Time for another long rambling entry from me!

First off, I must start with an apology. Sorry,

for forgetting your birthday. Did the typical thing of remembering it the day before but not on the day itself. Didn't want you to think that I was leaving you out or anything.

Well, the past week was a bit hectic for multiple reasons. One was that the TechComms (Technical Communication Skills) report was due in on the thursday, which I managed to get in one time. The other reason was that I was doing the lighting for a play for SUDS (Sussex University Drama Society), titled "Shopping and Fucking". They cut the sex scenes from this version however, and just hinted strongly at what would occur.

Anyway, the lighting involved what I like to call the dimmers of death. These are a pair of 6-channel dimmers, two outlets per channel, wired together with nice thick cable (probably rated upwards of 15 amps, which it needs to be) into one of those big blue plugs. To go with that was a big blue socket, with more nice thick cable coming out of that and going into a poor little 13-amp RCD plug. Now, your 13-amp fuse in 230-volt land will give you around 2.9kW. I think that we peaked at 3.2kW or so.

The other thing about these dimmers, is the sockets on one. Or more accurately, the lack of sockets on one. Yep, there's a nice round hole in the case where there used to be a 15-amp socket. And since we're talking stuff that can probably deliver 10 amps thru one of those sockets at somewhere around mains voltage, the one thing you don't want is a great big hole in the case. Needless to say the duct tape got added rather quickly, and as part of some 'preventative maintanence' I swapped the fuse for that channel with the blown one from another channel that we wanted to use.

So, enough of the dimmers of death. On to the lighting. We use a pair of 650-watt (probably) profiles, and two pairs of 500-watt profiles (the old ones with a tiny lense). To go with that were two 1kW fresnels, which needless to say were not powerd up at the same time as the rest of the lights, as replacing fuses is a bit of a hassle. Apparently with the last play they did when they were recording it (so add a pair of cameras, pair of monitors, mixing desk for video and sound and another screen into the equation), they managed to pop the breaker for the ring. We didn't manage a repeat performance this time, but it would not have suprised me. The odd thing is that they do have a decent supply, as there's 10 or so floodlights on the top of nice wobbly poles in the room as well. If only they could give us a proper 40 amp supply for the dimmers...

Yesterday (well now the day before yesterday, as it's gone midnight and I have a lecture in a bit under 11 hours), pleaseremove trundled down to visit, arriving an hour later than expected due to the trains being futzed up somewhat thanks to someone deciding to park on a level crossing. As a result people are complaining about the saftey of Britain's level crossings and how we should go back to manual crossings. The simple fact if is someone wants death by train crash, they'll get it. It's not as if the barriers will stop someone who's really determined and is prepared to ram them at 60mph. And then there's the tale of the person who is suing a railway company because she got hit while walking along the railway. Knowing how these things go she'll win the case as well. There's no hope left for some people.

Anyway, we then trundled into Brighton and wandered round the Maplin store, returning with a bag of random bits and a bit less money than we set out with. These included various odd gender benders for mucking around with getting sound in and out of a computer, a couple of phone bits, and some other random pieces like replacement test leads and CD-Rs. Maplin is a fun place to just wander round, and see all the random stuff they've got. They've branched out somewhat, and you can now pick up disco lighting and rc cars in addition to their kits and components. I'm a bit peeved however that I can't use a phone splitter I got, due to keycom being eternally messed up. It's one of those weird combinations of (probably) dodgy phone, old modem, phone splitter and keytalk. It'd be nice to be able to use a decent phone company and ISP, but keytalk/surf/com levy a charge on "0800 and 0808 competitor numbers" (i.e. any ISP or phone service other than them).

Speaking of internet stuff, I was vaguely amused to find that an old ISA modem beats a new PCI one. Use a PCI winmodem, connect at 48kbps on a good day. Use an old ISA realmodem, connect at 50kbps consistently. Yeah, it's only a few kbps, but it helps. Plus it means the modem doesn't monopolise the CPU because it does all it's processing itself. Yay for real bits o' kit!

Hmmm... looking through my e-mails, I see that Hotmail have sent me three e-mails boasting about the new 250MB mailbox that will be appearing this autumn later this year <%=DateAdd("m", Now, 1) %>, of which two are identical and the third follows the same style but oges on a bit more about their scheduling features. Never mind that Yahoo's already added the extra space (100MB) some time ago. Ah well.

This is shaping up to be a long post. I think I'll end it here, as I intend to sleep before my lecture. Plus there's the Programming deadline tomorrow, Computer Science on Thursday, AI the thursday after, and a TechComms presentation some time in the next week or so. All my deadlines have suddenly crept up and ambushed me. Typical.

(no subject)

Should it be worrying that you can now buy home defibrillators (those are the things that 'restart' your heart by giving you a nice shock of a few kV DC)?

Post-election report

I received this shortly after the election, and am posting it here with permission from the authour. Enjoy!

From: Barakiss Droma
Date: Thursday, 4 November 2004
To: (addresses removed)
Subject: Post Election Report

Hi there, for many of you this is probably the first e-mail you have ever received from me, or at least for a while.

