A Donkey on the Edge

Douglas Fairbanks has a Bacon number of 3

It snowed last week and Britain ground to a halt. The weather forecast was timely and explicit (large animated snowflakes covering the whole map of the country, what more do you want) but it seems everyone still thought they’d have no trouble driving home from work. This/05/be in part due to the total lack of coherent public transport in the UK or simply down to dogged stupidity…

In any case, I came home later than intended and ended up wiping out (well, slow-mo falling over…) and lost a passenger peg casting (grrr) but ordered a new one from a nice chap in Hull with a regional accent so intense I had to give him my credit card as his trustworthiness was unquestionable.

Fun driving—I usually take the bike into a park (Hampstead Heath in this case) and drive like a maniac in the virgin snow. I say usually, but as a good covering of snow only hits London every seven years or so it’s considerably less than usual. So I was out in this mess on purpose. It took six kind strangers, all of us slipping and sliding, to pick me and the bike up and slip the lot of us off the ten meter sheet of black ice I came unstuck on.

The walk home was long but great. Walking past piled up cars (every hill in London developed a sheet of black ice from idiots spinning their wheels and most acted as traps, collecting stacks of helpless cars). I stopped in a pub half way, had a triple Jack Daniels and a smoke. Great mood in the pub, one guy was trying to get food for his kids who had been trapped in their car for five hours. The bar was full of folk like me getting ready for an all-night trudge through the snow, and all seeing the funny side of it.

Looked like snow earlier today :-) but it didn’t stick :-(

Oh well, another seven years…

So I guess if I’m designing a brochure at this time of night I need to take a look at my time management;-)

Feiss + Penguin + iPod + Slashdot (not necessarily in that order)…

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52749&cid=5222245

Just got home from seeing the Leonardo vehicle (thank you Grandma Symington for looking after Clementine). It’s quite liberating having a ‘date’ with Nicki, I guess that’ll be the second film we’ve seen since the arrival of bairn.

Just wanted to say that CMIYC reminded me of classic 70’s caper movies like “The Hot Rock” or “The Taking of Pelham 123” in the sense that they have a ‘proper’ plot, bit of tension, bit of comic relief, bit of a statement (political, emotional or otherwise…) just good clean fun, really.

The thing that stays with you as you walk to the car park is the extreme sadness of LDiCap’s character. He plays this amazing con artist who is little more that a teen-ager looking for love, or at least a clear explanation of where he fits in in the world.

Great performance by Walken as his father and a surprising, older, Natalie Baye breaks the boy’s heart…

I forget if I mentioned this already, but those of you using an iBook by accident (as in you really need to be on a Powerbook but tricks of fate etc etc) might want to modify the Open firmware to kill mirroring. Instructions to re-enable the “arrange” tab in the monitors control panel are here

If you have no idea what I’m on about then no need to worry really;-)

Btw, I tried this on a recent (32meg vram/800) iBook, but it appears to work well on several generations.

The following received at 23:07

Dear Network Solutions® Customer,

As a courtesy to our customers, we are sending this summary notification of the domain name that is due to expire in the coming year. When you renew today, you can take advantage of our best savings. Your registration for BIGSAUCER.ORG will expire on 08/12/03. Act now.

And then, an hour later (60 minutes in which to renew my domain)…

Dear Network Solutions Customer:

We take every effort to protect you against unauthorized or fraudulent changes to your account. Therefore, we wanted to let you know that we have received a request to transfer your domain name, BIGSAUCER.ORG, to another registrar.

If this is not a valid request, no action is necessary. Your domain name registration will not be changed.

It’s bad enough they still hide the renewal confirmation with a double negative, they are now sending out automated renewal notices just before the confirm notice. Why is Verisign not in court? How can this be legal under American law?

Just got a note in the post asking me to register for the 2003 ADC in San José, California. For the first few seconds I actually considered using up some air-miles and spending two days in the sun to catch a glimpse of Steve Jobs in action in the flesh. Then I saw the price…

WWDC 2003 E-Tickets are also available a la carte at the “Early Bird” price of US$ 1295.

This is clear proof that Sadam has weapons of mass destruction all software developers are millionaires. One thousand three hundred dollars to go to a trade show? And this is the cheap early bird price?

