Has any iBook G4 owner reading this ever received a shock from their computer, of the “ouch, dammit” variety, while working with it plugged into the mains? I only noticed this the other night when I was beavering away. My battery’s power level went into the red and so I did what anyone sensible would have, inserted the AC jack. I was sitting on the floor at the time, and was wearing shorts, or I don’t think I’d have noticed it.
As parts of the computer touched my bare leg – namely the metal screw fitting, and the front catch was touching my chest, I noticed a slight burning sensation. Since I had not been receiving injuries from I computer before that, I gathered it had something to do with me being plugged in. I removed the AC jack and…job done. No more eel impersonations.
Anyone else noticed this?
Friday, October 21, 2005
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Trying to define sin
Sin. And old fashioned word with religious connotations, right? Well, I just happen to like the word – it carries more gravitas than say ‘doing wrong’ or ‘being bad’.
The reason I’m bringing up this issue is really related to a discussion I had with the facilitator in the Alpha Group I’m attending. We disagreed. Sherron, a lovely person, had the attitude that moral standards have dropped. I don’t actually agree with this. Bad news makes good copy, sells media space. That’s not to say we’re, as humans pure as the driven snow, this would be patent rubbish. But the evidence would suggest that in fact we are living more morally than in previous generations. Binge drinking is a hot topic at the moment. Alcohol consumption, in regular and immoderate amounts usually means there is something wrong with you or the structure in which you dwell – unhappy marriage, stress at work etc. Also, the British, as Kate Fox as pointed out, drink in order to become less inhibited. If that’s the case, then perhaps our greater consumption of alcohol is the explanation for the ‘death of Britishness’ – the stiff upper lip we are famous for.
Alcohol though. Peter Ackroyd, the source of all knowledge when it comes to London’s history, mentioned in his recent TV series, that in the late 18th century, there was a gin palace for every 35 people. That’s not a typo. A lot of gin palaces, and thus a lot of alcohol consumption.
The Victorian era is often looked about as some kind of ‘golden age’ of morality. Undoubtedly, some of our greatest engineers, scientists, innovators, architects and entrepreneurs came from this period. But on the other side, the poor lived in squalor mostly, with so called ‘illegitimate’ children being the norm in poorer parts of the UK. Poverty that we in the west have long been able to forget. And this leads to the reason I’m questioning the nature of sin. Much of the Victorian poverty was preventable. There were enough resources to house, clothe and feed everyone. When we think of poverty, we think of Africa or poor parts of Asia. So when you buy your trainers for £40 plus, do you think of the kids who stitched them up for a dollar a day? No, same the Victorians didn’t give a hoot for the east enders and those living in the mill towns of the north.
If I’m not making myself clear (and I seriously want to leave the office before it gets dark), then it is this. Christians and many Americans seem to have the attitude that ‘sin’ is something that we are entirely responsible for. Us, doing unto God as we would to others. “Responsibility” in this context means responsibility. There is nothing wrong with that – I can choose to be a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person, though the distinctions are more than often a bit blurred.
Yet I can no more change the conditions of the third world poor than I can move 10 tonne rocks with my little finger. What we as a society can do is protest against corporations, unfair trading conditions which make overseas poverty inevitable, and that’s about it, unless we go into full term violence, as we did with the hated Poll Tax in 1990. It takes a lot for a Brit to do this, be assured. Mostly, the good people who campaign against unfair trading conditions, globalisation etc, do nothing more than raise the public sense of unease. And this is perhaps all they can do. Maybe, for example, it will take another natural disaster or three like Katrina before the likes of Dubya wake up and smell the coffee. Oh dear, no coffee, plantations got waterlogged this year. Thhhhaaank you.
Its all well and good trying, at an individual level, to be a sinless person, and yet its just as damn easy being white as snow to our neighbours and loved ones while watching big business and stupid power-gorged governments do nasty things to those they consider beneath them, which lets face it is 99 percent of us. Sometimes we have to do the ant thing – work as a cohesive team against them. And occasionally, it even works.
Final thought: the last time I hunted for a pair of shoes made in Britain by workers presumably paid a living wage, I wore my shoe-leather out.
