URLs with ä, ö, ü after March 1st

From 1st March it will be permissible to include umlauts in URLs. Those are ä , ö , and ü , which should please all those German folks called März, Töpfer or Müller. How will those of you with non-german keyboards type such URLs in? That's why I wrote this, so you can just copy them :-)

PS: Belated Happy Birthday Ernst Henne(100 on 22/2)!

posted by Stu Savory on 27th February 2004 at 06:11 Central European Time permalink

---

It's bad punctuation.

J.F.Kerry has a lot to answer for. Well not yet, but his wife and her dynasty do actually. Heinz - their company - produces Alphabetti Spaghetti with all 26 letters, but NO punctuation marks. As a result of this mis-education in their childhoods, the authors of some (American) web-sites I've read seem unable to punctuate correctly. N.B. that's an adverb with the "ly" at the end, right?

Just yesterday, I found a blog which was very confused about it's versus its. The rule is very simple : "it is" and "it has" contract into "it's" (with the apostrophe). Otherwise please use "its".

Example : "It's my car, look at its steering-wheel. It's round and covered. Its leather is black. It's genuine cowhide." There now, it's easy isn't it? Then why does the local junk-food MacFranchised restaurant insist on writing "Good food at it's best! ? If their food is as bad as their grammar (and it is), I'll refer to it in future as their "eat's" :-)

I'm no copy-editor - apply to Teresa for that kind of thing - but when we write, let us at least do so by the rules of the game! Mickeysoft has to carry a lot of the blame too, though. Their bloody stupid so-called "grammar checker" can't tell the difference between "who's" and "whose"! It even allowed "Their's a fine mess you've got us into Billy"!

Back in May of 1999, Bob Hirschfield wrote a funny article in The Washington Post about the Strunkenwhite virus. This fictional bug refused to send Emails containing spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. As a result of this virus, the whole of corporate America ground to a halt within daze [sic]. So bloggers, please check your blogs before posting them; I won't add the rider "you know who you are", because you obviously don't.

If sod's law (aka Murphy's) prevails, there will be an error in today's post somewhere :-(

Breaking News : Just in case you still think that punctuation is unimportant, be aware that the judges concerned with the gay marriages in California are taking punctuation very seriously. The judge complained about the plaintiff's misuse of a semicolon, whereas the plaintiff wanted to complain about the misuse of colons (sic;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 25th February 2004 at 01:17 Central European Time permalink

---

Sad news from the USA

Sadly, due to personal vanity, the year-2000 Bush-usher Ralph Nader announced Sunday he will run again for the presidency, declaring that Bush has done a great job and the Democrats deserve to have their ticket split to allow Bush's planet-wide rape to continue.

As the Green Party's nominee in 2000, Nader appeared on the ballot in 43 states and D.C., garnering only 2.7 percent of the vote. But in Florida and New Hampshire, Bush won such narrow victories that had Gore received the bulk of Nader's votes in those states, he would have won the presidency. Nader is a spoiler, sending a confusing message to the green voters, as shown by the road-sign photo I took and show on the left. I just hope that they don't fall for it this time around; American voters need to focus on the one Democrat candidate to get the Bush/Cheney junta out of office in Fall 2004. Thanks to bartcop (whom I quoted above) for emphasizing this too (yesterday).

Ralph Nader : Unsafe with any vote.

Nader's candidacy will certainly not make Dubya sad! The only thing that makes him sad is the demise of Spot. Certainly he didn't even bother to respond - even with a mimeographed answer - when a shaken, grieving father wrote to the president. That letter just left him cold, as did this report of the suffering by his female soldiers. If you're in Bush's army, you're f*cked!

posted by Stu Savory on 24th February 2004 at 06:10 Central European Time permalink

---

Wet Dreams for Pilots and Wannabees

OK, fellow pilots, you got money to blow? This is the Mucho Macho way to go! Except for the chimp who went AWOL rather than fly an outclassed F102. Others would jump at the chance.

Back on the 19th of February I promised the blogreader(s) from Le Tourneau University's aviation course to blog a bit more about flying. Here it is, guys. Put on your G-suits before reading further.

How do you feel about a supersonic vertical climb to 50,000 feet in just under a minute. Then Immelmanning off the top for a Mach 2.2 descent? The plane is a twin-seat version of the English Electric Lightning that we Brits flew as THE cold-war interceptor of the sixties. The crème-de-la-crème of fighter jets, the Lightning still holds a number of world climb-to-altitude records. For my ex-Warsaw pact blogreaders, it is the contemporary of the MiG 17 Fishbed. The Lightning had about a 10% performance edge over the Fishbed. TU-95 Bearhunting; Up yours - at 50,000fpm.

