Nixta Sinks

I can't donate more money (well done Apple) to the Indian Ocean disaster but during a discussion with a session guitarist and motorcycle lunatic at the Musical Box the other night a seed was planted. He mentioned how he had some time and can do carpentry and masonry and wanted to buy himself a flight out there to help. It was an embryonic idea at the time, and one that of course should rather be channeled through some organisation to ensure that it's coordinated properly with other efforts, but a commendable idea. I felt that I couldn't offer anything like that, and it frustrated me no end.

Suddenly it struck me how stupid I'd been: I might be able to donate some skills in the arena of GIS. It might come to nothing, but GIS will (or should) be used throughout the recovery effort, and despite all my shortfalls, I do happen to know a little about it, and know a few others who do too.

I have contacted a couple of people, and have some others considering further options. If any of you GIS bods want me to put your names forward for volunteer work too, I'll gladly do so if I get any interest from my enquiries.

ESRI's home page has an e-mail address I have contacted. I have also contacted the editor of GIS Monitor. Lastly, Peter Batty is also on the case to think of others I can get in touch with.

I'll keep you posted as I hear stuff, particularly if there's some interest. I know Shiv has expressed some already.

On another note, I'm going to try to persuade the owner of Musical Box to match all tips from this evening with a donation to some charity for the relief effort (Dani's excellent idea). I've donated to the Red Cross. If anyone has better ideas, please let me know.

Chico's Gramophone

I ought to write something about the Musical Box, since it's pretty much (as The Sherman Foundation pointed out yesterday) my second home.

My history there began almost as soon as I got to New York, when He Who Must Not Be Named introduced me to a local dive that he'd found. That is to say, it appeared from the outside to be something of a dive. As a matter of fact it was completely unmarked. A curtained window, an inset door, and a garbage bin from under which a rat peered at me with what I took to be a ravenous look of contemplation (or contempt - it began with contemp though), and behind which graffitti covered corrugated steel shutters extended the height of the ground floor. To the left a Chinese take-out. To the right one of those brick walls that in war footage people are lined up against and shot - what looks like the side-wall to a warehouse. To add the final touch of flair, kids in baseballs caps trying to sell me coke, crack and weed.

So it was that with mild trepidation I stepped through the door into a blood red lounge packed with an eclectic crew of East Village likely lads, bright young things, fashionistas; rock'n'rollers and suits. At that time though, it was nothing more to me that another branch of New York's marvellous culture. Was it subculture? Was it culture? How could I tell? I had literally just moved in that day. He Who Must Not Be Named (HWMNBN) lived around the corner and, as if sent on a scouting mission from Denver a few months previously, had decided that I should visit the place. He was greeted from behind the bar as an old friend and we were ushered into the handshake of a young Irish jack-the-lad by the name of Damo. Damien Lumsden. Perfector of Chocolate Cake shots (invented I recently found out, by Tao). Illegal smugglee from Ireland by way of Canada. Best bartender I've seen, and with the scrawny looks of a car thieving rock star to boot and a penchant for fat chicks. Ah, little old Damo, how he and HWMNBN destroyed one-another over the next year and a bit, but what fun it must have been for them.

An evening of splendour was spent in the Musical Box at the hands of Damo. Delicious shots from Bertie Bott's, fine beers, and of course what the place is famous for, an excellent set of music...

Back then the bar was owned by two people: Johnny B, and Brendan. I know little about either of them of specific nature, and barely knew either of them despite the fact that I ought to pay them rent on occasion. Brendan had many friends in the music business. Johnny B owned other bars around town. Now, the stories and politics behind the bar, which the delightul effervescent effusive Kenny has managed all along, are beyond me to relate, and I'll probably not be objectively informed or balanced in relaying them. Suffice to say, the owners fell out about the same time Damo made an enemy of Johnny B and was disemployed, and the smoking ban came into effect in New York. This conspired to leave Johnny B the only owner, Damo on his way back to Ireland, and the bar largely empty: Many of the clientele had been invited by Brendan. In fact, it was Brendan who named the place, after an early Genesis song off Nursery Cryme, and interestingly it was apparently Tao's recognition of this fact from his massive musical knowledgebase that decided Brendan on hiring him.

The bar is doing well, but still recovering from the breakup etc.. We have got to know Tao since Damo left. With Damo there, Tao was the scary and mysterious "other" bartender we'd see from time to time. There was Jacqui, who left to open her own bar in Brooklyn, and a delightful fiery Spanish (I think) girl whose name I now forget. There was crazy-ass Gilad, and there's still the lovely Greta and we have Scotty (without whose influence I would not be reading the surprisingly good "Rambo: First Blood"). All of them made a great effort to make us feel at home, and with time we became great friends with Tao (taking a trip to Greece with him last summer). And of course there's Jimmy, the Toilet Nazi.

