I keep meaning to post a moan about the generic landscape pictures that clutter up photo gallery sites, not to mention yards of shelf with glossy colour hardbacks in tourist shops, but it probably wouldn’t amount to much more than “GAH, if I have to look at one more ‘glorious’ sunset, I’ll smash the monitor!!” This post from Auspicious Dragon and this essay by Mike Johnston are more eloquent and insightful than my annoyed ranting would be.

In our sideline as corporate drone, BB recently received a global email from a HR person. The contents needn’t concern us - you may rest assured they were as intriguing and exciting as any such missive can be - but the sender had chosen to colour the entire text in green. (This is the kind of derangement into which people descend when Lotus Bloats is the corporate standard.)

Fortunately by the miracle of Google, we were quickly able to locate a link that would enlighten the individual concerned.

Article from The Guardian:

“Twenty years ago, Mark Taylor was a 16-year-old with few friends and an obsession with the Smiths.”

Figures.

<Insert standard rant about quality of Fedora releases and inevitable bugs and issues with every upgrade>

OK, FC3 to FC5 has been a disaster, an utter abomination. It didn’t actually wipe all my data and toast the disk, so in that sense it was a limited success, but in the other important sense of leaving one with a workable system, it sucked ass. This is a quick list of the problems I’m currently having for the benefit of anyone else stuck in Fedora hell. If you’ve not upgraded yet, there’s still time to contemplate CentOS.

We’re back, with a momentous announcement. It’s the news that the world, or at least parents of the world, or at least some parents of the world, has been crying out for. News that will put an end to fruitless Googling and phonecalls that no one returns, settle debates and worries, help you to sleep at night and generally go forward into a bright new future with hope in your heart and expectation on your face:

Because today, we can formally confirm that yes, the Bébé Confort Iseos TT child car seat does fit in a Seat Toledo (2001 model).

Now you know. Rest easy. It’s over.

In yesterday’s Observer, Henry Porter wrote about the government’s latest restructuring of the democratic process to make it a little more amenable to their requirements. The name of the minister charged with piloting the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (aka. “We’ll do what we want” Bill) is Jim Murphy. It rang bells, mainly because I’ve recently been flicking through a pile of old student magazines. A quick Google confirms that Murphy was NUS President around my own time at university; I’m pretty sure there was an interview with him in which doubtless he railed against the Tory government of the day and promised radical action to fight for student rights; the usual spiel that, I’m sure, was as effective as as it ever was coming from the NUS.

Today, Murphy the MP is described as an “eager beaver clumsy super-loyalist” by the Guardian. If you’re currently a student, poring over the wise words of the current NUS incumbent, bear in mind how quickly and easily they go from radical young firebrands to limpid Labour lickspittles.

Interestingly, Murphy, along with his immediate predecessors Stephen Twigg and Lorna Fitzsimmons, voted with the government to end grants and introduce tuition fees in 2001.

More rampant Western materialism over cheap technology…

Nikon launched the D200 at the tail end of last year and from the specs, it was finally the DSLR I said I’d been holding out for. So I bought a D50. Eh?

New year, new camera: I wanted to buy a Nikon D50 DSLR. I’m not proud and I’m not giving up on film, but I needed something digital that accepted fast lenses, gave acceptable images at high ISOs and had a shooting rate that could keep up with my nine month old Junior Research Assistant’s expression changing between joyful, intrigued, puzzled and raspberry-blowing every few seconds. If it weren’t for the F-mount compatibility and ridiculously low price, I’d be buying a proper DSLR with a decent viewfinder. </rant>

So I took a moral stance and went down to the shops…

It is now possible to simply install and configure WebSphere� Application Server for multiple systems. Simplify installing GA code, refresh packs, fix packs and interim fixes, as well as creating/configuring artifacts and deploying applications. All of these steps can take precious time that could be spent focusing on your core business.

…No actually, working around the misimplemented or missing features in WAS V6 takes precious time that could be spent focusing on my core business.