automatonrevolution Storm in an Ale Mug

The Weekend formally known as “Ouch”

...or "Two injections and a wisdom tooth later".

So, it all started on Friday lunchtime. I'd had my lunch. and then my top left wisdom tooth started to hurt. Not hurt as in "slightly sore"...hurt is in "Pass the painkillers NOW!!!!". it was very unpleasant. Now, my wisdom teeth have been know to shift slightly in my head now and then, quite uncomfortably, since they first grew in, something to do with the way my gums didnt recede properly, so I resolved to wait till the next day to see if it would go away. I do, after all, have an appointment with my dentist soon anyway, so I figured I could let it subside and then mention it to the dentist.
Of course, it didn't subside.
So on Saturday morning, when I was still in horrible unable-to-eat-anything pain, and had already cancelled two possible social things for the day, I steeled myself and called the emergency dentist. Fair play to them, they must be busy as all hell with the distinct lack of dentists in Edinburgh that are taking on new patients, and they asked all the right relevant questions like "Are you in pain after taking painkillers" (answer being YEEEEEESSSS!!!), and they got me an appointment for eight pm that same evening.
When I got there I was told the tooth had to come out, which i was sort of prepared for in a "im flippin terrified of dentists" kind of way...what I wasn't prepared for was the why. The tooth wasnt shifting...it was barely there. It had disintigrated and was mostly just root. It had literaly collapsed. No option really...remove it....
Ick.
So...now theres an odd gap where my tooth used to be, which Im still uncomfortably aware of, and I spent most of Saturday night with a numb mouth wishing I could have a beer but knowing I couldn't...hard to drink beer with a numb mouth (then theres all the serious medical reasons why you cant drink alcohol so soon after an anesthetic).
At least I had a really good episode of Dr Who to watch. it was a stormer, really good story, really good concept, well told...I loved it.

Well, its about damn time!

Its late, and im tired, so I'll keep this short.

Tony Blair has finally announced his resignation, properly. And its about damn time. The lying little toerag should have slung his hook a long time ago. I guess better late than never....

Anyway, I'll post more about this when im more awake. But for now, im just glad its finally happened.

Dr Who was the missing member from Spinal Tap…clearly…

Okay...if you havent seen Saturdays episode of Dr Who...look away now.

Still here?

Ok, then I'll assume you want to read this.
First of all, I rather liked it. There wasn't much messing about, at its heart it was a very simple story, and one that played well with the ongoing theme of the Doctor being old, tired and generally bummed about all the things hes seen and done. There was some good dialogue between him and the appalingly named Professor Lazarus (only a sci-fi show thats trying to be referential would name him that), and for the most part the action and so on was pretty good. It had a fun Spinal Tap moment (the Doctor having to put the setting on the Organ up to eleven) and resolved the issue over whether or not Martha is actually going to stay with him. So far so good.

But..they need to sort out their CGI. The monster looked fine...except for the Scorpion King problem..and by that I mean that the face they gave it looked awfull, and so obviously bad CG that it wouldnt have been out of place on a Playstation 1. It would have looked better if they hadnt tried to give it a face that looked like the actor.
And Martha's mum....how dumb is she? Her son has been concussed by a monster created by an experiment funded by Mr Saxon...and the Doctor is trying to stop it...so when some bloke come up and says "Mr Saxon says the Doctor is dangerous"..she just goes along with it. Um...if it were me...id be saying "Mr Saxon is the frickin dangerous one...hes going around funding dodgy science projects!".
Anyway...Jacks back sometime in the next few episodes...which will be cool.

Oh...and "Mister Saxon" is an anagram, by the way...quite an interesting one. Im not the only one who's noticed it, according to the Dr Who Wiki....give it a go. You'll see what I mean.

Advertising and the “Opposite Effect Syndrome”

No, I have no idea what "Opposite Effect Sydrome" actually is. I just made it up. I guess what I mean is when, in an advertising context, an advert has the opposite effect from what is intended. Adverts, in general, are designed to make us consumers want to buy a product...not the other way round.

