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Louis' Blog has Moved (RSS too)

You can still get to my blog via blog.fallingbeam.org, though the actual URL is different, if you even know what that means you'd know how to find it out, but then, you don't need to. My RSS feed has changed to: http://newblog.fallingbeam.org/blog/index.rdf

You can get my new Klip here.

All the content on this site has been imported over to the new blog, so this site will slowly become more defunct. I even managed to import all my blogger.com entries, so everything I've written online in this format is now at the new place. How groovy.

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Buoy

I've been spending the past couple of hours playing around with Movable Type 3. Long story short you can have a look at it here. The annoying thing is that I'll probably not move over because the month archives don't come out right - also I still don't have formatting tools in Opera (*Firefox* does though) which is embarassing since even Blogger has got them now for Opera.

And honestly, I don't see that much of a difference, other than the new styles, which I have to hack rather relentlessly for them to be worth a damn, and which are otherwise quite limited. Thankfully security isn't an issue since I don't bother with comments.

After that I had the pleasure of finding out more about how X-Lite and Phoneconnector don't kiss nice. I'm sure Phoneconnector's tech support are going to get right on it. There's a workaround, but it's annoying and repetitive.

Race

This is from a few days back, but it seems to me that most of the narratives I've seen that deal with kidnapped babies tend to deal, in some way or other, with the narrative of the Lindbergh Baby. Not to mention Donna's dirty secret.

The thing with Will Bailey and Donna is getting me a bit flabbed.

Mininova.org

Because of my recent penchant for posting banners etc. here's one for you:

Unfortunately, if you use Proxomitron like I do, you'll see a blank space.

I weighed whether to make my Opera buttons (which now also occur at the bottom of every page) point to a page other than the "buy opera so they pay me licensing page", but then I figured that the banner in and of itself is advertising already, so the link isn't that big a deal.

Edit: I've noticed a bunch of hits coming in here looking for Mininova, so I thought I'd point you to a post that lists the better torrents sites arond, post-Suprnova/Lokitorrent

Fictional State

Okay, so the West Wing is trying its best to tread as lightly as possible between "keepin it real" and ga-ga-land fantasy. It's okay, and it really does seem like such a small step to take.

I'm now officially wondering whether VOIP is worth it. The problem with BroadVoice and X-Lite is that it requires a hell of a lot of bandwidth, so I effectively have to shut down Azureus just to get decent clarity - though apparently it does end up being the best voice quality possible. The problem with Skype and Phoneconnector is that it's not as idiot proof, even though it does seem much more efficient and probably more forgiving of bandwidth sqeezing.

I might give Skype the chance of running without Azureus - but there's still the issue of the USB port fucking up.

But having now discovered that rates have gone up to 10c a minute to the US, all this just seems like teeth.

Way

I wondered to myself for just a moment before being safe and registering with Do Not Call regardless. There's actually a rather happy way to find out my phone no. without asking. Just hover. But yes, Louis did a little broadside html hacking to put advert links more prominently. I suppose I should move the Klip link higher, but I figure it's fitting where it is, and people who don't read beyond the first entry aren't likely to be bothered anyway.

Sygate Begone.

Ok, so I'm not saying that Sygate is Evil, I'm just saying that it can fuck more things up than it really fixes. As usual any security issues I thought I had was just so much paranoia. At some point I think I'll uninstall ETrust, but it's supposed to be harmless. The MS Spyware detector is okay, so whatever. I've just left Sygate off, so I can be paranoid in the future. And yes, it was Skype that opened up port 443, god knows why it chooses that.

The real problem with Sygate on was that CPU usage spikes. But more importantly it fucked up the latency for VOIP, so Skype was fucking up (it's not so great anyway) and then it led to BroadVoice fucking up. Lots of fucking up for paranoia. The XP firewall is admirably admirable.

I'm getting too happy with drama for headlines. Thought the next logical step is outre Inquirer-land. Smurfing... hilarious.

