Rapidly circling the drain of becoming just another broadcast medium for big business and state control, can we allow our internet to become just another content controlled and filtered method of selling and brainwashing? Understanding the terms and methods is important in our ongoing struggle against totalitarianism and a “soviet” internet.

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Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorism rules introduced discreetly by Jacqui Smith.

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Surprise surprise.. I’m back again with my almost yearly installment of nothing much going on.

Nothing new to add from the new year post really, same old same old.
Just really wanted to say “I miss all you guys from the forums.. get your bums on irc sometime so we can all catch up.” and that kind of thing..
/me spams the xiii channel

Hmmm.. I didn’t have anything when I started so I will shut up now, was going to have a play with the widgets and whatnot but I can’t be bothered now..

Well it looks like another year is over. It’s been up and down to be brutally honest. Ended quite well, with a far more positive attitude for the future than last year.
Learned lots of cool new things. Built my own site, and it was good until the hardware decided it had seen better days and gave up the ghost. It’s still working, and doing good service back in it’s more usual role of network file and print server, but the demands of serving a website and forums to the world was too much for it’s tired 10 year old ass.. looolz

What else.. hmmm.. didn’t really have a structure when I started, so I’m just going to ramble on for a bit.

Gave up with console repairs earlier.. about march.. the new gen consoles are not the fun of the older ones.
Took a more pro-active role within the irc communities than I had previously, helping on the debian helplines and generally making a nuisance of myself everywhere else.
Lots of work with dvd ripping and copying with linux.. nothing illegal just using the existing playback decryption tools and codecs to enable the bypassing of even the most complicated copy protection.. the cracking of the psl file dumping was a notable first.. nearly got me in trouble, so don’t go looking for info about how to do it.. I took it all away.
Came close to getting shut down completely in April after a major panic with a dvd ripper I was involved with.
Summer was mostly spent on the coding of my website, with a few nice days out to Mancheater and Liverpool.

Since about October it’s all gone rather quiet.. just the recurring server maintenance contracts and a few pc builds. Haven’t been to see any bands this year.. oh hang about.. forgot the Bolton Metal Alliance huge thing.. That was pretty good, but because of the vast alcohol intake I don’t remember much about it.. soould be able to find the date for that.. It was the last night anybody was allowed to smoke inside anywhere. When I find a flyer maybe a scan and post somewhere…

Ongoing projects? Currently working on a minimal linux desktop system installation with all GUI applications. Restricted to the old hardware having 32MB ram.. so far there is a nice browser, irc and im apps, a burner (not happy with that one.. it is very slow) text and programming editors and a very simple photo/paint editor.. Installation iso currently runs in at 11mb, and with everything running takes around 16mb. Should be bloody great on those really ancient p2 laptops that run windows 95

Well there we have it. Looks like the end of an era for the forums so I thought a blog would be a good idea.

Best wishes to anybody who reads this.. and a

VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS 2008 TO ALL XXX XD

Ever  had one of those days when you want to kill the postman. Everything was sailing along sort of fine and whammo…My thieving landlord is now determined to stop me eating all in the name of profit. How am I supposed to find another £50 a month.. That’s an increase in my rent of £155 a month in the last year. It wouldn’t be so bad if he had actually done something about the broken heating, the condemned wiring and the leaking roof, but he hasn’t. Fuck it.. I just give up. If I leave there will be either a gas leak or a major electrical fault. The bastard has bled me of cash this year so that I am at the point of not having enough money to move. With all this and being ill I don’t know where to turn any more. I heard a good and dark thing tonight on some film or other. “death is a road we all have to take someday, yet it’s not the end..just a different path. Then this grey rainswept world clears and becomes silver light” or something like that.

I was hoping a friend was going to come and stay for a while next week, but now it seems not. I’m feeling very isolated and alone here. Maybe they will come soon, but if not I don’t know what I will do. It’s hard to say that you need somebody, but I have no family and very few friends (actually in this town I have no friends).. Notice the time again. It’s always very early morning when I post.. I’m back in the darkness where I hide from everything. Maybe I’ll have another attempt at sleeping, I had to get out of bed because I was crying on my own in the dark, and after 2 hours of that I really had enough of it. I’m not sure what I was so upset about. Maybe I should have another attempt at seeing my useless doctor, the one who makes me wait 6 weeks for an appointment, or perhaps another attempt like last time that actually resulted in getting to talk to somebody about the way I’m feeling and what I can do to try and get out of this hole!! Nah..forget it..can’t be bothered. It didn’t help anything last time so this time isn’t going to be any different.

