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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
vashti's InsaneJournal:
- Indexes for the outbound services from where we live:
49- An updated list of bus times, like on the bus shelters: 49 50
- The really cool bit: a constantly updated map of Cardiff with all the buses in service marked as they move around. Watching all the little buses move around is like reality TV, but purer.
Here's the one for the City Centre, where buses are abundant.
If you want to play with this, Cardiff's buses are all knocking off now. Try in the morning. - An updated list of bus times, like on the bus shelters: 49 50
| Friday, March 7th, 2008 | |
| 4:23 pm | I want to move to... ...the Isle of Man. BBC News: Graffiti vandals sought by police. Apparently the big story of the day is that some kids "tagged" a school wall with their handles. Do you people have no crime at all?! |
| Thursday, February 28th, 2008 | |
| 3:21 pm | WoW angst: my first raid Last night I went to Karazhan for the first time. ( Angst enclosed, you have been warned ) |
| Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | |
| 5:38 am | Mainstream Political Post: Saddam never bluffed that he had WMD Yes, Virginia, occasionally I still dip into the murky yet soul-destroying waters of Real Politics. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archiv When it became clear in summer 2003 that Iraq had nothing, the Bush administration, the CIA and their flunkies were anxious to find ways to exculpate themselves. They came up with a bunch of different, often contradictory storylines. For instance: • Saddam didn't have anything, but was going to restart his WMD programs the second our backs were turned • Saddam was deceived by his underlings into thinking he had WMD • Saddam pretended to have WMD in order to bluff regime outsiders • Saddam pretended to have WMD because he liked everyone to look at him as leader of the Arabs If you glance at the various government reports on Iraq, you'll see they all assert that one or more of these theories is correct. But if you actually read them carefully, you see the evidence they provide for their assertions is weak to nonexistent. In fact, they bear an uncanny resemblance to the pre-war case that Iraq had WMD. [More] |
| Monday, December 31st, 2007 | |
| 12:37 pm | Wikipedia rant This is an example of why Wikipedia is terminally up its own arse: The Llama Song has not only had its article deleted, but it's been protected so that it can't be recreated. I disagree with this; I think the Llama Song is a reasonably notable Internet meme, which was why I collated some newspaper references and put them on the talk page. Now people have been systematically deleting the talk page as well. So the references I came up with are gone, forever. I am pissed off. "the sum of all human knowledge"? Yeah, right. |
| Sunday, December 30th, 2007 | |
| 1:45 pm | Well, I be gumswozzled I'm not commenting overmuch on the Bhutto assassination, but couldn't help noticing today's news that the election is being postponed by the ruling party. Gosh, who didn't see that coming? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller..? |
| Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 | |
| 2:28 pm | do they know it's christmas? Overnight, the cats have stolen two pairs of knickers from the laundry basket and piled them up beneath Matt's chair, where he found them this morning. Happy winter thing, one and all. |
| Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 | |
| 11:34 pm | "Questionnaire", by Wendell Berry 1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. 2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred. 3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy. 4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without. 5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill. |
| Monday, December 17th, 2007 | |
| 12:00 pm | How did I miss this? Catching up on old news. "The world's 1st and only anti-rape condom" This is a device that is claimed to work a bit like YT's dentata from Snow Crash - upon penetration, the man's penis is stabbed with lots of tiny needles that have to be surgically removed. But it's not gone unopposed: S Africa 'rape trap' condemned. "This is a medieval instrument, based on male-hating notions and fundamentally misunderstands the nature of rape and violence against women in this society," said Charlene Smith, one of South Africa's most prominent campaigners against rape. For "one of South Africa's most prominent campaigners against rape", she sure comes across as a woman-hating rape apologist. But then, I'm on record as thinking it would be a better world if women had the legal right and ability to kill anyone who tried to rape them - if the law won't protect us, we have to protect ourselves. If someone tries to rape me, I don't care if they go away from it dead or mutilated, thanks very much. I do, in fact, hate them. I hate what they'd have tried to do to me and what people like them have done to all women in this culture - the looking behind you, the not going out after dark alone, the constant fear, the knowledge that if it happens to you, you'll have next to no legal redress and most people will think it was your fault. Charlene, you live in South Africa, which has some of the highest rates of rape in the world. How can you be opposed to women having the right to defend themselves? If she could come up with an anal variant, it'd be *perfect*. Well, "perfect" assuming that every rapist didn't meet a torturous, brutal, bloody death at the hands of his victim. |