If that's too easy on your guts, how about slowing down to Mach 0.9 - but below 50 feet! - in a Buccaneer? Equipped with terrain-hugging radar, this area-rule fuselage low level attack plane performs at its peak when it’s flying low and fast. And it’s perhaps superior to supersonic aircraft because it can carry more ordnance, fly further and make its attack with equal precision - and most definitely at lower altitude. And as for speed? Well, none of the supersonic planes can actually attack at supersonic speed. And, even carrying its internal bomb load of 4000 lb., the Buccaneer flies faster low level than the American Phantom, F-111, F-15E, the French Mirage, or the Warsaw Pact's Su-24.

Whetted your appetite? Then surf on over to the Cape Town (that's in South Africa) website of Thunder City and fill out their application form. Oh, by the way, their website doesn't even mention the nasty subject of what it'll cost you :-(

posted by Stu Savory, CFI on 22nd February 2004 at 01:00 Central European Time permalink

---

An insider's view of the Internet

Usually we sit in front of our client monitors, on the outside of the Internet, looking in. So I thought it would be neat to upload myself to the server - using FTP (Fool Tele-Port) - and see what it looks like from the inside of the Internet, looking back out. Here is the photo ;-)

Hypertext the first? We can use the Internet to travel through time as well, using permalinks and archives. So I wanted to see how far back in time hypertext could take me; back to the very first linked hypertext, way before Tim Berners-Lee was even at CERN to think of the web.

The first reference to hypertext which I could find was in the area of SF (Science Fiction). This story appeared in the July 1948 issue of Astounding : "He pressed the 'start' button; the headings vanished, to be replaced by page after page of print, succeeding one another on the screen as the two men read. They told strange and apparently disconnected stories - of unexplained fires and explosions; of people vanishing without trace; of unaccountable disasters to aircraft. There were many stories of an epidemic of mysterious disk-shaped objects seen in the sky, singly or in numbers. To each account was appended one or more reference-numbers. Sometimes Tortha Karf or Verkan Vall would punch one of these and read, on an adjoining screen, the explanatory matter referred to."

Well written H.Beam Piper, I'd say that was a good prediction! Of the National Enquirer too ;-)

Rockin 'n Groovin' : Wednesday morning I was taped for a short radio show about security. I find radio a difficult medium to produce. In fact I sit on my hands to stop me waving them around and I talk with my eyes closed to remind myself not to use slides/diagrams or refer to them. I much prefer blogging or lecturing. So that same evening was better, 'cos I lectured.

It was one of my rare appearances giving a public lecture (about fighting spam, as it happened). At public lectures you never know what you are going to get for an audience or at what technical level you can pitch your talk. But this audience was great. The whole auditorium was packed, not an empty seat to be seen. We had an immediate rapport, the whole thing (2 hours instead of 1) rocked and grooved. We played role-games and people fell about laughing when I told some bad-security anecdotes and took notes introspectively if I touched on a weak point in their company. When I present scientific papers at conferences or teach a university course the atmosphere is never as groovy. Anybody could attend, and so did. Even our local right-of-centre mayor was there to listen to a left-of-centre geek (me) talking about IT-security issues. Great to see our local politicians informing themselves, not just following party lines.

Afterwards five of us went for beer and a curry, accompanied by a very bright spam-expert from India. I freely admitted my great ignorance of Indian history, languages and their educational system, and so was able to get a first hand explanation. Thanks, lad, for a rapid orientation (sic). And thanks, Roland, for assisting during the Q+A session after the lecture; much appreciated.

Solving Cryptograms : I got a mail from RiRi pointing out that Google finds a tool for automatically solving cryptograms available on the net here. Takes all the fun out of it though IMHO, and if I pose more difficult crypto problems, blogreaders may not be able to solve them with pencil and paper. So maybe I'll just drop the cryptograms-thread. Damned computers!

Pun and games : Agnete mailed "I've been reading your blog long enough Stu, to know that you sometimes slip in sly,wry puns that I don't understand! So what did you mean on Thursday by 'dextrous' blogreaders? My dictionary say it means 'adroit', which I don't understand in your context". Well yes, Agnete, it was a little political joke. Dexter is Latin for 'right' and if you follow my link to "the dextrous 2flower" you will find there a Texas girl who supports Bush, i.e. is politically to the right. Similarly, the Latin word for 'left' is sinister, so I can expect that the 'dextrous' folks will be referring to me as 'sinister Stu' any day now :-) But remember, you read it here first :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 20th February 2004 at 01:41 Central European Time permalink

