Just been through my friends list and noticed several friends from real life who'd friended me but I hadn't noticed. Now fixed.

My doctor's surgery now has muzak in reception for "data protection purposes". Apparently this is to prevent patients at the counter from being overheard by others.

Immediate thoughts: the hard of hearing tend to speak more loudly thus negating the effect. On a slightly less PC level, patients whose command of English isn't great tend to speak loudly too. (I've heard them - over the music.)

But as far as I'm concerned, it's that the ruddy stuff is distorted that makes me wince. It's like everything's filtered through Jimi Hendrix playing "The star-spangled banner", and not in a good way.

As I've been signed off for a week, I think I shall improve the shining hour by doing some research into the legality of this.

Or, Ponyo on the cliff by the sea.

Miyazaki-sensei's latest film was on at the local cinema today, so I took the family along.

It's a deceptively simple piece of work, deliberately moving away from computer animation. Miyazaki was very hands-on with it, and while I'd like to think I'm enough of an aficianado of his work to have seen it straight off, I just got caught up in the opening sequence which sets the tone for the entire film, when I caught a nod to his first film, Nausicaa of the valley of winds.

(Pause to check IMDB on Nausicaa, and get reminded it's been 25 years that Miyazaki-sensei has been directing and producing his own films, and that I've been evangalising about them for almost as long. Hmm.)

The story's simple too. There are many old themes, not all of them from the Ghibli stable or Japanese folklore, but they are all well-woven together and come to a proper ending (a relief after the sudden stop of Howl's moving castle).

IMDB lists this as the first of Miyazaki's films to get a G (U) rating, rather than a PG, since Kiki's delivery service, so if you have kids who can follow a story and aren't over-sensitive, I'd recommend you take them to see it. Or of course see it yourself if you don't have kids.

Or, it's amazing what you find on the back row of a shelf.

(What, don't you fit two rows of books onto a shelf?)

Anyway. Ahem. Manuals and serial numbers for Windows 3.11, 95, 98, and 2k. The 3.11 discs are gone in a purge, but I've still got the 95, 98 and 2k CDs. Also Windows 98 Annoyances, Dummies and Resource Kit manuals, plus a Missing Manual for 2k.

Have to see if I can find a box for them - the shelf space is now occupied by H.G. Wells' "The Science of Life", "The outlook for Homo Sapiens", and Lancelot Hogben's "Science for the Citizen". Much more useful.

This is a counterpoint to marypcb's posting, "And that's why email encryption is such a no brainer". If you haven't read it yet please do, then come on back.

( Still with us? )

...of my 29th birthday. It's been good.

Got three CDs - well, one CD and two "music discs" which showcase the opposite views of the music industry towards their customers. Rick Wakeman's Criminal Record, ironically enough, has a large US Department of Justice stamp and the warning "Unauthorised reproduction is prohibited by Law", plus what appears to be some Windows-based DRM that my Mac snickered at. The other is Paulo Nutini's "Sunny Side Up" (thanks to pbristow for pointing that in my general direction) which when fired up in either Mac or PC provides a link to the artist's site with some info and extra material. It's good to know that some people have got the idea of "added value" and aren't just screaming that piano rolls teh intertubes are killing music.

Took everyone to see "Up", which no. 1 son found a little scary in places, and of which I am not ashamed to post that the first ten minutes had me in tears.

And so to bed. Will tonight's DVD be Black Lagoon or Duckula? Decisions, decisions...

Like this.

Nasa's Mercury-Redstone Ares booster two-minute flight was a success. If this continues, why, in the next ten years, the Americans might land someone on the Moon.

And they will get a warm welcome.

Today's XKCD page is nostalgic, and not in a good way.

Two of the computers had the same IP address, which might account for why when they're both on they slow to a crawl. DCHP sometimes do what you think it does.

One manual IP address set later and we shall see what happens next. If I'm very lucky, it might also explain why my hacked Home Hub occasionally loses its ADSL connection (but it continues to look like the fault lies at the exchange, alas...)

...or did anyone else see a line in this article in the Times on the Evening Standard stating Labour lost the 1945 General Election?

(If you didn't, don't bother, because it's gone now.)

