Andrew Oakley
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Andrew Oakley" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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11:59 pm
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Friends Only
My journal is mainly for friends only. You won't see any of the interesting stuff unless you get a LiveJournal account and I mark you as a friend. If you are one of my friends (or even just an acquaintance from long ago) and would like to have access, just email me andrew@aoakley.com with your LiveJournal username, your real name and other information I might recognise you from (nickname, photo, place/date where I met you etc).
I am a member of the Conservative party, an advocate of intellectual property freedom and rural society. If you don't want to hear these kinds of mainstream political views, do not allow me to post to your journal and do not read mine.
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06:09 pm
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Unenforceable Parking Restrictions in Cheltenham
Following someone else's Freedom of Information request and the subsequent Gloucestershire Echo newspaper article "35 streets where cars can park illegally" (their lack of capitalisation, not mine), I found the actual list of streets missing from the CBC FOI disclosure log. So I emailed CBC, and within a few days they replied with the list.
Since all FOI responses are public domain, I have now published the list of Unenforceable Parking Restrictions in Cheltenham June 2009 on my site. Enjoy your freedom responsibly, Cheltonians!
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03:08 pm
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Last Chance To See: Sporadic E TV
 I'd like everyone in Britain to take a few minutes this summer, for your last chance to see a very dear friend of mine, Sporadic E Propogation.
During a hot, damp, muggy day, take a moment to retune your old analogue TV and see if you can find some foreign TV stations!
Propagation is the term us radio geeks use to describe a radio signal that, due to the Earth's athmosphere, manages to travel a very long distance that it otherwise normally wouldn't. The classic example is skywave propogation, the way that AM-MW band on your radio allows you to hear foreign radio stations overnight. These often interfere with other AM-MW stations such as Talk Sport, Absolute Radio (Virgin 1215) or local independent "Classic Gold" stations. By day, the signal travels in a straight line, and what with the Earth being round, it disappears into space at the horizon, so you can't hear distant stations. By night, as the atmosphere cools, the ionosphere is at a lower altitude and reflects distant radio signals back to the surface. Radio Luxembourg, an overnight English station which ran from 1933-1992, is probably the best known example. As with all propogation, these signals tend to fade in and out, seeming to become quiet, loud then quiet again.
Sporadic E propogation is different. The heat and humidity allows radio signals to be reflected, or bent, by a higher ionospheric layer than would normally be the case, and affects much higher frequencies. This is not fully understood, but the end result is that FM-VHF radio and UHF TV channels can be received five hundred miles or further away from their normal reception area.
Although FM-VHF radio is going to be with us for several years to come (although not as long as you might think if Labour stay in power), analogue TV is not. Starting later this year, old analogue TV signals will be switched off in many areas. Digital TV cannot be manually retuned, you won't be able to simply turn a knob or press some +/- keys to retune your TV, it will tune itself automatically from the digital signal. Once the ability to manually tune analogue TV goes, you'll also lose the ability to witness Sporadic E Propogation and its ghostly images of fuzzy foreign TV channels from overseas. With most European countries starting to shut down their analogue TV output, 2009 may be your last good chance to receive long-distance terrestrial TV; digital signals aren't suited to being received in short bursts.
So, what are you looking for? Well, first learn how to manually retune your analogue TV. Typically you go into a setup menu and select something like "tuning", "frequency" or "UHF channel". The UHF channel numbers will be between 22 and 68. Don't use "auto tune", you need to manually check each channel yourself for the weak signal. You are most likely to see Sporadic E examples on the lower UHF channels during hot, muggy, humid days, particularly in the afternoons and early evenings. You're looking for a ghostly image, probably black and while (many but not all European countries use an incompatible colour system) with, most importantly, foreign language audio. It will fade in and out, and will probably last no longer than 20 seconds or a couple of minutes before disappearing completely.
