I spotted the sign on the right while driving into Dorridge yesterday, and a quick glance at the Lib Dem literature confirms it (there’s a photo). I can’t find Claire listed on the Solihull Lib Dem website other than a quick mention here.

The Solihull Lib Dem website could do with a decent spelling / grammar checker, but the front page indicates the narrow margin between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems in the Solihull area. If you know me it probably doesn’t come as any big shock to find that I vote Labour in the parliamentary elections. However the council elections are another matter. They’re a bit tricky, really. I don’t know what the idea is. Are you meant to vote for the party you want elected, as is the case in parliamentary elections, or do you vote for the person? I’d imagine the latter, but given that the coverage in the local papers isn’t great (and there’s no point reading the local party literature), how do you decide? Claire’s always been a friend, and as one of the most intelligent people I know I’m inclined to think she’d do a good job. Is that enough, though? You need to be extremely proactive to make a fair comparison, it would seem.

Because of my limited knowledge of individual candidates, in the past I would have just voted Labour if there was a Solihull candidate who even bothered trying - hell, if he/she put up some damn signs it’d be enough - but there’s never been any indication of this happening, so I’ve always voted Lib Dem. I’m a bit dubious about tactical voting and, much as I’d like to see the Conservatives lose seats, don’t really want to play it that way. I take an interest in politics and try to know the views of the various parties on matters that I have some knowledge of, and nearly always find myself disagreeing with the Conservatives and agreeing with Labour / Lib Dems. So should I use this method this year?

A particularly thorny issue in Dorridge currently is the closure of the Post Office. The PO is inside One Stop, a chain which Tesco recently bought out and are replacing with Tesco Expresses. Tesco don’t want a Post Office inside their shop, so it will have to be closed. Now, I can see why Tesco would be unwilling to have a PO on their premises. There would most likely be large queues, particularly on pensions day, and the PO would take up a fair bit of their space, I would imagine. Nevertheless, it’s not very popular with local residents. While I don’t think that travelling to Knowle would actually be terribly difficult (plenty of people have to travel further to their local POs), various local candidates are joining the chorus of complaints and setting up petitions, etc. I can see that it’s disappointing to lose a PO, so anything that they can do would help. However, Mum recently visited a nearby town (can’t quite remember which one atm) with a Tesco Express that contained a Post Office. So it obviously isn’t Tesco’s general policy. This would be an excellent point, I think, but all the newspaper reports / candidate literature that I’ve seen simply contain rhetoric about how annoying it is. I’d be very impressed with a candidate who asked Tesco why Dorridge is different (and it’s very possible there is a good reason). There are also empty shops across the road - would it be possible to move the PO to one of those? There seem to be various ways of dealing with the situation, which may for all I know be going on behind the scenes, that aren’t getting through to the local populace. I can’t make decisions based on rhetoric - I need more information. Given that I know Claire, I’m sure she does know a lot more detail than is written about in the papers; how do I find out, though? I was wondering whether setting up a blog would be a good idea for candidates - that would be a cheap (hell, Blogger’s free) but effective way of getting the message out to lazy people like me who aren’t very good at communicating

On the personal front, however, go Claire! Though it’s not a job I could face, I admire her very much for trying. As it stands currently, it’s likely she’ll get my vote.

Today is the day! I bet you’re all secretly excited really. To aid in your decision as to the best country Kate and I have produced:

THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST DECISION MAKING TALLY COUNTING ACT JUDGING GENERATOR MACHINE

Which, happily, takes the form of a spreadsheet. Fitting perfectly onto an A4 piece of paper, this stunning example of modern tabular and mathematical advances lets you assign each country points ranging from 1 to 10 in a number of heavily researched categories designed to increase your appreciation of the performing artists. It can be downloaded here (OpenOffice.org version here). Enjoy.

It’s Friday and Kate’s on the train home as I type. Woohoo!

