Off Centre

I came across this by a process far too complicated and unlikely to warrant explaining here.

Anyway, some things you just have to share. Enjoy :)

OK, I may be jumping the gun here, but I think I finally have Firefox 2.0 configured into some sort of usable status. Can't have taken me more than a day. 

I've set the tabs back to their old behavior by messing around in the depths of about:config (broswer.tabs.closebutton=3 and broswer.tabs.minwidth=0 in my case). I've managed to make it accept a theme other than the new Firefox default by creating a new profile and copying all the data files across (there's a link on mozillazine). I've re-installed adblock-plus, NoScript, Greasemonkey and Cookiesafe, and a dozen other things, hidden the history menu and probably a dozen other things - but it's starting to work the way I want it to work.

The CookieSafe extension is particularly necessary. See the Firefox devs in their infinite wisdom have elected to remove the option to disable third-party cookies. This means that if you go to a site, anyone with an ad or a web bug on the page can read and write cookies to your machine. This is a very popular technique with sites like doubleclick, for instance, because they can use these cookies to build up a profile of which sites you visit. In general third party cookies are a bad thing, not just for the lack of privacy, but also because it takes time to get the send the info to and from all these nosy-parker sites, and to read and write it all to your hard drive.

Mind, mozillazine does shed some light on the decision.  Apparently the old mechanism didn't work in all cases, which is why it was taken out of this release.  That's a bit like fixing a leaky boat by destroying the hull to my mind, but I'm sure it makes a deep kind of sense to organisations like doubleclick and Google. Of course, Google have been getting very pally with the Firefox team lately, but I doubt that influenced any decisions made.

Anyway, CookieSafe is supposed to fix the problem. And if it doesn't, I've re-enabled privoxy just to be on the safe side. Failing that, I might just write a script that nukes the cookie file at regular intervals.

Meanwhile, I'm still giving serious thought to switching browsers.

Bit of a rant, that last entry. 'Course, it'd be a bit less of one if I'd remembered that I set up LJ so that I have to do my own markup. Useful tip there, kids: if you're going to moan, rememeber your paragraph breaks, or else it looks like whole thing comes out in one breathless tirade.

Of course, if I could log in to LJ I could have previewed the post, and caught the problem. Then again, if I could have logged into LJ, I could edit it and fix the damn thing.

Bloody firefox. I wonder if I can revert back to 1.5 without screwing up my profile...

So, firefox 2.0 is out. Well Hoo-bloody-rah!

Normally, I'm firefox's biggest fan. But every now and then, they take some harmless little feature that wasn't bothering anyone and fix it, much to the annoyance of many of their users. This time round they've "fixed" the Alt keyboard shortcuts. So now I can't type Alt+S in wikimedia to save a page, among other things. Worst of all, Alt+S no longer works for Sage, the RSS reader extension I use. This is something I've been typing a couple of dozen times a day for the last year or so - so it's not a trivial thing for me to change and it's winding me right up. At least in wikimedia there's a workaround. Alt+Shift+S works instead (I find the extra keystroke so useful) but in Sage the best option seems to be to hack to source to change the letter to something else, and hope the 'fox devs don't find a use for that key in 2.01.

Oh, and I can't log into LJ over the web either, which is probably not their fault, but isn't improving my feelings toward Firefox 2.0. The trouble is, I think, that there's a nasty streak of arrogance in some of the Firefox devs. It wasn't so long ago that they disabled the type-ahead search feature in favour of status bar box. It was clunky to use, and about half the 'fox power users howled in outrage. And in reply, they got a snotty post saying "why not the trust the guys who made Firefox so popular to know what works best for you?" Eventually after much shouting and stamping and a rash of extensions fixing the problem, the usage was tweaked so it pretty much worked the old way. Deja Vu, anyone?

I think the development team have lost sight of what made the browser so attractive to a lot of people. I've been using firefox since the 0.1 alpha, back when it was called Phoenix. I liked it because it was lightweight and configurable. Minimal functionality, very fast, extensible, and you could make it do what you liked. But as Firefox gets older, the attitude seems to be "we know best, so shut up and surf".

I wonder if the IceWeasel team will be any less high handed?

