Stuff happening in my life
I met Stuart Langridge and Jono Bacon from LUG Radio last night as they came to Leeds where Jono talked at my local LUG. Wookey also gave a talk about the latest stuff going on in the Emdebian world.
And of course I also met up with some of the WYLUG regulars (Robert Speed, Jim Jackson, James Holden, et al) and some perhaps not so regular (which would include me btw).
We enjoyed the talks, went to a local Italian place for dinner then to a local pub. Was a great night.
I fell down the stairs on Wednesday and bumped the back of my head on the wall. Ever since then I’ve had a dull headache and occasional, but rather intense, flashes of pain behind my right eye. I’ve called NHS direct and they suggest I get it checked out, so I’m off down to A&E now.
I hope I didn’t break anything important. I like my brain. It knows what food I like.
UPDATE: The cute doctor says I have concussion and need to take it easy for a week. No staring at screens or reading. I guess I’ll need to go for a long walk. A really long walk. She asked if I’d had trouble concentrating or anything and I realised that reading has been rather difficult since Wednesday. I’d assumed that this particular book I’ve been reading had just got really complicated and/or was written badly. Turns out it’s more likely due to the bump. I’ll have to go back a couple of chapters to catch up when I’m feeling better.
Fat Wreck Chords are listed on the RIAA members list. This is a little confusing, considering they are an independent label who vehemently oppose the practices of the record industry dinosaurs.
After lots and lots of searching, I finally found what seems to be an excerpt from some newsletter by Fat Mike which denies this insanity. Though it states that they were taken off the list after complaining a lot, they are back on it now.
I’ve e-mailed them to suggest they put it on their website news section or something. It’s difficult to find the truth otherwise (assuming it is the truth).
UPDATE: Turns out this is old news, and Fat Wreck Chords deny any involvement with RIAA. I found that a guy e-mailed them about it in 2003 and they responded. Still no answer from them myself though.
People came together in Leeds on Wednesday to Unite Against Fascism. We protested outside Leeds Crown Court where Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, was up on charges of inciting racial hatred (well, the preliminary hearing). Louisa has written a much more in-depth commentary of the day, go read it. But in summary, it was a very positive day and we outnumbered the BNP supporters almost ten to one.
I took lots of photos, some of which you can find on my Unite Against Fascism Protest gallery.
UPDATE: ROFL. I just read that the BNP claim, on their website, that 350 supporters turned up and only 300 protestors. The way I saw it (and the mainstream media) they had, at most, 200 people and we had between 800 and 1000! Such hilarious misrepresentation of the facts is worthy of a FOX news piece.
I’ve just got off the phone with the chaps from LUG radio. They were chatting with me about the Everybody Loves Eric Raymond comic strip. 10 million geeks will hear it next Tuesday and rush to buy the tshirts I’m hocking on there. Or will be. By next week. Then I can retire at 26.
Anyway, it’s an amusing show so you should be listening to it whether I’m on it or not, so get downloading.
Just a reminder that the UK National ID card threat has not gone away. The government is still planning to get this piece of police state legislation implemented. The whole scheme is going to cost an estimated £19 billion. That’s over £300 per card. And it won’t make us more secure. It won’t prevent the majority benefit fraud. The technology doesn’t even work. It seems to achieve nothing but invade our privacy and provide fat contracts to private technology firms.
The world is not a different place since 9/11. The “rules of the game” have not changed. Reject the ID card.
Read more at “Our World Our Say” and No2Id.
Please donate something to the “Our World Our Say” campaign against ID cards. They have various projects to raise awareness and are currently raising money for an advertising campaign.
Louisa has written an account of our little holiday in Dumfries in Scotland in July. You can read it here on her blog.
She’s also written loads about our holiday in Russia.
I’m having to remove at least two Daddy long legs (Crane fly) from the house every day. If I open the door on an evening, there are always a number of them sleeping on the outside of it. There were a few buzzing around at my parents house in Bradford the other day.
Are we having an invasion? Has anyone else noticed a huge influx of crane fly?
An interesting symptom of this seems to be that spiders, due to their new diet of giant flies, are now growing much larger too. So now we have gianormous spiders skulking around hunting and eating even bigger flies. I fear for the lives of our cats, although they seem to be having fun hunting and catching the flies too.
UPDATE: In addition to Leeds and Bradford, I’ve now had reports of huge flies and spiders in Huddersfield too.
UPDATE: To repell these flies get some Citronella oil apply it around your doors and windows, perhaps dousing some small pieces of cloth. To get rid of ones that have already got in I just recommend catching them in your cupped hands and throwing them outside. If you’d prefer that the ones you miss don’t lay eggs all around your house, get some fly paper to catch those stragglers. Mass killing and torturing of them achieves nothing long term; you’ll just end up in Buddhist hell.
I got to wander around Lister’s Mill in Manningham, Bradford on Saturday and took a few photos. It’s currently being converted in to fancy flats.
I grew up in Manningham and have always dreamed of seeing inside the place. The weather was pretty miserable and the light was awful. I’ve arranged to go back in a few weeks when more of the rubble has been moved and the weather is better (hopefully).
The site manager guy I spoke to coincidentally has our family’s old home telephone number as his fax line. I often wondered who’d answer if I called my old phone number. Guess I don’t need to wonder now.
I set up various music players around our house and my work to report back to Audioscrobbler a couple of months ago. Audioscrobbler keeps track (heh) of the music you play and summarises it all. Kinda cute.
Our (me and Louisa) profile is at: http://www.last.fm/user/johnandlouisa/
We listen to music together, but also separately (me at work too) so the results can often be skewed towards each others tastes, but we share a lot of musical interests. See if you can guess who is listening to what in particular.
Comic strip harrassment
My “weekly” comic strip Everybody loves Eric Raymond is still going, but I’m sometimes late because of the difficulties involved in producing high quality humour and because I’m lazy.
I’m currently over half a day late with this weeks strip and I’ve begun to get comments:
Scrotor: Leach - It’s WEDNESDAY, and guess what?I don’t know who this Scrotor is. My teachers at school used to call me by my surname too. It amuses me that now random geeks call me it too. Unless my old teachers read my comic.
I really should be getting on with the strip rather than yapping about it here. This week features a new character that I don’t have a body for yet so is appearing as a ghost. Actually, I could have easily got a body sorted but the ghost idea amuses me.
21/9/2005 Add Comment