This Open Government business is surprisingly cool. It must be an accident – I can’t imagine MI5 or No 10 being happy with the sort of disclosure that’s going on with the Hutton Inquiry website. The BBC have been really pushing it hard on News 24 – probably so that if anything should mysteriously disappear, the chances of it being noticed would be higher.
Despite the dry nature of the evidence, for anyone with a keen interest in either government, media or voyeurism, it’s fascinating stuff. There’s something really great about seeing the private e-mails, notebook pages and letters of the people to whom we’ve supposedly entrusted the country.
Interestingly, they’ve gone to the trouble of blacking out personal details within the documents – but strangely this one however, appears to clearly show Alistair Campbell’s e-mail address. Hmm.

Finally – and I apologise in advance for this predictable comment – but the site is still very responsive considering the number of people who will currently be groping it. The reason why it’s holding up so well ? Let’s just say it isn’t running a Microshit OS 🙂
Only a matter of time before someone sets up a spoof site with a similar domain name….yawn…

An especially tedious week at work thanks in part to a new idiot-detector virus called “sobig-f”. We’ve been getting them pour into the college at the rate of about 1 a second – that’s a lot. Apart from the usual problem of the anti-virus protection getting relased after the virus is in the wild [ anyone wishing to advise me about blocking executables should address their queries to /dev/null ] it caused all sorts of interesting side-effects including running out of disk space and a load average in the 30s, which in turn lead to several massive mail backlogs. At this point I want to make it clear that my irritation is not with the virus authors, but with PEOPLE – this virus doesn’t exploit any security vulnerabilities, just psychology. Every operating system should have two modes – “normal”…or..”idiot” mode that is enabled by default and doesn’t let you do a god-damn thing apart from word process (without macros of course) and read text-only emails. OS upgrades would be installed automatically. There is no control panel or other moron-friendly way to switch to advanced mode, so if you can’t get your head round reading instructions and editing config files you can’t get in.

As it’s a bank holiday weekend I took friday off to enrich the experience. My boss decided to do the same about five minutes later so I ended up going into work anyway to change the backup tapes…sigh…I also got roped into going up to easynet in brick lane to take the lid off a server and check what RAM it had inside it. For added excitement it was a rack-mount server and I wasn’t allowed to disconnect it. 🙂

There are loads more events far blogworthier that I should have put in this space like ending up leading a gay procession up to the Queens Arms in Lewisham, whilst trying to obscure my face from the South London Press’ photographer…and managing to piss off Alex at the same time… Or nearly getting my legs broken by a neanderthal cockwit of a bouncer [ named “moses” annoyingly enough ] at another of Greenwich’s buggered-up pubs last night. But, like with every other aspect of life, I really can’t be bothered. So here are some random thoughtlets:

• On the whole, people are scum
• Dr Kelly did not commit suicide
• Harry Palmer could wipe the floor with James Bond. Easy
• pity about billion-dollar brain tho’
• There’s more to the power cut in N.A. than “a normal power surge”….lots of theories on this one.
• I’m not cut out for all this and should move to an obscure hillside cottage and spend my life writing really bad, bitter poetry whilst drinking rough whisky

People who can receive Channel 5 five know what to expect and usually don’t pity those that can’t. Nonetheless it still does manage to surprise me with its sheer determination to produce the lowest of the lowest common denominators. Apart from the “adult dramas” and documentaries about pornography, prostitution and ibiza, their straight documentaries are also surprisingly and unmistakably five. For example last week they had a programme on the Battle of Hastings. It was less than five minutes into broadcast when the cover slipped and we were reminded that this wasn’t BBC4. “Can modern management techniques help us understand why William beat Harold ?”…Cut to Dr Shyster of New Cackfield College Of Management Bollocks who then, with the aid of a powerpoint presentation, a pointing stick (god no) and his waistcoat, described the great battle of 1066 in terms of a “hostile takeover of a company named Great Britain by a project manager named William”.
In fairness there were one or two interesting factoids in the programme, but an equal number of items of pure fecal matter.
However let’s not be too harsh. It was probably great for the army of unemployed kids with MBAs. Not only would they dig the jargon, but they’re likely to be watching because they can’t afford to go out at night: they’re still paying L3wisham College fees for the MBA course they took two years ago in the desperate hope that it would be their passport to the high life.

“Remember, fascism and a police state doesn’t come all at once, it comes piece by piece. How far will we allow it go until we are all locked up in concentration camps.”
Sherman Austin, webmaster of RaisetheFist.com

Almost back to normal, and happy enough to sit and write a blog! Hoorah!

A couple of days ago we received our first ever mailing from Iran. An Iranian congratulations card from Alex, the manager of our local pizza delivery place, who wanted to wish me and Michele happy anniversery while he was on his honeymoon in Iran. Thanks Alex. Nice to have such a friendly relationship with our local businesses….do I sound like a local councillor ? Sorry….

Thanks also to the other Alex who has been keeping me entertained during my malaise with his most excellent blog.

Last night I wrote a shitty letter to the BBC complaining about a bit of tabloid shit that accidentally crept into their schedules in the guise of a documentary on the NHS and immigration. It was filth. They haven’t written back. I hope this is because they are too busy crying with regret, but I suspect not.

Michele had a job interview today. Sadly I decided not to follow the example of Alex and make my blog anonymous…pity, because I’d really like to slag off those involved. BASTARDS….

Humphrey was particularly cute today….feathery little thing.

What is Hell like ?

