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 xkcd: Third Way »
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[from: Google+ Posts]




NoMuzak Campaign

As we head into the shopping season, I've decided I'm going to wage a one-man-war against background music because I'm heartily sick of it. The deal is this. If you play background music in your establishment, I shall leave and refuse to buy anything from you. This applies to restaurants, pubs and bars as well as shop, supermarkets and malls. The exception is if you have an actual musical performance going on. So Ronnie Scotts is fine, but Robin Thicke in a Next or even Lianne De Havas in a hip Hackney bar is not. And don't get me started on Bing Crosby in the Pre-Christmas Tescos.

We'll see how long I can keep this up!

To make the protest fully authentic, I will also be pausing my music player while doing internet shopping.

This is where I fantasize about an aerosol product (MuzakOff) in a convenient pocket size for spraying a quick setting foam over the loudspeakers in lifts and toilets. 
[from: Google+ Posts]




So farewell then, Lou Reed.
You were never early. You were always late. 
First thing we learnt at your gigs was we always gotta wait.

Twenty-six dollars in my hand.
Just waiting for me mam,
To get back from the shops with the steaks.
We put them on the grill, till Keith said,
"Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they're done"

Keith's mum used to like Wild Side.
Especially the bit that goes doo-do-doo-do-doo.
She said it was about Sinatra.
But you can't always trust your mother.

Some people, they like to go out dancing 
And other peoples, they have to work, 
I put on the radio in Berlin but
There was nothin' goin' down at all

And certainly not Metal Machine Music.

(with a nod to) e.j.thribb (19)
[from: Google+ Posts]

I don't have a beard, but if I did, I'd certainly have a Metal Detectable Beard Snood in a red non-woven fabric.
http://www.detectamet.com/images/detectable-beard-snood-red.jpg 

SeeAlso: http://www.detectamet.com/beard-snoods.htm
http://goo.gl/xLDRT0

I'm a little puzzled by this image but like the poster.
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/files/image/608b0fedacabedbe-7.jpg
"Keep Calm and Wear a Beard Snood"

[from: Google+ Posts]




Insert mildly cynical comment here. He says:-

"All of this has taken me from where I was to where I am now, a self-described “joyful pessimist”, freed from the burden to save the world, and free to just live, to just be.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still support humanist movements like Occupy, and the radical activism of the Deep Green Resistance movement, even though I don’t think they will accomplish anything enduring. Their heart is in the right place."
 “Save the World” Reading List: 2013 Update « how to save the world »
The Three Es. illustration of the complex relationship between economy, energy/resources, and ecology, by the author ('up' arrow means 'increase'; 'down' arrow means 'decrease'); economic collapse, resource exhaustion and runaway climate change: we are on track to face all three in the next few ...

[from: Google+ Posts]




Oceania debt crisis spurs Eastasia calls for "de-Oceania-ized" world.

“The two political parties in Oceania have disregarded the interest of the rest of their country and the world,”

In Eastasia, there are calls for a reduction in Oceania's influence in the world, establishing a new international reserve currency to replace the dominant Oceania dollar.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-debt-crisis-spurs-chinese-calls-for-de-americanized-world/2013/10/14/8c459486-34d1-11e3-be86-6aeaa439845b_story.html
 U.S. debt crisis spurs Chinese calls for ‘de-Americanized’ world »
Possibility of U.S. default has China calling for a less U.S.-dependent global economy.

[from: Google+ Posts]








ChromeOS won't play ball with an eeePC 900

I'm trying to boot an old eeePC 900 into ChromeOS from a USB thumb drive and I'm hitting a brick
wall which is leading to a certain amount of yak-shaving. I don't really
see why this shoud be a problem because there are plenty of Linux
distros that manage this easily and just work. Like SystemRescue for instance.

ChromeOS also seems to have an unnecessarily complicated partition arrangement. Why can't they just do this in one (or two) partition?

So here's the deal.
- Download a recent ChromeOS image from http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/index.php?dir=weekly%2F
- Unpack it, and copy it onto a 4Gb USB drive using Win32DiskImager.exe
- Plug it into the eeePC and boot. Hit Esc on the BIOS screen, choose the USB drive
- Fail with 10 or so lines about a Kernel Panic.
- Google for ChromeOS Kernel Panic and find out that ChromeOS hard codes it's location as /dev/sdb But of course an external USB is going to be /dev/sdc
- Discover you can over-ride this by hitting esc during the ChromeOS boot and typing chromeos-usb.A root=/dev/sdc3 to tell it where the boot partition is.
- Get past the kernel panic but now it says "Your system is repairing itself, please with" then reboots.
- More googling suggests this is due to a missing or corrupt STATE partition, 1Gb on /dev/sdc1 There's a suggestion to look for unencrypted/clobber.log on the STATE partition to see how it failed
- Fire up SystemRescueCD. Fix /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg so it boots from sdc
- Discover that the STATE partition should be EXT4 but is displayed as UNKNOWN by gparted, realize my old copy of Systemrescue doesn't support EXT4, re-create my rescue thumb drive.
- Start again from scratch
- Check the ChromeOS drive before trying it out. Fix the boot target. Check that STATE looks ok, is in EXT4, has a directory structure and stuff.
- Try and boot. And guess what, it fails with "Your system is repairing itself"
- Go back and check it again with SystemRescue and discover that STATE is now back to "Unknown" file system

