We watched "Sex Lives of the Potato Men" last night.

Usually when I explain movies to someone I like to say it's like a cross between X and Y, but not this. This film (which really doesn't warrant the title "Movie") stands on its own, and not in a good way.

You get the impression from the outset that its production budget is slightly less than your average monthly grocery budget, which for some films fills them with innovative low-budget genius. This film just ticks over though. It uses out of town locations (and I know because there's some I walk past every time I step foot outside my house), untried scriptwriter and apart from the three c-list headliners, a largely unknown and never-will-be-known cast.

The plot is pretty much described by the title. Four potato delivery drivers try various ways of getting laid. One - Johnny Vegas - is removed from the family home and somewhat half-heartedly enters the suburban swinging scene, which is realistically portrayed as being full of middle-aged bored couples in towels.

Another , Mackenzie Crook (from The Office) is shagging the girl from the chippy while living in the storeroom. This girl turns out to have a voyeuristic husband whose aggressive insistence on hiding while she gets shagged leads to some disturbing but genuinely funny moments.

Our next protagonist, played well by the talented Mark Gatiss ("League of Gentlemen") stalks the daughter of a client, steals the family dog and meets a nice woman who he settles down with. This makes a nice semi-romantic grounding which helps keep the film from flying off into complete bizarreness and farce. Strange considering what Gatiss is used to writing.

The final member of this quorum is unbelievably the most gruesome and as such is the most comical. After using strawberry jam as a sex aid, he's become addicted to the taste, trying in turn fishpaste, kippers and squid in an attempt to recapture the taste he became addicted to. He eventually rediscovers it in the voluptuous form of Kay Purcell, an actress I quite enjoy watching and who really doesn't get enough screen time in this. A fate which befalls the very watchable Lucy Davis too.

The film is an excellent antidote to the mass produced let-downs coming out of Hollywood lately, gross and unpalatable in places, stark throughout, it manages to maintain the level of humour we have come to expect from Johnny Vegas, which, as cheeky, rude, gross and wry as it is, is not a bad thing.

Let's not paint it in a false light. This is not a film that would make your top ten. This is not a film you'd run out and buy on DVD. It may not even last in your memory further than the Odeon lobby, but it's a worthy and realistic slice of British institution comedy. There's also something reminiscent of Ealing and Brian Rix about this film, which in my eyes saves it from total unwatchability. I won't say go and buy it, but if you're planning a night in with the lads and a few bevvies, I'd say there were far worse films you could lift off the Blockbuster shelves - especially if you come from Southwest Birmingham, as it makes for a good game of "Spot the location".

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog because the Blogspot ones weren't working and I couldn't be bothered sorting them out.

Hopefully at the fourth attempt at installing the code, it'll actually work too.

What if HR Giger did batman?

For those of you that are interested, check out the latest Batmobile (described by someone on Slashdot as a "Hummer taking a dump") in the pictures section of the Batman Begins website.

I'm bloody starving, so it's time to get on with roasting potatoes and tomatoes with garlic and sage, then doing home-made garlic bread, grilling some nice smoked bacon and frying some mushrooms.

I may even be tempted to fry some eggs too.

Drool drool!

God knows I've tried my best to keep away from the US Elections, but I have to say there's a bit of a phenomenon going on in Boston at the moment.

The Democrat Party's National Convention has allowed special access to a number of Bloggers. For whatever reason I don't know, but it's created quite a stir.

Here's a few links to some of the News reports and Blogs involved:

Blogger Live: A self-refreshing ticker of the latest posts from bloggers attending the Convention.

Yahoo! Article on the Convention Blogs.
Blogsphere at CNN
Hardball's MSNBC Blog

Seeing the forest: Dave Johnson's team blog.
Pressthink: Jay Rosen.
Mark's Liberal Blog.
Talking Points Memo: Joshua Micah Marshall
Daily Kos: Fair and Balanced
Centerfield: Blog of the Centrist Coalition.
Burnt Orange Report: Three students from Dallas University.

Some important information from the Department of Vague Paranoia.

If you're living in fear of zombie invasion or alien abduction, this is where you can find the official UK Government pamphlet on how to deal with these threats.