We all know the score, Republican son wants to copy his father in every way, cheats in an election and becomes President of the USA. But here's the twist he then gets elected for a second term, pretty bad story right? It amazes me how so many people can simultaneously mark themselves for extermination on my black list in one go, and what is more the electoral register knows where they all live :-).

Many people say that this is the way that democracy works, it is there to accept the people's decision and run with it. Clearly they have never studied political history, one of the founding principles of liberal democracy was that the voter must vote responsibly, did they, let's look at the comparison in candidates.

(Bush) One of the only two Presidents to have an IQ below 100.
(Kerry) Very successful lawyer.
(Bush) Has been a serious alcoholic.
(Kerry) Has been responsible his whole life.
(Bush) Has crashed: cars, boats and planes.
(Kerry) Has used vehicles in a variety of combat situations.
(Bush) Cant string two sentences together.
(Kerry) Author.
(Bush) Bought up a failing oil well and sold it on fraudulently.
(Kerry) Didn't.
(Bush) Used his father's position to give compulsory purchase orders on people's homes in order to build a baseball stadium.
(Kerry) Didn't do that either.
(Bush) Got involved in a multi-billion bank fraud claim, daddy got him out.
(Kerry) Nope didn't do that either.
(Bush) Dodged the draft, then didn't turn up for National Service.
(Kerry) Dropped out of school prior to the draft to volunteer for combat.
(Bush) Bought some medals.
(Kerry) Won three purple hearts.
(Bush) Stayed out of politics until very recently.
(Kerry) Ran the anti-war campaign in the US after his war experiences.
(Bush) Supported by the Terminator (evil cyborg sent back to enslave mankind).
(Kerry) Supported by Presidents.

Now some partisan politics:
(Rep) Leaves 75% of the population without healthcare.
(Dem) Seeks to help those without healthcare.
(Rep) Let the economy slip, protectionism, extensive borrowing to fun tax cuts for only the richest Americans.
(Dem) A policy of proportional taxation to help relieve burden on the system, while using sensible economics to bring the country back in line.
(Rep) Bang Bang solutions (oxymoron).
(Dem) Negotiation.
(Rep) Guns are a right for everyone, they make the world safer don't you know.
(Dem) Restrict guns which have no hunting purpose.
(Rep) We hate gays.
(Dem) Screw who you want.
(Rep) No abortion.
(Dem) It has to be the woman's choice.
(Rep) No stem cell research.
(Dem) Whatever research is needed to improve the lives of the disabled.

You know you would have thought that hijacking plans would tell the Americans something about the world's view… no. More killing, no negotiation, that makes the whole world safer and more happy it is only logical that if I were to kill your brother who might be a terrorist that you will like me for it… right.

Apparently many Americans are excusing the Bush win by saying that we didn't like Reagan either so there. Pardon? Are you trying to loose the discussion, Reagan couldn't deal with more information than a single sheet of A4 in one go, hence the term Reagan Reports coming into play in the white house. So he had more intelligence then Bush. But his massive expenditure on weapons programs can be seen to have won the cold war, because it was either that or WW III in such a contest, the real irony is that the people who saved the world from Reagan were communists like Gorbachev who saw the danger and decided to do something about it. There is a reason why he was known as Ray-Gun, the whole Star Wars program is his fault… guess what more missile defence has sparked the former communist powers to develop even more powerful missiles to deal with it… as if that wasn't predictable. And in terms of Reagan's idea of spreading liberal democracy, the forcible attempts to send it, contrary to the entire theory of liberal democracy, shows hypocrisy and has put many nations off democracy entirely.

Sod the UK's special relationship with the US, if they can screw us over then they can go to hell, and they will. We need some power balance in the world, three possibilities exist: China develops even further and takes a role outside of Asia, the USSR reforms due to Putin's overt attempts to copy the system or the most sustainable one is a Federal Europe, we would be the one's in power then, rather then hanging onto shoe-strings. But we cant do it by following the Americans, and by that I am not just referring to politically, our social collapse can be seen as the result of imported American liberalism we have to reject that and our incessant following of American culture otherwise we will remain reflections of their culture not our own.

I burn my little USA flag today, something I hope to do more of as time goes on. Four years ago I decided to give the Americans a final chance to show themselves as a developed nation, they messed up and my opinion of them is now dead set against their nature and properties.

Today has been a bad day for the US, the Democrats (the Republicans in the long-term), the UK and our special interest, my party, Page's party, me, you the whole bloody world. Four years is a long time, people are already looking forward to 2008, this is the one occasion I am glad that Presidents are limited to two terms, but god knows if any of us will be around by then or if the world is the same. The world didn't change on 9/11 the US simply came to recognise the existence of it, don't let their pain die, when it does they wont give a damn about any of us.

Sorry about ranting at people indiscriminately here but I am fucking angry, in general now, this was the result I expected but hope is necessary for people to not go insane. What was the famous line, "Damn you all to hell" they have destroyed themselves, but I remain sorry for them, for all of us, most importantly for me.