On The Spoon

New blog location

2006-08-08T20:29:00.000+01:00

Stop fighting and listen

2006-08-06T11:32:00.000+01:00

The first step towards peace in the current Middle East crisis is a total and unconditional cessation of violence. Dialogue and negotiation cannot possibly be effective if both sides are still fighting.

We in Britain are all-too-familiar with terrorism. The whole of the United Kingdom suffered at the hands of the IRA for 30 years – but we got through it with intelligent and careful dialogue. We now have a devolved government in Northern Ireland and, although there are still problems, it is stumbling towards a permanent and peaceful solution. The violence has ended for good, and the most important lesson is that the dialogue could not possibly have started until the total cessation of violence happened.

With respect, Americans are too unfamiliar with the realities of terrorism to be able to deal with it. Their intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has created more problems that it solved, and I fear that they are irreparably damaging relations in Israel and Lebanon in the same way. The US Government does not have the knowledge and experience to solve anything there, and should not be getting involved. They are far too biased to provide impartial mediation, and their vision is too inward-looking.

After an unconditional cease-fire in the Israel/Lebanon conflict, we should then be seeking the services of people who really know what they are talking about when it comes to terrorism and its eventual elimination. David Trimble, John Hume, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness come to mind – Trimble and Hume were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for their efforts in solving the crisis in Northern Ireland; Adams and McGuiness were previously linked to terrorist organisations and have since renounced violence for participation in democracy. No matter what you think of them, it is people with this kind of experience who have a real chance of establishing lasting peace in the Middle East.

America fixes the Middle East

2006-07-23T22:14:00.000+01:00

So Dubya fully supports the disproportionate Israeli action in the Middle East, by supplying them with all of the military hardware they need. Marvellous. That'll fix it, won't it? There's too much violence there, so let's give them more weapons. Yeah, right. Nice one.

So we'll now have even more bloodshed, even more Arab hatred of the West, and a new humanitarian crisis. The U.S. government are a bunch of brainless idiots, who have a total disregard for peace and humanity. And the British government appear to be sleepwalking along with them, led by "Yo" Blair and the shamfully evasive Margaret Beckett. Disengaged? They have no idea.

Elysees

2006-07-20T21:07:00.000+01:00

Elysees
Originally uploaded by inventedeye.

View from L'Arc de Triomphe, Paris.

Garden Gate

2006-07-18T20:02:00.000+01:00

Garden Gate
Originally uploaded by inventedeye.

Wolvesnewton, Wales.

Big up Tiscali

2006-07-13T17:28:00.000+01:00

At last, an ISP that doesn't cave in to the oppressive authorities. Read more...

Britain is getting wronger and wronger

2006-07-11T20:41:00.000+01:00

This story horrifies me. The British authorities are so unaware of reality that it scares me. When you consider this as well, I wonder how to act in public so that I don't look like a terrorist. Is anybody telling us how we should act? This is confusing and terrifying.

A couple of insightful articles at openDemocracy.net can be found here and here.

The inventor of the Web speaks

2006-06-26T21:45:00.000+01:00

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web speaks on the subject of net neutrality. This is an issue we must all be aware of.

That Telewest thing

2006-06-26T20:30:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, about 100,000 Telwest customers had their digital TV service cut because of vandalism – read the BBC report here. If the chumps who did it are ever caught, the Police and Telewest will be the least of their worries – several thousand England football fans will be baying for their blood, as the outage occurred minutes before the start of England's World Cup match against Ecuador!

Bluecurve Theme Generator

2006-06-25T14:57:00.000+01:00

I wrote the Bluecurve theme generator to scratch a particular itch of mine, and I thought it might be useful to others.

I use Gnome on Fedora Core 3 for my desktop. Now I like consistency – I like all my applications (GTK, GTK2 and KDE) to have the same look, feel and colour scheme. On Fedora, Redhat provide a Bluecurve theme engine for all three environments (which is good), but if you want to use a colour scheme other than the default Bluecurve scheme, then it's quite hard to define your own with consistency across all three environments. My Bluecurve theme generator solves this – Click here to find out more. You will need a rudimentary understanding of how to run a script from a command shell, but don't worry – it's basic stuff.

Architects Schmarchitects

2006-06-22T17:01:00.000+01:00

I'm a software developer for a medium-sized business. One of our "architects" came to my desk the other day, and he spotted some of the O'Reilly books on my desk. He said to me, "So what's Python, then?" I looked at him, rather surprised that one of our highly-paid "architects" didn't know what Python is. It could have been his sense of humour, so I smiled and sniggered a bit. But then he said, "Is it a language? Who sells that, then?" Oh my god, I thought. He really doesn't know!

