Chika's journal

10:28pm: Latest bits of fiddling
OK, this is going to be bald, brief and who am I kidding? If you aren't interested in computer building or Linux wrangling, look away now!

( Read more... )

9:32pm: Windows 8?
I'm just in the process of trying to install this latest bit of kit. Actually I'm in the process of installing it for the third time, each time adding a bit more disc space and a bit more memory. I have a bad feeling about this!

Thankfully, Kanata is still awake and running, so I can leave Koyomi to muck around with the vagueries of Virtualbox and the Windows 8 "Consumer Preview" (can't they just call it a beta and have done with it? Goodness knows, we'll understand!) but I now have more than half Koyomi's memory and a dirty great 30GB chunk out of one of her drives devoted to this test and I still haven't seen a usable GUI display yet! The bad feeling, however, pretty much comes from the whole culture of Microsoft operating systems over the last few decades. In other words, the bloat.

Windows 7 was a rare thing in this whole saga. It's possibly the only time that Microsoft got their fingers burned by bloating up vastly from its predecessor, Windows XP, only to find that the market wanted little to do with it. You see, with XP and the increasing capacity of computers that ran it, it meant that users had something they hadn't had previously. They had a system that ran well within its confines so that the user could ask more of it because the computer wasn't struggling to deal with the inefficient bloat that ALL Microsoft systems have suffered from. Microsoft, you see, aren't interested in optimising their systems for lower powered computers or for maximum efficiency on higher powered computers. They are too interested in adding bling or putting new wizards and other fluff into the mix to blow it up. The 32 bit version of W8, for example, requires 16GB of disc space to call its own! I've had XP systems that were installed and running on a fraction of that, and don't start me on earlier versions!

You see, Microsoft were caught out by the rise of the netbook; a small, low powered machine that would never be able to run Vista properly. It meant that Microsoft had the embarrassing position that they had to use XP on these machines to avoid losing market share to the Linux distros. Unfortunately, the netbook market is now on the decline and Microsoft can now get away with moving back to the bad old habits of bloating and expecting the hardware to keep up.

I can't comment on the ARM version because I've yet to see a system that could support it but my only note about WOA is that if they bloat it like they seem to be doing with the x86 versions, then they risk losing that market to Android, Linux and the like. Bear in mind that the earlier versions of the ARM were built for the desktop running RISC OS, a GUI that still holds up well alongside Windows but runs in at a fraction of the size (the OS plus various added goodies still only amounts to about 10MB or less. Yes, that's MEGABYTES, not Gigabytes).

Well, I'm going to have a quick check to see what has happened this time. For the record, it takes the code, installs the drivers, sets the system up then reboots and hangs with just the picture of the "betta-fish" to comfort you. Sorry, but those graphics are no better than the A3000 running Zarch back in the early 90's! If anything else does happen, I'll update this...

9:28pm: A couple of notes..
Just putting this somewhere where I can find it.

I've had openSUSE 11.4 on Reina (my Acer Aspire One) for some time now, but there are a couple of problems that, to now, I have never been able to fix, until now.

Right-side SD slot

This doesn't get added on installation, so to get it to work, I needed to change the kernel settings. To fix:

1. Open YaST, then go to System --> /etc/sysconfig Editor


2. Go to System --> Kernel --> MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT


3. Input (or add to what is already there) the keyword acpiphp


4. Restart the system.

Tapping the touchpad

I tried two configuration tools. ksynaptics didn't really work at all, while gsynaptics only worked for the lifetime of the session. ksynaptics failed because it insisted that it needed the shared memory working but the setting to do that killed X11 every time. I read a number of articles about this and the most likely resolution was to add three lines to the configuration file.

1. As an admin, using a terminal session, cd to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d


2. Open the file 50-synaptics.conf with vi (make a copy first somewhere where you can get at it if anything goes wrong!)


3. Immediately before the line EndSection in the InputDevice section, add the following lines:
   

   Option   "TapButton1"   "1"
   Option   "TapButton2"   "2"
   Option   "TapButton3"   "3"



4. Restart the system (or restart X11 if you prefer).

Please note, anyone that may be reading this, that I do not take responsibility for anything going wrong with your system. I do know that it worked for me, but I would advise anyone making changes of this nature to make reasonable backups before starting (I tend to use a dd image to a removable HD - believe me, these things have saved my systems on more than one occasion!!)

