Here is a list of recent things that a decent blogger would have made into something interesting and worthwhile to read:

• Part of M’s job is to perform in front of strangers – her only props being a bizarrely random selection of wildlife including a snake, a raccoonpossum, assorted turtles, a screech owl, baby birds and a black vulture. This is for the purposes of education. I know she’s a great teacher, but I’d never seen her perform until last week, when we both attended a 7 year-old’s birthday party. They had decided to host it within the wildlife center and had requested a turn. I was so impressed, and the kids were captivated.
• The Roku has provided me with a seemingly endless collection of classic films and so I’ve been on a mission to watch all of the spy films that have eluded me thus far. There are so many spy films worth watching. No time for a list now. Later, later.
• Together with classic spy films, I’ve been indulging in Sci-Fi. And the problems in that genre seem to be a constant from the beginning. For example, in 1968 Stanley Kubrick directed a film version of an Arthur C Clarke classic, and produced a beautiful, moving, thought-provoking yet baffling film called “2001: A Space Odyssey”. A few years later, the Soviets attempted to rival it by producing a film version of another classic Sci-Fi book: Solaris. Everyone I’ve ever talked to about Solaris heralds the movie as a true classic of cinema. It scores highly on all of the Internet Movie sites worth considering and finding dissenters is not easy. So I have tried to watch it on Netflix, and repeatedly failed. Thus far I’m around 2 hours in, out of 2 hours 40, and the thought of going back depresses me. It’s awful. Really, really awful. It’s the sort of film that would come about by giving a great big talentless ponce a bunch of cash and telling him to make a film better than 2001. And that seems to be what happened. One comment on the IMDB message board said that “it was a film I’d watch when I was bored. ‘Maybe I’ll watch another 20 minutes of Solaris'”. At the time this struck a chord, but now I dread leaving it on for a few minutes. If there’s another still shot of something that doesn’t move for more than 50 seconds, I’m going to set fire to the TV. If you’ve seen the film, then you will empathise with me when I say “the car ride”. If anyone knows why this is popular with anyone outside the USSR in the 1970’s, please get in touch. I need to know what I’m missing.
• Can you spot David Brent?
• A week or so ago I bought a garden hoe – it’s my new favorite thing. The dude from “You bet your garden” (on NPR) is always on about hoes being the original way of dealing with weeds, and whether it works in the long-run or not, I’m enjoying slicing the little buggers into pieces with mighty-hoe. What a cool thing.
• What’s more irritating than a dude on the bus jawing on and on into his mobile for the whole journey?
  A dude with a diabolical stutter on the bus jawing on and on into his mobile for the whole journey. I was so stressed it nearly caused a coronary.
• A recent thought: people frequently poo-poo (huhuh) ideological ideas by claiming “human nature” will stop them from working. This concept has always struck me as utter bullshit, and this week the true culprit became apparent: ignorance. America’s current problems seem to stem from a (significant) minority of people who believe in fairies. Obviously, most of them don’t call them “fairies”, they use euphemisms like “Astrology” or “God” or “The Free Market”, but in reality, it’s all about fairies. So it’s gratifying to see that the sane majority is mobilising at last.
• We’ve booked flights back to London! This is massively exciting. I still haven’t met my new niece Lily!

Last Monday we Americans were off work. Well most of us anyway. In the UK this would have been regarded as a “Bank Holiday”, but over here it’s just called a “holiday”. Yeah, a day off work in the USA is called a “Holiday” and is distinct from a “Vacation” which is what we would call a Holiday. This particular holiday results from “a celebration of the Labor movement.”

Obviously, the rest of the world has a day that celebrates the Labour movement, but it’s in May, and called “May Day”. Any idea why it’s in May? How about some idea why the USA uniquely celebrates the Labour movement in September?

Well, thanks to Mr Fritz, I have learned the answers to these questions, and they’re quite intriguing.

To most Americans, “Labor Day” signifies the official end of summer. If you ask them what Labor day is all about, at best you’ll get some shit about the mythical “Labor Movement”, but more often you’ll hear about barbecues on the beach and the end of summer. There is an added irony to this we’ll discuss later.

In reality the history is a lot simpler, more understandable, and therefore prone to revisionism. It’s also pretty bloody fascinating.
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The first recognition of the Labor Movement in the USA is frequently cited as occurring in 1882, in New York. But it didn’t become a national Holiday in the USA until 1894 when President Grover Cleveland declared it as such. Any quick research on Google will yield this. For example, see what the US department of Labor has to say on the topic of Labor Day.