---

Hints for Solving Cryptograms

Crypto : Blogreader Ed (from Nebraska, cf Feb 3rd) wrote again - this time about Tuesday's blog entry - that he's never seen a cryptogram before, and doesn't have a clue how to proceed towards solving one, and could I give some hints. OK, Ed, just for you, here are the Ten standard hints for solving cryptograms which are suspected to be in English :

• Single-letter words will be "I" or "a". The most frequent letter in English is "e".
• Frequent use of the same three-letter word may indicate the word "the". Notice that the word "he" is part of the word "the".
• An apostrophe is usually followed by ''t" as in contractions (can't) or by "s" as in possessives (cat's tail). Remember that a word ending with an apostrophe is probably a plural noun ending in "s' ". An apostrophe at the beginning of a word indicates the initial letters have been dropped, like the "th" in the word "them."
• A question mark at the end of a quotation tells you the first word is likely to be "who", "what", "when", "where", "how", or "why".
• Certain consonants occur together, such as "th", "wh", "sh", and "ch".
• Likewise, the position of letters at the end of a word may indicate common endings such as "-tion", "-ent" or -ant", "-ing", or "-ed".
• Short, single-syllable words that have "-ed" or "-ing" added to them double their final consonant, also in "beginning" or "gotten".
• In a two-letter word, one letter must be a vowel.
• Often the (famous) author's name can be figured out, thereby leading to more clues within the quotation itself.
• If you get blocked, read the puzzle and let your mind fill in the blanks. The English language is based upon the basic structure of who is doing what, with descriptive or qualifying phrases rounding out the picture.

Now here is another for Ed (and for Irina in Toronto). It could even be about this Blog :-)

NX TFL WEH'D PY E KFFC YUEVMZY, DBYH TFL'ZZ
SLRD BEJY DF PY E BFOONPZY IEOHNHK. (WEDBYONHY ENOC)

Curiosity : I am by nature a curious person, I guess all academics are. So I like to see where my blogreaders come from. The stuff I wrote during this week about secret codes and the bible has attracted people from as far apart - physically and spiritually - as Hong Kong, Israel, the folks that hide behind the NIPR.MIL proxy/firewall and - last but not least - a blogreader from Le Tourneau University (that's in Longview, Texas). The latter institute is an interesting combination, it's a deeply christian faith establishment which also offers courses in aviation, teaching you e.g. to become a pilot. A step-by-step implementation of "nearer my God to thee" perhaps? Teasing apart, I think I'll have to do some more blog-reports about flying soon, if fellow pilots read this Blog too. In the mean time pilots, enjoy a High Flight!

About the NIPR.MIL firewall-cum-gateway : NIPR.MIL is not a single domain at all, but is a rather hush-hush US web proxy that acts as a gateway for hundreds of U.S. military domains in order to hide their identities. It was established by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) in response to a memorandum (CM-5 1099, INFOCOM) issued in March 1999 by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling for "actions to be taken to increase the readiness posture for Information Warfare." And it is well implemented too. So having a blogreader coming in from behind this gateway really piqued my curiosity ;-) However this particular (east-coast) blogreader only came once, albeit for nearly 12 minutes, so I could only narrow it down to him/her being one of any 829 named users. Next time, fella, I'll see ya next time ;-)

An unwelcome blogreader : No, no, my dextrous readers are welcome here too. The one I didn't want to see here is a Spambot. This particular spambot now scans this blog daily and extracts a list of words which crop up often and thus statistically are likely to interest me. It then sends me spam containing those words inserted randomly into the mail-header. It still fails of course, because my spamfilter rates the contents - not just the header - of the messages, so it gets caught as spam OK. But what will interest Meg and BrykMantra and the dextrous 2flower is that I just got my first spam bearing the word "Bushwhack", the header being "bushwhack seduce khan limpid crossover". Oh Meg, what hath thou wrought? :-)

posted by Stu Savory, CFII on 19th February 2004 at 04:31 Central European Time. permalink

---

GWB's secret WMD codes : cryptogram fun

Cryptogram fun : After reading Sunday's little piece about hidden codes, two blogreaders mailed me and asked if I would write some secret code puzzles for beginners ("no heavy crypto stuff please!"), preferably about Dubya or about blogging. So here are two easy cryptograms. In each the alphabet has been mixed up, each letter being represented (consistently) by another letter. Example A=d, B=y, C=k etc.

The mixed alphabets are different in each cryptogram. To keep it easy for you, I've left in all the blanks and punctuation marks, so you can see where the words' boundaries are. Both cryptograms are quotations by famous people, whose names are appended in brackets. Clues : The first one might also have been said by Dubya, the second might have been about Blogging.

