Noel's Personal Space

A Noelinho.org Update...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:53:19 +0000

Unfortunately, the pressures of life mean that Noelinho.org is currently taking a more back-seat role in my life than I would like right now. However, there are some developments that should soon be arriving on Noelinho.org and associated websites:

A Sassenach CMS update to include somwe nice new media such as images and video;
Comprehensive coverage of the 2009 F1 season;
Those long-awaited book reviews (there are almost some read and able to review!);
A quick guide to AJAX and how to make it work (you can tell what I've been working on recently...);
A quick guide to using Apache's mod_rewrite module;
A brand spanking new section on... The West Wing.

Ok, so maybe that last one needs a little explaining. I mean, the West Wing is a little old now, but it does still have a cult following. And you know what, if Lost can have Lostpedia, then the West Wing badly needs something to match. It gives me something to do.

Ubuntu 8.10 vs. Fedora 10

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:08:10 +0000

I have used Linux regularly for about 4 years. I that time, I have, for the most part, used Ubuntu Linux, but I have on many occasions tried other flavours of Linux, including Fedora. So, how do the latest editions of Ubuntu and Fedora compare?

It is fair to say that Ubuntu generally has the edge on Fedora in my experience. I have tried Fedora Core 4 and Fedora Core 6 before, with little success, Fedora Core 4 suffered from dependency problems when installing programs, and Fedora Core 6 just wouldn't install. I also tried Fedora 9, which ran very nicely from a Live CD, but didn't install properly.

On the other hand, I have used every version of Ubuntu since the first, 4.10 (Warty Warhog). It is fair to say that I have generally been impressed with it - no installation problems at all. The early versions I used - 4.10 (Warty), 5.04 (Hoary) and 5.10 (Breezy) were solid, but unspectacular.

This changed with Dapper Drake, (6.06, LTS), the first long-term support release. It was accompanied with a much more integrated feel, and generally just worked out of the box, with few changes required. All the releases since then have carried on building upon this release, none of them being spectacular, but all solidly pushing forward. So, how would Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.10 fare?

The fairest test is to run a clean install of both. For both, I used a Live CD, with my desktop PC, which is a 2.8 Ghz Intel Processor with HT technology (the most over-rated technology of the last 5 years, if you ask me), 512Mb RAM and a 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6600GT. So, not slow, but not about to set the world on fire either. Hardware support shouldn't be an issue.

I tried Fedora 10 first. It booted without a problem, and quite quickly. It has quite a slick desktop, but I really wanted an installed system, so I installed the OS to the hard drive straight away. Everything was fine, and I re-booted. Now, in the past, Fedora has forgotten to add itself to the bootloader when installing, which is a fairly major error, but there were no major problems like that this time.

I selected Fedora 10 from the GRUB menu and watched as Fedora booted. It then came to a screen where I could finish the setup of my system. Error. My mouse didn't work. My keyboard didn't work. I tried using USB and PS/2, but neither worked. I was stuck.

I tried installing the whole system again (the Live CD recognises the keyboard and mouse without any problem), and booting again, but the problem re-appeared. Given my previous bad experiences with the Fedora installer, I cut my losses and gave up.

Next, I tried the Ubuntu 8.10 installer. I had previously upgraded an install from 8.04 to 8.10, but this test is for a clean install - and clean installs are generally better anyway. I booted the Live CD - no problems. I ran the installer - no problems. The graphical installer is very slick, and the partitioning tool that Ubuntu uses is very impressive - Ubuntu manages to make partioning a joy, whereas Fedora has, in my experience, made it a very complicated affair, despite using the same base package. Anyway, I answered a few questions, the whole thing installed and it asked me to reboot.

At this point, I would like to mention something. When Fedora finishes installing, it just gives you a button to press to reboot. This is fine, but it leaves the CD is the drive, and if you don't take it out, you can end up booting from CD again when you reboot. Ubuntu automatically rejects the CD from the drive, tells you to remove it from the drive and to then press the "enter" key, thus eliminating this annoyance. It's a very small matter, but it saves a lot of hassle. Big thumbs up to Ubuntu on that one.

