Weird going back to work after a three-day weekend, and not enough sleep last night. Me and my big mouth!

Achievements today:

• got the community councillors into the palm (swiftly followed by an hour repairing the ravages of two failed synchronisations with my work mac)
• sorted the backlist and frontlist schedules
• ate jackfruit curry
• spent almost no money
• had a reasonable IM conversation with Julia
• installed Norton on the 2300 and sorted both HDs
• er, that’s it really

What needs done tomorrow?

• chase up where tow books due today have got to
• post letter to customs/ParcelFarce telling them what they can do with the £190 customs charge
• get working on 15 imprint and title pages.

Somehow I think I could be making better use of the time…

Thanks to and for alerting me to a CV or GWB’s utter eviltude and disregardance of even the most basic rules for a corrupt leader, namely ‘don’t get caught!’

The 9/11 Commission’s final report is tonight’s bedtime reading….

I spent the morning installing OSes and software on the 2300c – if Celia can use it, it’ll go to her on long-term loan.

This afternoon Baz directed production of labels for 3 forthcoming Deep Freeze records. Their most recent release was Radio One Dance Tune of the Week!

Now time to tell the parents…

a gender-free pronoun which also describes homo sapiens: thank you

THE ULTIMATE SILENCE
October 12, 1998

Six years ago today, Matthew Shepard was murdered for being homosexual.

What will you do to end the silence?

Click here to post this on your own page or weblog

Work seems to be under control.

• The AH English question paper is being proofed and the answers proof is approved.
• Pete has nearly cracked suggesting which 200o to 2003 answers to base the 2004 H PE answers.
• The Standard Grade PE reprint is at press.
• All my other reprints are scheduled and about to be progressed.
• I even had time to start trying to resurrect the G4 dual processor 1 GHz mac that has been languishing for ages. I still haven’t been able to get a replacement HD for it so am cramming OSX (10·2·8/Jaguar) and OS9·2·2 into only 6GB. I haven’t even put any apps on yet! However, I won’t bother with that until we have more software licenses and I know who’s going to use it, so I just need to fix the permissions and get USB woirking under OS9·2·2.

Community Council planning meeting went OK and I’ve already typed up and emailed the minutes. I have one objection to write, then no more CC until 26th October.

I’ve also emailed about Celia’s condition to her MSP. In the meantime I’ve bought her some pencils with rubber grips so she can try to write more easily. I’ve also bought her a clipboard so she can hold reading or writing material more easily.

Tomorrow is likely to be full of meetings:

• 0900: individual production meeting with Pete-colleague about his two projects
• 0930: meet with John: we hope to approve final files for covers for 4 reprints that John kicked off while I was in pastpaper-land
• 1000: finish install of G4_1GHz (set OSX folder permissions, try to beg a new hard disk out of Chiswick)
• 1015: individual production meeting with Andi about her two projects
• 1130: managers meeting
• 1230: lunch – try to chase up someone I need to hear from
• 1430: full production meeting and teleconference with Chiswick (to go over any items not resolved in individual production meetings, confirm delivery dates and check schedules for the 19 reprints I’m doing)

I’m likely to end up having to do minutes for the full production meeting and managers’ meeting.

Now waiting for fink to finish installing mySQL and then time for bed!

I finally got Eudora’s ‘quick recipient’ feature to only show each nickname once and to not show defunct nicknames. Much less tedious and un-necessary scrolling.

Well, the first bit of good news is that the new router is up and running with OS9·1, Jaguar and Panther. In fact, I installed Panther and found it had recognised the router, configured itself and enabled internet connectivity from blastoff. I have a slight quibble that the G4 was connected before I’d invoked the software firewall but since the router is doing SPI and NAT, I’m not really bothered.

Installing Panther only took an evening, rather than OS9’s all-day affair, mainly because I have a shed-load of OS9·1 software to install and configure thereafter. However, the copy of OS9·1 used for OSX’s classic environment and the related software were now all pre-installed on a separate partition (and I still have a full install of OS9·1 et al on a separate HD should I need pure OS9·1 – which I do for scanning). Must buy a scanner with OSX drivers one of these days

For Panther, I only had to

• install the OS
• set system preferences
• install the graphics tablet
• install, live-update and configure Norton SystemWorks
• install Adobe Creative Suite
• install software for and synchronise with the palm (Julia, this was probably the best birthday present ever)
• install and configure backup software (SilverKeeper – one of these I’ll grow up into a Retrospect user)
• install and configure Eudora
• update disk permissions

Joy of joys! I replaced the mac’s DVD-ROM with a DVD-RW (thanks Pete for holding my hand during the firmware episode) a while back and so had a ‘spare’ DVD-ROM. I bought an ATA 5·5/3·25 inch enclosure on eBay but it didn’t seem to work with the DVD-ROM under Jaguar. (It worked fine with ATA HDs.) The enclosure/DVD-ROM combination now works fine under Panther.

