But what I was thinking is that there is something wrong with the screening at airports for people who might want to do harm to either the passengers or crew of the flights I have taken. I assume that it’s a fairly standard procedure internationally. The US would have developed a system that works for it’s citizens and everyone else copies it they were the nation that has failed the most at preventing aircraft-related terrorism so they have a vested interest in appearing to be at the top of the tree in this field.

Here’s what I reckon happens. And this is apart from the obvious. The obvious being you drop some of your luggage at a chute to be loaded into the belly of the plane and they run it past various scans and checks to ascertain whether it contains anything that might explode in the cargo hold. Surely that little declaration you make when you check the luggage in isn’t everything.

“Does this contain explosives or explosive materials ?”

“Nope”

“OK, we’ll put it inside the plane with everyone else’s similarly-declared explosive-free boxes and suitcases”

There’s probably some x-ray machine that the suitcase whips past on the chute where an underpaid airline employee and/or lower level Government functionary may get to have a glance at the contents of the bag. There may be one of those little friendly dogs that will walk all over the top of the pile of cases before they’re stowed, there may be a myriad of hi-tech computer scans before your stuff is stowed in the belly of the ‘plane. It can’t just be your declaration – surely ?

But the idiocy of this system of preventing terrorists from boarding your plane is that everyone is treated like a potential terrorist. They can run my bag of dirty socks and soiled underwear, creased shirts and the book I was going to read during the flight through as many different tests as they like but where’s the sense in having each and every passenger subjected to the time-wasting and demeaning scrutiny when they are trying to get into the plane. It take’s frickin’ forever to get onto an airplane. You queue up with your carry-on luggage, the stuff you want to have near you on the plane, of course the book you wanted to read has already been scanned by many different scanners and a little beagle has walked over the bag but you might want a laptop computer, an iPod, a digital (or film) camera NOT thrown around by grumpy baggage handlers close by to amuse yourself or pretend to work with for the duration of the flight and your period in the forced detention centre they call a departure lounge. After you have made it close to the gate you are asked to unpack a lot of your stuff, pop a laptop into a separate tray and some people voluntarily start to undress, they put their shoes and belts onto a tray along with all the other stuff that will make their terrorism-detectors go ‘beep’, ‘beep’ ‘beep’  – your small change, your watch and wallet,  jewelery, pens (I don’t know if the freebie Biro will set off the bomb-detector they don’t have a lot of metal in them) all the while there’s about 4 people at the gate watching you and sizing you up for ‘special treatment’ after you have passed this first test.

So here’s the thing. These people who are subjecting you with their special anti-bomber vision are from the same demographic as you (and I’m being very generalist here, but it’s based on my many hours spent catching these planes over the last few years). It’s quite likely that you’re are a middle class Caucasian person and so are the scrutineers. Doesn’t anyone see the flaw in this?  Let’s assume I am a complete racist bastard and I think everyone from a different background looks suspicious and appears to me to be a potential terrorist. There’s no reason to assume that the people employed at airports aren’t just as biased and bigoted as the rest of their demographic so .. They’ll probably take a closer look at some people than others (but why the hell are the newspapers so frequently reporting that little old ladies are being cavity searched? is this some balancing act to make this ‘plane seem to be of universal application or is Al-Quaeda or the Taliban recruiting OAPs and schoolkids into their secret terrorist cells).

It’s wrong I say, wrong. We shouldn’t be herded past people who are like us to root out those fellow frequent flyers who want to subvert our way of life. We should have the CCTV cameras, the metal detectors, the doors and the gates staffed by people who are our opposite.

Here’s where the controversy begins.

If we as a flying community have decided (either directly or otherwise) that terrorism will be inflicted upon us by a group who claim to be making the world a better place for Muslims and non-Caucasians who better to be able to pick members of that small section of humanity than non-white Muslims.

How the hell would we middle-class middle-Australian middle-everythings know who is shifty-looking, who is doing their best to become a martyr and get their 40 virgins, I’ve already said that everyone who doesn’t look like me is shifty/suspicious/’off’ and should be taken away and given extra scrutiny and then put on another plane. Set a thief to catch a thief I say, the dudes at the gate should all be muscular youths from a middle eastern country or bearded older men from local mosques and a whole lot of those women who are completely covered from head to foot.

Theses are the ideal people to be watching the TV screens to pick out who is a potential danger to themselves and the rest of society. We need to get the FBI or the Dept. Of Homeland Security in the United States to get rid of their out-dated notion of racial profiling and get some different cultures into their anti-terrorist club.