1) W TQS QJ WH WCAUQHWVQAH MHVA VBS TAGK WHK W XSGP FGSJSHV BSTF
QH VGAMCTS. (WKTWQ JVSXSHJAH)

2) KYTHT ZJ UN JCVY KYZUM QJ VNUBTHJQKZNU. ZK ZJ QU ZEECJZNU. KYTHT
QHT ZUKTHJTVKZUM GNUNENMCTJ, KYQK ZJ QEE. (HTITVVQ LTJK)

You should be able to solve them within two to five minutes, OK?

Fortysix redux : Another blogreader (from Georgia, US) asked if I have any more numerological evidence about 46, secret codes and God in His heaven. Sure do!

• The 1988 data encryption standard was numbered FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) number 46! There's the connection to secret codes!
• And the working group made responsible for (these) identifications and documentation standards is ISO TC46! How about that?
• And as far as God in His heaven is concerned, the IAU (International Astronomy Union) Commission for Education about the heaven(s) is IAU commission number 46!
• And the lady who was so very concerned about the Bhagavad Gita may like to ruminate about another book, The Discourses of Rumi, in which Sheik Ibrahim is a noble dervish with that number (it is what it is ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 17th February 2004 at 01:23 Central European Time ;) permalink

---

Godspam : Spawn of the Devil

Barely had I posted yesterday's blog-entry containing the word Bible and the religious Spam started. Have these spammers no morals? Just look at this stuff will you? I quote verbatim:

Minister Charles Simpson has the power to 
make you a LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within 48 hours! 

BE ORDAINED NOW! As a minister, you will be authorized to 
perform the rites and ceremonies of the church!

WEDDINGS : MARRY your BROTHER, SISTER, or your BEST FRIEND!
Don't settle for being the BEST MAN OR BRIDES' MAID!
Most states require that you register your certificate 
(THAT WE SEND YOU) with the state prior to conducting the ceremony.

FUNERALS : A very hard time for you and your family
Don't settle for a minister you don't know!
Most states require that you register your certificate 
(THAT WE SEND YOU) with the state prior to conducting the ceremony.

BAPTISMS : You can say "WELCOME TO THE WORLD! I AM YOUR MINISTER 
AND YOUR UNCLE!" What a special way to welcome a child of God.

FORGIVENESS OF SINS : The Catholic Church has practiced the forgiveness 
of sins for centuries. **Forgiveness of Sins is granted to all who 
ask in sincerity and willingness to change for the better!

VISIT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES : Since you will be a Certified Minister, 
you can visit others in need! 
Preach the Word of God to those who have strayed from the flock

WANT TO START YOUR OWN CHURCH??
After your LEGAL ORDINATION, you may start your own congregation!

At this point you must be wondering how much the Certificate costs. 
Right? Well, let's talk about how much the program is worth. 
Considering the value of becoming a CERTIFIED MINISTER I'd say the 
program is easily worth $100. Wouldn't you agree? However, it won't 
cost that much. Not even close! My goal is to make this life changing 
program affordable so average folks can benefit from the power of it.

Since I know how much you want to help others, you're going to receive 
your Minister Certification for under $100.00... Not even $50.00... 
You are going to receive the entire life-changing course for only $29.95. 

For only $29.95 you will receive:
1. 8-inch by 10-inch certificate in color, with gold seal
(Certificate professionally printed by an ink press)
2. Proof of Minister Certification in your name
3. Shipping is free

I estimate the manufacturing and shipping costs as under 1 dollar fifty.
That's a 2000 percent margin for the spawn of the Devil, Godspammers!
Let alone another self-appointed interfering busybody with delusions of grandeur!

The next mail I got was classified as Spam by my Bayes filter, but I think it may have been a Christian responding to Sunday's blog in a genuine attempt to help my atheist self???

"God is real you will regret it for eternity if you do not accept him.
Dont end up in hell. Contact a local church or prayerline today.
Once a person is in hell it is too late! Save your soul today".

The next (non-spam) mail roundly condemned me for reading "that real filthy karma zootra stuff" (sic!). I presume she is referring to the book recommended on my left sidebar, and has no idea what the Bhagavad Gita really is, let alone actually read it.

Sheesh! Don't these people understand educated humour any more? Or never did?

posted by Stu Savory on 16th February 2004 at 06:06 Central European Time ;) permalink

---

Secret Code 46 : Who wrote the bible?

Hey sinners! Do you remember the lady from Utah who insisted the Lord prayed in English? Go read what I blogged about her on 29th Dec '03. Basically I posted a soundbite of the Lord's prayer in Aramaic for her, since this is what a Jew would have spoken 2000 years ago.

Well she's sent me another ranting diatribe again - Gods bless her soul - in which she asks rhetorically "Who do you think wrote the bible anyway ? - Jesus did!". Yet another unique theory from Utah.

'Tain't so lady!
Forty six is the (clue to the) answer. No, not 42, as the Douglas Adams' fans think. 46.