If you're in the West of England, Welsh doesn't count, it's too close for Sporadic E, neither does French if you're on the eastern English Channel coastline. Having a TV aerial that faces the European continent (ie. south or east) will generally give you a better chance of success, although due to the bouncy nature of Sporadic E, you never know.
Here's some screenshot examples to get you in the mood.
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12:28 pm
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Dragonmeet gaming convention, this Sun 28 June, Swindon
Just a reminder: http://www.dragonmeet.co.uk/
RPG & tabletop gaming convention, Swindon, this Sunday 28 June. 2 quid entry. CJ, Luke, Lloyd and I are already going. There may be spare car seats left if anyone else would like a lift.
See a list of games being run by a Sussex gaming club, or this forum thread. Also, Mongoose Publishing are doing a lecture on how to be a games writer.
There should also be a trade fair with dice, cards etc. It won't be big, but it should be fun.
Pick-up is 9:30am from near Enterprise car rental, Swindon Road, Cheltenham (near FCH). Return lift should arrive back in Cheltenham by 7pm if not well before. Email me: andrew@aoakley.com
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09:30 am
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More on minor parties
One thing I did see in another election leaflet for a minor party - Fair Pay Fair Trade - with which I surprisingly agreed, was the idea that all imports into the UK/EU should come from companies who have to abide by the same standards as our own companies. For example, their employees should be paid the same minimum wage as per the average minimum wage in Europe.
http://fairpayfairtrade.com/Home_Page.php
I don't hold with "immigrants are stealing our jobs" but I do have a lot of sympathy with "my job was off-shored to someone who isn't allowed to join a union, is paid a hundredth of my minimum wage and works in disgusting conditions". The problem isn't immigrants stealing our jobs, it's that British companies are exporting low-skill jobs. Not everyone is bright enough to go to university, and these people should have the opportunity of a fair job for a fair wage. Quite a few high-tech skilled jobs get offshored too, solely so that companies can avoid paying UK wages.
If the non-EU company fails to meet EU standards, then tax/duty should be levvied upon the imports to bring them up to an equivalent price as if they'd been produced under EU standards. We could use this extra tax revenue to reduce taxes for our own workers.
Another example, abattoirs. In the UK, farmers have to ship their cattle hundreds of miles to government-approved slaughterhouses. The approval requirements are so strict that almost all small local slaughterhouses have closed down. Rather than improving animal welfare, this has meant adding hundreds of miles of stress to the end of an animal's life. If you don't believe this is a serious problem, just think what happens when cattle try to stampede inside an articulated lorry. The animals often arrive looking like they've been in a fight, which, of course, they have.
Local slaughterhouses can't implement the approval requirements for a competitive price. Foreign meat, killed in a slaughterhouse which doesn't have to meet these requirements and doesn't have to pay its employees a minimum wage, easily undercuts (excuse the pun) EU-slaughtered meat by several hundred country miles.
This would, of course, mean that either the price of luxuries (such as meat[1]) would have to rise, or we'd have to reduce our standards to a more realistic level. I don't see a problem with either of those. If we really cared about animals, we wouldn't eat them, duh. And if our minimum wage means that we can't produce goods for a reasonable cost, then... just reduce the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a circular argument. "You need to earn so much because things cost so much... things cost so much because people need to be paid so much..." We only avoid this circular catastrophe by off-shoring our employment to what amounts to little more than bonded slavery.
[1] Meat clearly is a luxury. Vegetarians do not die from, and do not suffer from significant health problems from, being vegetarian. British citizens, including me, eat far too much meat. If you have a sedentary life such as desk job, you don't need to eat meat at all.
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04:45 pm
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Did the LibDems really do WORSE than Labour?
For the past month, the political media have been chanting the same refrain; that Labour would be beaten into fourth place by UKIP in the European elections.
Fourth place.
What actually happened is that Labour were beaten into third place by UKIP. The elephant in the room, which no journalist apparently wants to talk about [1], is that the Liberal Democrats actually fared worse. The LibDems came fourth. The LibDems did worse than Labour.
