Chika's journal

12:51pm: Not quite sure
Mid way through this morning, while I was up to the eyeballs wrestling with Netvault, HyperTrac and whatever else, I got a call from my brother.

My mother's latest boyfriend died from lung cancer this morning.

I'm not distraught, though my first thought was how the hell to get to my mother so I could see how she was bearing up. You see, this was a man that caused the final parting of our family, making it difficult for any of us to get together. I can remember leaving the flat where he and my mother have lived in tears because of him. He could be self-opinionated, obnoxious and stubborn. He would smoke, drink to excess, letting his health suffer and causing a burden on those close to him. Yet, despite all that, my mother decided to stay with him for the last twenty-seven years.

So, as you can imagine, I'm not exactly stricken with grief. But I'm not rejoicing either, because I am aware of how bad lung cancer can be. My mother's previous boyfriend, the one that caused the breakup of my family in the first place, went the same way. It can be a sneaky disease, creeping up and getting to you without you knowing, or it can be a total nightmare, dragging you through a painful decline. None of the options are pleasant, and any death leaves its mark on those nearest to you. That, unfortunately, includes my mother.

What I'm not sure about is exactly how I do feel about it. I can try to comfort Mum, but I'm not totally sure how to feel about it to myself. I certainly can't be sad about it, or indeed happy, because then I'd feel dishonest.

Play it by ear, I suppose...

12:50pm: Video
Just a link for my later attention. If you are interested in TV conversion and stuff, you could also see what you think.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/06/25/beginners_guide_avisynth/

5:44pm: MMW System Newsflash
Madoka is online and is back on the main desk! ZFC/Argonet folk rejoice, for Mads is back!!!

Oh, and I just got a 19" flatscreen monitor. It's ex-display, so I managed to get it very cheap. For the record, the MDF I'm using right now on both Madoka and Miyuki looks something like this...

file_format:1
monitor_title:AOC N19W
DPMS_state:0

# 1280 x 720    (43.8 kHz, 58 Hz)
startmode
 mode_name:1280 x 720
 x_res:1280
 y_res:720
 pixel_rate:74500
 h_timings:136,64,160,1280,60,0
 v_timings:6,29,0,720,0,3
 sync_pol:0
endmode

The screen in question is an Advent AOC N19W and is shared across the two RPCs and two other PCs using a KVM of unknown manufacture. All I need now is two PS/2 minis to convert the mice so I can clear the mixture of mice off the desk!

5:19pm: Review - Aria the Animation
I don't often really get sentimental over an anime series. This time could be different.

No embarrassing remarks allowed!!!

It's many years into the future, and the slow desecration of Man-Home (what they call Earth in this series) has forced humankind to craft a new home for themselves on Aqua (formerly Mars). The planet has been flooded by excavating water from underground and the weather and gravity are artificially controlled to provide a stable environment for life. In one place, Neo-Venezia, a town loosely based on Venice, has grown up and the Undines provide a guided gondola tour around it. The flooding part of the history of this planet was long in the past, and Neo-Venezia is a popular tourist spot.

Of course, to become an Undine, you need to train and practice. Into the story comes Akari, an apprentice Undine who came to Neo-Venezia the year before the opening of the series. She's one of those cheerful types that always seems to find fun in anything, although she isn't that good at controlling a gondola yet (except when rowing backwards which was a trick she picked up by mistake). She's usually seen with President Aria, the president of the Aria Company where Akari is apprenticed (the Prez is a cat, by the way). The series start and end with her encounters with Ai, a young girl from Man-Home who stows away in Akari's gondola one day. The series turns into a flow of one-shot stories from Akari's second year on the planet and her e-mail conversations with Ai back on Man-Home, including her meeting with rival company apprentices and friends Aika and Alice and their mentors, Alicia, Akira and Athena (anyone notice a common theme with names here?) as we learn about Aqua, how it works and who lives there. The stories are often completed by some form of point, or even moral, but never in the preaching way that often accompanied the worst of the American animation form.

There is a vague storyline to the series but it isn't important. What is important is that the whole series is very subtle, gentle and flows at its own pace and, while it might not seem to have a point, it certainly leaves me feeling sorry that it ended (there is a subsequent series, however, but I'll come to that when I get it). There are no giant mecha, but no magical girls or maids. Even the people they refer to as "fairies" aren't really that! In some ways, it reminds me a lot of the way in which Anne McCaffrey's Pern came into being, though without the political intrigue.

