I didn't quite catch that...

Yet again, I got bored with a theme and moved on. This time to Spiffy. As always, if you don’t like it, there’s the option down on the right hand side to change to any of the other themes.

And if you really don’t like it, I suppose you could *sniff* stop reading. But you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?

The government’s attempt to regulate the online gambling industry is not a bid to “grab” tax revenue, Sports Minister Richard Caborn has said.

In other news, “All the better to … em … see you with, my dear”, said the big misunderstood wolf.

Definition of Hatred: severe dislike.

Now, that’s the definition I would go with most often, but some would say hatred is evokes stronger feelings: animosity or hostility, perhaps.

Some of the things that hatred can drive people to do are criminal, there’s no denying it. But hatred, in and of itself, is not criminal; it is a feeling, and as such is far beyond the scope of the law.

It is not illegal to be racist; it is illegal to let your racism affect your business decisions. It is not illegal to dislike a religious group; it is illegal to allow this dislike to become discrimination in the workplace. It is not illegal, in fact, to be or to feel, it is only illegal when those states of being or feelings drive you to actually do something illegal.

So, if hatred is not illegal, how can incitement to hatred be illegal? Incitement to cause a breech of the peace, I understand, for a breech of the peach is an illegal act. Incitement to murder, ditto. But ‘inciting racial hatred’? It may not be nice, but how can it be against the law if the thing being incited isn’t?

I said when the new NI Licencing laws were proposed that they don’t go far enough: they don’t open the market, they don’t give customers any more choice, they don’t go far enough in repealing a silly piece of wartime legislation that’s so far out of date it should be called Ye Olde Defence of Thee Realm Acte.

But, of course, I’m wrong, according to the PSNI.

Supt Eccles said that the current cut off time of 0100 GMT for serving alcohol was late enough.

“If they were to serve any length of time beyond that it would allow for more drinking and more disorder potentially,” he said.

“More disorder, potentially”, people. That’s a comprehensive arguement. Never mind that a drink of Sprite could cause “more disorder, potentially”, those E-numbers being mighty potentially unstabling.

So, because of a potential increase in disorder, we should keep those puritanical laws in place. Hell, we could just go the whole hog and ban the drink completely, that’d be a roaring success…

Found at ye olde Free Market Towers.

T’other day, I went about installing Firefox 2.0 and IE 7. And thus far both seem decent. IE, in particular, is much better than IE 6, but then that’s not saying much. Firefox is only a little better (IMO) than its predecessor, but then its predecessor was only about 1.5×10⁹ times better than IE, so it gets a pass.

The only thing about FF2 that bugged me was the location of the ‘close tab’ button: it moved from having one for all the tabs to having one on each tab, like Opera does (and like IE7 does). I liked it on the 1.x implementation; it was a constant, no matter how many tabs were open or how wide the tabs were. Luckily it’s a simple fix: change browser.tabs.closeButtons to be 3, and it’s all as it should be. Which is nice. As is the automatic spell checker. Hopefully that’ll tidy up my woeful spellign on teh blug.

In IE, I’m not a massive fan of the implementation of tabs, although the Ctrl-Q function is nice. And it’s not as customisable as FireFox.

Overall, I’m probably going to keep using FF. But at least using IE shouldn’t be as annoying, for the times when it’s the only thing going.

I’m sure that everyone is well aware of the nature of workplace gossip. Someone is seen talking to someone else, and all of a sudden the grapevine is awash with the possible baby names. Very tedious horseshit for those involved, but it can provide endless amusement for the simple folk who have nothing to do with it, but can take the piss without fear of retribution. Like, in this instance, the simple fool wot writes this weblawgerry.

So, there was me, offering up helpful comments to the offended parties as they busied themselves apportioning blame (“What did you say to ‘em, you dozy wench?” “I sez nuffin ya big gype! Wha did you say?” etc). Hey, what could I do; they had their discussion at the door I had to stand at, and I’d be damned if I was going to let a piss taking opportunity like that slide by…

But Karma, she is a fickle beast. And thus it was that five minutes later, one of the basic background bodies appeared from the bar:

Here, Ed, you’ve been shagging X. Any tips? ‘cos I wanna get at her!

“Ex-squeeze me? I’ve been doing who-what-now? With yer one who left the country months ago?”

Aye, sure we all saw her getting into your car, man! We know!