| Friday, December 7th, 2007 | |
| 8:38 am | the morning after So I was lying in bed last night listening to what sounded like a force 10 gale blowing around my tiny little block of flats, when I noticed little clouds scudding across the sky. "Hm," I said to myself, "I shouldn't be able to see that". So I had a bit more of a look and, indeed, stars were winking at me through the window. This morning it's dry, it's clear and the sky is blue, with buttery yellow winter light. Now if only it holds out ... |
| Thursday, December 6th, 2007 | |
| 10:50 pm | From my bed The wind outside is astounding. We'll be lucky if there's a yurt left tomorrow. |
| Friday, October 19th, 2007 | |
| 4:38 am | Fuck, fuck, fuck: Arctic sea ice Carbon Equity have released The Big Melt: Lessons from the Arctic summer of 2007. Summary: * The standard "safe" warming level of 2 C is much, much too high. * We lost as much Arctic ice between 2005 and 2007 as we lost between 1979 and 2005 (20% in two years, as opposed to 7% decade on decade).. James Hansen attributes this to us "hitting a tipping point that we have been warning about for the past few years". Oh, and with regard to the English legal system's attempted discrediting of An Inconvenient Truth, where it was claimed (amongst other things) that significant sea level rise was only going to take place over a millennium, Hansen also has this to say: ( excerpts (summary: we're so fucked) ) |
| Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 | |
| 6:46 am | Bringing Up Baby ( Image: ) |
| Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 | |
| 10:05 pm | Real-time bus updates on the web This is one of the coolest things ever. ACIS provide those little things that you see in bus stops sometimes, which are meant to tell you how close the nearest bus is. Cardiff Council have it all linked up on their website. |
| Friday, September 21st, 2007 | |
| 1:55 am | in which I demonstrate my mad computering skillz some more I love my scanner. I use it several times a week and I love it dearly. It's a big old letter-sized SCSI thing that I've had for ten years and works just as well as the day I got it (in Linux, no less). I haven't seen a modern scanner that can top it. Well. Except that, over the past year, the glass in it has been progressively bowing downwards as the double-sided sticky tape (I shit you not) with which they stuck it to the box gives way. This has been bugging me for a while and interfering with my scanning joy, especially of late when I've had to stop at intervals to turn the case over so that the glass can weight itself back down. This evening I sat down and started randomly unscrewing things to see if I could persuade the box apart. At first I tried the two screws underneath, the ones holding the sockets and electronics into the case. Big mistake; those don't need to come out. Hmmn. No screws in evidence. Then I turned it over and lifted out the cover (the flap that goes up and down lifts away for easy scanning of bulky objects). Aha! Two big, easily removable screws underneath it. I undo them, then decide that, like a noob, I'm going to remove the base from the lid. Oh dear. That was a mistake. Gubbins everywhere. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. I panic a little, then notice that, behold, with a bit of a push forward the lid (containing the misbehaving glass) comes away in my hand. Woot. I rearrange the gubbins, put the lid back on and do a panicky impromptu scan to see how badly I buggered it up. Apparently not at all; it still works. Good good. Good. Ahem. I've had superglue on my shopping list for a while to fix said glass panel. In the hardware store a couple of days ago, we went to buy some. Except that super glue bonds everything up to and not including ... glass. Arsebiscuits. Bugger. I'm forcibly reminded of my glass crystal earrings, which had a crystal prism attached to a post, and continually popped off the post despite being repaired with superglue a lot. My mother never read the labels on things, which is why she did things like decorating the kitchen with flying curry and shards from an exploding pyrex pan, went to sleep in a burning bed which she had personally set on fire, and thought that taping an electrical cable to another one, plugging it in, draping it across the floor, then mopping the floor was a really clever thing to do. In at least three ways, I am nothing like her. An alternative was available which would