I should thank old CAPOW cohort Jeff for suggesting this title following my somewhat disastrous flirtation with another anime.

10:28pm: The Saga of WinSeven - Part Five
OK, good news and bad news.

Bad news, as I mentioned in the follow up to part four, is that Intel couldn't give a rat's arse about the 830M driver so I guess I'm stuck with that buglet, though I have roasted M$ about the situation.

Good news is that I found the prob with the Matroska playback. By default, CCCP tries to use the Overlay Mixer when working with video playback through Zoom Player. By changing this to VMR7, it springs into life! Subs and everything! To do this, right-click on the screen and go to Options, then select Video in the left screen and click on the down arrow next to the video renderer field and pick out VMR7. Note that the EVR setting, meant for use on systems with Vista, will work also but will de-sync the video from the audio on slower systems (yes, I tried). There are also VMR settings related to the use of DirectX9 but I thought I'd leave them alone given my current video bugs.

I was down to do some reporting this evening but a violent storm has made the mains unreliable for now. And I mean "violent" - hail, fork lightning, the lot!

11:01am: The Saga of WinSeven - Part Four and a bit
Just a quickie (oh Matron!!!)

I noticed that the graphics card driver wasn't installed yesterday, so I went searching for the driver online. Of course, being a Fuji laptop, my first stop was Fujitsu's site which quite happily informed me that the "card" in question was an Intel 830M and that drivers were available right up to Windows XP.

Of course, you can see the problem. There is absolutely no way that this system would ever run Windows Vista, despite the fact that I did manage to run Server 2008 on one some time ago. That means that no driver has been written since XP. So, with that in mind I downloaded the XP driver to see what W7 would make of it.

Well, it loads. But will it blend? That is the question!

Actually, it loads, runs, does everything it is supposed to except save itself! As soon as I reboot, the damn thing unloads itself, so it then has to be reloaded after I log in! This could be that the driver tries to save itself in time honoured WXP/W2K fashion, something that W7 might take exception to. Anyhow, I'm off to Intel to see what they have to say about it.

11:27am: The Saga of WinSeven - Part Four
OK, so I didn't finish up yesterday but I did get to the point where the system was up and running.

( Windows 7 RC1 (Warning: Long!) )

I'll run the system from time to time for the next week to see what else comes up, though I may have to break the system down to return it so I'm not sure how long I'm going to have it around.

10:36pm: The Saga of WinSeven - Part Three
( Windows 7 RC1 )

9:36pm: The Saga of WinSeven - Part Two
( Windows 7 RC1 )

8:47pm: MMW System Update Special - June 2009
Why a special? Well, because I'm trying out the new Windows 7 RC1

However, first, the usual rundown. I'm taking the whole lot apart next week to try an sort out the cabling. Part of this, if I can find a small hub, will be the return of Madoka to working. I intend to use Mads as a partial email handler, in particular handling her own box and some of the less used boxes, leaving the Arena Essex and Miyuki boxes to Miyuki.

I've also had trouble with an update to the Linux kernel on Kimiko which had killed most of the sound apps I had on here. Some of it was sorted when I found that the sound card had somehow become "unconfigured", though it took a while, once reconfigured, to get Amarok and Flashplayer working again and Realplayer still doesn't want to know! Thanks to the openSUSE guys. You really made my week! (Sarcasm mode off).

( Windows 7 RC1 )

Oh, and for the record, this is not being typed in from Windows 7. This is Kimiko on digits, so it's openSUSE 11.1 on the go! More later...

6:44pm: Steerrike!!!
I've only one thing to say about the London Underground strike planned for tomorrow.



Heh!

11:53pm: Review - Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex, 2nd Gig
You'll have to go look in the Anime Primer if you want to see what I wrote about the first series.

We return to the future world where Section 9 is rebuilding itself following its Laughing Man case and the fallout from that. Part of this fallout was that there was an election and a new president was elected. However, it is also apparent that a new problem is escalating in that refugees flooding into Japan, housed in various areas around the country including an island just off Nagasaki, are agitating for home rule. But why?

Then there is the case of the Individual Eleven. Supposedly based on a political writing that very few, if any, have actually read. It seems that a virus is linked with this and various terrorist acts crop up, linked with this writing. When an actual group emerges as the Individual Eleven and one then goes on to become a spiritual leader amongst the refugees, section 9 need to track this guy down and get him out of the picture. But why?

The leader of the Central Intelligence Service, a guy with a very twisted face, seems to be using section 9, and various other parts of the government, in ways that would eventually lead to civil war. But why?

