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I don’t develop on Windows any more.

Last time I used VS it ate the machine and installed a ton of services running SQL Server and other .Net stuff without even asking or explaining what it was doing. It’s just a fancy editor with a ton of macros built in that integrates with these services once you’ve understood how to use it. So what?

On Linux gedit is fully customisable with little bits of python code (most of which you can get from elsewhere so you don’t have to write them yourself). One of my colleagues has managed to get it looking like his beloved TextMate. Emacs runs on all platforms including windows and is more customisable than any other editor I’ve ever used (but you need to buy the O’Reilly book to get anywhere with it IMO).

I dunno, VS is heavy, slow and invasive, as is Windows. Mind you, so are most of the Java platforms too – but they don’t install a load of crap that slow your boot down even more …

I installed Wubi so I can switch back to Windows if I have to, but very rarely do. The machine looked like it needed to be upgraded because it was so slow. It’s like I’ve got a new machine. So why would I run windows and VS?

I’m in the middle of moving my blog to francisfish.com. I’ve been looking for a Rails-based solution and decided on typepad.

I’ve bee variously ill or stressed for most of the last month which was’t a lot of fun. Made some really silly and expensive mistakes at work that did’t help either. Nothing I can do about that now.

We’re off to the Redemption con this weekend which I am really looking forward to. R is trying to raise £2000 so that Deb can go on a guide-sponsored trip to Eastern Siberia to teach English and help run a summer camp. R is doing a “slot” and having a stall at the zocalo fair.

The new blog site will also feature my novel Archive Fragments. I’m going to set up a way of remixing it using random numbers, plus add your own content. To that end I’ve decided to release it under the CC non commercial licence. I’ve been reading Corey Doctrow’s Content and understand his arguments. Still confused about copyright – I need to think about it some more.

Still getting the site together – so I thought I’d post here to prove I have’t died.

I already put this on the forum, but here it is. Useful if you want to work out how to make other console programs run properly from cygwin. Note that is uses Bash shell arrays:

 #!/bin/bash

args=(“$&quot;)<br /><br />for (( i = 0 ; i &lt; ${#args[]} ; i++ ))
do
    x=”${args[$i]}”
    x=”${x///cygdrive/c/c:}”
    x=”${x////\}”
    new_args[$i]=”$x”
    echo “${args[$i]} -> ${new_args[$i]}”
done

#echo “/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Prince/Engine/bin/prince.exe” “${new_args]}&quot; 1&gt;&amp;2<br />&quot;/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Prince/Engine/bin/prince.exe&quot; &quot;${new_args[}”

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After WW II there was a specific ban on people joining or organising fascist groups, for obvious reasons. AFAIK this ban has’t been appealed for public servants and it is a serious issue for them, I think you sign a piece of paper saying that you will not join such an organisation when you take up employment – you certainly used to in the olden days.

A lot of the anti-nazi types used to try and use this law to stop NF/BNP/et al from organising or speaking in public, but of course the slightly calmer view was that these idiots should be allowed to speak because it becomes very obvious that their opinions are valueless when they open their mouths.

I’d rather have an open debate with these folk than allow them the veneer of respectability a ban gives them. There’s an old quote “I disagree with what you say, but I would die in order protect your right to say it” (wording may not be right). I agree with this view, personally, and it is the exact opposite of what many NuLabur and BNP people believe – in fact, don’t forget, Oswald Mosely (pre-war British fascist leader) came out of the Labour party.

I honestly did’t know Wacky Jaqui was in any political party of note – she certainly acts like no-one else in the universe exists and would doubtless be very keen to ban any speech she does’t like. Be careful what you wish for, it might come true. There’s a sad example of a big campaign against porn somewhere in the antipodes in the 80’s where the first thing the cops did when the law was introduced was raid the left-wing book shops and confiscate all of the literature aimed at lesbian and gay people – be VERY careful what you wish for, they might take it down as evidence and use it against you.

http://www.wisdom-books.com/ProductDetail.asp?PID=6370

Buy lots and sneak around car parks sticking them on bumpers, particularly beemers and mercs (heh)

You know you want to

But of course I can’t condone lawless behaviour

WARNING: Rails techie stuff

if you keep seeing this

 NoMethodError (undefined method `[]’ for :update:Symbol):
    /vendor/plugins/princely/lib/pdf_helper.rb:11:in `render’
 

when your controller is doing this:

render :update do
…
end

It’s because of a bug in the Princely plugin when it wraps the standard render method. I have emailed the maintainer (the bug tracker is broken and I did mention it in the email too) but he never bothered to reply. For the record you need to tinker with your plugin code:

Go to the offending line (11) in the plugin code (as per the error message) and change it to

     if options.nil? or ( not options.is_a? Hash ) or options[:pdf].nil?

This stops it assuming that the options is necessarily a Hash and getting upset. Probably a more elegant solution out there in Ruby land but it works for me.

I’ve been ridiculously busy and ill for most of the last month.

Had a week off work with a migraine-giving virus that still has its claws in me.

Lots of things going on and ideas bubbling.

Currently looking at an essay on Buddhism and Depression from the inside, I was making comments on a site and had my comments pulled two or three times so decided I was’t going to bother trying to help people there any more. I will create a platform where I can share my own experiences and hopefully help others without being censored.

I also think that someone who has taken the prescription drugs may have things to say that others can’t see from the outside.

Other stuff in the pot is a site to learn the Tibetan alphabet and another essay on Buddhism and Science (half wrote the introduction a while ago).

I’m trying to clear the decks and finish the beta Pharmarketeer site – it’s not far off, I just need to rekindle my enthusiasm long enough.

