at the moment….

– Dell and Lenovo are to ship notebooks with Linux pre-loaded. Welcome to the party!

– SCO lose the court case with Novell over the IP rights on Linux. Goodbye, SCO.

– It is reckoned that we are sitting on a “disciplinary timebomb” with boys at school. Hence the reason to try and employ more male teachers, who are more likely to be the dominant figure in the classroom. Soapbox time – get all the men you want, but let them teach with both hands in front as it were, not with one hand tied behind their backs. Don’t allow ridiculous claims for litigation from stupid parents and be clear from the off on how pupils will be taught. Firm but fair, problem solved!

– Wigan lose the first match of the season. Ah well, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

Now playing on Banshee – “Hey You, The Rock Steady Crew” – a classic!

democracy works in the United Kingdom. Instead of multi-page (or multi-box) petitions being delivered to Downing Street signed by Disaffected of Gloucester, we now have the ability to add our digital Lewinsky to petitions on the PM’s own website. Wowsers. What this means is that should the said petition get enough oxygen of publicity, the PM might say something. See for example the petition on road charging. Tony Blair (not sad to see the back of this celebrity wannabee liar, warmonger and lover of cronyism) turns around and says “thanks 2m people who signed this, but we’re going to do it anyway” (or words to that effect).

There was a time when elected officials formed a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Over time, this has become eroded to the point at which it’s become an unseemly struggle to climb the greasy pole to the top. Much is made over here of politicians who scoot a bit of Charlie or have a drunken orgy with some tarts. I myself could not care less. A PM could shag his way around Nuneaton on a Saturday night, but if he said that we couldn’t go to war with Iraq without a clear mandate, well that’s OK with me. I suspect most of the electorate feel this way – this is backed up by a recent vox pop based on the revelation by several members of Gordon Brown’s cabinet that they did a bit of puff at University. The reaction? So what – this was 20 years ago or more. In Alistair Darling’s case, he’s clearly lying to look cool. Now if he admitted dying his eyebrows, I’ll go for that.

This all leads me to the latest thing – congestion charging. FFS. Manchester City Council are the latest elected bunch of idiots that think this is the answer to the world’s problems. The council leader Richard Leese was quoted in 2005 as saying charging would be “disastrous” (or something equally as negative), now he’s all for it and thinks it’s the dogs bollocks. Great!

OK, so we’re all out of our cars because we’ve decided petrol is too expensive. Oh, and car insurance has rocketed because of “where there is blame, there’s a claim” merchants. Did I mention road tax? There’s that as well. Now the CC. So we’re out of our cars. Those close by could bus it or get on a bike. Then again, ah, the train! Oh no, we can’t do that because they’re full or we can’t afford it because fares keep rising than inflation can catch them. So we stay at home, spend bugger all money (even the Trafford Centre is inside the CC zone, they’re delighted!) and then over time, businesses leave (several major car dealerships already have plans in hand), customers follow them.

Then city dwellers leave, then shops close. As the tumbleweed rolls across the city because no-one can afford to leave the house any more, the city council say “well it isn’t the congestion charge”. Remember, to steal a cliche, “doing nothing is not an option”.

What a bunch of tits. Show me good, reliable, accessible and clean public transport, and we wouldn’t need cars so much, but stop punishing drivers.

extremely sobering thought just hit me (no, not the one about no-one reads this blog. Maybe they will if I die young in a terrible fireball?). That is that doing technical support for an 8 and 3 year old is terrifying stuff. I can do it all day every day at work, the chirp of the phone – the expectancy of the person on the other end that you know the answer to their problem off the top of your head. With kids it’s very different as they expect their parents to know everything. I suppose it’s a natural assumption, I was the same way. In much the same way as you think your parents will be there forever and never age, never get old.

I think the reason it’s so tough is that you can reason with adults, you can spin them a load of old bollocks should the need arise (not that I’m saying I do that a lot, I’d like to think I have a reputation for bare faced honesty) and you can also talk them through some quite complex problems. Kids don’t have that level of understanding, so it’s tough. Oh, and did I mention they want their fix in seconds, not minutes? Frustrating and very tiring, after a whole day arsing about with LVM and iSCSI on SLES10. Help me if you understand it!

