The Tigger of Wrath

Another small accomplishment

2009-12-31T00:00:09Z

Got a bonus when I dropped into my favourite local dead animal emporium - I got the bones and trimming off the rib of beef I'd ordered for New Year's Day's big family get together. There are now around 3 litres (12 cups) of stock cooling in the kitchen. Tomorrow I skim off the fat to melt down and re-strain for dripping, and render what remains to form the base of Friday's gravy to go with the Yorkshire pud before the actual joint gets served.

Gratuitous and innapropriate use of technology

2009-12-24T17:18:35Z

The $DEAD_BIRD scheduled for tomorrow's lunch weighs more than the kitchen scales can handle, and its label is indistinct.

Fortunately, the Wii Fit Plus has a "Weigh your pet" function...

Compliments of the season

2009-12-23T16:52:53Z

To anyone I haven't sent a card to (yes I know, it's bourgeois, adds to my carbon footprint [1], etc.) and who feels left out, feel free to click here.

Have a good time if you can, and catch you later.

[1] Which despite being large and black, with enormous toenails, is far smaller than anyone's who went to Copenhagen for the recent junket.

Does the Atari ST still have any uses?

2009-12-22T22:28:40Z

Other than landfill, that is.

We have two (one's an STe), still in working order. My geas against dumping working kit is being sorely tested by a need to create space, so if anyone can think what they could still be used for I'd be obliged. Frex, they come with MIDI built in, but not having been active in the filk community for so long I don't even know if MIDI's used nowadays and if it is whether Windows/*nix fits the bill better.

Over to you...

In which Big Brother shows off his incompetence yet again

2009-12-22T12:59:48Z

One of the ~~suckers~~ citizens of Airstrip One who paid to be a first adopter of the UK's national ID card has got his come-uppance when trying to flee to Eurasia.

I wonder if he'd have got any further if he'd flashed a credit card instead?

A fete not worse than death

2009-12-05T20:43:14Z

Specifically, Hal's school fete, where I picked up the complete runs of the Patlabor TV series and Leiji Matsumoto's The galaxy railways for six quid off the bring and buy stall. That's my holiday viewing sorted then.

LJ maintenance

2009-11-24T12:06:15Z

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

Legislative asswittery

2009-11-24T09:41:36Z

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.

Gake no ue no Ponyo

2009-11-22T21:38:02Z

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.

Book shuffling

2009-11-01T23:25:17Z

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.

Email encryption: still not ready for everyday use

2009-11-01T13:57:17Z

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? Good.

The idea of email encryption is indeed simple: Alice would like to send emails to Bob (and vice versa) without Carol being able to sit in the middle and read them. They use an encryption program to create a pair of keys each; one public, one private. They swap public keys and keep their private keys, well, private. Alice can then encrypt the content of her emails with Bob's public key and only Bob can open those emails using his private key.

Now Alice and Bob might not have decades, or even a few years of computer use behind them. They could be very recent new computer users, possibly from the "digitally disenfranchised" that have been ~~forced~~ persuaded online by Martha Lane Fox's crack inclusion squads. Alice and Bob don't have Macs because they cost too much money up front, and nobody in their circle of friends knew enough about Linux to recommend it. So like most of us they have a cheap and cheerless box stuffed with whatever components came into the factory that day, running one version or other of Windows (and a whole load of crapware). Mail encryption did not come out of the box with these PCs.

They know enough that unencrypted email is a bad idea, and want to put it right. They agree to buy some software to do this. So, what can go wrong?

First, the encryption could be crap. Not everyone can tell the difference between AES-256 and ROT-13, and there are unscrupulous salespersons out there who make money out of it; either through bashing out a snake-oil encryption solution, or the program that can break it: or quite possibly both from a different set of URLs and IP addresses each. Alice and Bob need to make a wise and informed choice. Will they take the time to browse Secure Computing's pages, or just type "email encryption" into Google and click on "I'm feeling lucky"?