The bar is a core part of my life here in New York. It's with great pride that I take people there and introduce them to Kenny, Scott and of course Tao. I don't ask much from a bar. In fact, I'm very unadventurous, but for me The Musical Box hits the nail on the head (good music, plenty of booze, out of the way, picky clientele), although it's starting to get frequented by NYU students since NYU started housing them in this part of town, but I strive to make them feel uniquely unwelcome. They're students after all. They're here to learn, and it's surely best to teach them the harshness of life sooner rather than later, no?

And now they have a smoking area decorated by Chico.

Yes. Childish. Predictable. Boring. Etc. But still reasonably amusing for a couple of minutes.

I'm amazed that they don't have the very obvious Analize This. Oh well. Actually, it can be found here (via) but I'm not convinced that the original spelling really works as well, if at all.

At this festive time of the year people turn their minds to death and deprivation, despondently dismembering the year to rollick in a strained impersonation of Mr. I. Givadamn, claiming how much the people who passed on meant to them and what a shame it was that they died. So much to give... It wasn't their time... How unfair! Except Greg, who's post-Arafat spring is still very noticeably a part of his step. Good man. Too many would have feigned sympathy.

A few weeks back I accidentally found myself part of a drunken conversation about who had died this year, and although I proudly recalled a few that others had forgotten (Ronald Reagan, Marlon Brando, Peter Ustinov), I had forgotten many that others could recall. Why did I only remember actors? The beeb's list is right now supplemented by its very own front page. Don't forget the others though: ODB, "Fuck Legend" Rick James, Ray Charles. Still. They're American and black though so that's hardly important now, is it? To balance it out and at the same time spoil my accuastion on the spot, they also missed out Norris McWhirter and Alistair Cooke.

Curiously though, I was certain that two-year veteran of the grave, Joe Strummer, was on this year's list. Oh well. Time flies and all that. I am also glad that the beeb selected Julia Child for their short-list.

Who's on your Obituary wish list for 2005? Jonathan Ross? Martha Stewart (whose eye-opening time in prison seems to be a re-run of that lovable old fart Lord Archer's, if his book's to be believed - page after page I'm amazed by how surprised Archer was at things he experienced in prison, the poor poppet).

[ PS Why am I ignoring the horrific headlines at the moment? Because other people are doing a great job of covering it and providing useful links. It's appalling proof that no matter how much we fuck each other up, God's always got one up on us. I have donated as much as I can right now to the Red Cross (roll on payday), but I have nothing to say about it that will help. I'm not washing my hands of the responsibility of covering this - I had none in the first place. ]

In cleaning out my old Linkspoint.com e-mail from the comfort not only of my own home, but in fact from Outlook 2003 using the fact that Exchange's Outlook Web Access doubles as a WEBDAV server, I came across a Friendster invitation.

My normal process is to delete those things immediately, but I'm hungover and a little slow today and before I could press the Delete key, I noticed it was from Giles. Logging on for the hell of it I saw that you can now do things like narrow down the people who can contact you or see you and make sure random retards don't contact you all the time and add you as their "special" friends in the internet equivalent of a fucktard's herpes party. I also was intrigued to see how many of my friends were listed via the network. Only found a couple of new ones that I recognised.

Looking like a poet Lesson 1

I felt my profile was a little dated so I modified it, uploading some new photos as I went (thanks to Greg), and can now leave the bugger alone for the next 8 months happy in the knowledge that people may be freshly offended/disappointed by stumbling across me.

And the whole point of this? I started playing with their search facility and came up with the first good thing I've ever got from Friendster. I was reminded how much I enjoy Philip Larkin. Random search led me to some bird who wrote in her description section the first verse of a poem I didn't know, but which I recognised immediately. Turns out it's in my Larkin book. And reading the whole thing prompted me to revisit and recall the old bugger's work:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

I should make it clear that I still think Friendster is still totally crap.

Except that I have finally, after years of banging my head against a brick wall, figured out how to make the inline flowing picture library work on Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox. It's so simple, I can't imagine why I didn't figure it out before. Actually, I haven't tried it on anything other than IE6 and Firefox 1 for x86, but anyone else can shove it up their arses for now. It's a good enough slice of the browser market. [ Update: It also works on Safari and Firefox for the Mac, but not in IE5 that Dani has on her Powerbook - well, sod it, it's good enough ]

Non-nerds out there may think this is trifling news. It is.

Here are the sites that I remember to be using the code (which have been updated). Yeah, I should make it a GAC dll, but you freeloaders out there can all go fuck yourselves.

