I chose my pen name surname from that of a character in a very good book that I read ages ago by Douglas Hill the character appears in the Last Legionary series and is called Keil Randor.
Everything on this blog which I hold the copyright for is now available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons (cc) licence.
From The Guardian
Nano-welds herald new era of electronicsNew Scientist
I have uploaded many more worldforge screenshots to my picasa webalbums and you can find them here.
Guardian article
Guardian article
It is the Christmas holidays now
I finaly got CVS to work enabling me to checkout all the source code from WorldForge. once I admitted defeat and checked it out to my desktop and then moved it to the folder I wanted it in it worked perfectly and page on CVS by worldforge was very useful and worked perfectly - when I did the checkout form the desktop.
Recently I upgraded to Firefox 2.0. which is even better than Firefox 1.5 - which after Firefox 2.0 is the best browser. Firefox is the best browser available - and I have looked at IE7 - it just is not good enough in conparison with FF 2.0.
hing I would like to be able to do in word etc.
When I got round to updating my windows using windows update I needed 64 updates it took ages to download - and even longer to instal. I was quite surprised.
Apparently many Scottish people want independance from England. What they don't know is that it should be the other way round. Scotland won it is a Scottish(or prehaps German but definetly not English) Queen who sits on our throne. It is England that pays tribute to Scotland not the other way round - it has more money to spend than it collects in taxes.
"This Train has been fitteld with improved air conditioning for your comfort"
We have been having some pretty bad weather in Scotland today (26th Oct) flooding in Dingwall (pictured - bbc) cut of the A9 and the railway which cut off much of the far north of Scotland. The worst flooding since 1954 which was worse because the tides we had - highest since then were combinded with a worse storm than we had. no one died this time - many did last time. congratulations to the emergancy services.
e resistance in wires.
on ipods with big speakers
Background music on trains?
Ugggh. And not even good music just annoying music – since when have we had to listen to horrible music on trains? People can listen to their own music that they like but forcing everybody to listen to horrible music… why? And it does not ven stop for the announcements. The guard of the driver fancies themselves a DJ? Not that there is any talking but the music changes a lot.
Actually it was the person sitting in front of me with big speakers bouncing it off the ceiling that made it sound like it was coming from the overhead speakers. But it seemed so strange that I stood up to check and saw instantly. Has this person no concept of personal space or noise pollution? On busses in
But it is a grown up and I have not the courage to ask them to stop. From hair colour estimating 40-50+(and he listens to Bob Dylan not the worst but dates him) White Male. There is hardly a peep out of anyone else. *sigh*. He is giving such bad press being so inconsiderate. Occasionally he sings along and that is even worse – oh and explanation – he brought his own alcohol not that he is drunk just slightly less in control.
Oh well enough complaining already.
Enough complaining for a while in fact.better and stronger than before. We are doing in maths vectors and differentiation again and so I will go back to basics an rewrite my problematic gravity code. I worked it out on paper anyway.
It is really annoying to have lost the sourcecode though the only link still working to internet based ones is the googlepages one that is the exe and the only one I ever gave to someone else to test was an exe. Though perhaps if I am lucky there might be an early version on the main computer J my hopes rise again.
Now I can be even more annoyed at the stupid manufacturers not only did they format my Hard drive when it did not need formatting but they failed to fix my laptop. They sent it back to Iansyst who when they were trying to reinstall found it still had problems – I had got all my hopes up thinking that it would be back Thursday or at the latest Friday but I will probably still have weeks to wait. AHHHH!!!
While my laptop was being fixed Iansyst had said that it probably would not be formatted and that it was very unlikely that it would be. When they got it back they said that of course it would have been formatted that is what Manufactures do. Ahh!
While trying to delete the old version of windows messenger from my computer I accidentally deleted among other things Windows Media player and Internet Explorer. But not Windows messenger. You have to UNCHECK the tick boxes in the add/remove Windows components and I unticked everything I did not want to unistal. OOPS. Well I managed to get Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer reinstalled again - but I think some other things on that list won’t come back with out the disk – because rechecking the boxes and doing it again did not work – got windows media and internet explorer back but not some other things – it said files that were there weren’t there - I could find them and look at them but it said that they were not there. *sigh* I don’t use Internet Explorer I used Firefox but there was a gap in my desktop where the windows Media player icon should be. It took me a couple of minutes to work out what had happened and a couple more to work out how it had happened (I did the thing that did this earlier and it worked on restart (I am not really that supid)).