Elsewhere, copious column inches and paper ink have been wasted on the current “terrorist” malarkey here in the UK. I’m most pissed off as I’m flying to London in a couple of weeks, and those who know me already know I despise flying at the best of times (I used to hate heights, now it’s just the loss of dignity and liberty as one goes through passport control and security check). Added to this now is all the faux security measures designed to strip away our layers of liberty, one piece at a time. From that perspective, the “terrorists” surely have the game won. The only way to win a battle of this nature is not to blink.

ravings :-

– Barry George gets to appeal one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history, as does

– Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi

– Gordon Brown makes it into Number 10. Don’t expect anything earth shattering, people. This is the man who voted for the Iraq invasion, raided pension funds, taxes like there is no tomorrow and does nothing to address the West Lothian Question.

And what else? Well I’ve been playing with LVM and EVMS. I can’t find a great deal of useful information on the Internet, so I’ve ordered a couple of books.

brief, as I’m too lazy currently to blog properly (and in no particular order) :-

– Getting to grips with my new camera, not as tricky as I presumed, but then again you need to have imagination to frame good pictures, and I don’t seem to have it.

– Joined Facebook, and I still don’t get it. I feel old, this manifests itself in various different ways, especially when I eschew new tech fads. You can rest assured that you’ll never find me on Second Life. My first life is just fine, thankyou.

– Jemima Khan – Find your own cats and stop wasting everyone’s time. And newsflash – YOU AREN’T SEXY!

– Metropolitan Police – Stop humouring dumb as fenceposts micro “celebrities” and concentrate on real crime, you know, where real people actually get hurt.

– Thierry Henry, I don’t think real Arsenal fans will miss you moaning your head off. Fans in the suites, you’re going to have to learn the players’ names now, aren’t you?

– SLED10 SP1 killed both my NDISWrapper powered wi-fi stick and also my NVidia drivers. Managed to sort it all out reasonably quickly and it’s good experience.

– Come on EA, get some decent footy game out for the PS3. Playing FIFA 06 is not the same.

– Blair is out, Brown is in. Nothing changes, except things get worse.

– Manchester congestion charging – are you taking the p*ss?

Full of a cold, bad mood, feel like I’m constantly choking on phlegm.

a while. I noticed that the last one was at the beginning of May, which surprised me really. It seems like a lot longer than that. And of course it goes without saying that an immense amount has happened in the last six weeks. Not least the following (in no particular order) :-

– Went to Spain for a two week “holiday”

– My wife broke my camera, so only a couple of days of photos

– Father in law lost his job owing to the actions of a despot who runs the place like his own personal fiefdom

– Dad got a job! Woo! Thought it would never happen and he’d have to keep on dragging himself off fishing until he drops off his perch

– Bought a new camera (Fuji 5600), not arrived yet

– Got a PSP, frightened to death of breaking it (see above for why). Good fun though, if a little frivolous

– Went to Port Aventura and saw their new ride, “Furious Baco”. Damn, doesn’t open until after we leave

– Hardly got sunburned at all, thanks to judicious use of hats and suncream

– Went to Barcelona for the day. Nice place, nice weather, mad people at the Sants station coming back to Salou

– Went to Tarragona and had a look at the cathedral and windy streets. Beautiful stuff and made me realise that I need a better camera (see above)

I’ll probably blog in more depth tomorrow as I’m going to see Velvet Revolver after work, which means me staying in the office (Apollo is only 20 mins on foot from work) and attempting to kill time.

strange kind of year so far, really. Once Christmas was out of the way, it was all eyes on BrainShare. Once that was out of the way it was Easter, now I’m only three weeks away from a fortnight in Spain. It feels a little bit “bitty” in that I haven’t really established any kind of momentum before I’m off doing something else.

In the news locally, my employer has hit the headlines for it’s treatment of students. I looked at the MEN website earlier today and the level of vitriol is quite amazing. That said, I’m sure I’d feel the same way if it happened to me. I don’t really feel the need to pass further comment on it, as I’m sure the students have done all of the talking. Needless to say it doesn’t look good!