1:00pm: Curriculum rethink for IT
See story on BBC

This appears to be a complete climbdown on the knotty problem of teaching IT in schools. The problem as I have seen it over the last couple of decades is a depressing one as those with little or no knowledge of IT have increasingly tried to dictate the course based on their own inabilities. I've known for many years that school children can be very adept at picking up IT skills yet governors and administrators have put their money in to buying cheap PC equipment to teach what amounts to the ECDL and little else. That isn't what teachers originally brought the computer into the classroom for.

Prof. Steve Furber, one of the people behind the Acorn machines including the BBC Micro and its successors, is to produce a report in the near future about this state of affairs and what can be done about it. In some ways, I can see what is likely to be the result of such a study in that education is increasingly becoming a political football, whatever the subject at hand. One of the biggest problems is that politicians as well as the people responsible for schools themselves have a completely inaccurate picture of what computers in schools are meant for. They aren't meant for use as typewriters as in previous generations. They are teaching tools, capable of being used in many different ways. One of the things they can be used for is the teaching of programming and logic skills, something that they were certainly used for back when I was learning my trade.

While there may be a need for some to learn to do word processing or spreadsheets, to do so to the complete exclusion of all other things is wrong (note there that I don't use a brand name - anyone that does needs to seriously consider their position! Oranges are not the only fruit) I look forward to Steve's report.

1:55pm: Just quickly keying this in from work, so I have to be brief.

A merry humbug (or bah Christmas if you prefer) to anybody still reading this stuff. :)

4:33pm: Cooee!
An interesting weekend...

Oh yeah. I know I've not been updating here for a while. Actually, you are more likely to see me doing stuff on YouTube or commenting on the Register but I haven't entirely given up here.

I've just come back from visiting my mother. I think I've realised how much I hate TV these days. Actually, Foyle's War wasn't too bad, but when the X Factor came on with some Irish bint doing a rough, off-key version of Mmm-bop, a sterotypical black woman doing the old Lauper standard Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (to do the girl justice, she could hardly be worse than Cyndi was) then being threatened with somebody doing a Wham! song, I just had to make my excuses. After all, I lived through this crap once already, so why should I have to put up with it again?!?

On the plus side, I had a very nice dinner, and a couple of extra dinners for the freezer! Ta, Mum!

( openSUSE 12.1 - Oh bloody hell )

( Crashnet Update )

( November 30 Strike by Public Service Workers )

I'm still here! :)

8:29pm: Tragedy at Hednesford Hills
The news started filtering through as I worked through my day at Arena Essex yesterday that something had happened at the Pre-68 Banger meeting at Hednesford. The first I heard, just short of one of the Outlaw races, was that somebody had died during the meeting and that the whole meeting had been cancelled. As the day went on, I heard more but counted it all as rumour and unsubstantiated.

That was until this morning as the details came through, not from fans and hearsay, but from the horses' mouth. Incarace, the promoter of the Hednesford Hills Raceway, issued a short statement on their website on Sunday night which simply stated; "It is with regret that we have to announce the tragic passing of driver David Weare following an incident at Hednesford today" along with a notice that Staffordshire police are taking an interest in the incident and an expression of condolences to the driver's family and fellow racers. (I should point out that anyone that was there and hasn't given details to the police should go to the Incarace site at http://www.spedeworth.co.uk/incarace/news.php where contact details can be found).

More information was forthcoming through the local press, both in Cannock where the Express & Star quoted both Nick Hughes and a spectator while This Is SouthDevon repeated condolences from local promoter Autospeed, again giving the account of spectator Glyn Jones, a local fan from Hednesford. A short bulletin also appeared on the BBC News website, though you had to dig for it, and it gave little detail.

It's one of those incidents that everyone connected with the sport always dreads. We always say that motorsport is dangerous yet nobody is ever quite prepared for the day when somebody gives his life and you always wonder if more could have been done. In this case, from the reports so far, it sounds like an accident, yet I can well imagine the feelings of those on the track at the time. The Pre-68 is a flagship event, not just for Hednesford but for the whole sport and has long been a must-see event in the banger calendar with drivers, mechanics and the promotion itself putting much into making an entertaining day, so it is sad to see such a day end like this.

