Vulnerable to flattery

The xkcd cartoon on the ssh security hole is here!

Walks 08

may
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Just to record that the Summer Walk season has started and that pictures from the first one are here
and that it looks as if next week's won't quite be as advertised!

Updating the Heron

I blogged a bit back about upgrading and installing Ubuntu's Hardy Heron and Mandriva 2008.1. I rather passed over the Ubuntu upgrade but as some issues have appeared, I'll make some comment just in case anyone else has these issues.

• Initially after the upgrade I was seeing the machine pausing and I was having to kill X in order to get a response. I dug a bit more deeply and discovered that there were some rather large log files in /var/log/gdm - I've using the ATI graphics driver and to solve the issue I''m including these lines in my xorg.conf file:

  option "no_dri" "yes"

  see the discussion here
• I was also having issues with sound due to the upgrade - sound is muted when I start up and I was finding that plugging in the headphones didn't mute the laptop speakers - wonderful for educating (or worrying - see my last.fm playlist!) my colleagues. This is on a HP nx6325 laptop For the moment I'm making sure my laptop has the headphones plugged in when I boot - not idea but it works for me! Googling suggests that a manual compile and install of the latest version of alsa may fix this. In the sound properties (gnome or kmix)I'm not seeing any option to enable speaker muting with headphones

11th May 1968

Forty years ago..and having been working my way gently through a book of photography I was stopped by a photograph of Gilles Caron, this one - see page four of that album. Another album is here. Caron went missing in Cambodia at the age of 30...

Wiki software to avoid

I realised that it’s the C++ of wikis — not only will it not solve your problems, it will cause new ones that will make you long for your original ones.

from mathrick on MoinMoin via The Gay Bar.
I spend most of my work time writing C++! (or maybe that's !C++)

Cat blogging

observant
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Biscuit - next door's elderly cat - was closely observing something. More cat photos from this hot May afternoon added on my flickr pages...

Boggle

This lemur

appears to be wending its way around the blogosphere.
Me last Friday...?
Hat tip to Little Bang Theory

Tesco woods

Suddenly the trees are out (at least I've noticed them) and the ex-industrial wasteland over towards Tesco looks leafy and attractive.

A theatrical knight?

more cat pictures.
But maybe you've already seen this...

Getting sound to work

Just a (I hope only one!) postscript to this experience of a Mandriva install. I rebooted this morning and found that amarok was no longer working

xine was unable to initialize any audio-drivers

It was working before the reboot so I assume something since the reboot before that (dvd encryption?) broke it. I eventually went into the Audio settings and disabled anything associated with Pulse Audio and that appears to have sorted it!

Paddy Ashdown..

tells it like it is!

Installs and upgrades

I installed Ubuntu's Hardy Heron on a replacement machine at home, that seemed to go pretty well and so on Friday I upgraded to the same distro (from Gutsy) on my work laptop - there was one point where it claimed that the download would take 10 hours - we do have a rather fast connection to the internet at work! - but that went pretty smoothly apart from the upgrade installing oodles of games which weren't there before.
So today I decided to go for a few more! To replace a old machine with the new Ubuntu machine - migrating the data and then to do a fresh install of Mandriva 2008.1 on the webserver. All did not go smoothly!

• I pulled the mains cable out of the (switched off) Ubuntu machine to move it across the room and the power circuit board tripped


• I extracted the IDE drive from the old machine so that the new one could use it - easier than copying the data I thought only to discover that the IDE cable in the new box wasn't long enough (it had lots of SATA cables and only one IDE). Wailing and gnashing of teeth and I put it back in the old machine created tar archives of the various home directories and ssh'ed them over

Seemed to go with only slight difficulty, however I then moved upstairs to get the web server done...

• This is the machine that got corrupted last time the power blew, so an install rather than an upgrade! Had 3 cd's of 2008.1, previously the install has read cd 1 followed by cd 2 etc (obviously), in this case it ping-ponged back and forth between the 3 cd's, I think I must have inserted cd 2 six times!


• Booted new OS to discover that grub had not copied over the stuff in the previous MBR (master boot record) - I was intending to gradually migrate over the next few days. Not a problem I thought edit the boot configuration - using drakconf that's pretty simple - so I did and rebooted to try to get back to the old OS - oops!
  

  modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.17-17mdv/modules.dep

  
  googling suggests the kernel hasn't been properly built!? and this machine rebooted successfully this morning! Tried another slightly older kernel version which was still there.


• Pause, I eventually decide to boot from the old OS install disk and try a rescue - and add the new version to a new MBR built from lilo - no! get some obscure error when trying to rescue the lilo version


• Cut losses go for a swift move to the new!


• Also noted that for some reason neither of blackbox nor fluxbox appeared to be in the 3 cd install (not g++ or mysql..)