So what's happened here? Something which even I, as a (literally) card-carrying Conservative party member, can scarcely believe. It would seem that disaffected Labour voters in the North of England and in Wales have switched directly to the Conservatives or UKIP, instead of going to the LibDems. I find this really, really odd. Most pundits would have you believe that the political rainbow of the UK goes, from left to right, Green/PlaidC/ScotN, Labour, LibDem, Conservative, UKIP. To jump straight from Labour to Conservative goes directly against this shared conciousness.
Labour to Green, fine. Labour to LibDem, fine.
Labour to Conservative? Very odd.
Labour to UKIP? Unbelievable.
What can have gone on? I find this result fantastic - as in, it appears to be the work of fantasy. But let's just have a look at the actual numbers,( Read more... )
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10:29 am
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(B)allot (N)ot (P)rotest
Nick Robinson's blog points out what I've been saying until I was blue in the face in the lead-up to the Euro election:
The BNP won two Euro MP seats despite getting fewer votes than the last Euro election because
people defected from Labour to either not voting at all, or voting for minor parties
In particular, it appears that in Yorkshire, around ten thousand people switched from Labour to the Greens (2009, 2004).
If the protest voters had stuck with Labour, or switched to another major party such as the Conservatives, UKIP or the Lib Dems, the BNP wouldn't have got in.
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05:25 pm
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Club DJ wanted
Genuine request: "Club DJ required for Red Sea Resort. 6 Month contract - Monthly Salary + full accom package. Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun."
An old school friend of mine manages a resort near Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, on the Red Sea. He is after a "club DJ". Audience is a mix of wealthy Russians, wealthy Arabs and wealthy Israelis. Email him direct: harryholliday@ukonline.co.uk (note the double L in Holliday)
It's effectively a gated community, if you want to live an entirely Western life you can provided you stay on campus.
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11:06 pm
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Toddler Disco
Tonight I shall be mostly compiling the music for Annabel's third birthday party disco. A mostly soul-destroying task (to think I actually paid Amazon 70p for Steps "5,6,7,8"; on the plus side, I didn't already own a copy), interspersed with a few highlights such as Altered Images "Happy Birthday" and Animal Magnate "Welcome To The Monkey House".
"Teddy Bear's Picnic". Shall we go for:
1. Original Henry Hall Orchestra version (very 1920s with Noel Coward sound-alike Val Rossing)
2. The Goon Show's Ray Ellington Quartet version (very zoot suit, very fast syncopated beat)
3. Bad Manners / Buster Bloodvessel version (dancy, but a bit odd)
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08:20 am
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Mike Savage misses the point. Dog bites man.
US shock jock Michael Savage says he'll sue Her Majesty's Government for defamation after being publicly listed as an undesirable, banned for entering the UK.
Savage is an outspoken right-wing political commentator of the type we simply don't have in the UK. Our broadcasting laws demand balanced viewpoints from each individual radio station; in the US, they solve this problem by simply letting as many people on as many radio stations say pretty much whatever they like, and hope it balances out across the board. Regardless of whether you agree with him, or agree with the system that allows him to broadcast his monologues and smack-down phone conversations with detractors, I readily admit that he makes for fascinating listening. I happened upon his show whilst driving around California, was hooked immediately and the dial was locked for the whole week. He is a giant of broadcasting. The nearest thing we have in the UK are James Whale and Charlie Wolf, but they don't really come close.
Savage is also well-known for getting very vocal without exposing the full depth of the facts. This is where his legal threats are doomed to failure.
Firstly, the Home Office can say "national security" and pretty much be done with it. They don't need to justify their actions, since Savage is a foreign national not on British soil, ergo he has no rights in the UK. There's a handy catch-22 for governments who wish to avoid problems, be they American shock-jocks or potential immigrants, and that's to just keep suspected troublemakers off their territory. The moment they set foot on land, they get rights. Until then... Somebody Else's Problem. This is the same in the US, Australia, the UK and pretty much everywhere.