Getting close to my 1,000th visitor. Woo! If things go as usual, number 1000 should be on Sunday or Monday. Also coming up is my one-year anniversary. Can't believe I've actually kept up some kind of diary for a whole year! First time ever!

My site-traffic counter takes notes of returning visitors, but its criteria means it doesn't catch a lot of people, so in time for my 1,000th hit and my first anniversary, if you're a regular reader please take a few minutes and leave a comment somewhere so I know who you are.

Thanks for reading and thanks to all the Google clickthroughs who have boosted my hit rate over this last year.

How gullible are you to Email Fraud?

Take this test to find out.

I got 100%. So no pressure.

If I won the Lottery tonight...

I'd faint!

Also I'd get to do something I've worked out in the last few days. I've been teasing myself looking through the houses for sale on Rightmove, checking out all the quarter-of-a-million-pound own pool, acres of land type places for sale around the country and it occured to me that it would be a great idea to buy an old farm (which seem to go for anything from £150,000 to £800,000) and convert it to a Campsite, with the old barns and outbuildings being turned into dormitories and a canteen for youth groups like the Boys' Brigade or the Scouts to use, or for using as a base for Corporate outward bound weekends and the like.

One thing I'd offer is the opportunity to hire specialised tents. I've seen a place that will make you a genuine Native American Teepee, and all sorts of other historical style tents. I'd love to have a stock of Teepees and offer Pagan events, with a sweat lodge and huge campfire and so on. Waht a wonderful way of celebrating the Sabbats!

Of course there's much more I'd do with a Lottery win, but this one would suit my longing for the Country life and for the outdoors. And if I happened to find a place near Snowdonia, well, so much the better...

If I was Prime Minister...

I'd trashcan the new Wembley Stadium and recommission the one they were going to build in Birmingham.

Ban big business from investing anywhere inside Greater London, concentrating instead on areas direly in need of investment and jobs, like South Wales, Tyneside, The East Midlands and suchlike. My chamber of commerce would be instructed to offer extra incentives to big foreign businesses that invested in such places.

Cancel any new homebuilding and roadbuilding schemes. Concentrate instead of redeveloping the huge empty stretches of brownbelt land and derelict housing lying empty because of planning restrictions and red tape.

Fire or heavily fine any manager who earns over a million pounds a year. There's no need for it. Economise, buy British and get your heads from up your backsides, you drain on the nations resources!

Emasculate Manchester Utd. They're too rich, the players go to pieces as soon as they leave the club and football is now the least important part of their business strategy. That's wrong and it's bad for the rest of the football league.

There's more but I'll come back to it later, as I remember what I was going to say.

I just discovered the wonderful sound of Hayseed Dixie. Bluegrass versions of rock and pop classics. Well worth a listen and a chuckle.

"I can afford any game I like but I rarely have the time to play them."

If this sounds like you, then you need to read this article from GameDev.net about the requirements of Wage Slave Gamers.

Look at This article on CNN. One for the Darwin Awards I think.


ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- When a pickup truck crossed the double yellow line along Seward Highway and killed two occupants of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, police initially thought the accident was another tragic mistake by a momentarily distracted driver.

Then they spotted the dashboard DVD player.

In what may be the first trial of its kind in the nation, prosecutors have accused the pickup truck's driver of second-degree murder for watching a movie instead of the road when he crashed head-on into the Jeep.

The pickup's driver, Erwin J. Petterson Jr., denies using the DVD player as he drove north on October 12, 2002 and contends he was only listening to music from a compact disc, said his attorney, Chuck Robinson.

"It's an excessive charge for what happened here," he said. "This was not a murder. Even the state medical examiner said during cross-examination that the manner of death for the people in the other car was accidental."

Petterson, 29, is accused of killing Robert Weiser, 60, and his wife Donna Weiser, 56, of Anchorage, while on a three-hour drive between Kenai and Anchorage. In his truck was the equivalent of a home entertainment system -- a DVD player, speakers and a Sony PlayStation 2.

While no Alaska law prohibits operating a DVD player in view of a driver, prosecutor June Stein said the facts warranted charging Petterson under one of two theories: that he knew his conduct was substantially certain to cause death, or that he knowingly engaged in conduct showing extreme indifference to human life.