Anyway, I think I should write more on this after I have had a chance to look at the results of the current elections in Afghanistan. There may be a shit-load of potential new recruits to my Cultural Profiling programme, there’s going to be a few people who may not have been able to swindle a eat into the parliament there and get jobs for all their mates and rellies looking to put their noses into a different trough and this may well be the perfect trough for ‘em

Back later

#1

nVidia Graphics

Fedora 12 / 13

In order to keep compatibility with nouveau, you either need to recreate the initrd manually after the driver has been installed, or add a command line option to the kernel. To recreate the initrd:

su -
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

To use the default initrd, but disable the nouveau driver, edit /etc/grub.conf and add the following to the end of the line(s) starting with ‘kernel’:

  rdblacklist=nouveau nomodeset

Before using the driver, you need to lower your system protection so SElinux doesn’t prevent the driver to load.

http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia#head-b52d8a785c3188f03b893e4f8c75f8d7e37c9e2b

x86_64 (64bit) users

If you wish to have 3D acceleration in 32bit packages such as Wine, be sure to install the xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386 package for your driver variant. For example, if you installed kmod-nvidia then you will require xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386, but if you install kmod-nvidia-96xx, you will need xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-libs.i386. If using Fedora 11 you will need to use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i586, with Fedora 12 use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686.

GeForce 6 and newer

yum install kmod-nvidia-PAE (or kmod-nvidia if not using kernel-PAE)

I hope that these are the same instructions for nVidia

Installation Using RPMFusion

To install the nvidia driver using RPMFusion and YUM.

1. Install the repository configuration files for YUM.
Run the following commands (enter ‘root’ password when prompted):

[mirandam@charon ~]$ su -c 'rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm'
[mirandam@charon ~]$ su -c 'rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

2. Due to the inclusion of nouveau in Fedora 11 and newer, it must first be disabled. After this step, a reboot is recommended.
   • Fedora 12 and Fedora 13Edit (as root): /boot/grub/grub.conf
     To the end of the default kernel (usually the first), edit the kernel line.
     Add the following: rdblacklist=nouveau to the end of the kernel line.

-OR- Modify the initramfs:

[mirandam@charon ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@charon ~]# mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
[root@charon ~]# dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

[root@charon ~]# exit

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

this may be a first step, – I might try an ‘upgrade’ (it has rarely proved fruitful though)

- http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f13.html#java

#2

Using Sun Java Instead

If you require Sun Java or if OpenJDK does not work properly, you can download Sun Java and use it in Fedora.

Download the Java package from:
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp. Always use the latest update.

Select: Java JRE 6 Update 20 (the JDK is for developers)

On the next page, for Platform select “Linux” for 32-bit users, and “Linux x64″ for 64-bit users.

For Language select “Multi-language”. Also accept the license agreement, and hit “Continue”.

On the next page, select the RPM option:

Java SE Runtime Environment 6u20
jre-6u20-linux-i586-rpm.bin (32-bit users)

jre-6u20-linux-x64-rpm.bin (64-bit users)

To install:

[mirandam@charon Download]$ sudo sh jre-6u20-linux-i586-rpm.bin
-OR-
[mirandam@charon Download]$ sudo sh jre-6u20-linux-x64-rpm.bin

You will need to hit ‘space’ till it reaches the end, then type ‘yes’. You should see the RPM installing. If it does not install, manually install it via sudo rpm -ivh.

When running the java command, Fedora will default to using OpenJDK. In order to use Sun Java, use the alternatives command.

To setup the Java runtime, perform the following (applies to both 32-bit and 64-bit users):

[mirandam@charon Download]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/default/bin/java 20000

Setup the Mozilla/Firefox browser plugin.

For 32-bit users:

[mirandam@charon Download]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so \
libjavaplugin.so /usr/java/default/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so 20000

For 64-bit users:

[mirandam@charon Download]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so \
libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 /usr/java/default/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so 20000

You may need to restart Firefox to see the plugin take effect.

Note: If you wish to switch back to OpenJDK you can run the following commands one by one to switch between the OpenJDK and Sun Java:

[mirandam@charon ~]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –config java

[mirandam@charon ~]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –config libjavaplugin.so
(or for 64-bit)
[mirandam@charon ~]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –config libjavaplugin.so.x86_64

To Update: If you wish update the JRE package, simply download the newest RPM package and install it as above. You will NOT need to reset alternatives, as those settings should remain intact.

More Information: Sun Install Documentation for Linux.

#3

Setting up sudo

Fedora, like all other Linux distributions, has a root user and has individual users. The root is the “superuser”, somewhat similar to “Administrator” in Windows.

Use the personal account you created at First Boot for daily use root only for administration/configuration. To run as ‘root’ use su or sudo commands. However sudo requires setup. As root run:

echo ‘loginname ALL=(ALL) ALL’ >> /etc/sudoers

Where ‘loginname’ is your user account.
Use ‘ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL’ if you don’t want to be prompted a password.
If you are prompted for a password with ‘sudo’ it is the user password, not root.

Example:

[mirandam@charon ~]$ su
Password: <— Enter root password [root@charon mirandam]# echo ‘mirandam ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL’ >> /etc/sudoers
[root@charon mirandam]# exit
exit

The following is an example of how sudo lets you execute root commands:

[mirandam@charon ~]$ du -sh /root
du: `/root’: Permission denied <— Fails!!!

[mirandam@charon ~]$ sudo du -sh /root
163M /root <— Works!!!