On the tech front, installed OpenSUSE 10.2 the other day. Not bad, much of what we come to expect these days from one of the good Linux distros (Ubuntu, SUSE, Red Hat). For those who installed Linux three or more years ago, there was usually some measure of pain getting the thing going. These days it’s a testament to the people who build it that we just assume it will work right out of the box. Which it does. I had a small problem with OS10.2 not mounting a ReiserFS partition, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed quite quickly. Also, the Register reports that Dell is soon to ship Ubuntu. Whilst I would have liked to see SLED or OpenSUSE in there, it’s certainly a good start. Ubuntu is a good distro, but I’ve been living off SUSE for around 18 months solidly, and it’s started to become ingrained into my DNA.

SP1 for SLED is now at RC3, so I can only presume a release is around the corner. The RCs have been roughly three weeks apart, so based on that I think we’re looking late May. I’ll see a Novell employee tomorrow at the GUG event in Leeds, so I think I’ll grill him on a release date. I doubt I’ll get much out of him, mind.

Trying to learn Spanish again – problem is that it’s usually in the evening when my brain is utterly dead and will not respond. I did try listening to Michel Thomas on the cross trainer this morning, that seemed to go in OK. Maybe it’s his methods too. Buuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeennnnnnoooooooo! He doesn’t half give that bloke a rough time though, doesn’t he? Only an hour before Liverpool vs Chelski, ought to be a good game. Oh, and I give Sammy Lee 6 months at Bolton before the love affair ends. BFS did a reasonable job there, and SL will feel a little like “after the Lord Mayors Show”.

Hasta Luego!

one of the best shows on TV in years, Life On Mars, ended last night. It will certainly put a void in my week’s TV viewing. It’s notable that the paucity of good shows now (especially British ones) have meant that there are few programmes I stop what I’m doing to sit down and watch. LoM is one of them, along with the CSI franchises, and that’s pretty much it. Oh, and of course the ever brilliant 24.

I originally watched the show because it was filmed in Manchester, some locations were even at MMU (Toastrack building in season 2, the offices of the Avon-type company) and also last night in the finale (Geoffrey Manton building standing in as the modern hospital). Locations apart, the show had so much wit, heart, style and was clearly a labour of love for the cast and writers. I now read that the brilliant DCI Gene Hunt will return, in an 80’s style sequel called “Ashes to Ashes”. Hope it doesn’t stink!

back, from outer space. Or at least Salt Lake City, where I had the privilege to visit Novell’s annual BrainShare conference. Not only did I visit it, but I presented two sessions, attended every evening shindig and sat the CLE9 exam (which I failed, just). To say it was an exhausting experience is a slight understatement. After coming home to Manchester on the red eye from JFK, I expected to be able to resume normal operations straight away, albeit with some slight fatigue thrown in. Man, how I was wrong! It’s hard to put your finger on the phenomenon, but I think owing to sheer exhaustion from throwing myself into the event and the 17hr journey home with all the loving that the TSA give you at airport security, it’s taken me the best part of two weeks to feel like my old self again.

Speaking of the TSA, nice of you to treat all passengers equally, especially at JFK. What I mean by that is that you treat all passengers, regardless of age, as a total criminal. It’s a nice feeling, especially for those of an elderly age who have enough trouble getting shoes and belts off to walk through the metal detector. I know 9/11 was a bad thing, but I do sometimes wonder if the Bush administration took this as a green light to bestow draconian measures on the travelling public.

Anyway, SLC itself is a nice place, surrounded by the most amazing mountain views. A blog entry can’t do adequate justice do describing what it’s like, you just have to try it yourself. And no, you don’t get assaulted by Mormons on every street corner (far and away the #1 I have been asked since I returned) and no, they don’t wear badges or try and tap you up to convert. For the record, I don’t believe in God and you are wasting your time trying. I posted pictures from the event at my Flickr stream. Sadly I think that owing to internal restructuring at work, I’ll never be at this event again, at least presuming I stay with my current employer.