Mood: Contemplative
Book: Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz
Music: Air con above my desk
The reason I’m bringing up this issue is really related to a discussion I had with the facilitator in the Alpha Group I’m attending. We disagreed. Sherron, a lovely person, had the attitude that moral standards have dropped. I don’t actually agree with this. Bad news makes good copy, sells media space. That’s not to say we’re, as humans pure as the driven snow, this would be patent rubbish. But the evidence would suggest that in fact we are living more morally than in previous generations. Binge drinking is a hot topic at the moment. Alcohol consumption, in regular and immoderate amounts usually means there is something wrong with you or the structure in which you dwell – unhappy marriage, stress at work etc. Also, the British, as Kate Fox as pointed out, drink in order to become less inhibited. If that’s the case, then perhaps our greater consumption of alcohol is the explanation for the ‘death of Britishness’ – the stiff upper lip we are famous for.
Alcohol though. Peter Ackroyd, the source of all knowledge when it comes to London’s history, mentioned in his recent TV series, that in the late 18th century, there was a gin palace for every 35 people. That’s not a typo. A lot of gin palaces, and thus a lot of alcohol consumption.
The Victorian era is often looked about as some kind of ‘golden age’ of morality. Undoubtedly, some of our greatest engineers, scientists, innovators, architects and entrepreneurs came from this period. But on the other side, the poor lived in squalor mostly, with so called ‘illegitimate’ children being the norm in poorer parts of the UK. Poverty that we in the west have long been able to forget. And this leads to the reason I’m questioning the nature of sin. Much of the Victorian poverty was preventable. There were enough resources to house, clothe and feed everyone. When we think of poverty, we think of Africa or poor parts of Asia. So when you buy your trainers for £40 plus, do you think of the kids who stitched them up for a dollar a day? No, same the Victorians didn’t give a hoot for the east enders and those living in the mill towns of the north.
If I’m not making myself clear (and I seriously want to leave the office before it gets dark), then it is this. Christians and many Americans seem to have the attitude that ‘sin’ is something that we are entirely responsible for. Us, doing unto God as we would to others. “Responsibility” in this context means
Yet I can no more change the conditions of the third world poor than I can move 10 tonne rocks with my little finger. What we as a society can do is protest against corporations, unfair trading conditions which make overseas poverty inevitable, and that’s about it, unless we go into full term violence, as we did with the hated Poll Tax in 1990. It takes a lot for a Brit to do this, be assured. Mostly, the good people who campaign against unfair trading conditions, globalisation etc, do nothing more than raise the public sense of unease. And this is perhaps all they can do. Maybe, for example, it will take another natural disaster or three like Katrina before the likes of Dubya wake up and smell the coffee. Oh dear, no coffee, plantations got waterlogged this year. Thhhhaaank you.
Its all well and good trying, at an individual level, to be a sinless person, and yet its just as damn easy being white as snow to our neighbours and loved ones while watching big business and stupid power-gorged governments do nasty things to those they consider beneath them, which lets face it is 99 percent of us. Sometimes we have to do the ant thing – work as a cohesive team against them. And occasionally, it even works.
Final thought: the last time I hunted for a pair of shoes made in Britain by workers presumably paid a living wage, I wore my shoe-leather out.
Mood: Contemplative
Book: Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz
Music: Air con above my desk
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Anonymous replies
Dear anonymous commentators
I know its a terribly brave thing to submit your comment using a returnable email address and a real name. Some are even brave enough to have done it. For those who have, I salute you. But for the vast majority who cower behind anonymity...
Go on, I don't bite. Too hard. And I'm a freak only with the boundaries of freakdom. Just. So unless you *very* offensive, I'll not flame you too much anyway.
And for all those spammers - I love spam, bring me more. Gmail is VERY good at spotting it.
I know its a terribly brave thing to submit your comment using a returnable email address and a real name. Some are even brave enough to have done it. For those who have, I salute you. But for the vast majority who cower behind anonymity...
Go on, I don't bite. Too hard. And I'm a freak only with the boundaries of freakdom. Just. So unless you *very* offensive, I'll not flame you too much anyway.
And for all those spammers - I love spam, bring me more. Gmail is VERY good at spotting it.
Stock Aitken Waterman - the greatest songwriters of all time?
You can tell you are getting old when you find that the music you either paid scant attention to, or actively disliked at the time, sounds good to your ears compared to the vast majority of what’s out now. I’m not saying that all modern music is crap, because there are some still some excellent tunesmiths around, thank goodness. But, for example, the whole so called R&B genre is an insult to the real R&B groove, that from the American south and its foreign imitators. Now that’s the real deal. However, I digress…
I was listening to some 80s downloads on the old Archos, of which there are about 300 tracks, and the ones which really stood out in a good way were believe it or not, the Stock Aitken Waterman numbers. (The other totally standout track was ‘Busy Doing Nothing’ by Barbara Gaskin and Dave Stewart [the other one]. Now that track ought to be preordained as a masterclass in sound texture for novice producers – its bloody wonderful, with at least seven distinct textures, which all work together, strangely enough – go download then tell me I’m talking out of my arse if you dare).