I can only express my condolences to the family and friends of David Weare and to those involved in the incident and meeting.

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2011/09/26/hednesford-raceway-driver-killed-in-crash/#ixzz1Z5PKTAY0
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-15056956
http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/Driver-dies-race-tragedy/story-13405807-detail/story.html

9:47am: Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS
Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

9:00am: Pong!
Yes, I'm still here and no, I'm not anywhere near the rioting.

It's an interesting situation, though at present it is probably troubling many as they fight to survive on both sides. On one side, you have the shopkeepers that are being targeted and on the other you have the disaffected youth trying to make a stake for themselves. However, let's just take a step back and consider how this started.

( Sorry but this all turns into a rant! Read more... )

I know that this has turned into a bit of a rant but I needed to get this all off my chest. I find that the media and the uninformed public are often too quick to simplify events such as these with mealy-mouthed words such as "riot" when the real reason behind it is a lot more complex, and that annoys me. Before we write off what is happening, we need to examine the real culprits here. Politicians and media moguls who have repeatedly shown themselves to be untrustworthy yet still seem to be in positions of power. So called "fat cats" in control of companies who prefer to concentrate on getting a bigger profit than last year (I can remember the days when getting any profit was enough!) rather than what their actions do to the society where the people that work for them have to live. The parents whose parenting skills are questionable at best.

Remember, this is happening in a climate where police forces are being told to cut back. Less police on the street. That's before we even get to the subject of what occurs in schools and the attitude of parents towards teachers these days. We are turning into a society of avaricious, lawless idiots and nobody appears to be able to stop it.

3:37pm: New Crashnet Gallery
I'm trying something new out over on my main site in the way of a gallery. See what you think of it!



To see more, go to www.crashnet.org.uk/gallery

4:20am: Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen dies
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13137674?postId=108211323

The subject line says it all. Certainly my favourite "assistant", Elisabeth Sladen wasn't one of those ultimately forgettable screaming sidekicks that the Doctor usually ended up with. It meant that Sarah-Jane and her inquisitive nature would often provide side stories that gave a whole new dimension to the show, a part that suited Lis well and is well remembered by a generation of fans. She will be missed.

11:58pm: I'm alive. Almost... (plus openSUSE 11.4 review)
Yeah, the annual bout of man-flu hit this week. Sore throat on Sunday, back to work on Monday but couldn't stop sneezing, weak and snotty on Tuesday so I stayed away then I started the day with some painful coughing. Going to try to get back to work tomorrow but I suspect that things will be difficult.

Anyway, on a more positive note, I have managed to get openSUSE 11.4 to work. My first attempt was a virtual machine, just for curiosity's sake, but Microsoft's VirtualPC isn't what I'd call brilliant for that sort of thing. However I do have one box that was built with 11.3 but had not been put into service yet as I didn't have a monitor for her. Well, Kanata now has a nice new shiny 1080p setup so the older monitor fell available as a result so Kasumi, a MicroATX system in a desktop case using Kaori's old Sempron, is now performing duties previously done by Sakura who was no longer able to carry on because of the lack of support in modern systems for the old Intel 810 graphics system. It's Kasumi, as a result, that got 11.4.

( Read more... )

Conclusion
I was cautious when 11.4 was announced, especially given that I've not been impressed with 11.3, but so far so good. So far it has been as stable at least as 11.1 which, in my humble opinion, was a real benchmark for the distro and a number of improvements have made it a bit easier to use. I'm still not totally sold on KDE4 but this latest version has come closest so far to getting me away from KDE3 which, just as with Microsoft and Windows XP, just refuses to go away! (Note that I'm not really much of a GNOME user so you'll need to look elsewhere for that sort of thing) My next project will be to try to install it on Reina, my Acer Aspire One netbook, something which has always been a real struggle on all the versions I've tried on her but, if it goes on anything like as easily as with Kasumi, then it will get my vote.

4:40pm: Ups and Downs
OK, so my new car (well, newish) is proving to be a mixed bag right now.

Nono is a delight to drive, I will say. On Monday I had a number of struggles with floods around Sandon and she came through without a hitch. Mind you, I drew the line at one particular set of floods which were about six feet! Nono isn't really built for that but one flood just outside Margaretting came awfully close when I put my foot down a little too much and got a lovely wave over the bonnet!