Secondly, and most importantly, Savage crucially misunderstands why he has been banned. Savage makes a great fuss about the fact he never advocates violence, but the British government isn't worried about Savage or his fans starting violence. What the British government is worried about is existing British citizens becoming violent should Savage make one of his trademark forthright speeches in the UK. The British government is worried about how a group of British Citizens who happen to be Muslim might react to him, or how a group of British Citizens who happen to be homosexual might react to him. There's a clear public order threat here - not from Savage himself, but from the whirlwind of reaction that Savage deliberately aims to leave in his wake.
The British government is simply opting to avoid a public order situation. Whether Savage is the cause or the victim isn't the British government's problem. By banning him from entering the country, the government avoids the public order problem either way. It'd probably be more polite if they'd have said "We're banning you from entering because we can't guarantee your safety nor the safety of people around you", but the effect would still be the same.
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12:42 am
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Cameron and dumber
It's almost like the Conservatives are just laughing in Labour's face. "Look, we're so hugely far ahead in the polls, that we can announce monumentally dumb policies like this and still have a twenty-point lead over you."
One, schools do not need to be wrestled away from local authorities and the national curriculum. Notably, the national curriculum is what stops the tiny, tiny number of loony local authorities from the excesses of the 80's. You, dear Conservative Party, will remember this because you fucking introduced the national curriculum in 1988 in order for it to perform exactly this role, which it has been doing successfully ever since. Don't piss in your own pool, you morons.
Two, schools need local authority control because they are part of the local infrastructure which needs to be planned and co-ordinated so that it fits in with the rest of the local infrastructure. There's a billion reasons why this should be fucking obvious. Transport, for starters. Children, especially primary-age children, cannot be expected to walk to anything other than their local school (firstly because they have short legs - small stature is one of the defining elements of children - and secondly because they'd get into fights with the children of the nearer school that they have to pass on the way). Busses, as I've said until I'm blue in the face, work on the principle of collecting a bunch of people along a line A-B who all want to go other points further down the same line. If you encourage neighbours to send their children to entirely different schools, they'll all have to be driven there separately in cars. Never mind the environment, think of the congestion.
Three, the public-private finance initiative is one of the main reasons why Labour has put this country into so much fucking debt. When are politicians going to figure out that companies can write contracts much better than you, and will always write them such that you lose. It's called profit. Spending millions of taxpayer money on infrastructure which the taxpayer doesn't own and the contract ultimately awards to a private company within as little as twenty years is just such an obviously fucking stupid idea that it amazes me any politician could fall for it.
Gah. I hate it when my own party makes me angry. I'll calm down in a day or two and write something slightly less sweary to my MP.
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12:03 am
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This week(end) I have been mostly...
Today (well, Sunday) I have:
Tidied the garden
Mowed the lawn, all of it, and removed the grass cuttings
Removed the second fence between the veg patch/chicken run and the orchard
Strimmed the orchard
Completed two missions in GTA:IV
Bought weedkiller, carrot seeds, strawberry, potato and lettuce seedlings from the garden centre (no Sarah Mum Mum today) and took Mel & Annabel round the steam railway station next door (Annabel has developed a thing for Strawberry Cornettos)
Mowed the orchard (I was surprised the mower coped; big up Briggs & Stratton)
Dug the veg patch
Planted the seeds and seedlings
Weedkilled the back yard
Strimmed the driveway
Raked over the driveway gravel to reduce the huge oil stain from Mel's old car
Weedkilled the driveway
Fixed the kitchen utensil drawer
Watched the first half of a Jackie Chan film I'd seen half a dozen times already, but I love Jackie Chan films, even the poo ones
Watched Lost (WTF? So it's Heroes now? If he could do this all along, why didn't he show any signs of it when confronted by the gazillions of bodycount over the last few series?)