Very much enjoyed the first two Torchwood installments. Doing adult S/F is always going to be tricky, I feel. Go to far in one direction and you wind up with something like Lexx, where some genuinely good ideas got buried in the deluge of smut and innuendo. On the other hand if you steer too wide of all things of Sexual, you end up with the X-Files with added swearing. I think this did a good job of walking a line between the two extremes.

I'm glad they're keeping it part of the Who continuity - there must have been a temptation to ignore the connection, especially since the Cardiff operation seems to have a kinder, gentler approach than the one late at Canary Wharf. I'm glad they're keeping up the production values, and I'm glad they're keeping a touch of humour as well. "CSI: Cardiff: measuring the velocity of a kebab."

On the minus side... not a lot really. I just hope they can keep up the quality. The cast is a little too bisexual for my personal comfort - but then I didn't mind when the girls started snogging, so I suppose I've no cause for complaint there :D Slightly peeved that the token englishman seems to be a cockney tosspot who can't quite see past his own short term gain (shades of Danny from Hustle) and as Fredlums pointed out, thereare a few too many Charlie's Angels moments as she put it, where they burst into the room waving guns at nothing in particular, but looking very dramatic.

Still, the good bits are very very good, and bad bits are minor niggles. A very promising start,  and I'm looking forward to next weeks episode.

So... is there anyone out there who hasn't figured out why the severed hand is so important to Jack?

I saw the front of Mother's Readers Digest magazine this morning. Most of it was taken up with a screaming headline:

"7 COMMON FOODS THAT KILL and how to avoid them"

So, without benefit of having read the article, I thought I'd summarise the content for the benefit of LJ readers everywhere

Food: Battered Cod
Background: Family favourite and stalwart of many a fish and chip supper, few now realise that "Battered" Cod first came by his nickname as a bare knuckle prizefighter taking part in illegal last-man-standing bouts. Sadly, fighter fatalities are not at all uncommon in such contests. According to the memoirs of "Cauliflower" Cheese, (a contemporary on the bare knuckle circuit), Cod is directly responsible for the manslaughter of five opponents, and some accounts put the figure as high as nine.
How to avoid: Cod claims to have put his violent past behind him, and appears to have done so in fact. Nevertheless, it would be wise to avoid needless provocation.

Food: Spaghetti Hoops
Background: Small and inoffensive in appearance, spaghetti hoops are nevertheless capable of delivering a nasty bite when desperate or backed into a corner. Although individual hoops are unlikely to pose a serious threat to a healthy human adult, they can turn nasty in large numbers, and there are recorded incidents where packs of feral pasta foodstuffs have caused the deaths of travellers in remote areas.
How to avoid: Try not to travel alone in remote areas where hoops are known to roam wild, especially in the winter time when their natural prey may be in short supply.

Food: Ham Burger
Background: The original fast food, Ham's obsession with speed in general, and fast cars in particular has led to a number of incidents where his driving has claimed the life of one or more pedestrians. Most of these cases have been settled privately, but there are still two outstanding cases being settled by civil litigation.
How to avoid: As at all times, show all possible care when crossing roads, or in areas where traffic may potentially become a threat to human life.

Food: Brussels Sprouts
Background: This regular at the Christmas dinner table might be less welcome if his role as an international mercenary and assassin were better known. A veteran of numerous brushfire wars in Central Africa, Sprouts has also organised security for Central American drugs barons, and has been known to take "wetwork" assignments for more than one intelligence agency.
How to avoid: Under normal circumstances, Sprouts poses no hazard to members of the general public. If you have reason to be believe you may be at risk, retreat to a secure location and contract either your local police force or a professional security consultancy.

Food: "eggfried" rice
Background: Often found lurking in restaurants and takeaways, Rice's bland demeanour is camouflage for a dangerous sexual predator. Young women are particularly at risk
How to avoid: Steer well clear of those establishments where rice can be found. Avoid initiating conversations, or forming any sort of a relationship with this food. It is only a matter of time before this menace is captured and brought to justice, but in the meanwhile vigilance is essential.

Food: "Chili" Peppers
Background: Behind the hot and spicy image, rumours of "thrillkilling" exploits abound on the Hollywood insider circuit. Some have claimed the entire story is no more than a shallow attempt to attract publicity and to re-position Chili as being more acceptable to the goth sub-culture. On the other hand, a number of short lived websites have claimed to offer video evidence of Peppers pushing an unsuspecting carrot under the wheels of an oncoming train. The truth may never be known
How to avoid: be stay well away from precipices and try not to turn your back. Caution is advised when dealing with any variety of pepper.

