Robert Small, The blog thereof.

[Photo's to come.]

I’ve recently bought a Sony Ericsson K800i, it’s a nice little thing. I say thing because it’s one of those multitudinous devices which contains a camera, a mp3 player, expandability via memory cards, a radio, a basic web browser, video calling and all the rest. What’s more it can be used to call people when you’re out and about!

In short I wanted a phone which I can use (unlocked) in the States without breaking a warranty. To use my MDA Vario II I’d have to break a warranty which I intend to use within the next few months, my Vario being slightly broken. Before some clever person points out that I can use my Vario in the states without unlocking it, I want to use a pay as go SIM from the states to lower charges and I can’t do that without unlocking.

So, I went to CarPhone Warehouse and purchased one. It’s the cheapest 3G phone I could get with T9. T9 is what I’m used to from my old old phone, a nice little Sharp. So, I have a phone which suites my requirements; it provides 2G/3G for the best coverage and T9 for my comfort.

It also has a ~3mpx camera, not too bad one either. I’ve taken a few photo’s with it and give it a test in most conditions, one thing I noted was that it actually handed both the dark and near dark with relative ease. I was very surprised that it even handled flash compensation reasonably well. The camera is covered by a shutter and when you remove the cover it automatically starts the camera application, when you close the shutter it closes the application. I thought this was quite useful.

It has a music player and radio, these leave a little to be desired. The radio is analogue, but other than that quite a reasonable little device, it requires the headphones to be plugged in as it uses them as an aerial, but it doesn’t restrict your listening to them. The music player is integrated enough to prevent the two running together and it has a passable interface for using to play a track at a time.  It didn’t like my music, in fact, it seemed to hate it. It (apparently by random) truncated it’s readings of my ID3 tags, it also doesn’t allow playing by album, this is not good if you’re in the habit of using compilations.

The web browser seems OK, as does the RSS reader, I haven’t tested this to the full because I have limited credit on the SIM which came with the phone.  I’m always hesidant about web browsers on phones, the screens are small and the typing facilities are minimal. However, if such things please you I think they should be adequate for most average needs.

I’ve not tested video calling, I see it as pretty pointless but the camera on the front seems to be OK.

So there you go, that’s me unboxing it. I’ve liked what I’ve seen and found it pretty usable, the leather strap for carrying makes it feel rather like a camera and adds a bit of character, the screen is clear and the camera is of good quality. Most importantly it makes calls, if it made coffee I’d be far happier than all the gimmicks.

Here’s me, signing off, Robert.

This is going to be a bit of an open response to a message I received on MySpace. As the message was not open I cannot provide absolute proof of it’s existence, but I know that you’ll trust me.

“i’ve got a question to ask you about that have you ever been laid? with a woman? you big gay twat” Wilmur

I will not release my full attention or energy in response, but I do feel it necessary to address this and such similar attacks. This has not been the only of such, I believe the homophobic community must be passing this around or maybe linking to it within their weekly newsletter.

Before I address any issues raised in or by this correspondence it does strike me that the sender must either have not read my blog, or been heavily under the influence of some mind numbing drug at the time. The entire blog was not about the act of sexual intercourse, foreplay, or anything pertaining to such actions; it was about the use of sexual attraction and visual/verbal sexual manipulation within advertisements and popular culture. For those of you who’d like to totally dismiss this as nonsensical, I’d prefer to address this form of address before it becomes too commonplace within my new mail. I am also amused to find that sexuality is brought into this, did the author read more than the title before realising it as a way to display his own insecurities on a public medium? This I expect will remain a secret.

I will not address the issue of the correspondent’s sexuality, if they’re a latent homosexual and this is the way they chose to show it then that is entirely their business and not mine to pry into. I will not address their interesting grammar, nor the lack of capitalisation but simply presume they’ve broken their shift key and were in great hurry for their life.

Maybe it is that they don’t understand my post, maybe they cant comprehend the meaning of ’sexing’ or how things can be sold using a sexual image. Surely this cannot be so, they had a public school (that’s paid for those outside the UK) education of a genuinely good quality. I would not be surprised if they got higher marks than yours truly, my English skills have always been lacking. Surely they must have been able to understand the simple concept of sex in advertising.