Had a bath and shave
Updated LJ
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12:12 pm
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Red Dwarf review
It seems there is some kind of media blackout on the new Red Dwarf episodes that aired over the weekend on the free-to-view Dave channel. No review on DenOfGeek nor SFX websites yet - despite the fact that SFX magazine had clearly paid for product placement in the middle episode. Very odd, especially since it was far, far better than the by-the-numbers Doctor Who special "Planet of the Dead" which shuffled on to the Beeb to phone in a stumbling, mediocre performance on Saturday.
"Back to Earth" is a three-parter billed as the last ever episodes. Although filmed and lit in a much darker, more broody, high-contrast style, "Back to Earth" retains the spirit of the original shows, with some good vocal and visual gags, and the occasional, deliberately goofy special effect. The ship had never looked better, and the monster had never looked more comedic.
The script is jammed full of witty observations about science fiction and sci-fi fandom in general, especially the latter episodes which pay heavy homage to Bladerunner, which was allegedly the writers' original inspiration for Red Dwarf. If you're a fan of Bladerunner, you should watch this for the closely-observed Bladerunner spoof alone.( Read more - minor spoilers, but not much )
It's as cartoony and zany as the original, the original cast seem to be genuinely enjoying their roles, the quips are sharp as ever, the homage bits are particularly excellent, the FX are good where they need to be and authentically wobbly where they should be, and... it shat over the Doctor Who Easter Special from a great height.
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12:05 pm
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Not breakin' the law, breakin' the law
A colleague at work is quite a committed Christian, and gave up booze for Lent. I wondered what I'd be able to give up for forty days and nights. I don't drink or smoke. I did try to give up take-aways, but the missus wanted one, so that fell down within the first couple of days.
Whilst remonstrating with yet another cyclist who was attempting to run me and my daughter over whilst walking through the pedestrian tunnel to Pitville playground, the criminal in question said "Everybody breaks the law". Which led me to an interesting thought... what if people didn't? What if I gave up breaking the law for 40 days?
Could I actually manage to not break a single law for 40 days?
Well, two-and-a-bit weeks in (I started a week late), I'm doing reasonably well. It's remarkably easy to go about your life not breaking the law at all. I've actually been amazed at how easy it is.( Read more... )
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09:48 am
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Don't talk amongst yourselves for a moment
Whilst everyone else witters away amongst their friends about THAT video of a G20 bystander, can I recommend that you stop talking amongst yourselves for a moment and instead do something actually useful, like writing to your MP to tell them that their insistence, or lack of, on a criminal trial for the constable involved will be a key factor in your decision as to whether to vote for them at the next election?
writetothem.com
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04:18 pm
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Never broken any of the ten commandments, he's rubbing out, rubbing out, rubbing them out
On Friday, I bought Mel a new car, a 2002 Vauxhall Zafira Comfort, a very nice MPV. It has 7 seats, five laid out in the normal fashion, and two which fold down into the boot. The plan is, rather than have Annabel squished up with the twins, she will sit in one of the rear seats.
It also means we will be able to take one car for the whole family plus one set of grandparents; twins on the rear seats, grandparents and Annabel in the middle seats. The centre seat has only a lap belt, so it'll be one of the grandparents sitting in the centre; given that Annabel can already undo a 3-point seatbelt, the chances of her staying put with a lap belt are zero.
We got a respectable £350 for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) red_mel's old VW Golf, not bad for a 15-year old car which was using 2 litres of oil a month, most of which was draining directly onto the clutch plate, resulting in the clutch not so much slipping, as skiing. The dealer also knocked a further £100 off the windscreen price, although I got the feeling that the relatively good price for the Golf was, in reality, money off the ticket price anyway. In the end we paid £3100 for it, plus Mel's old Golf.
The Zafira is in exceptionally good condition, mainly down to the fact that it has only done 44,000 miles ( Read more... )
Meanwhile, my T-reg 1999 Daihatsu Terios passed yet another MOT and dealer service without fuss. It's now done 173,000 miles ( Read more... )
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12:10 pm
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All along the Galactica - Stairway to Earth
So, BSG final episodes last night.