NOTE: Every command provided on this page will work if you remove sudo from the command. However this requires you must be logged in as ‘root’. An alternative to using sudo is to use su to login as root, before executing a command.

- again, from the same guide

Do they have a word for” livid with anger yet really, really saddened at the same time” ?

But we can talk etymology until the cows come home. I’m really angry and very, very sad. Finally all the ballots have been counted in The IK election, and all the back-door deals have been done.

The gormless half-wits of the Liberal-Democrats have delivered to Britain a Tory Government. That Clegg needs to be punished, his pain should equal the pain he has inflicted on British workers and pensioners, school-kids, sick people and me !

I’d suggest stringing him up somewhere prominent by his testicles, but I don’t think he is possessed of those glands so I’d be satisfied with thumbs instead.

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

Then people could gather and pelt the coward with rotten produce, abuse him, poke him with pointed sticks. And still that wouldn’t be penalty enough.

This Son-Of-A-Banker has decided that despite more voters casting their ballots for non-Conservative parties he would decide who would be PM. And if he thinks that as Deputy PM he will be able to minimise the suffering of the under-privileged, to temper the Tory iron fist he really does have rocks in his head and maybe he should be pelted with rocks instead of table waste.

He was born in 1967, his Dad was awarded the CBE so I’m guessing he remembers Thatcher/Major but didn’t fare too badly under them, his comfortable upper-middle class life protected him from the excesses of economic  rationalism.

“The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.”

My God ! “Clegg’s paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, was a Russian Baroness” his Wikipedia entry has been updated recently to reflect his new, elevated status. I shouldn’t say ‘elevated’ it may have raised some people’s estimation of him, his actions to become the second-in-charge have lowered him in my estimation. Still I should have expected it, the Grandson of White Russian anti-communists, a representative of those wishy-washy people who can’t decide if they’re red or blue, the leader of a party which is the UK equivalent of The Australian Democrats – why am I surprised ? They’re Tories who don’t have the courage to declare themselves as such. They can bleat all they like about how this Government will be good for all of the country but you know that’s going to be a lie, the pain won’t be shared equally nor will any gain.

Gah !! – I’m too furious with the Lib-Dems to finish, I owe you another half later

If you see this dude in the street kick his shins soundly and say it’s from me

This is him

Britain - For Sale

Yes kids the circus is coming to town, readying to hit your streets, your mass media, your shopping centres and your homes. You have been warned !

But it won’t be a circus in a good way. Nothing like the usual fun fair with the tombola, hurdy-gurdy, the Ferris Wheel, the itinerant entertainments that gave rise to the saying “all the fun of the fair”.

No this is the next British election, and it will be anything but fun. Firstly not enough people can be bothered to get off their arses and go have a look at what’s on offer, The newspapers, TV and radio will already have a winner in mind and will be pushing their own barrow, not the party or candidate that will be good for their readers/viewer but whoever will be best for the paper/TV station/radio station. Secondly those who have had a look at the entertainments on offer a lot don’t bother going to the pitch before kick-off.  But here’s where I get a bit hot and bothered, the few that do front on the day, pay for their ticket at the gate and go through the turnstiles will be grabbed at the entrance and ushered over to one of two sides.

On the one hand there’s a tired old ride, it’s been around the block a couple of times, it’s a bit shabby, tired and worse-for-wear the other is flash, never ridden and shiny. Standing in front of the old ride as a dour, dull sort of chap, quite un-enthused by the prospect of anyone hopping on and seemingly unsurprised that no-one does.

The other guy however is quite the lad, new suit, polished shoes all in all quite an attractive sort of a chap. But, and this is a huge ‘but’ this ride lasts for years and years once you’ve hopped into the seat and as Paul Keating (one of the better Australian Prime Ministers) said “you change the Government and you change the country” and that’s what will happen.

Again, this was started last July, never got around to getting it done, read this instead

have some of the pictures I was going to use anyway – enjoy the ride !!

Doesn’t he look absolutely magnificent, a fine figure of a man ! – of course I have my tongue firmly in my cheek this is how a private school bully appears to the masters of his college the day before annual Parent Teacher day and this spiv knows that his Mummy and Daddy  paid for the polo kit so he can get away with absolutely anything, including beating up on the first form boys.

Here’s a more appropriate photo

This is the Iron Lady an inspiration to bullies everywhere

and something more recent, but just as appropriate

best grafitti evah

They work in the corners, hidden in the shadows, few know their name, nobody their face. But everybody can see the product of their labours.

Who are they ?

I’m not in a position to name names just yet, but lets have a look around the internet and see what might be uncovered in a single hour.

I’m going to start off where I left off last week, we now know that Johanna (the poor delusional old woman who loves the British Conservative Party so deeply that she has re-named her blog to reflect her affection for, and devotion to, the political party that represents the British upper class and the ‘big end of town’)

She wants a United Kingdom where the smug face of David Cameron might grace her TV set as he announces another round of ‘unfortunate’ cuts to government services or a raft of sensible measures to protect ordinary Britons from the worst of the global financial crisis, ad of course she looks forward to him tackling the menace of the Trade Unions.