• Abbreviating somewhat! Now have email setup (I run imap for the rest of the household) downloading and spamchecking ok, I think apache2 is up again. Imap was a bit tricky for various security reasons - so I won't say too much. Tomorrow to get the newsserver up and running!
  

I hope these permutations prove useful to someone!

What a mess!

I was meant to be playing three pieces at the Alderley Edge festival later this month - the last movement of a Haydn sonata, Scriabin Op 2 No 1 Etude and the Grainger/Gershwin Love Walked in - but I've double booked the weekend and I need to be at a conference 50+ miles away so I don't think sneaking out will be possible - grrrr (though the Haydn is still rather ropey!)
I do have - though the score of Poulenc's Embarquement pour Cythere -

sticking out the tongue camp!

Claws are out

see more crazy cat pics
Ideally in favour of victimising an old English sheep dog look-alike

May Day

On the way back from La Cantina - a tapas bar in Macclesfield

meant to take a photo of the sunset coming off the train but was too rushed - so this will have to do!
(we celebrate two half-birthday's on May 1st!)

There should be a law against it

Florida lawmakers consider bill banning ornamental testicles thanks to pseudopiskie

Ever so me..

is today's Clare in the Community
Which leads me neatly on to Sarkozy and the other anniversary - May 1968 - there's apparently been a picture of Sarkozy on the May 1968 barricades(!), wearing a suit(!!) at 13(!!!).
I got this gem from a podcast from the Guardian travel site a Paris 1968 walking tour, you're meant to listen to it while walking though Paris, you stop at the entrance of the Ecole des Arts, and on your left is... I listened to it on my mp3 player on the way to and from Manchester this morning, slightly surreal but recommended on the background and the fall out from those events.
Whilst trying to find the image from Paris Match I found this:

The society of May 1968 “was completely blocked,” Mr. Geismar said — a conservative recreation of pre-World War II society, shaken by the Algerian war and the baby boom, its schools badly overcrowded.

“As a divorced man, Sarkozy couldn’t have been invited to dinner at the Élysée Palace, let alone be elected president of France,” Mr. Geismar said. Both the vivid personal life and political success of Mr. Sarkozy, with foreign and Jewish roots, “are unimaginable without 1968,” he said. “The neo-conservatives are unimaginable without ’68.”

Bird houses

..with attitude. Hat tip to Andrew Brown - who also has an exorcism scene that's worth a read!

Humph!

(well covers that other piece of news) and at the radical evangelical there's this

Lis Goddard has just written an article about evangelical women in leadership here. in it she says that experience is showing that a good proportion of women are not given curacies in evangelical churches because of the risk of adultery and/or the belief that a female curate is surplus to requirements because the vicar's wife has got the 'women's stuff' covered.

Grrrrr! Go and read it (and indeed the original)

Tap, tap...

I think things appear to be restored - at least of the ones I've tried. I had to add execute permissions to some files in /etc/init.d and reinstall some zapped files from the appropriate rpm, at least most of them appeared to be the same as in the original install (and not the subject of a security related upgrade). I used

rpm --upgrade --force

a fair bit, probably a blunt instrument but I appear to be unscathed. Web server is now back and running!

Normal service etc.

Had a couple of power trips at home - looks like a faulty monitor generated them - and this morning once I'd worked out the alarm clock wasn't going off and it wasn't that my eyes were getting bad and there were really no numbers on the clock and then identified the issue, this machine insisted on a fsck (file system check) on the system partition and then gave lots of errors on important looking files.
At the moment the email server (the imap end of things) isn't working, the webserver appears broken (so you won't be able to get there!), various applications won't start - most worryingly I can't even get the Mandriva admin tool 'drakconf' to start. I fear a reinstall is going to be necessary working out which files are broken, how to repair each one will I think be a mammoth task - at least, before this, I was thinking an upgrade was due.
Normal service will be resumed whenever.

The Crag

A busy morning - preaching and leading an extended communion service, so I attended the initial service too. Then off to Wildboarclough for lunch with friends at the Crag - the Crag is about to undergo a change of ownership, so there was some uncertainty as to whether it was going to be open - but it was and the carvery was enjoyed. Then we were guided around a local walk which I'm intending to lead when the Thursday evening walks start next month.


Quite a bit to see - apart from the views - with a heron, willow warbler and quite a few other birds.
I believe the Crag is likely still to be open next weekend...

To see it done at all..

To the Wilmslow Symphony Orchestra to see Shostakovich's Festival Overture (great fun), the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 (soloist Christopher Ellis) - pretty well done, not my favourite PC! Ending with the Stravinsky Rite of Spring - this is an amateur orchestra(!!) and an amateur photographer(!)

I nearly dissolved in giggles when the person next to me said `and the best of British' when the conductor got to the podium. They got through it intact with some wonderful playing. With an amateur ensemble you see and hear a lot more of the internal mechanism - especially with this work rather than an over smooth professional orchestra - and it was fascinating. They even continued through a fire alarm that went off during part I. Great ensemble, I really don't want to mention any particular section, very well done!

