Here’s the stuff packed into boxes and I’m soon to dash off to pick up the van. We take the ferry tomorrow (Thursday), return on Friday to drop off van and pick up car and kids to return for good on Saturday.

piles of boxes and junk and stuff

Fun(!)

On top of that…as I’ve mentioned in my tweet to Twitter recently:

Moving house = moving servers = moving blog engine = moving email system = moving spam filters system = and more = geek heaven

Yup am moving servers etc etc and going off Wordpress onto something else, and setting up my own email server along with DNS etc etc. I’ve gotten myself a VPS - virtual server. More on this later.

Here’s one damned good reason why that bill’s timing is vital for us…

The Family Guy series will be online videos based - you’re not going to get it on TV. You’ll get it over the Internet. And as a result of this Bill, we can expect it to be subtitled (well actually no we won’t this time although they could do it…as there’s a time period etcetc but future series - we can expect it)

Read here for more about The Family Guy going online.

Love or hate The Family Guy, there’s no denying that it’s a very popular series, we even get it in the UK thanks to the BBC and it’s popular here too. However this does show a glimpse of the future to come - the line between TV and the Internet is increasingly getting blurred. Bills like the HR 6320 is a gem not just for the USA, but for the rest of the world too as the Internet is an international medium with no boundaries.

I’ll point out that as this is a legislation for USA, they call it closed captions, but as I’m a brit, I’ll just refer to it as subtitles from this point on.

This covers a dozen areas, but for the deaf, the most interesting bits are the Internet video subtitling requirements which basically state that 18 months after its enactment, the FCC must set up regulations that include a schedule of deadlines for the provision of subtitles of video distributed to the public over the Internet.

This would cover 3 type of videos which are:

• preproduced material that has already been subtitled for TV viewing (iPlayer would be breaking the law here if it was Amercian as many TV shows that is subtitled isn’t subtitled on iPlayer)
• live programming*
• video that is “generally considered to be comparable to programming provided by multichannel programming distributors.”

* this would in theory cover 24 hours live shows such as done by Justin.tv in the past however the legislation does includes a waiver provision.
That means the FCC could grant waivers to companies that petition “showing that the requirements contained in this section would result in an undue burden.” - subtitling a 24 hours live show would be an “undue burden”!

It would not cover homemade videos that you see on YouTube etc. However it’s good to see that people in USA at least are taking the access to online video seriously. We really need it since look at:

BBC iPlayer - pathetic coverage of subtitles even for shows that was subtitled
Channel Four’s 4oD - No subtitles
ITV Catch Up - No subtitles
Sky Player - Unknown, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no subtitles.

All of that show that TV on Internet is already happening at least in UK. Yet in UK, they are not subject to the same Ofcom rules that cover subtitles for TV (which still isn’t 100% apart from BBC). There is nothing from Ofcom regarding subtitling of online videos. Thus they can do none at all and Ofcom won’t do anything because there’s no rules for it so it’s up to the provider what they do and it’s painfully obvious that without rules, they will not bother to do it.

• learning Python
• playing with Xen
  • only to scrap it and switch to KVM
• While at the same time running VirtualBox 1.6*
• Playing with Apache2 configuration as well as:
  • Dealing with multiple sites - internal only, for work using platforms such as:
    • Joomla
    • Drupal 5 & 6
    • Wordpress
    • GLPI (a type of asset manager)
    • Bugzilla
    • dimdim (open source version)
    • some others
• 2 test servers with Zimbra installed
  • one with massively broken Zimbra installation for recovery test and planning
  • one with working copy of Zimbra - backup planning and upgrade tests

That’s it just off the top of my head. There’s quite a lot of other things I’m dealing with that’s mostly work related again (and a lot of the above is work related too but not all…such as Python which is for myself and some internal sites is again for myself).

Obviously I need to manage myself a lot better than that but I never can focus my attention on a single project for long and so I tend to have a large pile of stuff that I can flick back and forth and keep me focused somewhat.

It’s painfully obvious that I am not going to get a 32 hours day granted by <insert diety of choice> here so…I need a slave. Any offers? Preferly a hot female of course.