Forty six tells you who wrote the bible, ma'am, in a secret code written in the bible itself. Just go buy the King James Authorised Version (completed in 1610 AD) unless you have one already. By the way, 1610 = 35*46 in case you hadn't noticed; more numerological evidence proving that 46 is the correct clue!

Remember 46 is the key to the secret code in the bible answering your question "Who wrote the bible (or translated the 1610 version into English at least)? "

So turn to Psalm 46 please. Now count through the words and write down the 46th word thereof. Now go to the end of Psalm 46 and count back 46 words from the end, writing down that word just behind the first one.

What have you got, lady? The answer to your question "Who wrote the bible?"!
Those two words are "shake" "spear".

More proof needed? In 1610 (when the bible was completed) Shakespear was 46 years old.

Yeah lady, Fortysix is verily the coded clue in the Bible! And now comes the recursive question : Is there a hidden code in Shakespeare's works too? ;-)

Forty Six : is the answer for the MotoGP (biker) fans too. Fortysix is the racing number inherited by il Dottore Valentino Rossi (see the book on the sidebar). He's racing for Yamaha this year, just to prove that it is him and not the Honda V5 which is the winning factor. Should be some really good racing this year. He's gonna make Mad Max Biaggi (on the V5 Honda) suffer... Yam Yam, can barely wait 'til the season starts. Go Doc Rossi, go!!!

Tips : Sleepless on friday, I scanned through (46?) blogs and would like to point you to the best three recent blog-entries:- Alysa Ettinger - the Grumpy Girl - (Women's rights bushwhacking), Mike Golby (The Turning of the Key, a long post after a long absence), and Taran Rampersad (spammed with Vogon Poetry!). Enjoy!

Why Today? And why am I posting this for you exactly today? In case you hadn't noticed, this is the 46th day of the year ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 15th February 2004 at 04:00 Central European Time ;) permalink

---

I've heard women prefer a Latin Lover ;-)

Eclogarii parvula : Hic libellus (Iter Gallicum) non scriptum magnus opere, sed incomparabilis est.
English: This little book - Tour de France - is not a great written work, but it is incomparable.

About 45 years ago I had my last school Latin lesson. So I thought it might be interesting to see if I can still read the stuff. Not JC's War Blog which we had to read in school, but this little Asterix comic written by Goscinny and drawn by Uderzo and translated into Latin by Karl-Heinz Graf von Rothenburg. And it's proving to be a struggle. I manage about 3 to 5 pages an evening before falling asleep over it!

The Asterix comics should be read in the original French, then you get all the puns and word-plays. I have a couple of their Asterix comics in German, one in English and the rest in the original French. The really subtle stuff gets lost in the translations though, which is the case here too. Examples : One of the Roman camps is called Babaorum. If you know French or have been to France, you know that 'Babaorum' is also the french name for a particularly sickly soggy soft donut soaked in rum. The dog in the comics is called Idefix, french for 'single-track mind'. One of the characters is called Assurancetourix, french for 'comprehensive car insurance', and so on and so forth. None of the translations can convey these word-games.

'Iter Gallicum' begins anno a.C.n.L: tota Gallia, quae, ut vides, est divisa in partes quinque..., which of course is a neat misquotation from the opening lines of Caesar's De Bello Gallico. There are several throw-away classical quotations therein, which are even funnier for being in the original Latin. All in all I like the book, even if it is hard work for me.

Phonacus audi: Should you like listening to retro Pop-music - in particular to Black Sabbath - then I recommend a CD called Sabbatum by Rondellus. The tracks are all Black Sabbath hits - like War Pigs and Solitude - but sung a capella in Latin in a medieval style. The group's website contains a dozen one minute MP3 samples which you can download to try out.

Post Scriptum: Be grateful that I didn't try to write the whole blog-entry in Latin today!
Aut non tentaris aut perfice, sed barba tenus sapientes. Cucullus non facit monachum ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 13th February 2004 at 02:09 Central European Time. permalink

---

Finally. Permalinks.

Permalinks implemented : via the Ortuk Blogger community, Patrick Jarrett has shown me how to do permalinks. So I've added Permalinks for each day so far in February 2004; I'm not going to rework the whole past year though! I've tested these internally on one of my local machines and they seem to work OK using my Opera Browser/W98SP2. In this solution, the blog gets redirected to another file, the month's pre-archive so to say. So you might get a slight delay ( under 5 secs) due to the redirection. BUT Patrick's neat solution ensures that all you folks can keep your bookmarks, favourites etc, they are all still valid. That's good. It's good for Sitemeter and Technorati too.

posted by Stu Savory on 12th February 2004 at 11:25 Central European Time. permalink

---

Software for the Terrorists' PDAs

Almanac : As we have been told by the usurper sitting in Al Gore's office, the latest terrorist tool is an almanac. WMD stands for World Military Data, he thinks(?). So if you carry a heavy ole almanac around with you, the department of homeland severity will be after you, with their dogs of war and a FREE Cuban holiday offer.

