Aquarionics

Command and Conquer

This afternoon, at 9am NY time, the worst terrorist activity ever began on New York. Others can cover this far more thoughally than I could ever do, so I give you extracts from one IRC channel's coverage of the events. There is a Text log available (Also in HTML). These are extracts from that, with added bits from other places.

"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb" , "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning" - Sombody on #news, ircnet, misquoting Nostradamus, See below.

Second Plane Impact

[14:07] [Carol] Plane crashed into world trade centre

[14:13] [Aquarion] [Two Planes] Have just crashed into the World Trade Center

"Expect the middle east to be flattened shortly." - Kuro5hin

[14:13] [Aquarion] BBC News just gone into Emergency mode

[14:23] [Aquarion] Both planes were hijacked in Boston

[14:25] [Aquarion] BBC Dip-ed. Four days ago, the US issued a world wide alert.
[14:25] [Aquarion] They knew *something* was going to happen.

[14:25] [Aquarion] ...swift retalitory action against whoever they thing is responsible...
[14:26] [Womble] Shoot first, ask questions later
[14:26] [ccooke] yay! it'll hurt less if we kill a few more people!

[14:38] [Shivetya] 'they say' Pentagon is on fire as well
[14:38] [Aquarion] Well, buildings behind the pentagon
[14:38] [Aquarion] No, the *actual* pentagon.

"An explosion rocked the U.S. Capitol today even as plumes of smoke billowed from the Pentagon today after several eyewitnesses told ABCNEWS they saw a plane crash into the building."

Towers aflame

[14:40] *** Sam has joined #afp
[14:40] [Aquarion] Sam is in NY, for those who don't know
[14:40] [Sam] I can see the smoke from my room :(

[14:46] [Aquarion] "Radical Islamic Group"?

[14:47] [Aquarion] [...] 1k injured
[14:48] [Rhys] plus however many were on the planes...

[14:51] [Rhys] 'nother explosion at world trade center
[14:53] [Aquarion] Oh fuck
[14:53] [Aquarion] Yes, it was the south tower

First Tower Collapses

[14:56] [Aquarion] We can't see for the smoke
[14:56] [Sam] the sky right above me is blue. then rapidly, grey to black towards Manhattan. it smells outside and I just saw a cloud of ashes fly past my window. I'm fucking scared.
[14:57] [Thomas] oh god.. the south tower is the tourist one :(

[15:02] [P-work] Shoot them down *with* passengers in?

[15:03] [Aquarion] ...Eradicate this evil...

[15:06] * Martin is relieved to hear from friends in New York

[15:08] [Aquarion] Eyewitness reports:
[15:08] [Aquarion] "You were walking, or driving?"
[15:08] [Aquarion] "I was running"

[15:16] [Womble] "car bomb outside US State Dept", says the BBC

[15:17] [Rhys] "My father works in the World Trade Center. I woke up this morning from a phone call from my aunt, who told me about the attacks. I was so scared that I couldn't even react to the news. I had to wait about ten minutes but my dad finally called; he and my mom woke up late this morning so he wasn't on time for work. "

[15:18] [Sam] gah. just heard a plane overhead and freaked

2nd Tower Collapses

[15:20] [Sam] AHH the other tower collapsed

[15:21] [Womble] Sam: Are you sure?

[15:22] [Sam] I'm positive
[15:22] [Sam] I just saw it happen live

"[simon_777] people *did* get out of the seccond building. My currnebt client (sun microsystems) have offices on teh 35th and 36th floors. Appernetnly acording to an internal email. all are safe and accounted for. " -#news, ircnet

[15:30] [Martin] this is like living in a Tom Clancy novel...

[15:33] [Sam] another plane crashed by Pittsburg? argh

[15:36] [Aquarion] Israel is evacuating it's embassies

[15:44] [Aquarion] Yasser Arafat has condemed the attacks - "Terrible and Unbeliever"
[15:44] [Womble] Gosh, really?

[15:54] [Aquarion] My god
[15:54] [Thomas] nick?
[15:54] [Aquarion] Pictures of WTC2 collapsing

[15:59] [Aquarion] 10000 people dead (mtv3, finland)

[15:59] [P-work] tamara: Depends. The pilot may have thought that crashing into the top of a tower and sticking there is slightly better than coming down unpredictably-somewhere-else-populated.