My picture library
Bazzalives
My stinking brother, Tom
Flangio

I just dun finished watchin' a filum on DVD. I like DVDs. Sometimes I watch them twice, because I can. This one I watched once. I have not watched it before and so it was very nice. The film was called Deer Hunter and I thought it was very good. There was lots of countryside, and there was some factories in it. They had fiery metal in them. I think they were making cars because when everyone went home after work they had to walk past all these cars. I don't think people are as noisy in real life as the people in the film and I thought that was not very realistic and sometimes they made America look a lot like a country full of foreign people, which I did not understand but which was quaint. It had the second Godfather in it, but I do not think he can act when he isn't doing a funny like Analyse This.

Dear Hunter,

Put me in mind of an observation I made not long ago. In Yugoslavia, which I visited frequently in my youth, if something was fantastic then it was referred to as "America!". If a new car was seen, or colourful magazines put on display, or if one watched a thrilling new film or a splendid speedboat cruising the coast, up went a roar of "Amerrrica!". Now, the word is as often as not accompanied by spitting. Ironic really that people who have now been exposed more freely to the benefits that America has spread (whether they wanted them or not, they envied them at the time), they now feel able to take them for granted and resent the baggage that comes with them. A shame how quickly we forget. Not that I agree with Road Rules, but I loved Road Runner.

Yours,

Nixta

The next film I watched before that was Return Of The King (distended erectors cut) which was nice. There were clouds and storms, but I did not like the big spider coz spiders scare me and although hobbits are small, that was one hell of a big spider. I once read the book.

I watched 15 minutes of Bad Taste before being told to turn it off, but the special effects were not quite as good as Return Of The King, despite the film being much older and having had much more time for them to make remakes and fix them all up and stuff. I don't think J.R. wrote that one though, but I haven't read the book. He has a nice hat though.

And horses.

Or was that Dynasty?

Finally, before that, I watched Bad Santa on the choo choo plane back from England. That was very funny coz santa kept having sex with fat chicks and they had a fat retarded kid in it. Actually, you can't ask for a better set of characters: Fat retarded kid, fucked up drunken Santa impersonator, black midget dwarf with his mail-order asian bride, Bernie Mac as a bad-ass mall security chief and John Ritter (RIP) as the lame-ass mall manager. So much ass. It's classic Tom Sharpe, come to think of it. The Sherman Foundation picked this movie up at Virgin just before I flew back to England and I had never heard of it (actually, he went for Badder Santa, the unrated uncircumcised version) which I must now borrow off him and hold to ransom for the DVD of mine he has locked up in a basement somewhere.

What have I been up to?

Many of you may well be internalising the very obvious question:

"Where is Nixta, and what has happened to his blog?"

Those of you that haven't, should be shot. Not at dawn. Not even, if we can possibly avoid it, shortly after making a run for it, but preferably in your sleep where you lay most comfortable and comforted, you mollycoddled mongrels!

Yeah, that's right, I know that none of you, not one, has wondered where I am. But I'll tell you anyway. I'm in London, that's where, and why? Because I need to make some money, that's why. Doing what? Who cares? Not you, but since you didn't ask, working for the same company I was working for before fixing up some software that was broken by ESRI when they released their second Service Pack. I'm very grateful to Angus McDougal for the opportunity to come over and fix up the problems. That in retrospect sounds sarcy, but it isn't - I've had a great deal of fun doing it, and of course have managed to visit my favourite sushi restaurant and to see Rufus, Rob, Lucille, Giles, Greg and Zoë and others.

I flew out at very short notice last Thursday with no hotel booked, surprised Rob at Home House, caught up with Rufus and ate revolting Japanese dried fish and smelt revolting Japanese Catfood Edamame, did some shopping, had a great christmas dinner at Rob's on Monday, did a load of work, arranged my own contract and stuff like that and will head back tomorrow afternoon to arrive home in freezing cold New York at just after 8pm local time, before whizzing home in a taxi, wrapping a couple of presents, dropping off my luggage and heading out to meet up with Dani and some friends somewhere. I don't know. Seemed to make sense at the time, but now my back is just complaining in advance.

I also have the smallest room in the hotel, which I have affectionately dubbed the Ian Schrager Suite in honour of said bastard's wanton frugality when it comes to the volume of his rooms. Shiv had a veritable suite, and I feel somewhat hard done by on account of there being no fridge in my room other than the automated mini-bar (which in theory bills you if you move anything though not, apparently, in practice) and no ironing board. Not only did Shiv have both of those, but he also had a small couch and much more cupboard space. His room didn't smell of paint either, and his entry card didn't wipe out every 36 hours. However, now that they've delivered me an ironing board and iron, it's not quite so bad, but when I come back in January I hope to have a slightly larger room (there's a hierarchy don't you know, which dictates that I should get the smallest room because I've never been there before - I know that I'm now on the shit-list, Elaine style).

