OneAndOneIs2

There's a Dilbert strip where Dogbert accepts a contract on Dilbert. He demands payment, although Dilbert isn't dead, because the contract only stipulates that he show that Dilbert "has no life"

If anyone wants me killed, use this argument to save yourself a lot of work.

I was looking through my finances and was feeling mildly disgruntled that, what with Christmas and my wild, extravagant spending, I didn't have enough left over to be worth moving some money into my savings account this month.

Then I thought "I'm an unemployed student living entirely off his grant money and I'm annoyed that I might wind up finishing the year only a little bit wealthier than I was when I started it?" and suddenly it didn't seem so bad...

I just found out I have an amazing superpower.

Seriously. It's on the BBC so it must be true.

* Perceive all tastes as more intense than other taster types, particularly bitter tastes
* Tend to be fussy about their food and have strong food likes and dislikes
* Usually don't like coffee, grapefruit, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and spinach
* Have lots of papillae, the tiny bumps on the tongue that contain taste buds

Accurate on every score. I am.. a supertaster!!!

Cue dramatic music.

I'll have to work on the secret identity tho.

Yesterday we were going over a bunch of Subject Knowledge stuff. As part of Newton's laws of motion, we talked about rockets and orbital mechanics.

Obviously it stayed with me because last night I dreamed I watched the space rocket take off, then that I was aboard when it docked at the International Space Station.

I suspect my dream was a little inaccurate here and there, unless there really IS a Starbucks on the ISS and it's genuinely close enough to Earth to have a breathable atmosphere. But the dream-vision of the Earth from space was very impressive.

Sadly, other days when we're at university aren't so hot. The non-subject ones, for starters. Usually they irritate mildly, but Monday really, really got to me.

We're supposed to write logs of what we've (allegedly) learned and how we'll apply it to our future teaching practice. Monday's activities lead me to write three pages of report that basically tear the entire day's activities and content to shreds - It was that bad. Normally it's little things like being told we must engage the pupils in two-way discourse - in an hour-long lecture - or being told how important it is to differentiate work for pupils of mixed ability - and then be sent off to all do exactly the same task - that get our backs up. I'm used to that and don't really bother recording it any more.

So now I'm debating whether or not to hand this report in, or just leave it as a rant and write a more tactful alternative. Bearing in mind that the person who will be marking it was responsible for everything other than the lecture on racism, what do YOU think..?

SESSION TOPICS: Homophobia and racism

Two lectures were delivered in the morning, one on homophobia and one on racism. Due to a lack of working projector, the presentations were hampered slightly by being paper printouts only.

The homophobia presentation provided interesting information but did not always supply relevant context: It is worth knowing that “50% gay students who had been bullied at school contemplated self-harm or suicide” but it is difficult to make a useful conclusion about this figure (Q21) without knowing what percentage of gay students are bullied or what percentage of non-gay bullying victims consider self-harm or suicide. Such information is vital to make the judgement posed later in the day as to which forms of bullying are “most important” to deal with. Additionally, the main emphasis on the rationale given for such bullying was that homosexuality disturbed “notions of masculinity”, making the bullies feel threatened – implying that homophobic bullying is an exclusively male issue.

There was also no attention given to the fact that homophobic name-calling does not necessarily equate to homophobic attitudes, but is simply a convenient insult to hurl: “Many adolescent boys say that the worst thing anyone can call you is 'gay'” (Mellor, 2004); nor was any mention made that “the majority of victims in schools are either too young to be certain about their sexual orientation - or are heterosexual” (Mellor, 2004).

As a result, I find this presentation difficult to use to reflect upon the issue it raised, as it left out what I consider to be key information. However, within my subject specialism, the main “scientific” objection raised against homosexuality is that “It's unnatural.” In fact, homosexuality is commonplace throughout the animal kingdom, something which can be stressed to challenge this preconception; and it can also be stressed that almost everything humans do is unnatural: Driving cars, wearing glasses, taking medicine, buying food, etc. so to consider one practice “bad” because it is “not natural” whilst others are unacceptable is hypocritical in the extreme.

