| The only Vista you'll see here is a 20' high brick wall. |
[Oct. 16th, 2007|12:56 am] |
By default, it is impossible to install unsigned drivers under Vista x64. Microsoft claim this is a step to reduce the vulnerability of the OS to viruses/spyware installing drivers without the user's knowledge, and improve stability by ensuring drivers are tested. We all know that it's really to enforce the regime of DRM that is a fundamental part of Vista.( Read more... ) |
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| *groan* |
[May. 14th, 2007|12:43 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  confused | ] |
I have a 4 hour synoptic essay to write under exam conditions tomorrow today, so as a time wasting exercise, I present a philosophical statement regarding my most hated favourite subject:
Philosophy: the art of adding an infinite regress of complexity to an already insoluble problem as an attempt to sidestep it, when the problem has only theoretical implications anyway. |
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| Gmail? |
[Mar. 23rd, 2007|02:00 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | 1.FM Club Internet Radio | ] |
Never had any trouble with my Gmail account before, but today I got a reactivation request email for my Yahoo! groups subscriptions... Following the link, I discovered that somewhat mysteriously, my account has bounced 400 messages in the last two weeks with the following error: "Remote host said: 552 5.2.2 User over quota 35si6623450wra [RCPT_TO]"... Odd, since Gmail says "You are currently using 372 MB (13%) of your 2831 MB.".
Ah well... Technology can be odd at times. If you use Gmail and you're missing any email you expected to receive, it's probably worth checking it didn't get bounced. It can't be any less reliable than my 'real' email account anyway! |
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| Traffic Calming Logic? |
[Mar. 22nd, 2007|04:58 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Lacuna Coil - Virtual Environment | ] |
As the result of a random websearch, I inadvertently ran into Croydon Council's pages on traffic calming measures, and to say I'm a little puzzled may be a considered an understatement...
A quote from one of the pages; "The Police, Fire Brigade, Ambulance Service and London Transport object to the proliferation of road humps and raised tables. Their objections are that humps increase their attendance times for emergency calls, and thus increase the risk to lives and property. The Ambulance Service and London Regional Transport object because of the discomfort and possible injury that may be caused to their passengers...The London Borough of Croydon has adopted the 75mm high hump as a standard, these reduce traffic to around 22 mph. The 100 mm high humps reduce speeds to 17 mph on the hump but speeds rise to 35 mph between the humps, causing excessive acceleration, braking and increased pollution. Road humps and raised tables can lead to complaints about increased noise and sometimes increased vibration from traffic."
And now, the puzzling bit; "They are, however, the only guaranteed way of reducing traffic speed."
How can you come to this conclusion given the evidence you have yourself included on the page ("speeds rise to 35 mph between the humps")?
Similar conclusions can be drawn from other pages on the sitelet; "Chicanes introduce a physical deflection into the vehicles' horizontal path, thereby further reducing the vehicle speed. A trial of chicanes in Woodcote Valley Road in 1994 reduced traffic speeds, but proved to be unacceptable to local residents and the emergency services and was subsequently removed." - So why do you have them then?
Traffic Calming? More like 'Road Rage Inducers' |
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| Err? |
[Mar. 11th, 2007|07:03 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | confused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Pendulum - Painkiller | ] |
Google Maps link... |
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| So far, so good |
[Jan. 25th, 2007|02:16 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | happy | ] |
On a side note: Why does OS X keep changing my keymap back to 'British' randomly after I select my own keymap for my Windows keyboard? AAARGH! |
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| I think I've lost my faith in Volvos.. |
[Nov. 23rd, 2006|05:03 pm] |
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Had to alert the driver of a brand new Volvo V70 that there was a rather foul electronic burning smell (the kind you get in tube stations because of the power lines arcing, but much more pungent) and grey smoke pouring out of the front wheel arches and eventually around the bonnet too. She hadn't realised because she was reading a map, and the engine hadn't overheated so there was no internal warning (I guess he pollen filters on modern cars must be pretty good at absorbing smells coming into the passenger compartment!) I don't know what happened to the car afterwards as we had to get back to college after making sure she had a way to get in touch with the AA/emergency services if necessary. The smoke appeared to continue to get worse after she'd switched off the engine and vacated the vehicle, so I do worry a little bit that it was actually on fire.... :-O |
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| Tottenham Hale Airport! |
[Nov. 16th, 2006|12:47 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
It seems that North London has finally gained it's own, bustling international airport! Google Earth told me so; it must be true!
Linky
It has special underground runways and terminals, and it was the result of a top secret government project, which is why we didn't know about it before... |
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| Another pointless political meme |
[Oct. 5th, 2006|12:17 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  bored | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | BBC News | ] |
Left Libertarian
You scored 82% Personal Liberty and 63% Economic Liberty!