So:-
1) ChromeOS can't cope with booting from a USB drive if it's not /dev/sdb Excuse me, but WTF?
2) It's getting confused by the STATE partition and then failing completely to sort it out, actually making it worse.

Can you tell I'm not impressed, yet?

So now what? Getting answers is quite hard because as usual with these things there's a huge amount of misinformation and only a few people who know what they're talking about. And several possible places to ask the questions.

So, why am I doing this? Well, because it's there. And also because I don't want to have to buy a ChromeBook in order to find out if they're any good. It's just a Linux distro with most of the UI being through a copy of Chrome, right? How hard can this be?
[from: Google+ Posts]




A couple of interesting articles about self-publishing music using a crowdfunding model. I also happen to really like the album (DFRNT - Fading), enough to spend money on it.
http://sittingovation.com/articles/fading-the-whole-story-crowdfunding-and-how-it-all-worked-out-part-1/
http://sittingovation.com/articles/fading-the-whole-story-crowdfunding-and-how-it-all-worked-out-part-2/

The second part especially gives some insight into how much work there is in this process. Labels and publishing companies do fill a need here.

It's also well worth reading Angus Finlayson's article about the dangers of crowdfunding in the music world which references DFRNT's project.
http://www.factmag.com/2012/04/23/without-you-i-am-nothing-kickstarter-indiegogo-and-the-rise-of-the-fan-funded-project/

[from: Google+ Posts]




Next time you eat Fish and Chips, consider this. We're already past "Peak Wild Caught Fish".
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2013/10/life-in-the-oceans-out-of-sight-out-of-mind.html
 Life In The Oceans — Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind - Decline of the Empire »
When somebody looks at the ocean they see just the surface of the ocean. It’s just a beautiful sunset over the ocean. Unless you’re sitting in a very polluted area of the ocean, you don’t really notice it that much. So most of the stuff that’s going on is beyond our eyesight. it’s underneath. And so there’s a real challenge, I think, in communicating why this ocean is important to you, personally, and particularly to the farmer in Kansas. And it’...

[from: Google+ Posts]




It's not New and it's not a River. But The New River is 400 years old this weekend. From Ware to Islington, get out there and celebrate by walking a bit of it or attending one of the events. 

http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/new-river-path.html
http://londonist.com/2013/09/400-years-of-the-new-river.php
http://newriver.org.uk/nr/index.php
http://www.amwell.org.uk/newriver400th.html
 diamond geezer »
NR400: 1613 - 2013. WALKING THE NEW RIVER Hertford → Islington (28 miles) If you've ever fancied walking the New River, there's never been a better time. Indeed I suspect there'll be more people walking it this weekend than ever before, because it's 400 years old tomorrow, which is a damned ...

[from: Google+ Posts]




I told you reality has an ironic bias.

I went looking for the latest reports on this year's Arctic Sea Ice extent at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ and found this on the home page.

NSIDC's Web site is currently unavailable because of severe weather and flooding. We expect to be online again this Monday, 16 September, around noon (USA Mountain Time). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. 
[from: Google+ Posts]




In the long term, current problems fade away.

This is a superb piece describing a series of snapshots of life on Earth from 10 to 10 billion years in factors of 10. I particularly liked this description of the banality of human nature from the 10 and 100 year views.

Among those who recognize that something's wrong, one widely accepted viewpoint holds that fusion power, artificial intelligence, and interstellar migration will shortly solve all our problems, and therefore we don't have to change the way we live. Another, equally popular, insists that total human extinction is scarcely a decade away, and therefore we don’t have to change the way we live. Most people who worry about the future accept one or the other claim, while the last chance for meaningful systemic change slips silently away.

The first reminds me of a thought I'd already had that they are like 2nd year students in student digs. There's no need to worry about cleaning or the state of the house as they'll be leaving soon anyway, never to return. The second are like 2nd year students in digs that are only cheap because they're scheduled for demolition. Who cares if there's no shower or hot water, we'll be out soon and anyway they're pulling down the building next year.

Edward Morbius originally shared this post:
Archdruid Report: Taking the Long View

Meanwhile, in the tropical forests of what is now southern Siberia, the descendants of raccoons who crossed the Bering land bridge during the last great ice age are proliferating rapidly, expanding into empty ecological niches once filled by the larger primates. In another thirty million years or so, their descendants will come down from the trees.