I then rebooted and logged in. No problems. The desktop is very slick. The background wallpaper looks fabulous. I was quickly prompted to install my updates, which I always like. The user panel at the top of the screen has been integrated fantastically to enable you to lock the screen, log out and reboot with the minimum of hassle. You can even start a guest session within your own session, giving someone else access to your computer, but without giving them the ability to log you out or accidentally shut your computer down. It even saves where your music was in the middle of playing and starts playing it back instantly when you end the session to go back to your previous session.

There are many more neat touches that impress. Pidgin integrates fanastically into the user applet to set your availability status. The codec finder works wonderfully so you don't have to worry about having to download the correct codec yourself. You can even buy licenced codecs if you want.

Pulseaudio now seems to work fantastically. I can play music in Rhythmbox and watch videos in Firefox without then having to kill pulseaudio in a terminal afterwards. Olive - the GTK frontend to bzr, has now evolved into a much friendlier program. The only slight disappointment is that OpenOffice 3 isn't included by default, although it is easy enough to add. Overall, very impressive. So, what's the verdict?

Software: Ubuntu 8/10, Fedora 9/10. They have virtually identical programs, but Fedora includes OpenOffice 3, so it shades this area.

Desktop Integration: Ubuntu 9/10, Fedora 7/10. Fedora's looks good, but Ubuntu's integration of user sessions, Pidgin and hardware drivers puts it out ahead.

Speed: Ubuntu 8/10, Fedora 8/10. Both are nifty, even on a machine that's starting to struggle slightly for raw power in an age where RAM is key.

Installer: Ubuntu 10/10, Fedora 6/10. Fedora's installer is quite slow, whereas Ubuntu's is fast, asks very few questions and has the best partition editor I've seen anywhere, ever. I'd use it over proprietary software any day.

Overall: Strictly speaking, Ubuntu 35/40, Fedora 30/40. However, I think I have to disqualify Fedora and give it a big fat 0/40.

It might seem harsh, but at the end of the day, my Fedora installation isn't useable - and not for the first time. It's not like I'm using cutting edge hardware. The keyboard is a fricking Cheery Linux keyboard for goodness sake! There's clearly a problem with the Fedora installer somewhere. And yes, I know I could spend hours on the Fedora forums trying to find an answer, but I shouldn't have to - not when every other Linux distro has no such problems. Linux Format may have had Fedora 10 down as beating Ubuntu 8.10, but there's no such judgement here. Ubuntu wins an easy knockout.

Merry Christmas - And A Christmas Present!

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:39:24 +0000

It may be quite sad to post to one's website on Christmas Day, but I don't care. Call me sad if you want, but since I haven't done it before now, merry Christmas to all my dear readers at Noelinho.org and on Planet Jedimoose!

Now, since it is traditional to give gifts on Christmas Day, I feel that despite the destinct lack of presents from my adoring website following this Christmas, I should give you all a wonderful present. And so, I present you with...the first snapshot release of Sassenach CMS 1.0.

Have a play at your leisure - please don't use it for working websites. Even I don't. It is quite incomplete and will still change substantially, but there are significant backend changes - but I will leave explaining those for another day!

Sunday Morning Football Trivia

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:42:18 +0000

In yesterday's F.A. Premier League football games, something rather unusual happened. none of the top four teams - Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal - all failed to win. Not only that, but they also all failed to score a goal. You could, in fact, include Aston Villa, who started the day in fifth place and finished the day in fourth place, in that statistic, since they drew 0-0 with Manchester United.

So, the highest-placed team in the Premier League to score a goal yesterday was Hull - in 6th place. Even they didn't win, drawing 2-2 with Portsmouth. The highest-placed team to win yesterday was Manchester City, who now sit in 11th place in the Premier League table - the bottom half. So, here are some trivia questions, which I don't know the answer to, but would love to know:

When was the last time that none of the "big four" - Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea - won their games in a round of games where all four were playing?
When was the last time none of them scored a goal in a round of games where all four were playing?
When was the last time that no team in the top half of the table won a game in a round of games? (I realise that, at the time of writing, Everton have yet to play and could well win, thus meaning this may not happen this week...)