It’s done by zombiecoterie who also have a blog called The Coterie of Zombies

I love the Beatles and this song is actually one of my favourite Beatles song so it was good to see a BSL version, which made it all the better for me. A big thanks to zombiecoterie for doing it.

zombiecoterie have done a couple of other videos in BSL too, you can view all of his videos here:

http://youtube.com/user/zombiecoterie

I’ve also noticed the Son of a Preacher Man video is also by him…I think I blogged about that in the past but completely forgot who it was by.

• firefox
  • window 1: 7 tabs
  • window 2: 6 tabs
• opera
  • 64 tabs[1]
• text editor (gedit)
  • 3 HTML
  • 1 bash script
• terminator[2]
  • 6 panes
  • 5 ssh to debian/ubuntu servers scattered across UK
  • 1 unused
• gnome terminal[3]
  • 3 windows
  • 2 ssh to my webserver (2 accounts)
  • 1 just finished running sudo apt-get install terminator
• eog
  • this was attempting to open a TIFF image from my wife but it’s reporting that I do not have enough memory for it (have just noticed it’s a 950Mb image)
• openoffice writer
  • 1 Word document (written in 1999)
• thunderbird
  • 3 IMAP account
  • lighting extension enabled
• pidgin (IM)
  • 1 msn
  • 1 googletalk
• empathy (IM - testing)
  • 1 msn
• gtwitter
• wine
  • steam.exe[4]
• virtualbox
  • 1 VM running Windows XP
  • 1 VM running Debian Sarge
  • 1 VM running Fedora 9
• gnome-do
• tomboy
• zimbra-desktop

[1] yes I counted. yes a lot is not needed and need to be closed. I’m lazy and opera works so well. this is the latest build of opera 9.50 available here. and frankly it works better and is faster than firefox. I do have epiphany installed too although I’ll like to get epiphany with webkit instead of gecko as a good alternative to opera and firefox.

[2]terminator - first heard from Planet Ubuntu and first time using it today - it is awesome for terminal lurve and is not the film

[3]gnome-terminal - I had these open before installing terminator - I have it mapped to Winkey-T so it is quick to open

[4]from this I play Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 (inc Ep 1 & 2) and Portal…when I’m not working of course…

My laptop is a Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz with 2GB of RAM. With all of the above, it is running fine with no slowdown apart from when eog was loading my wife’s image in which case I got some major slowdown for a short time and I then checked the image size. I thought it was 95Mb, but my mistake, it’s a 950Mb TIFF image eek!

All of the above is spread over 4 desktops which I can switch over quickly and easily using Compiz cube effect. This is a bloody fantastic 3D “gimmick” in that while it might be eye-candy, it’s a very useful eye-candy in that I am better able to visual where my work is on a cube. I also use Scale (similar to OSX’s Expose but more powerful and frankly better) but in Hardy it’s broken so it’s disabled

Uptime of my laptop (which also count suspended mode since it’s not a reboot) is

11:33:20 up 6 days,  2:29,  9 users,  load average: 0.73, 0.52, 0.43

However due to recent updates it is asking me to restart which I have yet to do.

Need I say more…?

So, I started reading Silent Alarm and the first thing that struck me was how you, Joe have no real knowledge of the processes of your early years. We all have our own emotional memories, and memories of events, but I�??m not sure you know why some of the things that happened, happened; and that is some thing you are entitled to know. So my dearest Joe this is your story. I will leave the emotion out of it, I�??m sure now you are a father you will understand that the things that hurt your child hurt you, and I don�??t need to explain that.

Just before you were three, in the summer you were slightly poorly and went to bed for about half a day with a slight temperature, this caused no alarm and you recovered very quickly it was only later that you seemed to ignore us when we talked to you , wouldn�??t come when I called you but as you were always wilful to be honest I just assumed you were being an independent pain in the butt. Eventually it became fairly obvious that it was a bit more than that. A visit to the doctor diagnosed Glue ear and a small operation to insert grommets would solve the problem. I had no way of explaining this to you so I know you found the hospital visit very scary. I sat beside you and when you woke up I called your name and you didn�??t respond - not a good moment. The doctors were confused but decided that maybe they should redo the operation, by this time you were not having it and I had to give you the pre-med at home to try and calm you down!

Again the operation was a failure and we were left in a place with no answers, no explanations, apart from a theory that it might have been a mild attack of measles, and no one offer any real constructive help apart from putting us on the NHS tread mill for assessment and education. You and I Joe went up and down to London to visit various experts who tested your hearing and IQ, needless to say they confirmed one thing, that you were extremely clever! These trips were a nightmare for both of us and I guess we probably upset quite a few commuters on their journeys home!