bond both plastic and glass, but that came in two tubes and needed to be mixed and applied with a spatula and I just completely lost my nerve. I fear glue. I can't help thinking that it's a really bad idea. So I was looking at the lid and the glass, and thinking "It's a shame I don't have a metal or plastic strip that would fit in there and attach with screws. Why, look, there are even convenient attachment points for screws to bore through on the underside of the lid, a convenient and well-balanced point from the glass". And I looked, and looked some more, and thought about it. And noticed that there was a 12-inch plastic ruler in one of my jars of pens[1]. Which I never use, or certainly not as often as I use my scanner. I pick it up. I slot it into the far end of the scanner lid. It fits perfectly. Snug against the three sides of the lid, and overlapping the glass by a centimetre or more. And even conveniently bevelled where there's a risk that it's going to foul up the scanner head. Perfect! Well, perfect except for the ruler not having holes where I need there to be holes. I try to screw the nails through the ruler; they laugh at me. I don't think my drill will work on this. And I don't have an awl. But I am not to be defeated; I pick up my nail scissors (always handy), mark the spots I need holes, and just keep on going. It's third-year geography all over again as I mutilate the poor, innocent ruler with whatever is closest to hand. Ten minutes later, two nice small boreholes have appeared (coff) through the ruler, right over the guideholes for whatever Umax wanted to screw in there, but didn't. I make sure that I'm not going to come into contact with the glass and then have a go at screwing the ruler to the plastic lid. CRACK. Nothing doing: the holes aren't wide enough and the plastic of the ruler won't force through; it cracks. I make the holes wider and try again. Perfect. The screws just keep on going through the plastic scanner lid and fasten the ruler firmly, very firmly, to the lid. They sit against each other with the glass in between them, and the two screws holding it all together. Admittedly, there are two one-inch steel points poking upwards from the surface of the thing, but other than that, what's the harm? I probably ought to get a hacksaw and take them off. Soon. Very soon. Although it isn't like the lid doesn't cover them. [1] I have one jar of writing pens, scissors, rulers and the like, and another jar of coloured felt-tip pens on my desk. Because real women write documents in at least fifteen colours. Current Mood: accomplished |
| Thursday, September 20th, 2007 | |
| 2:44 am | dhcp woe and madness I thought I was going to need more cable and another switch, but after approximately five hours of woe involving at least five machines on the network, tcpdump, subnetting, dummy devices, shouting at the router screaming "10.1.1.0 is not an invalid address to route to, you bitch", running out of trademarked caffeinated beverages, the router and my laptop[1] deciding they like each others' IP addresses much better and randomly switching places, the network routing DHCP but not IP like a girl, turning off my Internet-facing firewall, ping, ping and more ping, working out subnet addresses in binary with notepad, watching "Brass Eye" and S4C, I have persuaded my network that it wants to serve our IP block to the wired-in machines from the wireless router and 10/8 to everyone else from the wi-fi-free Linux server. This is, of course, RIPE's fault for not giving me a /24 of my very own. And I did it all from the comfy sofa underneath blankies. It's almost like being me, ten years ago. [1] I have a laptop. Did I mention that I have a laptop? I have a laptop. It is shiny and silver and has a big wide screen and wi-fi and audio and a dvd rewriter, and (after another eight or so hours of work last night) it all works in Linux. I am fab. |
| Monday, September 17th, 2007 | |
| 6:12 pm | More Potter links ( spoilers ahoy ) In other news, I've done something to my back and can't do much more than lie on the sofa being a big potato. Hate, hate, hate, I say. |
| 1:03 am | More Deathly Hallows musings ( Spoilers! All your Harry Potter spoilers are belong to me! ) |
| Sunday, September 9th, 2007 | |
| 9:54 am | Do you recycle? If your local authority doesn't require you to separate your recyclables, you need to read this: Campaign for Real Recycling. |
| Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 | |
| 3:01 pm | butterfly This week I've seen two striking butterflies flying around - they had wings edged with white semicircles and big patches of bright red on the wings. I keep coming back to the red admiral, although it doesn't feel quite right. It wasn't a peacock. (http://www.britishbutterflies.co.uk/ Read a BBC HYS on climate change. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. |
| Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 | |
| 2:45 am | Sketching I've been doing a little bit of drawing of late. Click for the full size versions.    |