I expect these statistics will take some digging, but any pointers would be welcome.

Update: Wigan beat Everton 1-0 in the Monday match, and so no team in the top half of the Premier League table has won over the weekend! Has it ever happened before in the history of the Premier League? I shall do my best to find out...

Coming Soon On Noelinho.org...

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:59:14 +0000

There has, you may have noticed, been a distinct lack of activity on Noelinho.org over the past couple of months. Thus, I feel I should give a little taster of some of the things you can expect to find on Noelinho.org over the coming couple of months over the Christmas and New Year period:

An update on Sassenach CMS, complete with a preview of version 1.0;
The long-awaited look at the history of African-American civil rights;
A few book reviews of books I have been working through;
An update to the Countdown Puzzle Page;
A few other Christmas treats may be in store.

Remember...good things come to those who wait.

CPU Frequency Scaling In Ubuntu 8.04

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:28:03 +0000

I hope you have a nice cup of tea at hand. This is one long post, but oh, is it good! If you're not interested in CPU frequency scaling, then firstly, why not, and secondly, this probably isn't for you...

Please note: this is a first draft and is liable to change after feedback, but it works! Please report any mistakes! This guide is also available as a downloadable pdf.

I am writing this guide to scaling CPU speeds not because there isn't any documentation out there already – there is, although it can be hard to find – and not because I am a technical genius – I know a fair bit, I guess, but I'm no Einstein. No, I'm writing this because it's something that I wanted to do but had to look in a number of places in order to find out how to do it. Furthermore, some of the documentation that I found was a little muddled and probably not easy enough for some people to follow. Thus, I am going to try and explain how to scale CPU speeds in Ubuntu's latest release, 8.04 (Hardy Heron). If you're not using Ubuntu 8.04, you may need to change a few things, but this guide should still be helpful as long as you are using a 2.6 kernel.

Before we start, a little disclaimer. Some of this guide will have you executing powerful commands and you could accidentally wreck your system. If you do this, it's not my fault. I'm not forcing you to do this, nor am I there to make sure you do it correctly. If you wreck your system, you've likely done something wrong. If so, you're best off going somewhere like the Ubuntu Forums for help, not here. If, however, you follow this guide and it just doesn't work, feel free to leave a comment or contact me and I can see if I can help this work for you, and perhaps update the guide. Like I said, I'm no expert, but I have, after some study, made CPU scaling work very nicely on both my laptop and my desktop, which are very different machines.

So, before we actually start doing anything, what exactly is CPU speed scaling, or as it is more technically known, CPU frequency scaling? It's quite simple really. A CPU is a central processing unit – it processes everything as computer does. The faster the processor, the quicker it can executer commands – although it can, of course, be constrained by other elements of your hardware, like insufficient RAM. CPUs have a speed rating – my laptop has a Core2Duo T7300 rated at 2.00Ghz, so basically, it has 2 CPU cores, and they run at 2.00Ghz. My rather ageing desktop has a Pentium 4 HT processor running rated at 2.8Ghz, meaning it has 1 core, running at 2.8Ghz. However, whilst this is what these processors are rated at, this does not mean to say that the processors must run at this speed. Far from it. My laptop CPU can also run at 1.6Ghz, 1.2Ghz and 800Mhz. My desktop CPU can run at all sorts of speeds down to 350Mhz. This is known as speed stepping. Please note, this is not the same as overclocking (or underclocking)! I will explain later about how overclocking fits in with speed stepping. One final note before moving on to the "why" - CPUs do not have to run at a set speed – they can dynamically change speeds. This can be very useful, as will be explained next...

So why might you actually want to speed step your CPU? You might want to save power. This would be a good way to do that. You may not need all the processing power your CPU has, and thus not want to use it unnecessarily. Neither of these are particularly likely reasons, but there are two more likely reasons for speed stepping. Firstly, if you have a problem with overheating, turning the processor's speed down will reduce the effect of overheating. Secondly, you may be using a laptop and trying to save power to extend battery life. Speed stepping can, when used correctly, save power and extend battery life. Considering laptops can often overheat because of their compact nature and people's lack of care for them, the reduced heat could potentially prolong the life of the laptop too, whilst still leaving you with processing power when required. So, enough of the background, let's get on with actually implementing speed stepping on our Ubuntu system!