But there is a solution, get some almanac software for your innocent little PDA. For only 20 dollars, you can get Fischer's world almanac from www.pocketdirectory.com for your Palm. If it is an important part of your devious plans to know the per capita income in Outer Mongolia or per square mile how dense the people of India are (less so than us western programmers?) then just download this 17,000 entry 2.7 MB almanac. 20 bucks buys a lot of knowledge. The supplement about "the US Government and Defense" costs only 8 dollars. In real money, that's about 30 pieces of silver.

Palm Chess : To while away your time sitting in an underground spiderhole, there is a really strong chess programm (i.e.2100+ Elo points) available for only 20 bucks from www.rebel.nl too. BTW: 2100 Elo points would beat ALL the German ladies' C-team, we're talking advanced chess SW here! Beats the pants off me too on Fridays. Strip Chess, THE intellectuals' game.

Planetarium : If you can only travel by night, navigating by the stars, spend 24 dollars at www.aho.ch for Andreas Hofer's superbly dynamic starmap. And it is just the SW you need for your Palm if you're an amateur astronomer too. It even displays in dark red, thus leaving your eyes' night/dark adaptation unaffected. Or download 2sky for 25 bucks from www.in2space.com to get over 220,000 objects.

Reality Check : These are useful tips for Palm SW (via Nils Schiffhauer in FAZ), even if you're not a terrorist, in case anyone seriously thinks I'm encouraging them. No way, Mark! If you still want a paper almanac, then I recommend A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. It is a very good conservationist book (see left sidebar). Given these tips, even the AWOL-man with the questionable discharge can do something new with his Palm ;-)

Welcome new blogreaders : Alembic, ArtMachine, Fundelupa, PunkClown, SwimPC, and the unknown soldiers from the "army.mil" server who came for sunday's sympathy blog entry.

Permalinks at last? : via the Ortuk Blogger community Patrick Jarrett has given me what may be the breakthrough tip for me, letting me do permalinks. I shall try out his tip on thursday. If the blog goes down then, you'll know I screwed it up. Byeee. Doing a backup now . . .

posted by Stu Savory on 11th February 2004 at 02:06 Central European Time. permalink

---

Shock and Awe

For your prayers : Let us think today of those mutilated by Bush's unneccessary rush into an unjustified war. No Iraqi WMD. This young man, Alan Germaine Lewis has had his life ruined. Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you, who went AWOL yourself!

And shame on you too, "Condole Easy" Rice. Haven't seen you trying to condole these brave men and women, maimed for life. Nor their spouses, children, or parents. None of these people shown on Fox, the manipulative media. Vox populi, Vox dei? Fox bushii.

And shame on you, Dick Cheney, for ignoring your country's real heroes, whilst arranging deals for your previous company, Halliburton, yes, they with their corrupt bribe-takers. Blood for oil. Alan's blood, not yours.

And shame on you, Donald Rumsfeld, now claiming you don't have to prove Irak hat WMD, Irak has to prove they didn't. You're the guy who sold weapons to Saddam and shook his hand while trying to persuade him to attack Iran. The War-minister who failed to capture Usama. Shame on you, warmonger, there is much blood on your hands. And many, many, wounded that you keep hidden from the great American public. And of the approx. 500 US dead. How many of their funerals have any of those named above attended? One remaining hand suffices to count.

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

This posting was inspired by Northstar's February 5th poster of the US war dead, headlined "You need to know". But let us not forget the 9000+ Iraqi dead too, also at the blooded hands of Bush etc. Thankyou for reminding us all, Northstar. Rumsfeld is here this weekend, so I've been waving my (probably futile) anti-war placard. One of many. But too few.

posted by Stu Savory on 8th February 2004 at 07:09 Central European Time. permalink

---

Bear Baiting

Today's post is dedicated to Mark ( BrykMantra), for our mutual teasing. He seems to see me as some kind of grumpy old bear, so I'm posting this family photo to confirm his worse suspicions :-)

The lady on the left - wearing a headband - is my better half, Cornelia. The lady on the right is Regina, a published amateur astronomer and a good friend of ours. So presumably, Mark, that must be grizzly ole me somewhere there in the middle :-)

Just as well that my dictation software does spelling correction, otherwise we'd get the porn-googlers here, looking for two bare ladies.