Initial Alaska State Trooper reports said Petterson was at fault when he took his eyes off the road to reach for a soda. Stein, though, will try to prove that the DVD player was on, apparently playing the movie "Road Trip."

"We know it was," she said. "It was wired so that the screen was in the open position when the ignition key was turned out."

The murder trial, which got under way last week in Kenai Superior Court, may be the first of its kind in the nation, said Matthew Swantson, director of communications for the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade association.

Installed as recommended, DVD players and TV screens are either visible only from the back seats or will not work unless the vehicle is in park. But owners can defeat the safety measures by installing the devices themselves, as Petterson did, according to prosecutors.

Robinson said he expects prosecutors to have trouble winning a second-degree murder conviction. "I think the prosecution is going to have a tough time proving the mental state of Mr. Petterson," he said. "It's a tragic accident that happens all the time on our highways."

Liz Neblett, spokeswoman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said more than 25 percent of police-reported crashes are distraction related, which covers everything from cell phone use to changing channels on a radio, screaming at kids, eating, applying makeup or reading a newspaper.

Vehicles can be equipped with fax machines, cell phones and two-way radios. But none should be used if they interrupt the concentration of drivers, she said. "It's a no-brainer. If it's distracting, don't do it," Neblett said.

After the crash, Petterson and his passenger, roommate Jonathan Douglas, were transported to an Anchorage hospital. Within hours, Douglas called his ex-wife and told her he was not sure how the collision occurred because he was "spacing out on a movie they were watching," according to prosecutors. The woman is scheduled to testify.

David Weiser, 34, the son of the slain couple, said only two people know what happened in the cab of the truck. But equipping a truck with entertainment options that can be used while driving goes beyond a momentary distraction of putting on makeup or using a cell phone, he said.

"This takes forethought, this takes methodical steps," David Weiser said. "You have to go to the store, plop over money, install it, and install it so it can be used without a brake employed.

"I view it as no different than walking into a bar, having five beers within an hour and getting behind the wheel," said Weiser, who quit an eight-year career as a loan originator in Boston to attend the trial.

Driving laws have not kept up with technological changes, Weiser said. He plans to work toward changing that after Petterson's trial is over.

"I would like for the jury to sit and hear the evidence, and if the evidence shows what I believe to be true, that his conviction reflect that," he said.

The first trailer for the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Movie is online.

You can choose the AVI or Realmedia versions.

It doesn't give anything away but it looks cool.

Thanks to CmdrTaco at Slashdot.

One of the discussions that goes on quite regularly in Harry Potter circles is whether the books are satanic or anti-Christian in nature. This is a fascinating article from the New York Times which requires registration in order to read articles. But don't bother doing that because I'm pasting it here:

G. P. Taylor, an Anglican vicar, onetime roadie for the Sex Pistols and former all-around sinner, was roaring across the Yorkshire moors on his Yamaha XV1100 in a lightning storm when the idea for his hit Christian children's book, "Shadowmancer," came to him.

Like some other committed Christians, he had been disturbed by the amount of witchcraft and the occult in children's literature. "Harry Potter," for instance. The best-selling author J. K. Rowling gives too much power to the forces of evil in her books, he told parishioners. Well, one congregant replied, why not write your own book then?

So Mr. Taylor created a story deeply imbued with Christian imagery and set on the 18th-century Yorkshire coast in Britain with its rugged cliffs, hidden caves and smuggler's legends. It is about an evil vicar, Obadiah Demurral, who tries to take over the world but is thwarted by three teenagers and a smuggler.

When "Shadowmancer" was first published in Britain last year, it was soon dubbed the Christian alternative to "Harry Potter" and surged to the top of the paperback best-seller list, outranking its secular rivals, the "Harry Potter" books, for 15 weeks in a row. And in May when "Shadowmancer" was published in the United States by G. P. Putnam's Sons, it beat "Harry Potter" for six weeks straight on the children's chapter-book best-seller list of The New York Times. There are 300,000 copies in print, and now booksellers are eagerly expecting a similar success when the sequel, "Wormwood," is published here in September.

