It's a Small World

Thanks to Cal of iamcal for bringing GeoURL to the attention of the UKBloggers group. GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory which means you can see my geographical neighbours via the little green button in the sidebar. I preferred the alternative view which categorises by location, including a "nearest" category which seems to be anything within a 5 mile radius. I've only had a brief look as I'm struggling not to expand my blogroll beyond readability. There were several blogs: Imperial Violet, Wisdom Goof, Davos (economic stuff), Andy Triggs (Web Designer), Planet Dazbert, Simon and the good looking and coincidentally named Webmapper. Other personal sites included Thouposbrook, Gary Brewer, Adam Spiers and Etienne Pollard. For something a little different, there was a Japanese Garden.

Interestingly, who should be one of my neighbours but the aforementioned Cal himself. Small world, eh? As an aside, checking out these new pages helped to remind me that I really should do an about page ... one day.

Update: It seems I chose a bad time to trust my memory. The original message was from James of chachacha.co.uk. Apologies James!

Something for Everyone ... Eventually

Why don't I comment on topical stuff as it happens like normal bloggers? Whilst pondering the answer to that question here's a brief collection of stimulating, if slightly aged, News items:

• Google vs. Evil highlights some of the decisions the Google guys have to make and how that affects our every search. A long but highly recommended article.
• LEDs are the future and are due to replace most other forms of light IMHO (& Wired's).
• Network Associates have been prevented from requiring permission from anyone wishing to review their products.
• The police have nearly got back the "Get Back Sessions"
• Did you know that Digital Download Day (Europe) is coming to your PC on March 21st. I like the idea of free music to entice punters into paying for pop. Yet I wonder how many tunes constitute £3.40's worth and see no sign of answers on the official site.
• Lastly, I'd like to wish StorCard the best of luck with their new credit card sized hard drives. 5Gb cards are predicted to sell for $15 (so I would guess £15 at the normal conversion rate). The card readers could be $100. Since 5Gb could hold more than a normal DVD (in these single-sided times) the possibilities could be very interesting. A couple of movies in your wallet with space for a truck load of photos, MP3s ...

For the less News inclined, here's some fun links:

• The camera never lies but Photoshop's a big fibber. Can you tell the real photos from the fakes? (I couldn't.)
• Fabulous, Frivolous Flying Fun - try it out.

As promised, not a mention the "you know what". I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right... ;o)

One More War

Infrequent blogs are us, eh? The good news is that I'm simply having too much fun doing other stuff to find time to blog about it :o).

I'm determined to blog about something other than the war very soon but I feel the need for one more post before I move on. I'd like to thank Hash of ArseBiscuits for pointing me towards this Pro War article. The comments are interesting in themselves and I'm impressed that it didn't descend into a massive flame war two posts in as these things usually do. See this anti-anti-war piece for an example! I was particularly impressed by Green Fairy's contributions. There was also this Pro-War piece in Observer that made some good points and did more to persuade me than anything else I've seen but still doesn't answer all my questions. One solution would be to make Bluetealeaf President :o). Lastly, I have to recommend this superb animation of the likely outcome of the war.

What She Said

Well, pretty much anyway ...

Bremner, Bird and Fortune - Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Hoorah for repeats. Channel 4 11:05 tonight. Catch it if you can.

Better or Worse than "Absolutely Nothing"?

Thank you for the comments on my previous post. Please keep them coming. So far, commentators have only reinforced my opinions with no attempts to dispel my un-patriotic(?) views. A summary of the reasons for war seem to be: business, bullshit and re-election. None of which strike me as a good reason to bomb people. I guess we shouldn't forget the oil either. Oh, apparently we should as both Bush & Blair have assured us it's nothing to do with the oil. Hmm. (Talking of which, did anyone see the superb "Between Iraq and a Hard Place" by Bremner and the two Johns. I only caught the second half but it was a superbly cutting and highly critical piece of political satire.)

No pro-war posts or links so far. Maybe pro-war people don't surf by here but that seems unlikely if "88 per cent of Americans want the war". That figure comes from today's 'must read' article: John le Carré's Times Opinion piece, The United States of America has gone mad. He also mentions that "a recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre". Scary.

In the interests of balance I would like to reiterate that I will still investigate any decent links relating to why we need to go to war. I would also like to remind everyone (especially terrorists) that not all Americans are mad. Indeed, who else would consider having a 60ft Lava Lamp as a Tourist Attraction. Sarcastic as that might sound, for once I'm being quite straight. I'd want to visit!

War! What's is it Good For?

I really meant to blog something interesting before I went away. I had plenty in mind but the weekend turned out different. OK, I slacked off. Sue me :o).

Seeing as I'm being tight and I've only paid for an hour's Internet time, I'll be brief. You've probably already guessed today's subject from the title. I'd genuinely appreciate it if someone could send me a link to an article explaining why we really ought to bomb Iraq because I really don't understand it. While we're on the subject, what exactly is the link with Osama and the terrorism threat? Maybe I've missed something but from what I know I really don't get it. I'm not the only one. According to this survey by TIME magazine Iraq is not the greatest threat to world peace (guess who's number one?). Until I get a decent explanation I'm behind stopping the war.

Keeping it topical but in the lightest of senses, I highly recommend this lovely photoshopping of Bush and the latest Bloggerheads mission Blair Porn Project.

Computers - More Trouble Than They're Worth?