The excellent photo you see above is courtesy of Greg who claims it's the favourite of all his photographs to date with his new camera (which he only got a few days ago, so that doesn't count for much). In fact, there are a disturbingly large number of photographs of yours truly with which I am not dissatisfied taken that evening, which says something, I imagine, about the photographer.

James with Oscar's new pony, Chloe

I've been quite short on inspiration for this blog of late (even more so than before), so I'm delving into the backlog of things I've had to write about, and on the off-chance that I'll be separated from this blog for a while and in the absence of actual photos of James with his Maine Coon I've had to doctor one up:

Oscar looked first at mum, then at dad,
Then at all of the pets that they had.
He gurgled and spat:
"What an oversized cat!"
Then reverted to crapping like mad.

I's watching you! Nice cranium...

Yeah, I'm scraping the barrel, but having that lengthy tirade/brocade/blockade about my work-related struggles at the top of this blog has got me down so much that I am no longer surprised that no-one is writing me comments, let alone any new emails.

So I thought I'd pick up on and mention briefly the news (which I'm sure everyone's read) that appointment of top officials in the US is being undermined by members of the population who aren't even allowed to vote (like me, though I'm allowed at least to pay taxes). This, for a democracy, is a fantastic achievement, and they didn't even have to go to all the trouble of deciphering one of this country's ballot papers. Chads? Heh. [ I swear I decided to use Mary Poppins in reference to nannies before I found that last article ]

Mary Poppins, move over, we have illegal nannies on the books and paying no heed to the achievements of their employers we'll have to make sure that a secondary or tertiary choice is used for the post. Not sure old Gee Dubya can count that far - I'm sure he has a good team of advisors though who can take a number each and work on it.

Mmmm. Rice. Just like in Nam

In his role as all powerful evil mastermind overlord, Bush does a sterling job in these photos in looking over his cronies' shoulders (pictures courtesy of the Beeb).

Is it me, or does he look like he's contemplating eating their brains (or controlling their minds)? He almost looks like he knows something about them we don't, and that's how he's going to make sure they do what he wants and not what we want (not that we can vote).

When I apply for my nanny job next week, remind me to fill in the requisite tax forms.

In January 2004 I left my company, Linkspoint, to go and work with some old tadgers in London on a project for the UK government. Specifically, I went to work on a project run by SchlumbergerSEMA for DEFRA. While I was there SchlumbergerSEMA was sold to ATOS Origin, but that made no difference to me or the work.

Now I need to feed myself. To skip the crap many of you may already know about my work history and immigration and Linkspoint, click here.

I started with Linkspoint in November 2001 when I moved out to New York from Denver. They needed someone with GIS experience (me? uh...) to take their expertise in GPS and mobile location based solutions to make use of maps and spatial applications (turned out that this was no more than a general aim without any precision or focus). I needed a GIS job in or near New York.

How not to quit
I made the mistake in Denver of doing the "right thing" and giving SchlumbergerSEMA (who had recently bought Convergent Group with whom I had obtained employment straight out of university in 1995, accidentally dropping me into the GIS industry) plenty of notice. In fact, I told them I was leaving before I had even begun looking for a new job out east. This was my first of many mistakes. Giving them so much notice ultimately cost me 6+ years' severance and a delayed christmas bonus. However, my new employers in Connecticut had exciting and specific work, and I was immediately creating software that was actually used (Convergent's record of developing systems that were shelved rather than delivered was second to none): Within one week of starting, we had my software serving up maps and storing forms data over a wireless network to handheld devices to allow the Department of Buildings in New York to speed up the process of reopening downtown buildings closed for health and safety reasons after the 2001 attacks of September 11th. Within two months, I had written more delivered and useful software than in all my time at Convergent Group.

As time went on though, Linkspoint's fortunes declined and although they had an envious reputation in and relationship with the city, they had to take work they might not otherwise take (for too little money, of course). By late 2003 I had not written any GIS software for over a year. My knowledge of the technologies in play was dwindling rapidly. Late in 2003, Phil asked me if I knew anyone who would want to make use of the very latest technologies for a project in London for a fairly excellent rate of pay. To his surprise, I volunteered my own services. While the London project was finalised and contracts were signed with clients, I set to work arranging the necessary immigration issues. Surely there would be little trouble travelling back to my country of citizenship from New York while my Green Card (through marriage) continued processing. No. There would not. There would be HUGE problems.