I finally saw Kill Bill last night and it was quite simply a joy. Mind you, I’m pretty much the epitome of the target audience. I’ve seen complaints about the level of violence and it is indeed staggeringly bloodthirsty. I tend to have a moderate toleration for violence - I didn’t like Reservoir Dogs for that reason - but after a few minutes I just started thinking of it as a cartoon, which I think is the intended perspective. Then it didn’t bother me any more. Of course nobody actually thinks it’s cool to chop people’s limbs off, but when it’s done in a ridiculously over the top fashion, without trying to be profound or meaningful, then it can be quite amusing. People differ, though, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend the film to anybody squeamish or, without being condescending, young. I only say this because violence used to get into my head and upset me when I was younger. American Psycho and The Devil’s Advocate were particularly horrible in this regard, but I saw the latter recently and was fine with it. I think I’m just more grown up and can deal with it now.

I would, however, recommend Kill Bill without hesitation to anybody interested in what I’ll call the art of film. I’ve always seen style as a virtue, and this film simply radiates style. Almost every shot would make a great photograph, and the fusion of music, beautiful locations, dramatic lighting and positively balletic fight scenes was, as I said, a joy to watch. The film is full of wonderful cinematic moments that I’d never seen before, much like the first time I saw Donnie Darko (I’ve seen it twice since). Uma Thurman seems a perfect pratagonist: continually hovering over the fine line between too serious and too silly, she oozes cool at every moment.

That’s just me, though, and I know plenty of people for whom the last paragraph would make no difference whatsoever. In fact I probably sound very pretentious. I’m not claiming that everybody should enjoy these qualities, though, just that I do and, like I said, in that way I probably fit the intended audience. I would call it a stunning film experience, which isn’t what everybody wants. Everybody has a different perspective on films, and this is why reviews are so stupid, and why I don’t review films on this website (believe it or not, I do try not to in conversation, but am not always successful). I’ve made an exception for Kill Bill as it appealed so much to my personal tastes. So for goodness’ sake don’t listen to anything I say, just go see it if you fancy it and make your own mind up

Now, I simply must see Kill Bill Volume Two as soon as possible…

Over the last couple of months the Netsky virus has tried its hardest to cause as much disruption to the Internet as possible. Kinda apt, given the rearrangement of the name…How did I miss that one

So much to write, so little time.

Opera 7.5 is out, and I like it. It looks good, works quickly, renders pages properly (though freeserve.com no longer exists so I can’t test to see whether that particular bug has been fixed) and has many useful features. I’m slowly getting used to mouse gestures, and have customised various menus so that I can open pictures quickly in an editor / get to my bookmarks quickly / download with getright etc. It’s a shame that Opera is unlikely to ever support ActiveX, but it’s not like it’s unreasonable of MS not to want that! The email client is fast and effective (I use it for mailing lists) and the new IRC feature has got me into a chat room for the first time…well, ever! mIRC scares me, you see

It’s Eurovision this Saturday! Wooohooo! I like Eurovision It’s just too funny. Terry Wogan’s insults crack me up (he was in trouble with Danish tabloids a few years back for describing the show’s presenters as “Dr Death and The Tooth Fairy”) and the various techniques employed by the singers to attract attention. Will the lyrics be somewhat odd? Or perhaps the lead singer will be dressed as a chimp. Will they go for the standard show-as-much-skin-as-possible? Or will they attempt, shock horror, to be classy? Equally amusing is the voting system. Proximity Democracy, I think it’s called. All in all, it’s a great evening’s entertainment.

I’ve finally reached a deal with the router formed in Lucifer’s zygote. I compromised by setting static IPs, and it decided, quite spontaneously, to work. I was still in trouble, though.

I upgraded my Tivo with a 120gb drive this evening, and so far everything seems to be going fine. I now have 40hrs of best-quality recording time, as opposed the 10 available before. The upgrade process was fairly painless; the biggest problem I had was configuring the jumpers of 4 drives so that they would all be available simultaneously. There was a fair bit of crawling around with a torch involved in that procedure. You have to boot from a linux boot cd, then run a few commands to backup and copy the data, as well as modifying the partition structure to take account of the newly available space. You also need to be very careful when taking the case off the Tivo; the power supply isn’t covered and touching a charged capacitor would result in Smoky Crispy Flavoured Wandwaver eBay auctions.