Broadvoice

I've signed up, so I now have a US telephone no. which you can have if you ask. Haven't had much time to fiddle with it, but it works, so yay. You can use this link if you want to sign up yourself. There's a referral program, but the buttons they have available are really annoying so I'll probably put a text link somewhere when I can be bothered. Apparently that link only works with Firefox and IE. I've complained to Broadvoice about it, as well as about their inadequate browser sniffing.

Aztec, Two-Step, Turandot

Someone clever decided to post a list of overlaps between Sports Night and West Wing. I'm gonna e-mail them with ones I think they missed. Eventually.

Fighting about "going to the hot club"

In both series, relationships break up over the guy being too boring/serious, and the woman wanting too much to be exciting, and go out, be seen, go to the right club etc.

In Sports Night this is what breaks up Natalie and Jeremy in Dana Get Your Gun. On West Wing, this is the background story of Sam breaking up with his fiance Lisa Sherborne in 100,000 Airplanes.

This other one I need to tidy up:

With regards to fathers' adultery as discussed here there's also another theme that runs through boths episodes, that both episodes mention maritime, or celestial navigation (a theme repeated in the title of the WW episode "Celestial Navigation"). Both episodes refer to finding out about the father's adultery as changing everything, and this is compared to something as fundamental as maps changing, or in Jeremy's case, wanting to find out how something happened. This is echoed in Natalie breaking down to Isaac ("And the Crowd Goes Wild) about Jeremy wanting to get his stuff back, and giving the tape to the police, as violating a fundamental principle.

Sess

And so Louis is not crazy, and Diane Warren did write a song for Chicago based on her overhearing a divorced couple (or some such). Look Away. I'm just wondering now who "Don't Turn Around" was originally written for - I suspect that it's Ace of Base, but that blows my mind, and Aswad?

Die Mac Mini, Die.

Since I'm doing this for Eugene right now, I offer this to all comers. A cheap, small, reasonably fast computer. The idea is to offer something that will keep people from the delusion that is the Mac Mini.

AOpen SFF system: $365

Sempron 2600+: $149

2x256 DDR 400: $140

250 gig hard drive: $260

BenQ DW1620 DVD-Writer: $130

This is a pretty good recent generation processor (like the G4), but with double the RAM, 6x the storage, and DVD writing. Software, of course, is free. All for about $895. A mac mini costs $928. If you added the ram, added a much slower Superdrive, and got a mere 80 gig, it would cost $1348.

In both cases you'll still have to supply a keyboard, monitor and mouse.

The AOpen is one of the prettier SFF systems - but best of all it has built in graphics, GeForce 4 MX, granted (which is less powerful that the mac mini), but that just means you can tack on more later. And it's so cheap I could spit. IGP means that you can't clock more than 333mhz, and unfortunately that's what the Sempr0n is at already, so if you want to overclock, you'll have to get a discrete graphics card. If you want to get similar performance to a Mac Mini, you can try this:

GeForce 5500 128ram DVI/Tv-out $105 (This can go much higher, depending what you want)

But remember, the IGP already comes with dual monitor and S-Video. You could even go for more RAM instead of better graphics, if gaming isn't the biggest issue.

Caveats include the fact that you can't add extra internal hard drives, but that's the same with the mac. No DVI with the IGP.

Louis takes no commission. This is a public service. I'd probably charge if you were a friend of a friend though.

MSN Messenger Beta

I hate nothing more than people who use their "usernames" on MSN to put anything other than their name. Thankfully, the new beta shows that Microsoft feels my pain. You can actually broadcast a headline along with your username, as a kind of subtitle. Hopefully, i won't need to keep having to view contacts by e-mail address. You also get more integration of the avatar into the contact list, so you see thumbnails which can be small or large. I enlarged my contact list just to take advantage of this - it's a nice touch.

These are links to places that will give you everything you need, the installers, and patches to get rid of all the crap. This is a leaked beta, and you should know what you're doing if you want to install it. www.mess.be www.mastaline.com

MPAA FUD-spreading liars: who knew?

