Category: General

Al Qa'eda: The French Connection

It has emerged that Al Qa'eda are struggling for support in Iraq because of some bad political decisions, such as banning women from buying cucumbers.

It sounds pretty funny really, but it transpires that cucumbers look like penises, so it is not appropriate for women to buy them. They can just stare at them in the market instead. But there is hope; they are allowed to buy tomatoes. Isn't that nice, eh?

The official reason is that cucumbers have been deemed a male vegetable, whereas tomatoes have been deemed a female fruit.

Quite clearly, there is a French connection. Think about it: il est le légume et la tomate. Given that the French have been accused in the Rwandan genocide (something I plan to come back to), I'm seeing a pattern here. We should be told.

Max Mosley And The Right To Privacy

I can't help but feel a (more than slight) unease about the way the case between Max Mosley and the News of the World has been played out over the last few weeks, but more so since the verdict in favour of Mosley this week. It was a slightly bizarre case, it must be said, but also, in my opinion, a completely unnecessary case, one that shows just how bad our media are.

I am glad that in the verdict this week, it was noted that Mosley, and others could expect privacy for consensual "sexual activities (albeit unconventional)". Now let me be clear about this: I am no fan of Max Mosley, and I am hardly comfortable with his choice of sexual activities, but at the end of the day, what does it matter? Why, just because people do not like what he is doing, is it ok to pay hookers to hide cameras in what is a private affair and make it public? I do not agree with his choices, but they are perfectly legal, and so, in that respect, his privacy should be respected. He has committed no crime. This is not something that really holds a wide public interest - it is nothing more than a snigger story.

The Daily Mail claimed that the verdict was a good day for the corrupt, and the Sun claims that what matters in your right to know. Why? Why is it so important that I should know about someone else's private life? Even the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, has weighed in on the row, calling the decision a dangerous precedent that will needlessly shackle the press. Of course, he is writing in the News of the World, but I'm sure that doesn't make a difference at all. Nor does the fact that he comes from the Anglican denomination. No, that must be coincidence.

This is a real problem we seem to have. Our press are far too quick to try and assume some kinf of moral high ground, claiming to be exposing the indecent - though perfectly legal - behaviour of others - by using rather suspect means. They gladly moralise on one page about how our society has lost all morality, whilst on the opposing page, have almost completely naked women and have columns such as Dear Deirdre, which seem to be full of the very same things that they moralise about.

Quite why Lord Carey has decided to get involved, I have no idea. What's it to him? Are newspapers our only hope of upholding morality? Of course, he's coming from the viewpoint of "freedom of expression", but what's that? In my understanding, freedom of expression should be allowed without harassment.

We can disagree with what people do, but persecuting them isn't the right way forward. Isn't Britain meant to be known for being a fairly liberal country? There's not much evidence of it from here.

May I Incur The Wrath Of MrBen

I may get in trouble for this, but I think you'll agree, it's worth it. You may remember me referring to mrBen possibly needing to hide. Well, look below, and you'll perhaps see what I'm talking about!

mrBen wearing...very little!

Please note, mrBen warned he would kill anyone who shows this to his daughter in the year 2023...so I'm safe for a few years yet.

I just can't stop laughing. I was asked if I wanted to take mrBen's place last week. I'm glad I didn't. He looks so much better.

*Picture licensed by schwuk under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence

LUGRadio Live 2008

I've just got back from LUGRadio Live 2008. I'm not going to give a review of the event right now, but instead, I'll leave you with a little ditty:

If you had gone down to LUGRadio Live,
You'd have been in for a big surprise;
A land full of geeks galore,
And for most, probably quite a bore.

Alas, there are some who like it so,
Debating how Linux can get the 'big mo';
Talking of robots and giving them rights,
Hoping they don't engage us in fights.

World domination, we talked about that,
Preparing to make the pyramid fat:
"It's the year of the Linux desktop", says Aq -
No change from his usual yack.

Then there's the Gong-a-Thong:
It's really quite wrong;
Not that it seemed to phase mrBen -
Though now he might have to hide in his den!

I'll leave mrBen to explain that one, because the pictures are interesting...

Noel's Latest Project Is Ready

Unfortunately, if you thought that meant Sassenach CMS is ready, you'll be disappointed. There are still some bugs that need fixing and there is some code that needs cleaning up. It is in a workable state, but not in a state that I want to release it in quite yet...