Oh well Panic over.
I won’t be making that mistake again. One should be careful what one does to ones operating system. – but that wizard was really stupid it was as if they thought that no one would try to use it, not designed for someone who had never used it before to use.
Prize giving and book signing ceremonies where you have to clap continuously are tiring as well as tedious.
(note both pictures are random)
Paper Only!
Sometimes I feel like someone is inventing new stuff and then changing the past so that it has been there years. On this occasion I heard about House yesterday and saw an advert in a magazine today – apparently lots of people have been obsessed with it for ages – but I don’t watch much TV especially not Channel 5.
I found out about IRC on Worldforge and saw it mentioned in a blog a few days later.
I know this feeling is wrong it is just that you don’t always see things until you know they are there and also because lots of clever people are inventing things and they may have been around years before they reach my attention and by that time they are probably going somewhere in the world.
Thus ends my pad of paper blog posts series. 1660 words. I hope you enjoyed it.
but the title just cried out for thisThe local train from the station near the camp was fine with plenty of space and luggage room (this was a not a virgin train).
However the Virgin train to Edinburgh was terrible fully booked with seat reservations all the way to Edinburgh and despite my seat reservation I ended up sitting on my bag
in the vestibule, there was an elderly man in the seat I had reserved and he needed it more than I did. It should not be possible for all seats to be fully booked and the additional passengers which pay more for valid tickets which work all day have no where to sit. Also neither of my bags would fit in the overhead racks and the small luggage sections were full to the ceiling. There were additional complications caused by an irate passenger (who had also been annoying on the previous train) who complained that she would faint or have an epileptic fit if she could not be provided with a seat. (standing up causes epileptic fits? I think not). She resorted to insulting
I asked if it was possible to advise the management of Virgin trains that not allocating all seats through reservation and then having additional passengers but instead reserving a few seats for the additional passengers might prevent repeats of the severity of the problem.
I was told that I could try but that there were “government plans to reduce the number of trains running and so it would only get worse and I should make the most of it”[approximately] this from the manager of the train. (what the government has to do with the decisions by virgin trains of how many trains they run I do not know – though perhaps they could be reducing the amount of subsides paid to Virgin)
Soon afterwards the slightly loopy lady complained that the train manager had been extremely rude to her after the manager had managed to create a seat and persuade her to move and sit in it (the lady did not want to squeeze along the corridor). The lady then proceeded to be rude to surrounding passengers which I later learned caused much hilarity. The train manager was not even in the same carriage when this supposed rudeness occurred. As I was originally writing this the train manager was phoning up to see if a policeman could get on at the next station and remove the lady because she was “upsetting everybody”. I pity the poor employees who have to deal with this.
One of the train crew agreed that ‘it is often like this’.
Train crew and passengers should not be subjected to this for the greed of the higher management.
Oh and the doors do not check whether anyone is between them before they close – lots of slightly squashed people. :)
A policeman came aboard at Carslie to try and remove the loopy lady sensitively she left but the manager was unsure whether she had reboarded but then she saw that the lady was on the station as we were leaving and so someone else will have to deal with her.
The plastic bag the lady left behind was disposed of in the bin, no one wanted to find out what was inside.
All the vestibules I can see are packed with standing people.
But Virgin does have Fair trade sugar. PR I think.
I took them up on there offer of a complementary drink and the orange juice and biscuits distracted me for at least 10 minutes.
At Lockerbie the train got even fuller and I do not think many people got off – though lots got on.
1 hour on the train from Lockerbie to the next station standing in a hot overcrowded vestibule. I do not anticipate this to be fun.
I usually like travelling by train, less hassle (especially with all the airport security checks) better for the environment… but travelling by Virgin trains is pushing it. Ahh my poor knees I will delve again into my in search of knee braces and hope that the weird pins and needles like pains that assault me after wearing wetsuits don’t get too bad.