Some of those sales have been fueled by the Christian media, which has hailed the "Christian Harry Potter" for its religious references and its celebration of God's power. Mr. Taylor's American promotional tour not only included the predictable appearance on the "Today" show, for instance, but also an interview with Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club." A reviewer for Pluggedin.com, the online magazine of the conservative Christian group "Focus on the Family," wrote, "It could be just the thing to counter Harry Potter's magic." And while Christianity Today magazine was more critical, it nonetheless credited "Shadowmancer" for showing "something that some of the others do not — characters relentlessly calling on God to shine his light into the shadows."

That was what attracted Anne Pouns of Houston, who describes herself as a born-again Christian. She had not allowed her children, who are now teenagers, to read "Harry Potter" when they were young, and hadn't read the series herself. "I don't desire to have it in my hands because of the witchcraft," she said.

But Ms. Pouns said she found "Shadowmancer" to be "a very fascinating book. It reminds me of `Lord of the Rings' and C. S. Lewis. If you have a knowledge of Scripture, you will realize how much he has interspersed the story with it."

Michelle Black, who works at His Way Christian Bookstore in Eldersburg, Md., said she also tried to avoid books containing references to the occult or to gods and goddesses, and appreciated the Christian message of "Shadowmancer."

In the beginning, for instance, an Ethiopian boy, Raphah, washes up on the coast bearing a fragment of the ark of the covenant. "He's willing to sacrifice his very life to prevent the darkness from overtaking the world," Ms. Black said. "It's like when Christ said, `Greater love hath no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.' "

Yet Mr. Taylor, who says he was influenced by the X-rated rapper Eminem as well as Jesus, insists he didn't set out to write a book against "Harry Potter." He has never even read the "Potter" books, he says, though he has seen the films. "I liked parts of them," he said on the telephone from Yorkshire, "though I found some of them theologically a bit difficult to handle."

" `Shadowmancer' isn't an alternative to `Harry Potter,' " he says, adding that he was simply writing "as a Christian."

Still, Mr. Taylor describes himself as a committed Christian who has ministered for two decades to those involved in the occult. "Shadowmancer," he says, shows that the true power in the universe is God.

Mr. Taylor, 46, was not always moved by evangelical fervor. Much of his youth was spent, he said, in the precincts of "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."

His father, Frank, was profoundly deaf, a shoe repairman or, in Mr. Taylor's words, "a mender of soles." ("I am a mender of souls," the large and jolly Mr. Taylor likes to say.) His mother, Mary, was severely hearing impaired and worked in a cafeteria. As a child, Mr. Taylor learned to communicate with them by watching them talk to each other in sign language.

The family, which included two sisters, lived in a government housing project. When he was 13, Mr. Taylor was expelled from school. "I hung a friend out the window," he said, "set fire to the desks. I'd taken a radiator off the wall, dyed my hair bright red."

At 15 he moved out of the house, lived with a girlfriend and became part of the punk rock scene, imbibing quantities of drugs and alcohol. "It was good fun," he said. "But it was stupid and dangerous."

When he was 21 Mr. Taylor found God. He was working in a community center for the deaf and elderly. "I had been searching for the truth," he said. His co-workers began talking to him about the power of Christianity.

"Very gently and very slowly they dismissed every argument I had," he said. "I didn't become a born-again Christian. It wasn't like Saul on the road to Damascus. Over a period, I realized this was the way I should follow."

In 1983 he married Kathy, a policewoman who dressed as a decoy prostitute in the Yorkshire Ripper case, which terrorized northern England during the 1970's. The couple have three children: Hannah, 16; Abigail, 13; and Lydia, 5. The two oldest have read "Harry Potter," Mr. Taylor said, and "they love it."

In 1986 Mr. Taylor became a policeman himself in Yorkshire. He attended night school at St. John's College at the University of Durham, earning a postgraduate diploma in theology and ministry. Then, in 1995, he was severely beaten by a gang including a man he had arrested. He lost part of his hearing, developed a benign tumor in his throat and was forced to resign the force.

He was now a full-time vicar. One of his churches, St. Mary's in Whitby, was said by Bram Stoker to be the site of Dracula's grave. Each year thousands of people dressed as vampires converged on the graveyard. Mr. Taylor tried to convert them to Christianity, he said.

