The last release of Squib was in December 2005. At that point I boldly predicted a new release in January with all sorts of interesting new features. Hrm... life never works out quite how you expect.
For one thing my job has hotted up big time since the new year, for another I've moved house, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the expedient hacks I made when I first wrote Squib came home to roost.
To get back on track I tossed out multiple weblog support which proved to be harder to retrofit than I'd imagined and a few other bits and pieces got kicked back to 0.5. However this has left room for numerous smaller improvements that make the day-to-day experience much nicer and with the recent fixes to publishing in place I'm almost ready to kick the 0.4 release out the door!
So, nearly 3 months late and minus the showboat features that were promised in December. I'm codenaming this release Vista.
At the moment I have no TV reception at all. This has turned out to be a good thing because it has drastically reduced (practically to nothing) the amount of mainstream media I am exposed to. I can almost feel the poision seeping out of my system.
I do still like to watch some sort of television when I am eating though so I still buy DVD's from time to time. A couple of weeks ago I picked up the first season of Firefly. I'm glad I did because I think it's great.
And I want to ask: How on earth did this show ever get cancelled in the first place?
Oh wait. It's good and it's a Sci-Fi show. Say no more. Please attribute my even asking this question to the euphoria of not being a slave to the TV anymore. About the only thing I will miss is baseball on Channel 5 but I guess I can subscribe to MLB Radio for my Giants fix.
According to figures I just saw on BBC News 24 the National Health Service is running at a cost of around £208,000,000 per day.
Of course with absolutely no context at all it's very hard to be anything other than scared by such a number.
No Kurt Russell isn't being wheeled out again... rather I have been listening to Condoleezza "Condi" Rice delivering a lecture today in Blackburn about Liberal Democracy. What an interesting experience that is! When listening to what she had to say it is useful to remember that, as a Professor of Political Science, she has been trained to manipulate events in history to make her own point. She's very good at it.
She makes reference to Jefferson & Madison as architects of liberal democracy in the US. But Jefferson had no blind love of democracy and with the other framers of the constitution made it clear that America was a Republic. The Bill of Rights is specifically intended to protect the individual from the mob.
Rice and her fellow neo-cons have accelerated the accretion of powers by the US state, where they are being abused. The government is awash in National Security Orders and petty bureaucrats who are enjoying all the extra secrecy so loved by this executive. I'm not sure even Thomas Hobbes, whom she understandably claims to admire, would have approved.
She has been mentioned as a future president of the USA. Is she qualified? Well she seems happy to preside over mass murder and to wield power and twist meaning to suit her current purpose. She may be over qualified!
She did make two good points in her speech, however. First she said that we in the West take for granted our Democratic cultures and I think voter apathy probably supports that viewpoint. I don't think that problem can be addressed without breaking down the power structures we already have and moving decision making power - on all fronts - away from central government. I'm not sure Condi and her neo-con friends would be with me on that one.
The second point she made was her concluding remark:
Advancing the cause of freedom is the greatest hope for peace in our time.
I completely agree with that. It's just a shame that she, apparently, doesn't. Or she has some kind of "freedom at the point of a gun" concept in mind.
Douglas Hurd, former UK foreign secretary, made some following remarks the most enjoyable of which was when he said that killing others was unacceptable even if you are a foreign invader with a good cause. You have to admire his use of coded diplomatic language.
By the way is there anybody in UK policis more smug and supercilious than Jack Straw?
- The Latest Defamation of Jefferson [by Thomas DiLorenzo]
Jefferson was adamantly opposed to interfering in foreign wars for any reason. "I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment," he wrote to Elbridge Gerry in 1799. "And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance . . ."
- Mind Tools - Self-Study Management Training, Career Training, Leadership Skills and Career Coaching - Essential Skills for an Excellent Career
Essential skills for an excellent career! Mind Tools gives you more than 100 important thinking, management training and career development skills, helping you to become highly effective and excel in your career. via Julian Elve
- How to create a REST Protocol
Pragmatic advice on being RESTful via Julian Elve
- Complex domains and researcher accountability
Life can only be understood backwards.
In the meantime, it has to be lived forwards.