Oh yeah, do you remember the email disconnection problem I was having? Well, I still haven’t found an explanation, but upgrading from Outlook Express to Outlook fixes it.

And, finally, some breaking news that sounds fantastic! Firstly, Half-Life 2 multiplayer will be Counterstrike on the Source engine. Also, Half-Life 1 has been ported to the Source engine! More details.

Oh…do you know what 12 + 7 equals? Ho hum :-)

There is now officially no form of the word ‘networking’ that I don’t hate. I have yet again being playing with the router from hell, and have to conclude we’d be better served by reverting to carrier pigeon. Did you know that Zoom adsl modems default to a 10.x.x.x ip address? It’s not a big thing, but I think they do it just to make initial configuration as annoying as possible. Zoom adsl modems also have a nice habit of waiting for something to time out on startup if they can’t connect in the same way they did before they were turned off. This timeout usually lasts about ten minutes. It’s annoying enough when you can’t figure out why it’s not working all of a sudden, so in desperation you press the hardware reset button and again come across the aforementioned 10.x.x.x ip address ‘feature’. However, you really have to have the timeout occur when you’ve got seven minutes before the place you’re working in closes to appreciate the ionospheric level of irritation it causes. So this company are going to have no network access tomorrow morning, and it’s going to be all my fault. Ho hum. The worrying thing is that I have a goddamn qualification in networking, and it’s still taking me hours and hours to figure out how to work things properly.

I’m having problems over at my other abode. Spammers keep registering accounts with various names designed to fool the username filters. They haven’t posted anything yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long before their automatic systems get upgraded to do that too. Ack. Die die die. I may have to set account authorisation via email soon. Oh well, it’s a good opportunity to get infrequent visitors to take part in the stalled games threads

So I was thinking. But then I realised my time would be far more productively spent looking at penguins.

Wanting to assure myself that this website is ok in the face of god, I ran it through The Gematriculator. It turns out that wongablog is 40% evil! Naturally I felt the need to analyse all my friends’ websites:

Lil’s LiveJournal - 26% evil — Contrary to all logic, it turns out that Lil is the least evil person amongst us. Gotta be a mistake.

Ed’s Blog - 32% evil — Also surprisingly low. You’d think they’d take into account the false idol penguins.

Lynsey’s Blog - 34% evil — To be expected, I suppose. They don’t know we never could find the budgie.

Nod’s Site - 41% evil — Finally somebody more evil than me! This could be related to his recent operating system massacre.

So there you have it. Perhaps Simon could run his local copy of Baguetter’s and let us know the score? If he doesn’t I’ll assume it’s in the high seventies and edit the post to reflect this fact

I just saw Casualty for the first time in years…What happened to that programme? I seem to remember quite liking it when I was younger. They used to all work as a team and the focus was on the patients; now they all just seem to hate each other and the patients are reduced to dire stereotypes. A bit like The Bill, but don’t get me started on that While I’m talking about Casualty, does anyone remember the train crash episode years and years ago? That was pretty nasty! I remember being a bit shaken up afterwards. There was also an episode they had to show later than normal, and I remember being really annoyed that it was past my bedtime…I wonder what it was that was so disturbing.

Nod and I have been thinking about taking a road trip in the USA this autumn, so I’ve been looking at car hire prices. Browsing the various rental company websites, it quickly becomes apparent that they’re not a lot of use. Some won’t calculate one-way trips (where you drop off the car at a different location), some won’t calculate more than 28 days, some won’t take into account second or ‘underage’ (under 25!) drivers and some just don’t work at all. The only site that could do everything was Alamo. I’ll certainly remember them! I crack myself up sometimes. Anyway, standard car rental for 34 days comes to £780. The one-way surcharge is £285. So far, not too bad when split between two people. Then, however, there’s the charge for two drivers under 25 - an extra £971. Geez. It’s $25 / day / person. I can understand the reasons, I suppose, it’s just irritating. I hadn’t anticipated spending £1000 just on renting the car!