On the down side, my alarm is still giving trouble. The poor guy charged with sorting it out has been pulling his hair out and so, I understand, have the folk at Clifford who make the thing! They are giving it another go next Monday but if it still doesn't work, they'll rip it out and stick a less complex Gemini unit in. So far, it seems, Nono is saying no to it!

Must go... currently sorting out a laptop for a VIP!

8:12pm: Akiko RIP
I finally did away with my old Peugeot 306 today.

OK, that may not seem like a monumental event, but Akiko (named after my favourite anime seiyuu, Hiramatsu Akiko) was only a month short of her sweet sixteenth and had been driven by me for all of those years. When I bought her, I was just coming out of an affair, had a different employer and was a lot younger! Akiko and I have been all over the mainland UK including trips to North Wales and Scotland and were both present at the reopening of the Norfolk Arena by TSR as well as oval circuits as diverse as Brafield, Hednesford, Mildenhall and Ringwood (not to mention Arena Essex, our home stamping ground). Things came to a head in the last few months, however.

It started when we had the first snows of the year back in January. I had to visit a local councillor to fix his printer but said councillor lives in the back of beyond and I had to go down some narrow country lanes to get to his house. As you could imagine, I was doing my best to be as careful as possible but, unfortunately, not everyone was doing the same. As I was travelling down a single-track lane, some clot in a Transit came haring down in the other direction, saw me too late, hammered on his brakes, lost control in the snow and clipped me in the rear offside quarter. Kiki (as I often called her) carried on regardless but I noticed much later (far too late to make a claim, unfortunately) that one of my back wheels was slightly out of alignment. If that was all, however, I'd probably have put up with it until the spring. That wasn't the end of it though.

Just before my MOT test in May, I did the brakes. New shoes all round, system bled and refilled. So imagine my concern when the MOT testing station told me that my brakes needed bleeding again! On further investigation, I was told that a bleed nipple was damaged and had to be replaced, hence the bleed. I knew that there was nothing wrong with anything on the brakes so I told them to keep the parts for my inspection upon collection. When I got there however, I was told that said parts had been disposed of. Does anything smell fishy here? I had said the previous year that I would change the car if anything beyond a set of brakes went wrong and suddenly I was being presented with a large bill relating to lots of things going wrong that I didn't know about and nothing to substantiate it. Last time I'll go to that dealer.

So summer came and I had a nice, long drive up from Basildon to Maldon where I was going to visit my mother on her birthday. At least that was the plan. I pulled into the Tesco at the Heybridge Causeway and bought my gift then went back, only to find that Kiki refused to turn over. There seemed to be some power there but the engine just didn't want to turn. The only things that came to mind other than a dead battery were something to do with the starter or the engine getting seized. Well I dismissed the seizing idea for a start and set to rocking the car whilst in gear and, after a few tries, she fired up. She did this a few times in the summer but then stopped. Until December.

Yes, December, and we are in the coldest, snowiest December in recent memory and Kiki is doing it again! An occasional bump start gets things going again but it doesn't last. What is more, she is starting to exhibit signs of either glow plug or injector problems which makes it even harder to get started, especially on a frosty morning as I try to go to work. Well, with the money I inherited from my father who passed away in May this year, I decided that Akiko deserved retirement. After all, 16 years and 189,500 miles (all but two of them put there by me) is pretty good going for a car of that type!

Akiko
(Peugeot 306XND 1.9 - M702 UMK)
January 18, 1995 - December 18, 2010
R.I.P.

Her replacement is a 2009 reg Ford Fusion 1.6TDCi Titanium (that's the UK version, not the US one) who has already distinguished herself by getting stuck in the snow about 100 yards from my home! Whilst it was certainly tempting to call her something snowbased such as Yuki, her actual name is to be Noriko (after my second favourite seiyuu, Hidaka Noriko). Akiko will be a hard act to follow!

4:51pm: Review - Diebuster - Aim for the Top 2
http://www.crashnet.org.uk/kanata/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=100

7:28pm: Anime Cliches (or Oh noes not agayne!)
Something I've been meaning to do for some time is get all my anime cliches down in one place. Now before anybody starts in, this is my list, and I know that it may not fit with everyone. Plus, for the record, for those out there that might start in with "why do they all have big eyes? Isn't that a cliche right there?" I am not interested in that. Anime as a genre (and that's an argument in itself!) has a number of stylings that need to be acknowledged, and those folk that can't accept that might as well go back to watching Disney... oh wait! Big eyes? Now where do you think that all started?!?

