- Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. Today is going to consist of work followed by the Predators film tonight. #
- Just opened my cards and presents, got some money from my family and Julia bought me a tent yay. Also I missed a delivery w00t! #
- Up at stupid O'Clock this morning after slinking into bed at 3am. My parents are over this weekend with the dogs, so entertaining time! #
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I’ve been trying to take photos of the Moon on and off for ages, with predictably terrible results. Finally with my new camera, I have a chance of getting it right, so I’ve been out snapping whenever I see a particularly good Moon and I’ve been pestering James endlessly for tips on getting it right. Last night was a particularly bright moon and clear sky so I was out again at midnight, no doubt looking a bit creepy. Below are a couple of the pictures. They’re not as stunning as every other picture of the Moon, but they’re the best I’ve managed to take thus far. Tips for improvements certainly welcome.
So with my bonus, I bought a newer and slightly more expensive futon from Argos which should be a lot better for people staying over. Unfortunately it’s bigger than the old one which has made space a bit tighter. Unable to resist the temptation to geek-up even the most mundane of tasks, I used Autodesk Homestyler to plan and move things around. It’s entirely flash based and is free, but to be frank is a bit limited as you can’t precisely size their 3d models so where my desk is 205cm I’ve had to settle for 200cm and such. Which means that the bookshelves are not quite as cramped on the plans as they are in real life, but I’ve used it before and for the minor task of moving stuff around, it’s perfectly adequate. Especially handy for avoiding that last minute problem of stuff not fitting right, but I wouldn’t use it for micro-millimetre precision. Here’s the finished product both in 2D and 3D. I’ve always held the view that if you don’t bother to vote, you can’t really comment. In that I’ve never voted before now, I’ve tried to keep up that ideal, I doubt I’ve been 100% successful but I’m only human But as I said, this time I’ve been much more interested in politics, even though I’ve felt that my vote wouldn’t actually count. So not only have I kept up with the election and the various party policies, but I even went to the polling station for the first time with Julia, who was also voting for the first time. I think it’s a measure of how disappointed we were with the current government and all of the mistakes the government has made that we actually felt that we needed to register our disgruntlement. I can’t comment on why Julia wanted to vote by from my point in my opinion in the last 10 years our personal freedoms have been eroded to the point of non-existence by the laws over which the Labour government has presided. Personal Freedoms (Rant) If the police want to search through my files and find that I’ve encrypted just about every piece of data I own, they have the right under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to compel me to reveal my encryption keys with the threat of Gaol if I refuse. I would of course refuse on principle. Even worse, even if I did capitulate and want to provide keys, there’s a couple of encrypted archives whose passwords I’ve forgotten but I keep around in case I suddenly remember the keys! I couldn’t reveal those if I wanted to. The only saving grace here is that the authorities have only sent one person to prison for this thus far. Thanks to decency laws, some of the pornography which I downloaded in my youth is almost certainly illegal! I say almost certainly, there’s still a lack of guidance to police forces on what actually constitutes an ‘extreme image’ but rest assured that if you’ve even briefly browsed the darker side of the web you could have something nasty in your web cache. Personally, I’m reluctant to purge the gigs of pr0n I worked hard to download, even though I’ve only even looked at the tiniest percentage of it, just on the off chance that some parts of it may be ‘extreme’. I’m sure you could arrest most of the men in the country on this one! And for Christ’s sake don’t get me started on the Digital Economy Act which was most recently rushed through the parliamentary wash-up. You may think that none of this really applies unless the police kick my door in and confiscate all of my computers, but that’s not as unlikely as you may think. A couple of years ago a friend of mine had all of his computer equipment confiscated and was arrested by the police based entirely on a false accusation by a former employer that he had stolen some hardware off of them when they fired him. Totally untrue and in recent months it was thrown out by a court. But that didn’t stop the police from holding onto all of his computer equipment for two years and no doubt searching through everything they could find. Luckily he’d just rebuilt and formatted his main machine but that didn’t stop them trying to pin other charges on him based on what they’d found on his kit! Innocent until proven guilty indeed! All it took was a petty minded company man and a burned bridge to kick things off, how many of us have stormed out of a job in the past with a two fingered salute? Probably more than one of two of us. So welcome to the UK where now live, where the spectre of terrorism has criminalized most of us without any of us being the wiser. The only reason we haven’t all been carted away is because the police haven’t focused on us, yet. The Election Here’s a list of those tools I’ve used recently : When trying to work out who to vote for, I was actually torn between Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Conservative policies closely matched my own opinions but frankly I find it very difficult to trust them and I worry about the undercurrent of racism and homophobia that seems to rear it’s head every now and then. Whereas I find the LibDems seemingly more trustworthy and some of their policies to be sensible, I was quite put off by large parts of of their policies, such as on Trident and the immigration amnesty to name a few. What we’ve actually seen, play out with the Conservative/Liberal coalition to me seems the best of both worlds. The bulk of the Tory manifesto and some of the better ideas from the Liberals bound up with the integrity of the LibDems and the appeal of Nick Clegg. Realistically I know they’re not going to repeal all of the laws mentioned above but I fervently hope they’ll start moderating them when they can, given the importance of all of the other problems we’re faced with. Obviously we’ll see what actually happens, but I can’t help but be both pleased and optimistic. This is the first time I’ve ever given a shit and I hope it’s not all wasted effort.
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