So the remaining tasks are

• work out how to copy DVDs
• check permissions once more
• find out why my product key for Application Switcher Menu hasn’t arrived. (ASM reintroduces the application menu in the right of the menu bar – I had sorely missed it.) HAH – email with product key has just arrived (happy bruce). They must have known I was blogging them (paranoia – HOW DID THEY KNOW?)
• install and configure modems for the blackbird and 2300c
• sell the old ADSL modem on eBay

What else? Well, Panther seems a little faster than Jaguar and a bit more organised. On the con side, Safari now has a “download this link as…” feature, so you now have to alt-click, drag, then click . (Under Jaguar’s “donload link”, you just had to alt-click and drag.) The router so far has been easy and simple – and I’ve switched off the wireless component until I get a wireless laptop (roll on January – meanwhile I still have an ethernet cable running into the bedroom).

What a change from Wednesday, where I tried to install Panther and do other things at the same time. Leaving Panther to its own devices lead to 3 kernel panics and temporary loss of Jaguar. I then watched a movie someone had recommended. Even though they described what they like about the film, I recall no signs of it – or of anything else to commend this movie – and won’t be watching any more in the series.

However this does remind me of a bit of good news. My ScreenSelect account is active. Lotsa good movies coming my way for only £15 per month.

This afternoon, Jane Ann and I watched the opening of the Scottish Parliament. I had to leave the room while Eddi Reader sang but Mrs Queen could be seen to smile from time to time and Liz Lochead read a poem that really worked on me… Maybe I do have a soul after all.

Right then, time to bathe, gird my loins and go to meet the outside world.

The Political Compass

It turns out I am “Economic Left/Right: -6.38, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.31”: very like the positions of UK Green Party and Ralph Nader but diametrically opposed to George W Bush – thank goodness! There was me thinking I might be a raving fascist after all!

I’d recommend you take the quiz – it’s a real eye-opener!

3

From Private Eye (issue 1116), who quoted a piece in the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 8·7·07

“We’re all used to the ABC wasting taxpayer’s money but this is outrageous,” a spokesman for Australia’s Federal Government told reporters in Canberra, “and more than that, it’s thoroughly distasteful. A few weeks ago, our national broadcaster was pleading poverty as an excuse for axing their children’s news programme. Yet now it seems they have enough money to pay a scientist to teach kids how to break wind more effectively.”

Despite government protests, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki defended his research which is being broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “The average fart is a joyous event,” he informed the audience of his children’s science show, “yet they’re so embarrassing that we don’t even have a good word for them, just a cold technical term like ‘flatus’ or a lot of euphemisms like cutting the cheese or letting one fly. But they’re only possible at all thanks to the magnificent job that your wondrous anal sphincter performs about ten time each day without fail, releasing gas without letting any liquid or solid pass through. No other muscle in the body is such a protector of the dignity of man, yet so ready to come to his relief, and I doubt whether any device made by the human race could equal this task, let alone keep doing it for seventy years. It’s a miracle.”

Dr Kruszelnicki has particularly angered ministers by encouraging children to take part in his “Great Fart Survey, and Great Baked Beans Fart Experiment. We want to know what are the farts of Australia’s kids really like? Are we a nation of ‘silent but deadlies’, or ‘machine gunners’? And how much do baked beans really increase your farting ability?”

Finally rejoined the Vegan Society. Of course, this was so I’d be able to receive discounts on vegan accommodation. I really want to escape the tepid and pathetic puddle of turgid slime my life has currently become, to try to being to look to the future with more than self-disgust and approbation and to forget about all things Leck for a while. I have 15 days of holiday to take between now and 24th October (and am owed about 5 more in overtime). However, I have about £100 I can safely spend – including travel – so I think I’m SOL!

Also, the flat is almost tidy. I think I have about 90 minutes more to do on it then I can relax…