The second topic was racism (Q18). Again, this presentation was difficult to use as a source of information on the topic. The only aspect of racism addressed was that between white and non-white ethnicities. There was no acknowledgement at all of the existence of any other type of inter-ethnic racism, despite this being a type of racism extreme enough to cause instances such as hundreds of deaths in “bloody conflict between Hispanic and black gangs” in Los Angeles (Guardian newspaper, 2007). Additionally, despite the presenter placing great emphasis on matters such as 'race' (Q19), she persistently referred to “English” when she meant “British” - to the resentment of some non-English British members of the audience; and played down audience questions/comments so brusquely that one individual who wished to make an observation commented afterwards that he was seriously considering making a formal complaint after the way he was dealt with. Such behaviour made it very hard to accept the notion that bullying and racial matters were as important as the presenter was saying: Inconsistencies between information and attitude are something I will try to avoid in my own practice.

There was a useful note made for the science teacher when it was pointed out that there was no “scientific” distinction between races: Genetically and physiologically, a human is a human, whether black, white, or Asian. This is something that can be usefully stressed in classes.

Following the second lecture, there was a regrettable continuation of the “mixed messages”, as statements about the importance of the topic and the value of debating it were sharply at odds with the constant pressure to deal with each issue as quickly as possible in order to move onto the next due to time constraints. This despite the fact that it has been observed that the best teaching “involved teaching in depth. Where done fleetingly, learners failed to see” (Historical Association, 2007) and that it might therefore have been better to cover one aspect thoroughly rather than skim over as many as possible.

Debate in small groups was constructive within the groups, but there was very little opportunity for the groups to share their conclusions with the rest of the class. Additionally, where stated views differed from the desired conclusions, there was no opportunity for inclusion of differing opinions via debate, but an almost-abrupt “No, that is wrong” attitude. One particular issue that several students felt strongly about was the argument that racist and homophobic bullying were more important than other types, with the sole justification given for this attitude being that children have been killed in racist or homophobic attacks. This blatantly ignores the fact that “at least 16 children kill themselves each year because they are being bullied at school” (Suicide and Mental Health Association International 2006) and these deaths are no less tragic for being less direct than the overt murderous attacks. A significant proportion of students felt that bullying in any form should be considered equally unacceptable, and compartmentalisation into subjective “more or less” important sub-groups could only harm efforts to prevent a bullying culture. It is regrettable that no time or credence was given to these views, as students felt strongly enough about it to remain behind after the timetabled end of the session to discuss it amongst themselves.

Lastly, the thing that made it most difficult of all to reflect upon the day's topic or build it into our teaching practice (Q7a) was the lack of information given on how to deal with it. This would have been valuable for standard Q5, but received only a simplistic “Challenge racist or homophobic epithets” and a very large handout, which there was no time to read and which was very difficult to extract relevant information on. It was very difficult to work out what exact action we as student teachers, or as NQTs in future, should take on this topic from this day's content. Too much time was spent on impressing the importance of the problem on pupils who would already have readily agreed that bullying exists and must be dealt with, and almost none was devoted to ways in which we could effectively deal with it as part of standard Q30. This in spite of the fact that the teachers recognised as being better at dealing with bullying are simply those who are better at listening to pupils (Oliver and Candappa, 2003), a piece of advice that could have been usefully given at any time throughout the day and which should have been highlighted, as it is a part of standard Q4 and thus a necessary part of becoming a teacher as well as a desirable attribute.

For these reasons, I was unable to apply the day's content to my own teaching practice and will have to instead rely upon my own researches into the matter (Q7b)


Bibliography:
Guardian newspaper (2007), “Gang mayhem grips LA” via website:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2036580,00.html

Historical Association, (2007), “Teaching Emotive and Controversial History” via the DFES website: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RW100.pdf

Mellor A (2004), “Information for Schools on Homophobic Bullying”, website: http://www.antibullying.net/homophobicinfo3.htm

Oliver and Candappa (2003), “Tackling Bullying”, via the DFES website:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/bullying/pdf/Childline%20DP%20Bullying%20(download).pdf

Suicide and Mental Health Association International (2006), “Common Symptoms of PTSD”, website:
http://suicideandmentalhealthassociationinternational.org/commptsdsym.html

Tactful, isn't it..?

