Saw her name mentioned on a recent episode of The Sopranos. Not heard of Sue Grafton before, maybe she is worth a read. Any comments?
Technorati tags: Sue Grafton, The Sopranos
Category: Uncategorized
Sir Alistair Graham looses out!
In a move that will be seen as vindictive revenge by Tony Blair, Sir Alistair steps down from his chairmanship of the Committee on Standards in Public Life when his contract ends next month.
Perhaps Sir Alistair was doing too good a job which is why Blair feels threatened and has made sure that there is no chance of Sir Alistair staying on till a successor is found. Read the full story here.
Where to spend that money?
While I was away this week, I saw a news report that reported that many children in the South-West of the UK are living in temporary accommodation with their parents for one reason or another because there is not enough permanent housing for them.
This is due to many reasons, but a main one being that there is not enough council housing left to house these needy families.
Why, I wonder as the UK government has moved to the vote for a £75 billion replacement for the Trident nuclear missile system, are they not spending the money on something more valuable – human need – than on yet another missile system that serves no real immediate purpose.
DRM – The arguments rumble on.
I’ve just watched a BBC 24 Click Online broadcast about DRM, what is Richard Gooch from the International Federation of Phonographic Industry on about? Stating that everyone he knows only want to use an IPOD! What rubbish. I, for one will never buy an IPOD.
Why? I have a Sony Ericsson P910i mobile phone (a little old now), it syncs with my Outlook – I don’t need to carry my laptop as often, it has Internet access – I don’t need to carry my laptop as often, and it plays MP3’s – I don’t need to carry my laptop as often (for CDs)!!
I may still be in a minority by purchasing CDs and playing them on my CD player (yes, I have downloaded some music which I can also on my ‘MP3’ player), PC and ‘mobile phone/MP3 player’. But having everything on one portable device has got to be better than strangling yourself with yet another pair of ‘white’ earphones.
And to the argument, ‘isn’t it risky having everything on one device in case it gets lost or stolen! Make sure you have a backup (you already have the CDs back at ‘base’) and to the argument of what about space – buy yourself a 2Gbyte memory card!
I’m all for DRM – I work in the publishing industry, so this is something that I fully endorse for all media and its use, but don’t tell me that I can only play my music – that I have purchased – when someone else tells me; when, where and on what device.
Bye Bye Qumana!
Just a short post to say good bye to what I had thought was a good product (albeit with some small issues) that seems to have gone the way of many software products through lack of support and lack of response to user questions.
Since Blogger.com moved from its ‘beta’ state, many people have had problems with getting their blogs to work they way they used to. My main problem has been that Qumana just seemed to stop working – it wouldn’t post anything – with the new Blogger. Despite a number of emails to support, scouring the various forums for answers, I got no where.
So what to do, first I sorted out as few issues that were squarely Blogger.Com issues – how can an organisation make such a hash of an ‘upgrade’! Then I had a look around for replacement off-line blogging editing software, after some research and testing I’ve have ended up using Windows Live Writer (Beta). Yes it has a few foibles, but what software hasn’t? It’s early days with its use, but it does post without any errors.
So it’s Bye Bye to Qumana, sorry you didn’t want to fix my issue.
An excellent Restaurant to visit.
I was away on a short break in Cornwall last week and during an afternoon trip along the south coast happened on a very good restaurant in the small Cornish port of Porthleven.
The Lugger Bistro is a small, friendly restaurant serving brilliantly cooked and presented food – I would rate the sirloin steak I had, as one of my top-ten steaks I have ever eaten – something that is a rarity in the UK these days!
Although it was a quite night – I suppose this is a big problem with all restaurants in the off season – we had a very enjoyable evening and full praise must go to the owner Dane Benner and his staff for running such an excellent ‘eatery’. I’ll go back again when I’m next in that area. If you get a chance, call in, you won’t be disappointed.
Location details: 7 Fore Street, Porthleven. Cornwall, TR13 9HQ
The surveillance society moves on another step!
More children to be fingerprinted! See the full story here…
Trident related E-Petition
As you will have seen from my previous posts [1], [2], [3], [4]; I have taken a particular stand against the spending of any money on a replacement for the aging Trident Nuclear missile system.
I had not thought of this before, but with the high-profile achieved by the Anti-road Charging ‘E-Petition’, there should be one (maybe more) relating to the costs surrounding any Trident replacement.
Well, now there is one and I managed to be the first person to add my name after Sian Davies, the creator of this new ‘E-Petition’.
Add your name to this one and lets see if we can get even more signatures on this than were collected on the Anti-road Charging petition.
We were really brave, weren’t we?
I had this sent to me over the Xmas break, I had not seen it before and though it quiet funny when you make a comparison with today’s overly risk-assessed, nanny-state controlled and politically-correct cosseted world!
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE….
1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s & 70’s !!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They ate salad dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose, and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with at least 4 friends, from one bottle, and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate white bread and real butter, and drank soft drink with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because….
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as
we were back home when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were OK.
We would spend hours building our wooden go-carts out of scrap wood, and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS, and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents .
We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house, and knocked on the door, or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
In football we had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned….
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And -YOU- are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers, and the government regulated our lives for our own good!
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!
PS – The big type is because your eyes are probably shot at your age !
Does make you wonder doesn’t it!!!
Tags: Nanny State, Risk Assessment
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A debt finallly paid.
I saw this clip today about the final loan repayments being made to the USA and Canada for their World War II Lend-Lease loans. That took a long time!
But that’s only the money that’s getting paid back. What about all the technology that went that way over the years following the end of WW II – Radar, Jet Engine, Sonar, Computing – who knows what else?
Perhaps in another 50 years, we’ll get to really know when those cabinet papers are released and we find out something better that how that nice man Harold Wilson organised his resignation!
Tags: Lend-Lease, Cabinet Papers, Harold Wilson, WW II
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