US Immigration
While an immigration application is processing for 2 years with the USCIS (previously the BCIS and before that the INS), one needs a rather disparagingly titled Advanced Parole. This is permission to leave the US for a certain period of time. Except in the case of an emergency, this document requires at least 90 days to obtain, costs $about 130 and lasts only one year. In New York, it takes even longer, but after 90 days you are legally entitled to present yourself at the USCIS offices and demand that it is handed over forthwith (it is no more than a poorly photocopied piece of paper with a photograph attached, a red stamp and a signature overlaid). My lawyer sent in the paperwork in plenty of time before my current parole expired, some 110 days before I had to travel. About 40 days before I was due to travel, he received a notice from the USCIS that the application was incomplete and that he had not attached the photographs I had provided him. He forwarded that on to me 25 days later, claiming that the USCIS had lost the photographs, but really it didn't matter to me. I talked to him, I talked to the USCIS, and I talked to my lawyer's man on the ground who knew the intimate workings of the USCIS office at Federal Plaza on downtown broadway. He was unconcerned and told me not to worry - that we could go in there a week beforehand with fresh paperwork and arrange a new advanced parole. My fears were allayed somewhat.

One week beforehand, ashen faced, he informed me that 3 days earlier a middle-manager (Ms. Hernandez, responsible for this horrific story [PDF here]) at the USCIS office had determined that they would no longer process emergency advanced paroles, no exceptions, on the grounds that... there actually weren't any grounds specified... merely because she didn't want to manage the extra work so close to the Christmas holidays. No announcements were made. In fact, her superiors didn't even know. People were informed as they turned up for their emergency paroles. My lawyer is well connected with the USCIS nationwide, and with the USCIS in New York, but puzzlingly nothing I could do would persuade him to take any action on the matter. I was not the only person in this boat, and Hernandez' actions still fill me with rage, but the New York Times article actually helped my cause in the end.

Congress works!
With Linkspoint's connections with the city and the projects we were working on to help update the technologies used in citywide business (regardless of the fact that they didn't make use of GIS), we made a good argument that the experience I would gain in the UK would benefit the city upon my return. Nevertheless, my lawyer would not be persuaded to do anything, so I contacted my congresswoman. Her staff worked tirelessly once we realised it was too late for my lawyer to do anything, arranged calls with the USCIS in Washington, in New York, and with my lawyer, and the day before I was due to travel I was begrudgingly issued an Advanced Parole at Federal Plaza in a process that took 10 minutes (after 2 days' work by the congresswoman's staff), followed 10 minutes later by a call to British Airways to purchase a flight for the next day. The time wasted by me, by my lawyer, by his man in the field, and by the congresswoman's office, not to mention the cash fees I paid for this non-service was ridiculous. All so that I could travel back to my country of citizenship to earn more serious money and keep myself trained up-to-date.

When I finally left Linkspoint for London, they gave me a resounding vote of confidence and told me that any time I wanted to come back, I would be more than welcome. They have always treated me fairly within the constraints of their resources. For example, in 2003 when they cut eveyone's pay in half, they worked to help me survive on the minimum I needed. When I left, they continued to pay me (half pay) for a month. The problem is twofold:

• They still have no GIS work
• They have no money to hire me back on

Linkspoint have been negotiating a purchase by a company. But I need a Plan B just in case.

My Plan Bs
I have been working for a month or so on winning a 16 week project out here for a real estate company which I've written about before. That's one of my Plan Bs. The other Plan B is continued work back in London. They have been generous enough to allow me to do documentation and design work from here, and want me to come out to London to do development there in January, but if Plan B the first goes through, that's not going to be possible. However, Plan B the first is teetering on the edge of failure because of what I consider to be poor management and decision making by the potential client, combined with misleading information about the development with which we're to integrate. My Plan C was going to be returning to Linkspoint to make ends meet.

I suddenly find myself going from 3 possible plans, including one to fall back on after either/both of the initial Plan Bs, to having potentially just one Plan B that will only last 6 weeks. If anything happened to that plan, I end up with no plans at all, and no money in the bank.

So, since I'm new to freelancing and contracting, how many Plan Bs does one need?

Anxiety level: Orange.

The cost of a wee

I was born in a Catholic country and raised near the Catholic Church with a suitable mix of CoE psalms and hymns in the morning, public school guilt-mongering, and a healthy dose of perpetual shame and shaming. Perhaps that's the reason that I feel guilty about using restrooms (or bogs) in restaurants/bars/etc. that I'm not strictly at that moment a patron of.

I snuck into a tiny coffee shop and bakery down in Soho (they even have/had a shirt) on a very cold day having enjoyed a cup of hot cocoa and a missed connection at a nearby restaurant to use their toilet, knowing that they were largely empty, that they had a toilet and that it was clean. I felt justified also since I had bought a couple of cups of coffee there in the previous 10 days. The whole time I occupied the tiny one-toilet restroom, I kept my ear open rather obsessively for any sign of disquietude from without at my presence within but I couldn't really tell, passive aggression being what it is in this town. Nonetheless on my way out I decided that since we didn't have any bread at home at the time and since I was still looking for a place that might sell decent bread (American bread being revolting, sugary, or sourdough), that I would purchase a baguette. It cost $1.75 and I only had $20 bills on me, for which I apologised thinking that the politeness of my initial request had gone rather well, at which point the saleslady (who had been having an intensely friendly conversation with some Soho nobs before my appearance from the bathroom) snapped "No you don't, I saw some dollars in there". Now, it could just have been that she was offering to sell me the loaf for a dollar, or it could have been that she was practicing her passive-aggression on me, or maybe she just had trouble controlling the volume of her voice. Fortunately I was able to fan out the remaining notes in my hand to demonstrate that I didn't have anything incriminating there, took my change, my newly acquired loaf, and left.