You might remember from Star Wars: A New Hope the bit where the attacking rebels go for the Death Star a little while before Luke. How often does that bloke say "Almost there!" - he's the grown-up equivalent of the kid who starts asking "Are we nearly there yet?" five minutes after the start of the journey.

Yeah, yeah, I was that kid. But I grew out of it, at least...

Anyway. "Almost there." Yes. You might (or might not) remember that the BBC, before they got bogged down in proprietary iplayer crud, was going great guns on creating the first convincing, free, unencumbered-by-patents movie compression technology.

Yeah, I know all about Ogg as a video format. It's not really doing all that well yet, sadly. I hope it does - I love Ogg, my whole music collection is in it.

Dirac, tho, if it gets there, will have the backing of one of the largest and most recognized media corporations in the world. If it makes it as an international standard, it'll make it onto a vast number of PCs on the strength of that alone. It might be of use to iPods and other places that don't want to be beholden to Microsoft, too.

And it's almost there!

Let's just hope they don't get a pack of the bad guys sneaking up behind them... ;o)

...but I'll say it anyway?!?!

Somebody went to a lot of trouble to write a fairly lengthy comment. Can anybody tell me just why he bothered??

Seriously. What's the point of this comment?

I cut myself shaving earlier.

I don't often do that these days, since learning to shave properly. But I was testing out a new razor - the Merkur slant-bar. It's very weird. It exposes more of the blade than I'm used to, but at a slight angle. So it gives a VERY close shave, but in a weird way. A lot of adjusting to do, methinks.

Anyway. I shave after showering - human hair is roughly as tough as copper wire of the same thickness, hence tough to cut when dry. It's much softer when wet, so soaking it in a shower and then using water-based lather makes for much less wear and tear on the razor and on your face. A downside is that this means the bathroom air is very humid, and thus the mirror fogs up.

There are ways around this. You can buy an electrically-heated mirror that stays too warm to fog up. You can do what I do, and rub soap on the mirror so the surface tension is destroyed and the light-scattering droplets dissolve into an invisible film.

But there is a BETTER potential way.

The fog on the mirror is there because the mirror is cold and the air is humid. So what you need is an automatic system that heats up the mirror when you shower.

The shower uses hot water.

So if the hot water pipe supplying the shower was routed along the back of a mirror, the mirror would automatically get heated up whenever you showered. No electronics, no maintenance, just a slight extension to the pipe and you've got a fog-free mirror for shaving, or just being vain.

Why isn't this already built into houses and/or shower units? A perpetual, free, fog-free mirror would be great!

There you go, yet another million-dollar idea given away for free. Somebody get busy. So long as I get a free unit when you start selling them, I won't challenge your patent ;o)

Having set up my shiny new widescreen dual-core laptop to dual-boot, it was time to start seriously hacking Vista into a usable OS.

First things first: Get the damn WiFi working. Vista and Ubuntu both refused to do this. Ubuntu won't even show me the existence of the router in the wifi GUI menu. Vista will, it just wouldn't connect to it.

I switched the router from "WEP or WPA" to just WEP (because I was certain of the WEP key) and boom, it worked. Switched it back to WPA subsequently and worked out the right settings, and it still works. Yay.

Now online, I could start snagging FOSS apps to replace the crud Vista had come with, and clear out all the crap. My cunning plan is to get Vista and Ubuntu using all the same apps and sharing data via the shared FAT partition if need be, so it's the same experience using either.

So far so good:

That's Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, VLC, Winamp, Vim, and OpenOffice in the bottom corner; and a wallpaper off KDE-look. I've put Clamwin anti-virus on, tho I'm not sure why I've bothered with one at all.

I also put Yad'm on for times when I want the cube desktop on Vista, and I've put on a few cross-platform games like Darwinia and Doom 3.