The correspondent asks me if I’ve ever had sex with someone. I must remind them that this is none of their business, apart from being totally irrelevant to the post. They then go on to ask if, if the first question was answered yes, it was a member of the fair sex. They then accuse me of being gay and a `twat`. Gay I take to mean homosexual, and `twat` to mean fool; the other alternative is unlikely even in the context of the absurdity of the post, it being a happy vulva. I’ll let my friends judge me on my foolishness, but I’m most definitely heterosexual. Even if I were, what would be the problem, would there even be any change to the validity of my points of view? This strikes me as the stereotypical accusation of a young man being ‘gay’ because he cries at his wedding, his wedding to a woman, rather petty.

In conclusion I find this attack rather laughable. It’s badly worded and badly punctuated, it’s lacking in substance, it totally lacks factual backing or grounding for the accusations. It is unfortunate that I’ve received a few other similar emails or messages, it’s sad that even in this day of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ a man cannot stand up for what he believes to be right, and stand against something he believes to be another’s disgrace without attracting insults. Of course, it has to be the age old accusation of homosexuality.

How pathetic.

Kind regards, Robert.

I started using TuxOnIce when I switched kernel’s to the kamikaze sources. I’ve been doing a few things to try and get the best power usage out of Linux and my IBM X31 possible, TuxOnIce seems to do an excellent job suspending and resuming my entire OS. Without giving it any extra kernel parameters and only changing a few options within the configuration. For those of you who haven’t met TuxOnIce, it’s the new Suspend2.

Some of you may know that I’ve recently purchased an IBM X31 and that I’ve been trying to get the best battery life from it possible. One of the things about this is not having to restart whenever you have to change a battery, hibernation as it was dubbed by the windows developers is a useful trick for this. I can wait till my battery is almost run out, hibernate, change batteries, then start up again and resume where I left off. This can be done in a short enough time to preserve a net connection and not ping out on IRC! I’ve actually considered creating a ‘blank’ suspend image which has the main core of the OS and the DE loaded already and simply resuming to that instead of ever starting a new session, the problem with that would be resuming from a different partition when I’d actually suspended. I’d also have to create a new version of this image each time I updated my kernel or certain bits of core software, this will take some thought before I decide to go into it but it does provide something for thinking about.

I’m intending to build my father a media centre, this will (of course) use a Linux core and a probably a MythTV front end. This project would greatly benefit from a suspend image booted from a CF card, in fact, it would be almost instant boot and instantly be usable from where it last was. This might be a method of producing a very fast unalterable distro, your entire filesystem could be on ram-disks and your entire operating system could be stored on a suspend image, all you’d need is an initrd image and a kernel. The entire system could be updated by a bootable dvd which simply replaces the suspend image. If anyone has any comments on this then please do leave them as I’ve become interested in the concept within the space of writing it. Before I get attacked for breaking freedom and closing an OS, it wouldn’t be closed at all, the suspend image could be disassembled and edited with absolute ease; to prevent this some for of checksumming or signing would have to be implemented and I would not support that. Tell me your thoughts.

I used to use Suspend2 when I first experimented with Gentoo a few years ago, now I’ve returned to it for my IBM X31 I’ve resumed my interest (pun not intended). Back then I was looking to completely replace windows and show my school that it was possible. Although I proved this to myself they were still cynical and blamed every problem on Linux, even when the camera refused to work on their windows PC’s. There are none so blind as the willing. I do find it both sad and somewhat frightening, people believe what they’re told by the people they believe are right; even after being shown categorical results to the opposite. I’m rambling.

Do leave my any thoughts on the suspend image based OS.

Kind regards, Robert.

The postman whistles as he walks down the path, knocks three times and presents the occupant with their post. He declines the cup of tea and returns to his bicycle to continue down the lane. Arriving at the gate he enters the next house, inspects a new baby and incurs a cup of tea. Three doors down he informs old Mrs Wilkinson of the new baby’s name and tell her of the latest plans for the cathedral in Rochester. He meets everyone with their post and a brief friendly conversation, in fact, the entire local community is held together by the postman. He carries local news around and provides a daily visitor to the aged.

I’ve only ever twice spoken to my post woman, both times were a result of  her trying to avoid being involved with her duty of delivering the post. I’ve many a time caught her, or some other worker attempting to avoid presenting me with my post. For some reason they prefer to write out a slip telling me that they don’t think I’m there without bothering to try the bell. It’s a sign of the times. No longer is there a vibrant community between the men and women who stay at home, in fact, rarely is anyone at home between nine and twelve. No longer does the postman share information or make light upon days of the aged and infirm.

Indeed, the world of malady is shown through the lack of conversation with the deliverer of the post.

Kind regards, Robert.