Prick up your ears

Via Niles comes this link for testing the age of your ears and their high frequency response. With headphones I could hear all of them!? I hope this isn't cheating?

Better be careful

From today's Guardian:

Poland's 28,000 Roman Catholic priests have been told by church authorities that they may be fined if they are discovered to have plagiarised their sermons from the internet, and could even face up to three years in prison.

The church has published a self-help book on writing sermons to lure parish priests away from the growing habit of stealing the words of their fellow clergy.

Father Wieslaw Przyczyna, the co-author of To Plagiarise or not to Plagiarise, told Polish media that the guide had been written to address what had become an increasingly common problem, as more churches put their sermons online and an increasing numbers of priests used the internet.

must try not to inspired by anything I read as I prepare for tomorrow's talk - I do normally cite though..
Am I allowed to quote 'To Plagiarise or not to Plagiarise'?

More on A Child of Our Time

When I wrote

and at short notice Alexander Grove

I knew that he'd only been asked to sing the morning of the concert, I didn't realise that, at that point, he didn't know the work!
A pretty good performance then!!

Spanish walk

We may have thought that some of last autumn's Inntravel arranged Almeria walks were rather exposed - this is an exposed Spanish walk! I'd want to know a little more about the stability of some of those walkways before using them! (Nicked link from uk.rec.humour but this is serious!

Indigènes links

From Isabelle's handouts (more for my benefit?)
Site web de CNDP sur Indigènes
film history you need to search for Indigènes and get here - at least I did!

Forty years ago

Having mentioned the Powell speech here, I wasn't going to mention it again, but I was struck by the conjunction of that anniversary and the two events I attended yesterday (blogged in the previous two entries). I don't think either of them was planned in light of the anniversary, but maybe it's a measure of where we've moved and the possibility of further change.

Deep River

After a busy morning at Indigènes and an afternoon at ManLUG and OpenVPN, I took the easy option and plumped for The King Edward Musical Society (KEMS) and A Child of Our Time.
I originally saw this work in 1966 (or 1965?) in Macclesfield when I guess it was also performed by KEMS. Written in the days before Tippett's words became over self-indulgent

Pogroms in the east,
lynching in the west;
Europe brooding
on a war of starvation,

I would know
my shadow and my light,
so shall I at last be whole.
Then courage, brother,
dare the grave passage.

Deep river,
my home is over Jordan.
Deep river, Lord,
I want to cross over into camp-ground.
Oh chill! Oh don't you want to go,
To that gospel feast,
That promised land,
That land where all is peace?

Words and a work of great power calling for inner and outer reconciliation between the light and the dark.
Soloists included Margaret Ferguson - you understood why Tippett loved black sopranos - and at short notice Alexander Grove

Mort pour la France

Just back from (most of ) an Open University French Film day at the Cornerhouse with a showing of Rachid Bouchareb's Indigènes. The film was introduced by Isabelle Vanderschelden in French(!) which I understood pretty well and was helpful as a prologue to the film.
Unfortunately the film then had English subtitles - some were necessary but French would have been better. The film tells the story of four Algerians who join up with the French army in 1942 to fight 'pour la patrie' (France) - in scenes of great patriotism - and follows their tale as they help to liberate their country from the Nazis. In the process they discover that their African bodies are somewhat less valuable than French bodies, they are less likely to be promoted and their sergeant - a pied noir (a French national living in Algeria) who often fights their corner is in the end their master race. Powerful scenes of prejudice extending to the most trivial rubbing it in events.

Along the campaign in Italy, France and Alsace, they realize that French soldiers are promoted, has better food and have leaves to visit their families, while the Arab soldiers are shamefully discriminated and treated like 2nd ranking soldiers (from IMDB)

The film was written out of the injustice of Algerian ex-service pensions being frozen when Algeria became independent and in spite of a vote in 2002 for their reinstatement it kept getting postponed until the film was released and Mme Chirac told her husband that 'something must be done'
Echoes of soldiers from the British Empire who also fought in WWII and and also found themselves kept at arms length when the war was over?
The film was released in English as 'Days of Glory'

Decisions

as to what to go to on Saturday night, when I have the choice of

• West Side Story at the Royal Northern College


• Nederlands Dans Theatre at the Lowry


• Tippett's A Child of Our Time at the King Edward Music Society


• The Stockport Symphony Orchestra with a concert of Elgar and Strauss - including Ein Heldenleben

any of those I'd look forward to, with enthusiasm, but to choose one -arrrgh!

An explanation would be useful

from BSI about their approval of the fast-tracking of OOXML, but in the meantime:

Last week BSI (British Standards Institution) decided to approve the fast tracking of the Microsoft sponsored OOXML format (DIS29500).