Back to SAW. At the time, because there were so many of them around at once, and because quite frankly, the lyrics were and still are vacuous to say the least, I never paid as much attention to their songwriting as it deserved. But thinking about the song structures they used, the key changes, even the trademark Linnn Drum beat, considering their output was supposedly 7 songs per week, many of the tracks they produced were intricate affairs, and I feel now that any slating they got back then was via jealous musicians. You can fool people with crap for some of the time, but either we were really thick in the late 80s*, or the music wasn’t crap, mostly.
If you think I’m having a wind-up, take the chords to You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You by Sonia. Mike Stock probably knocked this up in the few minutes between pulling his wire in the gents and glugging his fifth cup of tea that day. Play the chorus, slowly, using the grand piano setting of your keyboard. To me, its bloody genius. Well, come on, could YOU do it five minutes? Most musicians get off on the fact that that their songs are ‘crafted’, ‘masterpieces’, ‘a labour of love’ etc. To me, the real art of SAW is that they, oddly enough, didn’t sell out to crassness. Most the songs they wrote are eminently recyclable in the manner of a real classic, ‘Yesterday’ by Macca, the most covered tune ever.
Here’s the summing up the wonderful Wikipedia’s entry on Mike Stock (the chief composer):
“Although Mike Stock may not be revered as John Lennon or Bob Dylan are for thought provoking lyrics, his music does appeal to the heart and is sonically and creatively every bit equal to John Lennon or Bob Dylan, if not more so than the aforementioned artists. It is no more creative to write 'Imagine' than it is to write 'I'd Rather Jack'. It is also worth noting that Bob Dylan has never had a no.1 record. Mike Stock has had 17. “
Spot on. And I’ve even agree that ‘Imagine’, with its po-faced sentiment, and blatant politicking, is a truly awful record, possibly one of the most over-revered tunes ever written. I don’t have a problem with serious music, honest, but this song was written by one of the richest men in pop. How can you take it seriously? It makes me want to vom whenever I here it, I hate it that much, and I love the Beatles. Give me the Reynolds Girls any day. At least ‘I’d Rather Jack’ pretends nothing – its bubblegum and proud.
*Hmm, we did vote for Thatcher and her wretched government twice during that period. Possibly due to mass experimentation with the atmosphere, that’s my only sane conclusion.
I was listening to some 80s downloads on the old Archos, of which there are about 300 tracks, and the ones which really stood out in a good way were believe it or not, the Stock Aitken Waterman numbers. (The other totally standout track was ‘Busy Doing Nothing’ by Barbara Gaskin and Dave Stewart [the other one]. Now that track ought to be preordained as a masterclass in sound texture for novice producers – its bloody wonderful, with at least seven distinct textures, which all work together, strangely enough – go download then tell me I’m talking out of my arse if you dare).
Back to SAW. At the time, because there were so many of them around at once, and because quite frankly, the lyrics were and still are vacuous to say the least, I never paid as much attention to their songwriting as it deserved. But thinking about the song structures they used, the key changes, even the trademark Linnn Drum beat, considering their output was supposedly 7 songs per week, many of the tracks they produced were intricate affairs, and I feel now that any slating they got back then was via jealous musicians. You can fool people with crap for some of the time, but either we were really thick in the late 80s*, or the music wasn’t crap, mostly.
If you think I’m having a wind-up, take the chords to You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You by Sonia. Mike Stock probably knocked this up in the few minutes between pulling his wire in the gents and glugging his fifth cup of tea that day. Play the chorus, slowly, using the grand piano setting of your keyboard. To me, its bloody genius. Well, come on, could YOU do it five minutes? Most musicians get off on the fact that that their songs are ‘crafted’, ‘masterpieces’, ‘a labour of love’ etc. To me, the real art of SAW is that they, oddly enough, didn’t sell out to crassness. Most the songs they wrote are eminently recyclable in the manner of a real classic, ‘Yesterday’ by Macca, the most covered tune ever.
