Andy Ramblings

When he says 'troubled' he what is he really thinking, or should I say, what are his neo-con buddies thinking. More like, oh shit we tried to keep the lid on this, we have badly press managed this issue. so we had better get our puppet to sound 'troubled' So Bush says this..
lets have a second look at that statement.

'Those Who violated the Law'

Which Law? If he is International Law, then they haven't done anything wrong what's so ever, as we all know, the US isn't signatory to the international courts so as far as Bush is concerned, on a legal ground, he's fine and has nothing to worry about. and will try and find a way to get it off the headlines and quick

The problem is, the rest of the world doesn't think that way at all. I think that what will happen with the marines involved, is that will be taken home, told to shut up and live a nice life.

Well, the only thing left is for the people of the US to not to support the Bush bandwagon in the November mid-terms.

Bush is part of the problem, not the solution!

You never know what will happen, I can't say too much about it, but my long time favorite  cartoonist, Tex Avery is able to say it so much better.
Symphony in Slang will should you what can happen

It's a Monday, not much to say today, other than it's not very summery yet, still a bit chilly, and my cold feels if it's getting better.

So just to cheer you up a bit, here's a fun puppet show that some of you may have seen, but I like it so here it is again. It's the famous Dancing Skeleton Dancing man.

Just something to entertain you will I try and get better .. I know I don't run fast, but I got a bleedin' summer ? (can I call it summer yet?) cold! So I'm a bit under the weather...

Anyone remember good old Alfred E Neuman from the Famous Mad Magazines ? Ever wondered if he had a relative in high places? I tell ye all, he sure does.

Yep, Tonight is the night, where all we Europeans get together for a huge sing-along maybe not , but it 's a big party. This year it's in Greece, cause they won last year. I can't remember anything from then, but suffice to say, It was a good show.
So, what's happening this year? On Thursday night, there was the semi's,  and 10 countries didn't make it through... The two I think I would have liked to have seen are Belgium, and Iceland, Iceland for comedy factor as it's a Bjork mark 2. ( watch video here ) and well Belgium cause the singer looks great! (watch Video here ).
I know crap taste in music I have, but it's all for entertainment and as an avid observer of this competition since the mid 70's... I'll say no more...

Anyway, the show is on tonight at 20:00 BST. live webcast info here
Here is one of the scariest, but hell a great looking bunch of Finns with a song called Hard rock hallelujah.. I think they will set the stage alight somehow !

An Anti-war protester found a very novel way to protest against the war in Iraq. No he didn't run around the White House in the nude, or did he gate crash some press conference where Bush was chatting about nothing. No he found a very novel way, The US army has a website that it uses as a recruitment tool. So what's on this website? Well you can play at being a soldier, get the feel of being in battle, and yes, get your head blown off as well, but you don't die, your playing in the safety of your living room.


Images that Joseph took while 'playing' the game:
You may or may not have noticed if you look on the top right on some of the images, that there is a cheat server for the guys to play, I'm guessing that this one is the 'ignores the Geneva Convention' mode
Other sites of interest:

Actual fatalities     : http://icasualties.org/oif/
America's Army    : http://www.americasarmy.com/
Other site:

GamePolitics.com
Terranova.blogs.com
Livejournal.com(notsuchpatriot)
Rhizome.org
We make money not art
http://www.selectparks.net/

A poll shows what us IT folk (we are very nice really)  have known for years, that IT support is one of the most stressful jobs around. Well so says Skillsoft after it polled over 3500 IT 'experts', if it's the same experts I have heard of, I'm not surprised they find it stressful, most don't even know how to install more than 1 operating system, know how to fix a BSOD (a nasty problem that when happens can be a bit of a worry, but most times it's ok)
So what are the other jobs? Well the folks at El Reg have a report on it, here are the results.

1. IT
2. Medicine/Caring Profession
3. Engineering
4. Sales and Marketing
5. Education
6. Finance
7. Human Resources
8. Operations
9. Production
10. Clerical

There you go, us IT peeps get pestered by those below the in the list.
To go further, there are obviously far more stressful jobs, and again the folks at El Reg have delivered.

1. Iraqi police recruit
2. US Army bomb disposal expert
3. Baghdad A&E doctor
4. British Airways pilot
5. Naomi Campbell's personal assistant
6. Naomi Campbell's housekeeper
7. Dick Cheney's shooting buddy
8. Steve Ballmer's office furniture supplier
9. President Bush's grammatical consultant
10. Wayne Rooney's fiancée
11. IT journalist

I think the guy who does the grammar for Bush has given up! I suppose if you Cheney's shooting buddy, but not a lawyer, you may just be ok, or disguise yourself as a quail and you'll be safe. Just make sure he's not sober!

Well folks, I finally decided that I would take the plunge and work out why this site has been a bit on the slow side . So as Serendipity is plug-in-based it was a matter of trying to find which one was causing the problem. Each of the blocks of data you see on the right, is controlled by a plugin, making it very flexible, but, with flexibility comes problems with mixing and matching plugin. Not that this is really a problem, the problem came down to, yep, you've guessed it, Yours Truly, Andy Rambling!
It turns out that I was had put the same plugin twice, that affected the core of the displaying process, I had 2 header plug-ins! Which meant that poor old browsers got their wee-rendering engines in a twist. Removed one, and it appears to be a lot faster.  I do hope that you, the surfer also find that it's faster (if you've been here before that is)
There, that's that. A busy, sort of day tomorrow...