The first thing we need to do is make sure that we have a couple of packages installed. One of these is "powernowd", and the other is "cpufrequtils". To see if these two packages are installed, go to System → Administration → Synaptic Package Manager and type in the package names.

Once you have made sure that these two packages are installed, go to Applications → Accessories → Terminal. In the terminal, type "/sys/devices/system/cpu/". Then press the "tab" button twice. If you have two processors, or a multi-core processor, you should see "cpu0" and "cpu1". If you have more than two cores or processors, you will see more (one for each that you have); if you have just the one processor with one core, you should just see "cpu0". If you still have the command on the line, type "cpu0/cpufreq". Hopefully, it should find a cpufreq/directory. If it does, press the "tab" button twice again. A whole list of new options should be available, such as "scaling_driver", "scaling_governor", "scaling_max_freq", "cpu_max_freq", etc... I have 13 options on my system. We will use these later to probe the processor and to change our speed step settings.

Now, you need to copy and paste the following command into the terminal and press "enter":

ls /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/ \
/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel\
/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/

Please note: if you are using an earlier version of Ubuntu, you may need to replace the "x86" in the last line with "i386". If you get an error message in the output from the above text, try replacing the text. Unfortunately, I don't know when that changed in the kernel – I just know it did. Anyway, what we're interested in is the output. The first output lists the available speed step drivers we can use to speed step the CPU. The second output lists the governors, which I will talk about later. The first list will consist of drivers such as "acpi-cpufreq.ko", "speedstep-centrino.ko", "p4-clockmod.ko" and "powernow-k8.ko". Hopefully, one of these drivers is the one we need – we just need to find out which one. With some logical thinking, and by paying attention to the terminal's output, we can actually do this quite easily. The format we need to use is the following:

sudo modprobe driver

Please note, although the drivers in the previous output had the extension ".ko", we do not add that extension in the modprobe! So, if we are trying to add the p4-clockmod driver, we enter the following:

sudo modprobe p4-clockmod

If I accidentally add the ".ko" extension, I will get the following error:

FATAL: Module p4_clockmod.ko not found.

So the next question is, how do we know if we have loaded the correct driver? If we load the correct driver, there will be no output from the terminal. If we load the incorrect driver, however, we will see a message that says something along the lines of "Device not found". And so, having evaded simple errors, we come to the million-dollar question: which driver is the right driver?

Good question! The simply answer is, "I don't know"! However, with some logical thinking, we can get somewhere. The best driver to try first is "acpi-cpufreq" as it is the most likely to work. This is the driver I use for my Core2Duo. If you have an nforce2 chipset, try "cpufreq-nforce2". If you have a Centrino processor, try "speedstep-centrino". If you have p4, like my desktop, try "p4-clockmod". If you have an AMD processor, try one of the "powernow-6/7/8" drivers (use the number that's most appropriate, if you know which one that is).

But what if you don't know what kind of processor you have? That's not a position I'm familiar with, but I can still help you. For more information about your processor, type in the following command in the terminal:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

This will tell you lots of information you don't need, and a little that's helpful. Take a look at "vendor_id" and "model name" - these two labels will tell you what you need to know about your processor. Also look at "cpu Mhz" - this tells you the speed your processor is currently running at. Please note: it does not display the speed it is supposed to run at, or can run at, but the speed that it is currently running at.

Anyway, once you have successfully loaded a driver, you need set the speed or set a governor to automatically govern the speed. These are two very different things. Setting the speed is, in effect, manually throttling the CPU – especially effective if you're trying to stop the CPU from overheating. Setting a governor is a dynamic way of changing the speed of the CPU in accordance with the amount of power it needs at a given time – more effective for saving power on laptops. Decide which of these methods you want to take – for now – as they take different approaches (although we will be able to alter both later).