Paranoia begone.

Scratch

Getting more convinced that DVD rips aren't the same quality as HD rips. Finding Aphex Twin rather convincing. Ambient thing seems rather enjoyable, and quiet without being melancholy, which is a plus. Now starting to wonder if getting Boomtown was a mistake. More and often. Perhaps. Some things, however, are just too scribbly, and you get the feeling that you're just scratching.

My Wedding Day

I suppose I could write about the vague watchability of Boomtown, mostly because of the parables it spins. Just tad. I've just said that I've been trying to watch funnier things recently, and that's pretty true. The noodle place people recognise me now. It's probably worse at night with no people and no activity. And if I shower now, I won't sleep for a while yet, which doesn't seem so attractive to me. But my Lacey Chabert's grown up into a babe hasn't she? Less distinctive features, but such come hither hair. Though really it just might have been the same strategy as Mary McCormack, being Mary Louise Parker. Bonnie Hunt just seems so rife with insecurity, an ooze of vulnerability.

Totem: Drink my daddy's wine

Come behold Prudence

Inadvertent

I just realised there's probably a reason that the MPAA put its prints all over lokitorrent.com and torrentstop.com (the subsidiary), but you just get a plain old 404 on mufftorrent.com.

Slashdot: Opera Fastest Browser

Gasp. Where have all the Firefox Fanboys gone? To bite my shiny metal ass.

RSS and Economist

Just to inform people who don't already know, RSS stands for, amongst other things Really Simple Syndication. It basically allows you read newsfeeds, to view headlines and some extra text, normally with a link to the full story etc. That's not it's only use, it does many things, including notification of new torrents/blog posts etc.

The RSS feed for my blog is this: http://blog.fallingbeam.org/blog/index.rdf

Though you could have found that at the bottom right of the main blog page, under syndication.

A convenient way to read RSS feeds is to use Opera, which uses its mail client to read feeds. 8 Beta even notifies you in the address bar when a page has a feed. Personally I prefer Klipfolio, made by Serence. I even have my own customised Klip (also linked on blog and site front pages). You can add any feed url you want to Klipfolio by making copies of Feed Viewer. Klipfolio has tonnes of preset and ready made klips for things from weather, stocks, news, to Hotmail/Gmail inbox feeds etc.

TVtorrents, at www.tvtorrents.ws (currently, they keep moving), has its own custom app to auto download and launch torrents, TVTAD.

The Economist has added it's own RSS feeds just recently. I wonder if the ad-viewing free full access is still in effect.

Suspicious minds think that CNY has proved that cable speed/latency is dependent on the number of users, because there's been quite a bit of crawling from people being home, which alleviates in the wee.

Very Not Laura Nyro

It's just that she uses her sentiment like a bludgeon. Fair enough it's not Alanis, but still annoying. That and the gameshow music.

Wedding Bell Blues

And so the mysticism of Laura Nyro. From what I can hear she seems to be the Carole King of something, her renditions just quiet, sincere, clenching, not the same kind of spunk you hear with the ones that hit. It's probably not more than inevitable that the picting of it should come about, Amy Sherman and Aaron Sorkin, like a ball. It's a kind of plaintive wondrousness to discover these tiny stitchings, when the fabric is blanket and wrapped to everyone else perhaps. And particularly that the scriptor would have been obscured herself by aforementioned spunk. It's a kind of tugging, a kind of happy happy tugging, glad. I suppose a mention of basket weaving would not be out of place in all this. Layers and reusing of old whiskey to retain consistency. Listening with your spine.

Bang the Gong

Sophia Bush and Kristen Bell really look spookily like each other. If only it was called Hermione. Foghat rocks. Seoul Raiders was pretty awful. And like I told Winston, second day's a charm. Someone really needs to assure me that it's not the bloody drivers, and that the underclocking is making things better.

Bite The Drama

Oh my. Marti Noxon must be as concerned with ratings as much as she is with comedy. There's only one word to describe how bad it is. Charmed.