( Read more... )

11:26am: Review - Hand Maid May
Posted at http://www.crashnet.org.uk/kanata/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=97

5:25pm: Review - Whisper of the Heart
Posted at http://www.crashnet.org.uk/kanata/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=95

1:23am: Reviews on the move
I have just finished moving the LiveJournal part of my reviews to a new site. Well, not that new! It's actually all shifted back to my site at Crashnet under the title "Anime Reviews from Hell" which was the title I used on the Lurker's Retreat many years ago (in fact, as a temporary thing, I've even resurrected the old logo!)

To see the site, go to http://crashnet.org.uk/kanata/viewforum.php?f=3 (or just go to crashnet.org.uk/kanata and select "Anime Reviews from Hell").

9:54pm: Review - Sora no Otoshimono
Released in 2009, the first thing I would have said about this series after part one was that it seemed like a cross between Mahoromatic, Steel Angel Kurumi and Chobits. However, watching the rest of it made me change my mind to an extent.

In a small rural town called Sorami, a person has discovered a phenomenon that seems to roam the skies at random. When it passed over the town, it happened to drop something. The person it dropped it next to was Tomoki, a chara who is a bit of a loser and a great deal of a pervert. Thing of Ataru Moroboshi (Urusei Yatsura) but a bit younger. Actually, he's very much like Moroboshi as he has a childhood girlfriend who regularly karate chops him when she finds him doing something pervy, and the something that was dropped happened to be not quite human. It was, in fact, an "angeloid", which as far as anyone can make out is a type of android but with wings. This particular angeloid introduces herself as Ikarus (or something like that) which, as the series draws to its inevitable climax, turns out to be a pretty ironic title for her.

Actually, the whole thing, with Ikarus becoming attached to a misfit, the somewhat tsudere younger girl coming after her to bring her back, the ultimate betrayal of both by someone or something from the shadows and so on is a little cliched by this time, plus the inevitable beach trip, festival, culture festival, bath house romp, jokes about panties, the links to the local yakuza and the eccentric older boy (complete with glasses and various "sidekicks" - yes, this is the person that has discovered the phenomenon) all seem to have been lifted from other anime. Indeed there is very little that you could call original about it, though the move to having an almost complete pervert, albeit with a soft side that tends to take pity on those in need, is a bit of a step away from the total clueless wimps that seem to have been popular in such roles such as in the previously mentioned Mahoromatic or Chobits.

The saving graces is that the whole series doesn't take itself too seriously, at least until the very last episode when it really gets heavy, and it does have a few good laughs, including the migratory panties (which later turn into exploding panties). However things such as the cultural festival where the "New World Discovery Group" becomes a rock band could, for all I know, have been lifted almost completely from a similar episode in the first Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu season and the ending itself is predictable, even if it does feature a few good explosions. It's hardly conclusive though so I suspect that a further series may be possible if there is enough support for it. Animation quality is generally reasonable though fairly typical TV fare, while the opening theme is yet another appalling autotuned anthem. There isn't one specific closing theme as many of the episodes finish with either a parody or a flashback complete with appropriate song.

My sources inform me that Funimation has the US licence for this, so we shall see how it fares on the left of the pond. I doubt that it will take the market by storm but feel free to try it when it does hit the market.

7:34pm: Outsourcing to cut costs?
I happened across this story earlier on. It's puzzling me a little. Here's why.

A council, at whatever level, is attempting to outsource a service to cut costs. If that services costs X when the council delivers it, then how does it cost any less if the council pays somebody else to do it? Lower overheads? Maybe, but the cost of the overheads incurred by the company awarded the contract have to be paid for somewhere. Reduced capital costs? Possibly, though again a company would need to fund any capital costs from somewhere. Bear in mind that companies exist to make money, unlike councils which, at best, plough anything they make into the services they provide. Of course, costs can be cut where a company provides a service that is consolidated with services already provided to other councils, but then some councils are already investigating consolidation with each other.