So I suppose my being increasingly turned off by the current Apple "Mac and PC" ad campaign means Im getting Opposite Effect Syndrome.

Now, granted, being a long term PC user I am unlikely to buy a Mac anyway, and Im probably pretty biased...but these ads are really beginning to get on my man-boobs.
You'll probably know the ones I mean. Man in a suit on the left, representing the stodgy old PC, man in jeans and T-shirt on the right, representing Macs. They have a sort of "this is what I can do" conversation thats intended to be sort of funny, and to show how hip, user-friendly and fun Macs are compared to the lumbering, no-fun PC.

It aint working for me. I might just be getting the wrong end of the stick, but Mr Mac (or whatever hes called) just comes across as kinda smug and well...up himself. Instead of making me want to buy a Mac, its making me want one less. "Look at me" he says "I have this funky doody photo-editing thingy that makes holiday snaps so much more fun and easy to manage in my virtual photo album." While Mr PC blithers on about Pie Charts and so on. The inferance being (I think), PCs can't do fun stuff, Macs can.
Except..when I see that advert, when Mr Mac lists all the things the Mac can do with this funky doody photo software, im sitting there thinking...."But PCs can do all that stuff too. In fact, I bought my Mum one of those programs last Christmas and even SHE can use it."

Maybe I havent been watching the right ads, but so far Mr Mac hasnt said he can do anything that I know that PCs cant do as well. I know that the idea is to make Macs look better than PCs (maybe they are, im not going to argue that cos I dont know for sure...im talking about the ads here....), but misrepresenting the PC as some bumbling dinosaur isnt doing the Mac any favours in my eyes. Sure, even I can see that Apple have been able to write a better user interface than Microsoft for years...but instead of highliighting THAT sort of advantage, these ads are playing cheap shots and making MR Mac, in my eyes, look like a smug git.

Maybe Im missing the point. Feel free to say so. Either way, I'll quit whinging now

I may have the body but of a weak and feeble woman….

...but I have the heart and stomach of a Dalek??????

Alright. Tell me I'm crazy. Tell me I've lost the plot entirely...but......
In Saturdays episode of Dr Who, "The Shakespeare Code", when Queen Elizabeth the 1st turns up right at the end and declares the Doctor to be her sworn enemy...didn't she look a little bit like Davros, the creator of the Daleks?
Maybe its just me, but the makeup they used made her face pretty Davros-ish...you could have painted her green and it would be complete. Even the way she said "Doctor!" and "My sworn enemy", sounded an awful lot like Davros to me.

And you never see her legs. Shes always wearing those big dresses.

Its Davros, im telling you. The last time we saw that ugly goit was in "Remembrance of the Daleks", when the Hand of Omega crashed into Davros' ship after going back in time and destroying the Dalek homeworld. Just before impact, we know that Davros was getting into an escape shuttle, and in the shot of the exploding ship, if you look closely, something small and white moves away from the ship just before it explodes.

Now, its not too much of a stretch, in Dr Who terms, to suggest that that white thing was Davros escaping, and that since he was close to an explosion caused by a ime-traveling device of infinate cosmic power (in an itty-bitty wee space), that Davros might have been transported back in time.

Im just saying......

Not a Democracy:- Part 2

Those of you who were masochistic enough to subject yourselves to the inane ramblings of my previous blog, "Storm In An Ale Mug", may remember a post I did called "Not a Democracy...A Hypocrisy". In it I ranted about the state of the Union, about how we arent being democraticly represented if Labour could get in with a majority even though 64% of the electorate didnt vote for them, and how we'd been steamrollered into a crazy war on a false premise yet Blair somehow hadn't been arrested...

Well. This is part two.
Its taken me a few days to calm down about this. If I'd posted about this on Wednesday most of it would have been swearing.