UKUUG is concerned that this decision is not in the public's interest for several reasons:

* The current draft attracted over 1000 unique comments (i.e. corrections), of which the largest list (635) was from BSI itself. How does BSI then approve fast tracking, in the absence of a revised draft?

* By accepting an unfinished draft into the fast track standards route can only serve to harm the sector to which the standard will apply, as well as undermining wider faith in the standards bodies who are allowing this to happen.

* Given the absence of a single implementation of the standard, not even Microsoft are willing to state when they'll implement it, it seems hard to justify the fast tracking on the basis of urgent market need.

* Rejection of the fast track is not rejection of the standard. If this standard were put on the slow track, there would then be time for all involved to examine the 6000 plus pages in the detail that such an important standard needs if we are to rely on it into the future.

* To be fast tracked a proposed standard needs a high level of consensus, whereas OOXML has been marked by high levels of disagreement and controversy.

That being the case, the UKUUG is seeking legal advice on how best to proceed in order to convince BSI to reconsider its decision and instead raise an objection to the fast tracking of the standard within the 2 month window allowed by the ISO.

read the rest at UKUUG press release

And eventually...

Madeleine Milhaud died 4 months ago tomorrow, as I reported back here, the obituary appeared in the Independent later that month. Today(!) her obituary appeared in the Guardian, it is though a splendid one from Roger Nichols, well worth waiting for and worth reading -

One of the joys of going to see Madeleine was that you never knew who you might meet. Claudel's daughter, perhaps, or Dave Brubeck's son, Darius. Where else could you learn that, at Satie's funeral, his family duly arrived, "and they all had umbrellas" (pronounced "umberellas")? Or that Stravinsky, in America during Prohibition had thought his eminence entitled him to import several dozen bottles of Bordeaux, only to be summoned to the dockside where the customs man ritually smashed each one with a hammer?

and lots of details on her own artistic persona!

Eh?

From today's Guardian Radio 3 listing:
2.00pm British Symphony Series

• Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra


• Strauss: Duett-concertino


• Dallapiccola: Frammenti sinfonici (Marsia)


• Martinu: Symphony No 4

not a lot of British symphonies there I thought - and illustrated by a picture of Bartók (hardly a Brit!) who only wrote one early atypical tone poem/symphony Kossuth. When you see a full entry for the afternoon the Vaughan Williams Symphony No 6 is missing (as well as Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw) - I might catch the whole thing on 'listen again' one afternoon this week..

Must be getting tired!

Can't find a picture on the Sun's web site for today's front page (must be a first time this phrase has appeared on this blog!) - but the front page headline was Harry Army Hero gets MRSA - I spent some time trying to work out who Mrs A was, what the scandal was likely to be and why the Sun was indulging in such circumlocution.

Eh Luiiiiigiiiii!

Today's Steve Bell If on the hairpieced one and Porca Italia.
(sorry that's stereotyping)
This blog is currently getting around a hit a day for this search string, though I expect this to soon fall off!

mr l'ordinateur

I'm sure this must somehow be IT related

Nicely labelled 'Pop Kitch'
Hat tip to eine kleine nicht musik

Rome album

cypresses
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

To make things easier for folk from the Rome trip wanting to see my pictures, they're now all accessible from one page rather than messing around with several blog entries! This picture of a Palatine is currently adorning my work desktop!

Listen carefully

follwing a mention on rmcr I've found this

don't watch the dogs (well you can!) listen to the soundtrack. I must be too young to have heard of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards - Florence Foster Jenkins yes - but not these two, there is though a subtle difference, you have to be pretty good to play like this deliberately! I'm on the trail of their 'I love Paris'...

Seen this morning

On the way to

(outside Christ Church) and on the way home

from church. I love the contrast between the extreme rundownness of the long closed pub and the still intact but battered oval pseudo pre-Raphaelite decoration.

Open wide

see more crazy cat pics
(Immediately after posting this I had to rescue my electric toothbrush head after someone else had mistakenly used it!)

Lavatory love story

Lovely - the punch line is in Russian - but I think its meaning is obvious.
Hattip to Vrovkin's blog - no I don't speak Russian!

Bring on the woad

According to the wikipedia article on the England First Party (a spinoff of the BNP)

Public displays by religions not of European origin would be banned, and the number of non-Christian places of worship would be significantly reduced in order to protect English culture

I can't find this statement on their website but looking at the revision history it looks as if that party has a lot to do with the Wikipedia article. It has a fairly unpleasant set of policies - I do like the way the manifesto moves straight from executing politicians they don't like, to pensioners bus passes - but I do wonder whether they realise where Christianity originated?
How many religions are there of European origin?
I won't link to their web site, you'll just have to find it yourself.

ex-SPCK may damage your computer!

Thanks to Neil for this, hacked or just broken?

