The Meeting Place

10:38am: A new blog
Hey chaps. I'm starting a new blog.

How do I go about importing it into LJ via RSS?

9:53am: Iain's computer security rant.
Noob: "Windows isn't secure!"

Me: "I've ran windows XPSP2 since it was released. I've reformatted it once (when I left uni - crap left over from coursework and a messy data structure, neither of which are the OS's fault). For the past 8 months I've been running it with no Antivirus. I've never had any malware since SP2 was released."

Since the dawn of time, computers have been secure - if you know what you're doing. You know the rules. Don't click on executable attachments in e-mails. Don't download executables from non-trusted sites. Disable ActiveX controls and use IE's built-in security controls before you look at warez or pr0n sites.

XPSP2 was a milestone in computer security. For the first time, your computer was secure if you *didn't* know what you were doing.

However, a computer is only as secure as its user. If you poke holes in your firewall (XP warns you), turn ActiveX on (XP warns you), run executables from non-trusted sites (XP warns you), tinker with IE's security settings (XP warns you), and let your Antivirus go out of date (XP warns you)... well, it's your own f****** fault.

It's all the idiots who have enough computer literacy to do dangerous stuff, but not enough computer literacy to know its dangerous and take precautions that are giving computer security a bad name.

And you know what happens when Microsoft tries to lock down their systems and stop them hurting themselves?

"OMG VISTA DOESN'T LET ME DO WHAT I WANT TO DO!!! WAAAAAAAAA!"

FFS dudes. I'm hardly a fanboi, but give them a break already...

The Vista installer should have a pop-up: "Are you a noob? Yes/No". If you click "yes" it should only let you run signed executables, and should run on max security settings and not let you change anything. If you click "no" it should say "Are you really sure? Like, if I let you meddle with the security settings, I can't guarantee you won't get hacked! I'm sure/No, you're right, deal me the noob cards"

12:29pm:

8:57am: A conversation I had with a friend...
Her: "[I hate the Labour party. Tony and his cronies are such idiots and don't have a clue how to run the country.]"

Me: "You were 10 when John Major lost the 1997 general election. You've never paid taxes - let alone paid taxes to anyone other than Labour."

Armchair politics irritate me. What the hell do you know about how to run the country?

Is that an unjustified opinion?

12:34pm: A metric for spam?
How do you measure quantity of spam?

Number of messages is too vague. Total size in KB is too lame.

I propose a new metric for spam. I propose that we should measure the size of a pile of spam by the length of your penis - IF you accepted all of the penis enlargement offers in the pile, and IF they all worked.

"Dude, I got 18 inches of spam today!..."

5:49pm: Tech Geekery (or, why I think the PS3 sucks, part 1)
Computing has entered an interesting era. When I started gaming for myself (rather than having games bought for me at Christmas) the Snes retailed at about £120, compared to almost £2000 for a top-end Pentium 60. PC games and console games (NES Elite notwithstanding) were fundamentally different, and you couldn't really draw a comparison between them w.r.t which was better. I like Zelda, thus I will buy a SNES. I like Quake, thus I will buy a PC.

This year the PS3 shipped, with a price tag of £500 (once you've bought yourself some sweet accessories and maybe a game). Console games and PC games are growing closer and closer together, with many high-profile ports (HALO, Oblivion... although thankfully the makers of Tekken and C&C clones know where they belong). While in years past the question has been "PC2 or XBOX?", will we start to see "PS3 vs XBOX360 vs PC?" as a meaningful choice, rather than a forgone conclusion?

I for one think that the PS3's days are numbered. The XBOX 360 is fighting with Windows Media Center for your money, and the Wii comes in at a reasonable price-point as a pure games machine. The PS3 might be the cheapest Blu-Ray on the market (am I bothered?), but as a games machine, can it really stand up to the might of the PC?

Or more to the point, have the prices of the PS3 and the PC converged sufficiently that this comparison is justified?

My challenge to myself, which I'll be documenting in my lunch-hour next week, is to "build" a PC for £500 that can compete on a hardware basis with the PS3.

11:08am: When did the government become an enemy?
I've been reading about the recent events in France following the government's new bill on employment. France has a very poor employment rate for young people, driven partly (the government says) by the fact that it is very hard for an employer to fire an employee if they turn out to be rubbish.

The result? The French riot. "We've earned the right to secure jobs", "The government must create more jobs" etc.

Now, I can quite clearly understand the French people's perspective. They don't want to be insta-fired from jobs. However, I don't understand why they aren't even looking at the bigger picture. They don't have jobs *because* the labour market is so stagnant, and - at the end of the day - the government is trying to help.

If I were France's government, I'd be right offended.

This got me thinking about a deeper problem.

