Extreme Gravity Racing Series. The Volvo entry rocks!

Webserver - next steps.

Have taken fitzroytuesday.homelinux.net offline for the time being as want to ensure the security is locked down properly.

Once I've done this the next thing will be to think of something to do with it - has anyone got some ideas?

It will be straightforward to register a proper domain name (fitzroviantuesdays.com!) to point at the machine - in fact it shouldn't be *too* difficult to have the apache server running multiple websites on multiple domain names, if anyone has any pet projects...

OK - apache webserver up and intermittently running at http://fitzroytuesday.homelinux.net/ Now I just need to work out how to add content to this thing!

wish i'd thought to scan mine...

Re-edited my links below and they seem to be working OK-ish. Anyway Claire, Jenny-Pops and myself are staying here next week. Highly exciting - never been to the Isle of Wight before...

Just created an account with DynDNS.org. Should be able to post the address of a Harringay hosted website sometime in the next couple of days (DIY permitting).

I see yahoo are getting into RSS now...

About fucking time...

I'm sure I mentioned this before, but BLOG:CMS is software for setting up your own blog site. You need PHP installed and MySQL running (as well as web server software obviously!) Only 1 Meg download....it's pretty cool.

Here's a picture of it running, and another which shows what it looks like just with a different stylesheet (or "skin").

Skye bridge tolls cause unfortunate acronym. Still the highest bridge toll in Europe, but going to be removed before the end of the year it seems...

George Bush, in his wisdom, promotes hydrogen power as an alternative to oil. Hydrogen power is non-polluting and easier than invasion!

I've still got loads of Gmail invites....anyone know anyone who wants one?

Programs that may behave differently in Windows XP Service Pack 2 . Golly there seem to be quite a lot of these...

Yes, a very good Fitzrovian evening.

Here's a link to a paper on Mindfulness in plain English which is well worth reading.

Ah yes, the five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and 'umami', coined by the Japanese inventor of monosodium glutamate.

Also, Kobe beef, produced by feeding cows beer and giving them sake massages.

Good to get the Fitzroy sessions back on track yesterday. Topics to follow up: John's mindful buddhist conversion, hydrogen power, flavourless tea, Skye bridge, er... memory not serving me well this morning, like John and his pin number.

Talking of tea, I take it you've all seen nice cup of tea and a sit down?

Mobile blogging via blackberry - I'm on the top deck of a no. 38, just going past the ritz...

Proof of concept mobile blogging from my blackberry. I'm writing this on the top deck of a 38...

Oh dear - ThankYouTony.com.

Pub II

OK - suggest next Tuesday (17th) in the Princess Louise (just near Holborn Tube) from 7pm. Who's with me?

Most Scots believe life is sweeter south of the Border

I liked Where Are You Now, When We Need You Most, Rage Against The Machine? And Jim Anchower is always good.

Good one in this week's Onion: Kerry Unveils One-Point Plan For Better America (ie, the removal of George Bush).

I also liked 'US Military Clears A-Team of All Charges' - after 30 years on the run.

Pub

Anyone up for a Fitzroy gathering at some stage? Been a while now...

Peer-to-peer networks carry surprising cargo - ZDNet UK News

The Daily Mail Watch - watching them : watching us

Monbiot in Grauniad today, slagging off climate change deniers like David Bellamy. Also inlcudes this interesting take on modern prosperity - "A recent study by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the costs of crime have risen by 13 times in the past 50 years, and the costs of family breakdown fourfold. The money we spend on such disasters is included in the official measure of human happiness: gross domestic product. Extract these costs and you discover, the study says, that our quality of life peaked in 1976. "

Lastminute.com to axe 350 jobs. "Lastminute chairman Allan Leighton said the company, in common with other travel operators, had been affected by a growing tendency for consumers to book their holidays later than usual." Eh? wasn't that supposed to be the whole point?

Richard Herring is performing at the "Pod Deco" in Edinburgh. The Pod Deco is the old Odeon on South Clerk Street. I always feel a bit wistful for Edinburgh at this time of year.

Further to the webserver project, I tried installing Suse10 on a 500MHz Celeron Sony Vaio with 64MB RAM and the YAST installer tool reported not enough memory! Bah. It did give the option of enabling swap space but I couldn't work out how to make it run fdisk (or similar) to set a swap partition.