That's a lot of "whys", and not all of them actually get answered in the course of this series, but a lot of what occurred in the first series is followed up in this. The plot is twisted and keeps you guessing long into the series, though some episodes are so wordy that the visuals are little more than dressing. While I can criticise this, it is not out of place considering that some of the Shirow original work can go the same way. We see a new use of Tachikomas (and a new series of Tachikoma Days too!) and some of the back story behind various members of section 9 and how the section first came together.

Although I enjoyed the series, I must say that I enjoyed the first series more. Again, though, I'd mention that this is the kind of anime that requires you to think a bit, so don't expect this to go easy on you. If you are purely a fan of the throwaway mainstream anime, you will possibly struggle through this. It's also worth mentioning that while it is not absolutely necessary to watch the first series before this, it does help and you may enjoy it more if you do. However, both series still stand head and shoulders above the first movie and its bastard offspring, Innocence, both of which I really can't stand.

11:32pm: YouBoobs on YouTube
OK, this has been swimming around my head for a while and I need to release it.

Over the last few months I've been watching a lot less TV and a lot more YouTube. Generally speaking, this isn't such a bad thing but I have noticed a few things that are really bugging me.

1. Duplicate videos
   It seems that a number of users are obsessed with getting high ratings so when they see an original idea that is clocking up lots of views, they repost it to get themselves noticed.
2. Misleading titles or descriptions
   This is usually the result of poor research. For example, assuming that all CGI animation is Pixar, even the really well known stuff.
3. Slagging off
   It's all very well criticising badly researched labelling, but there are those that seem to spend their every waking moment slagging these people off, even if they already know that they made a mistake.
4. Using the term "meme"
   This seems to be a common thing these days. Yet another misused word because those people who believe that they are "rilly kewl" would never use such an old-fashioned word such as "idea".
5. Quoting and re-quoting
   Another oddity is where someone will post a segment of the soundtrack in text. Say, for example, somebody posted the end theme from Monty Python's Life of Brian (not such an unusual thing since Monty Python do actually post their own material on YouTube). You can almost always guarantee that some moron who wants to be seen commenting on the video will post a couple of lines from the song, usually with a smiley on the end.

It seems that the newest AOL (Assholes On Line) generation isn't pestering Usenet; it's making a nuisance of itself on YouTube instead. And that's before we get to the actual video content (let's face it, we know that some people should never be allowed to get anywhere near a camera but YouTube gives everyone and their respective dogs a chance to make fools of themselves while the world cringes helplessly whenever it happens to accidentally trip over one of these testaments to self-endulgence).

And don't get me started on web boards!

5:07pm: "New" search?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8070790.stm

Another attempt to take the market away from everyone else. Not that I'm particularly happy about the state of play with search engines these days as the most popular ones, especially Google, put so much emphasis on sales and marketing sites that searches are often pointless or, at the very least, aggravating.

The bit that got me was the very last line of this report; "Microsoft has a great tradition of coming from behind." Yup. Mostly because their usual method of dealing with competition is to fuck them in the arse!

---

Actually it all got off to a bad start with Bing! For example, our works web filter system immediately blocked Bing because of a past use of the domain for something that we didn't want infesting our intranet. This was especially troublesome because some users had got used to putting a search word into the address field without worrying about going to a specific search engine and, since IE went to Bing instead of MSN Live Search, we started getting calls on the helldesk about it!

It turned out that we weren't alone in this, a large number of other users suffering the same thing with Bing!

1:51am: Mini Review - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (New Series)
This is a mini review purely because this is a new series that has only just begun. It's probably the most up to date release I've seen since Ghost In The Shell, and it's for a series I liked in its first series, so I'm pretty excited about it. Besides, I can't get to sleep right now because of the humidity, so I might as well do something constructive.

Now, you should remember from the first series (or my review at the very least) that Haruhi is a somewhat eccentric girl whose only interest, apart from espers, aliens and time travellers, is having a good time. If she doesn't get it, there is a very good chance that she will completely reshape the world to get it! She is hooked up with Asahina (time traveller), Nagato (an alien), Koizumi (an esper) and a guy known only as Kyon who, apart from being an ordinary boy, seems to be linked to Haruhi in some way which isn't entirely clear, or not to him at least.