Today's Sylvia

Is here. Yes that'll do nicely.
And then there's today's xkcd...

I hope there's some real evidence

From today's Guardian

Three British Muslims took part in a "hostile" reconnaissance mission of potential targets in London with two men who went on to bomb the city's transport system on July 7, a court was told yesterday. The trip, in December 2004, was "part of a sinister plot to cause explosions", according to the prosecution. It was an "essential preparatory step ... to bring death and destruction to the heart of the United Kingdom".
During the mission - seven months before the bombs that killed 52 people - the men visited a number of locations, including the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium.

Neil Flewitt, QC, told a jury at Kingston crown court in south-west London that it was not his case that the defendants were directly involved in the London bombings...

It is the prosecution case that the defendants associated with and shared the beliefs of the London bombers and so were willing to assist them in one particular and important aspect of their preparation for the London bombings."

So if I have a relation who has been found guilty of downloading and sharing indecent images of children and I am found to have used a computer in his presence, I can be up in court with assisting his schemes by assisting in showing him how to use the mouse?! I just hope there's some real significant evidence to come in this case!

Targeted spam

Following last week's trip to Rome, I received a spam yesterday with the subject

Have you been to Rome?

to an email that isn't immediately associated with this weblog - has the spammers subject line random generator come up with this by coincidence? I wasn't responsible to booking the flight but the airport transfer firm looks like a possible culprit? - (later) looks as if I was wrong though - two other messages with this same subject line sent to totally different email addresses - coincidence then!
Then after this announcement

The Federal Communications Commission is set to announce the launch of a national alert system, using text messaging and other mobile technologies to tell Americans when to panic.

I've already received a spam - at my gmail address purporting to be one of these alerts

Male bishop

appointment [of Stockport] has been announced - I think he looks interesting! He's Robert Atwell, vicar of St Mary’s in Primrose Hill, North London. From Stocks to Primroses! (Name and link to the website added 11th Apr)

Women bishops

I seemed to have been away for some of this, but for our Welsh readers:

now that God has willed that the Bible should be in French, women will take over the office of bishops, and bishops the office of women. Women will preach the gospel, while bishops will gossip with young girls

Etienne Le Court (1532!) quoted in McGrath's Christianity's Dangerous Idea
Though I'd like to know more of the background to that quote..

The problem of being away for 1st April

Is that you miss posts like this in context. Nicholas and Carla the Opera..

St Theresa

St Theresa
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

And here's the scupture those men in the theatre box were ogling. A wonderful piece but probably not carrying the meaning intended - well I'm sure someone must have intended a spiritual content!

and Day 3

The Album is here - I used to know how to put a JAlbum into a preexisting location but at the moment I've forgotten. This day was the cat sanctuary, Campo di Fiori, Piazza Navona, lunch and back to the hotel via a second trip to Santa Maria della Vittoria - where's the faculty application :-). Looks as if the EXIF data on all the pictures is one day out...for 1st April read 2nd April etc!

The Tiber

The Tiber
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Flowing peacefully in the Spring sunshine on Thursday. 40 years ago yesterday was the anniversary of Martin Luther King's murder. I remember reading with horror of that event and the unrest that followed whilst on an exchange trip in France - near Compiegne -I don't think the Raoul's had a television - all I can remember is the French press coverage of the riots and then returning to their house in a Latin quarter that was soon to have its own erruption. On my return to the UK, I was struck by other - English this time - newspapers which covered the sacking of Enoch Powell for an inflammatory speech where he quoted Virgil seeing the Tiber foaming with much blood. That was 20th April - that must have been a long school Easter holiday! - I don't think you can separate those two events - which is rightly why his speech attracted the condemnation it did.

Day 2 of Rome

Album is here -including a morning around churches and mosaics, afternoon in the Forum and Palatine and an evening meal at the Antica Taverna - we had a second trip there for lunch next day - I needed to try the cheese antipasto!

Self-promotion

My caption seems to be mentioned in the latest Church Times caption competition - but maybe being mentioned is easy?
Oh, and I see I've now managed more blog entries so far this year than in the whole of 2005 - when I had considerably more time on my hands!

An initial album

For the first day the - almost complete pictures are on my webserver here - looks as if the relative links to the full photos need fixing (they're one level higher than the generated html claims) will get it done tomorrow! (now fixed)

View from the room

View in the early morning of the orange tree.
I had no part in the booking of the hotel for the week - and it was only after walking around on the first evening I decided that it must have been the same hotel the Hotel Piedmonte that I also stayed in on my last trip to Rome in June 1989 in a week when happened, and the death of this man, not to mention this disaster - I did wonder if there was going to be anything left on my return to the UK. I was there (in 1989) to present a paper at the European Simulation Multiconference. This time it was uninterrupted tourism! The restaurant I used a lot the last time was still there - just down the street, I Leoni d'Abruzzo, though rebranded and slightly upmarket - I recommend their vegetable antipasto!

campo di fiori

campo di fiori
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

View of the morning market - yesterday!
Unfortunately I missed out on the consumption of artichokes...

wwjd?