The article does bring up one big question, and that is accountability. This isn't meant to be a slur on every single company that already provide outsourced services for councils and other government agencies, but the problem is that I have encountered more than one of these companies that provide a substandard service at the taxpayer's expense with no real accountability enforced. Examples have occurred in cleaning services in hospitals where companies have provided a substandard service leading to infestation and infection, in ICT where services have deteriorated to such an extend that they become unusable or where projects have slipped to an alarming extent, and to housing where once affordable rents have disappeared. I know of at least one training company that is supposed to provide work training to the unemployed on behalf of the DWP (or whatever they decide to call themselves next) to get them back into work but seems to do little else than to sit their victims in a poorly ventilated room with a bunch of newspapers and tells them to get on with it. This, if the article is to be believed, could get even worse with such things as social services being outsourced, not to mention schools and such.

It all brings to mind the movie Robocop. Now bear in mind that some of what was done in that film was tongue-in-cheek, but many a true word is spoken in jest, even in wHollyWeird. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd advise you to try it then, having watched it, ask yourself if you really trust the private sector to deliver public services. I know that the US does it that way, but does that really make it better? I'm not convinced.

9:27pm: Review - Bakemonogatari
It's a strange name for a strange anime series, but Bakemonogatari is a series that I did enjoy. The name itself is wordplay in that it combines two words - "bakemono", which means "monster" and "monogatari" which translates as "story". The series is often translated into "Ghostory" (probably because it is closer to the actual content of the series than "Monstory" would be).

Araragi was a vampire. In fact, he still is, to a lesser extent, but he has been saved by Oshino Meme, a rather uncute man with a rather cute name. During the course of this series, which is comprised of a number of stories, Araragi meets a girl with no weight, a grade schooler that can't find her way home, a kohei athlete with a hidden secret, another girl with snake scales on her skin and yet another girl who has a rather destructive alter-ego. The thing that links each of these stories, apart from the fact that Araragi meets them and decides to do something about them, is that each of them is related to or afflicted by a curse or aberration related to an animal.

In some ways, you could call this a love story, but that wouldn't do it justice although in the final five part story, Tsubasa Cat, a love triangle emerges which could threaten Araragi's life if he gives in to it. It features such animal ghosts as a weight crab (whatever that is), a snail, a monkey (or a paw of one, anyway), a snake or two and a cat, each having an effect on the girl they are attached to. The first story, Hitagi Crab, sets the scene for the entire series and introduces Araragi's initial love interest, though it initially seems that Hitagi is trying to alternately humiliate him and threaten him.

The whole series is pretty well animated, though the sometimes annoying amount of text exposition and the various coloured "frames" that get inserted where you might expect action remind me a little of a Dennis Potter play. It has a darkness about it that brings such series as Serial Experiments Lain to mind, though this series is a lot more accessible. There is also the question of a young vampire girl called Shinobu who is linked with Araragi but you are never totally sure as to how, even at the end. For those reasons, this is a series with which you need some patience but, just as with Lain, that can pay off in the end as it is quite enjoyable. Probably another reason why "Monstory" wouldn't be a good name to use here; after all, this series is a million miles away from such staples as Pokemon, Digimon and Monster Rancher!

7:41pm: Review - Akazukin Chacha
I felt in the mood to view something old but something I had not seen before. I'd heard of Akazukin Chacha (translates to "Red Riding Hood" Chacha) but had never actually seen any of it, so when I had the chance to watch, I went for it.

The story starts with Chacha finally starting school. Chacha is the student of Seravy, the champion magician, and a girl with a hidden past. She's also a magician with a habit of getting the spell wrong, usually as a result of some sort of pun or mispronunciation, a joke that runs right through the 74 episodes. She has a friend called Riiya who just happens to be a werewolf, is very strong and is always eating - or trying to anyway, and she makes another friend in the first episode called Shiine who is a student of a rival of Seravy, a rather loud woman known as Dorothy with pink hair, the subject of a number of plots in the later series. Shiine is capable of much of the same magic that Chacha is trying to learn, though his attachment to Chacha becomes a rivalry that again runs through the entire series.