I realised I haven’t mentioned the fact that many of you will be in the midst of revising for / taking finals atm, so good luck with all that. I was meant to be a millionaire by this point…crap! I’ll work a bit harder next week and get back to you.

Has anyone ever played Tribes / Tribes 2? They’re now available for free…Should I stoop to waiting all day in a FilePlanet queue to get it? Sure I could read some reviews myself and find out, but it’s late and I can’t be bothered.

Oh, and for those of you interested in graphics, the real-time ATI Ruby demo is quite astonishing. Go watch it.

Having been playing around with it for a few months, I’m now recommending Norton Internet Security 2004 to all my clients in need of virus/firewall protection. While it’s perhaps a little cumbersome for those of us who like full control over everything we do, I think it’s great for the average user. It has the advantage of ease of use, updating itself automatically and working pretty damn well. Also, it’s a one-stop-shop for antivirus, firewall, parental control, spam filtering (well, kinda) and privacy controls. Norton being a large company, you can also be pretty sure they’re not going to go bust in the near future; they also have a very large knowledge base which has helped me solve a fair few problems I’d never have got around otherwise.

The main disadvantages seem to be: it’s a bugger to fix if something goes wrong file-wise, as it’s deliberately designed not to let other programs alter it; Windows startup takes longer, and older computers are noticably slower with it running; people tend to get a bit confused by the many ‘do you wish to allow this to connect’ windows; it’s important to drum into people that it’s a subscription service and that another fee is due after a year or it’ll be effectively useless (it doesn’t help that Norton do their best to talk you into actually upgrading it when your time’s up, which is substantially more expensive than just renewing the license); the initial updates can also be prohibitively large for dialup users, for example the ‘parental control URLs’ update was 20mb by nine months after the release of NIS 2003.

NIS 2004 is a wallet numbing £54.99 if you want to download it from the Symantec online store (perversely, that’s exactly the same price as having it posted to you.) However, if you go to the dabs.com download store you can download it for £44.99. Stores such as PC World tend to have it for £49.99, or £24.99 if you buy it with a PC (!).

While eating lunch yesterday I started watching One Million Years BC and it nearly killed me. It’s about cavemen, as you may perhaps expect. One of them has a fight with the leader of his tribe, so decides to wander off. So he gets to this cliff and has a rest. Suddenly, what rises up over the edge? An iguana! A massive dinosaur-sized one! Cue hysterics 1. After running away (lots of blue-screen work which was probably pretty impressive back then) he finally manages to escape. Now he’s running along the plains of what looked like Utah. He turns around a bluff and sees…a diplodocus! In the middle of the desert! This one doesn’t see him, so he manages to avoid it. Scrambling over a bluff, he looks down to see…A MASSIVE TARANTULA!!!! It was as big as the Millennium Dome Cue hysterics 2. Then, finally, he makes it over the side of a large drop and reaches a beach but collapses before reaching the water. He’s rescued by various women (who were frollicking in the sea in impractical outfits - as you do when you’re a cavewoman). Just when you think he’s safe, the final monster appears. Just imagine the fear that would overcome you if you looked up into the eyes of a highly dangerous, building-sized, extremely scary…tortoise. That was it, I was gone. Yes, this was the best they could come up with. A tortoise. This perhaps isn’t a surprise when you see the cover of the DVD. I’m thinking they perhaps weren’t that interested in the monsters Well, not that kind anyway…I didn’t watch much more of the film, but I’d highly recommend it if you want a laugh!

My road is being destroyed. The diggers came down today and literally ripped up the pavement on the other side from my house. They’re going to be working on it for five weeks apparently. Joy. They recently finished Kingscote; apparently they’d have been done much sooner if some pratt hadn’t moved their cones one night.

I might have made that last bit up.

Please please please make sure your computers are up-to-date. Had Sasser been malicious…well, I hate to think. Downloading individual updates can take a while, but is undoubtedly worth it. See my previous post for more info on how to keep your computers up and running.