This went, by the way, significantly better than an occasion in English when I was 13: I was sat at my desk with my hands behind my back (something I find quite comfortable) during the headmaster's teaching of the class. He noticed and asked rather accusingly what I had behind my back, so I waved them in the air, palms forward, accompanied with what must have been a rather stupid smug grin, and for my exertions won the yelling of my life and a trip to his office at lunchtime (which thankfully consisted of no more than a resigned shake of the head, a sigh, and an admission of ignorance as to how to continue schooling me).

But back to the toilets! Why should I obsess so much about using their's? Why should I feel so much guilt that I should afterwards buy a loaf of bread, trying to interpret every event as other people's tut-tutting at my appalling behaviour? It's pathetic. People have gone to see shrinks for much less.

Rufus Cartwright	Austin Cornhusker

Is Rufus moonlighting as a maize-inspired fashion fagonista when he's not a doctor? We all know that the man doesn't sleep, but now that Concorde's gone, does he really have time to hang out at Bravo TV and Parson's School of Design?

To be fair, Austin looks more like Rufus' and Jarvis' love-child, but since (as I found out today at the gym when filling in my death-acceptance and disblamation forms) men can't get preggers, that's unlikely, so I'll leave old Cocker out of this and lay the blame flatly on Cartwright.

Ru: Conratulations - that was a fantastic design (and as Dani noted early on in the show, you displayed singular initiative in buying something as imaginative as whole corn when others were getting tights, bin-liners (loser! fuck off!), deck-chairs and tin-foil), but remember when you're working with organic materials that they will deteriorate overnight.

I *HATE* reality television. As one Comedy Central chap (no, it's not John Stewart for once) said recently, "We've filmed it all; there's no reality left" (I may be paraphrasing), but I have to admit begrudging admiration for two series: The Apprentice, and the aforementioned Project Runway.

The Apprentice can be viewed in two parts. Watch the first 10 minutes, get the gist of the episode, go away and read a book or make and drink a soothing cup of tea, then come back and watch Donald Trump fire people. It's fantastic viewing, and unlike other reality TV shows in that Mr. Trump is actually working towards hiring one of these people to run one of his companies and although many of them are out of their depth, it's not the usual run of the mill road-rules/survivor morons there: Some of these people are genuinely smart. I haven't yet seen any of the Richard Branson thing of Fox, but since it's Fox it must be shit. That and the fact that Mr. Branson (for whom I have long had great admiration, a kind of successful Andy) was the most uninspiring point-missing confusekin I've ever seen when interviewed recently.

Project Runway ought to be watched all the way through though I base that solely on the first episode where the tension mounted to such a degree that you didn't know whether of the final three left on the catwalk, cowering in front of the judges, Austin was going to be the one to be shot down or lauded to immunity. And neither did the three. In fact, the loser was one of the most self-confident cock-suckers I've ever seen (and I've met a few - if you know me you'll know who I mean), and that moment of Schadenfreude was worth all my principles on the matter. It's no doubt because of the subjectivity of something so creative as opposed to the damned obvious It's A Knockoutness of survivor's put these coloured sticks in a pile or their your eyes are the closest together competitions, but I like it. What you didn't see during the episode was how Austin rescued the dress - a travesty of editing if you ask me, which I'm sure none of you will.

I'm off to read Part 2 of Rambo, First Blood (Part 1 was not bad - excellent dialog, but very (though not unexpectedly) trashy narrative).

Good night.

[ P.S. Bravo Bravo for making your website so link-toable ]

I can see them now: sat around a small table in a closet at a warehouse, shrugging their shoulders and playing cards over a coffee and a couple of Gauloises while their explosive luggage goes unguarded and their dogs are busy humping each other in the corner (before similarly lying down for a coffee and a smoke).

Just when you think that only Americans can be so dumb, the frogs do something spectacular. Oh, come on Nixta, it could have happened to anyone! But it's so much more delicious that it happened to those aristo-bashing Frenchies, quoi?

Of course, CNN misses most of the more salient points of the story, namely that the explosive was quite safe as it was, and that there were 90 planes it might have ended up on (explaining why they didn't call the planes back to Paris rather than making it someone else's problem, which was my interpretation of CNN's report). It doesn't seem worth writing about after reading the beeb's take on it though. Oh well, too late now.