The girl girl dynamic isn't even as interesting or arresting as Hex. The non-blonde one is even slightly better than the locus, but they're all too pretty and blank.

Louis got pwn3d

It was probably the naughty beta (the one that was withdrawn) of MSN messenger 7.

Bang

How many times to they need to get shot? How much trauma do they have to go through? Someone must really have realised that the most fun you can have is people shooting each other up.

Leaving

Ok, wow. They really pulled out all the stops for these guys leaving the series. The Doc thing is absolutely breathtakingly distancing and powerful. Bang. Though really, all the people who are good looking enough to still have a career must have decided to leave.

But really, somewhere along the line someone must have realised that there's only so much you can do with fire, so now it's a cop show with paramedics.

Call for Help

Well, apparently there are reasons why some people get to executive produce. Edward Allen Bernero is now interesting to me. The episode was really rather good, not exactly real-time, but done in extended long shots, nicely timed for the ads. Very detective fiction, a really rather lovelily put together. I suppose if I have to show anyone an episode of Third Watch, this would be it. I wonder if they ask very conscientiously for the actors to retain some fashion of how they speak, because the actors seem to talk a particular way, particularly pronounced with Davis and Monroe.

This really did seem to have a kind of lyricism about it, not surprisingly it felt very much like Before Sunset. What I'd take issue with is the symmetry of the dialogue, too neat, too closed off, too bookended and deliberately and contrivedly rambly - like the establishing and closing shots etc.

Yeah, apparently they just needed to get their stride back, took them till mid-season though.

Oh, and Mimi Leder's episodes of Jonny Zero (actually, most of that show so far) has been so absolutely disappointing. Especially for the fact that they're trying to be Angel, with Burly Guy in need of Redemption, Mouthy Sidekick, and Rescued Girl. The direction relied too much on very blarey music, and felt too much like an action film.

Lost

5th season third watch is a bit poor. I'm going to say they do rather unearned things, and that they try to "dig deep" in to the concept - but just for perspective I used to say that about Aaron Sorkin's West Wing season premieres. It's nice though, following through on a big narrative, a very large tattoo.

I suppose I shouldn't feel funny about people feeling sorry for me - I feel sorry for me :P. I really shouldn't start writing when I'm going to be distracted.

But really, after you hear John Wells (or whoever) talking about how after a while you have to stir the pot, it makes the stirring a bit contrived. And you'd think that there should never be such a thing as a transitional season, though that's what West Wing 5 was, that's what this season feels like. Also the meshing is starting to get really contrived.

Maybe it's just the start of season blues, along with the new, and not terribly engaging, characters. Tia Texada was much more fun when she first came on, and Nia Long is just so yawn inducing it's not true. Also the police storylines can begin to feel like they dominate, probably because they have that much more scope in many ways.

Mary McCormack was really rather fun on Celebrity Poker Showdown. She, like Mary Louise Parker, have people to thank.

Oh, and Jennifer Paige may be coming out with a new album eventually, having moved to the south etc. Yahoo search is good in that they tend to return the official page first.

It's spelt with an E

I get the feeling it would have been an interesting and probably fittingly dramatic feature project, but as a series it seems to stumble quite badly. Sabrina Llyod is still quite fetching, but...

Shippers

I've just discovered this lovely site devoted to the Yokas-Boscorelli relationship. Apparently these people refer to themselves as "shippers".

Yahoo Search isn't bad. It's currently replaced my default search from that other search that's getting backlashed as of now. Opera's editable search.ini is a god-send, as it the search.ini editor - both of which are easily searched for. I'm tired of opening movable type in IE, so I've taken to using Opera's notes to manually edit links.

The Doors

So just to say, if people want to find solace from Chinese New Year, they're welcome to come over. Just remember that you will be required you to bring oranges to bai the stately and matriarchal Prudence. One in each paw. Plenty of prata and mee goreng.