“Hang on, I give a girl a lift home (OK, twice, but that’s not important right now), and all of a sudden there’s been bedplay involved? How did I miss that?”

Ed, stop acting the twat. We know, and if you’re not at her now, at least tell me how I can get in there!

At which point, dear reader, I must confess that patience was lost, and harsh words were said, and perhaps small pointless acts of violence were carried out. For several reasons:

• I don’t like people gossiping about me. Even less so when it’s horseshit that they’re talking.
• It’s commons knowledge that I suck at the reading of signs, but I definitely didn’t see any opportunity of such behaviour at the time. Was I wrong? Did this 17 year old prick see something in X‘s behaviour that implied such behaviour? And now I’m second guessing things that happened months ago, dammit!
• Also as mentioned in the past, I am not the best at offering advice on how to deal with the ladies. But even if I was the font of all knowledge in that area, then the absolute last person that I’d ever share that knowledge with was the one asking the question. Hell, there are permanent marks on his face from where the night vision gear sits, night after night.

Luckily enough, the small acts of violence persuaded the fella to go away. Leaving me to enjoy the one sided bitching about office gossip from the female of the piece at the start of the post. Which I continued to regale with bad sarcasm and silly comments.

DAMN YOU, KARMA! You can take my piece of mind, but you’ll never take my mind from the gutter!

Those crazy merkins, they’ll pay good money for nothing. And they’ll pay even better money for nothing of an Irish background.

Lisburn man Alan Jenkins, 65, and agricultural scientist Pat Burke, 27, from Tipperary, have built a thriving business out of flogging dirt to America.

They claim their “official Irish dirt” has become a prized commodity for Irish-Americans, especially those who want a bit of the auld sod sprinkled on their graves.

Yes, a couple of geniuses (genii?) have started to make money by selling irish dirt to people, and it’s being bought by people who want a sod off of the ol’ sod in their grave.

It’s madness, it’s folly, it’s separating fools from their money. And it’s bloody brilliant and I wish I’d thought of it first…

Bloody stupid minister, bloody stupid policies and bloody stupid suggestions:

Tax on alcohol should rise to reduce binge drinking among teenagers, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has said.

Ms Hewitt urged chancellor Gordon Brown to “really increase” taxes on alcohol, especially on drinks such as alcopops, most popular with young people.

Nonsense. If you really increase taxes on alcohol, you’ll really increase three things:

• The tax receipts from normal people who are going to buy drink because they fucking want to, and who’ll have to grin and bear it at the till.
• Smuggling and duty avoidance, perfectly sensible if you ask me. Bring back the booze cruise, that’s what I say.
• The number of kids who go straight to the hardest stuff, because the soft stuff has been prices out of reach by a stupid minister. Less alcopops, more vodka; less buckfast, more whiskey; less cider, more moonshine.

Apart from that, go ahead. I’d say that it was all about unintended consequences, but there hasn’t been a recent case of taxation having it’s intended consequence for quite some time now…

Last year, I found myself quite enjoying a big-scale BBC nature program, called Coast. Yes, I know, it’s from Auntie Beeb, yes it’s full of environmental claptrappery but dammit, it was good.

And then, lo and behold, I found out at 8.45 last night that it was back. Starting at 8.30. Last night. Bugger.

So, I missed the start. I’m guessing that it would have explained why the long haired scottish historian was leading the thing, rather than the freaky walking dude, but that’s not important right now.

It seems to be keeping up the standard, ie quite enjoyable pop-science, taking in some spectacular views. Which is nice. Should be fun, and at least they have the sense to not be showing it on Friday nights…

I was reading something on el Reg about a little USB hamster, that would sit on your desk at work. And I thought that it looked quite fun: it moves in it’s wheel as you type, and it’s speed varies as your typing speed does. Which sounds fun, but I think that ye olde P45 would not be long in arriving if I was to set such a thing on my desk. So I’ve managed to avoid handing over 25 of my hard earned pounds for it.

But I was left with a gaping void in my life. A void that can only be filled by daft computer power hamsters. And preferably not the dancing kind.

So I present to you the official I Didn’t Quite Catch That… hamster: hammy.

Credit to monty for pointing me in the direction of the virtual pet generator. All complaints should be directed to him, not me.

Another thing that has been bothering me recently: UK TV networks and their general ineptness in getting US shows over here.