So, in today's installment of "Iain doesn't understand crazy folks" I ask you to explain something to me.

Do you see the government as an enemy? Do you resent paying taxes? What is it that drives a person to doggedly and single-mindedly defend what he sees as "in his interests", when a step back and a few seconds of rational thought would show that the government knows damn well what's "in his interests" and is probably tying to help? One can point to a large number of times through history when "The People" just haven't had a clue what was good for them, and have ended up screwing themselves over by "defending their interests". The demarcation/unions/glasgow shipyards issue is probably the one closest to home, and certainly the one I'm most familiar with. But there are many many others that I'm casually familiar with.

Are people just stupid, or am I missing something that makes this mind-set rational and understandable?

I'll maybe add more to this later.

I.
(I've got another rant lined up about forcing your beliefs on other people, but I'll leave that for another day)

11:30pm: zomg! proxy gig!


Be there. Or be somewhere else.

I.

11:11am: So! What news from the world of Iain?
Well, rather a lot actually (unsurprising since I haven't updated this in a while).

So, shall I break this up by time or by subject? By subject I think, because November was a long time ago...

General life: Still living with Megan. She's still wonderful and I still love her to bits. Our flat is small and messy and we have several loads of laundry to do.

Work: Liam (the game store owner for all you non-gamers) went into hospital a few weeks ago. This means that on top of trying to start my own business, I'm working full time here. That means zero free time. While neither of my jobs are particularly stressful, I don't deal well with task-switching, and not having any free time sucks too. The business is coming on ok. I have bank details incoming, some work lined up, and I'm working on my website (feedback on the logo and the name is appreciated). If you want to see some of my work then you're most welcome to take a peek.

Computer games: In WoW, Jessie now has Benediction, 4/8 pieces of Prophecy, and 2/8 pieces of Transcendence. Hurrah for epixx lol. We also cleared Molten Core in less than two hours, and killed Raggy before he spawned the sons. Am now rating "total pwnage" on the pwnometer. I also discovered how to do a slow-motion flying headbutt in Rag-Doll-Kung-Fu. This (unsurprisingly) has given the game a new lease of life. UFO:Aftershock is too buggy for me to play. Chaos League and Evil Genius are disappointing, even coming back to them after months of not playing them. We did a week long lan party over new year. That rocked.

Roleplaying: Despite my best efforts, I'm still running Forsaken. Every time I think that the setting sucks, I just about manage to run a session everyone enjoys. I'm sticking it out for now. Vampire is going well (hurrah for actual local politics. now to weed out all the 'tards in the Invictus nationally...). My tabletop project is on hold until I have only one job.

Music: Let there be rock. There's a gig coming soon. I'll keep you informed.

That's about it for now. Have fun y'all

Iain
-"Would you rather date a rich guy, or a guy who has uber-micro?"

10:11am: Wow...
Just had the best weekend of RP ever...

Bad. Ass.

I.

10:42am: I'm a ninja, it's my birthday...
The first thing Megan said to me this morning when I woke up was "grats on 22".

Rofl

I.

12:19pm: In reply to a previous post of mine:
"This time I'm taking the CMS to bits, making the bits do what I want, and then putting them back together in the way I want them."

...and finding that increasingly the bits *do* exactly what I want anyway...

My usual complaints about Open Source software still apply though. There is practically no documentation for anything other than the core system, and the HCI sucks really bad.

I guess that's what I get paid for though, eh?

I.

12:15pm: A thought.
Why is our society so obsessed with Freedom of Speech?

I am much more concerned with Freedom of Thought than Freedom of Speech, and seeing as the latter frequently invalidates the former...

In other news I've finished the housework, and can now play WoW.

Sweet.

I.

2:53pm: This post was not brought to you under coersion. Honest guv.
Paul and Lucy are great. Really they are :)

In other news, iain@geas.org.uk

woO!

10:40am: Websites are right clever things aren't they?
PHP + mysql + xmtpl + XHTML + CSS = lots of fun for me...

You really can do all sorts of crazy shit. Plus it's elegant, and lots of other things that make the software engineer in me nice and happy.

This is my first proper site I guess. Everything else I've done was just jamming a CMS online and hacking with it until it did what I wanted it to do. This time I'm taking the CMS to bits, making the bits do what I want, and then putting them back together in the way I want them.

It's weird. It's like learning how to write left-handed, or learning to ride a bike backwards. I've been programming for about 14 years now, writing HTML for 10, yet here I am with the w3schools tutorials open learning how to do it all *properly*, from scratch...

Websites for GEAS (the University of Edinburgh Roleplaying Society), Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, and an e-store/community site for Black Lion Games - in addition to the one I'm writing - will form my portfolio which I can then show to potential clients - who will then hopefully pay me huge amounts of money to make sites for *them*.