Got myself a Jesus Phone (iPhone to those who have’t read the sarky articles). I quite like it but the mail client is awful and wo’t display conversation threads like gmail does, so you keep reading the same mail over and over again – very annoying if you  are a member of a discussion group. It also wo’t go to wide mode when you turn the device. I got round this by loading the free Google application and using Safari to save the gmail bookmark it creates onto the desktop. Now I read my mail using that bookmark, Google have kindly set it up to work well on an iPhone and it will go wide.

Other things I have discovered is the free Stanza app, that lets you read e-books and will download them from various free sites. Almost all the way through the whole Oz series (as in the Wizard of Oz etc.). There are about 12 of them. 

Trying to learn Tibetan again, 3rd time lucky, maybe. Went to a class at Kagyu Ling last Saturday. It’s fun and mentally stretching without being work. So I think I will stick with it now. Interestingly they’ve kept the spellings from when the writing system was invented, so a lot of words are spelt with, say, g’s but pronounced with d’s. Plus the usual slurring and removal of s’s over time as happens with all spoken languages. Quite a few letters sound the same to a European ear – interesting and useful for my Dharma studies. This is like English-speaking people keeping spellings from Chaucer.

It was also my 49th Birthday last month – not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.

I’ve also been listening to a lot of podcasts – really recommend those by the Venerable Robina Courtin – several hours of explanation of some basic Buddhist ideas in her own inimitable style. She is’t in the same Tibetan school as me, but really knows her stuff. Have a hunt on iTunes for them.

Better get back to living a life!

Blessings to all.

Meditation is strange and powerful medicine. I recently had an experience where I was confronted by memories and experiences from a long time ago. Not anything specific, just memories of pain and discomfort from when I was a kid. It kept me awake all night.

Strange thing now, is that I don’t seem to have any fear. I mean, I would’t drive my car into someone or get myself killed. Not even put myself in the way of things – that would be stupid. But I just have’t got that fear of dying I used to have. I don’t feel like nothing can touch me, but just that whatever does I can handle it and get past it. A feeling of great calm.

We all have defilements in our minds that make us see things wrongly. They are usually translated as fear, anger and craving (actually there are a lot more based on combinations of them). You tend to have one defilement that appears to be the one you have to deal with and that’s what you work with first. In my case I thought it was anger. I work on this all the time. But in fact it is fear. Fear has ruled my life until now. In fact the anger is a way of coping with the fear by pushing things away. Now the fear has gone. I don’t know if this will last, but it is a good feeling.

Still have further to go than I can even imagine.

Because you’re worth it

Just fuck off Loreal!! Right now!! This should really read: You’re such a loser that the only thing you can do to make yourself feel better is slap some expensive stuff on your hair. Every time I hear this advert I feel insulted, I feel it belittles people. Sick of that Latin American lass with the nice bum telling me I’m worth it. I’m a bloke and my hair is getting thinner by the day. Go away. And you are’t worth it – you are better than it, much better!!! It’s worthless, just some stuff to make your hair and skin look nice.

I think I’ve been watching too much Channel 5.

Anti ageing creams

These do work, in fact the technology comes from some stuff that was created to help wounds heal more quickly would you believe. But I’m tired of worn-out actresses with too much foundation on in direct bright lights pretending they have no wrinkles at all shouting “I love you” into phones and running badly across cheesy film sets. Oh, yeah, and the the one where the very attractive dark haired woman plays with rubber balls while pretending to be too stupid to understand what the too-clever male voice is saying – why did this actress let these jokers belittle her sex like that? Money probably.

All of the smelly clothes stuff

Simpering women sniffing their clothes as they walk through streets – what do diamonds smell like anyway? 

The one where the woman books herself into a hotel and rolls around in her own clothes – weirdo.

The animated Bold ads – I just want my clothes to smell clean. And I hate the grinning animated figures – the look drugged out of their minds on something – your life is complete and happy if you stink of our weird chemicals that make you act like you’re about to orgasm – go away!! Don’t think so!!

Concentrated washing stuff

I’ve been a distributor for a well-known multi-level marketing company for years. Our stuff was always concentrated and has been for ever. It’s nice that you idiots have realised what damage you were doing to the environment but so what?

It does as much as a bottle that’s twice it’s size. Pardon? Not if the other bottle’s got the same stuff in it. Gibberish, unless it does exactly nothing.

The shampoo that’s got cashmere in it

Cashmere comes from shaving a goat; it’s used to make wool. How can it possibly be in a shampoo? What part of the goat is in it? Does it make you smell like a goat, or maybe its urine? Just another advertising lie. Stop it.

There’s more but that’s my top few.

Had a guy from years ago ask to connect with me on Linked In.

Thing is, he played practical jokes on me and doctored the screen of the person sitting next to me (who was an employee of the company we were working with, the bully and I were consultants). The screen had a “brown eye” on it. Put it this way, we’ve all got at least one brown eye even if our eyes are blue. The military in the UK have the term “brown eyed boy”, this means someone who curries favour. I leave you to work out what it means. The guy who sat next to me probably thought it was me doing this, and if he had complained it could have got us all sacked with no references – quite rightly. I regret to this day I never stood up to this bully and his little clique of giggling nitwits. I have no idea what this very quiet spoken decent guy had done to the bully to make him do this thing. I suspect nothing other than look like the kind of person who would’t complain – that’s all these idiots need.

I did’t want to link with him, as you can imagine. I pointed out all the things above and said if he had grown up then great, but I was’t sure I could be bothered finding out. He sent me a mail saying “other people” had said he should’t bother with me, I replied that if these other people were his little gang I could’t care less.

This is one of the problems with the all-male IT gang, there is sometimes bullying in large projects and it needs to be stepped on hard. This guy is one of the milder ones from this time, at least one other once squared up to me because I’d dared to change his (not correct) design while he was on holiday. Seriously sad. Nearly asked him to put his bits away.

I am not so naive these days.