In Hell you are always too hot – there is no refuge from the heat, no way to cool down, no way to feel comfortable. You think you can bear it no longer, but you have no choice – the heat continues forever. Every drop of water is tepid, every breeze is warm and Hell-mart has perpetually sold out of air-conditioners.
Everyone has a chest infection that keeps them coughing and restricts their breathing, while sinus infections keep heads feeling ready to explode. Beacuse you feel so lousy, all you can do is lie about, whinging and watching daytime television…
Alright, you get the picture, I’m still feeling crappy after a tortuous weekend of overheated misery I’m off work. Many people may consider that taking a monday off work the day after the hottest day EVER in Britain was a tad dodgy. But believe me I would much rather be sitting in an ice-cold puddle in the rain, than be sitting in this humid, sweaty, posionous smog. So would my lungs. We have 1, 12-inch fan that is doing a sterling job, considering how it is now running on good will and vaseline…but not good enough. Michele went out to buy another fan, and just got laughed at. In fact, the woman in Agros told her that they hadn’t run out of fans, they just weren’t stocking them because, and I’m not making this up, they’re now on their winter catalogue. What a great business strategy that is. The hottest August ever on record, and all you can get from Argos are some woolly undies, an electric fan heater, and a cardie – although the latter would probably be useful to mop up the puddles of arse-sweat I’m leaving around the house.
…oh yes…I nearly forgot…the heavy, heavy depression. I don’t know whether it was one of the many infections, the weather or just the daytime television, but my illness has been accompanied by total despair and a feeling of hopelessness I haven’t felt for a long time. Thanks for that God – it really helped.

It’s seriously, no-messingly, indisputably

HOT

. And muggy. So muggy. It’s like trying to breathe jelly. People all over europe are keeling over with heatstroke, but England continues to firmly shun any suggestion that we should all be using air-conditioners, with the stiff-upper-lipped resoluteness that will probably result in my death later today.

Last night was Brodie’s brithday. The Fish Brothers played the Rosemary branch and many many people turned up and drank too much….including the man himself, who became very tired and emotional and it took three of us to get him upstairs and into bed. Good gig tho. One of Brodie’s friends who lives in Ireland was looking at the Fish Brothers’ website and noticed the gig in honour of his birthday, so came all the way over! He ended up staying round at ours as the host had an early bath.

Thanks to Andy, I now have a copy of the radio show from the other night. Have a listen. I don’t actually appear until about 28 minutes in to it, but the non-me bits are much better listening anyway.

Smile were kind enough to send me a copy of the fraudulent cheque. It was made out to somone with a name that can only belong to a Columbian drug baron or ficticious identity. Obviously I can’t publish this name, but suffice to say that his first name is “Pedro”….honestly…

Yesterday included one of those random injections of weirdness that makes life bearable. I got a phonecall from sebastian in the DoC (department of computing) inviting me up to their 12th floor barbecue. Apparently there was a “geek” there who wanted to see me. The geek was a thoroughly bloody nice chap called Andrew, and with him were Jenny and “Tyndall”, who turns out to know a friend of mine Peter. They wanted to know if I was interested in going onto the radio that night to talk bollocks. Seb and Claire had obviously tipped them off that I was very adept at it. Their friendly manner and the beer I’d consumed convinced me it might be fun so I agreed.

8pm I was waiting on Charing Cross Road, full to the brim with dutch courage and a paranoid feeling that the whole thing was probably a wind up, but they arrived and up we went into the cramped studio of Resonance FM 104.4, situated in the roof of a curry house. Even though it’s a legit station, it had such a pirate feel to it with everyone shuffling past each other, pulling cables about, and knocking things over while someone was trying to do a radio show. It took about 15 minutes for the “sound engineer” to get the desk working properly – which of course was 15 minutes of airtime. As a result the output must have been pretty bizarre, consisting of the same gamelan tune twice and “busy line” by Rose Murphy played through a flanger…..but hey, this is art radio! All the better for it. The programme was called “Big Ears” and although
I never actually heard the final output, it was essentially a peculiar soundscape of ambient noises, strange music and a chat between me and Andrew, where he asked me all kinds of jocular tech questions and I gave jocular bullshit answers with the sound of running water over it. Good fun tho’. After an hour and a half we made way for the next turn, who appeared to be a large Turkish family, and went to the coach and horses for a couple. Ian, who’d been in the west end for teh past few hours, met up with us and was in a tired and emotional state. All most amusing.

A perfect day. Zap called me at about 10am to see if I was up for goint to the computer fair in Sratford. The prospect of yet another day in, working, or rather pretending to work, while the sun’s out, persuaded me to accept his offer. What a wise choice.

The weather was HOT. We went around the fair getting a handle on the prices, and eventually Zap bought a SmartCard reader while I bought some RAM and then we went to the pub.
A couple of pints later we went back to the fair.
If you’ve never been to one of the computer fairs, you’ve missed out. They’re reminiscent of middle-eastern bazarrs, only more high-tech. There are almost no white people working there. It’s essentially middle-eastern, Indian, African or Pakistani people who are selling their warez. Whilst people haggle over the price of motherboards and RAM with women in muslim dress, kids behind the tables solder, strip and chip people’s playstations. Haggling with people over the price of hard-disks, DVDs and all kinds of hardware really does make for a good holiday.
After our hagglefest we got on the DLR, scanned a few wireless networks and reired to the Gypsy Moth in Greenwich for a nice sunny drink. Beautiful.

A trip to Eltham to visit my parents followed. The 286 brought back many memories, mostly tedious, but Stella managed to cook a splendid Salmon dinner and we ate, drank and laughed until hometime. Cathy and Kate from next-door came round too – altogether a nice evening.

Primary Colors could be summed up as:
“Power corrupts,
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”