Today, the Lords debated, very vigorously and with great emotion on the issue of Assisted Death. Both sides of the debate had a lot to say, but it was defeated. So, what's my view on this issue?

I personally, agree that one should be given the choice to decide when they leave this world. This is the same argument I have used over time on this issue. I am aware that this is a very emotive issue. I also do not believe in what religious folk describe as the sanctity of life, in that God gave you life, so he is the only one who can take it.

The main arguments against were the religious groups, and I have to say, people who are, I believe of strong religious background.
What is the requirement to be accepted, if one can say that, are (with my comments) Source
Ok, this part is very clear. It's the patient that makes the first approach. The doctor then has to check if the illness in question is terminal. If the patient has to be suffering intolerable pain, one can very well assume that they are  or will be on morphine based painkillers or maybe stronger all the time. So can one be said to be of sound mind? Unless one is able to make a living will, that would say, if such or such situation arise, an example, would be that the pain and condition is being treated by aggressive drug treatment , which will in most cases have bad side effects. Making your life a misery.
One thing that is beginning to offered is palliative care, this is a very good alternative to staying in the standard ward where to be honest, are not very inspiring or inspired in the care for those who are dying and know that they are. i suggest popping over to this site on the BBC (How to have a good death)
Though I think palliative care is very good and serves a very good issue for the terminally ill. But in the end, you are going to die.
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OK, not much happening today, well, I guess there is loads happening but I'm not that interested at the moment.
So, in the meantime, check out this pointless game, There is a point, Escape!

The letter that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iranian President)  sent to  Bush, appears to 'attack' him, What I say, is that it's most likely just telling Bush some home truths, that all the Arab world knows and knew he was lying. There is no escaping that fact.

Things getting better? How do we know that? No international reporter will leave the green zone as they know that they will be targets for the warring factions for kidnapping and/or killed., The only way we in the west have to get a snippet is by the Iraqi reporters, Bloggers, and video reporters. These people risk their lives on a daily basis to try and give us some news from with in the Red zone, this is anywhere outside of the green zone. Which I would say is 99.99999% of the rest of the country.

So what does this letter say? All 18 pages of it? That I don't think will ever get published unless the Iranians make it public, but then the US will say something along the lines of, It's a fake, it's not what was said etc...
Here are some snippets (from the BBC)
From the New York Times there is an expanded view on the Isreal issue.
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OK, this is a bit late in the day, as it all happened a couple of weeks ago. But I wanted to see the business, Video links below

The White House Correspondents dinner is an annual event. It's when all the correspondents get together to have a party and in some cases take the fun out of the President, this year was no exception, Stephen Colbert really made the night, for the wrong reasons. Well depends on which side of the wall your on, for me, it made the evening, It was like Shakespeare plays where it's the clown who is the one who speaks truths of the day. This is almost the only way one can, in the US, report things in the US, without having  Bush media cronies complain.

I found it, some nice person recorded it, I cut it down to size and change the format, I have 2 version. One is the whole show which is around 1hr30 mins, and 2 small snippets.

The snippets are in DivX format and can be viewed here If you want to view the whole show go here

Here are some other links to this story. click here or/and here

That's a question, is now a good time to by shares in the condom industry? Why do I ask? Well looks as if Pope may be changing is mind on the us of condoms! Other than that, it's about time that they do, the methods they use at the moment are as safe as playing Russian Roulette, but this one was called Vatican Roulette!

On a serious note, this is incredibility important for 3^rd world countries where your getting complete generations being wiped out. Where children lose their parents, uncles and aunties, maybe even more. I'm not saying the this is the churches fault, but I do say, is that they have a lot to answer for.

So for more info on what the pope may say can be found here.

Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes have got together to publish:
What makes this even more fun is that they're asking Bloggers to help write it. Simply take a look at their list of top scandals and follow the instructions.

As with most bank holidays here in the UK, it was crap weather, neither warm, nor cold. Just yunky.
So what can one do? I could take more photos, get some walking done, to see some sights of London. But the lighting wasn't too good, very gray. So not a day for photography but a day to get my head around my photo gallery. Some of you have ventured in I'm sure, and have seen, what can only be described as work in progress. But no, now it's pretty much up and working, latest software installed and is pretty cool bit of coding by the guys at Gallery2. More on that later.

So, what can you expect from my photo gallery? All sorts of stuff, I would say that wouldn't I. But yes, there is a nice selection of photos from around London, San Francisco, Belgium and finally a nice selection of background images that you are free to take, I found them on the net with no restrictions on them so far.

I have set-up a feature so that you an e-mail pictures to your friends or who ever you like. A feature I'm thinking of is to allow you, the internet surfer,  to have the images as puzzles. If you like any of the images, you can rate them.

So, now you know what's there, why not take a hope over to it here. You can also get to it by clicking on the image that appears on the top right of this blog. but most of all enjoy the work, and the pictures.

Gallery2, what do I like about it? many things,
Mainly it's simple to use. It's easy to install,  and most important, it's free and I control everything (calms down before I start getting delusional )