I’m pretty sure that she discusses her Blue-Sphere blog with the other members of the knitting circle known as the Bethnal Green branch of the tories and perhaps one or two of them might help her from time to time. Maybe slip her some juicy gossip, or correct her spelling tell her what might make a good topic for her to raise.

Big Dave (I’m going to call The Rt Hon David Cameron MP ‘Big Dave’ from now on, even though he’s not that big except in the mouth department ) has a staff on henchmen and lackeys to do his bidding they include his Parliamentary Private Secretary and a Senior Parliamentary & Political Advisor not to mention his personal staff, those employed by the Party Head Office whatever PR firm they have on retainer all of them trying to keep the troops on message. The message of course is that people living in England Scotland Wales and a small part of Ireland( and there some weird little islands scattered around the world that are part of the United Kingdom? – like the Malvinas) NEED a new Government and that Government is going to be led by that fresh-faced boy genius – Big Dave. They can worry about policy, practice and programme after the dust has settled from the election. The Message is ‘Brown Has Gotta Go’.

And it is the members of this team of spin doctors and communications advisors who will be filling the otherwise empty heads of people  like Johanna with the idea that the conservatives of today are nothing like the conservatives of yesteryear, that they have a duty to convince all their friends and neighbours that the world and Bethnal Green will be a better place when Big Dave and his team of spivs have cleaned out the communists who currently hang onto the treasury purse-strings.

OK, nobody in their right mind likes Gordon Brown. Brown by name and brown by nature ( this would have been better if he’d been born Gordon Grey – I could have used a Goethe quote “Grey, grey is theory, but green is the tree of life !” I think it was from Dr Faustus but since it’s not appropriate I won’t bother to look it up), he’s a dull, dull, dull man I’m not in England and only see him rarely on local TV but there’s something about him that makes me nod off. But the question has to be asked. Does being a dullard and a plodder make him an un-desirable PM ? Sure, I would absolutely hate having a pint with him in my local, I’d feel like I was drinking on my own, he doesn’t look the type of fellow who’s handy with a pool cue or can find his way to the dartboard. But it doesn’t make him a worse Prime Minister than that clown Cameron.

And ‘clown’ is the impression I get of the Conservative leader, he’s flashy and has a wonderful smile, but the party he represents has a long history (of which they’re proud) of being brutal Economic Rationalists. Their notion of Good Government is to govern nothing – that’s right, NOTHING ! You see all of a persons hopes and desires may be satisfied by the market, Government and regulation artificially constrains the market and according to these wannabes thwarts each individuals ability to obtain happiness and fulfilment in their lifetime. I’m old enough to have kept my hatred of Thatcherism in my fore-brain ( I should look up the actual part of the brain where memory is stored), the apparent cruelty to the poor and under-privileged perpetrated by the User-Pays system of providing governmental services. Jeez ! When will the tories get it through their over-stuffed and under-empathetic heads – some people don’t got no dosh, yet are deserving of community services by the fact that they exist – it’s called HUMANITY Cameron

The class system serves so very few people well, but so many very ill

I started writing this over a year ago, I had planned on a lengthy pre-election series but never got around to it, this I regret. Especially now since the elction is nigh and there’s some doubt that it will return a clear Government I never thought that I’d live to see the day that the Lib-Dems would be in a position of such influence, it would be like the Australian Democrats here being courted to form a coalition Government with either the Liberal Party or the ALP.

I swear I heard grenades and mortars as well as a cannonade

The barrage lasted a full half-hour and I’m not on an obvious war zone but a suburban backyard

This was the close of Australia Day 2010, a rowdy and drunken holiday ending in violent and intrusive noise

A celebration of all things Australian, something I’ve never really come to grips with.

I understand we are a small country, an island and isolated from the rest of the world by vast distances, but there isn’t a single nation in this country, there are many. There isn’t a unified community of interest, there are many. There isn’t a single ‘Australia’ there are many.

Some might be able to argue that the similarities within the population far out-weigh the differences, I probably don’t agree.

I doubt that when some business magnate looks out over whatever harbour his penthouse apartment has views of (or mansion – take your pick, I’m not fussy on how you imagine the truly wealthy live) staring at an uninterrupted view of the fireworks spectacular will be feeling the same emotion as one of his employees standing uncomfortably in a crowded public space craning for a view of the fireworks his tax dollars have subsidised. After all the rulers of this nation have established a strong tradition of tax-avoidance so not a lot of thought in the well-fed plutocrat’s behalf on whether this is a money well spent, his kids schools don’t have to hold raffles to make up for shortfalls in Government funding to cover the cost of excursions and after-school activities.

I don’t think newly arrived Australians look to the skies and feel the same as the indigenous Australians who had their country stolen by some better-armed British over 200 years ago (and which by the way they still have a pretty clear constitutional claim on us – the Queen of England remains the Queen of Australia and our Parliament legislates at her pleasure).

