A shock to the system

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!
However that was only for one day. The rest of the time then one pair of thick socks and a jumper suffices inside and putting a coat on is good for outside. There have only been about 2 days in which it has not rained in the three weeks we have been up here. That does not mean that there has not been lots of sun it just means that the weather is more unstable - it changes more every time you look out the window the view is different because the sky has changed and whether or not you can see which of the distant mountains.
It is usualy much more windy but some days the sea of the moray firth is as still as a sheet of glass with hardly a ripple. The Sea! Still! watching a sand castle (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).
It is beautiful up here and there is a different walk for every day of the week with a few spare as well. It is 8 minutes to the nearest Tesco (though bread fish and other perishable stuff is half rotten or stale by the time it reaches Inverness) so going to the nearest farm shop provides nicer food that actualy tastes of something - but they do not sell everything.
In short I like it up here but it will take a while to get used to the temperature. I am sure Global warming wil sort out the temperature at the expense of making the weather worse and doing so much damage to all sorts of things that it is not worth it.

My position on the Middle east Crisis (updated)

Belated publication yes but long held

Firstly Israel is making a huge mistake.
The military option is not an option that can solve the problem it will only cause further terrorism and it will achieve that through causing immense suffering.
Secondly even if Israel had decided to be so stupid as to decide on the useless military option they are using entirely the wrong tactics and strategy they are playing right into the hands of the terrorists. You have superior technology and firepower use it stupid don't bomb people and cities and villages and bridges and roads and infrastructure. Don't try and put Lebanon back 20 years in time you stupid fools. If you are going to blow anyone up blow up 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 Palestinians and Lebanon are the victims victims for is not 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.
Israel must reach out its hand in peace to the government of Lebanon if they are not strong enough to fight Hezbollah and disarm it if they are not lords of their own castle then Israel must help Lebanon it must stand beside Lebanon and ease its path letting Lebanon choose its own destiny and then helping it get there. Rather than putting Lebanon back 20 years it should put it forwards 30 for all they destroy must be rebuilt. They must not make another victim. They must be and raise up Lebanon as a beacon of peace, freedom and prosperity in the Middle East. They must ask for forgiveness and repair the damages they have made. If terrorists stand against you be not terrorised. Open your hearts and let the whole world see the love inside. And if the unruly and dirty children laugh at you and throw stones take them by the hands and wash their feet feed them and give them clothes teach them justice. But if you close your hearts and kick them in the face they will hide behind the tree and mug you when they are grown.
A cause is not an excuse but it still needs to be solved.
But I am like another prophet speaking in the desert and we all know what happens to those - they get their heads chopped off. and for this I think a wry smile.
Remember Solomons temple was built with cedars from Lebanon provided by the friendly king of Lebanon let it again be as it was before with Lebanon and Israel united in trade and in war against a foreign aggressor let them fight together the battle of ideologies together they may defeat terrorism but divided as so many dry twigs they will be broken.

Update
Okay this post has been updated scram-jet has been changed to cruise with the corresponding change in speed because scram-jets are not yet anywhere near production. I also learn't that cruise missles cost £1.2 million and this means that my plan would be ruinously expensive. My excuse is that I thought that since such a large volume of military material is being bought for the wars in the Middle east the price must have gone down.
Apparently the HMS Illustrious does not have such a good radar as I thought I thought from what I was told that from Scotland it could track a Mark 3 tennis ball over the English Channel - maybe I misunderstood.
Ooh and look pictures of big explosions nice and dramatic.

Slough

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

Now this Is quite an old poem and so some of the words may not be known to all readers
Cad is an impolite word for someone who chases women (I did not know this one)
I do not think there are any other particulary dificult ones and if you don't understand them read more old stuff some old words really are quite good.
I hope you enjoyed this poem because I did.
An aristocratic home grown terrorist? No I think I agree.

Rose Tinted Spectacles

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.

I’mmmmm Back

I am very very sorry for my extended absence but Orange and BT conspired against me and the wheels of corporate beaurocarcy took almost a month to turn. I think it was BT more than orange because they could not cancel the old people who used to live in the house we have moved to's broardband account until we had been here two weeks. But orange did not tell us we would need to do this when we called ten days before we moved and so we spent 13 days waiting for the line to be cleared and only one waiting to be connected - but orange had those 13 days to get ready.

Getting ready for moving and the moving itself took up another few day as well.
I would also like to mention their stupidity and time wasting nature of the system and the fact that domestic users treated as second class and have much longer delays than commerical users.

Anyway I will be getting back to exisiting on the internet again. I tremble at the thought of reading through my feed reader it will have grown very long indeed for such an absence.

I will be blogging soon.

Visit to BP - AE

Recently I did a days work experience with Alternative Energy BP's alternative energy company. It was very interesting and I learnt lots - and got lots of freebees - including a 128MB USB flash drive.
I learn't for example that they think that the oil spike will be between 2015 and 2040 - depending on whether demand increases or decreases and on how much new supplies are discovered or made accessible.
I got some more idea of just how big the problem is - they think we would be lucky to stabilise CO₂ production in 20 years rather than the suggested 10 to prevent catastrophic and uncontrolable warming. We have already caused a 3 degree rise - it has just not caught up with us yet - now we must decide whether we want the total to be four or six - bad or terrible.

Laptop down

One of the reasons why I have not posted recently is because on Tuesday my laptop broke. progressively it would not turn on properly all that happened was that the power light went on and the fan and hardisk whirred. So anyway iansyst got it collected today. Hopefuly they can fix it.

So sorry for not writing but I have to deal with annoying sisters and brothers and parents now. especialy silly sisters.

Microsoft could be fined 365,000,000 euros

Microsoft could be fined 365,000,000 euros by the european commision - 2million a day for the past 6 months - see here
They probably won't but they could
'Under the ruling, Microsoft had to supply rivals with information about its Windows operating system.

On Monday, Microsoft said it had begun to provide the information Brussels had demanded, but the Commission has signalled the company acted too late.

In December, Brussels informed the software giant that it had failed to comply with the original ruling it issued in March 2004.

At the time of the warning, the Commission said Microsoft would face fines of up to 2m euros a day if it did not comply immediately.'

Look What I found on my desk when I came home

I found this on my desk when I came home I think it might be slightly out of date - though it was only published in 1991. I think code has moved on since then, still the principles are the same. 

Old Sear Works

The old version of sear - 0.6.1 has suddenly started working - rather than crashing. but the new one 0.6.2 which has lots of good bug fixes just exits itself when it loads the world. oh well.
look screenshot!

I now have a Web album just for screenshots - look here.

The Death of a blog

In case anyone is worried it is not this blog which is in danger. Rather it is my Images_Max_Randor_does blog that I think I will phase out - at least I will not make any new posts to it.
I now have the Piscara Web Albumbs thing and have uploaded I think all of my pictures for the blog there. You can find it here.

I am writing to you via a broardband wirelessconnection in leeds. I last posted from Yorkshire and before that I spent a week in inverness and before that a weekend in the Lake district. I have traveled a lot recently.

I am very very sorry.

I am very very sorry for neglecting you and not subjecting you to my limited talents. I thought I could explain on the friday before last but I did not have time to get onto the internet. I thought I would have internet connection from Monday onwards but the place where I was doing my work experince was too restricted when it came to the internet. I am trying and will continue to try to post nearly every day.
My sincerest apologies - not that anyone has commented in my absence - but oh well.