What doesn't run through the series but finishes about two thirds of the way through is that Chacha is able to become a magical princess with the help of her two friends and a number of magical items, all the more reason why the current ruler of this land, known only as the Evil Lord or somesuch, wants her dead and sends a number of foes to fight her. In the later series, Chacha loses this power and has to concentrate on solving life's difficulties with what power she has otherwise. There are a number of other regular cast members, including Marine, a mermaid with a crush on Riiya and a blind spot to his metamorphed form (which is why he spends much of his time in his dog... er, wolf form when she is about), Yakko, a girl who specialises in potions and who has a sizeable crush on Seravy, Orin, a rather small girl who just happens to be a ninja and who has a crush on Shiine and a number of other weird charas.

What it also has is probably the most convoluted henshin sequence of any anime I've ever seen! It starts off fairly well, although the fact that Chacha needs Shiine and Riiya to perform it, coupled with the appalling Japlish employed (it ends with the cringe-making phrase "Magical Princess Holy Up! Beauty serene arrow, magical shoot!") seems a bit overcomplex, but it gets worse as each development doesn't replace the previous form as in such shows as Sailor Moon, it gets tacked on the end! This includes all those features that you would normally expect from a henshin sequence including dramatic music, poses and special effects, but also includes the Phoenix Sword (remove the phrase "Magical Shoot", then add "Saint Fairy Navigation", then add "Lightning Feather Skill Up!") and the Bird Shield (add "Bird Shield Build Up!"). That's before I even mention the "Winged Kris" move! After the series gets to about episode 50 or thereabouts, this all gets dropped, only to be resurrected in a couple of flashback moments, but the series struggles to come up with much in the way of a storyline after that.

The biggest strength in this series, as I see it, is the comedy based around the puns and wordplay, much as you might expect from, say, a Takahashi title, but it has little else to commend it. Some of the charas are a bit pointless, such as Barabaraman (a teacher who sprouts roses and rose thorns when he gets excited - beware if he ever tries to hug you!) and Yuki (another teacher who just happens to be a snow fairy - guess what happens when she gets excited!) On the whole, it isn't a bad series, but I suspect that it would appeal to a very much younger age group.

11:41am: Finally!
http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2010/08/27/the-stig-he-is-ours/

Actually, I totally agree with Andy Wilman about this, but with one additional point. At the moment, a lot of companies are using legal means to prevent the so called piracy of various things by individuals or small groups. Large companies make the claim that they are protecting their rights against people that they brand as pirates or criminals, yet in this instance we see a large corporation such as HarperCollins making the claim that they have some sort of right to ripping off the BBC on behalf of the reading public. Who elected HarperCollins as my mouthpiece?!? I pay my licence fee and therefore own my fair share of the BBC and everything in it, even though that share is probably impossible to extract. Therefore the BBC is representing, amongst other things, my interest and have that right to protect my interests in whatever way is necessary to stop a company that is acting in a way that other organisations have branded as criminal.

In effect, HarperCollins is merely resorting to a tactic that newspapers have been using for years. They simply yell "The People Have A Right To Know" as if they were the people's representative and hope that the other party will get scared and back down. To be honest, I've even seen the BBC resort to this, though they do have some right in some situations. They are a governmental organisation, their top officials appointed by the government and their funds provided by the public. It's a bit like somebody calling a local government office and asking for anything they want, citing the Freedom of Information Act when they don't get an answer that they like.

If anything, this is yet another reason to examine the whole copyright/intellectual property thing and get the laws tidied up once and for all rather than tie up the courts in legal battles over rulings based on inconclusive regulation, knee-jerk laws and corporate greed.

11:49pm: The continuing saga of Kanata and Reina
You may be aware that many Linux distros have dropped KDE 3.5 in favour of KDE 4. In some cases, it has been because they have a belief that KDE 4 is now stable enough to at least rival KDE 3.5, and in other cases it is merely the fact that supporting two different versions of the same thing is something that they don't want to do. Both may be valid cases, except that in the first case, I am not so easily convinced and in the second, it is not a case of supporting two versions, it is a case of supporting what the users are actually using. It's a gripe I also have against Microsoft and their dropping of support for some versions of Windows XP in favour of Vista and 7, even though XP still has the larger user base at present (yes, I know that it is SP2 they have dropped but SP2 is still widely used out there).