Links for all of them when I'm done.

I.

5:52pm: Iain's political thought of the day
Disclaimer: once again, Iain is a crazy authoritarian. this thought of the day may be slightly biased...

Lbertarian Socialism right? It's a bit retarded isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

The founding principle of L.S. says:

"It sucks that working class people [specifically in the case of unskilled factory workers] don't own the means by which they work."

Which, if you think about it, is a pretty good point. If a joiner is so poor that he can't afford his tools and has to hire them from some rich bint who is making money out of their money, then that kind of does indeed suck. Factory workers are in a sucky position. Not because "selling your labour power is degrading" or any of that kind of tosh (work or starve, muppets. to buggery with all this "from/to each..." pish), but because the idle rich guy at the top who *does* own the factory is making money for nothing, by no virtue of his own other than the fact that he had enough money to buy the factory in the first place - or, more likely, inherited it from his parents...

Now. My thought of the day is: how can such a solid founding principle result in such a retarded proposition for a social system?

Off to play in the opera.

Meritocratic social systems ftw.

5:49pm: I love gmail...
More specifically, I love the way that it occasionally gives you hilariously irrelevant "sponsored links".

These links were classed as "relevant" to an ooc post on the Camarilla Invictus list:

Disturbing Ghost Footage
warning: very freaky scary
crucifies.com

The Truth About Hell
Will People Burn Forever? Is Purgatory Real? Here is The Truth!
www.realtruthmag.org

Are you going to Heaven?
This book by Joseph Alleine has the answer. Free Download!
hellwrecker.com

The post was:

> [Me bitching about the status rules]

Liam Draper: "I completely understand"

Get your lollerskates on kiddies, coz that's all we have time for on OMGWTFBBQ today...

2:01pm: Game Theory and Life
In my final year at uni I studied a little bit of Game Theory (I was crappy at the maths side of it, but the general principles crop up surprisingly often in real life situations).

There is a certain kind of person that society "likes" having in it. This person is gets up in the morning, goes to work, earns his or her wage, and then goes home. They spend their wage on necessities and on socially acceptable luxuries. They don't clash with the Law, they don't litter, they don't drink and drive, they aren't addicted to drugs etc. You know, the proverbial "good citizen" that we're all supposed to be trying to become.

However, society doesn't appear to encourage this kind of person.

I like to think of myself as an "okay" citizen. I have a job. I'm looking for a better job. I don't willfully hurt other people. In general I believe it is wrong to break the law (whether or not I believe that X is wrong, if X is against the law then one shouldn't do it). I don't smoke, I don't drink, I'm in good health. I don't drive, I don't wander the streets at night in a drunken stupor leching on women. I have a girlfriend, we've been together for four years, we've bought a flat together and are planning the future etc. I like to think that the world wouldn't be a better place if I didn't exist.

If, however, I was treating life like a game (a mechanical game - like a CCG, or World of Warcraft - or a mathematical game) this would not by any means be the life I would live. Pardon me if my research here has holes in it. I would probably be an alcoholic in a council flat with 6 children, recovering from a heroine addiction, claiming the dole and begging on princess street. Why? Because this lifestyle (barring some kind of "american dream" scenario) appears to get me the best reward:effort ratio. Whether or not this is actually true or not isn't important. If people believe it to be true then it will influence their actions. I had several friends at school (no longer my friends) who would always ask "why should I get a job when the government will just pay me for doing nothing". The perception matters just as much as the truth.

Is it strange that the "rules" of the game of life don't promote a lifestyle "desirable" by society? Don't you think we would have created a way of living that encouraged the kind of behaviour that we want to encourage?

Do you find it sad that apparantly the only thing standing between us and universal delinquency is the moral compass of the individual? (somthing, incidentally, which I am not inclined to trust.)

Or am I mistaken? Is my belief that society punishes the middle class while rewarding the idle rich and the (not)working class unfounded?

1:52pm: A rant about today's society (aka "Iain doesn't understand the liberal mind")
Disclaimer: This post contains broad sweeping generalisations and should be taken with several pinches of salt.

Okay. A question. I have an authoritarian mindset and often have difficulty percieving and/or understanding the liberal way of thinking. I'm not arguing for this, I just want to know what you guys think.

Calum, you'll probably have to help me out with this one.

We licence people to drive right? The justification is that a dumbass in a car with no clue how to use it is dangerous on our streets. He/she could cause lots of property damage, or in the worst case kill someone by accident.

Now, bringing up a child is infinitely more dangerous to society than driving a car. Delinquent children (and the adults they turn into) regularly cost society enourmous amounts of productivity. They disrupt classes, eating up valuable teacher time. They vandalise, they shoplift, and in the worst cases they assault and/or kill.