Getting WiFi working on Ubuntu was a bit tricky, but I got it in the end. The GUI from "System Preferences network" doesn't show anything. But the CLI did:
iwlist eth1 scan showed the various WiFi networks

Then a script with the following run via sudo:
iwconfig eth1 mode managed key [26-character WEP key]
iwconfig eth1 essid "Livebox-93B0"
dhclient eth1
connected me to the right one, and just like that I was online.

So.. all-in-all, the laptop is gradually becoming bearable. Vista is getting steadily marginalized by the pruning of the crud and the adding of FOSS, and Ubuntu works with pretty much all the hardware out-the-box. WiFi was the only niggle, and that's sorted now. So I just have to set it up so the taskbars, wallpaper etc. mirror Vista and Ubuntu will be all sorted too. Yay!

Water is amazing stuff.

It's got all kinds of unique properties. Its solid form is lighter than liquid, for example. It's the only commonly-occurring substance that we encounter in all three phases: Solid, liquid, gas.

It's also the only compound that has different names for the different phases: Steam, water, and ice.

I encountered two of the three today in the car, and I fear tomorrow may see all three.

That's the road I drove in on this morning. It's been raining quite a lot over the last day or two - Water

Tonight, there's not a cloud in the sky. Which means temperatures are below freezing already - Ice

And my windscreen keeps fogging up with all the cold damp conditions - Steam.

Gonna be slow going tomorrow...

Linked from Slashdot, a mildly interesting article on copy protection.

Rick Cotton is pro-protection, but whilst showing a better than usual grasp of the issues, still doesn't understand it very well.

1. There may not be a single answer to this question. It may vary by medium, by technological environment and by groups of creators. Some media may be more susceptible to flexible, effective and commercially reasonable technology protections than others. Some groups of creators may have different preferences than others. Some tech environments may be easier to address first than others.

True enough. At least no sign of the "DRM for everything" mania from certain *AA spokespeople we've had in the past.

2. Many creators devote huge amounts of time, creative energy, and — in commercial settings — monetary investment to produce copyrighted works...Both fairness and the law (firmly rooted in the U.S. Constitution) support creators’ right to control the use of their work and to be compensated for these efforts (if that is what they want). ” In today’s digital world, that includes taking steps to protect their works from indiscriminate, wholesale theft on the Internet.

Also true, and doing so well until that "theft" part at the end - copyright violation is in no sense theft. As I myself argued about this time two years ago, copyright should exist. If nothing else, without it, there's no copyleft.

3. Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband Internet.

Broadly true, but mostly irrelevant to the argument. However, he's quite right that piracy is rampant and in most cases indefensible.

4. Another feature of this debate that should change is technologists disingenuously trashing technology. Too often, the same people who enthusiastically and unreservedly sing the praises of the infinite and wondrous capabilities of digital technology in virtually every other respect pretend that technology has nothing to offer and no ability to reduce the massive trafficking in wholesale infringements of entire works (certainly in the area of video, film, TV, games and software). It is categorically and demonstratively untrue and unworthy of tech champions.

5. The imperfect protection offered by anti-piracy technologies - “Every lock can be picked” - is no reason to give up on them. Despite the existence of lock picks, identity thieves, and hackers, cars and homes still have locks, e-mail accounts have passwords, and computers have firewalls. Our general approach — including most particularly in the digital world — is to put the strongest possible security in place and fix flaws and weak spots when they are identified through breaches, but not simply abandon the effort. The arena of content protection technology should be no different. Speed bumps do work.

Here's where he starts to lose it.

He draws on real-world examples, and you can't do that with data on the Internet.

If I buy a set of lock picks and learn the skills, I can break any common household lock. But most people don't have those skills, so locks are a deterrent.

If I crack a copy protected movie and put it on P2P, it doesn't matter that most people don't have the skill to do likewise: Picking the lock once unlocks it for the whole world. Nothing short of perfect copy protection has any value: In the real world, if you have 100 door locks and a lock pick, you need to pick 100 locks. On the Internet, if you have 100 locks and you work out how to crack them... you've just unlocked all 100 locks at once.