Some examples:

• Sopranos: Channel/More 4 had this several months after RTÉ, who had it a few weeks after the US.
• Battlestar Galactica: Sky went from premiering the first season (ahead of the US) to being months behind on season 2, and we’re now a month behind season 3 with no sign of getting started.
• The West Wing: Again, Channel/More 4 were many months behind, especially on seasons 5&6. The DVD of 6 was out before the season finished on More 4, fer crying out loud. At least RTÉ had the decency to be showing it withing a couple of weeks of the US, but…
• Studio 60: it looks like 4 will be near six months in showing this, and the Irish broadcaster will be TV3, who don’t come through on NTL. So I’ll have to resort to other means to watch it.
• NCIS: yes, I know that FX showed it early, but 5 is only getting to the end of season 2 now, and the DVDs of season 2 came out a fortnight ago…

And yet, the UKish networks can be right and quick off the bat when they want to be. SG1, Atlantis, Dead Link Me, Bones, CSI and all the stupid reality guff come across within weeks (or even days) of their US broadcast. Firefly was not only over here in short order, but in the right order. So why is it that so many decent shows take so long?

(This was all brought on by me getting round to seeing the end of NCIS s2 on DVD last night, and wondering if 5 will be showing the next season in a few weeks when 2 finishes in a few weeks. I’m not expecting that they will, but it never hurts to have a little hope, does it?)

Do you know something that really annoys me? Greenish nonsense about climate change and how this should be immediately used to financially punish those with conspicuous symbols of wealth.

Like this.

Richmond upon Thames residents with high-emission cars could pay £750 a year, compared with £200 now, but the greenest cars would be exempt.
…
Owners of 4x4s and high performance sports cars would pay higher parking permit rates than those with electric, hybrid and some diesel vehicles.

Band A, which would be free, would consist of electric cars, while vehicles covered under band G would include petrol 4x4s, the Jaguar X-type and the Renault Espace people carrier.

Also, under this proposal, households with two or more cars would be brutally ass-raped charged extortinate rates to park the second car.

Never mind that people who drive less efficient cars already get mugged for car tax and every time they fill up the tank; never mind that climate change (and the human effect on it) is not completely proven; never mind that the precious hybrid cars use more energy to produce than sensible cars. No, there is a greenish agenda, and it must be adhered to. And if that gets to cover a little immoral wealth redistribution, then all the better.

Useless muppets. May they go the way of the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, for they certainly meet the ‘mindless jerks’ criteria…

Some months ago, Ulster Bank rolled out a highly-publicised upgrade to their online banking. New user IDs, new login procedures, new password verification during use, and no longer tied to a single PC. All very sensible, and nicely covered up the appearance that nothing very important had changed in the usability of the thing. Aside from the password changes, the biggest thing that seemed to have changed was the colours in the stylesheets.

Meaning that there were several crippling limitations on what you could do with it. Inter-account transfers were fine; payments to a short list of organisations (some taxes, some local credit cards) worked OK, third party transfers were crude but effective. But I couldn’t pay, for example, a BarclayCard bill through it, and everytime I asked why not I got a different answer¹.

Then, all of a sudden, with no fanfare, that changed. I can now pay bills to pretty much anyone I want. As I may have said before, this is an innovation that every other bank in the world caught onto last century, but baby steps in the right direction are still steps in the right direction…

–
¹ – Which translates from helpdesk to english as “We don’t know, it’s probably our system being shite but I can’t say that, nor can I be bothered to check out exactly why.”

Blogs are great, aren’t they? A regularly updated collection of posts by completely different people from all over the golbe, at your fingertips. What’s not to like?

Er, quite a lot, actually. There are many things that cause me small bits of annoyance when it comes to blogs, not least the scab effect: some blogs are so bad, that you keep comming back to them, just like people can’t resist picking at a scab.

(I fully accept that this blog is guilty of some of the things that annoy me greatly about other’s blogs, but if I suddenly started being rational and consistent about my likes and dislikes, people would start wondering what was wrong with me.)