But there are two astonishing occurrences underpinning these events that are suspiciously absent from not only the standard government documentation, but also from the general American Psyche:

1. The wonderfully understated, Haymarket Affair
2. The Pullman Strike

The Pullman Strike

Many people will be familiar with the name “Pullman”, especially in relation to luxurious trains, and this is why: Pullman built trains. Obviously he didn’t build them himself, he hired a bunch of little men to do it for him, but they were his trains. Being a philanthropist, he built an entire town for his workers to inhabit. This was a show town that would prove to the cynical masses how Capitalism was the only way to utopia. Furthermore he insisted that all of his workers live there, because they were worth it.
All went well until 1894 when the company started to notice decreased profits, at which point they had to take drastic measures to keep their philanthropic organisation going. The only possible option was to reduce the number of workers, and then reduce the wages of the remaining workers.

Now, these ungrateful workers started to get the hump. The ones without jobs had no way to pay the rent, and the ones with jobs couldn’t afford the rent (the utopian houses they were obliged to live in carried massively high rents). Their reaction was strange; rather than work much harder to pay for their rent and living, they decided to strike! Talk about ungrateful!

Pullman was rightly angry about this abuse of his good will and wrote to the President: Grover Cleveland. Being a shrewd man with a full understanding of industrial relations, Cleveland sent in the troops. Thousands of them. That would surely sort out the strikers. There was no way this could go wrong. Who could have imagined fatalities occurring?

The perceived leader of the rebellion, Eugene V. Debs, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to custody. However, after such a blatant abuse of the working people in the US, Cleveland stood to take a battering in the election. So, he did what every brave man would have done to maintain his position of power and influence: he awarded the working people of America with a single day off a year.

The upshot of the whole incident can be summarised as

• The strikers lost.
• Debs was imprisoned.
• The workers in the US get a day off each year.

There was another interesting side effect: Debs was not a Socialist when he entered prison; he was simply angered by the injustices of his society. However, during his incarceration he read Marx and became a thorn in the side of the government, and governments to come.

The weirdest twist to this story comes next in the tale of…

The Haymarket “Affair”

Eight years before the Pullman incident, in May 1886, another euphemism took place. Despite its name, it wasn’t an “affair” at all – it has been described more accurately as a “massacre” or “riot” that lead to the rest of the world celebrating the Labour Movement on May 1st. The only country that celebrates its Labor movement on a different day is the USA. Funny old world.

Around the time of the Haymarket Massacre there was a great deal of unrest amongst the workers in the industrial centers of America. There was a movement afoot to limit the working day to eight hours so that workers could be assured of eight hours leisure and eight hours rest. Obviously the employing classes were prepared to do anything to prevent this and used every resource, be it private or public to prevent it. Strikebreakers were shipped in, and tensions flared. The Police, in their traditional role as protectors of the wealthy, were bound to protect the strikebreakers and resorted to gunfire. Two strikers were killed.

The following day a mass protest was called, and the Police attended in large numbers. After the speeches from the leaders of the rally, the Police attempted to disperse the crowd and chaos ensued. A pipe bomb was thrown at the Police which killed one officer and the Police responded with gunfire. Around 60 officers were wounded by the gunfire from their own ranks.

As an indirect result of this event, May 1st became the International workers day. When Grover Cleveland found himself in severe danger of ruining his chances of re-election 8 years later, he decided to create a national holiday in order to appease the workers…but chose September as the month so as to disassociate it from the “other” celebrations in May, which could have evoked unpleasant memories.

What strikes me as the most tragic failure of this movement is that now, despite the typical working day in America being the fair eight hours, fought for by their brave ancestors, the majority of the poor people end up working two eight-hour jobs just to stay alive. These are frequently the same people that vote Employer in the elections. How did this happen?

Sunday is usually the day I spend on the sofa with a laptop and some birds, while M is at work. The day passes surprisingly quickly but I usually end up feeling slightly sad: Sunday sad, combined with a tinge of regret that the weekend has been wasted.

This Sunday I had a day trip to New York City, where East-Anglia-K8 and her sister were on holiday; ostensibly they were there to attend Rock The Bells (which was as spectacularly awesome as it sounds), but they’d never been here before so it was a chance to soak up some juice from the Big Apple.

Now, if you’ve never been to NYC the one thing you need to know is that it is a truly spectacular city. All of the hyperbole and gushing that traditionally accompanies descriptions of the city are utterly and totally justifiable. As a result non-New-Yorkers, most notably Philadelphians, are quick to slag it off. Ignore them. New York is the archetype of canine testes, and the first time you see it in person you want to record every building, person, smell and sound. Like London, the more you get to know it, the more you realise you don’t know and the more bizarre, exciting, and pleasurable it becomes. I love it. Wouldn’t want to live there, but I love it. Apparently it’s a common feeling.