Castles of Sand

I like Faith being special. I suppose it's all a lot more entertaining that I gave it credit for, as long as you get into it. Carlos was pretty Peep Show, but he was undoubtly effective, and not just a little funny a lot of the time.

SOTU Taunting

Those fingers were gloating, not the expression of anything other than spite and bile. Whether wagging of flipping. It's honestly almost obscene that they should feel the need to abuse symbols in this way.

Gryphon House

The gadding tourists abound Beach Rd make me wish I was back in Boston.

Minky

I just had a dream about the Britney Spears dating reality show. It seemed to be a continuation of something. I wasn't doing too well. My father was there somehow trying, on the train, to get his laptop online. I had an overly intellectual conversation with her and it seemed to go really badly, particularly when she didn't quite get me and she didn't know the word "visceral". Apparently Harvey Weinstein was the one producing the show. I also kept being castigated for not taking out my sheets in the morning, so much that I was fined for it later. I had left for some reason and come back to the midst, only find things had changed, and I had to catch up on my journal writing for her. After dozing I went to get paper from the room. In doing so I stumbled upon one of the guys making out with another girl, probably part of the show, an assistant of Britney's. I persisted, however in getting the paper, then told them to carry on. Later I realised that there had been a sock on the door and I had been too sleepy or something to notice. The guy got kicked off. Reminds me of barging into the greek guy's room with his hot girlfriend naked under the sheets, trying to get rizla. The bizarre shift was when we were suddenly in a kind of forum or tribunal questioning a killer, when the guy next to me said, I'm gonna kill him, kill you, then kill myself. I didn't quite hear him, so I asked him to repeat himself, and while he was doing that I wrestled the gun from his hands.

This probably goes up there with the -- as slayer dream.

Sniffy

My apartment smells like fabric softener.

Pretty flowers

And so perhaps Louis should do a kind of TV diary for each day, since that is what Louis does the most each day here.

Currently in freeze frame is the SI Swimsuit Model Search, the (probably) penultimate episode, and I find that they're making me root for Alicia - in a way that says to me this is the choice they want me to make, by stating that clear preference and portraying her narrative as the most compelling. And in such a way that doesn't make me think it's a fake-out. And looking at the shoots, I probably agree.

Project Runway isn't online, but the pictures on the website paint quite nicely the USPS thing that happened, and Austin making his model debut.

Just to mention though, that Louis has reorganised his room, so that the dining table is now right next to the bed, ready to be pulled out for mahjong etc. and the couch is now nearer the kitchen. Most important is that now the route to the toilet is no longer one that has to be traversed with such care.

State of the Union was a bit too showy for me, too much staged, which made the moving portions all the more alienating in retrospect. Immigration is something he seems genuinely to be standing up for, and he did a good job of articulating the need for Social Security reform. The vision of smaller government came out well. The layout of the Democratic response was a bit bizarre.

I'm considering whether to go for another 15" LCD, or should I already be thinking the prices of the 17s are good enough. I'm looking at the entry level 17" DVI from Viewsonic at $469 (all in Sing), or the 15 from Acer at about a hundred dollars less. It would seem to make sense to go for the 17, but first I have questions about how the desktop would span between resolutions, and really, if the S-Video will just clone, whether it's worth it at all to go ahead. Though I really should RMA the CMV one before it's too late. I'll probably just go and take a look at them and make a decision.

Just in passing, Last Train was a bit too reliant on it's OTT scoring, and was very radio watching. Third Watch season 3 similarly.

monkeysgotufty.com

Peep Show

Apparently someone's discovered that self-immolation is funny. All MS all the time. TV Tome, and Channel 4.

How fucked up is the American version going to be?

Tori

Somehow it seems that the Economist is the one that is able to write about industry and commerce with that kind of excitement and unseemly desire. And yet they do so by telling stories, creating manifestation - the narrative of sucess. You succeed by having followed the tenets, you fail by having not, or by not being aware of the tenets then; when things change, change your mind. It's just typical that the aspirational tone of it, and the mode in which it is presented, would be the way to make it sound like they were writing about there being no help or pity.

