ILikeJam

My flat's trying to kill me.

Exactly a year ago, when I first moved in, my heavy-as-fuck blinds came off their hilariously flimsy mounts and attempted to remove my right arm on the way down. That time my shoulder popped out and back in again, resulting in only temporary pain and resentment.
On Saturday night, exactly the same thing happened, but the pain and resentment has persisted. A mortal blow was also delivered to my long-suffering dragon tree, and my equally long-suffering speakers have received injuries that may require plastic surgery.

Balls to the tree and speakers, though. My shoulder's gubbed, so I'm heading to the venerable family GP to demand satisfaction. Or whatever he recommends. The mouse-to-keyboard-and-back arm-rotation is now accompanied by a painful 'clunk', so I'm slightly concerned that this might end up being a real problem what with my profession and all. I can see it putting a dent in my sex life anyway, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

It's probably worth noting that both of my shoulders are what I believe is termed unstable, so this was going to happen sooner or later. Actually, my knee used to do the same pop-out-and-back routine as well so I'm guessing it's congenital, and therefore my parents' fault more than my flat's. (If you want to experience pain and panic in equal and very large doses, I can recommend trying to straighten out a partially dislocated knee every time - popped shoulders are a definitely piece of piss in comparison.)

On a lighter note, the Sub was all kinds of excellent on Saturday (before the attempted dismemberment) - Domenic's back from Barcelona for good, and he's chucking around some fine quality House.

I'm on Twitter now. I held off for so long, but the thought of being able to shout into the abyss on yet another website was just too much temptation. That, and I wanted to see what Stephen Fry had for breakfast.

Shitting bricks about Swine Flu? Me neither, but if you know someone who is why not suggest an enema?
It'll do fuck all to stop you getting Swine Flu, but should solve the brick shitting problem.

Oh, how the stupid does so burn.

Why is there so much dog shit in the East End?

Why do parents of small children refer to themselves in the third person?

Why do I have to fill out a 14 page document to ask for some disk space from the guy who sits at the desk right behind me?

Idiots. That's why.

Look into her eyes. They're the eyes of a woman obsessed by sex. Eyes that mock our sacred institutions. 'Bedroom eyes' they called them in a bygone day. They're the eyes of a woman whose lust knows no bounds, who lives but for corrupting others to a life of carnal pleasures and lewd designs.
A woman whose erotic desires and little time practices are used to titillate the unsuspecting, and would stoop to any depths to satisfy her pornographic tastes*. The Marquis de Sade would have regarded her as a peer.
This sex-ridded smut peddler. Look at her face. It is the face of a smutmonger.

I've been playing with wiki software at work of late, looking for something to manage the Unix team's ad-hoc documents and other voodoo - stuff that doesn't really fit in the Official Stamped And Approved Methods Of Doing Things.
I wanted to do this at my last employers, but the thought of deploying PHP/perl/MySQL web apps on Solaris filled me with a subtle dread, so I didn't really look into it too deeply.
A quick shufty on the Interwub, however, revealed that Sun have pre-configured Apache/MySQL/PHP packages available as Cool Stack. I wish Sun would stop with the 'cool' moniker. This is not.

The whole install was remarkably painless - building the zone took longer than installing and configuring the 'cool' packages and the TikiWiki software.
First thing I did once the Wiki was up was to slap the install procedure on a Wiki page, which you can see here, if you're interested in doing the same thing yourself. For the uninitiated: yes, that does constitute a remarkably painless install on Solaris.

Looks like Jack Straw shat it and pulled the plug on Clause 152.

Top work bloggers, doctors, comedians, campaigners, Facebookers, and everyone else who made some noise.

Politics time!

There's a nasty bit of legislation running through the Commons the noo, which goes by the name of the Coroners and Justice Bill, Clause 152. I'd encourage you to read it. Thankfully it's not very long.

Back? Good. I'd like to draw your attention to the following in particular:

(1)
An information-sharing order may--
...
(h) modify any enactment.

Any enactment? So, by invoking an 'information-sharing order', any Member of Parliament can do... anything they like.
I'm not sure of the scope of this legislation, but that provision is entirely unqualified. There doesn't seem to be any limit on what's allowed once one of these 'information-sharing orders' is created. Maybe, if required, your house could be raided. Maybe you could be detained indefinitely. Maybe Jacqui Smith could just send the boys round to kick your head in and get the information.

Even if the Clause only affects the Data Protection Act's provisions (the Clause is an amendment to the DPA), that's some seriously powerful legislation. It allows any MP, MSP etc. to throw the Data Protection Act in the bin and do whatever they want with whatever information they like. And then they can let anyone else do the same as long as:

(a)  the sharing of information enabled by the order is
necessary to secure a relevant policy objective
(b) that the effect of the provision made by the order is
proportionate to that policy objective, and
(c) that the provision made by the order strikes a fair balance
between the public interest and the interests of any person
affected by it.

What policies? Any policies, apparently. Who decides the public interest and fair balance? We're not told. These three conditions are all that limit the power of this legislation, and being so ill-defined they offer no protection from abuse. Not that this matters very much, since the Clause allows for the modification of any enactment, presumably including the Clause itself.

Accordingly, and for the first time in my puff, I've written to my MP and requested that this deeply sinister power-grab be rejected at the first possible opportunity. If you've got 5 minutes, I'd be much obliged if you'd do the same.

In what can only be described as a surprising departure from the her usual course of idiocy, Jacqui Smith has expertly wielded the banhammer against the afore mentioned Westboro God botherers.

Shame, really. I was looking forward to the youtube videos of them getting their collective head kicked in. Ah well.