A day of down-and-dirty muddy protest

14:20 Pile wife and baby into SUV

14:50 Arrive at Marble Arch, one block away from anti-war protest—park legally on meter

15:15 Walk over to Hyde Park and listen to Tony ‘God’ Benn (who should have been prime-minister since 1960 but wasn’t) speak to assembled marchers in hide park

15:30 Listen to Charles Kennedy except that the guy with the megaphone by the “Mecca Cola” float is drowning out the main-stage pa system…

15:45 Bump into 5-month-pregnant Georgia and Stefan who have cycled over from Islington between the footie and the rugger

16:00 Head back to car via Belgian chocolate boutique on Seymour Place

16:20 Swing by Panzer’s in St John’s Wood for watercress

16:30 Home

I can’t believe the day turned out like that… it sort of just happened;-)

Am currently a little tipsy as have just returned from dinner with Piers and friends to celebrate his fortieth birthday. Will attempt coherent post tomorrow am (seeing as the entire UK blogging community has already posted I/05/as well take my time…).

I was introduced to the silent operation, brilliant colours, high resolution, piezoelectric ink delivery printing system of Epson’s printers things started to go wrong. Since then things have gotten gradually worse as I spend more and more cash on pointless ink cartridges all the while kicking myself for not buying a laser printer as I listen to yet another ink-gobbling head-clean…

Anyway, got this lovely note in the post today with a fantastic link to Epson sucks Joy for Epson-haters everywhere…

Well, we’re still all coldy (Clem coughing in the middle of the night via monitor is just sooo pitiful sounding) and Nick and I are still at each other’s throats, but we had lovely day yesterday. We took a long walk (Esther Ranzen shops in the O2 centre Homebase) and had a good chat which felt really good in the end. Hopefully the new office will be sorted soon and out life will get slightly more back to normal.

Last night Clemmie had very major tooth pain and essentially screamed bloody murder all night. Nick and I took turns squeezing, bouncing and singing until the wee hours. She finally went to sleep after breakfast for her 08:30 nap. Boy, no fun, the worst part is you know she’s hurting but you can’t do anything about it.

On the topic of all night stress and distress, if you’re a young parent and want help, check out NHS Direct (0845 4647). They are fantastic. It works like traditional ‘expert systems’ were supposed to work. Your call is filtered by an initial call-centre handler, you then hang up and a specialist calls you back almost straight away. Very impressive, and publicly funded too:-)

I had meant to post a proper comment re the demonstration as I only had time for the flippant post below on the day. There are hundreds of reasons to worry right now, but the one thing that keeps coming back to me is how Orwellian the whole circus is becoming.

I think I first picked-up on it when the US announced their “Ministry of Homeland Security”. How did America go from being a beacon of democratic checks and balances—the nation were a president can be impeached—to Black Shirt country overnight? I can understand how 9/11 might have been a Lusitania moment, but there is no Kaiser. Essentially, the President is supposed to use appropriate force. Instead, Bush has decided to get Biblical and do a lot of “striking down”. In essence, pursuing the creation of an imaginary ‘Pax Americana’ where and US citizen could walk to the end of the empire unscathed, protect by the knowledge that should any harm become him the response would be swift and terrible.

In occupied France, if one villager struck at a German soldier, the whole village would be executed. This is the kind of thing that is necessary to enforce this kind of Pax. I suppose we’ve started along this road: you bomb two of our buildings to shit, we will bomb somebody-near-to-you’s country to shit (as I write this, I realise this is a crude over-simplification, but my heart tells me that the US should be bigger than that—in victory magnanimous as Churchill said…).

I would really appreciate someone explaining to how this is a viable long term policy. In particular, if the nation doing the bombing to shit happens to hold most of the world’s wealth and consume most of the world’s energy, I don’t see how this scenario could build a world I’d want my daughter to grow up in.

So we need to re-claim the language. Next time someone tells you it’s appeasement, tell them bollocks, that has nothing to do with it. Spurious comparisons to Suez or Poland just won’t do. As responsible world citizens, we need to step back, think, and look at the big picture.

Is it appropriate to make adherence to a UN mandate a fulcrum of the debate? How can this be justified when the whole world knows that Sadam is far from the worst offender in town (I believe the US and Israel hold the two top positions in the sin bin). Can it be right that we only make a big deal out of the resolutions that suit us?

I can only hope the American people see the error of their ways and chuck out the monkey. This is the most God fearing nation on earth, but they still manage to execute more citizens per year than anybody else. If they can fiddle the commandments, maybe they could compromise on George Bush…

Watching the BAFTA awards in the background while catching up on some work for Monday am, it always amazes me what good A-List attendance the show gets. The Audience was packed with Hollywood’s finest and it occurred to me that this is what the Oscars ceremony used to be like.