I do, however, have a project to show off to you. I have now made a Countdown Puzzle Page. It's not complete yet,  but you can at least try the quiz. Especially worth a mention is the algorithm that checks to see if your maths is up to scratch! Take a look and comment on it here. I will be adding some database functionality sometime soon, but I'll just let you get used to it for now. Have a crack at the problems and see how you do. I'm setting 28 points as a basemark on the challenge here, and in my personal opinion, the maths is hard. Anyone who can solve that in thirty seconds is doing well!

Have fun...and there's more in the pipeline. But I can't tell you that yet.

A Note Of Caution

I have a digital camera that hasn't worked very well for a while now. Basically, it doesn't work. With fully charged batteries, it would just about turn on. When plugged in to the mains, it turns on, then off again without hesitation. It doesn't really do the job of a digital camera.

So I decided to rry something. I put a couple of extra volts of power in to the camera - just to see what would happen, like. It killed the camera.

So, a note for everyone: don't put more volts through your digital camera than it's designed to take. In fact, maybe don't try it with anything else either (although sometimes it's useful with speakers; you can occasionally get a little more grunt out of them that way!).*

*I take no responsibility if you break your speakers doing this, but it's never broken mine. Throwing them against the wall and smashing them on the floor by mistake did, however.

Anyway, just a word of warning for you. It made no difference to me, though - the camera was already broken!

Fresh Priorities

Almost two years ago, I posted about priorities. I had spent the summer working for the Baptist Union of Scotland Youth, and as part of my review, I mentioned that I wanted to think about my priorities in life. Thus, I wrote about them in the hope that I might stick to them.

Well, not far off two years on, I can look back at them and say that I failed miserably - perhaps because I forgot all about them. I did not spend much more time on my degree, although I did start getting better marks; I never did start playing more cricket, let alone competitively; I didn't get involved in 5-a-side football; I started to get involved in the Live@215 music cafe, but then left the church I was involved in; and didn't really leave myself a whole lot of time to relax. I did, however, get involved in more societies, and joined the Societies Committee at Sheffield Union.

All in all, my priorities didn't get prioritised - or they changed. So, two years later, I've finished my degree. Maybe it's about time I looked at them again. So, just like last time, I should start with a list of what I already do:

So that's what I am doing at the moment. Of those things, there are few that are going to go away. Obviously, me degree is now out of the way, and there are a couple of websites for which I am no longer responsible. I have decided I want to continue to drive forward the Baptist Union's youth website as I have quite a few ideas for it. The Hoddesdon Baptist Church website will soon not be my responsibility, partly because I will no longer have any involvement in that church, but also partly because there seems to be little desire for that site to develop, and my aim is to develop websites rather than to maintain them. My church involvement will change very slightly, but will require just as much time as it does now, just in slightly different ways. My content management system is something I have really focused upon since the turn of the year, and I am aiming to polish off a release version very shortly and then take a much slower development approach.

So, that's what I do now and how that may change over the coming period. However, there are new challenges coming my way and new challenges  want to take up. So, what are they? Let's list them:

The last one is probably the most important, but also the hardest. Any suggestions for how to weave it in to the others?

No Energy Savings On E-Day

I read with interest today that E-Day, held on 28th February, did not lead to any energy savings. I can't say with any honesty that I am at all surprised.

The first I knew of E-Day - a when everyone was encouraged to switch off electrical equipment in order to save energy - was the evening before. It's hardly great publicity.

A little tip: it's always a good idea to tell people about it. If I don't know my friend Tom is sitting in Starbucks waiting for me, I'm not going to go and meet him, am I? No, sirree!

Absolutely Appalling

Taken from the BBC News website:

A council has admitted failing children who were sexually abused by a foster couple in Yorkshire.

An independent inquiry was launched after Ian Wathey and Craig Faunch, from Pontefract, were jailed in June for a catalogue of sex offences against boys.

The inquiry's report said Wakefield Council staff failed to act on suspicions for fear of being seen to be discriminatory.

The council said a "rigorous overhaul" of children's services was needed.

Pat Garbutt, the council's portfolio holder for children and young people, said: "Some of the practice and management systems we had in place at the time covered by this inquiry failed children in our care.

"Action has been taken by senior management to rectify those failings."

Brian Parrott, chairman of the independent inquiry, presented the report to councillors at a meeting on Wednesday.

He told them that the fostering panel which approved Faunch and Wathey was "deficient in a number of respects".