I Have Lava in my Smurf-Crease

It's always sad when a series you like gets cancelled. Thankfully rips are now pretty much readily available of Grounded For Life.

Just a note to people, could you bring me back my stuff? It's not that I really need it back, but I'm beginning to forget what I've lent out, and I should try and get it back.

These would include Sports Night, any more sets of keys, Robotech, my magnetic card for the main door, Jenna Haze, probably Dead Ringers? Well, basically if you have it bring it back, you know, whenever.

Louis bought a TV!!

Louis bought a TV!!

Not bad for $130, 29 inch, Panasonic, about 5 years old, including them delivering it to me :D. 2 S-Video inputs, one for DVD, another for my comp - perfect. They said they'd deliver tomorrow night.

Do Laundry

Remember Info.txt in mail. Copy over Outlook files, clean install Acer, install phoneconnector (software first), test skype, get beta of ABC, ask about new features, rip Murder One, rip K Street, laundry, go through mail, install kingston software, clean install klipfolio.

Bridge on Saturday. Buy beer. Buy CDRs. Ramones. Try file transfer with Winrar corp.

No Heavy Lifting

Writing suddenly seems to have become incumbent on me drinking, which is always a good sign. I think I've decided that general culling is going be better than obsessive arranging, at least this time round. Stout tastes funny.

I got my reality distorted again. Widgets look nice, but thinking of Opera and Klipfolio, those all seem less and less impressive. And when he goes on about digital music it makes me want to hit things.

You See, It's a Two Part Plan

First you show up. Then you see what happens.

Superstar

Watching it brings me to a number of conclusions. I feel the sudden urge to react strongly against Todd Haynes. His politics is more middle-brow than I'd think imaginable - the term "the robots are going to eat us" springs to mind - or my new favorite, a capitalist version of a tin foil hat. Boo hoo, commercial representation, blah blah, oh marxist me. Twat. A large portion of why the film might be thought of as compelling would be due to the music, which is rather lovely. It was pointed out to me one of Haynes' contradictions in the film, that fame and celebrity, more importantly media-ness, come under some kind of limp flailing, when there's this almost fetishistic interest in the persona of a figure that would be iconic for so many reasons. ie he is politically and socially conscious/sentient (barely), but he still loves the trappings of Karen Carpenter. But she does sound like Aimee Mann. And as far as I know, image, or the perpetuation of image, is supposed to have a lot less to do with it than familial control. I refer you to my second chapter. I'd provide a link to the site where you can get it as a direct download, but the rest of the site is annoying beyond words. If he's still going on in the same way, he's that particular kind of rabid. The rabid that eats itself.

Distracted

And so it seems a bit fun to just treat writing here (avoiding the B word) as a way of staving off desperation - the boring kind. Bunch of things that are slipping away, but whatever. Rachel Ray is on, and it is so much like porn, it's almost not funny.

I've always sort of liked making lists here, so DiscHub, another spindle of 50 Taiyo Yuden, the compact fluorecent bulbs, new thumbdrive, think about the new hitachi drive.

Writing here makes it clear that it's not a new medium, simply another interface - it doesn't seem to fundamentally change the experience. Links I suppose (the pictures could have been clipped in), but...

Acrobat 7: Nice warez if you can get it

I'm sure my peeps can find it in the usual places, and I have to say, it's not bad for being free. Of course I'm talking about Acrobat, which the intellectually stunted will confuse with the normally free Acrobat Reader. It's faster, it seems less bloated, you can customise the install so you don't get annoying buttons in Office, though you can still get them in IE if you so desire. They've moved to an SDI system, which is honestly better, since unless you're Opera... Also the UI is snazzier, and the toolbar seems to zoom and squeeze, which is just dandy.

Unfortunately it led me to the realisation that Opera's printing is still not as nice as IE's, but with Proxomitron, that's not really that big a deal. And printing to PDF still seems more accurate/nicer than converting, though I can't say the difference between the two particularly announces itself.