I can certainly see why they've been saving money doing plodding talky episodes for the past few weeks. That was a *lot* of special effects.
Everything below the cut, including the comments, can be considered major spoilers.( Read more... )
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12:56 pm
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Keep Calm and Scalable Vectors
I've been toying with composing my own icons over the last year or so. This started as a need to assign visually distinctive icons to my various server connections, and with my computers all being named after Egyptian gods and demi-gods, that was relatively easy. Each machine is represented by a line drawing of a shoulders-up portrait, taken from out-of-copyright Egyptology books. For example, my fileserver, Thoth the librarian, an ibis-headed man with writing implements; my web server, Isis the mother-magician, a woman with a hat shaped like a throne, etc.
From there I became interested in SVG, the open-source scalable vector graphics format which allows line drawings to be zoomed in or out without loss of quality. There's a good site VectorMagic.com which will allow you to convert a limited number of bitmap line drawings into SVG format without needing to install any software.
 One of the best I've done is a scalable copy of the WWII "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster, which is in the public domain (no copyright) since Crown Copyright, at the time the post was made, expired after 50 years. Since it can be enlarged without loss of quality, it is suitable for reprinting as a poster or a t-shirt, in addition to being used as an icon. I've placed it on Wikimedia Commons and you can download it perfectly legally from:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Keep-calm-and-carry-on.svg
 I've also been looking at games to play on my Asus Eee 901 netbook running Ubuntu-Eee Linux. Last night I perfected my install of classic Quake using ezQuake after I dug out my original v1.01 DOS Quake CD (which, yes, was covered in dust) to obtain the pak1 file. I'd forgotten just what a superb, fast-paced, involving game this is. In particular I'd forgotten how much fun it was exploring the maps to find the various keys needed to progress through locked doors. Since the game runs so fast on modern hardware, you can run from one end of the map to the other without any lagginess, and you never get bored travelling around.
Of course, this meant I needed a classic Quake icon. Ubuntu-Eee comes with a dark background, so the original Quake icon didn't stand out. I added a yellow-ish border to it, and it stands out much better. Available as an SVG here.
Update: Being colour blind, it's possible I've got the background red colour wrong on the Keep Calm poster. If a fully colour-sighted person could give me a corrected HTML RGB code, I'd be very grateful. Currently it is: #F50401
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12:10 pm
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Street View from Brum and Brizzle
Google Street View is now operational for a number of larger UK cities, including Birmingham, Oxford and Bristol.
If nothing else, it made me aware of just how massive the pedestrian area is in the centre of Birmingham. It is exceptionally difficult, for instance, to get a Google Street View of Birmingham's signature Rotunda building. Almost none of New Street is covered, neither is the shopping end of Corporation Street. I wonder if the city council could be approached to permit the Google Street View vans along the bus and taxi lanes which criss-cross the massive central pedestrian zone?
In other towns, roads have to lead up to the main shopping areas, in order for trucks to make deliveries. In Birmingham, built as it is on a huge hill which has been hollowed out for centuries, private tunnels take delivery trucks from relatively distant ringroads into loading areas below the pedestrian precincts. Have you ever wondered how the central Boots or WH Smiths branch gets stocked, or how parcels leave the main Post Office, given that they're slap bang in the middle of an entirely pedestrianised area? A question worth posing to Subterranea Britannica should they ever run out of Rotor bunkers to explore.
Update: I'm now wondering if the lack of coverage is actually due to pedestrianisation, or simple lack of being arsed. Google Street View doesn't seem to cover Hagley Road, one of Birmingham's more picturesque major arteries, and the Bristol coverage is so out-of-date that Cabot's Circus appears as a construction site. There's simply not the level of effort or quality been put into this, as went into the San Francisco coverage. A big damp squib IMHO.
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01:49 pm
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Personality Test
| You Are GULLIBLE | 
The Sucker
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.
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