Am going to try again with Gentoo 20004.2... Does this sound sensible or is there a better distro for low end machines (Seumas)?

I've just rediscoverd the The Postmodernism Generator, after reading about it last night in Francis Wheen's mumbo jumbo book. It generates entire essays, complete with footnotes, author etc.

A couple of cultural items, plus a possible project...

First off, "Hear my Name" by Armand Van Helden. Absolutely superb house track. The video is quite good as well.

I've been playing a downloadable game thingy while on the bus which I can reccomend - Ancient Empires by Macrospace. Very similar to the legendary Advance Wars.

On the project front, I've realised that my broadband router supports Dynamic DNS which means that I will be able to host an (internet visible) webserver. To this end I'm looking at setting up a low end end machine running linux and apache. Not sure when I'll get round to doing this but once its in place it could be a new home for Fitzrovian Tuesdays (fitzroviantuesdays.com anyone?)

2nd Tuesday...

is next week. Anyone up for Fitzroy-ing?

I have just returned from here and here. It were great.

I haven't got anything new or important to say other than fucking hell I hate George Bush even more than I did a week ago.

End of the Routemaster

Wind farms etc...

Just got a flyer for this through my letterbox this morning. Not sure what to do as it is beginning to look like the whole windfarm thing is a bit of a racket, really. They do look nice though.

William Shatner sings Pulp's Common People. Or speaks it anyway.

Lookout V1.2. This is quite good. Much better than Outlook 2003's woeful search facility anyway...

I'd like to think this is true:

'NEWSWEEK reports that President Bush, appearing before a right-to-life rally in Tampa, Florida, on June 17,'04, stated: "We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces. A Feces is a living being in the eyes of God, who has endowed that feces with all of the rights and God- given blessings of any other human being." The audience listened in disbelief as the President repeated his error at least a dozen times, before realizing that he had used the word 'feces" when he meant to say "fetus."  '

NTK's pedantic webpage mistake feature now has a website: Doh - Broken web pages, but in a funny way

 
One think always puzzled me about Stephen Hawking Is he a genius whose work will go down in history (e.g. like Bohr, Heisinger, Einsten, Schroeder etc) or is he just one of a thousand or so leading contemporary theoretical physicists who happens to go round in a wheel chair?

419 scammer operates out of Edinburgh scheme.

Hopefully going to get the OK to donate a load of our (ie my work's) older kit to these guys. All seems very worthwhile - and they promote open source!

This appears to be real - Powell goes disco for Asean forum

My brother got me Mario Golf Toadstool Tour for my birthday. It rocks...

child pimp and ho costumes for sale. That's the nephews' birthdays sorted, then...

Cassini-Huygens: Multimedia-Images-Latest Images

BHODemon 2.0 Useful if you still have to use IE....

Oxfam - Conflict Campaign

Wild parrots settle in suburbs

This is first tuesday today, right? We're not due to meet until next week?

Hubble discovers 100 new planets

How cool is this? I'm amazed it's not bigger news as the implications are pretty stupendous ie "The discovery will lend support to the idea that almost every sunlike star in our galaxy, and probably the Universe, is accompanied by planets."

An Open Letter to the Radioactive Spider That Never Bit Me.

Welcome to EUROBAD '74, an exhibition of Europe's
worst interiors of 1974.

Another national psycho-tragedy last night. But at least now the European Championship will probably be won by a social democracy not embroiled in an illegal occupation.

Am reading Meyer Hillman's book on How to Save the Planet. Absolutely terrifying - basically, it's immoral to ever fly anywhere on holiday, or do anything else much except read, cycle and farm crops. We are all fucked.

Odd - two comments underneath Colin's meme machine entry but it lists as Comments (0).

What was that meme machine book you guys mentioned the other night?

Hotmail bounces Gmail invitations

Cheat's guide to Joyce's Ulysses

Big Noise Music -- forget iTunes, Oxfam have launched a music download site, with 10% going to charidee. They're also involved in a new chain of fair trade coffee shops (called Progresso, which is a bit of a duff name).