Yes, we undoubtedly dillied and dallied, shillied and shallied for longer than we should have; but that's just us.

We finally ended up with a Skoda Octavia hatchback: it was cheaper than the equivalent estate. Just over a year old, just over 10k on the clock, so nicely run in and the worst of the depreciation over.

The major difference over the old car is the steering. The nekobus was an old fashioned rack-and-pinion job - this has power steering and it's smooth. I don't speak for the co-pilot, but I will be a while getting used to it, as well as spending a while in the driveway with the manual working out exactly what all the buttons do. Oh, the basics such as lights and wipers are broadly the same, but there's a lot more to tweak in a car seventeen years older [erase and correct: younger] than the previous one.

It's nice to be mobile again, not least because while I've been sorting this out one of my in-laws has been in hospital with some pretty serious internal problems, and now she's finally on the mend it's really good to know we can visit without having to beg the family for a lift from the local train station.

...the Beatles are kept off the No. 1 slot in the album charts by Vera Lynn.

I think this tops the not-so serious rant I made back in July on the lines of, "in the last century, men were walking on the moon, you could pay an airline to carry you faster than the speed of sound, and there were nine planets on the Solar System, not eight."

Heck, I know it does.

Poll #1455006 In case you'd missed the hype, a poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

What version of the Beatles' remastered albums will you be buying?

If your answer is neither, it's because

Do you wish to complain about this poll?

As feared, the nekobus is massively uneconomic to repair.

( More mutterings here )

Any crash you can walk away from is a good one. We all walked.

We were on our way back to Leeds late this morning, around Junction 12 of the M1, when a 42-ton lorry decided to pull out of the inside lane into the middle lane where the car was. The first strike knocked us sideways (not a way you want to be traveling at 60mph); the second partially knocked us back enabling me to recover from the skid and come to a grinding halt in the middle of the motorway facing roughly forwards.

Managed to get the engine started again after a couple of goes and made it to the hard shoulder around the same time as the Highways Agency turned up. One of their patrol cars had been going the other way and seen the incident happen. They got us out of the car and made sure an ambulance was on the way to check us up: the were_gopher had already 'phoned the Police and let then know where we were. Nobody was injured; Hal was hysterical as befits anyone who's had a behemoth slam at high speed into the door he's been sitting quietly next to. I allowed myself five minutes of the heebie-jeebies in the ambulance once I was sure everyone else was okay and then put my stiff upper lip back on.

Names and addresses having been exchanged, including two kind souls who'd been behind us and seen the whole thing, the Police and ambulance crew departed and the Agency people escorted the car to a breakdown area just off Junction 13. Sorting out the insurance and recovery service took about an hour, most of which was spent in a greasy spoon truck stop over a large all-day breakfast and large mugs of very sweet tea, then it was haul the car up onto the back of the back of a truck and off to Leeds.

It's too early to say if the car's repairable. I hope so, but it's a K reg (17 years), and the left side's pretty fairly dented from the rear bumper up to the front wheel arch. Both doors will need replacing, and the glove compartment won't shut which does not bode well for the main frame. Still, it helped keep us alive, and you can't say much more than that.

All is well; the kids are happy to be home, and so are we. Night all.

We performed a binary chop on the VHS collection this afternoon. Any TV series that's commercially available, plus a fair amount of films ditto, are wrapped up and bound for the dump tomorrow. That's 345 tapes. Yes, we're counting; there are about twice as many to go through. Stuff that isn't commercially available but should be, combined with odd bits like the Alex Cox intros to his Moviedrome series on BBC2, and the odd documentary.

It's going to be fun and interesting going through the remainder, given the oldest is 26 years old. Hopefully the VCR will survice the experience; I've just had it refurbished.

Expansys are offering the Nokia N810 Internet tablet for £130 (minus a penny).

And I've just sworn off buying shinies for the rest of the year.

And the were_gopher knows this.

And she has a baseball bat handy.

So I just thought I'd throw temptation your way...

Stuck at Stevenage. A replacement train is promised. We shall see.

According to the Air Ministry Roof I'm holding, there's a reasonable chance I'll be able to start each month with the appropriate line from Flanders and Swann's "Song of the weather".

Isn't Global Warming fun?