First, I'm going to go through how to manually set the speed of the CPU to a set level. Before we can set the level, however, we need to know what speeds the CPU is capable of running at. We do this by executing the following command:
$cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies
This command will output a series of numbers, separated by spaces. These are the speeds (in hertz, Hz), that the CPU is capable of running at. On my laptop, the CPU can run at 2Ghz, 1.6Ghz, 1.2Ghz and 0.8Ghz. Make sure you count the number of 0's! Decide which of the available frequencies you want to run the CPU at, and then execute it with the following command:

sudo cpufreq-selector -f value

Remember, 1Ghz == 1000000! The "-f" argument simply tells the program to set the frequency. You can select a particular CPU by using "-c" followed by the CPU number. That's it, if you were just wanting to set a new, constant CPU frequency! And, just to check the new frequency has been applied, we can issue the following command:

cpufreq-info

This will output a fair amount of information, one piece of which will be "current CPU frequency Is..." If, however, you want *just* the current CPU frequency, you can issue a more long-winded command that will just output the frequency in hertz (Hz):

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq

If, however, you are wanting to set a governor, it's a little more long-winded, but not complicated. First, we want to go to the cpufreq/ driectory:

cd /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/

Now that we're here, we want to see which governor is currently set:

cat scaling_governor

The output will almost certainly be "userspace", which basically means that the CPU has been set to a particular, constant speed. If you're reading this, I'm assuming that speed is full speed! Anyway, what we want to do next is to find out the scaling_governors we are able to set, which we query using the following command:

cat scaling_available_governors

The output will hopefully be "ondemand", "userspace", "conservative", "powersave" and "performance". "Userspace" allows the user to set the CPU frequency manually, "powersave" runs the CPU at the lowest frequency, "performance" sets it to the maximum frequency. "Ondemand" and "conservative" are very similar – they both set the CPU frequency quite low where possible, and then raise the frequency as necessary to run commands. The difference, however, is that the "conservative" governor gradually steps up the speed, whereas the "ondemand" governor is capable of jumping straight to the fastest frequency step. Depending upon what you are doing, either of the two methods could save more or less power than the other, and it is probably in part down to personal taste. So, now you're an expert in the options, pick one and execute it in the terminal! I'm going to execute the "ondemand" governor.

sudo sh -c "echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor"

The "sh -c" bit is telling bash to run the command in a shell. This is needed because the command is run as a superuser. You can run the command as root, but I really wouldn't advise it when you can do it like this. Because the command has to be run through a shell, the actual command has to be run within quotation marks. Anyway, once this has been successfully run, your system will be running the "ondemand" governor! But you can't see that yet, and you want to be able to see that this is working, right? Yes, you do. Read on. We're almost there!

Apologies to all non-GNOME users out there, but the following section is applicable to GNOME (but there's more after this section to interest you!). I don't use KDE or any other desktop, so I can't help you when it comes to a graphical utility for CPU frequency and governors outside of GNOME. However, if you do use the GNOME desktop, there is an applet for the GNOME panel that can help us. However, first of all, we need to reconfigure the "gnome-applets" package so as to give it superuser privileges. We do this using the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets

You will be asked a question, to which you need to answer "yes". Then, right-click on the GNOME panel, click "add to panel" and select "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor". Once you have placed it in the panel, you can left-click on the applet and select either a frequency, or a scaling governor. We're done!

However, for your piece of mind, I have added a few notes on the bottom here to explain a few other things. Take a quick look here if you experience any difficulties.
The command "cat cpuinfo_cur_freq" and "cat scaling_cur_freq" output the same information, but the former requires superuser privileges whereas the latter doesn't. The commands "cat cpuinfo_max_freq" and "cat scaling_max_freq", and "cat_cpuinfo_min_freq" and "cat scaling_min_freq" give the same relative output, but in this case, none of the commands require superuser privileges. No, I don't know why either!

If you want to find out which driver you are currently using, use the command "cat scaling_driver". To check the current governor, use the command "cat scaling_governor". To check how long your computer has been in each CPU frequency state, execute the command "cat stats/time_in_state".

