Arguably the defining episode of Deep Space Nine was "In The Pale Moonlight." A lot of DS9 fans loved it because it embraced the vein of grittiness that the series aimed for. (At one point DS9 was planned to be a post-watershed outing for Star Trek.)

A lot of fans of Star Trek in general, but particularly not Deep Space Nine held it up to be the definitive proof that it was totally at odds with Gene Rodenberry's vision of the future. Nuts to the exposition/introspection format of the episode, it involved the "Good Guys" perpetrating frauds and assassinations aplenty.

The episode takes the form of someone dictating their log, cutting away to flashback of the events they were describing. The episode ends with the line "Computer, erase that entire personal log."

In four separate contexts in the last day or so I've written emails, messages and notes, checked them for typos, made sure everything is in order... and then aborted it.
( Other Things I've Done Today )

Bad Moods,

In the book of the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, (Life The Universe and Everything.) There was a Rory award for "The Most gratuitous use of the ford 'Fuck', in a serious screenplay." In the Radio version, a comically obtrusive sound effect coincided with each recital of the award's name, masking the word 'Fuck', I was disappointed when I bought the tertiary phase on CD, and the sound effect had been mixed down, rendering the word quite intelligible.
( Read more... )

Just to confirm that I still get out with the camera now and again...( Photos )

Last night's reading session slew another couple of the documents I need to get my head around for developing my OS. And filled in a couple of important gaps. ( Read more... )

Yesterday I wrote an experimental printer driver for CUPS, cleared a backlog of things to do, and read through a lot of the more intimidating documentation associated with my OS project. 

Ask anyone who knows me, I am fantastic at sulking. When it comes to the Olympic unproductive petulant moping event my heels will be dug in so deep that I won't even turn up.

( sulk )

I don't normally use cuts in my blog, nor do I normally ask people to comment, for this entry I'm doing both.
( Pinned Down )
I also had a lump of breadboard up there.
( Desperate Hacks )
And now my hour of fame is over.

Yesterday we had a textbook bit of holywoodism from the government.

And it had everything. There was the unlikely hero who was just the guy we needed to save the world, the random character in the background chattering away in exposition to the audience, explaining that the bold and brave plan wouldn't work. Bystanders were impressed, cute fluffy children and wide eyed innocent bunny rabbits were saved.  Labour already have a buyer for the film rights, and Bruce Willis is beefing up his scottish accent to play Brown.

To great fanfare from the press, nae-saying from John Hutton, and self congratulation from all concerned, the current government has announced that it would like to scrap a Trident submarine, someday.  In a remarkably mild display of cynicism, they're selling this as a step towards global disarmament and a nuclear free world.

Except, it just isn't.

Calling an increase in on patrol warheads a step towards disarmament is pretty mild as Labour PR stunts go, compared to the baby organ scandal, the foot and mouth electioneering, and getting half the unemployed 18 year olds to borrow their own benefits and sit at university rather than clutter up the unemployment stats.

Hutton made a couple of comments I agreed with though,  firstly that you can't provide continuous global cover with just three boats. At the moment, a country could conceivably have to wait two weeks for the patrol boat to get within range and retaliate against it, this also undermines the potential for using trident in tactical scenarios.  Secondly, that we don't know what the world will look like in twenty years time. We don't want to find ourselves needing trident, and not being able to rebuild it quickly enough.  To start from scratch and build a new system, even using existing designs could take ten years, recently we've seen the global situation change drastically between two and four years. (Between the attacks on America in 2001, or the start of Bush's election campaign, and the invasion of Iraq.)

I haven't been particularly bored since I got to London,

Friday night was Maggie's sponsored walk, which I attended.  I had a hilarious moment of clarity in the last mile when I realised that everyone in front of me was walking the same way, moving their thigh and letting gravity deal with the knee.

After spending most of yesterday in bed my knees are working again.

I've recently been corresponding with my MP, who has been wonderful and pushed it on to the right people. The reply he forwarded back to me was of course pure spin with a theme of "I wish this was Stalin's Russia, where I could have this guy thrown into the gullag for daring to bring this matter up." 

I was incensed, livid, fuming, and started writing a reply.

I could remember the broad strokes of the letter, and it was a good week before I had calmed down enough to read it without bursting a couple of blood vessels. This gave me time to filter some of the blunter and agressive terms out of my reply.

Having re-read it, it still stinks of a substance often associated with farmyard animals, but is also from a cabinet minister.  Promptiong another rewrite acknowledging that much as I'd like to I can't call a cabinet minster (Even in a Labour cabinet which doubles as a job creation scheme.) An unmitigated nincompoop, at least not to his face.

Well it gives me something to chew on while my laundry's doing.

I went to proms in the park this evening.

This should be ample context for anyone who received a multimedia message from my phone of me grinning and wearing a union-flag themed baseball cap.

It was very pleasant, somewhat so for the absence of any notable EU flags being waved during "Land Of Hope And Glory" or "Rule Britannia" (Something which often irritates me when I see it on television.)  and much more so for meeting some very interesting people.

A little under a year ago I was passing through London, and for complex reasons had to briefly emerge from the tube network to dive into RBS in Ealing.  At the tine I was utterly ignoring the city layout on the grounds that they were just random bits of a massive city, and that in all likelyhood I'd never need to navigate it again.

Ealing is now just up the track from me, and since my approach to public transport oes something to brownian motion, I'm getting used to seeing shops and getting flashbacks to when I was jetlagged,dragging a suitcase around, and had a few grand of ready cash in my pocket.

I really am going to have to find the bar that I drank in that afternoon.

Other random strolling has turned up a shop where I can buy an old sky box, I had forgotten such shops existed, somehow I'd assumed that if it wasn't on ebay it didn't get sold.