And so I start wondering about when Opera will finally get around to implementing those CSS bits that will allow me to get rid of Proxomitron, and Michel coming over, and how disappointing eXeem has been, and other things that keep escaping me like ornery twinkies. What, we all wonder, will be the super duper new feature in Oprah 1.0? Opera's RSS reader's become more useful with the deluge of torrents from some places. Like a big net behind a boat.

The temptation to get a cheap Mac suddenly reminds me how not cheap they actually are. I'd only end up using Opera on it, there are no compelling features that I particularly want, the specs will suck, I'd have to get a KVM switch, etc. etc. Safari really wasn't *that* nice, and I'm sure the UI tricks get pretty old. And there is general irk. For 500 US I could build a much faster Athlon XP system (even a P4 HT system if I wasn't too picky with the board), overclock the fuck out of it, get triple the storage - AND have a Benq DVD writer chucked in. And Windows, like Office, is free.

VOIP is the wave of the future man. Once the fax stuff gets worked out, and with Skype for the regular people, and by BYODing, it's cheap and pretty easy. I wonder though, how Broadvoice can allow plan switching so often/easily, unless there's a catch somewhere.

I will some time get around to pointing out the futility, or just the crappy implementation of ratios on trackers. And being on the ass-handed end of Azureus makes me flick the foreheads of the ABC naysayers. When you seed, you should actually seed. I don't know why I feel like this time it'd be a good idea to donate to Lokitorrent, but just maybe. Iso hunt looks pretty good, and torrentspy will be better with feeds.

Ask me to show you my WiFi seeker :).

Opera 8 Beta 1!!

Happy Day. Changelog/download link is here. Press coverage of Opera is always so reluctant/lazy. The only articles I've seen have been basically lifted from the press release, and they focus an inordinate amount of attention (no doubt partly Opera's fault) on new features. It's the UI/rendering engine/cache, stupid. Apparently there's going to be a new name, speculation is circling round Oprah 1.0 or Operate (Opera 8, get it?).

Basically I think they were doing previews of it as 7.6 so as to spring this as a kind of christmas present, and also to minimise the protests of version no. inflation. All good fun.

Those interested can read my Modest Proposal.

Symrin and Martin Wainright

I almost wrote "it's strange the way things happen", but then decided that I'm not that awful a writer yet.

I had actually just recieved an e-mail from my hosting provider, telling me I had a vulnerability in my forum software (phpBB) that made them want to bale hay, but within minutes they've fixed it so ta-da.

What that led to though, was me actually going to my forum, something I haven't done for a bit, and find out people had actually posted on there. Now I suppose they posted while I was being lazy and holidaying in sunny Boston the last week, but no I probably wouldn't have known anyway.

The first is rather inconsequential, some girl/woman asking for free homework advice on the "meaning" of the flitcraft parable. Not that I'd mind talking to her about it, but she'd have to make a bit more of an effort - an e-mail about what she's got so far and a phone number/IM address would be sufficient. As will become more important later, my e-mail address, which I should make more prominent on my blog, can be found on the main page, www.fallingbeam.org.

I also stumbled upon someone posting in my guest book, you can read it here. Now this is remarkable in and of itself, since he's the first person ever to do so ever. It also probably betrays his age/technical knowledge, which I'm not making note of to scoff or belittle, but it tells me any number of things. First that he might not have spent that much time on this, and being a news person I suppose that fits in with some idea I might have of them. Secondly that he's from the Guardian, and despite(?) what I might otherwise say about it, it is also another one of those that talks about blogs a lot, though since they give prizes for them, they can't be all that silly about it. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that google ranks me pretty high in a search for Symrin.

This is what he wrote, which when I read it struck me with a kind of unexpected surprise (sic); and the instance of it was suddenly rather moving.

