I meant to write a
I meant to write a bunch of things for the site this evening, but I've been in serious chill mode, so all I've done is mark-up a review I've done of a very cool comic I'm reading at the moment called Out There, which is linked left. And I'm still listening to Ben Folds. I hope the neighbours like it too 
Tales from the ‘crypt… First
Tales from the 'crypt... First off, I should apologise for linking to the Washington Post article which falsely claimed that Phil Zimmermann regretted developing PGP - crap reportage at its pinnacle. Secondly - I keep hearing one politician after another railing against both encryption itself and those who object to its being demonised in the name of 'civil liberties'.
Let's look at this realistically: Assuming PGP or a similar encryption technology was indeed used to plan the events of September 11th, what would outlawing it or 'regulating' it have achieved? Well, in the first instance, prohibition never works, because too many people are too willing to profit from any black market they can get into, so the only people to suffer would be those of us who might want to encrypt our communications because they're private and personal, and not the people who plan terror and murder. Plus, "necessity is the mother of invention" is a proverb for a reason - because it's true - someone unscrupulous enough not to report what they'd developed would just create a new encryption technology, or lo-tech would re-arise, as it actually already has; not for nothing does the Al-Qaida organisation use messengers with physical messages to carry communications.
And 'regulation' won't catch the bad guys anyway - suppose everyone was legally required to hand over their private keys against the day that the government might decide it needed to check out their email. What conceivable reason would potential terrorists have to hand theirs over? So once again, the law-abiding would hand over their liberties, while the bad guys blithely carried on sending their encrypted instructions to kill, maim, and terrorise.
How this fairly obvious and logical reasoning isn't able to make it into the thick skulls of the politicos I can't fathom. Unless of course, they don't want to understand it, because it wouldn't give them an opportunity to curtail all of our liberties of course......
Who, me? Cynical?
Sunday evening R&R Sitting with
Sunday evening R&R Sitting with a glass of wine, Dillon on my lap (casually flexing her claws into my groin every now and then (*wince*)),surfing some blogs, and listening to the new Ben Folds album Rockin' The Suburbs, which is absolutely brilliant. Difficult to pick out a favourite track, though The Ascent of Stan ("once you wanted revolution//Now you're the institution.") comes quite high on the list, as does the title track ("i'm rockin' the suburbs//just like Micheal Jackson did.//i'm rockin' the suburbs//except that he was talented."). It's all good stuff though. Highly recommended.
Right, yet another minor fiddle
Right, yet another minor fiddle with the look and feel of this place. (Very minor - font and font sizes, and losing the gifs for the headers, as some people thought they were difficult to read). I've got a few thoughts about rationalising some of the stuff over on the left, which I'll do one of these days.
I’m delighted to be listed
I'm delighted to be listed as a Blog of Note by Lisa-Jane. Now, if I return the favour, is that making one of us a linkslut? (Last linkslut reference, promise.)
Courtesy of Lisa-Jane: What's Your Theme Song? (Beware of the pop-under). Mine is I Feel Good, apparently:
"Owwww! Nothing gets you going like an all-out, full force, soul-meets-jaguar, call of the wild. You've got natural soul that comes out in the closed-eye, full-grinned, screeches that James Brown made famous in this song. You don't even need music playing to feel the beat. You were probably voted most friendly, best dancer, or most likely to get this party started, because you do feel good. So good, so good, you can even bring a smile to the grouchy DMV lady's face. Like the syncopated beat of your theme song, you add just the right punch to any conversation. Your friends love the up-beat you bring to their down-beat, and your dates are never short of sugar and spice. Whether you are in the middle of an important meeting or stuck in traffic, the King of Soul's "I Feel Good" takes you through the toll bridge and towards the open road to your next event. Owwww!"
The countdown to the first sarky comment (probably from Mike) starts now.....
Okay – how convoluted can
Okay - how convoluted can we make this? Dave posted some photographs that were taken by Barnaby in the images section of his (Dave's) Blog. Chris has now drawn Dave's attention to the fact that Russ, whose Blog is here, has seen them, and had, er, a positive reaction to them...
At some obscure hour of
At some obscure hour of the night last night, I wrote the following, but was having problems connecting to Blogger to post it. Part one of a series, I suspect:
Sometimes the middle of the night seems like a time of bleary misery, and others, one of great clarity. Tonight feels like the latter.
I've been sitting here for the last hour reflecting on this huge nostalgia-kick I've been on for the last couple of months and where it comes from, and what I can get out of it. I'm not sure I have answers, but I think I do have more questions.
Firstly - what has triggered it all? Partly I think it's to do with a couple of people from my past having reappeared in my life, which inevitably has triggered thoughts of the specific memories I associate with them - mostly the happy ones - unavoidably some no so happy. Pulling those individuals and their connected incidents out of the tangled mess of memory is both a rewarding and enjoyable experience, but it only goes some way towards explaining the overall range of reflection and nostalgia I've been experiencing.
I think that what's happened is the culmination of a few years of build-up to a point where the dam bursts and the memories come crashing down. In the last few years, I've had many conversations with people (Chris especially, but others too) about the impact of my childhood experiences on who I am now, and whether I should deal with some of the issues relating to those experiences with a view to improving on the person now. So now I'm up to my eyes in thoughts about home, school, family, the things I did, the things I felt. And it's literally a flood - I can be dragged along by a current of school memories and then suddenly get hit in the back of the head by a passing piece of family-angst flotsam. It's very disconcerting, and not a little disturbing.
It's also a little annoying, because I don't have much opportunity to discuss it properly with anyone who shared in it all. The family-angst stuff threatens to create an entirely new generation if not addressed with ferocious delicacy, most of the school-memory people I haven't spoken to in 20-plus years, and even an entire years-long swath of early adult relationships stopped dead a few years ago for various reasons; (and the bolshy bugger in me won't let me go running back after those involved, even if I wanted to, which I don't think I do).
So, as I'm stuck in the nostalgia-flood, at least for the time being, how do I make sure I get something constructive out of it. Learning from the past so as not to repeat it is a valuable starting point, but it's all very simplistic. Don't we really need to learn from the past because if we don't, it was just wasted time? It seems that the aim to take out of this period of involuntary recollection is to work out what I *did* learn from my past.
So what's that?
Probably best left for another day........
Today, I boughht an iMac
Today, I boughht an iMac - not the sort of thing I do every day, admittedly, but a change is as good as a rest.
I feel as though there are a bunch of things I want to blog, but just at the moment I can't think what any of them are...... I'm very tired, which probably isn't helping.
Maybe tomorrow.
What an odd day -
What an odd day - feels like one day made up of several smaller ones that had no direct relation to each other.
This morning we had our photographs taken - you'll see why shortly.
Lunchtime I met up with Trudi for the first time in 19 years, Apparently (despite the advanced baldness and the beard) I look exactly like I did at 16, which as I pointed out may be the most depressing thing I've heard all week. We had a general gossip about the old hometown, people from school, and the way things were, but also a fair bit about life, the universe and everything as it is at the moment, which was very nice. We sat on the balcony of Tate Modern, overlooking the Thames, which was very pleasant indeed.
The I had to catch a train to Milton Keynes to see our accountant (Virgin Trains - 'nuff said).
And this evening I've been having dinner with Sarah, who lives about ten minutes from me, and who I see once in a blue moon, which is just plain daft. We had a good evening, doing a lot of reflecting on our respective school days (nostalgia being contagious) and also, inevitably, discussing recent events in New York, where we both have friends and workmates (or former workmates in my case).