New Statesman New Media Award nominees

Did a Second Tuesday happen yesterday?

Where does this leave us? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3783543.stm

Notcon 04

Nasa Cities Collection

Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer now online

The Pixies: Rock's comeback kings

Return of Colossus marks D-Day

This is good - it create's a mini shockwave movie derived from the Google image search, based on the keyword you put in: One Word Movie

Re: Ecotricity

There seems to be a bit of a windmill backlash building from unexpected sources. A lot of people (including alternative energy types) are saying that they'll never generate enough power. I was thinking about this stuff the other day, and it occured to me that we should be investing loads in providing solar power in Africa -- doing our R&D there and basically giving it away to them in vast quantities. Also, I still think they should add dynamos to treadmills and exercise bikes in gyms across the world...

Seumas, I'm sure you'll disapprove of me posting this, but I just read a speech by Bill Gates for a thing I'm doing at work, and thought it might be of vague interest for John, workwise: Bill Gates' Speech Transcript: Microsoft CEO Summit May 2004.

Doonesbury at war. Just in case anyone missed the Gruaniad piece yesterday.

Kissinger Tells Of A Drunk Nixon. Hope Monkeyboy isn't back on the sauce - choking on pretzels, falling off mountainbikes etc...

Well, it's something I suppose.. I've just switched electricity suppliers to http://www.ecotricity.co.uk

It only takes a minute.

Unexpectedly, Shaun Woodward has probably got the best MP's website. It's a blog basically, and he gets stuck in. I've had some reasonable chat with him.

http://www.shaunwoodward.com

Best. Geek-Gift. Ever.

Hiya all,

Neither John nor myself will be able to make this Second Tuesday. He's off to the sunshine and I'm off to the cold. Anyway, we thought maybe a Final Thursday might do the trick if you're available for that? Thoughts?

Best headline of the day - Swedish elk steals bicycle.

James Lovelock in today's Independent. Reading this rather spoiled my bus journey in this morning... :-/

Pandaf Golf

The Onion infographic on Electronic Voting Machines -- includes button sequence for God mode, giving user unlimited votes (R2,L2,Triangle,Circle,R2,R2), and pop-ups reading "People who voted for John Kerry also ordered these products from Amazon.com"...

What stupendously nice weather we're having!

:-D

The new Hari Kunzru novel is all about an Indian in Silicon Valley writing computer viruses.

Rainy-day voice of a generation. Anyone see Morrissey on Jonathon Ross on Friday? Saw it was on but missed it...

Test....chosen a new username to go with email account...

Ebay is just weird....

eBay item 3292008773 (Ends 21-May-04 13:03:52 BST) - Monopoly Quiz Machine

Cold Turkey -- In These Times

Donna out of Elastica has a new band.

Turning the Pages

Hubble sees 'planet' around star

Good chat last night. Sorry I got there late. As I remember, here were the major themes:

Coming to terms with the absence of free will
A collective bout of "we told you so" about Iraq, tempered by total despair over the situation
John's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Seamus's theism

What the hell is going on in the world? Islamist website shows 'beheading'

Tomorrow evening

Who's up for the Fitzroy tomorrow? Seeing as Colin can't make it, maybe we should postpone to next week?

Have you seen the End of Story thing they're doing on BBC 3 website? A bunch of authors have written two thirds of a short story, and now they're running a competition to see who can write the best ending...

Don't think I can make it next week
Sorry, I've managed to double-book myself. Perhaps we can hold an extra session later in the month? Apart from general socialising, I was hoping to pick your brains about Linux...

Scottish update

Apologies for the lack of promised photoblogging action - I didn't bring my laptop so can't transfer pictures from digital camera to interweb. I've also not taken very many pictures though will try and post a panoramic shot of the East Lothian coast from the hills above Musselburgh (just what this blog needs) when I get back to London.

Apache killing video becomes viral news

I saw this horrible video of an Apache helicopter shooting Iraqis a few months ago. Something about it didn't seem right - surely it couldn't be real - and I decided that it must be some kind of sick simulation.


In light of all the torture pictures and videos that have come to light in the last couple of weeks, this has been checked out, and apparently it's genuine. My sources tell me it might turn up on the news this week...