The blogging paradox: The more there is going on in my life, the less time there is to blog about it. Since I spent most of last year on the house and deliberately ignored the computers, I tried to take advantage of the Christmas lull to catch up on 12 months of maintenance. As usual there were a ridiculous number of obstacles in the way but over the last week I've had some success. I've almost got a server set up at home. The OS is all installed and I finally managed to get the USB working on it (grr, Compaq, grr). I've got a webserver, mail server, ftp server etc all up and running. I still need to sort out the firewall, move the ADSL modem over to the server from my PC, move the printer and scanner over and work out how to enable external access to the server ...

I've finally managed to get the digital TV card up and running. It's a superb picture when it works! My WiFi hassles have been almost overcome. I've run my backup hobs & burnt CDs. I've forced Outlook to start opening attachments again. We've bought a new digital camera and a card reader (more on that later). I even dredged the old Webcam out and got it uploading pictures to the Internet. Whether I'll ever be bothered to turn the grainy old thing on is another matter :o).

I also need to sort my PC out so that others can reference it by name rather than IP, suss how the security stuff works in Win2K, switch on the encoding for my WiFi, rebuild an ancient laptop, work out why Office (inc Outlook) doesn't work on my new (dual) Win2k installation, stop my M$ keyboard from preventing sleep mode on my PC .. and on .. and on ... When am I gonna get time to actually use the damn things?! Oh well. The hope is to get a baby web server sorted out so any pictures and such can be moved there and then I can begin to blog in earnest. Looks like the dream will have to wait a little while yet. Not helped by being sent on a course next week in Gloucester.

In the odd spare moment I've rescued the occasional Pikmin and watched just enough videos to keep one blank tape spare. That's about it, although special thanks to G&C for laying siege to our house this week. There's no better relief from computer maintenance than a surprise snowball fight :o).

To Freely Split Infinitives

A blast from the past in the form of Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" was playing on the radio the other day. As occasionally happens, I caught a lyric and found myself puzzled. "Splitting an infinitive. He says Amen! and Hallelujah!". I've never been good at avoiding split infinitives but I was pretty sure these were simple religious exclamations or interjections, not infinitives of any type. I've now checked and an infinitive is definitely a basic form of a verb. In English this tends to include a 'to', as in 'to be', 'to do' or 'to elucidate'. Splitting the infinitive means sticking something in between the 'to' and the verb. The obvious example of this is 'to boldly go where no man has gone before'. The fastidious would prefer to hear Kirk and co. intoning 'to go boldly ...'. Whilst this example seems weaker to me, other examples seem almost impossible not to split. Try to neatly rejig (sorry) 'to more than double your salary'.

I'm glad to report that after checking the situation out it appears that it is not wrong to split an infinitive. Indeed, when the Oxford dictionaries officially denied the need to avoid splitting infinitives in 1998 it made the news (BBC or AP). Hallelujah! :o)

So I found myself educated and exonerated but not enlightened. Then I stumbled upon the solution to my original puzzle. It turned out to be a simple case of a misheard lyric. It seems the line is Spinning in infinity | He says Amen! and Hallelujah!.

Thus concludes my story. However, I was never one to quit when I'm ahead and whenever I wander into the world of words I seem to get diverted. For example the misheard lyric reminded me of the Police song, 'Sue Lawley', and how that lead to an investigation by Nationwide, on which she was a presenter. Also, my bimonthly trip to AskOxford lead me to investigate the lit vs. lighted whinge I'd had a while ago. It seems both are completely interchangeable, as are learnt/learned, spoilt/spoiled etc. Then the use of the word bimonthly in this very paragraph lead me to check whether it meant twice a month or every two months. Apparently it can mean either, which is handy as that's pretty much the meaning I intended :o).

I nearly used the word moot in the second paragraph, only to discover that, along with rhetorical, it used to mean something quite different as this shows: Rhetoric is the ancient art and study of oration and composition. Ars rhetorica includes forensics, the study of argumentation. Rhetoric, as the study of persuasion and appropriate address, is a breeding ground for many proscriptive rules for speaking and writing, including "correct" grammar. These days, we sometimes call a question "rhetorical" when we say we don’t really expect the question to receive a definitive answer. Rhetorical questions are kin to the phrase "it’s academic," meaning a "moot point," because, sadly, there is a perception that the concerns of academics are unanswerable and not mattering anyway. This lead to investigations into rhetoric, literary terms and a revision of basic grammar that I won't go into for fear of feeling silly.

By the way, did you know silly means 'fortuitous, happy or prosperous'. I don't know about you but that's too much for me. I'm outta here. Of course, 'outta' isn't a proper word (despite being used at least 760,000 times on the web). Mind you 'gotta' has been used three and a half million times and still hasn't made it. Aaargh! Run away ....

Happy New Year

I've been having a lovely holiday. We've been eating silly amounts of food, drinking a fair bit of plonk, catching up with loads of friends, playing games and watching an obscene amount of television. Superb. After the year we've just had we deserved a coach potato's holiday and we've made the most of it. I've seen more movies in the last week than the last year. It's been so much fun I think we should extend it for a weekend or two. Alas, it's back to work tomorrow.

I have almost kept up with my blogroll but that's about it. I'm glad to hear Samuel Pepys started blogging today, the 1st of January 1660, and continuing each day (c/o Enthusiasm). My favourite Christmas story came from Burnt Toast. Some chap stuck 300 dollar bills to a window with a sign asking people to take what they needed.

Special hellos to the TW@s for being the cause of this year's worst hangover and the lovely Gareth & Cath for a top New Year's Eve Party. Whilst I'm enjoying the novelty of sublime laziness things may remain quite quiet here ;o). Since Santa provided the house with Gamecube it could be a while before I'm drawn back to the PC. Hope you're all having lovely times too. Wishing you much success and happiness in 2003.