The first episode of the new series has been eagerly awaited by many and, though it dispenses with the Hare Hare Yukai dance on the end, it blends nicely with the first series. Just as well since it appears that the new series will be plugging a few gaps in the first, for example in this first episode we find out a little more about our resident bunny girl/maid time traveller and her alien friend, do a spot of time travelling, meet up with Asahina Senior again and meet Haruhi the graffiti artist, or that would have been the case had Kyon not been there to boss around! It resolves a question or two but raises a few more, something I'm hoping will continue with whatever comes next. I'm excited again!!!

11:58am: Review - Seven of Seven
Also known as Seven of Nana, it's another title I picked up following a recollection of the manga. It's also a title where the anime only loosely follows the manga in its contents.

Basically speaking, the story is about a young girl, Nana Suzuki, who is studying for exams while nursing an enormous crush on a boy in her class, Yuichi Kamachika. In that much, the two versions of the story are exactly the same, and other elements appear the same such as the trio who bully Nana, Nana's best friend Hitomi and the rather awful teachers she has to work with.

In the manga, Nana divides into seven because of a crystal that her father finds and gives to her. She holds it up to the full moon to see it more clearly and divides as a result. In the manga, she lives with her parents, and her grandfather only has a passing involvement. In the anime, however, her parents are away on business in America and Nana lives with her granfather. Nana divides due to an experiment that went wrong with the kitchen microwave which her grandfather has borrowed to perfect his attempt at solidifying light or somesuch. The division happens when Nana tried to take the microwave back so she can make another cake for Yuichi as the original ended up in the river due to the interference of the trio.

The styles are quite different too in that the Nanas that appear in the manga aren't exactly the same. Certainly we have seven Nanas but the anime version doesn't have a "mean" Nana as the manga does, but then the anime does have the mysterious eighth Nana later in the series. Actually, in comparison, the manga and anime Nanas look very different. The anime series does adopt some of the storylines from the manga, but not necessarily in the same order. The anime doesn't play so heavily on competitions either, and the seven never attend the school at the same time, something that is a story in itself in the manga. Something the anime does do which is only addressed in one part of the manga are the Nana Rangers, who first come up early in the series and make regular appearances right through. These are, so the anime says, a group of superheroines from an old television show, though the Nanas are able to bring them to life by using their prisms.

The whole series heavily plays on the exam regime that is supposed to exist in Japan, in that moving to the school of your choice involves lots of work, especially at high level where cramming and such are de rigour. This comes up again and again in such anime, from such different titles as Azumanga Daioh, Love Hina, Chobits, even Sailor Moon to an extent. Seven tries to be comical in places, it also tries to be moving in others but never dwells on either mood and doesn't always pull it off anyway.

Honestly, and ignoring some of the exploits of some of the Nanas (especially Nanapon, the sexy one), this is an anime directed at a certain audience, probably around middle school age at most. I didn't mind the manga though I found it a little bland in places. The anime is somewhat better, though I still find some of it a little bland and, on occasion, bordering on preaching in places, a heinous crime for animation in my book, but ignoring that, it's twenty-five episodes and one special episode of cute.

9:57pm: Review - Renkin San-kyuu Magical? Pokaan
Or, so I have been assured, "3rd Grade Alchemy" Magical? Pokaan, or just Magipoka if you prefer. It matters not.

It's a story covering the life of four young "princesses", though you might want to question that once you see them. We have Uma (pronounced Yuma throughout the series, so I'm not totally sure why the subtitler insisted on "Uma", though this isn't the only oddity in this series, and the subtitler can't be blamed for all of them!) who is a rather immature witch with a problem - her magic doesn't work! Then we have Pachira (pronounced "Pakira") who happens to be a vampire except that, with only a few exceptions, she only appears to drink tomato juice and, throughout the entirety of the series, she spends more time giving blood than drinking it! Then we have the resident house dog, Liru, who craves meat and turns into a little yellow dog when she sees something round and moon-like. Yup, she's a werewolf, though you'd never guess it! Finally we have Ai, an android with a rather buggy computer and never enough memory who spends much of her time doing the household chores and dreaming of that human body she wants.

The first episode starts out very serious but soon gets into stride as a comedy for those old enough not to embarrass their parents by watching it with such themes as experimenting with shopping channels, swapping notes on their perfect life partners and even a rather warped English speaking challenge where mistakes are punished in a rather unorthodox way. Above all, the four are trying to learn how to cope with living in a human world they know next to nothing about, from learning about mail to learning what Valentine's Day is and all points between. A small list of extras make themselves known through the series, including the rather busty Super Doctor K-ko who can be thought of as a chesty version of Professor Von Goosewing from Count Duckula (with a large spider on her boobs) and an invisible girl called Keimi (spelt Cammy in one episode).