The local authority offered you a place in a nursery school in Watford for children with hearing difficulties so I duely dragged you over I think you lasted about four weeks before they told me that they couldn�??t teach you and the best place for you would be a residential school in St Albans . You were four years old �?��?��?��?�..I told them to shove it and marched out never to return .this meant we had to find somewhere for you and this was why we ended up in whitchurch with you going to Bedgrove with Mrs Campball.

After that things calmed down a tad as we now had the support of the unit at school and apart from the constant visits to the ENT dept at Stoke Mandeville to get new ear moulds and hearing aids because you had thrown them away in the garden �?� I got very good at finding them! And the time when you wrote to your consultant to tell him off for not explaining things to you so we had an afternoon with him putting pretend grommets ito pretend ears! Life had some sort of direction until we got close to your 11 birthday I was told by the head master at Bedgrove that they were not going to put you in for the 11 plus and you would automatically be going to a school in Milton Keynes. I knew as did your teachers that you would pass the exam but the local government didn�??t want to face the problem of how to teach you in the local grammer school, and they weren�??t prepare to pay for you to go to Mary Hare . At around the same time there was a lot of talk on the radio about parental choice for schooling �?� nothing ever changes�?��?�..I was so angry that I phoned up Radio Four and told them your story they asked me to go up to London to be interviewed which I did, they then asked Aylebury County Council if they would like to reply, they declined . I got Mare Hare to let you take their exam even though they had finished the exam process for the year, which of course you passed and the local council agreed to fund you schooling without a fuss. The rest of course you know.

I had no guide lines there were no support groups, and I probably made mistakes but I did everything I could to fight your corner. The one thing I really really wanted for you Joe was for you to meet someone amazing who would be able to really talk and understand you, for you to have children, and most of all to be happy. Well sometimes wishes get granted you have the most amazing family Kat is simply the best as are Cadhla and Padraigh; so go on and be happy.

Love you all

Mum xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

========

Imagine a world of silence?

Wonderful! It’s so peaceful and I don’t have to listen to the wife’s nagging anymore!

Nor do I have to listen to the bullshit that’s churned out by the RNID as usual…

£50 million and they are unable to actually employ deaf people in senior positions. Seriously I might as well go and be rude here. They can take their bloody campaign and stuff it up their own fucking arse. I’m sick and tired of being pitied. I’m not a fucking object to be pitied.

Hello?! I’m well educated, I do well for myself, I have a job, I’ve got a family, and amazingly enough they do very well in school, top of class and all that, both of them. One of them is in Irish speaking school even, so that’s 3 languages one is learning and if it was up to RNID, they’ll paint me as a jobless piece of shit that’s struggle and planning to kill myself all the time whining non-stop about the loss of my hearing from when I was 3 or 4. Oh and my extremely mild tinntius would be painted as something that’s extremely painful and is 24/7 and all that…

For fuck’s sake RNID get your fucking head out of your fucking arse. Being an organisation that is run by hearing people - they have no idea how much it piss off deaf people. Sure these people doing the PR stunt might be thinking they’re such great folks doing a “good thing” for us poor bastards but why can’t they just stop and ask themselves…where’s the bloody research into this? Why not…you know…ask the people they’re supposed to represent instead of being all “yippee dooyaa! we’re such good hearted folks, those poor basta….err..deaf people must LOVE us for doing this for them”

No I don’t. I think you’re a bunch of pricks for doing it. There ya go, that’s my opinion. You’re just raising money to pay for some overpriced staff that know fuck all about deafness apart from running a business that doesn’t actually employ deaf people at a senior level.

What’s worse is that they does some token gestures that keep some deaf people saying year after year “oh but this time they’re actually starting to listen! we must keep it up! Join RNID and increase our voice!” - no it’s sheer bollocks. They’ve had years to perfect the art of BEING DEAF to the people they claim to represent. Ironic that….

Edited: Tony have done a good satire song here

Get it while it’s hot Just click on image above.

Slow broadband? Want printed free CD’s? Get it posted to you.

And here’s a damn good reason why I use Ubuntu…

Many thanks to all the people that have done a lot of work on the latest Ubuntu release, they are simply just too many to name, but every one of you all have done fantastic work.