"Defcon 5 =- peacetime.. Defcon 4= readiness (as in cold war), defocn 3 = war alert ready to mobilize, troops recalled, defcon 2 = active war state, defcon 1 = nukewar"
"Defcon2 confirmed!!!!!!!!!"
"Defcon is *not* public Knowlage. All Defcon status reports will be *rumours*, FFS people." - Aquarion, ircnet

[16:32] [Aquarion] I wish they'd stop showing that footage.
[16:32] [Womble] me too
[16:32] [KinkyWork] which bit?
[16:32] * hippo feels sick : bbc just shown the plane crashing into the 2nd tower
[16:32] [Womble] yeah, that
[16:32] [Aquarion] That bit

[16:32] [Rhys] it's just unbelievable. i mean, things hit and on fire yes, but the world trade centre simply _isn't there_ any more

[16:40] * Aquarion wonders about Stephen Evans
[16:40] [Aquarion] His broadcast got cut off as the 1st tower collapsed.
[16:41] [Rhys] aq: oh that guy who said "hello...wait, there's another expl...[EOF]"?

Reports from the scene

[16:43] * mike sighs at a post on metafilter: "if you look at how they fell, they fell absolutely straight down and that says that there were explosives rigged already in the tower and they wanted it to look like a result of the crashes. the first crash was to get the cameras rolling. the second crash was to introduce. and the bombings were to ice the cake. right now a 2nd hijacked plane is heading towards the pentagon as i type this. THIS IS WAR."
[16:44] [Aquarion] mike: The towers were designed to fall straight down. Should they fall at all.

[17:12] [Aquarion] *sigh* Why do I feel that at any moment Jeramy Beadle should pop up and say "Hah! Fooled you!". *wish*
[17:13] [thom] it feels like that should happen. that this is just a goddamn *joke*, a ridiculous hoax, with puppets and models and cgi.

[17:16] [pol] This is some seriously bad stuff

[17:19] [Aquarion] All other news has now been suspended until further notice
[17:19] [ccooke] aqua: ?
[17:20] [Aquarion] The tory leadership contest, the TUC stuff, and most everything not .us based as been suspended until they have a chance at airtime
[17:20] [ccooke] understandable.

[17:27] [ccooke] aqua: any more news/confirmations/denials about the one heading to london?
[17:28] [Aquarion] None
[17:28] [Aquarion] None even *mentioned*, all planes that the FAA mentioned are accounted for
[17:29] [Aquarion] And if *anyone* belives that a plane due to fly from Boston to NY would make it to .uk, I have a new fuel tank to sell you.

[ Ananova | BBC | CNN | Newsforge ]

Modified 11:55-12/09/2001 for removed incorrect content, and more links :-)
Modified Dec 2002 for image-rot
Modified Sept 2003 for further link/image-rot

This your country, this is your country on war

Drugs are bad. look at where drug money goes. Taxes are good, look at where tax money goes.

Politics, Geekdom and a little Comic Relief

So, Mr Bush gave his speech on the state of the union, and I watched the BBC news report of it, in which it pointed out that it sounded more like a sermon than a political speech.

George W Bush is a problem, because he is quite plainly going to go to war no matter what happens. My problem with this is that someone we didn't elect appears to be dictating British policy (Whether the country who have him as Grand High Poobah did is another matter). My problem is also with the person we did elect, whose next job is to convince the 94% of the country that don't believe Mr Bu^Hlair's position is correct. Note that word. Convince. Less than 6% of the country think it's a good idea to go to war without UN backing, and our leader is trying to convince us otherwise. I have a feeling this should be the other way around, this being a democracy and everything, the idea is for us - the people - to put them - the politicions - in charge. When the Minister for Technology is able to install a new hard-drive, when the Minister for Sport has managed a sports club, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a degree in finantial theory, then I might start trusting the political system again (Oh, and yes, there are geeks who meddle in politics. Watch Debian-[devel|legal] if you don't believe me...).

Why are we fighting Saddam? Because he might still have the Weapons of Mass Distruction (Argh!! Irradiated Wafers! Poisoned Wine!) the US (and us) sold him a dozen years back? Because we as Englightened countries have the right to enforce our views on politics? For fucks sake, the UKs last prime minister was recently raked over hot coals for an affair with a co-worker, the last US president too, both have suffered major economic crises in the last few years, the UK has unemployment levels that are just scary and a system for dealing with it that is just as much so (As LoneCat says, if she had been relying on the Jobseeker's Allowance for food and rent she'd have starved to death long ago). This mythical Freedom of Speech thing? The UK doesn't have a divine freedom of speech, though it has the Human Rights act, which says we do, and libel, slander and other laws that say we can't. The legal system is like an os code-base that's been in use and development for decades without a rewrite, There are function calls never used, deprecated (but still occsionally used so we can't lose them) updated to buggery and new functionality tacked onto the end, and enough loopholes for the thing to crash every so often.