The Scottish countryside however is living up to its usual beauty.
I think seeing me scribbling away in my notebook may have unnerved the crew slightly but they were all nice. I pity them the most as they have to do this every Saturday and probably have other journeys on other days. I know that this is the last weekend of the
The strain lessened slightly at Haymarket but it is only a few minutes from there to Waverly.
Freedom at last 1 hour 20 minutes to eat my packed lunch before my connection leaves.
Thus ends episode 2 of the Tragedy of Virgin trains.
(this was brought on by hearing that someone got £200 million in a divorce payment – impossible to spend?) First I would put it in a bank – or perhaps several and make it a trust fund with myself as trustee and use the interest above inflation for renewable energy projects for peoples home offering and additional 30% grant on top of what the government offers which would be paid back twice in the excess electricity sold back to the grid or a fixed payment until it is paid back twice (if the electricity sold back is too low) – the payment would still be cheaper than buying the electricity or heat. I would also use it for other worthy causes and to make a state of the art energy efficient house when I need one. Putting the money back in later of course.
Not Enough Luggage Space! Trying to fit more people in by having smaller luggage racks. I most definetly do not understand why the overhead racks are curved so that bags don’t fit in them. (perhaps the air conditioning?) argh, and I had to wait ages for them to open the doors – not as if they were doing anything inside. But having electronic displays rather than paper tickets stuck into the seats to show reservations could be good but the way they have done it means that a seat can look like it is vacant if someone has not used it for one part of the journey you are on but the fact that someone else has booked it later is not shown – and the positioning means that people sitting in the seats cannot see it. And also the insissent announcements encouraging you to upgrade to 1st class for ‘£10-20’. Fortunately the company was good do it was still an interesting journey and the scenery was great as well.
I had an interesting read of “Disciplines of a Godly Man” more of that later when I have finished it.
Ahrg overzealous air conditioning making it so cold you have to wear a coat is stupid and the doors cannot stay shut when the train rocks and open slightly before shutting again.
It is not good that the toilets at Edinburgh Waverly are paying ones and that you have to scrabble around in your pocket for a 20p piece then wait in a queue before getting to some dirty toilets with no toilet paper, especially since most of the users will be spending a large amount of money on tickets anyway.
“All luggage on seats will be charged at the full adult fare’! I suppose that is one way of increasing the number of available seats.
Why did the guard pull all the luggage out from the racks by the door up onto the overhead racks. A little old lady could not reach her luggage (though later when she wanted to get up she did manage to get it down with difficulty).
The reason I did not put my bag in the overhead rack was because it was big and heavy and I did not want to drop it on someone’s head when I took it down or to lift it up in the first place
According to a survey of 1700 Palestinian children by a psychologist in Palestine. This data is from last nights newsnight which you can watch or listen to online. This is very very bad news, if the children are ready to die then this conflict will not end. It will continue forever unless everything changes. Both sides are locked in conflict and held there by the conflict itself. Either Israel which is the only side which is coordinated enough to change changes its entire strategy and reaches out in love rather than in hate, of there will be war between them forever until one side is completely destroyed down to the last child. There are 1 billion Muslims. Israel cannot kill them all and if it tried then we (the rest of the world) would have to stop them. They would have to perpetrate a holocaust 333 times worse than the one they suffered. If they are not capable of this they could not do such a thing and would not want to do such a terrible thing. but after many generations locked in this struggle they would be destroyed. There are more Arabs than Jews and their number is growing faster. When one father has four wives! and 54 children! and the Jewish people are more restrained then they cannot hope to succeed if nothing else they will be outnumbered and out-bred. In the long term Israel cannot win, in the short term it can kill lots of people but in the long term they will loose. Israel I know your history I know that with God 300 can defeat thousands but is your God with you? Will he rain down meteors for you? Will he change the flow of time for you. Did he clear away your enemies before you? Does he prevent you from stumbling? Does he bring down fire from heaven at the call of your prophets. Where are your prophets? Where are your Judges of old? The anointed kings you demanded. Is he with you. At the end of a 2000 year exile you cried out to him and went home. With him you can withstand anything but throughout your history you have been conquered and exiled you turned away from him and so after warning you and when you ignored his warning he turned away from you. Only the guilt and pity of the West has sustained you thus far. But you have made enemies more numerous than yourselves. Enemies who will fight to the death and with their blood poison you.
