National ID Cards

I’ve studiously avoided mentioning the UK National ID card scheme currently being proposed by Hitler and Goering Blair and Blunkett, mainly because I don’t currently feel the need to froth at the mouth. However, Bruce Schneier – a well known security consultant and cryptography specialist – has written a piece about ID Cards that pretty much sums up my feelings on it. I’ve been reading Schneier’s Cryptogram newsletter for about three years, and (as with the post three down) I don’t agree with all of his views, but I do find the majority of it interesting and thought-provoking.

Kitchen-geek

Now that‘s what I call a sink.

Want one.

Sneering

I may not agree with what you say.
But I shall fight to the death to defend your right to say it.

Note : This is very disjointed at the moment. I’ll edit it several times, I’m sure. I know what I want to say, I just haven’t figured the right words yet.

There seems to be a bit of a theme developing at the moment. Meg has gone off for a break, primarily because of the attentions of some fucktard comment-troll, and now Blue Witch is off for a break as well, following on from people thinking they know her, and feeling able to snipe behind her back on her opinions. Gordon wrote his views earlier this week, which I agree with too.

So far as I’m concerned, blogs, weblogs, and all that gubbins come under one heading – Personal Sites. The first word there is the important one. It’s personal. We all have different opinions, different thoughts, and differing ways of expressing them. If we all thought the same, weblogs and personal sites would never have taken off – at least half the joy of blogs etc is finding other people, appreciating their style of writing, seeing what they have to say about things. Sometimes they’re good for spotting things we’ve missed ourselves – more times than enough I’ve found myself looking at a site or a story I’d never normally read, purely because one of my regular reads has said “this is a really good/bad/whatever thing, and you should read it”. I probably wouldn’t have found half the sites on the blogroll if it weren’t for things like that. And that’s what this is all about. It’s personal views, and we either like them or we don’t.

In that context, a set of blogs is no different to a party, or a social gathering. It’s a load of different people expounding about different subjects in different ways. Sometimes we listen, and like what we hear. Other times we listen, and disagree. Sometimes we disagree so much that we walk away, leave that group, and find another one.

With blogs, however, there’s a slight difference. Instead of just walking away thinking “I don’t really agree with that”, some people seem to feel the need to dissect that, and to turn it into personal attacks. Fair enough, that’s free speech at work. But it cuts both ways – I’ve got the right to say what the fuck I want, in whatever way I want. And so have you. I try to let people have their say, and if it’s in a way I don’t like, then fair enough – it’s still their right to say it.

Free speech is such a double-edged sword. So many of us banter the concept about willy-nilly, but the perspective on free speech there is “I’ll say what I want, but you can’t criticise it”. That’s not free speech. I can’t remember who first used the quote at the top of this post – but it echoes my feelings on this subject completely.

Fare thee Well

This’ll mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside Manchester, so if you’re not interested, just move along, there’ll be something else here soon.

Over the last four years or so, I’ve been a regular reader of City Life (Warning, the site appears to utterly bork Opera), the Manchester equivalent of Time Out. Next week, they’re relaunching with (another) new design, so this week’s edition is a bit of a milestone. One feature I’ve read almost religiously every week has been Phil Griffin’s Archisnap, a small feature that each issue has looked at a certain building or development around Manchester. Very bobble-hatted on occasion, but always passionate about the development of both architecture and Manchester, it’s always been a good read, whether I’ve agreed with the author or not. A small archive of them is available from Cube gallery – I’d love to see a full web archive of them at some point.

Through Griffin’s column, I’ve learned about bits of the city that no-one would really notice without having them pointed out, and also about buildings I’ve noticed, but had no idea of the history behind them. The last Archisnap is in this week’s City Life. It’ll be sorely missed.

Referrers

I don’t normally list any of the referrers to this site (other than bizarre Google searches, of course), but I’m intrigued about what brought the Department of Elder Affairs, Tallahassee, United States scurrying to this site earlier today.

At first I wondered why there was a department dealing with Elder trees, but now I realise I’m wrong. All the same, I’d love to know what brought them here.

Bollocks to it

Ah, the joys of favicons. Having norked about a bit, and added in a line of code to the HTML, it now works in most browsers. Except IE, which is (of course) doing its own thing, and just being a pain in the arse. So sod it, I’m not going to mess about any more for now, and work on the theory “It’s there, it’s just not always visible in borked browsers“

And at least I didn’t delete my entire weblog along the way. *Grin*

Bureaucracy

Gah, I’ve decided that Companies House are the bureaucrats it’s OK to loathe. On occasion I check out my company details on their site – not for any good reason, but more to make sure that I’m not missing anything, as they’ve been known to be utterly incompetent cunts in the past. (See also : the links listed here. ) This time, it’s fortunate that I did check it – as yet again, the form for my Annual Return hasn’t been received here, yet it’s due in at the end of the week. And what would have happened if I hadn’t sent it in by Friday? I could be sued by Companies House.

Now, I’m not saying there’s a conflict of interest here, but surely if the inefficiency of Companies House can subsequently bring extra money (in the form of legal costs, fines etc.) into the coffers of – um – Companies House, then there’s something wrong with that equation…

As it is, I’ve now done it all online, and sent it in. I just hope I don’t go through the farce of previous years about whether the motherfuckers have received it or not. I may back myself up, and send in a copy by post too. After all, I’ve already paid the £15 for the online one, so it shouldn’t be a problem to duplicate it…