Aquarionics

So, we have more or less been adopted by Arnold The Cat recently. Mostly because I tend to leave the back door open (Mmm, nature) and Arnold likes being fuzzled and so wanders up to my room when I’m home.

LoneCat, love of my life and co-inhabitant of this particular version of domestic bliss, is allergic to cats. Arnold, recognising this, prefers to sit on her bed if the doors open, and glare at her when she isn’t stroking him. Which is – obviously – always.

Thus the essential drama is maintained. LoneCat verses Real Cat. LoneCat is well trained. As she has mentioned she occasionally lets Arnold use the house as a thoroughfare, and today this ritual was once again performed. Arnold batted at the cat flap (installed by previous owners, one-way locked by us. Cats can get out, but not in), LoneCat let him in, failing to notice that it was pelting with rain outside.

Arnold, finding himself in a warm place in which he was not actively being rained upon, felt that this was a place in which he could remain. Specifically, he felt that halfway up the spiral staircase was the ideal place from where a small, cute, white and grey splotched feline could lay and carefully watch all that passed below. LoneCat – who couldn’t touch the cat – then tried to convince it vocally that this wasn’t a good place to be, and out in the nice, fresh rain was the ideal place for the well appointed feline this summer.

The cat didn’t swallow this. Instead, it batted at one of the yellow plastic ducks we have on our stairs for reasons I one day hope to explain. The cavalry – that is Me – was called in. I attempted to talk Arnold down from the stairs. I tried pushing, guiding it with strokes and fuzzles, and lifting it up. This was repulsed with tactics such as ignoring me, moving out of the way, and clinging to the carpet like industrial strength Velcro.

I used the heater to blow hot air at it, and it hid in an Amazon box. When I picked up the Amazon box, it went into the kitchen. I guided it out of the kitchen and it made a break for my bedroom – within the clutter of which a small feline could hide undetected for decades – whereupon the cat tripped on a rubber duck and hit the stairs face first.

At this point I could probably have picked up the stunned pet without any problem, save for the minor fact that I was trying not to laugh to much to do anything much. There then followed a short period of the cat attempting to pretend nothing had happened, whilst pointing out that it had a hurt paw now, and would quite like sympathy.

We left it. Score one to the cat.

Obviously, a little while after we left it alone it left of it’s own accord. It is, after all, a cat.

Once more with spellcheck

I now have Doom³

BBL.

I’ve released the very first version of AqWiki (Version Prerelease Alpha Milestone Zero Beta, not to underline the whole “Not final” thing too heavily. Or anything).

I’m looking for people to download it and run though the install instructions and report any problems to the bug tracker. It requires Linux, PHP, MySQL & Apache, and testers will earn my eternal gratitude and stuff.

Every LiveJournal publishes an RSS feed and an Atom feed, except those who are already syndicated accounts. The problem is that the main benefit of LJ beyond something like blogspot is the ability to block off some posts to everyone but your ‘friends’.

Much as I distrust the terminology, this is occasionally useful. So, how do you subscribe to a feed and see the ‘friends’ only posts? Like this:

http://username|password@​www.livejournal.com/​users/​exampleusername/​data/​rss?auth=httpd

Magic.

Don’t, whatever you do, do this in something public like Bloglines, or you’ll be storing stuff other people want private in a database over which you have no control and they have no idea.

+(Incidentally, If you add a feed with a username or username & password to bloglines, it’s set as “Private” so nobody else can see it. It’s still in their database, though, so I suppose it depends on how much you trust Ask Jeeves not to be Evil).+

Observations that the first this is equally true to LJ are normally completely ignored.

edited to replace soft-hypens in the long URL with zero width spaces because Mozilla doesn’t support shy and it breaks the layout. I hate the bazaar model when it means that nobody else cares enough to fix a bug. The relevant bug had it’s fifth birthday recently

From Preparing for emergencies

Page 14:

“To prepare for an emergency, you should take time to find out: [...]

• The emergency procedures for your children at school
• The emergency procedures at your workplace”

Page 16:

“If you hear, see, or come across anything that may be linked with terrorist activity, please tell the police.
[...]
Have you seen anyone pay an unusual amount of attention to security measures at any location?”

So, report anyone you see reading PfE to the police. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.

(No, don’t report me, I got this from ForeverDirt)

Stay alert, troubleshooters.