6. Even if imperfect, the implementation of anti-piracy technologies also sends an important message. The technological infrastructure of the broadband internet must communicate to the vast majority of users that wholesale reproduction of entire works (or even major portions) is not acceptable. Committed hackers may develop work arounds, but that is not the point. The reality is that technology speaks — and speaks loudly. Today — and for the last decade — the ease of accessing pirated content has spoken to internet users — and particularly young users — “if can’t really be wrong if it is so easy to do.” That perception needs to change.”

Sadly, things haven't improved yet. Thousands of crimes are easy to do. You could easily use a kitchen knife to murder somebody. Does this mean we need knives to be modified to make it harder to commit a crime with them?

No?

Then why do we need computers to be modified? It's attitudes that need to be addressed, not technology.

Here in the UK, where the overwhelming concern (right or wrong) in road safety is slowing cars down, there are "Speed kills" signs everywhere, speed cameras everywhere, speed traps everywhere... and absolutely no speed limiters being built into cars to stop them going over 70mph.

It's the same thing: "Guns don't kill people..." in yet another form.

7. Technological protections clearly need to be constructed to take account of a wide number of legitimate concerns such as not interfering with legitimate consumer expectations, privacy and fair use. But the extraordinary capabilities of digital technology have brought us the broadband Internet, dizzying mobile communications and marvelous desktop, laptop, and handheld computing. Digital technology is also capable of great exactitude and flexibility in identifying copyrighted content and targeting infringements with no more intrusiveness than when it screens out viruses and hacker attacks. I am sure we will be exploring those subjects in greater detail later this week.

He starts out well - upholding fair use etc. But then holds up vaporware as a solution. "What if somebody invented copy protection that didn't stop you doing anything that's legal and moral, but made it impossible to do bad things like distribute to your friends?"

Well? What if they did? You think it's that easy, scribble it onto a piece of paper, send it to a software company as the "user requirements", and ask how long it'll take them to write the code to do the desired task.

Overall conclusion: The lawyers and media and software people are starting to get the hang of the idea that they can't screw the users out of their rights and still sell their products to a happy consumer base. But they still cling to the fantasy of magic protection that'll take all the bad things away.

It's so attractive an image, they can't bring themselves to look at the ugly truth: That the only way to stop the "tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" is to remove the incentive for people to do it, not the ability.

I see SimCity, the original "Build your own city" game, has been released under the GPL. It joins other noted games such as Doom, Quake, and Second Life in the category of commercial games that have been open-sourced.

A lot of people don't realize just how good an idea this is.

Take Doom - one of my all-time favourite games. Released in 1993, as shareware. I first played it when it came free with my first ever Linux installation. You had to buy the game to get all the levels, but the demo was superb. It sold a million copies.

Doom II came out a year or so later, and sold two million -id software's highest-selling game, apparently. Certainly the technical superiority of the game over anything seen before it (stop sniggering, it was cutting-edge in its day) helped, but the fact that Doom was spread over the Internet, legally and for free, played a huge role in making its sequel so successful.

Of course, that was a long time ago and by today's standards, Doom is primitive. So id was kind enough to throw open the source code, under the GPL, in 1999.

Since then, Doom has been ported to practically everything capable of running it. Even my little GP32 handheld can play Doom. So can the PSP. So can an iPod... By releasing the code, id has seen to it that Doom is still under active development even today, and running on a staggering number of machines.

Big deal, you might think. They don't make any money out of it.

True enough. But here's a thought for you: Everybody knows coca-cola. They know what it tastes like, they know if they like it or not.

So why do the coca-cola company bother to spend $2.5 billion advertising a product that everybody knows about?

Because they need to make sure that new, young consumers learn about how good coca-cola is, and remind the older ones how much they like drinking it.

The relevance? Although the original Doom game is so old as to be almost unmarketable, except for the occasional nostalgia kick, by open-sourcing it, id insured that when they brought out the next version, Doom 3, they didn't have to remind the old gamers nor educate the new ones how good a game Doom is.