So why do I even bring it up? Well, as you may know, I recently built a new machine; Kanata. This system was built a few weeks before openSUSE 11.3 went live, hence she runs openSUSE 11.2 as opposed to her predecessor, Kimiko, who was on 11.1. My netbook, Reina, was also on 11.1 until about a week or so ago when the previous load started to act up again (it seemed that OpenOffice was continually corrupting itself following a hibernation to RAM for no apparent reason, and an application reload only fixed it for a couple of weeks before the problem resurfaced). Reina was put onto openSUSE 11.3 as a result. The common problem here, however, is that both are running KDE 4 by default. The version on 11.2 was very iffy and the version on 11.3, though a lot more stable than previously, still had a few niggling problems, including an annoying one where the screen furniture resized itself when I attached Reina to a projector to test it out but did not resize itself back when I restarted later on, something that KDE 3.5 never had any trouble with, at least on the versions that I have tried on versions of openSUSE since 10.2 (I can't vouch for anything earlier as most of my Linux work before then was at the CLI rather than on a GUI).

I managed to pin down a rather helpful document after a bit of searching which took you through the installation of KDE 3.5.10 on openSUSE 11.2 but without installing KDE 4 first (he did it by installing a minimal X system using twm, editing the /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager file then adding in the entire KDE3 installation from the supposedly unsupported KDE3 repository using an extremely long list of modules which I edited into a succession on zypper in commands in a script to save myself a lot of typing and stuff). This was a good bit of kit though I also added in a number of bits to my own taste including mPlayer and smplayer, since I tend to watch more stuff on my computers than I watch on the TV these days!

All seemed well, especially with Kanata who was very capably taking over all of Kimiko's chores and Reina was reasonably well following her own update. That was until today.

When I work trackside at Arena Essex Raceway, I normally take Reina along and write up the race while waiting for the next one then suspending to RAM while the race is on. This has always been a reasonable was to work, and Reina was an ideal system to do this with. Today, however, was the first time I had used Reina trackside since the rebuild with 11.3 and. to my horror, I found that she would not hibernate! With only a two cell battery onboard, that meant that I would lose power in around one and a half hours, which would only take me about three or four races into today's twelve event schedule. I decided to shut down and do my notes by hand for today, then consider fixing the problem when I got home.

It appeared, at first, that there was no power management software loaded, and that openSUSE had given up the ghost with such things but, on closer inspection, I found that they relied on something called "PowerDevil" to do this on 11.2 onwards. Trouble is that PowerDevil makes no attempt to show itself when running KDE 3.5. On the document I had to hand for installing KDE 3.5.10 on these later systems, this item is overlooked as, I presume, the writer was only concerned with desktop environments. Since my first attempt at working this was on Kanata, a desktop machine, I never considered the problem until today, when I found myself with an unworkable setup.

I knew that PowerDevil was not something I had heard of on previous builds, so I went to have a look on Sakura, an old laptop system that currently sits by my bed running the venerable (and now unsupported) openSUSE 11.0. That was running KPowerSave to do this sort of thing but, so it seems, KPowerSave was not in the KDE3 repository and has been deleted from all recent repositories. Trying to download the thing from websites was a waste of time as kPowerSave cannot be loaded without kPowerSave-lang and kPowerSave-lang cannot be loaded without kPowerSave! However, although openSUSE 11.0 is no longer supported, openSUSE 11.1 is still supported and has an up to date version of kPowerSave, complete with dependancies, sitting in its repository. It was a gamble, but I added the repository into Kanata and selected the installation. In it chugged, quite happily loading in and running, and is now sitting on my desktop, telling me that I'm all plugged in and my three cores are idling around 1050MHz each. Happy that it worked on 11.2, I then tried the same trick on Reina and 11.3, and that worked too, suspend key and all!

I daresay that there are a number of lessons to be learned here, but I'm not about to spell them out now. Goodness knows what will happen once the 11.1 repository drops out of support and gets deleted - I have got the official factory DVD somewhere around for 11.1 so I imagine that all should be well if I can find it in the mess my flat is currently in! I'm a bit puzzled that they would leave a bit of software like this out of the repository, even if it is just stuck in the KDE3 file if nothing else will serve, but for now Reina is quite capable of suspending to RAM when asked, just as before.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in putting KDE3 on openSUSE 11.2 onwards, the document I worked from was found at http://forums.opensuse.org/english/information-new-users/unreviewed-how-faq/427319-how-install-kde-3-5-opensuse-11-2-a.html. For the record, it works just as well on 11.3, though as I said before, the two machines I did it on were already loaded with KDE 4 before I started.