In many places, this was fun. It certainly isn't a typical throwaway mainstream anime as it would run foul of too many TV house rules outside Japan, and it probably wouldn't appeal to the serious mecha or martial artists nuts out there but, if you want a laugh and can ignore some of the obvious cliches and puns that crop up in places, it isn't a bad way to spend twelve TV and three OAV episodes.

As for the question mark in the title, consider Uma then think about it, and Unicode foulups be damned!

12:45pm: Writer's Block: Word for Word
I tend not to remember that I remember songs until they are called into my head by circumstance. The only ones I'm sure of right now all come from the album Aqualung by Jethro Tull, but there are plenty of others that will pop in unbidden.

8:22pm: Review - Yume Tsukai
The name is translated in the anime as "Dream Users" and appears to be a play on the same sort of genre as that used by better known anime such as Vampire Princess Miyu. The story is fairly simple in that the users (all named after days of the week, so it seems) come to the rescue of people for whom dreams have become nightmares and said nightmares have sneaked into reality.

The main charas seem to be a real bunch of misfits, from Touko, a young girl with a left eye that does tricks and a habit of sleeping whenever possible and wearing a noh mask everywhere; her younger sister Rinko who acts like a brat but tends to drift off into subjects beyond her age... the plot behind these charas seems to mirror every other team anime since Sailor Moon! Then, for good measure, they sling in a bunch of fantasy mecha, from blown up toys and sweets to a rather over the top gun known as the "Dream Cyclone" (the summoning spell for that defies description!) where one person pulls the trigger, another punches the back and the third person acts as the bullet! Over the top and totally ridiculous.

As you can imagine from the above, I'm not specifically impressed with this series. Some of the art is a little dodgy, the premise is sound but poorly executed and some of the charas and storylines are guaranteed to offend the politically correct, especially given the personal preferences of one of the recurring charas (in one review, this is passed off as jest. I'm not sure about that but I know how lolicon sits with some folk). The series lasted for twelve episodes; another indicator that the series was a non-starter, even in the home market. According to Wikipedia, the anime lacked much of the depth of the manga, a sign that the anime producers weren't as interested in reproducing the story.

I mentioned Miyu earlier. My preference would be to go watch that as it works in ways that Yume Tsukai doesn't.

7:58pm: Wot, no reviews?
OK, so I haven't been reviewing much lately. I've been working rather a lot lately, so I just haven't had time, but there are a few titles on the back burner waiting for completion so I can let rip.

Bubbling under right now are GitS SAC 2nd Gig (I have seen it before but it was a long time ago, and a cheap box set came my way recently, so that's getting a watch right now), You're Under Arrest (again, this dates a long way back but I've now caught up with all that happened after the original AnimEigo releases, or at least I shall be) and two new titles I found out about while on YouTube; Yume Tsukai and Magical Pokaan. Yes, these are a bit girly but the former looks a little like it may turn out to be a cross between Vampire Princess Miyu and Cardcaptor Sakura, so I'm trudging on, and the other just seems to be a giggle!

Meanwhile, I just managed to see Oxhorn's latest Inventing Swear Words. In episode 5, Ox, Stag and Mort decide that they have been sidetracked enough and are now looking for a way to get their new words into use without having to twist anyone's arms. It seems that the whole thing about not changing the chat filter settings was a blind! Oh, and the Master of Euphemisms makes a return. Just so that he can mind the boat.

6:51pm: MMW System Update - May 2009
Congratulations, Google! You really have created the biggest pile of crap since MSIE!

I should explain. You may have heard of Google Chrome. Interesting idea for a browser. I thought I would try it as I like to see what is about. So I installed it on Kaori as I usually do.

Google Chrome appears to Kaspersky 2009 to be a trojan. Google Chrome appears to my firewall as an unknown application. Google Chrome has killed my taskbar, my GUI shell and virtually everything else, making my system, even in safe mode, totally unusable!

It is going to take me hours to get the system back to normal! ARRRRGH!!!

---

OK, it didn't take as long as that, but I was lucky enough to have another machine available, namely Saeko my long suffering and critically ancient works back up laptop, from which I could rescue the file I needed, namely Explorer.exe which was deleted as part of the Google Chrome set up! I ask you!