The Megabus has been around in Britain for a few years but I’ve never tried it; it always sounded like a scam. But since it made its way to the colonies, I’ve heard first-hand tales of wonder that imply it’s actually as good as it suggests. And it is! With a single day’s advance booking I got a $22 round-trip from 30th St station to 23rd and 7th in NYC…and each trip was only 2 hours; in a comfortable, air-conditioned, free wi-fi having double-decker bus. The whole trip went like clockwork, including the blissful subway ride, which meant I met K8 and Cass at their hotel at 11am as arranged. And what a hotel! The Hudson. If you want a description, Google it or look at some of the pictures, just know it’s spectacular.

It’s always weird and wonderful to see friends and family from England out-of-context, over here – and always makes me nostalgic. But we had a most excellent day. Even though it was 93 degrees, miraculously the humidity was low and so it was actually bearable! We wandered around, had a row with a bunch of Tottenham-Court-Road-style crooks, went up The Eiffel TowerThe Empire State, had a selection of drinks in SoHo, Greenwich Village and in mid town, and generally had a gay old time.

Despite being a single day, it was so far removed from the normal working life, in retrospect it felt like a week-long holiday.

Nice to be home though. I even got warm homely feelings when I saw Philly on the horizon…weird.

A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues at work was blessed with an idea that can only be ascribed to genius: “maybe a few of us should chip in to buy a sandwich toaster?” This was insightful on many levels, not least of which was that we all frequently found ourselves spending a considerable amount of money buying paninis from the local foodery. After a few seconds of the googel, we noticed that a George Foreman Grill would be even cheaper than a sandwich toaster, and offer some potentially interesting options. So three of us chipped in to buy a pathetically cheap grill. We also decided to collectively buy some ingredients for some proper grilled sandwiches.
If you’ve never had a sandwich full of deliciously poncey cheeses, meats and spices, that is heated on a George Foreman grill, then you will never understand the joy we experience every day of the working week.
Initially, the three of us that decided the communal grill was a good idea brought in a variety of breads, cheeses, lunch meats, mustards and spices. The others regarded us with a mixture of scepticism, and irritation (we tend to dominate the kitchen) but occasionally we would be asked how much a “share” in the operation would cost. So we declared it “The Peoples Grill”, stenciled a hammer and sickle on it, and offered its services to anyone who had ingredients.
And so, lunch has transformed into a beautiful collective celebration of grilled deliciousness. This week we shared:

• Black forest ham
• Smoked swiss cheese
• Aged, peppered swiss cheese
• Jelapeno, wasabi and spiced mustard
• Brie
• Smoked salmon

The brains behind the collective grill also coined a phrase for those of us grillers with culinary aspirations: Fourmets. Looks like we’re going to need a bigger grill.

For over a week now I have been stuck at home in quarantine after picking up a dose of viral conjunctivitis from fuck-knows where. It doesn’t really matter once it’s diagnosed because there’s nothing that can be done about it (it’s a virus), and it’s as contagious as any other massively contagious virus. You (I) just have to wait it out. The progress is very slow, and until I’m back to normal, going to work is a no-no; giving this out to people with kids would be like injecting everyone at work with the lurgi(sp?). So I’ve been under a self-imposed house-arrest for the last week, and as comfy as this sofa gets I’m feeling pretty frustrated. Fortunately, being a programmer there is very little (if anything) required by my job that can’t be done from home nowadays. Obviously that does raise the question of the efficacy of commuting at all – but that’s an issue for other posts. But no matter how much one hates one’s cube and office-space, two weeks of house/sofa can make it seem positively enticing – I’m even missing the bus.

Still, as the blur has worn off over the past few days I’ve been able to work and also watch some TV (curse you 24 for being genuinely quite entertaining). On Saturday night our neighbours were having a small party/band/happy-thing out the back of their house. Being a leper I couldn’t attend and so Michele went without me while I watched 3-4am in Jack Bauer’s crap first big day of aggro.

After a short while, Michele thought it may do me good to socialise with the good people of across-the-road, and so, despite being contagious, and despite it being dark out, we went over for half-an-hour or so…while I wore dark glasses (like a big arse) and refused to shake anyone’s hand. It was lovely to get out of the house and talk to people though – and Brendan’s band were truly awesome in a jazzy-mellow way (poorly-lit videos to follow).

In a nutshell, being under house arrest does suck…but not that much. I’d rather be confined to my sofa with Bat, Birds, Roku et al for a couple of weeks, than in a small, confined, prison cell, full of my old crap, for several years.

Goodnight.

Geeks only (you have been warned)

Regardless of how fun and friendly a development environment may be, the bullshit accompanying it can ruin everything. For example, and completely at random, let’s compare iPhone development to Qt development.

X-Code (the iPhone/Mac dev IDE) is at the usable and comfortable end of my IDE spectrum. Objective C is by far my favourite programming language, and the Apple run-time systems are luxurious (mmmm…Quartz and OpenGL). The IDE is free (as in beer).