Theres a first. I have a spam comment from some car insurance company with no comment. They hit my email tho..

There’s no comment to go with it. That’s strange too.

I can’t even put the damn spammers details in here so we can all spam them back. Never mind.. I’ll post them on the spambot site I’m a member of instead.

Nobody looks here anyway so…At least the spammers can be bothered. Sad for them.. I don’t own a car..they lose.

Ever have one of those days.. You wake up and though you can’t put your finger on it something is just not quite right? Well I’ve had close on 4 weeks of it. I’m seriously starting to think that the real world has drifted off and left me in somebody’s messed up nightmare. Earlier today I was repairing a heavy piece of domestic equipment and put down a large spanner I was using.. I use the word with caution.. more like “attempting to use” and it just vanished. I didn’t go away from where I was working. I didn’t even move from the spot, but when I went to pick it up again it just wasn’t there.. Gone! Vanished as if it had never existed. This is only one of many strange happenings recently that are starting to question my view of reality. Sitting here earlier there was a large bang in the other room. Of course I live alone so I have to investigate. A large thing that has been sitting on the floor for the last 6 months minding it’s own business has taken it upon itself to fall over. Not that strange? Well seeing as the item in question is a 4×12 speaker cabinet I think it’s at least a little unusual. I’m either living in an alternate reality or I have a poltergeist. Maybe I’ll wake up and find it’s a dream. I know what dreams feel like and this isn’t right for that. To start with I’m sitting at my computer with the desk lamp on so there is direct light. Ever noticed in dreams how the light always comes from somewhere else, like an open door or through a partly obscured window? And it’s too hot and uncomfortable.. Not dreamlike at all, apart from all the strange goings on.

Maybe Rod Sterling will step out of the wardrobe after I go to sleep and do his piece to camera as he always did back in the classic days. I’ll have to get my webcam working and leave it running when I go to bed. Then at least I will have any evidence of funny goings on while I am asleep. It’s worrying me about that huge box falling over earlier. They don’t do things like that on their own volition.. It’s so heavy I usually just drag it about if I need to move it, so for it to decide to do something all by itself concerns me very greatly….

As for the other strange happenings. A whole week before my monthly rent was due to be paid I had a letter saying my rent for July was £XXX.. I had only paid £XXX (the same amount) and could I pay the outstanding amount immediately! I took that to a legal man who informed me that if I wanted to be funny about it it was legal proof that I had paid a months rent in full for a period which at that point I did not even have a tenancy agreement to cover. It wasn’t an auto generated letter either.. It had been typed and signed by a staff member I have met on more than one occasion.. Strange.

Really, I don’t know what to think of the last few weeks. Very weird.

As testing is completed successfully I can write something worthwhile. (maybe..if I can think of anything)

With the firewall rebuilt and working properly or once I have a little time for me. Summer is beautiful and all my roses are in bloom. I don’t like gardeneng but when there is one at the front of the house on a main road then there is a certain responsibility to keep it tidy.

On the internet front, site admin responsibilities take a fair bit of my time, what with answering all the messages from people wanting to be moderators and the like, or asking how I got the job. Standard answer for all of these is ready to copy/paste now. Saves the effort of personalising everything. Yeah I know it’s lazy but it’s a pain having to type the same things over and over ad infinitum.

Otherwise..life isn’t too bad, some more money would be nice but everything is ticking along nicely for the moment. Where’s the next disaster to come from I wonder. Whatever.. It can’t possibly get as bad as it was a few weeks ago. Maybe I’ll have a few days out. If I can get my camera to connect to my PC then there will be some pictures of nice places for everyone to enjoy. In the meantime I’ll try to keep everyone posted of what’s happening and where it all comes from.

Jan

XXX