They already knew, because although they might have mega gaming rigs with gigs of RAM, multiple CPU cores, and graphics cards with enough power to run a small city.. they probably still have Doom installed on their phone, their PDA, or their handheld console.

Doom is on virtually everything. It's even coming to the iPhone. Everybody knows about it, most people have it, any gamer will have played it.

Think about how much it would have cost id to port Doom to that many architectures. Think about how much it would have cost them in marketing to get the same level of exposure they got for free by giving away the source code.

Think about how much hype there was when Doom 3 came out.

And you'll know why it can be worth a company's while, releasing source code to versions of software it no longer sells.

As you may recall, I got myself a new laptop at Christmas. It came with Vista installed.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I do actually have a want/need for Windows. So instead of just wiping the whole thing, I'm going to dual boot. Because of the potential perils of this, I want to make sure I can re-install Vista if the need should arise.

It doesn't come with install disks, it comes with software that will create them for you. So I'm currently going through all the options and making every possible backup, in the hopes that at least one of them will work.

The first one, the factory default, burned away merrily until it reached the end. Then it locked up.

That's what users want from their new Windows installations. Familiarity :o)

I rebooted and it seemed to work. Didn't go the whole way, tho - wanted to get all the other recovery options first. Right now, it's backing up drivers. I'll probably do another "default" just in case..

I'm hoping, perhaps naively, that the factory default won't have all the CRAP installed on it that the laptop does... This is what I get when I start up my virgin Vista laptop:

All those icons.. the application windows.. the sidebar icons... I don't want any of it!

Except for the webcam software.. that's quite handy. It's quite a good camera built into the laptop:

So once the disk is burned, I'll reinstall "default" Vista. Then I'll install Ubuntu as well. Then I'll take all the crap out of Vista, put on useful stuff like Firefox, and we'll be all set.

Speaking of Firefox, if you look at the webcam image, just to the right of my ear, you'll see my plush red panda - AKA the firefox. Good isn't it? :o)

(You'll also see Dilbert peeking over my shoulder. But let's not go there...)

Driving home from the school I'm observing at this week, I was stuck behind a slow-moving geriatric driver. One of the annoying ones who crawls along at 40 in the 60 limits, then screams off at 40 when you get into a 30 limit.

People consistently below the limit, I can cope with. People who stick at one speed regardless of all other considerations... get on my nerves. When they're in front of me, anyway.

Anyway, the car being driven by this nuisance was a Toyota. It reminded me on the single stupidest car slogan I ever saw, which was of course "The car in front is a Toyota" - I assume they meant that the superior car that was so fast and maneuverable that it left you behind was naturally going to be a Toyota.

But it doesn't work like that. 99% of the time, the car in front is a bloody nuisance that's being badly driven.

Thinking about cars and annoyances reminded me of my recent trip to the USA, where the rented car had all kinds of irritating "helpful" features (remember the Word paperclip..?) and to a train of thought I had in the taxi on my way to the airport before that, when I decided what features I would build into my kit car(s) in the event I ever move somewhere that allows me to actually build one (or more)

So:

A petrol cap on both sides of the car.
How many times have you asked/been asked "What side is the petrol cap on this car?" How many times have you gone to refuel only to find that the only available pump is on the wrong side? Such a simple thing to remedy.. one cap on each side, job done.

Semi-automatic windscreen wipers
A detector that triggers the wipers when there's just enough rain on the screen to be worth wiping off, I like the idea of. Never had one, but want one.
Wipers that get turned on for a fixed number of wipes every time you spray screenwash, I dislike intensely, but have had on every car I've ever owned. Most annoying on days when you're low on screenwash or it's cold enough that the pipes are frozen solid so the wipers scrape over dry glass, smearing the dirt and squeaking painfully. I don't like ANY technology that tries to be helpful that you can't turn off.