Is our system any better? We don't stone people to death, but we do send them to prison for three years of a life sentance before we decide they didn't do it. Personally, I'd prefer the government to put more money into things like the Transport Network, but that's just me.

The argument about archives goes on, too, so it's time to bring out the real guns. I mean, are people still using serif fonts on calenders? I mean, it's so passe, darlings. Go for the sans-serif, or I'll remove you from my blogroll. All of you. That'll learn all y'all.

Comic Relief then. I read too many comics. There is my neatocool Today's Comics thing at my start page which shows you exactly how bad my addiction is. The newest two are a couple I've been meaning to catch up with for some time. The first is Angst Tech, and the second is Polymer City Chronicles. Both are computer-gamer orienated, but I *think* they are both good enough to sustain you though the bits you don't understand if you arn't a gamer. Oh, and Jeff Minter not only has a new game in development, but also a weblog. Yay.

Let them eat cake

An eventful day. Well, comparatively. Nobody has phoned me telling me I've won a million on the lottery, which would surprise me. On the other hand, no people demanding five grand in unpaid tax. On the third hand, a lack of cheese engineered from Brussels sprouts seeking my destruction with the aid of exploding smiley faces.

Swings and roundabouts, then.

Yesterday Pol brought my camera back, which is very good. Today LoneCat finished making a birthday cake for me. It's very, very nice, and looks like an Aquarium :-)

Photos of said cake are in the gallery. Oh, yes, and I've gotten around to recoding the Gallery for Epistula. Go Me. On top of this, I've put the new design onto the Forever continuous story system, and done some behind the scenes tweaking to make bits slightly easier. Part of this new stuff includes the separating the Forever user system from the prospective AqCom one, which has the side-benefit that for the first time since November, new people can get Forever accounts. What? You don't know what Forever is? go have a look. It's very odd.

The two main topics in blogdom at the moment seem to be the Columbia incident and the war. My position on the Columbia thing is an unpopular one. I believe that seven astronauts perishing whilst doing something they enjoyed is less tragic than most of the rest of the deaths in this sad world. I've killfiled all the threads in the newsgroups I read on the subject because I find the arguments tedious, and I've given up arguing with those who keep telling me how tragic it is. Yes, it's unfortunate. Yes, it's sad. Move on. It may be simply that at my age (Younger than the ship) I don't understand what it means for those who saw the first time. They died in service of their country. I fear, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, that they are merely leaving early to avoid the rush.

Make Tea, Not War

Today there was the march in London to attempt to stop us doing something silly, like war. Vaughan marched, Meg marched, Mouse was marching, and many other people I know also marched.

I didn't. Partly because I think that if anything was going to stop this, the weapons inspectors' report would stop it (Iraq, as Nick so elequontly put it appears to have a tin opener.), and partly because I was due to spend the evening in a pub in Cambridge, taking salt and speaking of affairs with people.

That is, the 'speaking of affairs' was with people, the speaking was not of 'affairs with people'. The problem with floridless is ease of misunderstanding

I agree with Tom in part, in that my main objection to this whole event is not that we appear to be fighting against Iraq (Though the lack of expressed logical reason - or evidence for given logical reasons - is a major factor) it's more that we appear to be riding rough-shod over sixty-odd years of established procedure to do so. I don't trust Bush to do anything more than protect his interests, and I don't trust Blair at all. In fact, the only thing I think would stop Blair supporting this action would be for him to think it would damage his chances of re-election beyond repair.

Then there is the Oh, when we said Never Again, we only really meant Never Again against Japan, who are our friends at the moment. We have toys that go Boom, you expect us not to use them? thing, which is just too scary for me to even consider. (Both links via Nick)

Ketchup

Various things have happened to me, and to Epistula, while I’ve been away. Also to the blogroll. So once more, it’s time for:

While You Were Out

• Epistula got Textiled so I can write all my entries in english and the computer does the hard part. Yay.

• Aqcom got a new Projects section. It’s currently a flat HTML thing mainly as a list (As much for my benifit as yours) as to what I’m working on. Eventually it’ll become fully Epistulated.