What would Jesus drive? - obviously from this interesting crib scene - a Ferarri.
the second picture is a nighttime view of the scene - with flashing lights - shudder.
If you need a guide to show it you - I'm open to offers (nice restaurant nearby!)

Church as Theatre

I was grandstanding with these dirty old men (sorry that's illustrious benefactors) twice this week, you'll just have to google or wait for the full album to appear to find out what they are ogling! But I'm back from Rome!!

Trakl

I'm currently reading Margitt Lehbert's translation of Georg Trakl's poems and thought I'd leave this verse here

Amid red leaves hung with guitars
Streams the young girls' yellow hair
By the fence where sunflowers tower.
Through clouds a golden cart moves on.

Wonderful, though the imagery becomes a little more down to earth in the following verses!

I must be getting old

Because I've no idea what this caption is on about. Love the photo though.

What do you mean? Of course I've heard HHGTTG

Nicholas tell us..

..all musicians are jealous (with apologies to Tom Lehrer). See Overgrown Path's post on his (Sarkozy's) second and third wives musical connections. Doesn't look as if his first wife had musical connections - my last-exit player offered me a Carla Bruni track when I was at work this week - I was listening to Jacques Brel related tracks.

On its way...

- hat tip to Peter Ould..

The false God of certainty

We all have a hunger for certitude, and the problem is that the Gospel is not about certitude, it’s about fidelity. So what we all want to do if we can is immediately transpose fidelity into certitude, because fidelity is a relational category and certitude is flat, mechanical category. So we have to acknowledge our thirst for certitude and then recognize that if you had all the certitudes in the world it would not make the quality of your life any better because what we must have is fidelity.

- Walter Bruggemann - go and read the rest at Prodigal Kiwi

Giordano Bruno ignores

Roman market
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I like this picture of Giordano Bruno studiously ignoring the market that's appeared behind his glowering statue

graphic bells and whistles

On my work laptop I've been playing with compiz for enhanced graphic experiences -

- note the glxgears running inside the cube for a fun addition!
though I like to have 4x4 workspaces for putting the running applications and I find that sometimes on changing a workspace I end up with no panel, no menu - so I assume compiz has crashed - can't replicate it easily but I think the secret in avoiding crashes is to move the apps to the workspace rather than going directly to the workspace and opening the app there.
Then I've found that the screen is getting garbled

- the above is screen shot of a web page in firefox - a bit of googling suggests this is related to using multiple monitors - yes I like 16 workspaces and 2 monitors! - I didn't see this before the end of last week when I installed some extra software including some fonts... so for the moment it's back to the more boring but reliable fluxbox!
At work I run fluxbox with an instance of X on each monitor - haven't worked out how to do that with gnome/compiz yet - gives a nice segregation of applications!

Croatian accordions

As spotted on Late Junction

though the track on the radio was a little more restful than this - Motion Trio's cd is accessible from asphalt tango

Give me back my bugs!

I'm reminded by this story about microsoft access files being repackaged as virus attack vectors, of an incident that happened to me a few years ago-
I was working on a software application which saved files with an .adp suffix - something that is also used for Access project files. We were using outlook for email and I had a folder on the server with all the bug reports in - usually with example attachment files (obviously as our adp files).
One day, new version of Outlook tightened up security and - surprise - I wasn't able to download any of the files because the post upgrade outlook considered them risky!
Fortunately I was able to access the exchange server using a web interface and download the files (so much for security) but there were riskier ways of getting back access(!)
Be careful where you place your bug reports!

Scary

I can't remember how I came across Hello Kitty Hell but this entry is distinctly scary

The thought of having some 'Hello Kitty' in your computer without realising it...

For all cats watching

Yumm, squirrel! - thanks to Dave Walker - how did I miss this posting?!

Brain hurts..

No doubt the Easter holiday is scrambling some of this, but at the moment I'm confused as to how an 8 day away delivery can be a 3-4 day service and why the economy takes even longer than the free one.

looking at the logs

On consulting the referral logs for this blog, I see that someone got here through this search, they must have been sadly disappointed - I see I'm the number five hit for that search. Fortunately if you remove the 'Pier' from that first word this site is nowhere near the top

Halt, who goes there? - Baaaaaaa!

Following those two posts, this would be a good point to mention the last Silk screen showing of the season was last week. This film - The Dish - tells the story of the Parkes radio telescope's role in the Apollo moon landings - wonderfully funny!
Oh, and at the AGM - after the film - it was nice to see that Io non ho paura I recommended was the no 2 most highly rated film of the season.