Food: Mashed Potato
Background: Ubiquitous and hardworking "Mash" nevertheless shows signs of being unable to cope with the pressures of modern living. A potato on the edge can be volatile and unpredictable, and prone to lash out at whoever is near to hand. Incidents of sniper rifle killing sprees and running amok with large edged weapons are not unheard of. Remember: It's the quiet ones you have to watch.
How to avoid: Probably impossible, but it is important to realise the most potatoes are peaceful and law-abiding. Treat the potatoes you encounter with courtesy and respect and try not to leave sharp objects within their easy reach

Whoo! New machine, and a bit of a beast! Intel Core Duo processor, 2Gb memory and 160Gb hard drive. Not bad for a laptop. The best thing is that it's yet to be heard to make any noise louder than a gentle sigh as it wafts a little air over it's CPU. No more buzz-buzz-rattle. No more turn-up-the-TV-dear-I-can't-hear-it-over-the-laptop. I'm sure Hanibal Lecter would have approved. Mind, Dr. Lecter would probably have dismembered the buzzing monstrosity and sauteed it's ram modules in a tarragon and fingernail sauce. Me, I'm just looking forward to the peace and quiet.

It's been an interesting week. I've been getting the metro into work more than usual, so I've been buying papers for change. One Torygraph (force of habit from years ago) and one Groiniad (in the interests of editorial balance).

Unsurprisingly, both were following the conservative conference, with a keen eye on David Cameron. The surprising thing was the criteria by which they evaluated his performance. Both of them seemed to be rating Cameron on his skill at lying.

Obviously, neither framed the matter in quite those terms. But they talked about the skill (or lack of same) with which Cameron had chosen policies, and the extent to which they would take votes away from Tony Blair. They talked about how this policy or that had been selected to appeal to young voters, or to this segment or to that... and somehow, no one even considered asking whether any of these were anything more than shallow self serving lies that stood to be forgotten as soon as the election was over. No seemed to entertain the slightest illusion that any of these promises might be sincere. And who can blame them?

Or perhaps there is some mystical agency at work here; some strange divination that guarantees that the nation can best be managed by implementing whatever policies make your opponent look most foolish. Maybe there exists some Divine Right of Frauds by which whatever policy is used to elect a government, by virtue of the governments election, retroactively becomes the best possible policy for the government of that nation.

Sadly. the most likely explanation seems that the policies proposed by the modern politician have have little or no relation to those which they intend to pursue. That seems to be the accepted view. I've talked to a number of people about this, and they all said something like "yes, but I think you have to these days..." or "but that's just the nature of the game..."

At what point did we decide that the best way to run a country was to hold a contest to find the biggest liar, and then make him or her God for the next five years? At what point did we form this strange consensus, that the national interest would be best served by institutionalised mendacity? If people find organised deceit so fascinating, then by all means make it the national sport or something, but I can't for the life of me see is as a sound basis for government.

Can we accept that the system is broken in this respect? Because I think the real question is how do we fix this? I'm fed up with this system, and somehow I don't think I'm the only one.

More on this later.

Not feeling to well today - there's been a bug going around, so I'm letting fredlums coddle me a bit.

Meanwhile, what better opportunity to see what I can make this thing do.

It may get a bit garish around here until I settle on something I like. Fair warning.

Turns out there's a command line editor for LiveJournal. I find command line tools more flexible than GUI ones, and doubly so when comared to web based ones. So, I thought I'd give this a bash. As it were.

The tool's called jlj. It's apparently based on jirc, which suggests that the "j" stands for Java. Which is really odd, since I jlj is apparently written in Perl.

OK - of the handful of people likely to read this, probably only two have any clue what I'm talking about, and I doubt any of them agree with me about command line anyway. Let's stop wasting time and see if this thing works as advertised...

This is by way of a test.

I'm going to do some stuff like add blank lines to see if they get squeezed out. And some html tags to see if they get formatted. If you don't see any then they do.

Basically I've no idea what I'm doing.

I just figure its high time I found out.

I'm too tired to say anything sensible. more later. maybe.

[edit]

Gadzooks, isn't it easy to open with a depressed miserable post? I'll try and be a bit more cheerful next time :)