[ Actually, I take it back, the Yanks have it after all ]

All I can say is, if you're having trouble installing the Quicktime plugin for Firefox (coz you can't be arsed with Apple's site), dig out IE and watch the video. As The Sherman Foundation put it in a press-release earlier today:

The perfect marriage of moron and machine.

Also via TSF.

This is certainly the most expensive DVD set I've ever seen. Thank goodness you get 33% off at Amazon, coz that $7500 price-tag is just too much. Though if it's an "Amazon.com Exclusive", I'm not sure what the competetive pricing is all about...

Now you all know what to get me for Christmas

DJ Waxy Fresh, the Future Mayor of Hoboken, writes an interesting observation on his drive home through Manhattan.

Rather than reply in the comments, for which I have been chastised in the past, I'll post my response here:

All green and all red

From my living room and bedroom windows I get a clear view most of the way down Avenue B and all the lights within view (from 14th Street down to about 4th Street) switch at exactly the same moment, except when the weather turns warmer or colder when one of the lights tends to lag by about half a second, but they fix that soon after (or maybe they get reset automatically at some point).

But going up 1st Avenue, you (or more likely the cabbie) can time the approach to hit the lights just as they turn green, one after the other. I've never gone up far enough to test the limits of the rolling greens, but in Denver, I could time the drive up Downing Street to hit all green lights from I25 to Speer, then on from Speer to 14th Street (where I think they deliberately break traffic up before hitting 15th Street, Colfax Avenue). This rolling green seems only to apply to the Avenues in New York, no doubt largely the cause of the infamous cross-town traffic problem this city has.

I have heard rumours and read a few things in the past about emergency services vehicles being able to remotely trigger green lights in their particular direction. For a moment there, I thought that it would be better to make all lights red at a junction being approached, but that will probably only work in two-way streets not heavily populated by traffic (otherwise you risk clogging up the whole street with stationary vehicles and impeding the ambulance/fire engine/whatever rather than clearing them a way through). I have also observed that whereas I was always taught in the UK to pull over and come to a complete stop if there are emergency vehicles basting their sirens away, over here in New York the habit seems to be to merely slow down (often almost imperceptibly) and pull towards the outside lane, which of course I think is a very bad idea, especially near a junction when you can't be confident on account of the Close Encounters lights these things have on them that they're not trying to indicate a turn somehow.

Effectively though, emergency vehicles with this sort of prioritising system must cause havoc to the lights throughout the place. Actually, the lights throughout the Denver Tech Center all seem to be induction-loop triggered, and I have to admit to having seen motorcyclists waiting impatiently for them to change. It's only poofy motorcyclists with Japanese bikes anyway (though they could get this ingenious gadget). Real Coloradans drive Harley Davidsons, and they trigger induction loops, burglar alarms, and chronic doubled-up laughter wherever they go. However, the way induction loops are used to trigger green filters for left turns at busy junctions tends to work very well throughout Denver, as far as I could tell.

Anyway, it's all vastly dull (I used to work in the transportation department of a GIS company, not that I ever did anything related to transportation there), and not nearly as interesting as FMOH's colour-coded thesis (same link as at the start), so if you've read this far, fuck off and read How It Happened.

One of the elevators in my building has a freshly written note:

Call me for Sex (212) 731-3431

I'm no expert in handwriting analysis, but it's definitely female, and the capital "S" has a line from the end of the top of the S through it and down to the left. Who learns to write like that? Any thoughts, any of you smart lads and lasses out there? I will endeavour to take a photo when I can (it wasn't bright enough for my camera phone). I'm not going to call the number, but any of you lot can - in fact, I encourage you to do so and to leave feedback in the comments. Let's find out who this horny/whorey person is (reverse lookups have failed to turn up any results so far).

My moral outrage? Well, if you insist, then it must be on account of the spoilt screaming reprobate children. Won't anyone think of the bastard yelling satan-spawn children? There are plenty in this building and not only must they be subjected to the numerous cigarette ends littering the stairwells, but also to the empty condom packet (though the user had the good grace this time to take the used contents of the packet with them), and now to this (though it's probably too high for any child around these parts too young to have tried crack from one of the many street-vendors).

I suppose it's just someone trying to make a buck or two. But use Craig's List for that - you'll find a much larger clientele there.

This is a NERD article. Not Safe For Normal People. I wrote it before this one, but held off on publishing it. I felt in the end that I should on the vague off-chance that someone else encountered this problem.

I have a Microtek Scanmaker 6700 which I bought a while back and which frankly rocks. It's a great Firewire scanner which Dani uses all the time for her work on this main PC Server of mine. The software is flexible and quick, with loads of options for the professional graphics maniulatorrrrrrr and so forth, but over the years I have had a couple of problems with it.