In "Shadowmancer," Mr. Taylor turns the power of the occult celebrated in "Harry Potter" on its heels. Demurral is a sorcerer who uses witchcraft to carry out his devilish schemes. But Raphah (the name is from the Hebrew for "healer"), and the two teenagers who join up with him, Thomas and Kate, defeat Demurral through prayer and the intervention of a savior figure named Riathamus (a Latinizing of a fifth-century British word meaning king of kings.)

In writing the book, Mr. Taylor said he wanted to emulate the adventure tales of Robert Louis Stevenson. It took him eight months to finish, he said. He sent it to an on-line editorial service, but got back a nasty letter, he said. He figured it would never be published, so he sold his Yamaha and used the money to print 2,500 copies himself. Another parishioner sent a copy to her uncle, David Reynolds, one of the founders of Bloomsbury, publisher of "Harry Potter" in Britain. Mr. Reynolds sent Mr. Taylor a letter predicting it would be a best seller, and the name of an agent.

Faber & Faber bought the book for about $13,000; later he made a three-book deal with Putnam's for $500,000. The sequel, "Wormwood," from the falling star in the Book of Revelation, is about a comet hitting 18th-century London and a kabbalist, an angel and a servant girl who set out to save the city.

The film rights were optioned by Lisa Marie Butkiewicz, of Fortitude Films, a leader of Women Influencing the Nation, formed to support Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," which was criticized for being anti-Semitic.

"It is my hope that Mel Gibson would direct the film," Mr. Taylor said. Fortitude has just sold the rights to Universal for $6.2 million, and has also taken an option on "Wormwood."

He is now at work on the third book, "Tersias," about a boy whose mother blinds him so that he can become a beggar. The boy has the gift of prophecy, and "all sorts of elements want him," Mr. Taylor said.

Mr. Taylor has resigned his church post, but will remain an itinerant vicar. He has moved out of his shabby vicarage into a four-bedroom home near Scarborough that he describes as modest. And he will still tithe 10 percent of his income to the Church.

"Oh yes," Mr. Taylor said, "I'm a 10 percenter."

Postman shaped doggie biscuits

Click on the pic for the story

Revenge of the Sith. Dear god.

The original name of Starwars Episode 6 was Revenge of the Jedi. Lucas changed it as he believed revenge wasn't something Jedi would do. So he recycles the title he really wanted to use 20 years later.

So now we have it:

The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Revenge of the Sith
A new hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi

For the record, I'll just mention that I had to look up Episode 2's title as I'm so used to calling it "Send in the Clones".

I wonder how much of this next chapter's essential story will be buried under Lucas's catering to the fanboys? What's got to happen in ROTS? HA! ROTS! Nice one George!

Anyway, What's got to happen? Anakin & Amidala have to do the deed, Amidala has to go into hiding on Alderaan, under the protection of the Organa family, before Anakin finds out she's pregnant with twins. She also has to die less then a few years after giving birth. Anakin has a date with a pit of lava, from which he's saved by some element of the Dark Side which rebuilds him as Vader. Palpatine has to declare himself Emperor and start killing off the Jedi, Yoda must begin his exile on Dagobah, Obi Wan must begin his exile and watch over Luke and the Lars family on Tatooine.

Pad that lot out with eyewatering but uninspired CGI and as many fanboy characters as you can cram in and you've got another cash cow.

George, take note. I will not be paying to watch your film. I will download the pirate version that someone filmed and put on the web. I'll wait a while and pick up the six-film box set on DVD off Ebay. You are not getting one brass farthing off me. You don't deserve it.

Revenge of the Sith. I ask you. Sheesh.

Google, 60's stylee, as spotted on "Chasing Daisy"

Yes, it's true, I have three books on the go at the moment.

Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting is the modern classic which spawned the great film. It's written in Aberdeen dialect, so isn't over-easy on the eye, but is a grim insight into the minds of a collection of junkies, pimps and headcases. This is a collection of short stories and episodes mostly narrated by Mark Renton, Francis Begbie, Simon Williamson (AKA Sick Boy) and Danny Murphy (Spud). Together they leave you with an insight into the drugs and violence culture in modern Edinburgh, although you could quite easily find these people in any town around the world.