Concerned about what the NASDAQ will do next week, the Fed next month, who the GOP will position for 2016? Climate change and peak oil?  How about taking a long view.

John Michael Greer writes some serious deep-think stuff, and I'll thank +Terry Dyke again for turning me on to him (say, Terry, awful quiet over there, everything OK?).

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-next-ten-billion-years.html

#thelongview  


[from: Google+ Posts]



The answer is 42. Now what's the question?

One of the more entertaining comments about all the NSA, GCHQ, Snowden, Greenwald, Schneier revelations.

So all the information in the entire electronic communications system of the world is now being bugged and searched. We have what is by orders of magnitude the largest data bank ever conceived, giving us Laplacian knowledge about our society at every point in time. I've occasionally speculated on the kind of data cornucopia we could have if we weren't obsessed with privacy - and now we've got it.

And what are we doing with it? If you believe the government, they're looking for terrorists; if you listen to just-proven-correct paranoiacs, they're looking for opposition; in any case, how terribly trivial.

We have a corpus that contains the answers to almost any question about human beings. We have the oracle in front of us. And all we can ask it is "Who is going to plant a bomb where?"

...

why isn't there an industry for thinking up questions?

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/09/the-latest-news.html#comment-1665702
 The latest news - Charlie's Diary »
This is my surprised face. Nope? Okay: This is my ironic face. (Same face. I don't gamble, otherwise it would be my poker face, too.) I am having enourmous trouble resisting the urge to say "v gbyq lbh fb", so, er, v gbyq lbh fb, only you mistook it for pulp/genre fiction.

[from: Google+ Posts]




This caught my eye in Cory Doctorow's acceptance for an award for Pirate Cinema.
Every single problem everyone has from now on will involve the Internet, because the Internet will be woven into every facet of our lives.
http://boingboing.net/2013/09/04/science-fiction-award-season.html

Which resonated with something else I read today. Poe's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law (On the internet) without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism.

I have a variation of that. Everything I've seen or heard on the internet in the past few years looks like, and is indistinguishable from, ironic sarcasm. But that's just me!
[from: Google+ Posts]




The object.content field (activities.list and .get) is documented as "The HTML-formatted content, suitable for display." However it only covers the content added at the time of sharing and does not include attachments.

There's an ongoing problem that new attachment types (eg Soundcloud) don't necessarily appear in the API output. For attachments that do, the object.attachments[].content only shows the plain text, not the full html as seen in the desktop Web UI.

So if you were using the API to get the G+ posts for onwards transfer into another system, the API coder needs to recreate each attachment html and gets no hints from Google on how to do this.

I've created a feature request in the issues database to deal with this. I feel that object.content really ought to be a full html rep of the whole item as seen in the desktop UI. But I guess this might break existing code (like my own!)
https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=641

Thoughts?
 google-plus-platform »
Google+ Platform

[from: Google+ Posts]




BT Sport on Virgin Media. It's no extra charge if you have the XL TV package, otherwise £15 per month.

So at least some of us will get the full MotoGP package.

http://mediacentre.virginmedia.com/Stories/Virgin-Media-scores-the-winner-with-BT-Sport-248e.aspx

I wonder what, if anything, will happen to Eurosport's WSB and BSB coverage and what will happen to the Eurosport and BBC MotoGP teams.
 Virgin Media Media Centre - Virgin Media scores the winner with BT Sport »
Virgin TV, the only place for every major UK sports channel in one subscription BT Sport at no extra cost for millions more sports fans thanks to Virgin Media

[from: Google+ Posts]




DHARMA CLEANER. WARNING! COMBUSTIBLE. HARMFUL IF INHALED OR SWALLOWED. MAY CAUSE SKIN AND EYE IRRITATION. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.

Anyone who's had to read one of my emails will understand why I find this site appealing.

A random product label every time you hit refresh. http://www.backlabel.gr/label.html

ps. "Keep out of reach of children" is an important life message and one many of us wish we'd followed. Along with the important advice, "Keep dry and away from children".
 backlabel »
backlabel. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee: All our products have an unconditional 60 day money back guarantee! So if for any reason you are not 100% satisified, simply return the product for a full refund, no questions asked. That is the backlabel 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, so you have nothing to ...

[from: Google+ Posts]

Hopefully the widget below will play. Great track btw.
https://soundcloud.com/houndstoothlbl/09-and-the-world-was-gone
[from: Google+ Posts]

The new Soundcloud widget is very welcome where the user inserts a Soundcloud URL and a playable widget is automatically added to the post.

However it's not appearing in activities.list or activities.get in the Google+ API. Neither in the object.content nor as an object.attachment.
[from: Google+ Posts]

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