Brykmantra takes me to task for spelling 'Merica with a small "a". He says it should have a large and capital "A" leading it. "A" as in "Al Gore", right? Actually I've thought for nigh on four years now that 'Merika was led by a small and ineffective "w". But I'll drop the apostrophe if that pleases him, lest he think I'm bashing the 'Merkins, instead of just doing my usual Bushwhacking.

Bushwhacking : In fact if one reads down all the way to the end of this blog, one finds no America-Bashing. I don't do that. What I regularly do however, is to be a sarcastic Bushwhacker. Meg named me that, a name I bear (geddit?) with pride. Remember, the map is not the territory; nor is the country the same as its leader. So I can love America whilst still pushing hard for a change in its leadership. So do me a favour, vote Democrat in 2004, even if it does make this blog a whole lot more boring.

On this theme, have you seen that Dubya now has a hypothesis that the CIA initially misled him about WMD in Irak? "Hypothesis" is much too difficult a word for Dubya to pronounce correctly, maybe he was thinking (barely) of a Tenet?

posted by Stu Savory on 6th February 2004 at 09:11 Central European Time. permalink

---

Biting the tale that feeds to you

Recursion and reiteration : Been emailing with a non-attributing plagiarist about blog crossquoting. It is my opinion that it's OK if not done to excess. Copying up to a dozen lines is OK, as long as there's a link to the source. It's like a compliment, OK? Certainly not worth flaming anyone for, IMHO. Copying a whole day's blog-entry though is not de rigeur, I think.

Otherwise, ask first! I see you took it down now, as I requested. Okay. 'Nuff said.

That stated, I must admit that I don't know who the artist of this cartoon is, nor where it originally appeared; I just thought it appropriate in this context. Mea culpa.

Sometimes too, disputants will want to present both points of view (each their own) of the same thing. This is quite obviously all right, as long as it doesn't degrade into one of those nasty flame wars either.

New blog-readers : Welcome to Chele, to Transblawg (Margaret Marks), and to Lifechanges ... Delayed; drop by whenever you like.

Scottish rock/folk music : It seems that my Scots blog entry of 25th January is still getting hits and links. A girl from Arkansas, Jenny, wrote and asked for a recommendation of any modern Scottish rock/folk music. She didn't want the traditional pipe stuff, but a blend of traditional folk and modern rock music. Well Jenny, I've got just the tip for you. Go listen to the Battlefield Band. You can download whole tracks from their site. You'll like them.

Jenny also asked - teasingly - that I show her and the other girls of her highschool what a Scotsman wears under his kilt. Sorry Jenny, there are technical reasons for NOT doing that. You see, this is a non-flash website :-)

Bushwhacking Countdown 5-4-3-2-1 : President Kerry. President Kerry. President Kerry. President Kerry. President Kerry. Get used to seeing it in print. President Kerry. President Kerry. President Kerry. President Kerry. Rolls easily off the tongue, doesn't it. President Kerry. President Kerry. President Kerry. Or even Dean, I don't care. President Kerry. President Kerry. Looking forward to the day Bush/Cheney get ejected. President Kerry. I wonder if his Dad is called Elei? Kerry Eleison. Lord have mercy. Especially on bad punners.

posted by Stu Savory on 5th February 2004 at 04:00 Central European Time. permalink

---

The downside of Orkut

Well, I may have upset some people in Orkut this week. They had entered me as a potential friend, which Orkut asked me to confirm. And I just said NO. Maybe they are (were?) my blogreaders, or friends of friends of friends . . .(some degree removed). Anyway, I didn't feel I knew them well enough to accept; I set my barrier at a high level.

This may be a potentially explosive issue which affects Orkut itself. Rejection is always painful. I know narcissists who get very upset when rejected, although deservedly so. Orkut is on dangerous ground here, and dragging us all onto their emotional territory here too. Doug blogged he felt like a pariah, until invited to join. Taran (whom I also invited) initially had qualms, blogging "but I don't want to!". I've had other mails suggesting that Orkut has peaked out and wouldn't we rather all just play Tetris again :-) But others are having fun there.

But maybe Halley was right in her initial instinctive assessment. She refused even to join, perceiving it as a timewaster.

So I'm gradually backing off too, and will concentrate on the blogging, OK folks?

posted by Stu Savory on 4th February 2004 at 05:50 Central European Time. permalink

---

State where you've been!

Got an Email from Blogreader Ed (surname not given) of Valentine, Nebraska. He has not been outside the US (due to Dubya-Depression unemployment he writes), but would like to know which (US) states I've visited. OK, Ed, they're shown in red on the map.