For me, the most fascinating characters are Renton and Spud. Theirs is a genuine friendship, with the hippy Spud and the world weary Renton genuinely caring for each other, as opposed to the acts of affection and solidarity Begbie bullies into his circle of friends and the jealous, usurious acquaintances that Sick Boy forms.

The book goes into every horror of Heroin addiction, pulling no punches when it comes to issues like overdosing, death, withdrawal, HIV, prostitution and mindless violence.

But despite all this, you're left with a strange sense of hope. As the film and book have both been around for about 10 years, it's no giveaway to say that Renton ends up by stealing thousands of pounds from his friends and leaving the country, and thoughout the book you have the recurring theme of Renton's attempts and desire to kick his habit and better his life. This is juxtaposed with his overpowering nihilism, but at the end of the day, when the opportunity presents itself, his ambition, his desire to escape and make something of his life beats everything. I find wonderful hope in this fact, and I think, especially given his continuing story in the sequel "Porno", Mark Renton has to be one of the bravest, most hopeful characters I've read about.

Spud is also a character full of hope, but his is a naive, frustrated, apathetic hope. One of the phrases you most associate with Spud is "But what can you do?". He accepts his role as junky and punchbag with philosophical apathy and resignedness and as such becomes a truly tragic character.

Irvine Welsh spins a wide web around these friends and associates and brings them to life in all of their glory. An incredibly well done crawl along the underbelly of Aberdeen's junky society.

Where did this come from? Suddenly it's summer again. My lips are salty with sweat, as is the rest of my body, the thermometer on our living room clock steadfastly refuses to drop below 24 celcius and al the frozen shopping we did is re-freezing after being put away.

We have a wonderful way of doing shopping: We travel eight miles into the centre of Birmingham, laden with barely enough money to keep the kids hydrated and to fill the fridge and freezer, with enough left over for a Taxi from somewhere six miles closer to home. We don't do this in ther car because we don't own one and neither of us can drive. We do this with a 75 litre rucksack, which comfortably holds something like 30lbs of food, which then sits on my back.

Some days are easier, when we only go about two miles to the closest Sainsbury's and stock up on expensive salads, crisps and "American Range" Southern fried chicken and ribs.

Our kids are funny buggers to buy groceries for anyway, with Bethan refusing anything with any goodness or nutritional value and Allison telling us she's gone off everything she's been happily scoffing down for the last two years. It doesn't help...and I mean it really doesn't help...when Charlie says "I don't know what I feel like eating this week, let's go into this shop and play it by ear". We invariably come out £20 lighter and 10lb heavier.

Me? I like lots of things, I like variety. But I don't like roast dinners and stews on the hottest day of the year and I don't like steak. I can't bring myself to eat a meat which, even at its leanest, makes your teeth spring back like they're trying to chew through a trampoline and makes your jaw ache so much that you can't bear the thought of tackling the ice cream you've got for pudding.

I can make chinese. I'm good at chinese. My satay's a hit, my stir-fry has to be tasted to be believed, I've done a chop suey which went down a storm and I fry my own prawn crackers. I do excellent Italian, I like my Texmex efforts and I like experimenting with combinations of ingredients. I'm easy to please. I could live happily off 20p packets of noodles, a bag of rice, jar of soy sauce, some eggs and a few chicken breasts.

However, I live with the most picky eaters ever, and it drives me frankly nuts. I love food shopping but having to cope with "I don't like that anymore" from three sides simultaneously is making me hate it.

So I've developed a system for food shopping. I give them ten minutes to decide what I'm supposed to get. If they don't make a decision, I go out and buy what I think they're going to eat, or more precisely, what I can bear to cook, plus one or two treats. It kinda works, but only when I'm doing the shopping alone. When I take them with me, all bets are off.

Thank god you don't have to pick out your own birthday presents.

Well my adventures with defragging seems to have paid off. From a disturbing 60% fragmented, my "D:" drive is down to an unhealthy but vastly improved 43%. The report advised me to defrag again. Can't argue with that.