Next, does Bob's email program keep Alice's emails encrypted until they're opened, or does it just save a decrypted copy to wherever it keeps emails? Some programs keep all emails in one big file; very hard to keep just some of it private. The latter leaves emails which should be private available for inspection by anyone getting access to the computer. If Alice and Bob are lucky, they'll have some defence against this. Otherwise, some malware-crafted web link will give Carol's Intelligence Agency a way in.

(No, this is not an anti-Windows rant. The price of data security is eternal vigilance and even Mac users have managed to get their boxes pwn3d. Okay, they had to type in an administrator password when installing a cracked copy of Snow Leopard, but it's possible.)

Let's just take it as read that Alice and Bob have found a program with good encryption, which manages its keys properly, and their saved emails are well protected. Now we're really going to make life difficult for them by making them have to exchange emails with Dick.

Dick is a *nix user of the Old School. HTML emails sent to him go straight to /dev/null unread, with a barely civilised auto-reply to the sender on how clueless they are. His OS and the programs that run on it are mostly several steps behind the current release, because he only updates when there's a known security flaw and it's been patched. Let's just say his email encryption setup is incompatible with Alice's and Bob's, and leave it at that. Alice and Bob can either switch to an encryption package that's compatible with Dick's, or find a way to keep their existing system and accommodate him. Again, assume they've done that. Now add Eric, Freya, Georgiou, Haruko... Several different encryption setups, none of which talk to each other.

Remember that Alice and Bob are ~~dummies~~ Mere Mortals. So we need something that (probably) hasn't been written yet: an add-on program, that can plug into many different email and encryption programs (Windows and *nix versions of course) that can be taught that Bob, Eric, and Georgiou use package X, Dick uses Y, and Freya, and Haruko use Z; and will then automatically use the right package for the right sender/recipient while requiring Alice to do as little as necessary to prove she's not Carol. Nice idea, horrible to implement. (Just one of the many problems: licencing the right to encrypt/decrypt programs X, Y and Z, one or more of which may not be free at the point of use and whose makers quite rightly expect to be paid. Too many of those and our all-singing, all-dancing, ultimate plugin may become too expensive for people to use, even if they can pick and choose programs for it to work with.)

Okay, at this point a miracle occurs, and it all works. Great. We could have gone other ways about it, such as using two or three email clients depending on who they're corresponding with, but not too many people will do that, and we'd be back to encryption being a minority interest and therefore a beacon to Carol's Intelligence Agency that here are some people who whilst they ~~are innocent~~ have not yet been convicted of an offence, are worth watching.

I'm now going to go away and write a follow up to this in which I will maintain that even with email encryption sorted out, it's really not going to help that much in protecting our information. Comments are open, and I'll weigh in if it looks like fun. Over to you.

Today is the twentieth anniversary...

2009-10-30T23:14:27Z

...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...

Sometimes, you just have to see things in black and white

2009-10-29T23:45:56Z

Like this.

Per ardua ad astra

2009-10-28T19:36:39Z

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.

Aieee! my eyes!!!

2009-10-26T08:33:35Z

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

One potential home networking problem solved

2009-10-07T21:44:10Z

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...)

Was it just me?

2009-10-02T16:24:49Z

...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.)

Finally, a car

2009-09-29T21:33:28Z

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.

In the Twenty-First Century...

2009-09-13T18:59:42Z

...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.

Beatles

2009-09-08T21:42:56Z

View Poll: In case you'd missed the hype, a poll

We can haz new old car plz?

2009-09-04T20:16:43Z

As feared, the nekobus is massively uneconomic to repair.

Even if I bought it back from the insurance company for tuppence-ha'penny, it would be a factor of ten above the current list price to get it roadworthy again. So it's take the money (substantially above the list price; it paid, sort of, to keep it in good nick), and it's off looking for something slightly newer and larger.

Currently in the sights: estate, diesel. Relatively agnostic on the make, although the were_gopher is muttering about Volvos.

Crash bang thud wallop and possibly tinkle

2009-08-27T18:25:24Z

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.

Decluttering

2009-08-16T19:31:38Z

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.

"You filthy rotten swine, you!"

2009-08-12T19:33:03Z

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...

Are you right there Michael?

2009-08-06T21:18:26Z

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