You will need:

• Half a dozen eggs
• An adapter from your local plug layout to the one you will be staying in
• A multi socket extension, get a surge breaking one if possible
• Glue (optional)

Firstly unwrap everything, if you weren’t intending to do this in the first place then you probably shouldn’t be following this.

Secondly, pop the adapter onto the plug (the one you normally put in the wall). You now have 4/6/8/n sockets of your local plug layout which you can use wherever you’re traveling to.

Now a little warning. This does not convert frequency or voltage, you can only use appliances which will take the frequency/voltage settings from the country you’re traveling to; however, this is not an issue in most places now as most standard appliances take a range of settings, my laptop will work in Europe, England, Japan, Australia, and even the USA with a simple plug change*. What this will enable you to do is provide a reasonably wide range of appliances with power, recently I’ve seen that most charging plugs (mice, phones, speakers, pda’s, cameras, etc) are compatible with this method. If your device isn’t then it’s probably best to buy a multi-voltage/plug adapter from the target country, almost every device has voltage/polarity instructions somewhere near where it gets it’s power.

This method does NOT provide any inbuilt protection from power surges, so I’d advise the purchase of a surge breaker within the power socket extension, this may be extra cost now but replacing everything is an extra cost later. Do not over load this little set up, if you do you will probably be in pretty big trouble from whoever owns the establishment which you’re living in; this is not suitable for running CRTs or kettles off, buy a proper adapter or just a new kettle. Who takes a kettle in their suitcase anyway?

If you decide to use this constantly you may wish to glue the apparatus together to prevent it falling to bits, some two-pin layouts are less than secure.

The only other thing I can say is, don’t do this unless you accept full liability for when you break it. I mean if you break it…

Kind regards, Robert.

* It may work in other places but I haven’t checked this.

One would expect that a post office might provide fast and efficient movement of post from one place to another. Would one expect travel insurance and a phone service? It’s strange, I’ve become more and more aware of the different services they offer. I do wonder how they can provide all this and yet claim the need to close so many post offices in the aid of economy.

On Friday I went into the local branch of the post office and bought myself travel insurance, it’s actually a very good deal. I also changed a reasonable amount of money into dollars and euros, I should be able to have a few cups of coffee when I’m sitting in Amsterdam. It’s nice, the post office workers are all friendly, helps when you’re doing something you’ve never done before and something that you’re a little unsure how you can do and what you can get out of it. Travel insurance is not something I’m highly knowledgeable about and I felt just a little lost buying it from the nice gentleman aptly named Fred. He passed me over to a nice lady, I forget her name, who proceeded to fill out the forms for me and provide me with a booklet which informed me that I’d get a few hundred if I were hijacked or a few thousand if I missed my flight, I decided to pass on the hijack offer.

Contemplating my situation over a cup of coffee I decided that I was glad the post office was also involved in travel services, it’s good to support something other than a supermarket or a major bank/building society. I feel rather loyal to our postal service, it is after all rather British. Whatever people say, it is very good when it works. Strikes and unfortunate incidents with things getting lost don’t help, I hope all this will clear up soon.

The post office also offers a credit card, banking, telephone and broadband, and I dare say several other services. Is this diversification sensible? It didn’t work for Sainsbury’s, sideways expansion is a risky business. I believe their banking services are very old, they also seem to be farmed out to the Bank Of Ireland and not their own. I dislike middlemen, the concept rarely helps the consumer, this time however they seem to be offering something which does help the consumer. I’ve never used their banking services, only their postal and travel services.

This blog post has been something of a spilling out of ideas and thoughts, something of an explanation to myself for my own thoughts. You’re lucky to be privy to my thoughts.

Kind regards, Robert.

I will be working on a new V8d Org project, Linux GPS. This is a project designed to build an almost complete compatibility list with full instructions how to get all the devices working with your chosen distribution. Membership and readership will be free.

We will be using a mixture of a wiki for the main information and forums for threaded conversations about what’s going on. Lee is working on the design of this site at the moment, the process simply is to pick two pieces of standard software to be integrated together with the desired result.

We will also be providing a list of software which uses GPS and the role it takes, if we see any major gap in the software packages then we will attempt to breach this gap to provide a complete experience for the Linux user. For those interested I do intend to support and involve the OSM (OpenStreetMap)  community and their work in both the software and the information.

I’m afraid it’s happened. The worse side of the world has taken it’s toll, even I have succumbed to a greater evil. The forces of a great and terrible darkness have overcome me.

I have become an habitual teabag user.