They're replacing Trident.
Rather than actually keeping to our signatorial obligations and working to reduce our nuclear weapon capability (when I say "our", I mean the "USA"...more on this later) as per the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Britian is signed to...our Government is going to replace Trident, each missile already many times more destructive than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, with all-new and improved even more deadly missiles.
The Hypocrisy of this staggers me.
Let me explain.
- Iraq has been reduced to a blood-soaked hellhole, its infrastructure destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people killed...on the pretext that Saddaam had WMD's..
- We've nearing the end of a long and fraught dimplomatic process with North Korea to get them to dismantle their current Nuclear capability in exchange for consessions from the West,
- The drums of war are beginning to start again..this time aimed at Iran, because the US insists that the Iranians are building Nuclear Weapons instead of a civil nuclear power plant.

In short we, the West (especially Britian and the US) have a long history of telling other countries that they cant have Nuclear weapons, because of the Non-Proliferation treaty...the examples above are just the most recent ones...yet Blair and co are going to spend billions of pounds replacing Trident with a new, more powerful weapons system. Classic hypocrisy...We're telling everyone else they cant do it, then turning round and doing it ourselves.
It makes me sick to my stomach.

The part line is "Better to have them and not need them, than need them and not have them." This would seem like wisdom....but....
The actual success of the so called Nuclear Deterrant concept is unproven at best. Its one of those things that we can never truly know if it actually made a differance or not, and more to the point, we are continually being told that the threat now comes from rogue groups like Al Quaeda rather than enemy states...a Nuclear Deterrant isn't going to bother terrorist organisations at all. If they use nukes, it wont be a missile, it'll be a dirty bomb.
And the other problem is that we will have them, but not be albe to use them without foreign permission. Thats right folks...just like Trident, this new nuclear system will incorporate so much US technology (on loan, not bought outright) that again we won't be able to launch them if we need to without first calling Washington and asking if its ok. The launch codes for Trident are held by the US...not us. This new system will be no differant.

And, dammit, is it really so naive to believe and hope that these treaties that our Government signs aren't just words on a page? That when they sign up to prevent the proliferation of these vile, disgusting devices of mass-murder that they actually MEAN it?

Over 90 MP rebelled against the Government in this vote...with a number of them resigning as well (including some I really didnt expect to), but still its going ahead. Blairs legacy has a skull carved upon it.

Not a Democracy. A Hypocrisy.

Ratho. Ratho? Where the is Ratho?

So its all change and oddness at work at the moment. Thanks to a bizarre managment decision, the offices I work for are being relocated to....Ratho, of all places. Certainly this is an interesting decision, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the company is unwilling to continue paying rent on a 3-storey building if we're only actually using one floor. I think Ratho was chosen mostly because they already had a building they could convert out there, and it was easy for the bosses to get to in their cars.

Meh. Its going to be a pain for me to get to. The bus service out to there isnt exactly frequent, and I have to get out to Haymarket to actually catch it.

And there NOTHING out there...barely any shops, the nearest pub is 20 minutes walk away, the only shop is a Scotmid ffs. Ghah.

Anyway, Friday was the last dat at the old office. We kinda, did some work..but not much. We had themed music and silly posters up on the walls and it was all a bit daft. Monday morning is going to be chaos. I got a tour round the new offices on Thursday, and the printers werent set up, the server was having a snooze, and the phones didnt work.

I can't wait....

The Trouble with Blogs….(or, “What the hell do I write about?”)

The problem with blogs, or more accurately the problem I have with blogs is that I never know what to write about. This is of course evidenced by the rather limited selection of posts here on Automatonrevolution. My first blog, the origional "Storm in an Ale Mug" sort of degenerated into a political bitching session, and even I can't bitch about politics and war indefinately (some people will laugh at that statement...:P).

The thing is, I have lots of things I want to write about..but I don't know what to give lots of space to, and what should only get a passing mention. I mean, theres the coolness of the World of Warcraft CCG, theres the very enjoyable weekend I recently spent visiting Dave and Kai, theres the pleasant suprise that has been the last few train journeys I've taken (weakened slightly by a growing rant about Railway stations), theres Mums new telly, theres the last few days where I spent time with Mum and the doggies....

You see the problem.

Oh sod it.