I might also suggest that rural Australians who have to make do with a small bonfire-type arrangement miss out on the multi-million dollar circus provided by their tax-dollars altogether won’t be sharing in a common bond of Australian-ness ( them city folk being all soft and lazy and wouldn’t know hard times if it kicked them in the arse) with the People who have settled in the cities from war-torn regions, fled dictatorships, famine. droughts and sought succour and aid here.

I raise this now because of the increasing number of attacks on foreign-born students in Australia, as my notion of a patriotic Australian keep’s returning to a white low-middle class male with a temporary Australian Flag tattoo on one or both of their blue-singlet clad shoulders yelling at ‘foreigners’, a notion given to me from what is now known as the Cronulla Riots not any one’s finest hour and certainly doesn’t make my heart glow with the warmth of a caring country ready to help and support those people in the world who are worse off materially than we here.

Nope, the newspapers can print off all the paper flags they can sell, the television can broadcast as many happy families standing around bar-be-ques as they feel necessary but my mind’s eye always goes back to the snarling, vicious thugs and their racist chants chasing Lebanese kids away from ‘their’ beach. I re-visit recent images of devastated Indian students sorrowed by another attack on their fellows

Australia won’t ever be a united nation, it can’t even get close until we have matured enough to be rid of the backward racist elements who define what a decent Australian citizen should be as someone who is exactly like themselves.

Better late than never, I wrote this ages ago in Adelaide in a Brompton back-yard, I haven’t changed my position on racism or the fact it’s an elephant standing in the corner of Australian lounge-rooms.

So hell ! – who were members of this band ? Or better – Who wasn’t ?

Let’s have a look at the chronology

1973 – some of the people who eventually formed The Cure get together under the banner of The Obelisk and did the one single gig – this you can look up for yourself on Wikipedia. The members of The Oblelisk Robert Smith (piano), Mick Dempsey (guitar), Laurence Tolhurst (drums), Marc Ceggano (guitar, lead) and Alan Hill (bass) OK that was just the one show and no known recording of it, but remember the names of the members (that Smith kid will keep cropping up)

1976 – Easy Cure formed with Robert Smith (now vocals and guitar, I guess the piano playing didn’t work out for him, small pianists don’t get a lot of action), Michael Dempsey (bass), Laurance Tolhurst (drums) and Porl Thompson (guitar) – not a lot known about this incarnation except it was

1978 – They dropped the “Easy’ from their name, and Porl Thompson dropped out of the band. Now we have a band called “The Cure”

1979 – released ‘Three Imaginary Boys‘ having signed a record deal – this is the album with “Jumping Someone Else’s Train ‘ and the ever-cheerful ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (which has been covered ad infinitum by ska bands – Area 7 springs to mind and good luck trying to find that on a CD). This is pretty raw stuff, quite punky which is to be expected considering what was happening on the fringes of English music at the time.

1980 – Yikes ! Dempsey leaves but new members Simon Gallup (bass) and Mattieu Hartley (keyboards) jump on for a ride they release the moody single ‘A Forest’ quite different to their first releases, one might say almost musical. Their second album 17 seconds (another cracker) released Play For today, great single as well as, of course, 17 Seconds – stayed tuned about this album (trivia: The Final Sound only went for 50 seconds because they ran out of tape when recording)

1981 – Crikey ! Hartley jumps off this band’s wagon and tThe Cure is now a three-piece pop combo. This might explain the “Charlotte Sometimes” single and the album ‘Primary‘. Maybe they were all a little bit sad – trios must be very claustrophobic.

1982 – Yeegads ! , now Gallup gallops – what is this is The Cure now a duo ?? The band released the single “Hanging Gardens” and it doesn’t sound like the work of just two dudes – the liner notes credit

* Simon Gallup – bass, keyboard

* Robert Smith – guitar, keyboard, vocals

* Lol Tolhurst – drums, keyboard

Pornography was released, in ’82 a fair bit of pornography was probably released this was the name of The Cure’s album for the year though

1983 They released “The Walk” and “Love Cats.”

1984 The Top and The Caterpillar were released. “The Top” was a hippy pop psychedelic album, Smith played all the instruments except for drums The The Cure were joined by Andy Anderson (drums), Phil Thornalley (bass) and Porl Thompson (guitar)

1985 Andy Anderson and Philip Thornally left the band , or were allowed the opportunity to work with other musicians on other projects.

Boris Williams (drums) and Simon Gallup (bass) joined – is Gallup a sucker for punishment or what ? The Head on the Door album was released. Singles included Inbetween Days and Close to Me two of my favourite singles. Inbetween days was covered by Ben Folds

1986 Singles album released – “Standing on a Beach”. The Cure headlined Glastonbury Festival.

1987 The Cure released a double album, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. World Tour called “Kissing Tour”. Roger O’Donnell joined (keyboard)

1989 Disintegration was released, from which 4 hit singles were released. — Lol Tolhurst left for the 3^rd time (?).

1990 Roger O’Donnell left and was replaced by Perry Bamonte. The Cure headlined Glastonbury, Mixed Up was released, re-mixed singles of Never Enough, Close to Me and A Forest were released.

