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| 2008-05-14 12:56 |
| (no subject) |
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This guy got me well worked up.
In other news, I sent a photograph of myself with green hair to my friend Clara in America. She wrote back accusing me of being a limey. :o)
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| 2008-05-11 22:08 |
| Note to self: always remove reflective strip before flash photography... |
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( piccy )
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| 2008-05-11 12:04 |
| Israeli/Palestinian(/Bedouin) initiatives |
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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) troo pointed out on my recent post on my views about Zionism that, though it may seem different as portrayed by the media, the peaceniks on the Israeli—and probably also the Palestinian—side are now, and have largely been, in the majority amongst the populace; it's just that the extremists have a louder voice, and the leaders don't always reflect well the views of their electorate.
Furthermore, I think I ought to point out the numerous initiatives to bring the two sides together at the grass roots level, which you also don't see well represented in the media—places like the joint Israeli/Palestinian village Neve Shalom, and organisations like Combatants for Peace, whom I heard speak yesterday at Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg's. This organisation consists of people who have fought on both sides, who have renounced violence and now promote dialogue as a means of resolving their people's problems. That's a brave decision to take, especially for one of the speakers, Bassam Aramin, whose ten-year old daughter was shot dead by Israeli border police outside her school the other year. It would have been very easy for him to seek revenge—but revenge, as he points out, only leads to more violence. And so he is pushing instead, against a system biased against him, for justice.
You can hear him speaking again this afternoon in central London if you're there, and reading this in time (instead of being out in the sunshine).
Tomorrow Moishe House are hosting Ra'ed Al Mickawi, a speaker from BUSTAN, another joint initiative. I shall be going to hear him; will those of my readers in physical range be?
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| 2008-05-05 10:13 |
| My views on Zionism |
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By popular request, my views on Zionism.
(All facts are reported to the best of my knowledge, which means I may be perpetuating inaccuracies here; but I did the best I could. Parts of this have been pasted from notes I have posted on my blog before.)
( It's a biggy. )
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| 2008-05-05 09:39 |
| The Blues Brothers |
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ELWOOD BLUES: What? What did I do?
COP: You failed to stop on a red signal.
ELWOOD BLUES: The light was yellow, sir.
[two minutes later]
COP: Elwood, we show your licence currently under suspension. Step out of the car, please.
[ELWOOD BLUES drives off with a squeal of tyres]
[rest of the film follows] Do you know, every time I have seen that film, I'm left at that point wondering if he really had jumped the light, or whether it was actually yellow—and every time, cursing myself for having failed to pay attention at the time and find out. I've been meaning for ages to just have a look at that little bit and find out—and every time I so remember, I've not been in a position to do so. Until now. So what do you think, ladies and gentlemen: did he run the red light or not? :o)
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| 2008-04-28 21:47 |
| Has everyone forgotten about East Turkestan? |
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During the last few weeks, the spotlight of the world's media has been on the suppression of the Tibetan struggle for autonomy by the People's Republic of China. Whist this is a worthy cause, I would like to draw attention to another issue that seems to have been forgotten altogether: that of East Turkestan, or Uyghurstan as it's also known, in the northwest of China. Like Tibet, this area was not part of traditional China, but has at times been under a Chinese protectorate, and like Tibet, the Chinese eventually invaded and annexed it. Also like Tibet, it suffers from a problem of Han Chinese imperialism. Indeed, you probably won't see the names East Turkestan or Uyghurstan on your atlas today; what you'll see is Xinjiang (新疆), Chinese for "New Territory"—how nakedly imperialist is that?
Wikipedia says: The Manchus invaded East Turkistan in 1759 and dominated it until 1864. During this period the Uyghurs revolted 42 times against Manchu rule with the purpose of regaining their independence. Following this, they threw off Chinese rule until the PRC invaded—possibly peacefully at the time—and annexed the region again in 1949. The Uyghur struggle for self-determination goes on to this day; Wikipedia records: A police roundup of suspected separatists during Ramadan resulted in large demonstrations that turned violent in February 1997 in an episode known as the Ghulja / Yining Incident that led to at least 9 deaths. The Urumqi bus bombs of February 25, 1997, perhaps a response to the crackdown that followed the Ghulja Incident, killed 9 and injured 68. (Though it goes on to add: "Despite much talk of separatism and terrorism in Xinjiang, especially after the 9-11 attacks in the United States and the US invasion of Afghanistan, the situation in Xinjiang was quiet from the late nineties through mid-2006.") Wikipedia also records: The percentage of ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang has grown from 6 percent in 1949[13] to an official tally of over 40 percent at present. This figure does not include military personnel or their families, or the many unregistered migrant workers. Much of this transformation can be attributed to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a semi-military organization of settlers that has built farms, towns, and cities over scattered parts of Xinjiang. The demographic transformation is held by Uyghur independence advocates as a threat to Uyghurs and other non-Han ethnicities in maintaining their culture, similar to the case of Tibet. At the Seder table I mentioned the Uyghur struggle for self-determination, and asked why it has been forgotten, when that in Tibet has been thrust into the limelight. And the response I got (from family members who had largely not heard of it at all) was: because there's no Uyghur equivalent of the Dalai Lama. Which is pretty damning but probably right. So I thought I would post about the issue here and do my little bit to raise its profile. Postscript: In case it's not absolutely obvious, I do not condone terrorism; nor am I in possession of sufficient knowledge of the situation and its background to be able to judge the pro-Uyghur and pro-PRC arguments knowledgeably. However, it does seem clear to me there is some form of injustice being perpetrated here, and one whose profile could do with raising.