The event itself was again more Linux, which was co-incidentally what my sessions were about. If you happened to be reading this and you came along, thanks for your support! Hopefully you gave me a fantastic review, even if you didn’t mean it! 😉 I got back and immediately got cracking with XEN virtualisation, building my first XEN-ed server in no time (SLES10 on SLES10) and I do believe from what I’ve heard that as well as identity management, server virtualisation skills are the way to go in future.

It’s already occurred to me that in order to sell this as a solution at work, I have some “hearts and minds” work to do with colleagues. This was brought home with informal conversations with colleagues and their superiors. The good news is that I see a lot more GroupWise on Linux this summer, provided the server replacement fund is allocated.

Away from BrainShare, I’ve bought a PS3! I know they are expensive, but I had a bit of extra money and I thought, why not? It’s not like a have a social life to speak of! I wasn’t sure if the games were region free, so I went to BestBuy, out in the SLC suburbs to check out what was available. In the end, I bought MotorStorm, Ridge Racer 7 and an extra controller. Along with a DS game, it came to around $220, which is about £120. The point here is that is considerably less than what I would have paid in the UK, where we continue to be right royally ripped off by everyone. Even Bill Gates’ notion on the dollar to pounds conversion (like for like – $200 equals £200) seems hard to explain. Thankfully I won’t be buying Windows Vista while I have a hole in my arse.

What else is new? Too much for me to cover now, and my fingers are very cold, so not much typing here I don’t think. Maybe next time!

now until I leave for BrainShare on Saturday (or three days, depending on how you count it). I have finally got my suitcase out of the loft, I don’t know what it weighs, but I can’t imagine I have much scope in there to add to much more. I think my limit is 32 kilos, which sounds like a lot, but the case itself is a beast, so depending on how many clothes I throw in there, I may have to trade down.

I still can’t say I’m looking forward to removing my shoes and belt, taking my laptop out of my bag, being restricted to a small clear bag of liquids, giving the Masons handshake and all the rest through passport control, and I wonder if it’s really necessary. Like I saw someone say the other day, if someone is going to blow up a plane, they are going to do it anyway one way or another. Treating every passenger like a criminal first and foremost is not good practice. Quite apart from anything else, nothing has since been heard on the so called “liquid” bomb plot, least of all anyone being in court. From what I gather, planes are much sturdier than you might think, and to bring on down, you’d need to take your mix on board on a trolley, as you’d need so much. Oh, and the trolley dollys should be so kind as to give you the galley to prepare the device!

In the news, experienced and highly decorated former Army commanding officer Patrick Mercer MP is removed from David Cameron’s front line Tory team for expressing the view that some bone idle ethnic minority soldiers play the race card to excuse the fact they aren’t good officers. Mercer makes this remark off the record and it’s published. Cameron removes him as a racist even though he has promoted five black officers and they all claim he’s the best commander they ever served under. Let’s be clear Mr Cameron, in battle situations, we’re talking about life and death and being able to put your life in your team’s hands. What it isn’t is standing outside some posh drinking club at Oxford where you and your minted chums get bladdered, smash the place up and have a jolly good laugh. If you ask me, Patrick Mercer should be the leader of the Opposition, not David Cameron. There is someone I can vote for!

He’s not racist, and nor am I. My motto is to take people as you find them, but the steady erosion of free speech in the UK at the moment is not a healthy thing. One thing you might infer from all of this is that maybe (and I’m postulating here) the reason non-whites don’t get the plumb jobs they deserve is because the employers don’t want to worry about what baggage may be brought along in the event of a dispute. An allegation of racism against an employer means mud sticks, even if it isn’t true.

I’m all for the best man (or woman) for the job, regardless of the fact that they are white, black, Asian, Chinese, disabled or whatever. The playing field is not equal for anyone because employers remain terrified of being sued.

Oh one last thing, turns out energy saving bulbs (which EU ministers have voted for, in favour of phasing out standard bulbs – thanks for asking) are a bit of a con. They’re bad for your eyes, are not as energy efficient as they’re pitched, can’t be used in many cases where current lighting is and made of banned toxic materials! Stroll on!