• I got a new project, or more accuratly a reactivation of an older idea. It’s a full Geek Thing review system, which I’m building as generic as I can, and exploring all the things I learnt while doing Epistula. Plus the kind of detailed cookie-based login system I haven’t done since StoryVille (Ex fiction project. Died of code-deletion). Interesting thing about it right now is that users select a licence for user-submitted reviews & comments to be released under. This allows – for example – someone to licence all their reviews under a CC(Creative Commons) thing. The two things I would like to happen to this idea would be for reviews to be editable based on licence (So if someone releases a GDL review, someone else can edit it), but that could get too complicated, and also lead to the possibility of someone going though and replacing all GPL‘d reviews with a string of spaces. So, Freedom of Information verses Fuckwittery Of Idiots. Round one, ding ding.

• Funcom have announced a sequel to the game I was raving about last month: The Longest Journey

• I applied for jobs. I got phone calls from recruiters, I still haven’t had a single interview. I wait patiently.

• And then there is the World of Ends stuff. My response is somewhat like Stavros wrote, only less amusing. The internet is* complicated. Not in spite of, but because the idea is so simple. ”[T]he Internet was designed to hold smaller networks together, turning them into one big network” lies up there with “They’re only words written down, how much damage can they do?” in tales of “Points, Missing thereof”. The thing isn’t that the idea of The Internet is complicated, it’s that the consequences are quite so far-reaching. The document appears to be doing the classic thing of arguing about what it originally was, as opposed to what it means now. Because the internet *isn’t the simple network of networks that once it was, not in the public mindset. It’s the far more complicated idea of the people using the network of networks. From granny on AOL though to Luke The L33t Hacksaw burning though a 1024 bit/sec connection. We need a new name either for this new thing, or for the old one. Then we can have this discussion without terminology getting in the way.

• Cam returned with a well formed rant about Americanism. The US Administration still scares me, even more so now it appears to be running England as well. Blessings of any deities listening to anyone caught up in this fucking mess. That’s all of us, by the way.

• Still not king yet.

Us Congress On Expectoration Of Vocal Inhibitors

Show the flag and pass the ketchup was the order of the day in House cafeterias Tuesday. Lawmakers struck a lunchtime blow against the French and put "freedom fries" on the menu.

And for breakfast they'll now have "freedom toast."

The name changes follow similar actions by restaurants around the country protesting French opposition to the administration's Iraq war plans.
(ŠAssociated Press)

Yup. The US Goverment are taking the word "French" from the language because the french won't play ball. This isn't it, though. Bill H.R.1072.IH states that No funds under the control of any United States official that are expended for post-conflict assistance for Iraq may be provided, through grant, contract, or other means, to any French firm. Note how dispite the fact we are not actually at war yet they are still allocating who will — and will not — be clearing up after this fight that still — theoretically — might not happen.

And the title? Back to the old Spitting the Dummy thing.

(Thanks to St-Lemur for the original "Fries" link)

Please stop hanging around

So this is what we find.

In the last days of March 2003, nobody could have imagined that forces beyond the imagination of average were conspiring to make Aquarion Kael D’Blue’s life more complicated than necessary. Necessary, in this case, being… well, at all would be nice.

The house hasn’t happened. I’m still homeless, still staying with Pol & Supermouse in the wilds of Aylesbury, still trying to get back the deposit for the old place, still recovering the extra rent they took by accident, still trying to resolve the new flat before I wear out my welcome here.

I hate, with a passion unholy, this, because I should have moved in last week, I should have sorted my life out, and even with the crap at the end of last month, I should have moved in by last weekend. To be fair, this isn’t all my fault, but it’s still annoying.

The results of this are severalfold. Not only has it resulted in the creation of Point First d4, quick and painful replacement for the dead 2d10 site – in three days flat, but also a number of minor (mostly internal) additions to Forever (Including the RSS feed, and the ability to add new users, which has apparently been dead since December) but also a bug & suggestion tracking system (Not written, but installed, in the form of Anthill, a PHP Bugzilla-like) for all the various Aquarionic systems (Epistula, Afphrid, Aqcom & PFd4) and I’ve also started on a redesign (You can act all suprised now) which, whatever it ends up being, will be less orange than Simon’s.

In less technological news, I’ve been helping Pol & Supermouse do such things as put up fencing, trellising and posts. Also clearning out server rooms, putting things into lofts, and watching copious amounts of really, really bad TV curtosy of my first detailed exploration of the anchient art of having hundreds of channels of bad TV at my summoning.

In conclusion, Samuri Jack is quite good, but most of them should have been shot at birth. Oh, and Graham Norton is So Very Annoying. Conclusion ends.