1992 Recorded “Wish” and toured with Wish Tour, a world wide sell out show. Porl Thompson left.

1993 Live works included Paris and Show. The Cure headlined at the XFM “Great Xpectations” show in Finsbury Park, London.

1994 Boris Williams left.

1995 Jason Cooper joined on drums, Roger O’Donnell rejoined on keyboard. Work started on the Dredd Song, for the film Judge Dredd. Headlined a few European festivals, including the 25th Glastonbury.

1996 Wild Mood Swings was released, went top ten around the world. The Cure embarked on the Swing Tour, their largest to date. 4 singles were released.

1997 Galore, a compilation of sorts- the singles from ’87 to ’97, and a video compilation to Standing on a Beach was released.

1998 More Than This single, for the X files movie

2000 Bloodflowers was released. I don’t like this one all that much, but after collecting so many of their albums, you sort have gotta have it for continuity dontchya ?

2001 The Cure released their Greatest Hits album, which included 2 new songs, Cut Here and Just Say Yes. The Cure departed from Fiction Records, after 23 years. One can only surmise what sort of hell it was for the A&R person who had to deal with the band, imagine every time you had a meeting and seeing either a sea of strangers or the same old faces or a combination of old and new. The only continuity being the sullen dude (who is now getting a bit porky) bedaubed by eyeliner and hair slathered with Gothic Juice (the strongest hairspray known to man)

2002 The Cure head-lined a number of European Festivals, and rehearsed for a special two night performance at the Tempodrom, Berlin. Performances from both nights were shot in High Definition video on 12 cameras.

2003 The Trilogy DVD was released, and the band signed a 3 album global deal with the Geffen label.

2004 Join the Dots, a 4cd Box Set was released, including B sides and rare singles. “The Cure” album was released.

2005 Perry Bamonte and Roger O’Donnell left – I wonder if the band room ever had a revolving door, did the local newsagent have a permanent scrap of paper thumb-tacked to their notice board advertising for “band members to join working band – no time-wasters.”., Porl Thompson returned – surprise surprise !! . The band headlined at Live 8, Paris.

2006 The band closed the Teenage Cancer Trust Show at the Royal Albert Hall, and started work on their 13th studio album. Robert Smith worked on live DVD projects with re-releases of The Top, The Head on the Door, and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me.

So what do I tell my American Friend ? The styles are so different, the members line-ups changed more frequently than some people change underwear, there’s all those studio albums, the live albums, the bootlegs, the DVDs – hell. I just told her to make up her own mind.

Anyway I may need to edit this from time to time, because I reckon it’s incomplete as it is now.

In 642 ACE a a border dispute/land-grab was fought out between two Anglo-Saxon leaders – Penda and Oswald. Warfare in the year 642 was conducted quite differently using a vastly different technology to the devastating computer games played by recent school-leavers of today who have had the great (or ill-) fortune to have been recruited by some military force. Big knives and axes were pretty-much the cutting-edge  of military weaponry (cutting-edge –geddit !). Oswald is supposed to have been hacked into many bits ‘n’ pieces on this field of endeavour. So I’m guessing that the end result hasn’t changed much, just the method of it’s delivery.

One of the many bits of Oswald hacked off is supposed to have been carried off by an eagle into a nearby tree. His arm – but the news media of then was as unreliable as of now.

Since then the site of this battle has been known as ‘Oswald’s Tree’ or Oswstrey

Skipping forward a millenium or so we remember this place of bloody dismemberment for locals

- Andy Lloyd (the Captain of the English Cricket team)

- the only survivor of (or injured participant in) the successful MI5 assassination of Diana Spencer Trevor Rees-Jones,

- a thinker/writer on matters religious – Thomas Bray and the poet Wilfred Owen

but most of all (for today’s purpose) WILLIAM ARCHIBALD SPOONER (he went to school there).

from National Portrait Gallery, London

Spooner was employed to further the arcane interests of the Church Of England, a cleric, but mostly lectured at New College, Oxford. But I’m pretty sure there’s not many people who remember his vivid and inspiring lectures on Aristotelian Ethics. Described as “an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too large for his body” almost a stereotype of a competent but dull lecturer. Nope, most people remember this person for his malformed morphemes. OK ‘morphemes’ are the smallest unit of semantics, an individual unit of meaning. Think of the suffix  “-able” or prefix “-un”, now think of any verb (remember them ? – they’re ‘doing’ words) hell ! — lets just go with “do”. So to try and describe an action that is considered impossible we might combine these 3 and apply the word un-do-able – simple innit ?

Spooner is supposed to have regularly got this wrong, we can’t possibly know what was going through his head (who can know what a person is actually thinking ?) but we do have some record of what came out of his mouth. Whatever he was thinking he’d do some internal mixing and matching with the morphemes before they got from the tip of his tongue to the ear of the listener.