Where else do you get good old-fashioned 10 minute thank you speeches? I think a guy with a headset pulls you off the stage if you go over your alloted 10 seconds of fame at the Oscars.

The night even ended with a BAFTA Fellowship to Saul Zaentz which generated a good 15 minute speech (close-ups of people looking attentive and serious during interminable thank you) ending with an inspiring condemnation of America’s slide into darkness. You rock Saul;-)

Quick question sparked by the The Pianist winning best film—does Roman only do acceptance speeches in countries that do not have an extradition agreement with the USA?

My friend Ben has been reading my various rants on the war and has sent me a long note pointing out how I am not presenting the argument in a well balanced way. He is probably the best person I know (best, as in to be a good man) so I value his opinion. He is also naturally good at managing conflict and is not afraid of confrontation should it be necessary (yours truly will tend to shy away from pain unless really prodded). Here is what he had to say:

I looked at your donkey edge site. You’re really writing up a storm. The war bit was interesting; a bit too easy, but still interesting. You should at least acknowledge the uniqueness of the situation which certainly has no parallel in the world wars. Back then strong countries were strong, and a few innocent deaths were nothing to worry about, what with millions being slaughtered. I haven’t had any desire to defend the bushy one lately, but I guess I have to now.

A nuclear bomb exploding in the US was only a tired hollywood script until 9/11, then it seemed ridiculously possible. So you are the leader of the most powerful country by far, and the possibility of a nucular explosion suddenly snaps 20/20 into focus, and you are literally the only dude in the world with the ability to do anything about it. It doesn’t seem so far-fetched that you would try to prevent a nutcase who will eventually make a bomb from finishing it. I think you’ve got it wrong that the US wants to show severed heads to prevent an attack. The two motivations are Bush finishing his father’s legacy (sadly) and prevention of Iraq getting nukes.

Nevermind that there are another dozen or so potentially equal or worse threats out there than Iraq; there is at least a pretext and ability to go after Iraq. Britain’s fun with the IRA, and Israel’s continuing fun should be some indication that you can’t do a hell of a lot to stop terrorists. We can only hope to prevent terrorists from having a nuclear device. The worst negative that I can think of (besides enfeebling the UN) is provoking animosity in arab countries.

Most americans would like to go to war only if the sentiment is shared by a reasonable majority of our allies, but Bush is not really helping with his heavy handed rhetoric. Unfortunately I think Bush feels he needs to talk that way to the american people (and maybe he’s right), but it creates a backlash with the allies and makes them want to be the counterweight.

btw, there are no ministers in US govt., and also, the US is not the axis of evil together with Israel.

There you go. Am considering my reply:-)

Got the following in the post this morning. I’m always amazed to find out that my Mom isn’t my only reader;-)

RE: An American Replies

Hi Dug,

I don’t think you have any responsibility or obligation whatsoever to present a ‘balanced’ point of view. You are writing in what is (in effect) a personal diary, it is published and public yes, but still personal nevertheless. Do you have ambitions to turn Donkey into the Grauniad? I think not. And what is this ‘well-balanced’ thing your friend refers to anyway? ;)

Some people go on marches. Some people write in their weblogs. Some people choose to nothing, and that is fine. My respect goes to those that take a stand. It is (imho) very much a time in which to do so.

Regards (and respect),

David Fromant
Freelance web, writing, & project management

Thanks David. I think the well balanced thing was actually something I said, but I wholeheartedly agree that it is time to take a stand. However great or small your contribution, do something.

Also, Ben has now written back several times and we have argued long into the night (the triple-quoted emails would be impossible to transcribe here as-is). He was surprised to find his letter published, as he says, if he had known, he/05/have phrased things differently. We’re going to try and work on a position and we/05/edit his earlier post. More tomorrow about this I think:-)

It’s moments like this where my heart swells and I’m proud to live in a democracy (the feeling fades fairly quickly, but hey…)

The Guardian had this to say

Parliament’s history books record great rebellions of times gone by, but, in sheer weight of numbers at least, none match up to last night’s defiance by 121 government backbenchers, all voting for an amendment describing the the case for war as ‘yet unproven’

Read the whole piece

Great series of pictures from the peace marches all around the world. Nick and I were standing about 1cm North East of the bright yellow truck to the left of the picture (it was impossible to get into the moshpit with Clemmie’s pram). I mention this because on the day it was impossible to get a sense for the numbers. This is one seriously large crowd. (thanks Caterina)

I understand this link is down until the owner finds a new host—keep checking back

Wow, George Clooney picked William Shatner’s Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds in his Desert Island Disks. George, you’re so groovy:-)