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A left libertarian believes in little to no government intervention on personal matters and little to moderate government intervention on economic matters. They generally believe in a government that is extremely small and limited to the extent of protecting people's liberty. They tend to be strongly opposed to war, police powers, victimless crimes, foreign intervention and what they consider to be a welfare state. They strongly support self-ownership and support property rights. They support capitalism as an economic system. Libertarian thought is individualist in nature.
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My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 93% on Personal | | You scored higher than 93% on Economic |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 10th, 2006|09:42 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Lemon Demon - The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny | ] |
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| I'm not a goth though! This quiz lies, or maybe I took the wrong one? |
[Jun. 7th, 2006|11:22 pm] |
 | You scored as Industrial/Rivet-Head. You're a rivet-head. You like industrial music, warehouses, and you are a minion of the machines.
Perky Goff | | 75% | Industrial/Rivet-Head | | 75% | Fantasy Goth | | 67% | Cyber-goth | | 63% | Romantic Goth | | 63% | Death Rocker | | 58% | Old-school Goth | | 54% | Anything-Goes Goth | | 46% | Ethereal Goth | | 38% | Understanding Outsider | | 29% | Confused Outsider | | 8% | </td>
What subcategory of Goth best fits you?
created with QuizFarm.com |
Well, in addition to this exiting meme, I've finally finished all my exams - after 6 hours yesterday and 3 today, I was completely exhausted, so I hope I did ok! So we went and had tapas, which was nice. |
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| X-Men 3 |
[May. 27th, 2006|07:55 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  shocked | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | I've Got Some Falling to Do-Lemon Demon-Hip to the Javabean | ] |
The captain has left the bridge..........
p.s. Storm is so cool! |
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| Prevarication |
[May. 25th, 2006|11:47 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  lazy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Klavier-Rammstein-Sehnsucht | ] |
I should really be revising for my exams in two weeks time, yet I'm still reading LJ... Oh dear... Help! |
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| Some kind of boring middleground.... |
[May. 14th, 2006|04:38 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Pendulum - Hold Your Colour | ] |
| Your Political Profile: | | Overall: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal | | Social Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal | | Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal | | Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal | | Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal | | Defense and Crime: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal |
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| Pointless meme! |
[May. 6th, 2006|02:10 pm] |
 | You scored as Friedrich Nietzsche. Well you're an egotistical maniac, and you are so very iconoclastic that you probably are currently lost in a post-modern Jupiter, I mean jungle of self-definition.
Don't let it get you down though, someday, through a willful onslaught of reinterpretation of dated forms and ideas, you will strike on something that passes as remotely new, and people WILL be into it on the basis of how hip it is alone. Also, the average espresso drinker looks up to you.
Friedrich Nietzsche | | 75% | Stephen Hawking | | 58% | C.G. Jung | | 58% | Miyamoto Musashi | | 50% | Dante Alighieri | | 50% | Sigmund Freud | | 25% | O.J. Simpson | | 25% | Adolf Hitler | | 25% | Charles Manson | | 25% | Mother Teresa | | 17% | Steven Morrissey | | 17% | Jesus Christ | | 17% | Elvis Presley | | 8% | Hugh Hefner | | 0% | </td>
What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You?
created with QuizFarm.com |
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| London |
[Jan. 16th, 2006|12:41 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | stressed | ] |
I've come to the conclusion that London sucks. London transport sucks, London attitude sucks, London people suck. Just about everything about our capital makes it the most unpleasant place this side of a POW camp to be.
This is in no small part due to Ken Livingstone. I guess I can't really blame him for the attitude of Londoners, beside the fact that anybody who is forced to use public transportation here will want to commit murder by the end of a working day (by the way, seeing a thousand posters a day bearing the words 'Mayor of LondON' gets irritating after a while too). Let us begin with his road taxation. If I choose to own a car, I have to pay tax to keep it on the road. Fair enough. If I want to travel over a privately owned toll road, I have to pay for that privilege too. Also fair enough, but if I want to drive on publicly owned roads in London, I can't do that without having 8 Quid extorted from me. That's not fair. You know who can afford to drive in London? The kind of people who drive 4x4s with five litre engines. The kind of people who own massive Bentleys and can afford to have their chauffeurs wastefully drive round for hours on end to avoid parking charges while they attend to business. Not people who drive tiny, efficient, environmentally friendly 1.1 litre cars that do 50 miles to the gallon. So obviously, the Congestion Charge is all about addressing problems with pollution in Central London. OK, you say, congestion on the Capital's roads has decreased a hair since Red Ken's extra road tax was introduced. That's obviously a good result, but it would've impressed me a darn sight more if they hadn't had to rig the traffic systems in and around the capital to slow traffic in the lead up to the introduction of the CC to make its effect more pronounced. I've also noticed during my travels that many junctions around the zone have been 'modified' since the charges introduction to make sure that any unsuspecting individuals lacking an encyclopaedic knowledge of London's roads will be forced into the zone even though they have no reason to be there. OK. No sane person would dream of driving in London during the working week anyway, which brings me to my next issue.