Non-automatic-off indicators
This might make the car illegal, for all I know.. but not only do I not like my indicators getting turned off by MY car, I think this is a feature that should be illegal on ALL cars. Because (a) they're crap, and (b) people are idiots.

(a) mostly strikes on large roundabouts where you straighten and turn more than once, and your indicator is thus turned off when you don't want it to. Unwantedly helpful

(b) is mostly a problem because people seem to think that because there is something to turn them off automatically, they should never turn them off by hand. So in the event that their turn doesn't trigger the signal deactivation, they don't turn it off, or notice that the signal is still there.

Banning the damn things altogether would mean that your signal doesn't get turned off unwantedly, and everybody would get into the habit of turning their signals off as well as on.

Night vision screen
A gadget I first saw on Top Gear, easily doable very cheaply when you know how to modify a simple webcam to work with IR. Which of course, I do. An IR lamp and a hacked cam and you can see the road ahead in veritably flood-lit conditions, without having anti-social full-beam headlights on. In fact, you could even turn your headlamps off and freak out all the other drivers :o)

An electric heater
I had this on one car.. all the others rely on heat from the engine to warm the air. Takes forever to defrost on icy mornings. Sick of it.

Multiple cigarette lighters
I understand why there was only ever one of these in the early days, when these sockets were used to light cigarettes. But now, when they're general-purpose power sources for all manner of gadgets? A modern car may need power for the mobile phone, GPS, and iPod all at once, why is there only ONE plug socket??

I think there were others.. but I can't remember any more.

Suggestions..?

As usual, when leaving for a long (and expensive) flight, I was feeling exceptionally paranoid that I'd forget something vital, or run out of time, or otherwise have problems. But I had passport & tickets, the presents were packed.. surely I had everything? Insurance details & the address I was staying at were all written down, and the taxi was booked for 9:30, with my flight leaving at one. More than enough time, surely..?

Sigh.

I wasn't late. I was there in time to check in, get through security, get breakfast, shop, and get bored. And then the plane was an hour late due to typical English weather

(I started using Flickr because I'm sick of uploading stuff to my blog. Yeah, I'm lazy )

Eventually, they announced loading, and all the sheeple immediately got up out of the comfy lounge seats and formed a very, very long line so that hey could get onto the small, cramped plane setas after a long wait. I sat and watched them go, then queued for thirty seconds and got onto the plane. It's not like you get better seats by getting on first...

I suppose you could say I saw my first white Christmas on this flight, only it wasn't Christmas day, and I saw it from a long way up... still, it was definitely very icy down there...

It was hard to tell when the ice gave way to rocks, due to the sunlight and other factors, but eventually we were definitely going over the Grand Canyon and some time after, we landed. After reclaiming my stuff from the carousel, I made my way out, and then had the highly entertaining task of working out what to do next. I was being collected by my brother's in-laws, whom I'd never met. And there seemed to be nobody looking for me by the gate. And my phone didn't work.

So I went looking for a payphone, but they're very primitive when it comes to phones out there. I thought it was only mobile ("cell") phones, but no, payphones too - can you believe, they don't take notes or cards? Only coins. Primitives.

Of course, I had no coins, but the information desk gave me two dollars change, and I went back to the payphones. First, phoned my brother's mobile, and his battery lasted just long enough for him to give me his in-laws' phone number. Then phoned them, and using the last quarter I had, paid enough for it to actually connect me. I was able to find out that they WERE at the airport, but they were waiting by one of the eight exits on the floor below. Hence why I hadn't seen them by the "Arrivals" gate.

So I went down and met them, and all was well. Yay.

Christmas eve was quite fun - crackers and over-sized pea shooters seemed popular with the kids that were visiting, and Christmas day was quite eventful too - after breakfast and all the presents were done, we went to the first millionaire's house I've ever been to for the obligatory turkey - and it was actually the first time I've encountered turkey that was worth eating. I didn't know there was such a thing before.

Next day we headed to the red rocks of the self-proclaimed spiritual capital of the world, Sedona. Lest the sun-drenched rocks under a clear blue sky fool you, I took a photo of a fountain crusted in ice to make the point that it was bloody cold out there.