Not sure if the Chrome installation was directly responsible or if it triggered something else that did the dirty deed, especially as I use the Vista Transformation Pack on both Kaori and Saeko, but the fact that it happened, not to mention the alerts from Kaspersky and Kerio about what was happening should be warning enough!

Anyway, with the missing file duly reinstated, I gave it a go. My first thought was that the whole thing is a sodding keylogger! In its efforts to integrate with the Google search ethic, it sends out every press you make to cross-reference your typing with its own records. Sorry, but that's a keylogger as far as I can see, not to mention that this ups the net access ratio and slows the response of the system. The last may not be a problem with a fast enough system but it played havoc again with the firewall (I refuse to set up multiple rules for this sort of thing!)

When I finally got to a page, all seemed to render OK. That's something, I suppose, but this whole episode does not make me feel inclined to leave it installed.

Next episode; I now have my Windows 7 RC 1 DVD ready, so all I need to do now is check Sakura for that memory bug I think might be in her and plug away!

9:46am: ...Gone.
I had a call yesterday to say that the family home has now been sold. You can imagine my concern, therefore, when I read this article this morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8005402.stm

Again, it appears that the elderly and their families are being crapped on from upon high.

6:59pm: MMW System Update - April 2009
I'm typing this on a new system!

Actually, this is a long overdue replacement for my old Psion 5 which I used to do a lot of my reporting stuff on until it got caught in one too many showers and the screen packed up. Since Psion don't exactly make these things anymore, I decided to go look for a cheapish netbook instead and ended up with an Acer Aspire One.

Reina
I gave the machine the name "Reina", though the idea of this system having anything to do with the sound of jewels is debatable. She's a 16GB SSD model, and came to me with Linpus loaded. Naturally, I gave this system a looksee but found that it was so locked down that even trying to find what was on the drive and how much space you had was a pain in the nether regions. The upshot was that I scrubbed that off and put on openSUSE 11.1.

This went on relatively painlessly, albeit rather slowly. I spent the entire afternoon waiting for the whole thing to load up from a USB mounted DVD drive I have, followed by a few patches in vi suggested by the project that were supposed to sort out a few buglets with the various slots and finally the download of a shitload of patches that have been issued to date since openSUSE 11.1 was released. It's all on, though. The system still gets a little sluggish occasionally, though the "dirty write back" patch has eased that off a bit.

The screen is 1024x600 which, I admit, takes a little getting used to, but the 8" (approx) screen is bigger than the Psion. How it will handle in the great outdoors is something I have still to find out but the keyboard is useable, if a little small for my fat fingers! It certainly feels reasonable enough and responds well, though I suspect that I may plonk a USB keyboard on here eventually. I may do it anyway for the mouse as the only bit that really annoys me is the crappy touch mouse and the almost impossible buttons each side of the touch area.

This, however, also means that a number of other systems that I currently use are due to be phased out. These will eventually include my works laptop, Saeko, which rarely ever gets booted these days. Sakura could also get the chop depending on whether Reina can be made to handle the various video files I use, and maybe Ayumi too will go, especially given her recently increasing habit of killing the sound system at odd times. We shall see.

Oh, why not Windows? Well, it's more expensive. I object to paying Microsoft Tax when I have an OS and add-ons already available to me that do the job.

12:38pm: I've been waiting for this!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7987426.stm

Thank goodness somebody said it, although I'm surprised that it had to be Parky. Make no mistake, it is tragic when a person dies like this, but it is a sign of the decline of the British media that such a massive coverage should be made of a lesser celebrity whose biggest claim to fame was her involvement in a notable event in a reality television show.

I actually said something along the same lines at work, to which the response was that the publicity had obviously worked and that Max Clifford was some kind of saint! I'm sorry, and I really don't hold anything against Goody herself, but the publicity machine displayed the kind of tact that can only normally be encountered when a wet kipper is slapped across your face. Repeatedly.

The news media has become a bunch of gossip mongers and rumour merchants, and the chance of finding any real news in it is becoming less with every passing day.

2:11pm: Bye bye, Lynton Avenue!
And with a final visit to remove the last couple of bits of mine, I say farewell to my home. I was born there and lived there on and off all my life. It's rather a sad thing to see the place completely emptied of all the stuff, though I can't empty it of all my memories. I'm just annoyed that, after 49 years of ownership, my father has lost the home he as paid for through hard work, all because his brain goes bubbye. Years of contribution into a state fund, and precious little support to show for it, so the house has to go to pay for his upkeep.

The government has failed him, his family and so many like him. And this is hardly party political as every government since Attlee has a share of the blame.