London Transport. Did I mention that it sucks? Every squeaky, rattly, uncomfortable bus that I catch, whilst getting thrown out of my seat by a pregnant, blonde 16 year old (or maybe they are just heavily overweight - either way, they're quite capable of guilting innocent people out of their seats due to their apparent difficulty standing) or a 65 year old alcoholic who hasn't washed in a year. Every time I get my feet run over and am forced out of my standing place by some inconsiderate cow with a huge, non-foldable pram the size of a Rolls Royce, which she then proceeds to take the baby out of and occupy two seats as well (did I mention that they should charge a flat fee of £5 to bring an unfolded pram on to a bus, after all, they take up the space of 4 people, and it would be nice for the wheelchair users for whom the spaces are designed for actually able to get onto a bus!). Every time somebody shoves me out of the way only to alight the bus at the same stop as me, I get closer and closer to murder. You know that song 'Mr. Psycho' by Space? That pretty much describes my relationship with London's transport system.
The staff LT employ compound the problem by possessing a negative brain capacity and no understanding of what tickets they are able to sell. The only thing you can guarantee when confronting somebody behind a 3 inch thick, bullet proof glass shield is that they will try their best to divert confusion in any possible direction, be it the local Post Office ("You need to get an application form from the Post Office"), their own sucky, incomprehensible website or idiot operated phone un-helpline.
Fares will be reasonable, because they introduced the Congestion Charge, right - the tickets being subsidized by that, so they're getting cheaper? Nope. I recently turned 18, and hence no longer qualify for the 16-17 discount that made bus travel quite reasonable (£4 for a weekly bus pass). I now have to pay £1.50 to catch a single bus compared to 70 pence I would've under the same circumstances not so long ago. More than double. A travel card including zone one costs more than a fiver, so certainly no tube journeys for me, a college student with no money. You know where that money from the CC goes? It goes into providing free travel to some horrible 15 year old oik who spends an entire bus journey either yapping obnoxiously into their mobile phone (or worse, giving the passengers a delightful sample of their extensive ringtone collection) or mumbling something only just loud enough for one to hear about a 'Goth'. OKAY, I LOOK LIKE A BLEEDIN' GOTH. Is that meant to be an insult?!
It's all okay - I'm a poor, defenceless student. Yay! That means I get a student Oyster card. As of this morning (actually, I can't blame them for that, when I finally got round to posting the form off a month after my birthday), I qualify for 30% off of period tickets. That means I'd only have to pay... £9.40 for a weekly bus pass. I guess I'll keep walking when I don't need to travel from Edmonton and use Pre-Pay when I do then. At least I only pay £1 for a peak journey (and to have my journey tracked along with my name and address on a lovely, secure, government owned computer system. 1984?) on a day when I do have to catch a bus with this. Of course, if I put all my travel money on my Oyster card and loose it, or it stops working (as some people's seem to have, and LU employees seem to have no idea what to do under the circumstances) I'm either stuck in King's Cross or have to argue with an LT employeeanderthal and give them a fake name and address when they bring out the penalty charge form. It's not like I ever have any cash.
And another thing. When I used to catch 149s and 38s, I used to get a seat. The last time I got a seat on a 38 was in fact when Routemasters were still running the journey. I hope London Transport are proud of their ridiculous, congestion inducing articulated cattle trucks. They certainly aren't fit for humans.
I really want to get away from the madhouse where people run halfway down a road after a bus when another one will be along in 2 minutes, where people overtake and cut you up, 20 feet from a red traffic light, where people have no idea why their vehicles where fitted with funny yellow blinkenlights and where everything costs a fortune. I hate London.
The one positive thing about all this is that at the moment, I'm walking for a couple of hours a day for the half of the week we spend at Kindra's. Unfortunately, my lungs are filling up with pollutants all the while, negating any positive effect that the exercise might have thanks to Mr. 4x4 owner. Maybe I should get a motorbike. |
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| Yay! I got rid of the evil step parent of doom! |
[Jan. 3rd, 2006|02:06 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Never Ever Land-Infected Mushroom-Infected Mushroom - BP Empire | ] |
 Oh Great Cthulhu!I have been an extremely industrious devotee this year. Yesterday, I fed ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) feyeleanor to a Shoggoth (250 points). In July, I exposed ladymoonray to soul-rending horrors (250 points). In August, I visited my relatives in Innsmouth (100 points). In December, I burnt my copy of the Necronomicon (-75 points). In October, I called down the wrath of Yog-Sothoth upon calypsed (65 points). In March, I recruited calypsed as a new cultist (30 points). In short, I have been very good (620 points) and deserve to be eaten first. Your humble and obedient servant, anisotropica
Submit your own plea to Cthulhu! |
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