Links on Jodrell

These two may be of interest

• Schrödinger’s Pig


• and Alan Garner's involvement in the current campaign, I thought he lived closer to the Edge but apparently not

Jodrell Bank

You may have seen the recent news that e-MERLIN funding for Jodrell back likely to be withdrawn with the following possible consequences:

- Astronomers would be unable to exploit an £8M upgrade (due to be completed in 2009) which will make e-MERLIN the world’s most powerful array of radio telescopes.
- The UK will lose its major observational capability in radio astronomy, a subject which UK astronomers pioneered more than 50 years ago and in which we still play a leading role.
- The UK will no longer participate in European and global networks of large radio telescopes.
- The UK will risk losing its world-leading role in this area of science and innovation.
- At least six radio telescopes will be closed down (the Mark II at Jodrell Bank and the telescopes at Pickmere, Darnhall, Knockin, Defford and Cambridge).
- Since e-MERLIN is the main activity at Jodrell Bank Observatory, it would place a serious question mark over the sustainability of the observatory as a site for active scientific observations.

I won't mention the live heritage nature of that site..If you wish to register your objection to this proposal this might well be a good place to visit!
I find it hard to believe that the government would allow this to happen in view of the iconic nature of the site but the proposal and intention appears to be there!

Old Maids cycling to church

(™ John Major) Are rather transformed in Andrew Rilstone's take on Sharia. Well worth a read!

Ink blots

Wonderful Rorschach 'test' at today's Astronomy picture

Dissolution

'Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant' by Poulenc
beautifully performed by Kristina - I recommend her other two YouTube videos too.
I was actually looking for a video of Poulenc's Derniere Poème - still looking!

Riding the slide

via www.manicalarga.net

Sorry

but not very

Berlusconi

Oh, good grief

Perla Pavoncello, 24, asked the media mogul how she was supposed to start a family or get a mortgage without a job, only to be told: 'You should look to marry a millionaire, like my son, or someone who doesn't have such problems.' He then added: 'With that smile of yours, you could even get away with it.'
Opposition politicians slammed Berlusconi as Italy's answer to Marie Antoinette and forms quickly appeared on the internet to fill in and send off to Berlusconi's eldest son asking for his hand in marriage. Piersilvio Berlusconi, 38, declined to say if he was open to offers.

I'm still looking for one of those forms...ah try here - acquired via this blog - a postcard from your honeymoon would be appreciated!
Berlustconi doesn't seem to get enough google hits at present.
This is a better link - I didn't think English that weird was possible but I see it's a machine translation.

A night with the magician

To the RNCM last night to see a Ravel double bill:

L'heure Espagnole and L'enfant et les sortileges. I'd not really appreciated L'heure Espagnole before, maybe you need to see it - apart from its overtones of Brian Rix (somewhat to my surprise he's still going and is Baron of Hornsea - which has a pottery whose dishes we've been dining off for the last 25+ years). The continual presence of the clocks was caught to perfection in the RNCM performance. L'enfant et les sortileges is wonderful - various movies for example here on You Tube - childhood though the eyes of a master. Two more performances - hurry! - we bought the last 3 seats last night so spent the evening scattered over the theatre.

Can one know the length of a dream?

I've seen it before but I was still enthralled, the teapot and cup got a lot of the applause (apart of course from the boy) but I was very taken by fire's performance

The Olympics

Spot on from Mad Priest:

When they decided to give the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing, they were fully aware that China was second only to the United States in their abuse of human rights, and they were fully aware that Tibet was an illegally occupied nation state that was being systematically denuded of its culture and native population. Yet they still did it and now the free nations of the world are, once again, faced with the decision as to whether to boycott the games or not.

Britannia Music

I used to be a regular customer (and an appreciative customer) of Britannia Music until it folded last year - yesterday I received a letter from a credit agency (intrum justitia) claiming I owed them (as administrators) some unpaid money (> £30) supplying an 0870 number as a contact! Sifting though my orders I find the exact amount ordered (and paid for) back from March 2007. A web search appears to give lots of other folk with similar letters - the letter was quite threatening - if you receive one, do check that it is not for an amount that you have paid!
Either Britannia music's credit systems were in a mess when they folded, or the credit agency has a similar problem, or someone is seeing how much they can recoup by threats.
Fortunately I have the emails from Britannia recording my payment!
Later - as this posting is fairly high up the google hit list for likely search terms or other letter receivers, let me also recommend this thread and this phone number 0151 4732626 quoted in the thread, as an alternative to the 0870 rip-off number.

In case you've not seen this

Postman Pat does rural evangelism.
Via Elizaphanian

Thought for the weekend

Our essential orientation to life is a consequence of the stories that form us. A genuine story will not leave us alone. It insists, sometimes in the most impolite terms, on changing us

Daniel Taylor The Healing Power of Stories quoted in Ann Morisy's Journeying Out. No doubt it will find its way into the talk on Sunday morning for Palm Sunday - last time I preached on Palm Sunday was 2003 - when there was some chance of optimism about the future of Iraq - how things have changed. Also thinking about personas and anonymity for Sunday..