My computer's organised like this:

Two 60Gb drives, the C drive holding my system, program files, the annoying "Documents and Settings", my 20Gig music directory (4 Gigs of which is Christmas Music!) and my rather large Movies directory.

The D drive holds stuff I've downloaded and disk images to use with Daemon Tools' Virtual CD-Rom.

Before I started backing things up onto my last ten blank CD's, I had 6 gig left on the C drive and 8.5 gig free on the D drive, and that was after deleting upwards of six gigs between the two drives in order to gain the 15% free space the defrag app needs to work in the first place.

so now I have no blank CD's, a little less space in my BIG cd pouch and a search set up on Ebay for DVD-r drives and disks.

Bearing all this in mind, it's no wonder I'm dreaming of multi-terabyte RAID arrays.

My next PC will be a Network Fileserver.

I like Windows XP firewall
I like Shareaza
I like HTML that works
I like Macromedia Dreamweaver
I like simple solutions
I like the "under the hood" options in Windows which make it possible to concentrate the virtual memory on making the system work as opposed to the programs I run on it, which switch off the FUCKING annoying "Report this to Microsoft" error reports and which make Windows look after its own virtual memory, all of which factors have made my PC virtually unusable for days now.

But most of all I like not being stressed out just because one line of code isn't working properly, when I don't have a clue what line it is or how to make it work when I find it.

Tonight, my job is to defrag my "files" drive. Only 65% fragmented, so not much to do really.

OK, so there were exactly two lines of code I needed to change to make sure it shows properly in Netscape, Mozilla and Opera.

They're done now, and I've got rid of the old comment system in favour of Blogger's own brand.

I love it when a code comes together.

Done some satisfying work on The Clan On Camera site. It's fit for human consumption now, so pop over and cast a glance at our holiday pics.

Videos coming soon, as are links to the software which helped me build the place.

Media news...

Entire cast of "24"
sacked.

Season 2, Episode 1 of Dead Like Me is out on Bittorrent. Link coming soon in the usual place.

Brent Spiner is to appear in Enterprise this year. The show is struggling on an embattled station. Lets hope this and the recent reshuffles at Paramount and UPN make a difference. The feeling among the fanbase is that Enterprise is doomed. Happily they've made Manny Coto a co-executive Producer, so at least we can say there's one competent writer at the helm.

Spiderman 2 is navel-staring, wishy-washy, cheesily written, boredom inducing nonsense.

"King Arthur" comes out very soon, as does Jonathan Frakes' live-action Gerry Anderson-free "Thunderbirds". Guess which one I'm looking forward to?

Erm, no. Not "Thunderbirds"

The Hedgewitch Clan on Camera website is now live!

OK, well there's only the front page done so far, and I'm slightly annoyed that 50megs.com only allows its free members 12 megs of webspace, but that should be plenty really.

There's two galleries and a few videos to go up yet, and I think I'll be doing them at some point today or tomorrow, then it's prety much done until I can find a way of paying for more space.

But there you go, anyway. Now the Grandparents can't argue about who gets to see the holiday pics, eh?

I hate Firewalls
I hate Kazaa
I hate Virus scanners
And I hate security patches that turn your computer into the buggiest piece of crap that ever wasted electricity.

Even more than them I hate security patches that screww up your computer and which you then find you can't uninstall.

Fuck it all.

It has not been a good night.

Oh, and I hate flies and moths too.

I am Kung Fu Master. I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible. What Video Game Character Are You?

Courtesy of the good people of Something Awful

We're back off holiday!

I'm building a site at 50megs.com to show off all the pics we took, so keep an eye out here.

Free Speech takes another backwards step in the states.

Probably my last entry before the holiday...

And the Forecast? Wet.

Bloody English weather.

If you want to keep an eye on how wet we're getting, check this forecast page

*** Update ***

It's not actually looking too bad now. Maybe the British Summer didn't end in June this year.

Gawd, now I've damned myself...

*** See Ya Next Week ***

When I get back, I'll put all the pics online for the grandparents to coo over. And of course, I'll post a link here too.

We're packed!

Despite the countdown, there's actually about 36 hours before we go on holiday, and all we have to do now is tidy the house.

It might only be 20 miles down the road, but I'm still looking forward to it. It's a new base from which to visit places we've never been before. I'm planning a trip to the Royal Show, Warwick Castle and a few other places.