The current consensus blames juvenile delinquency primarily on the parents.

So the question is: "Why don't we licence people to have kids?"

Now, there are several logistical reasons that we don't (there isn't a valid test of parenting ability. how do you stop unlicenced parents-to-be having children. what does one do with the child in the case of an unauthorised pregnancy). These aren't the reasons that I'm interested in. I want to know why a liberal puritan would consider this morally wrong.

A related post to follow.

9:07pm: A CV huh?
Okay. An infinity of "HOW TO WRITE A CV" guides (online and offline later) and I still think my CV sucks.

Why oh why do none of them have example CVs?

Any tips from anyone, or pointers to examples?

I.

9:39pm: Day N
Hmm Lost track.

The past few days have been a blur of get up, rehearse, eat, sleep, repeat.

Our conductor constantly swears at us ( I mean, come on, we're a youth orchestra, we're entitled to suck )

I ache all over.

I'm going to bed now.

That's about it really. I am mindless zombie bass playing man...

I.

8:56am: Heh
How on earth did it go from being a hippie commune to some kind of crazy torture tour?

Our conductor is XXX Hardcore. The notes in the opera are reasonably easy, but the tempo changes left right and centre and I can never tell which beat is the downbeat (and the conductor doesn't really help). The rehearsals are long, my stool is falling apart, my bow is falling apart, the contra-basson player keeps bashing her instrument off my bass (i know they're drunk at the best of times, but *come on*)...

Our harsh rehearsal schedule *does* mean that I don't have to cook though (which is a plus, if a small one)

It also means that I ache all over though. I'll be returning to Edinburgh with a variety of hilarious double bass injuries.

I.

11:56pm: Lessons of the Day
Lesson no. 1: GW plastics are in fact the win. Poly Cement is your friend.

Lesson no. 2: Evaluate the hardcore-ness of your conductor *before* you start pissing around

Lesson no. 3: Getting paid for playing music is just as good as it sounds.

Lesson no. 4: Orchestra girls are hot. All of them. I don't understand it, the must weed out the ugly ones, or maybe it's in the breeding... there isn't a single girl in the orchestra I wouldn't have...

(there might not in fact be a single girl in the orchestra anyway, but seeing as I'm not looking, I haven't really been asking for marital status...)

They're all lovely people, and they might even manage to make this trip bearable. Still wish I was at home with Megan though.

Ocht. All sad now.

Anyway. Join us tommorow for the next exiting (lol) episode of "Iain's Opera Adventure"...

I.
"Diggadiggadiggadiggadigga! Like an angry dog!" <- wtf? musicians are so weird.

9:15am: Day 2
Okay. So it feels more like a hippie commune again up here.

There's a cooking rota, which terrifies me (how on earth am I supposed to cook for 20 people?)...

I've never really noticed up until now how uncomfortable I am in a group of strangers. I've never really encountered one since I started analysing my own behaviour. Is it strange that I'd rather sit in my room bumming around on the internet (remembering that I'm confined to port 80) than sit with a bunch of nice people watching Scream.

Now, there may be some mitigating factors. First of all, about two thirds of them are foreign. They speak good english, but often lapse into french. Seconly, they're opera singers, which makes them a bit unhinged. Thirdly, they're higher up than me on the social ladder, meaning I have to do my "I can talk proper, honest" act in order to be understood. Fourth, they've been together for three weeks rehearsing, and I just arrived yesterday.

So. I've been practising my small talk a little, but mostly running and hiding. I'm hoping it'll get better when the orchestra gets here. There's only like 15 of us anyway. On the other hand, they're all toffs too. At least I'll know some of them though.

My confinement gets worse and worse. Not only am I confined to what I can do in a browser, a whole bundle of sites have been blacklisted. So no CGI IRC (d'oh), only about half of the forums I sit and troll on. I guess there's no porn either. Haven't looked, hang on... yep. no porn. I'm actually quite impressed at how well they've censored almost everything that they don't want their student's using their internet connection for. On the other hand, I'm still irritated that I can't play WoW, and I can't upload anything to my website.

To Do: write some php to let me edit CSS from a text-box in a browser window.
To Do: write some JavaScript to turn said textbox into a proper IDE, with auto-complete, syntax and error highlighting and that sort of thing.

On the plus side, I found a handful of mp3s on my phone, I get paid today and I get to go shopping in the morning. Might pick up some GW plastics, a scalpel and some poly-cement...

4:12pm: Nooooo!
Go to port 80. Go directly to port 80. Do not pass go. Do not access ftp, irc, bit-torrent, kazaa, or *shock* world of warcraft.

*cries*

Seriously. Felt like a hippie commune ten minutes ago. Feels like a prison now. A prison of fibre-optic cable, proxies, firewalls and bass strings...