I know, it’s terrible, really terrible. I suppose this revelation will make some of you lose faith with me entirely, probably entirely for some of you. I feel somewhat a little less correct for this fact, a little less in the area of correct British culture. The convenience culture is slowly eroding into my life bit by bit.

It’s no good, I’ll have to make myself a good pot of tea using a good leaf blend (probably Yorkshire) and  drink it in defiece of teabags and convenience foods.

Yours, Robert.

‘A man who urinated on a woman as she lay dying and shouted “this is YouTube material” has been sentenced to three years in prison.’ bbc.co.uk report, thanks Auntie.

Listening to this BBC report on the radio I contemplated what a sick society we live in; however, my incredulity was not tried enough, yet. I was only half listening to the news now, imagining the woman’s humiliation as the man covered her in shaving foam and urinated on her. I can hardly imagine a more terrible scene of death.

Given in his defense is that he was under the influence of marijuana and alcohol. This is no defense, surely the court is meant to measure out judgment as some level of compensation for the man’s actions; his state of intoxication makes no difference to the crime from the victims end, not only did he not help or phone for help he gloried in making her last moments as close to hell as possible. He may feel that it’s YouTube material, but I feel that it’s more than a valid excuse to lock him up for many years. That he was a former soldier makes this crime even more horrific, this man was trained to help in extreme danger zones and impartially remove resistance with an aim to preserve human life, it would seem that dialing 999 (the emergency services) was too much for one of such high caliber.

‘A director who presided over redundancies as she swindled money from a company to support a lavish lifestyle has been jailed for five years.’ bbc.co.uk report, thanks again Beeb

As I said, my mind had taken precedent over my ears as I mused over this terrible incident, however, one thing was left to shake me to the core. It would appear that the courts in this country value corporate theft above the defilement of and failing to aid a distressed and dying woman. Gentle reader, I do not intend to be judge, jury and executioner; I have no intent nor the pretension to believe I have any right or even the ability. However, I do feel a deep resentment and what I can only describe as riotous wrath that the legal system should treat someone in this way.

I’m unsure what can be done to rectify this situation, after all, past experience would bring me to believe that it’s only one of many. Past experience would also bring me to believe that we are probably not told everything which we might be and would need to be to discover the true state of affairs, however, I still express my genuine outrage at what seems to be a great injustice.

Yours, disgusted, Robert.

Edit 01:27 27 Oct: Fixed more to Valtr0n’s liking

In most countries it is illegal to sell sex; in some the law is reversed and it illegal to buy sex.

Everyone has seen the adverts, you know the ones, pretty women photographed next to the product or even using it. I have no objection to the choice of good looking participants for adverts; what I object to is the use of this when, as is increasingly common, the pretty woman is totally irrelevant. I’m sorry if I’m incorrect but there’s no connection I’ve discovered between the undressed female form and web hosting, or fishing nets.

I also object, quite strongly, to the ’sexing’ of music and music videos. Rap, notorious for this, is well known to objectify women and glorify gangsterism. I believe that the ‘armies’ based around various rebel forces in Africa often use ‘gangster rap’ to give their child soldiers the confidence to follow the orders they’re given. Studies have shown that heavy bass beats in music increases testosterone levels, this would be excellent for someone about to make young children shoot up villages. It would also create a heightened level of all the bad sides of masculinity within the children, is it any wonder that they rape and massacrer? I dislike the trend to take this form of film making over into the rest of the music industry, not that I liked the music industry in the first place, I dislike the use of women as objects; in fact, I consider it to be an attempt to manipulate me.

The reason I think that the criticism or abuse of others is so attractive to some is as follows; to be above others (rightly or wrongly) one must create a difference between yourself and them, this can be done by their failing or by your success. If you push them down then you help them fail by your perception, you are now - in your own mind - bigger than they. I hope this makes sense, I’ll probably explain more about it another time, this is getting on for two in the morning and my mind has ceased working according to the normal constraints of ordered thinking. This goes for the objectification of women by men, mostly men who have little self worth; by pushing others beneath them they have greater self worth. It’s sick.

So why did I say that I considered it to be an attempt to manipulate me? Well, if I believe what I’ve already stated then it’s an attempt to make me feel good about myself and buy their music because it does so; they’ve failed as it only serves to make me even more sick of modern ‘culture’ than I was before. If I do not become entwined in their net by this devious trick they have a backup plan up their sleeve, simply lure my interest with sex.

But over all, I find it disturbing that to make me buy a fishing net, a new film, or maybe a cup of coffee I must be lured in by the attraction of sex. Whatever happened to the appeal of wanting to buy a product?

Kindest regards, Robert.