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| 2008-04-28 19:49 |
| Sucker for "Blade Runner"... |
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A few years ago, I started building up a DVD library by buying films I'd liked when I saw them going cheap, but stopped at around a dozen DVDs when I realised I was never actually getting around to watching any of them. One big hole in this collection, however, was Blade Runner, and I took the opportunity a few months ago to fill it. What I got, though, for £5, was just the film, no extra features or anything.
And then, of course, Blade Runner: The Final Cut came out immediately afterward.
Which me, being me, I never got around to seeing in the cinema.
Now I see play.com is having an everything-for-£5 sale ending at midnight tonight—included in which is Blade Runner: The Final Cut (reduced from £16), with lots of extra features. I shouldn't buy it, as I already have the film on DVD... but I'm a sucker for Blade Runner, and I think it's unlikely I won't. (This sale also includes Fight Club, reduced from £18, and I suspect I'm going to plump for that too...)
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| 2008-04-16 19:17 |
| In the way of displaying from Pesach cleaning... |
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When I was twelve I joined my Senior School's computer club. The golden rule there was: you were not allowed to play computer games unless you wrote them yourself. Being the person I was, I then devoted the rest of my time in the school to trying to write my own games. Eventually, I succeeded, and even wrote one which would have been commercially released if the recession in the early nineties hadn't killed off what was left of the eight-bit market.
However, at the beginning I would come up with grandiose plans, way beyond my ability to implement, and would generally founder a short way in. It took me several years to realise what I needed was to start off small and work up. Moreover, in those early years I would always start off working through the game in chronological order, viz. with the title sequence, before getting to the main game. Well, none of the games might have ever got finished, but it kept me occupied, and taught me a thing or two about programming.
The following is from one of my more advanced title sequences; it dates from when I was fourteen or fifteen:
( View piccy )
In 2000, I decided to collect together everything I had ever done on digital media, and still had, and burn it onto one CD-ROM, whilst I still had the ability to read 5¼" DFS disks (and the ability to transfer to 3½" DOS disks). I recall finding the above image, viewing it on my father's BBC Master as a BBC Micro format screenshot, then transferring it onto a 3½" disk, wandering out of the room and into my room, where I had phlogiston running Linux, then coming back a couple of minutes later, and to the utter astonishment of my brother Darren, who was in the room doing something else, displaying the file as a GIF on my father's Risc PC.
Of course, I had written a program to do the conversion earlier. But the memory of his astonishment sticks with me still.
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| 2008-04-13 20:29 |
| Fully green hair is restored |
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This was my first time bleaching and dyeing my hair by myself, and the first time I tried the former, it didn't work. I reasoned that I hadn't used enough bleach, as when ewtikins did it, I could feel the bleach attacking my scalp (a little like bathing in the Dead Sea) throughout; whereas this time I only felt that at the start. So I put on more bleach, and tried again. Now, the instructions provided for exposures of 20' to 40' to the bleach, and I ended up going up to 50' (or was it 55'? I forget). I thought I'd be okay due to the underexposure for the first half of this time, but now the sides of my scalp both look and feel a little raw. (Or possibly it was due to the fact I kept the dye on for hours and hours this time, and despite having rinsed and shampooed my hair twice in the interim, there was still a smell of bleach hanging about it.)
Hopefully it will recover of its own accord in the next day or two, now it's no longer being exposed to any nasty chemicals... and now I am finally in my dyed-hair exit strategy, I won't need to bleach it again.
In other news: fill sink with ice from defrosting fridge and freezer, cover with a layer of charcoal scraped from burnt toast, and, er, turn into Eugene Shoemaker demonstrating the process of formation of a moon of the outer Solar System on Horizon twenty years ago. :o)
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| 2008-04-10 08:51 |
| (no subject) |
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I hit Barlby Road at the same time as the cavalry again this morning. (Seriously large numbers of horses, plus covered gun carriages and all.) Well, that'll be Barlby Road covered in horse manure on my way home this evening, and me retching and gagging and struggling to draw enough breath to cycle the whole way.
