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Tuesday July 5, 2005

Inappropriate camwhore

Personal

I hate false modesty and I like this picture of myself:

/img/journal/20050623-camwhore.400.jpg

Well, Where Are You Now does not. WAYN is one of the many networking sites (like , Orkut, Friendster) aimed at people who travel. Sounded like fun, but here's an e-mail I received just now:

Your profile image which was uploaded to your membership on  has been removed as it was deemed inappropriate for the WhereAreYouNow.com site.

To avoid photos being removed in future please do not upload images which are of an explicit nature, indecent, or could be seen as offensive in any way. Images which are obviously bogus, of celebrities, children, cartoons/animations or inanimate objects may also be deemed inappropriate.

Your profile image should be a true representation of yourself.

Excuse me? It bloody well is a true representation! Offensive? Indecent? Bollocks, you can't even see my nipples! I walk around like this in sodding Hyde Park! Having ruled out any explicit nature and lacking any cartoon qualities, I obviously must be a celebrity then? An inanimate object? A child perhaps? Bogus?

Wankers. I'll stick to MySpace. I found out the hard way that camwhore is not yet a complementary mainstream term, but at least in some communities pimping yourself with your bling is appreciated.

Why I disliked Live8

Anglosphere

Bob Geldof is a hero. After Live8 there will be no more poverty, just as there was none after Live Aid twenty years ago. Yeah, right.

(Africa needs reform, not financial gestures.)

But at least the stars were fabulous (okay, most of them maybe twenty years ago). And they were so amazingly generous to perform while only getting $12,000 worth of goodies plus some wicked food. I bet they were trying out the tea-smoked spare ribs before it was being sent to Africa. Yeah, right.

(Africa needs reform, not financial gestures.)

Well, at least the G8 will now have to remove the debts and enter an area of fair trade and Africa will experience the same growth as China. Yeah, right. Debt relief is unfair towards African countries fighting corruption and repaying their debts. It sets a bad example. And so far the ways of the booming Chinese economy are only followed by Mugabe and it's not really making people happier there.

(Africa needs reform, not financial gestures.)

Furthermore, Africa is far too tribal to join the civilised world of no poverty. Tribal thoughts tend to result in birth rights, blood purity, corruption and blood revenge. Precisely the primitive thoughts we no longer accept in our world and loath regardless of whether the source is a royal family, Adolf Hitler or Islamic radicalists.

Nowadays we merely giggle when motherfucker is being uttered in mainstream music. Until the Hutsi and Tutsi clans feel the same, let's stop with insane gestures of solidarity bound to fail and pull the modernising African countries to our level of wealth first, one by one. Perhaps then the rest will wake up.

Africa needs reform, not financial gestures. I feel confident George Bush and Tony Blair know this and won't be swayed by the millions of people who think they understand the world just because they can sing along to Hey Jude.

E-mail data loss

Software

Cause: a Kontact crash during an DIMAP synchronisation due to a disappearing network due to an older version of FreeBSD dropping my wi-fi interface once in a while.

Result: all e-mail between June 11 and present day lost. If you sent me something important, please resend it.

I'd rather not try and reproduce this but I should, so I can file a KDE bug report. Data loss is pretty nasty.

Agriculture subsidies

Anglosphere

Just heard on the radio that President Bush will remove subsidies for US farmers if the EU cancels its own. Tony Blair should be willing, considering his strong stance against the French farmer subsidies. Even Kofi Annan of UN fame agrees.

The Anglosphere has spoken. Are you ready for a better world through free markets as well, Mr. Chirac?

Jacques Chirac

Anglosphere

The Mirror has 10 things you need to know about Jacques Chirac.

2) HE regularly cheated on his wife Bernadette. His nickname among female staff when he was Paris mayor was "three minutes, shower included".

But since when do the French shower?

Daily journal digests

Personal

In case you're too lazy to "read me" daily, you can now go to your user preferences and enable a daily journal digest. Once a day (around midnight European time) all my rambles will automatically appear in your mail box, with convenient links to permanent URLs where you can leave your comments. You'll always be up-to-date! If you don't have a user account yet, you can register one for free.

Because I probably hate spam more than you do, the daily digest is completely optional: you have to opt-in specifically and you can opt-out at any moment. I'm a wonderful web site owner, aren't I?

When I find the time (and enough people show an interest in digests) I'll enhance the feature so people can filter on categories or even keywords, but I don't expect that to happen very soon.

Expensive flights

Urbanity

It must be summer, or war, for flights to and from London have gotten a lot more expensive.

Normally I'd be able to fly back and forth for €130, but VLM is now asking €155,50. But not on the night I want to go back, no, that's €125 for the return flight alone, excluding taxes. Transavia is cheaper, but uses Stansted airport (STD) instead of London City (LCY). A return journey by train to that hell-hole would cost me an extra €35,50 (or €21,50 for a single). EasyJet flies from Amsterdam airport (AMS), which would cost me €10 plus €15 for the train from Luton Airport (LTN), while it's not cheap (nor pleasant) to fly back from Luton.

Got all that? Well, I did. And after a lot of calculating, my best options appear to be:

I really don't want to go to Amsterdam though and I'm not too thrilled about Stansted and Luton either. Meh. Let's try something completely different:

No check-in or having to get to airports.. you know what, I might just save the environment and take the train. I'd still be able to queue for Lenny Kravitz, meet for my birthday (it's been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long since I've seen her), buy some new clothes and relax. I always carry an MP3 player and notebook with me anyway, so I won't be bored at all.

Just booked. I'm going to London. By train.. I've never done that before, this should be interesting. And I'm staying at the Blakemore Hotel again. Affordable and I know what I get (I've been to crappier, more expensive places).

Next day: Wednesday July 6, 2005 Previous day: Monday July 4, 2005

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