So, some of the things that annoy me, a little or a lot:

• Raving moonbat blogs; those by people who are totally out of this world batshit crazy. But you can’t help but revisit, just to see if they’re for real. They can’t be, can they? But then, they are. Oh dear. I fear for their sanity.
• Otherwise decent blogs that go mad over their lifestyle choices. So they may have some decent posts which are a joy to read, but they’re sandwiched in between a multitude of “SO YOU THINK YOU’RE THE ONLY SEMI-LUNAR CYCLE QUASI-VEGITARIAN WITCH? YOU’RE NOT ALONE! HERE’S WHY I’M A SEMI-LUNAR CYCLE QUASI-VEGITARIAN WITCH, AND WHY YOU SHOULD BE TOO!” posts. Fine, you are the way you are, good for you. Explaining it twice a day gets annoying, as does pontificating to everyone who isn’t exactly like you. Especially when you reserve your greatest ire for those full-lunar cycle quasi-vegitarian witches above all others.
• Forcing readers to open links in new windows. It’s not a big annoyance, and it’s easy to counter. But it’s still annoying; if your site is good enough, people will know how to use the back button to get there, and if it isn’t they’ll just get annoyed at having another bloody window to shut.
• Decent blogs disappearing and suddenly being replaced by kanji spam blogs. I blame blogger.
• The scab blogs; blogs you dislike a little and should never read, but which you keep visiting. Such as Go Fug Yourself, a silly blog about fashion which I keep going back to for the sarky comments. I hate it.
• Blogs that list things that you should do to make your blog respectable. I don’t want respect, I just wanna have a laugh.
• Blogs that post lists about what’s wrong with other blogs.
• Group blogs that are shite, but were decent when they were single user efforts. There are a couple of blogs that I used to read very regularly when only one person wrote them, but after they opened to door to all and sundry the humour/insight dried up. In fact, the only real group blog that I rate these days is Samizdata.

And breathe, Mr Hillan. It’s just t’internet, it’s not worth getting worked up over…

There are some things you just shouldn’t mess with. If you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, you know that you don’t mess with a) a man’s wheels or b) a man’s wife’s feet. If you’ve more of a Transporter fan, you know not to mess with the jacket. If you’re a mad music fan, you know not to mess with another man’s alphabetised LP collection.

And if you’re in government in the UK, you should damn well know not to mess with a man’s local. Which is why this proposal should never be happening.

The government is is funding the roll out of fingerprint security at the doors of pubs and clubs in major English cities.
…
Some licensees were not happy to have their punters fingerprinted, but are all now apparently behind the idea. Not only does the council let them open later if they join the scheme, but the system costs them only £1.50 a day to run.

Oh, and they are also coerced into taking the fingerprint system. New licences stipulate that a landlord who doesn’t install fingerprint security and fails to show a “considerable” reduction in alcohol-related violence, will be put on report by the police and have their licences revoked.

This was one of the things I was concerned about when the government brought in 24-hour drinking: they gave a little bit of freedom, but took large parts away. And now they’re threatening (via local councils and their interpretations of centreal government proclamations) to take licences away from people unless they submit their customers to fingerprint checks.

Anyone who can possibly think up a way in which this would be good, please let me know. Because I’m at a total loss; there’s nothing but bad news all over this story.

Note to self: next time someone informs me that their house party will be attended by a certain fat american, give them a bit more than immediate scorn.

House parties with Mr Anniston? Sure it musta been like Swingers in there…

The greatest driver (statistically) in Formula 1 history retired today, after a stunning effort to get a final win.

The sport will be different with him gone. Maybe better, maybe worse, but he’s been the driver for more than a decade, so it’s difficult to see how it could be the same.

Hopefully the beautiful red cars continue to be a) the best looking cars on the grid and b) pretty quick.

Ulster 30, some french lot 3.

Good game, especially the first half. The second, not so much.

CyberScribe has the best ideas. This one being a very sensible withdrawl from the madness that is adult life, and a return to the sillyness and fulfilment of childhood:

Resignation As An Adult

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again.I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four star restaurant.I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day.I want to return to a time when life was simple; when all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care.I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to live simple again. I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.So . . . here’s my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood.And if you want to discuss this further, you’ll have to catch me first, cause…………..”Tag! You’re it.”

Now, I could get away with quitting the main job like that, but I think that there may be one or two issues raised at the door job. They’re much more likely to beat some sense into me, but I just don’t wanna be sensible, I wanna go back to when life made sense.

‘course, there are those whose adult jobs are exactly what they want to be doing. So they’re probably less inclined to go about withdrawing from them. Lucky sods that they are…