Another Simon's cat

Hat tip to Lindsay

Oh go on!

Sometimes some schmaltz is nice

I'd lose the female string band though! The other YouTube copy looks too much like a shampoo advert losing the darker words - though the final transition is nice!

Spamming google

Whilst searching for words to Hallyday's Un jour viendra, googles summary gave -

We couldn't find any jobs for un jour viendra.... Please check the keyword terms you entered.

Courtesy of a myspace site...I won't supply a link!

Free phone

Don't think I've mentioned that David Shenton's cartoons are on the web and I loved today's

Get one's tribute in early

It brings a warm glow:

The mad privatiser who held a quasi-religious belief that the market was the ideal mechanism for social organisation, who thought naked personal ambition was fine, who crushed the unions, who knew how to appeal to our basest desires, who turned us into a nation of selfish toads.

from Michele Hanson in today's Guardian.
Curiously I read this (for, I think, the first time) last night:

This woman is headstrong,obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated

Cleaning up the Bishop (and his mitre)

12-26-2007_061.JPG
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Uploaded this a few months back and am gradually getting around to cleaning some of the noise and dirt off that slide scan. The latest version is here - I hope that's an improvement though the top left is still rather bitty.
For those expecting an ecclesiastical post - the mountain just to the right of the centre is the Bishop and the one in the centre is the Mitre (Mt Collon is to the left - photo taken in 1971 on a walking holiday)

We went!

Bit of a busy week - hence the slowdown of blogging - on Monday I went with BATS (the church book group) to MADS (I see a javascript banner is that a firefox isn't the browser I'm expecting artifice..?)the local amateur dramatic society - to see Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular a rather black comedy but an interesting study of 1970's kitchens. I thought the ending was weak but the getting there was enjoyable. Inevitably some of the acting was better than others but the cast carried it well.
Wednesday night was Io non ho paura at the Silk Screen - I was one of(?) the recommenders of this film - so in spite of having a meeting afterwards I thought I'd better turn up. I saw this back in 2004 at the cornerhouse (www.iononhopaura.it appears to have gone now)-
seeing it again, I though some bits were slow but once it got to the combine harvesters and the rush to the climax I was absorbed and moved. Half the fun earlier was waiting to see the audience jump when the kidnapee first appears...
Then Thursday night was 'Waiting for Godot' at the Library Theatre in Manchester
. Definitely played for laughs even at the most desperate moments. At the start of Act 2 one of the audience just in front of us, stifled a sneeze and David Fielder's Vladimir, milked the moment. I'd never seen the play before - though I had acted a bit of it as an Easter Saturday epilogue back in 1982. I'd urge you to see it but I think tonight is the last night! - nothing happens, waiting for night to fall. The play's text is available here. Also I remember the spontaneous applause at the end of Lucky's monologue and Pozzo's repulsive Churchill. An interesting counterpoint after seeing 'Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead' in the same theatre last year.

Stepping back a bit

03032008
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

On the way down to the station and getting a bit brighter. I thought it was quiet so that I'd get a picture of the whole hill with noone visible but someone just rounded the corner as the picture was being taken!

Honor Moore

Anglican future has some sensible words on the Paul Moore story.

The Wii Generation

.. for today's pun

Bollington Chamber Music

Off to Bollington to see the Elias String Quartet in a concert of Haydn, Bartok and Mendelssohn.
Started with the Haydn Emperor - showed wonderful sense of ensemble and the the Bartok 4(the principal draw as far as I was concerned) wonderfully carried off. String quartets have a reputation of being very abstract and cerebral but the feeling I took away - from all the works was the physicality of the medium. The Bartok 4 is now 100 years old - this year - and is still a challenge! I felt the difficulty of the pizzicato movement - with bows, you - as a player - get a physical clue as to when the other players are about to hit their strings, with pizzicato it is far harder, and the wonderful rumpus of the last movement - you could almost see the Hungarian village band! (then there was the achingly beautifully played solos in the central movement). I've only heard one Bartok Quartet live before - the 6th played by an amateur(!) ensemble at Cambridge.
The Mendelssohn they've recorded. I felt the first two movements rather dull but enjoyed the last two with a fugal subject dropping from the sky. With the last movement I felt the Violin Concerto was hovering there in the wings.
The bar at the Bollington Arts centre has a price list for wines - one column for 'house wines' the other is labelled 'posher wines'!
We went to a Chamber Concert many years ago in Bollington (the Sorrel Quartet I think) I hope it won't be as long before we go again!

Read the source!

On this page - a really secure password - see the fun on this at The Daily WTF's So You hacked our site