So we had a conversation about open source tools and technology, and I was shocked that someone so senior in our business was demonstrating huge gaps in their knowledge. When selecting products and platforms for our software solutions, he was going no further than Microsoft's website. This hopelessly blinkered approach has got to be hurting our business, by stifling any kind of innovation and agility (words from our mission statement!). I have discovered complex and expensive Visual Basic projects which could have been done for a fraction of the cost with a few lines of Perl.

I know that many companies overlook open source technology – I'm not saying that it's a magic bullet that will solve all of our IT problems, but such as restrictive approach to architecture is surely a bad thing, isn't it?

Waassaa?

2006-06-21T21:50:00.000+01:00

My website, that's waassaa. There's not much there yet but some nifty stuff is on the way, especially if you use Linux.

Football, only better

2006-06-19T21:29:00.000+01:00

In my expertly-informed opinion (IMEIO?), football would be greatly improved by implementing the following:

Award penalties for dissent towards match officials – that would stop the rude and violent gesticulating which we don't want to see;
Ban all personnel from the pitch area, except the match officials and the 22 players – we want to watch a game of football, and not aging, overweight coaches/managers barking orders at the players;
No substitutions, except for injuries – players should start acting like proper athletes, and play for the full 90 minutes;
Use of video replays – the referee should be able to request replays via a giant screen (as in rugby union), so that the whole stadium can see those shamefully theatrical dives.

There. That's better, isn't it?

Decline in literacy

2006-06-19T17:21:00.000+01:00

In my experience written literacy, particularly in the workplace, is on the decline. Not only are apostrophes used with gay abandon, but mid-sentence captialization for common (non-proper) nouns is on the increase. People no longer seem to be able to construct valid sentences, instead writing in a colloquial, spoken-word style. Punctuation, particularly when choosing a dash (–), a semi-colon (;) or a comma (,) is also poor. There are many other literacy issues, such as using long, rarely-used words in an attempt to appear cleverer, and using non-existent words (such as using the word "evidence" as a verb†). The problem is not just with working documents, but also with formal published documents which are often referenced by legally-binding agreements.

Everyone should have a copy of First Aid In English on their desks, and should feel no shame in regularly consulting it. Buy yourself a copy – it only costs a fiver.

†N.B. Instead of "...as evidenced by..." you can simply say, "...as shown by".

The Myth of Sandi Thom

2006-06-12T17:46:00.000+01:00

Ms. Thom is not all that she claims to be. Her story goes something like this: after her car broke down on the way back from yet-another half-attended gig she decided to pack in live touring in favour of webcasting concerts from her basement, only to be discovered weeks later by RCA records, thanks to all the online "buzz" surrounding her website, whence said gigs were cast. Nice story. However, over recent weeks several British online music forums have been uncovering the truth. It turns out that the whole thing was carefully choreographed – she has been signed to the music PR firm Quite Great since June 2005. She's not stupid, but it doesn't bode well for the quality of her music if she needs to resort to such deceitful media campaigns to sell it. Read more...

The power of the GPL

2006-06-12T17:24:00.000+01:00

Warning – this is a GeekPost™.

An open-source replacement firmware for a £40 Linksys router can give it the functionality of a £400 enterprise device. How so? Well, Linksys/Cisco got caught using GNU/Linux in their routers without abiding by the GPL licensing terms. When they were forced to comply, it allowed open-source hackers to add all kinds of improvements to the router. With the instructions in this HOWTO, you can do all sorts of fancy stuff, including boosting the wireless signal strength. I had one of these once – I returned it to the store because the supplied firmware both sucked and blowed simultaneously. If this firmware hack had been available, I might have kept it!

A step in the right direction

2006-06-05T21:47:00.000+01:00

The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group has called for increased regulation of DRM-laden media with the goal of bringing clarity to this confusing subject. The multi-party working group which "considers Internet issues as they affect society" in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, has released a report that highlights some of the problems caused in the UK by DRM schemes. I won't be holding my breath, but is reassuring that our elected representatives are considering this sort of thing. Read more...

Baker & McKenzie LLP enforce by intimidation

2006-06-04T08:54:00.000+01:00

We're all guilty until proven innocent now. BoingBoing was sent a letter by the law firm Baker & McKenzie warning them not "to publish unauthorized streaming and downloading of FIFA World Cup matches". This just shows how stupid Baker & McKenzie are! BoingBoing are not a streaming media site - they are a news site specializing in digital freedom. I wish these idiotic law firms (and the oppressive tyrants they represent) would stop initimidating people, and realize that it is those same people who purchase their products (no matter how grudgingly). So, Baker & McKenzie, get a life! Oh, I'm sorry, you're a law firm so you are unable do that.