"Hi there - I don't know if this is the way to send a message - excuse ignorance - but I chanced through Google on a reference to the Symrin takeaway in York in a message on your site from 'subtitles'. This described Naseem Majothi the powerhouse behind the takeaway - though not by name. I thought Subtitles might be interested to know that Naseem is indeed a marvellous person from a marvellous family. Her father Yusuf has just died and I went with my family to a very moving ceremony of tributes to him at Huntington school in York on Sunday - all sorts of people from his brothers to a police inspector and neighbours talking about him. My connection with the family is that my parents took them in when they were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972 - with just £55 having had their thriving business taken from them without compensation. The spirit they showed in rebuilding their lives is truly admirable and U hope a source of hope and encouragement to others. They also make extremely good food - if Subtitles doesn't already know, they may be interested to hear that a proper restaurant next to the Symrin is under construction. Anyway, hope that's interesting. It's a small world thanks to the Net. All best Martin Wainwright (Northern editor, The Guardian)"

The occurance of events just seems all kinds of boggly. As Mal would say in reaction to a naked woman in a freezer-box: "huh." The blog entry he found was this one.

Well, Martin, my name is Louis Khor, I was a student at the University of York from 2000 to 2003. I started ordering Symrin because I'd heard great word of mouth about it from a friend I no longer talk to whose girlfriend at the time was a muslim and he'd joined the muslim society and heard about this place and told me (amongst others). Coming from Singapore we were all used to a much different tenor of "curry", I would assume south rather than north indian. But intitially the reputation was of big portions and the hottest curry we'd ever tasted anywhere. Initially my house mate would order and he would be know as Mr. Ong, but eventually when i started calling more, she would start to think he was me, Mr. Louis, and that's when he ceded ordering duties to me, because he suspected she was nicer to me. Knowing that Uni fees aren't what they are for foreign students, I'm convinced that if she had children, that I'd helped to put at least one of them through Uni, with the amount and freqency I ordered, or as it might turn out, they might think of naming a table in their new restaurant in my honor :).

She really was unfailingly friendly, though there were times when you could tell that she was no end of busy. After a while, I abdicated my choice of curry to her, since I had tried too many things there for me to trust my notion of novelty. She would sometimes include free drinks, and her free portions of sweet rice got me hooked on to that in turn.

On certain days, if I'm not wrong, it would be her father, the one mentioned above, who would deliver the curry. He was always similarly affable, and the recurrance of his deliveries was uneventful in as much as he wasn't a dolt and didn't get lost/late. It's unfortunate that the memory I have of him is not the most flattering one, the memory of young people thinking old people simply a bit barmy. He had once offered me and my kitchen of housemates the oppurtunity to buy the lovely chicken and spices and stuff that they bought wholesale, and we all smiled indulgently and sort of rolled our eyes. When I tried once ordering curry power, it never appeared, so...

As for her, I only met her, and saw her holding court, that once, and much of that recollection still seems pretty accurate. What I do remember is her being rather more forceful to her local staff, in the way only immigrant figures ordering about brits can be - reminds me of the chinese supermarket in leeds. Though now I think of it, her register did significantly alter even when she shifted from clients to her kitchen staff. She offered us free drinks and chastise me for getting the rather expensive Rani, and for later leaving the cans lying about. I'm so definitely going back there when next we go over to the UK. I hope the restaurant is up by then. Unfortunately I can't even seem to remember the number of the place, much less the address. I'm sure directory inquiries will have it somewhere.

I had to steel myself with a bottle of stout to write this. There's just been too much pre and post holiday trauma with money pissed away for me to be too eager to do too much. I hope my RMA goes well. I suppose there's really no need for martin to contact me again, and he's probably as elusive to contact as he found me to be, so whatever, but my e-mail address, as referenced above, can be found here.

Edit: Michel helpfully pointed this link out to me, the mention is right at the bottom (Opera's search function would be particularly useful). Here's the details of Symrin anyway for those looking for it:

Symryn
4 Saxon Place, York YO3 7UE
Tel: 01904 426293