Never in my life have I heard anything like this. The reason is that, until privatisation, the job of the water board (as was), was to make the water system work properly. Now, it’s to ensure that the share-holders make an ever increasing profit. How do you keep increasing your profits ?

• Pay your workers less
• Don’t be so meticulous with the “day to day” jobs (like cleaning storm drains, fixing rail tracks etc etc
• Make your business more efficient – (by sacking the overly heavy management layers…oops no, sorry, even though they are paid an order of magiture higher than the skilled people on the front-line, they are worth far more…probly)
• Ditching all of these luxurious things like holidays with pay for workers and contracts
• Not making “environmental” concessions to sate the liberal lefties (tree hugging tossers). You can’t stop progress. The needs of the planet (and its inhabitants) should be secondary to thos of a healthy free market. Oh wait, we are inhabitants of the planet…fuck us, we are expendable in the name of business…but not the liberal, commie, “planet”.

Interesting item in The Reg about how Penguin (books) and some bird called Katie Dirtbox (or something) have decided to try and appropriate katie.com from the legitimate owner, thus causing her a great deal of hassle and bad vibes. Legal threats, bad-publicity, you name it, katie.com has had it.
Now this isn’t really of earth-shattering importance I grant you, but it is a simple example of something that humans really need to learn.

The law only exists to protect money and power

So why does everyone have to be so interested in it ? Why does every mailing list, blog (yes including this one now…), discussion forum and debate always have to go through long periods of discussion about whether something may or may not be legal ?
It doesn’t matter! If the lawyers are set on you by enough money and power, you’re fucked. Whether they win the case, or spend you to death, they’ll get you. Whenever you see some arsehat on some mailing list say “IANAL” say “Yes! You Anal!”. Stop worrying about it. Stop making out that there is any logic behind the law. It, and its well-paid soldiers, are there to screw you…and they will. Lawyers never lose, even if they lose.
So, please, please hear me people:

• Don’t play their game, you’ll just encourage them! – if you’re concerned that something you’re doing might not be legal ie it’s something that isn’t clearly illegal, then do it anyway. If you start getting threatening letters from the soldiers of satan then reassess.
• Stand up to the bullies – their main tactic is to scare you into complying. If you are clearly in the wrong then back down and they will too. Otherwise wipe your arse on their letter. DON’T RESPOND!
• Don’t keep going on about it! If “you anal” then shut up and stop ruining the mailing list.
• If you do end up in legal muck, go out firing!

OK, I know there are exceptions to the rules. People sometimes do win when they deserve to (morally, not legally I mean). But they are just that…exceptions to the rule. Yes, Microsoft’s lawyers did leave me alone after their initial threats, but not because they realised they were in the wrong. They could choose to return at any time, and they’d win.
DRM and software patent suits are the next Big Thing, and the more people humour the lawyers, the more stifled and restricted all of our lives are going to become. Don’t play!
Rant over.

OK – I’m sure I’m late in on this one, but I do own a “Morris Minor and the Majors” 12 inch so I’m happy to be associated with such things. “Guns don’t kill people” by Welsh Gangster Rappers, “Goldie Looking Chain” is a masterpiece. Available on a p2p/bt network near you.

Guns don’t kill people, Rappers do –
I seen it in a documentary on BBC 2
— Goldie Lookin Chain

FoF is really quite good. It’s shambolic code, but it works, just like my code – sort of.. It’s an “RSS Aggregator” which means you can get all your favourite news/blog/bullshit sites on one page, for simplicity. And it’s server side so you can check it anywhere 🙂 And it’s free. And it’s open source. And it works. And it knows RSS, RDF and Atom.

Yesterday I added Trackback support to my blog. No reason really apart from wanting to play too. In fact I hate Trackback. I hate “Movable Type”. They’re simply tools for getting self obsessed wanky bloggers to be able to promote each other up the googleranks…like me really.
In the next few months I predict Trackback will be killed by spammers.

Have you ever tried Teoma BTW ? Quite nice.