We now call this mis-application a “Spoonerism”. I did a bit of a read on the internet to try and cite a few of Spooner’s originals but guess what ? There are very few to be had, and I have great reservation about their reliability ( rely-ability). But even if he never said them himself it’s probably instructive to provide at least a few examples. Interviewed in 1930 (when he was quite old admittedly) he said “Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take” when waffling on about succession and Conquering Kings but the unreliable examples include …

“The Lord is a shoving leopard” – the Lord is a loving shepherd

“You have hissed all my mystery lectures, and were caught fighting a liar in the quad” – he was giving a student his marching orders for cutting all his history lectures and starting a fire

Anyway, you should have the drift. Again these could just have been made up by his students to take the piss out of a dull lecturer and the ‘Conquering Kings’ reference was from a ‘Funny Words’ web-site. He was supposed to have been a bit odd in other mannerisms, reportedly,  so the language thing is likely to be true, but we are talking about the late 1800′s (he is said to have spilt some salt over a hostess’s tablecloth and attempted to clean it up by pouring claret over it, or another, was in the pulpit for an hour delivering a sermon for an hour on St Paul but in that sermon never mentioned this Christian saint a single time but repeatedly referenced Aristotle, over and over he mis-quoted Aristotle, climbed down and went to his seat, immediately rose again and re-climbed the pulpit and said “Did I say Aristotle ? – I meant St Paul”

He was born in 1844 and died August 1930, try and find his biography in The Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography he was an Oxford Don after all.

But I digress, when you see any reference to ‘Spooner’ or ‘Spoonerism’ in a cryptic crossword you will have to bear this in mind, it may be asking you to re-read the clue incorrectly (??) um, it’s asking you to unravel the clue to get the actual clue (??). The clue has been deliberately malformed to further muddy the waters. Try this…

Spooners Light Wine Divides Lanes (5, 4)

Before you start racking your brain for types of alcoholic fermented grape pressings (wine obviously has 4 letters) that have 5 letters in it’s name and then spending time ‘dividing’ (or  re-arranging the letters of) to come up with an answer that makes some sense out of the clue. You’ve been told that there’s a spoonerism involved and two seem to spring out, “Livides Danes” (livid Danes ?) doesn’t make any sense but ‘Wight Line’ suggests White Line and Eureka ! a white line does indeed divide many a traffic lane and, best of all, it fits. Often you have to take a gamble and just enter into the grid something that fits and come back to it later if it becomes less likely to be correct (which is why we use pencils when we are learning this skill) but if you can complete the puzzle and every other clue is correct then this answer is most likely correct as well.Besides, who looks up the answers in the paper published the next day anyway ?

You can now get off the bus or train  and deposit the finished newspaper in the nearest appropriate receptacle. I’m guessing that the crossword page is the last page you turn to, it would be just dumb to buy a paper just for the puzzles wouldn’t it ? Always read the news, it’s important to know what’s going on in the world that’s wider than your own, limited, experience.

I’m hoping that this will help in solving those enigmatic beauties – Cryptic Crossword Puzzles – inspire you even (hence the headline)

I was going to use “How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall ?” as the headline for today. It’s an old saw and you know the answer is going to be “practice, practice, practice’.

Since I was asked recently how to do something, something I have dabbled in for a while. I have formed the notion that it is within my nature to try and make some contribution to the total sum of the body of knowledge possessed by humanity and also contribute in some way to epistemology. Even someone as decrepit, broken, scorned and reviled as I may have something worthwhile to say from time to time

So today I’m going to provide what I hope to be my guide on how to make the first attempts at cracking the cryptography used in setting a crossword puzzle. Not the ‘easy’ or ‘quick’ versions but the convoluted coded versions. I find the straight crossword puzzles a bit tedious, they are often ambiguous and are merely grids where the person solving is directed to find the appropriate synonym that satisfies the clue – fairly boring

So let’s embark on examining the ‘rules’ for solving cryptic crossword puzzles.

Firstly the rules aren’t as hard and fast as some might suggest but can fall within a few general categories. I’m pretty sure that the person creating the puzzle doesn’t want something that no-one can ever solve, what would be the point of that ? You might get a gig for a week, but I’m pretty sure that if you wrote a daily crossword that was unsolvable you’d be looking for something else to do. Even though you may have just established a reputation of being the person that writes the ‘unsolvable crossword’ and you’ll get a bunch of freaks trying to eventually get it finished, if it’s never completed all you will have done is created a neat grid with accompanying gibberish and that’s just a pile of crap.

I’m not going to have room today for a complete guide, it’ll take a few more that a thousand words to complete this task, and besides the battery on this laptop will only last as long as it will take to post this instalment anyway.

The first step is to read the clue, have a look at the number bracketed at the end, now you know that you’re looking for a word of (x) letters. So far so good (you could probably look at the actual crossword itself). The clue preceding this number will tell you two things, what you are looking for and how you might go about finding it. If we can successfully separate out these two elements we’re well on the way to being rid of this clue (and getting the first answer is always the hardest,  a journey of a thousand miles etc etc etc) I should probably start providing examples at this juncture, but intend to leave that for the second installment.