Here’s the summing up the wonderful Wikipedia’s entry on Mike Stock (the chief composer):
“Although Mike Stock may not be revered as John Lennon or Bob Dylan are for thought provoking lyrics, his music does appeal to the heart and is sonically and creatively every bit equal to John Lennon or Bob Dylan, if not more so than the aforementioned artists. It is no more creative to write 'Imagine' than it is to write 'I'd Rather Jack'. It is also worth noting that Bob Dylan has never had a no.1 record. Mike Stock has had 17. “
Spot on. And I’ve even agree that ‘Imagine’, with its po-faced sentiment, and blatant politicking, is a truly awful record, possibly one of the most over-revered tunes ever written. I don’t have a problem with serious music, honest, but this song was written by one of the richest men in pop. How can you take it seriously? It makes me want to vom whenever I here it, I hate it that much, and I love the Beatles. Give me the Reynolds Girls any day. At least ‘I’d Rather Jack’ pretends nothing – its bubblegum and proud.
*Hmm, we did vote for Thatcher and her wretched government twice during that period. Possibly due to mass experimentation with the atmosphere, that’s my only sane conclusion.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
New Mac, dead PC
I took delivery of my new Mac iBook on Monday and have been busy learning the new software. As well as the Apple variations on believed themes - TextEdit word processor, Safari internet and the weird world of Apple Mail, which I'm beginning to like increasingly the more I use it, I'm also having to learning from scratch the Mac access technology; Voiceover in conjunction with Zoom. I'm not too sure how this is going to work out ultimately as there are 20 lessons in all and only on lesson 7. I'm generally impressed by the voices and suspect that once I get the hang of it, the combination should work fairly well for a partially sighted user, though I'm not sure how successful it would be if I were totally blind. Anyway, the laptop itself is ergonomically sound, in a way that very few non-Apple products seem to be. I love the slot loading CD drive for example.
Contrary to Apples statement 'it just works' - well it didn't. What didn't work in particular was it with our BT Voyager modem. This is one of the most common modems in the UK, and the fact that setting it up required quite an extensive search on the net (thanks to Jay from www.satansam.com) I'd still be beating it around with a big stick and cursing the day I ever bought it. In fact it may well have been returned to the Apple shop by now. Apple's support was nil, as was PlusNet, our provider who sent me the wrong information. Even as a non-confirmed AppleHead, it was obvious just by looking at the first couple of lines of 'help' they sent that they didn't have a clue. So I'm not impressed. Once the non-obvious answer had been correctly input in the Mac, hey presto, lift-off. It involved obtaining DNS server numbers.
The other major win-factor is the amazingly long battery life of the iBook which beats the crap out of the old Dell.
Speaking of the laptop, sadly, this is going to get continued use as our main PC, the one we lovingly set up a few weeks ago is no longer working. It died rather spectacularly in the middle of working from home. What is mean by 'spectacularly' is going a bit over board, as there weren't any sparks or loud bangs, but just a sudden absence of anything on the screen. Rebooting just takes us to the pre-Windows (Bios info) screen - and that's it. So no desktop computer. Just we need, and if it weren't for the new Mac I think I'd be clamoring for the return of the abacus.
Lots more to write, but tomorrow if I get time.
Mood: Anticipating work (in a bad way)
Book: Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz
Sounds: Radio 6 and TV
Contrary to Apples statement 'it just works' - well it didn't. What didn't work in particular was it with our BT Voyager modem. This is one of the most common modems in the UK, and the fact that setting it up required quite an extensive search on the net (thanks to Jay from www.satansam.com) I'd still be beating it around with a big stick and cursing the day I ever bought it. In fact it may well have been returned to the Apple shop by now. Apple's support was nil, as was PlusNet, our provider who sent me the wrong information. Even as a non-confirmed AppleHead, it was obvious just by looking at the first couple of lines of 'help' they sent that they didn't have a clue. So I'm not impressed. Once the non-obvious answer had been correctly input in the Mac, hey presto, lift-off. It involved obtaining DNS server numbers.
The other major win-factor is the amazingly long battery life of the iBook which beats the crap out of the old Dell.
Speaking of the laptop, sadly, this is going to get continued use as our main PC, the one we lovingly set up a few weeks ago is no longer working. It died rather spectacularly in the middle of working from home. What is mean by 'spectacularly' is going a bit over board, as there weren't any sparks or loud bangs, but just a sudden absence of anything on the screen. Rebooting just takes us to the pre-Windows (Bios info) screen - and that's it. So no desktop computer. Just we need, and if it weren't for the new Mac I think I'd be clamoring for the return of the abacus.
Lots more to write, but tomorrow if I get time.
Mood: Anticipating work (in a bad way)
Book: Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz
Sounds: Radio 6 and TV
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