He said: "From the outset inappropriate children were placed with them, presenting challenges which the foster carers were not sufficiently skilled to meet.

"Issues arose in the first longer-term placement of two children, including potential indicators of child sexual abuse, which were inadequately investigated, analysed, understood or acted upon."

He added: "It seems to us that some staff members failed to exercise the professional judgement which they should for fear of being seen to be discriminatory".

Mrs Garbutt said: "Our first concern in this care is and always has been for the young people who were abused by this couple.

"We realised through our own early investigations and through the findings of this report that those children were put at risk. This should not have happened."

She said the council commissioned the independent inquiry because it knew there was "much to learn and we wanted to make sure that we were in a position to assess what happened - and why - and what we could do about it to safeguard all children in our care.

"I am confident that things have improved - and are improving - since this very sad case came to light."

Mrs Garbutt said an action plan of improvements had been drawn up to cover all the report's recommendations.

She said: "It represents a rigorous overhaul of our services to children in our care. We will learn lessons from this inquiry."

I am just lost for words. I had to turn the television off when I saw this. Already vulnerable young people have been betrayed and ignored on grounds of political correctness. To boil this down to professional judgement is awful. It should boil down to love and care. None of the people who allowed this to go on should still be in their jobs. It turns my stomach to think that a person's well-being, especially an already vulnerable person's well-being, should be superseded by people who don't want to look bad.

What a depraved world we live in.

Bank Holiday Photographs

The Bank Holiday weekend has been just like the classic, stereotypical British Bank Holiday: short bursts of sunshine along with bursts of rain. Thus, one nice barbeque on Saturday was equalled with one wet barbeque which was conducted indoors on Sunday, and Monday's picnic was... completely cancelled due to rain. However, I have managed to take a fe nive photos around the University of Sheffield to put up here to show you.

Weston Park, facing the Arts Tower Firstly, a picture of Weston Park, facing the Arts Tower. Weston Park is the closest park to the University of Sheffield's Union, though I must confess, I hardly ever go in there. I went in there today and it started raining, so perhaps it is better that I stay away from it. The University's SPEAK group have some hopes about the possibility of doing things in Weston Park, but more of that as and when (and, more to the point, if) it happens.

Weston Park, facing the museum If you pan around to the left, you see a lovely-looking building which houses the Weston Park museum. I haven't been in the museum myself, but do plan to at some point, though from the views of other people I know who have been, I've not missed a great deal. They appear to use lots of new technology in the building, with no end of things to push, but not have much in the way of information, which is surely the main point of a museum...

Rainbow With the C.U. picnic cancelled, off we went to the Interval, a cafe/bar at the University's Union. That was packed because of the Beer Festival, so we tried to go to the Gallery in the Union, which was closed. Finally, we tried to go to the University Arms, but this too was closed, so we gave up looking for places to go. However, there was a wonderful rainbow,s o I took my camera out and took a picture. Well, actually, I took quite a few pictures - it was very hard to make the rainbow stand out from the clouds whilst still maintaining enough light in the picture as a whole. This was the best I got in the one minute I had to take the picture.

Information Commons This blog keeps on mentioning the Information Commons, but as yet, you haven't seen it. Here it is in its glory, green copper filling the landscape. The building on the far left is the Hicks Building, the tall building on the right is the Arts Tower, and the building in front of that is the Chemistry Building. The Information Commons stands out amongst them all.

Dessert Having wandered about looking for places to go after out cancelled C.U. picnic, we decided to go to Aunt Sally, a very nice public house which serves fantastic food. Hungry from our adventures, I ordered the largest dessert they sell, apparently designed for two people (back in Hertfordshire, I've seen larger advertised for one - people in South Yorkshire clearly have small appetites), and whilst the three people next to me struggled to finish one between them, polished mine off before proudly holding my trophy aloft. If only you got a second for free if you finished the first...

Hospital Finally, as we left, a perfect opportunity arose to catch the Hallamshire Hospital in its evening glory. The sky contrasts beautifully with the hospital's lights, providing a wonderful picture. It would be nicer if I had a tripod as it is slightly blurred, but still, it is a rather nice picture. Again, I took a few different shots, but they came out rather more blurred because they had a longer exposure time (up to 7 seconds).

That concludes my mini tour of Sheffield. If I ever get round to making a new gallery, I'll put the shots up, but for now, that's your lot.