There are a few ways the person setting the clue will point you to the solution. It can be a simple anagram, it can be a string of letters contained within the clue, it can be phonetics. You will have to read the clue a few times to decide which of the rules apply to it, but there are a few common triggers. And it’s rather up to the skill of the compiler how well or ill concealed the triggers are.

If you read a clue that has ‘within’,  ‘inside’, ‘in’, ‘you will find’, ‘buried’ or something in this vein you might try looking at all the letters in the clue to try and find the word you are seeking embedded in that string.

If  that doesn’t work, does the clue contain ‘heard’, ‘sounds’, ‘you will hear’ ? now you may have to read the clue differently, the word you seek could be found by simply reading the clue to yourself and listening carefully. Don’t read it out aloud to yourself on the bus or train people will (rightly) think you a nutjob.

If there’s no joy thus far, have a look to see if you have been, for example, invited to perhaps join two 4 letter words and re-arrange their order to make a single eight letter word. Indicators like ‘make’, ‘rearrange’, ‘change’, ‘alter’ or ‘edit’ should tip you off.

Also look out for switches that invite you to look at something ‘backwards’ or ‘in reverse’

Then for an added bonus there are some clues that you just have to pick up from doing a lot of crosswords on a lot of train trips (I’m going for a million public transport miles). These mongrel hints inside the clues aren’t generally used in puzzles from the US (but may). If you see ‘queen’, ‘sovereign’ or a ‘monarch’ you’re going to get an ER (for Elizabeth Regina – the Queen of England and their current monarch) in there somewhere, if there’s some mention of someone who is a writer there’s likely to be an ED (for editor), Shakespeare is always the bard and the bard is always Shakespeare and it’s a bloody compiler who starts getting you to try and recall all the characters of every Shakespearean drama and everything they have ever said – but they do ! This type of clues is confounding and quite often I have found myself trying to kick my own arse when I’ve seen the solution, because it was so frickin’ obvious (but not at the time I was doing the puzzle – obviously, kicking my own arse for no reason is a fairly recent personal phenomenon).

So the first and hardest step is to keep reading the question and work out what the word you are looking for might be then have a crack at applying the rules to see if the remaining words in the clue might have applied to satisfy the question being asked of you by the compiler

OK KO ?

What do you call an imbecile who imposes on a whole population an internet filtering system to ‘protect the kiddies’ ?

What do you call a dribbling moron who imposes on an entire population an ISP-level internet filtering system to ‘protect the kiddies’ that many, many people who are knowledgeable in the filtering of web-sites to ‘protect the little kiddies’ say will not work in the manner in which it was intended ?

You call this sort of determined but stupid person “Conroy”. By virtue of his Labor Party connections he sought and won a seat in the Australian Parliament representing the State of Victoria in the Senate and since the party he represents won the majority of seats in the Federal Lower House he has been the Minister for Fuck -Ups and Ineptitude. You can probably tell I don’t like the prick, in my opinion he is a person who imposes whatever brand of weird Christianity he practices without a single thought that others, who disagree with what God has told Conroy is the right thing to do, may have some point in opposing this futile and expensive potential attack on the freedom as despite many experts who work in this field and who AREN’T trying to sell him the hardware and software for this attack on a person’s ability to self-filter internet content keep telling him – it isn’t going to work.

I have a waste-bin full of his form-replies, where he insists that the only thing the filter will be picking up is material that is classified by the quango who determine what may and may not be seen on our cinema screens as “RC” – ‘Refused Classification’

I counted all the internet addresses one idle evening lately and stopped at around the 234 million mark, is this jerk-off trying to tell me that he will be employing hundreds of new staff to classify each and every one of these as if they were movies ? If so he better get hiring because the number of new sites being added each year is growing at an ever-increasing rate (47, 000, 000 added in 2009)

But what is really getting my wick is that this mongrel who is supposed to be providing more and faster bandwidth to this country is taking steps to slow it down, no-one can tell me that adding another bottleneck to my connection to sites is not going to have a hit on my internet speed. AND he wants me to pay extra for a poorer-performing internet connection, he doesn’t expect the ISP’s to shrug their collective shoulders and say that they will have to wear the added financial burden of filtering through every request to be connected to a web-site (he really should be sent to the ‘special’ area of Parliament where they seat the clinically insane Members until they can be removed via a by-election if he does).

I think I should probably start  looking for some proxy service or VPN so my connection to the free world won’t be filtered, or if they do want to filter it they had better have some form of a court order that permits them such an action.

The internet isn’t another TV station, it isn’t an alternative to a cinema, it’s more than that, it’s as valid a medium of communication as the postal service or a telephone company, we won’t be seeing this dirt-bag trying to open every letter or eavesdrop on all phone calls ‘to protect the kiddies’ so why apply different standards to the internet ?

When he loses the next election I hope that the current Prime Minister is happy that he has provided a new Tory Government with quite a powerful tool to filter out any ALP material – however inadvertantly, and with an assurance that their web-sites and tedious blogs will be ‘restored as soon as possible’ which will probably mean the week after the polls have been declared and they have lost another election.

Some democracy