Before I upgraded to this new server, running Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (which I didn't pay for, having got a free copy from a Microsoft seminar by way of Dave and Bill some time back), my old massive and cumbersome noisebox ran Windows 2000 Server. Why Server? Because IIS 5 and IIS 6 do not allow multiple websites (and consequently Host Header resolution so that I might host numerous websites here via DNS2Go) unless you have Windows Server of some description. Running Windows XP Pro would have been perfect otherwise.

I also used to run Terminal Services on Windows 2000 Server as a means of accessing my only machine without, in theory, disturbing Dani while she worked on this machine while I was away. RealVNC is a splendid piece of free software, but you log on to the current console session and that's a bit hard to use when someone is sitting at the machine and doing stuff themselves.

Problem 1: With Windows 2000 Server, if I terminal served in, the scanner detection software would barf out because a copy of it was already running and the scanner would stop working until a reboot (I'm sure there might have been some selective shutdown of processes that might have worked OK with a quick restart of said processes, but I never looked into it).

When I installed Windows 2003 Server, I tried to set it up for Terminal Services, but Microsoft has got savvy to my cheap-arsed pilfering ways and has a much more sophisticated licensing scheme which meant that I would have to actually pay to allow people (me) to terminal serve to the machine, so I just left it for a while in case I could come up with any way around that (I never did, as it happens).

Problem 2: Shortly after that, my scanner software (ScanMaker) started playing up. When it stopped appearing in Photoshop's Import menu, I uninstalled Photoshop and the ScanMaker and reinstalled it. That worked for a while. Then a week later it stopped working again. This time I got around to trying to run the scanner software on its own but that failed to load and no amount of uninstalling and installing, cajoling and so forth would induce things to work again.

I banged my head against walls, pulled out hair, installed stuff on laptops (which worked, but was hellishly inconvenient) and even bought a Consult-Your-Colon kit from Target to see if it would provide any insight without me having to actually physically pull stuff out of my arse, all to no avail.

Finally, I came across a couple of incredibly useful pieces of software. SysInternals have for a long time provided remarkable utilities for people (like me) who have no life. One such program (Process Explorer) gives you a good idea of what system resources each process uses, rather like Task Manager after it's been to the gym, taken some speed and then sat up all night in Superman's Molecule Chamber. Donning Zod's saucy black number, I knelt before it and had my hand crushed by being introduced to Dependency Walker, which I ran on the new server to find that ScanMaker was trying to load Twain_32.dll (the windows interface to TWAIN, which most imaging software talks to to build up such Import menu items as Photoshop does) not from the WINDOWS directory (where you'll find it) but from my user profile folder.

LoadLibraryA("C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\WINDOWS\Twain_32.dll") returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified module could not be found (126).

Whaaaaaaa? I dunno. On the machine that worked that library was loaded from "C:\Windows" (which is where it lives). So I looked in the registry for bad path values or for references to Twain_32.dll, and nothing. Finally, just as I was about to give up, I noticed that on the other machine dependency walked had this line near the start:

Loaded "c:\windows\system32\TSAPPCMP.DLL" at address 0x71C20000 by thread 1. Successfully hooked module.

Erm. OK. Quick search on Google for TSAPPCMP and I get a bunch of Japanese pages, but search on TSAPPCMP.DLL and I find out it's something to do with Terminal Server. Hmmmmm. Surely that can't have anything to do with it? Well, in the words of Dudley Moore when confronted that Loganberry Jam doesn't go up one's arse:

"It shouldn't, but it does!"

Fuck me Dudley, if I didn't nip into Add/Remove Programs and unselect Terminal Services, reboot, and everything works wonderfully again.

Though I haven't actually got a signed contract yet, it seems that I will indeed be doing the documentation for a change order for DEFRA after all, as reported earlier. I woke up this morning, having expected to start on Monday, wondering whether I'd jinxed the whole deal by reporting on it too soon, but an e-mail awaiting my slothful arse set that straight, and I'm on the case. Hoorah!

Pah! I don't believe in that sort of shit anyway.

This is a lame excuse for a blog entry, but I refuse not to blog: Along the lines of Rob's occasional excuse for blogging, is Robert dead? It's been over 24 hours since he filed something.

And where's Rufus? I must be mistaken, but I thought he was just going away for a week. I suppose I could check his pages to find out whether that's true. I suspect it's not.

Still to make up my mind on House, the Fox TV vehicle for Vicodin guzzling Hugh Laurie's appalling American accent. It's growing on me (the show, not the accent) as mindless entertainment - a cross between E.R., Poirot and The A-Team - but being nothing but ignorant in the field of medecine perhaps increases my enjoyment of it. I have already learnt to ignore the accent and enjoy the gratuitous shots of Dr. Cameron's cleavage.