Seems like I'm an edgy-man, Ed, not having visited either your home state or any of the central ones either. Ooops, I see I've forgotten to mark Wisconsin red. Sorry. Of course any of us sport pilots worth his salt has to fly a small plane into Oshkosh (near Lake Winnebago, about 150 miles NNW of Chicago) for the EAA-Meet at some time in his life. I'll have to put up a photo webpage of my trips to Oshkosh sometime (like when I've scanned the old photos).

Valentine, Nebraska, Ed? Does your whole town party on February 14th, or what?

Your second request, Ed, for my favourite photo I made on my WW-travels, is more difficult, I'd need to review ALL the photo albums & slides. So let me just show you the best photo taken on vacation in the Austrian Alps last year. It is of Ground Lake (=Bodensee), altitude about 5000 feet, population two. Smaller than the texan town which was Dubya's memory-jogger during the last non-election, Kilgore. Trout from the lake here are really delicious too!

Sunday's MS satire redux, via Carl Rose:-)
One OS to fool them all
One browser to find them
One email client to bring them all
And through security holes, blind them...

Sunday's experiment to observe the response-time of p0rn spammers was FAST! I'd deliberately mentioned the phrase Paris Hilton several times as a p0rn-spammer troll. It took the first one just 2 hours and 21 minutes from me putting the blog-entry online to me receiving the first very explicit offer of that Paris Hilton video. With Viagra AND that video I'm sure that you'd end up (sic!) with a really nice organ (see photo). Those scum have some really fast-working spiders, I must give them that. Much faster than Technorati for me, Meg.

New friends : Welcome too, to four new blogreaders, RiRi, Punk Clown, Theophany, and Armin Grewe, all resulting from Meg's latest post about yours-truly presumably. Yesterday two Scots Alister Black and Wyn showed up too; Welcome! The blog-entry in Scots was for Burns Nicht (25/1/2004) though. But I've reverted to blogging in English so that the Sassenachs can understand me again :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 3rd February 2004 at 06:07 Central European Time. permalink

---

Where do you want to go today, myDoom-B?

There are 192 countries, so far I've been to only 58 of them (~30%). These 58 are coloured red in the map. I haven't been to all the 134 green ones, nor can I afford to do so :-(

Sadly, Tobago is one of the green ones, where blog-readers Debby and Carl are. Maybe they can get together with Taran there?

You can make your own map of the countries you have visited (interactively) and even write your own online travelogue there on their website. Not suitable for R/G colourblind folks. Maps like this one seem to be the new meme. Fox TV star Gary had one yesterday too.

G ill B ates :
Billyboy is to be awarded a KBE (a gong for foreigners) by HM Liz, Queen of GB. Even though MS is now to provide Windows for Welsh speakers, apparently Charlyboy - the well known tampon-wannabee and P.O.W. (Prince of Wales) - did not make the recommendation (maybe he's a Linux fan, like Taran Rampersad). Now just imagine he was not called B ill G ates, but by a typographic transpositional error in Buck House, Gill Bates. Further imagine please that he invited his parents to attend the investiture ceremony (3 guests only allowed). What would the Master of Ceremonies have to announce? "Your Majesty, these are Mister Bates, Mrs.Bates, and their son Master B...." Oops! Well maybe I thought he was a secret tosser ;-) Lends a whole new meaning not only to the words micro & soft, but also philanthropic (~big donor). Doug Alders made a good point about MS mispractices yesterday (Jan 31st).

Another Tosser : After Kerry's success in NH, Dubya said he wanted to run on home to Mommy ("go to Ma's"), but instead committed to going to Mars. But he has to balance the budget too, so he may scrap NASA and go with this new US superlight invention saving some money Cheney can then divert to Halliburton. Sounds a bit bird-brained to me!

Psittacus erithacus : Unlike Joel on 26th Jan, I don't think Dubya sounds like a parrot when talking to the press. Parrots sound a bit more intelligent!

Oh dear, I've drifted off into Bushwhacking again, whereas I meant just to post MS humour today, while watching the myDoom-B worm do its DOS thing. What kind of company names its first product after a Denial Of Service attack? I must be getting stuck in a rut.

Apropos Rutting : I just read that a famous dumb-blonde hotel heiress - who shall remain nameless, so I don't get all the p0rn0 freaks hitting this blog - will be getting married on Valentine's day. But in Las Vegas, not in the upmarket family hotel in the capital of France, the Paris Hilton. Ooops, I went and said it! NB: according to the website of that famous french hotel, the Paris Hilton neither allows use of the rear entrance by customers, nor does the Paris Hilton allow double occupancy. So that's why the opening night will be held in Vegas. Apparently paparazzi are planning to use fire-truck turntable ladders to make videos and movies from outside the bedroom of Paris Hilton. On the job, these are known as Windows of opportunity ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 1st February 2004 at 07:47(sic!) Central European Time. permalink

---