So you can expect yet another fallow week as I'm not going to be here.

And if the graphics all go missing then you will all know that my ISP has finally had enough of me not paying them. In that case, normal service wil be resumed just as soon as I can sort out another site to host the graphics from.

Right! Let's get cracking - there's washing-up to do...

This blog looks terrible in Mozilla.

According to W3C there's over 250 errors in the HTML code of this site.

Unfortunately, I don't know the first thing about how to put it right, so if you're visiting using Mozilla or Netscape, do yourself a favour and use Neoplanet or Opera or something.

Just Stop using Internet Explorer

There's been a bit in the News lately about the poverty gap, or specifically, the percieved difference in affluence between north and south.

This is a subject that's close to my heart, as I've spent ten years on or near the poverty line, on benefits and handouts and unable to get a job because my rent was too high.

So I've gleaned a few articles from my usual source: BBCi

This article points out the evidence that the poverty gap is getting wider. It says that there's a migration going on, with more and more people moving south in order to take advantage of the more affluent society. There are, according to the report, some signs of hope. Several northern cities, including Liverpool, Manchester, Gateshead, Newcastle and Birmingham are ungoing somewhat of a renaissance, with big businesses being attracted back to the areas. Whether this stems the flow of people away from the cities, it's probably too early to tell.

This article is written by a resident of Hackney, one of the poorest places in the UK. He tells a tale mostly of hope and imported affluence, telling about the high profile nightclubs and galleries which have sprung up in the borough, but then points out that the actual residents of the borough are more likely to be found in dingy sub-post offices and grubby pubs. This gives the unnerving implication that although businesses are coming to the area and bringing wealth, that wealth is not benefitting Hackney's residents.

A possible reason for this can be seen here in an article which points out the damning fact that the most affluent parts of the UK are the least likely to give to charity and conversely the biggest contributors come form the most poverty stricken areas.

This acknowledges an opinion I've had for quite a long time, borne out by the prevalent attitude on such London-centric gossip sites such as Popbitch that the further south you go, the less community-minded and less tolerant people get.

As the first report points out, Britain is rapidly turning into a city-state, with the whole country, the media and the news largely dominated by the sprawling metropolis of Greater London, which these days seems to extend from East Anglia to Sussex and everything outside this corner of Britain is referred to (even in the case of Cornwall) as "Up North" or "Regional".

I cannot agree with the love affair people have with London. To me, London equals concrete claustrophobia, snobbery, paranoia and cloying pollution. I haven't been to London since I was a boy, but the memory of the crushing crowds, grubbiness and the smell remains with me to this day. I couldnt work or live in an atmosphere where one is expected to keep glancing over one's shoulder to keep an eye on how much richer your neighbour is getting.

The popular impression I get from people I know who have spent time living in London is that it's a melting pot of all the character traits I find least attractive - jealousy, selfishness, the ambition to acquire as much wealth as possible and the belief that they're better in some way because they pay more for what they have.

Let's be honest, the cost of a pint of milk is 30p and if you choose to live somewhere where you have to pay £1 for it, that makes you stupid, not superior.

I'm not planning on getting any further south than I am right now. My ambition is to find a comfortable job to settle into for the next 25 years. I won't find that down south. If you don't want to be the manager befor ethe end of the year, or don't want to screw over your colleagles for a promotion, you're ridiculed and scorned. Maybe this is the way of the world these days, maybe there's no nice people left in business. So maybe I'll start my own business and do things my way.

People have called me an old hippy for a long time now and I guess they're right. The thing is, I'm happy with the description. I'm comfortable with my spiritually rich life and my happy family and I have no plans to have my light snuffed out by the melting pot of greed and insincerity that is our Nations' Capitol.

My family comes mostly from the North, Dad's parents came from Tyneside, Mum's parents came from Wales and Thailand, so my "regional" preferences are perhaps easier to understand, but then, is it really so incomprehensible why someone would favour vast swathes of countryside, mountain ranges, huge lakes, majestic valleys and spectacular seas over the concrete and limestone jungle of London?

Nah, give me greenery. I like breathing air you can't slice with a knife.