I really wish they wouldn't do that. Horses in large numbers are a source of urban pollution.
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| 2008-04-09 19:43 |
| Parti-coloured (not to mention partly-coloured and party-coloured) hair |
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I've had my hair cut. I thought there'd be enough green left at the tips even at the back and sides that the result would still come out overall green.
I was wrong.
And the result looks rather odd:
So now my choices are:
- Redye the hair green according to my original plan, and don't worry that the back and sides are brown. (I'm disinclined to go for this one.)
- Rebleach the hair at the weekend, and redye it green. (The disadvantages of this are that the back and sides will end up a month later with only a little bit of green at the tips, as the hair's so short now, so I'd need to rebleach it again.)
- Redye the hair some dark colour that doesn't completely clash with my natural colour (e.g. dark blue).
Any thoughts, before I unilaterally ignore the lot of you and make my own decision anyway?
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| 2008-04-07 17:01 |
| (no subject) |
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My hair needs mowing...
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| 2008-04-06 21:17 |
| We had two inches of snow lying this morning |
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Normally when this happens in the UK, my f-list is full of people saying "SNNNNNEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!" and the like.
Since this hasn't happened this time, I shall take the opportunity to quote papersky, and plug the gap: From: Jo Walton
Subject: Re: Blast it, how do I make names sound how I want them?
Date: 1998/10/20
Organization: Intellectual Berserkers for a Better Tomorrow
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.composition Dorothy J Heydt writes:Julian Flood wrote:
Not in Coney Weston, a few still say 'it snew somethin terrible las week'. As they and their ancestors have been here since the Ice Age I bow to their seniority. Where is Coney Weston and how would you describe their ancestors? 'Cause the Saxons only came in as the Roman Empire was falling. Others even later. Interesting survival, though. It's in Suffolk, not far from Bury St. Edmonds. It's not in Johnson's :Placenames of England and Wales: which means it's probably not in Doomesday, as he mentions most of what is but he does miss some. It's unlikely to be other than a Saxon settlement, going by the village pattern around there, but it could be older, road atlases aren't the best tool for telling.
When the mammoths came a-thundering off the glaciers in the North
we were huddled here in Coney and we never ventured forth.
We ignored it in our village when the wind of changes blew
but if it was getting parky out, we always said "it snew".
We were here in Coney Weston when the Beaker People came
(and we've still got these here beakers and they still look just the same)
we have weathered out the bloody Celts, the bloody Saxons too,
and the useless bloody Normans and we always said "it snew".
There was Shakespeare, from the Midlands, and Milton's London ways.
There was Doctor Johnson's little book and his newfangled ways.
There was three wise clerks of Oxenford, fiddling with something new
but here in Coney Weston we have always said "it snew".
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| 2008-04-01 19:28 |
| Linux DVD playing |
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As most of you know, I use Linux at home, and watch DVDs on my computer. However, my setup appears to be hypersensitive to damage to the disc: scratches or smudges that Windows Media will cruise blithely over, with at worst a little jerkiness, cause my DVD playing software, whether Totem, Xine, MPlayer or VLC, to judder, frame by frame, to a standstill, and then to give up and kick me out of the viewing altogether (which makes it very annoying trying to find the place again afterwards).
/var/log/messages reports:
( Read more... )
Anybody got any idea what I can do about this (or even what keywords to google for for help)?
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| 2008-03-30 18:42 |
| Ashkenazi pronunciation |
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I was thinking in shul yesterday about the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, and how, outside of the Chareidi community, it's rare to come across it nowadays, and was struck by how we expect it to be the case. If you stop and think about it, though, the implications are startling: Can anyone here think of any other case where a community the best part of ten million strong, has, over the course of just half a century, en masse abandoned the pronunciation it had been using for its liturgical language for six centuries—let alone a case where the community abandoned it so for a pronunciation made up by one man half a century beforehand, and then gone on to regard the historical pronunciation as old-fashioned and unattractive?
It truly is a remarkable phenomenon—and yet we all take it for granted nowadays!
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| 2008-03-27 12:53 |
| Hair |
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The green in my hair is fading pretty fast. compilerbitch said I should get two to three weeks out of green, but after a week and a half, covering two washes (plus one additional rinse, because the day after I first dyed it, there was still an ammoniacal smell of bleach hanging about me), substantial swathes of it, particularly the front, are now a greenish yellow. I may try redyeing those patches piecemeal at the weekend, rather than waiting for the remaining bright green to fade. This might help eke out my remaining dye a bit longer, but once I've run out of bright green, what then? Buy more and redye... or try out a different colour?
Submit your colour requests here! :o)
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