Oh, and we appear to have succeeded in invading Iraq, leading to lots of incredibly cinematic pictures of US Troops – ably assisted by grateful residents – destroying statues. I mean, you couldn’t arrange for such cinematic footage. Sorry, I’m being cynical again.

Does that mean we can get back to the important things, like new XML specs, Grad school, Personality Defects and the value of scemantic markup? apart, of course, from those who never left it. I tell you what, I’ve got this great idea for how to communicate between weblogs, and it involves carrier pigeons with the evil bit set...

Room in the handbasket

So, We have on the one hand Oh My God as Blanket calmly ignores the desires of thousands of citizens and moves the ID cards in under a new name and department, that of immigration control.

I’m agreeing with Stuart on this one, they did the consultation, and they ignored us. In fact, even if it was merely a “What sort of things should we consider?” as Nick suggests in the comments, then they have ignored it. They have, as far as I have seen, completely failed to address most of the points brought up by the opponants of such a scheme.

Nick’s counterargument that the government are not obligied to listen to us is well noted, and whilst I agree with the points, I don’t like them. In fact, I really don’t like the idea that any government can produce ideals to make us vote for them, and the only thing we have to hold them to it is four years later. I realise that not all the election promises can suceed, real life gets in the way. And the fact that most of the country will still vote for this particuler set of clowns because they won’t even consider the other options.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, The US Government has found a loophole allowing them to build a floating death-camp with execution, and no appeal or jury. I think I’ll go back to watching West Wing DVDs, then I can live in a happy world where the people in charge of a country actually give a flying fuck about the opinions of everyone.

Darkness

Sometimes, the darkness is because there is no light.

Sometimes, the darkness is because the lights are off.

Sometimes, the darkness is because you have your eyes closed.

Absolutly Nothing

Stephen Fry:

Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher and mathematician, got into terrible trouble by writing quite fearsome articles against the first World War when it began. He got all these letters from people who said, My child is prepared to lay down their life for their country. Dont you think that sacrifice demands some respect?
He wrote this extraordinary essay in which he said, Dont you understand? The sacrifice were asking of our young is not that they die for their country, but that they kill for their country. Thats the sacrifice. To ask a child to kill someone else, whom youve never met. Thats a moral choice, pulling a trigger. Having a bullet hit you is not a moral choice. You dont decide to be killed. Its a terrible thing that happens to you. But killing something is something you do and thats a desperate sacrifice. And were seeing that in the Iraq war. Thats what this poor Lynndie England did, this tragic soldier who was shot smugly smiling next to naked Arab prisoners. Thats the chickens coming home to roost. Its not Americans being asked to die by President Bush. Its Americans being asked to kill and to torture. Not necessarily by name. He doesnt say, I want you to kill this or that one. Of course, politics isnt that simple. Essentially that is what society does. It asks its young to kill, and thats what we all have to live with.

Blitz

It’s been brought to my attention that people may not be aware that I no longer work in London.

I no longer work in London, at a place just outside Kings Cross.

I no longer have a 90% chance of being in a train, just before 9am today, that was around the Kings Cross area.

I have never been so glad of that fact than I was today. Everyone I know of in London has been accounted for as safe, for which I am grateful. I remember the days of the IRA bombings, when each bombing meant a fear that something near my dad’s office had happened.

Today is a bad day to be in London. Today is a good day to do exactly what you were going to do anyway. Sit back, enjoy where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing. Living, if nothing else. Many people today aren’t.

This is not a cause to unite under. We don’t need another one. This is a cause to ignore. We couldn’t have stopped this without losing too much. I can say this from my happy glass house of not having anything terrible happen to someone I know over today’s tragedy – You’d be amazed how many people turn into rabid right-wing reactionaries in the aftermath of a crisis – but terror was their intent. Here they won’t get the people, after the IRA and such we don’t respond well to threats of violence, I’m just hoping out glorious leaders don’t do anything stupid right now.

Oh, and Tony Blair got the reaction right. It’s mildly unfair to critise the man on everything he does wrong without occasionally noting that he isn’t a complete muppet.

Talking of which, tonight I intend to get LoneCat to watch Smiletime.

Tuesday, 11th September 2001

I had come back from a weekend in Cambridge, where I had had a lot of fun.

I was working my way up to the decision to drop out of university before the new term started because I didn’t like it very much and thought someone might accidentally kill me.

I was in a kick of titling my entries with computer game titles.

So I was on IRC while the towers were falling