Qt provides an IDE even less objectionable than X-Code, that will let you build, test, debug and produce code on multiple devices. It prefers C++ (which I generally hate), but makes it usable, secure, and viable, via its own well-designed API. BTW – the boost/STL advocates out there are free to go and fuck right off with the .NET developers. It’s also free (as in beer and speech).

Where the iPhone experience fails (IMO) is with all of the extra crap you have to do to run an app on it: developer profiles, provisioning profiles, distribution profiles etc, etc, are a tortuous pastime, even for someone like me who knows and loves encryption. It’s a tremendous hassle and provides almost zero advantages. It also provides a million unhelpful and foggy error messages that are totally impossible to understand unless you were in the team that developed the API.

For example, who cares if my app does evil things to people’s phones when the OS itself is so poorly protected that simply visiting a website can silently cause your phone to be utterly hacked by someone else.

[anyone wishing to point out that other OS’s are/have been affected by similar bugs need to realise that I am slagging off the TSA-style security theatre of the apple code-signing bullshit which is still vulnerable to perfectly ordinary attack vectors]

A few blogs ago I may have mentioned reading Keith Allen‘s autobiography. Well, now 3/4 of the way through it, I am approaching the point of stalking him out of sheer admiration. The chances that you, dear reader, have even heard of him, is very low, but I’ve been a fan for many, many years; purely because of the little I knew. But reading this book made me realise that everything you could imagine about Keith Allen’s wild life was wrong…he was waaay more wild and righteous in real life. Not to say that he wasn’t a total arsehole from time-to-time, in fact he was! But he admits as much! OK, that doesn’t excuse him, but he’s not asking for excuses! He’s giving the reader an unedited peek into his head – faults and all.
In order to avoid turning this into a KA love-in, I’ll get to the point: one anecdote in the book is about how he made a record with the deliberate purpose of making Afro-Carribbean homophobes feel uncomfortable. As dodgy as this sounds, it was born out of the frustration of witnessing one set of unjustly oppressed people being disgusted by another. People whom he’d marched alongside in previous years attacking others for being gay clearly bewildered and irritated him – it’s quite apparent that he is as happy and confident about his own sexuality as it is possible to be.

Anyway – here is the record he made. Listen to the lyrics, and then imagine the shock and discomfort the listeners went through while he interviewed them for his pirate radio show, and asked for their opinions on it. In Notting Hill. In the 70’s.

Tickle Tune – Sex Boots Dread

My wife’s laptop runs Debian, and it’s pretty stable. But there is one issue that is proving to be a real pain: the wireless adapter – an Intel job – occasionally detatches itself from the AP for no apparent reason. Obviously this is not a good scenario and something I had to address; I hate getting support calls from home.
My “solution” was to write a little script for her that fixes the problem by taking the interface down and bringing it up again. Now all she has to do is type “fixtehinternets” and it’ll come back up.
Earlier today I was telling my work colleagues about this little hack, and their reaction was totally unexpected; they wanted a copy for their wives! Mr K even suggested I publish the script for the benefit of the google. So, with the caveat that it’s a piece of crap, here is the valuable code:

#!/bin/sh
echo "O HAI! I CAN HAS UR PASSWORDZ ?"
echo "AHM IN UR WIREZ, FIXING UR INTERNETS"
sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid "myssid"
sleep 2
sudo route add default gw 192.168.x.x
ping 158.x.x.x -c 1 >/dev/null 2>&1
[ $? -eq 0 ] && echo "YAY U HAVE ALL TEH INTERNETS!!!" || echo "O NOES! IT ARE BROKE STILL"
echo KTHXBYE

Now, you’ll either not understand a word of that, or you’ll recognise it as the quality piece of genius that it is.
Use it wisely, and not for evil.

One of the first records I remember enjoying as a kid was a version of Peter and the Wolf narrated by Frankie Howard. Thirty-nine years later I’m not only still into Prokofiev, but also Peter and the Wolf. It seems to be universally known and loved, and that means there is a seemingly limitless number of versions narrated by a vast range of stars, ranging from Sean Connery to David Bowie.

A good friend of mine, who has a bit of a vinyl habit, discovered my interest in Peter and the Wolf and has vigilantly looked out for me on his various excursions to charity shops across the nation. A couple of weeks back, he struck gold in the form of a version by Jimmy Smith. If you know Jimmy Smith you’ll probably either know this recording already or be bemused by the idea of him covering Prokofiev. But no-one who hears it could deny it is an incredible album and it’s difficult to imagine someone who didn’t enjoy at least some of it. So I ripped the deliciously well-kempt vinyl and have been playing it, almost continuously, since it arrived.

Thank you Mr Fritz.

P.S.
We witnessed a double rainbow driving back from the wildlife centre tonight. What could it mean?

Is that all there is to a political debate?