I bought a cap to keep the low sun out of my eyes. It has "Sedona" written on the outside, and "Made in China" written on the label...

We'd been given the name of a psychic who was apparently particularly good, but when we got to the shop he works from, they said that psychics go home early in winter because they don't get many late customers. Surely, though, as a psychic, he should have known we were coming and waited for us..?

Oh well.

Dinner that evening was an example of some of those little things that the US does a lot better than the UK: The bread rolls at the start had been warmed, and the butter (mmm, whipped butter...) was room-temperature. Contrast that to the room-temperature rolls and fridge-cold butter you usually get over here.

I think it was the next day that I finally got over my jet lag, got used to the climate, and overcame the habits of living in a flat with a reclusive flatmate and being too busy to have a social life, enough to manage to remember how to be sociable again. But the highlight of the day was when we went out for "a quick drink" with some friends of my brother & sister-in-law, and I'm not convinced that I believe that the alcohol was having no effect.

Interesting lamps tho...

We went out to see the house of a famous local architect whose name I have forgotten but we were all quite impressed by. His house was in serious desert country but had cunning features such as water in front of the house so the breeze would be cooled by it, giving a kind of free air-conditioning effect. Well worth a visit if you can figure out where to go. If possible, stay for the night because apparently in the evenings this dragon, originally a water fountain, is shown off to best effect: It was plumbed into the gas lines and shoots a three-foot flame. Far more appropriate for a dragon than a waterspout!

Other things happened too - mostly shopping- but they're quite dull. Or unrepeatable :)

They do like their Christmas lights out in America - where we put a string or two in a tree, they light up the whole tree. It's very odd to see inflatable snowmen in the desert tho. Cacti with lights all over looked far more appropriate, and I saw some great chilli fairy lights :)

Paid the obligatory visit to IHOP on Saturday for breakfast - I only got a short stack, for some reason, but never mind.. IHOP's always nice to visit. Another of those things you just don't get over here.

Some of the things you can't get over THERE include proper butter - theirs is always so anemic; proper Cadbury's chocolate (Hersheys in a Cadbury wrapper just isn't right); and an accurate price for what you're buying. WHY do they insist on showing prices without bloody tax included?? Who cares how much of the price is made up of tax, I don't have the option of not paying it!! I'd rather like to know how much money I actually have to part with to buy something, if that's not too much to ask..

Ho-hum.

On the flight home, I needed an extra bag to fit my newly-bought bedding, cutlery, and peppermint patties into. My new laptop went into my carry-on bag. It's amazing how cheap stuff is in America - or, rather, how much we get ripped off in the UK. The number of products that seem to work out the pricing by "replace the $ with a £ and call it good" is unreal.. You can just about cope with that from some items that can't be cheap to transport, but Microsoft's excuse for doing it with Vista?

They're all bastards.

There's other things to say, but my RSI is flaring up, so I'm not going to.

The End.

It's my blog's birthday. I picked a memorable date..

I'm back from America, weighted down with a laptop, peppermint patties, and far too much washing. I'm working my way through the chores slowly but surely. I bought some new bedding while I was out there so that's currently in the washing machine. Which is beeping to tell me it's finished. I'll get to it.

New laptop has a couple of things to fix - like the US plug and the Vista OS. Apparently they don't ship install disks with laptops any more, they put the ISO on the machine and you burn your own copy. Tight gits. Once I have a power supply and a DVD-R disc, I'll burn the install disc and then get some flavour of Linux - probably Ubuntu - installed on it. I'll go with dual-booting, at least for a while. Looking forward to seeing how the dual-core and open-source Intel graphics perform..

I've just been informed my hard drive is full.. too many photos, I think. Enter ImageMagick and mogrify -resize 33% *.jpg - digital camera photos are all bigger than my monitor, so there's no point in keeping them in their large and multi-MB size when they can be shrunk to save masses of space.. Freed up a gig and a half.

I should really write a proper post on the whole "living in America" thing.. but I'm not in the mood. Later!

Happy New Year!