Israel you must find again your appointed king and with your God you must wage the war of ideas you must love your enemy or they will destroy you. Or are you prepared to fight to the death? Knowing that you will loose? The only way out of this mess is love. And if you fail your God made you from one man children of Abraham remember he had another son Ishmael remember also Esau. Where are their children? in Palestine? Lebanon? Jacob fought Esau in their mothers womb. But would he kill Esau? Will you kill his children's children?
And if your enemies are not the sons and daughters of Abraham. they are the sons and daughters of Noah and before that Adam and Eve. Will you kill family? However far removed or will you mend again the broken bonds and stand together. There is only one way for Israel to win the war and it is harder for every missile they fire. Winning the war would I think be the greatest achievement in the history of humanity. Remember if you have the Creator of the Universe on your side anything is possible for he so loved the world that he sent his one and only son to die to save the world.
Will you choose love and life or hate and death?
Will you hear me at all?
My recent move to Inverness from London has been a bit of a shock to the system. You should not have to wear a jumper and two pairs of socks in august!
e (they do have sand up here) assulted by a sea with no waves is quite scary even without waves it easily overwhelms the defences that can be thrown up with sand - eventualy it over tops them (the only sand on the local beach is near the bottom and the tide rises several meters above the highest point of sand).
Belated publication yes but long held
the people firing the rockets. You have the technology. You have cruise missiles that can travel almost at the speed of sound and hit the correct target with devastating power. You have radar systems that can track a tennis ball traveling at mark 3 hundreds of miles away. And that is with one warship that warship (launched recently from somewhere in Scotland the HMS Illustrious) can then hit that tennis ball with a missile. Why then does Israel not make its radar systems capable of detecting and tracking every single missile that Hezbollah launches and calculating the position of launch hit that position with a cruise missile in less than 30 seconds(It doesn't
because each cruise missile costs £1.2 million and each Hezbollah rocket costs a couple of hundred). Turning every missile launch into an expensive suicide mission would quickly lower the number of strikes (and any computer connected to the Internet could then become an air raid warning speaker). I place this plan just to show the stupidity of their current military plan (except I did not consider the cost) . Of course this plan would not work it would not stop Hezbollah it would just win the battle and not the war. In the process it would bankrupt Israel and anyone who was prepared to support them but hey.
the bully frequently one who was bullied? This is not an excuse but it is the cause all through their history Israel has been persecuted it was exiled to Egypt, Babylon, Persia and by the Romans all over the world. 2000 years being its longest period of exile and all through that it was persecuted. Then again it returned and this time as when they spent a while in Egypt their land was populated by another people and this time as before they drove the people away. They could have lived together in peace but they chose terrorism - Israel became a nation through kidnapping soldiers and blowing people up. If only Israel had listened to its prophets long ago instead of killing them
. But so would any people.
by Sir John Betjeman (1930s ish)Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over Death!
Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town -
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half-a-crown
For twenty years,
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washed his repulsive skin
In women's tears,
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives fizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales
Shall I look upon the world
With rose tinted spectacles
Seeing not the pain and sorrow
Or shall I with ice coated ones
Stare out upon the world
Seeing not the joy and laughter
Or with mirror coated ones
Thinking only of myself
And hiding from the world
See not the love of others
Or with ones that look behind
Seeing only mine and others pasts
Not caring for today or the morrow
Seeing not the changes coming
Or in short sightedness
Living today for tomorrow we die
And seeing not the bigger picture
Or again in long sightedness
That the smaller joys in life are
Hidden
And caught by misty cobwebs
I would see the good, and the
Bad – not to dwell on but to change,
Learn from the past
But look to the future
And here and now I
Will write this poem
Seeking a very strange
Pair of spectacles
For my eyes are not enough.