The World of Warcraft CCG is very cool. I love it, it has me hooked, much like the online game has...(and I can't wait for January when the Expansion for that gets released....) its fun, has cool cards, and I can manage to make a decent deck with it, which makes a nice change.

I had a lovely time visiting Dave and Kai last week, it was very nice to just be able to chill with two very wonderful people who happen to be very good friends...even though it rained lots. Im actually sort of happy we didnt do lots and lots of stuff, because sometimes its nice to be able to relax in good company, you know? So..much huggness being sent in their general direction.

What suprised me about the train journeys to and from Cheltenham, and also the more recent one to Lanark, was how they were a) On Time, b) Clean (very clean) and c) Relativly comfortable. I've been on longer journeys to and from London that have been the equivalent of distilled Hell..but these ones were actually almost enjoyable. Of course, it helps if theres a big smile and a big hug waiting for you at journeys end...

I'll save the rant about railway stations for another time...I think.

Mum has a new telly...and its huge. Well...huge-ish. Well, I think its pretty big. Its a 26 inch LCD screen and its very cool. had a lot of fun setting it up with the DVD/RAM recorder thingy she got with it, and playing with buttons. The manual reads like the instructions for the Warp Core on the Starship Enterprise (ie, is completely useless unless you already know everything about the telly already). but its still very nice.

Weekend with Mum was nice in general, in fact. Both Rowan and Corrie were there (Rowan is Mum's crazy crazy Collie, and Corrie is my sister's crazy crazy Westie "Who knows No Fear!!!!"), so it was Doggie chaos, and lots of fun. especially the way the two of them were playing a sort of "cold war" over this one special squeaky toy...very funny to watch.

Um....running out of words now....

Okay...so I could go into lots more detail on most of these subjects...but Im sure you get the gist....

Sometimes its hard to keep WoW in a compartment

Contrary to popular belief, I do not Sleep, Eat, Drink and Breathe that utterly lovely and addictive game known as World of Warcraft. I'm not QUITE that much of a fanboy geek. Certainy, I do play it an awful lot and I do also play the card game and have, on occasion, made my friends eyes glaze over by talking about it..but it doesn't dominate my life and the roleplaying and scheming and plotting hardly ever actually spill over into the rest of my life. I don't go to bed thinking about what dark machinations im going to be doing when I next log on, and I generaly don't get all that affected by stuff that happens in the game.

Until last night.

Last night my character was hanging around the pub in Goldshire (its a town, don't worry about it), when another player started doing the "dancing naked on the table-top then jumping in the fireplace" routine. Now, Goldshire gets about 30 people like that each day, and its really irritating because its meant to be a Roleplaying server, and I personally can't see much that could be counted as In Character about doing that...so I remonstrated with the person In Character and then Out Of Character I gently explained the whole RP thing. We got to chatting, which was nice because I was expecting to recieve a response along the lines of "LOL U LZR N00B, U SUXOR". Turns out this was a fairly nice girl, still at school, who'd wandered on to the server to find out what it was like, and so was actually pretty interested in RP. So far so good.

The thing that got me though, was when I suggested she check some of the RP essays that can be found on the server forums, because some of those essays are very well written and could explain things much better than I could. She said she didn't think she could read a long essay because she wasn't very clever. I responded with "You needn't put yourself down like that". She replied that lots of people at her school tell her she's stupid. "God gave me a good body" She said, "But not a good brain".

I was livid. This put me in a seriously bad mood. Because its total bollocks. She'd already shown herself to be articulate and interested in stuff, and yet she was convinced that she was stupid because a bunch of numbnuts had told her so. A 13 year old kid should not have to think like that. Its not right and its not fair.

Apart from anything else, "cleverness" is such a wooly term in any case. Theres so many differant types of cleverness, and stupidity, that labeling someone as stupid is in fact stupidity in itself. I'm not good with numbers. That doesnt make me stupid. I had a chemistry teacher who told me a wouldn't amount to anything because I was having trouble with my chemistry schoolwork. Yet I have a science degree....

I think im going to keep an eye out for that player, and make sure to say Hi every once in a while.