You can artificially set a minimum and maximum CPU frequency state using these commands too. To check the current maximum state, execute the command "cat scaling_max_freq", and for the minimum, execute "cat scaling_min_freq". If you wanted to set the minimum frequency to 1.2Ghz, you would execute the following command:

sudo sh -c "echo 1200000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq"

And to set the maximum frequency at, say, 1.6Ghz, you would execute the following command:

sudo sh -c "echo 1600000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq"

Easy! I don't know what happens if you accidentally set the maximum frequency to a lower value than the minimum – you'll probably get an error message though.
As far as I am aware, that is everything and this tour through CPU frequency scaling is complete! If you use this and it works, please leave a comment to let me know. If you tried and it didn't, leave a comment and let me know. If you don't understand, or you find a mistake, leave a comment and let me know! If you're still reading, you're a committed reader. Leave a comment and let me know. Maybe I'll buy you a drink sometime!

The Disappointment Of Fedora

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:13:52 +0000

I have, a few times before, tried out different versions of the Linux operating system. I generally use Ubuntu, but have also been known to use Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, Knoppix and Fedora.

I quite often use Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux to run a simple operating system from a USB device, and Knoppix if I want a full system. However, I have often tried Fedora as an alternative to Ubuntu. Unfotunately, I have never been very successful with Fedora. I frist tried Fedora Core 4, which was ok, but took half a dozen attempts to successfully install to a hard drive due to conflicts. Then, every time I tried to install programs, it told me about more conflicts and explained that the software couldn't be installed. Sadly, that meant that it wasn't really very practical. Never mind, eh? Well, I then tried Fedora Core 5, which had the same problem, as did Fedora Core 6. So I gave up, admitted defeat. Until now.

Yesterday, I tried installing Fedora 9. I downloaded the DVD image and burned it to a DVD. I then installed it on my desktop seemingly successfully (albeit slowly), and went to bed to come back to this morning. Unfortunately, it hangs at the loading screen. Not helpful. So, I have now tried four versions of Fedora, and none of them have been successful. It doesn't give me a great impression of the project!

One difference with my setup this time around was that I installed the Fedora on to an XFS partition, whereas beforehand, I had always used ext3. However, Fedora is supposed to support XFS, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Annoyingly, this failed installation has also stopped my installation of Ubuntu from working, as it reinstalled GRUB and insisted upon formatting my boot/ partition, so I now need to reinstall this too. This is also a problem Fedora has had in the past, although now with a marked improvement. In the past, Fedora didn't install itself on the boot partition, let alone anything else, so at least it's got that far...

Should I try Fedora 10 later in the year? Or should I admit defeat and just try Linux From Scratch again?

Tablet

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:43:46 +0000

Tablet is a wonderfully Scottish way to die, and not to be confused with tablets, which are horrible medical things that are impossible to swallow.

I decided that since I can't buy tablet in Sheffield, and no-one seems to know what it is, that I would make some. I can tell you, since I am sitting next to it as I eat this, that the tablet I have made tastes wonderful.

Unfortunately, the tablet doesn't look quite as good. In fact, it resembles a cat's litter tray. Of course, it still tastes good, but the appearance could do with a major upgrade...

So, a tip to all potential makers of Scottish tablet: firstly, use this recipe. It's a good'un. Secondly, don't make my mistake of either simmering the mixture for too long, or for letting the mixture set (and it sets very quickly!) in the pot. Otherwise, you'll get a cat's litter tray like me.

When I have consumed what is left of my kilo of sugar disguised as dessert, I may try again, having learnt from my experiences. And no, you can't have a bit. It's all mine - MINE!

Ok, maybe you can have a little bit. A smidgin, perhaps. I'll think about it.

Sassenach CMS 0.9 Released

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:12:48 +0000

Not a long post, this. I just wanted to alert people to the release of Sassenach CMS 0.9.

This is a first release and is not recommended for use on production websites right now as it's not quite polished. Treat it more as an evaluatory release.

For more information, please take a look at the Sassenach CMS website and Launchpad project pages.

Try it out and let me know what you think, and make sure you read the advice at the bottom before downloading. It's important! Also, please note that there is no documentation with this release, so feel free to ask me questions, and I'll do my best to answer them. I don't have a contact form for nothing, you know!

Al Qa'eda: The French Connection

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:27:45 +0000

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.