Today I discovered that you can get a Bedwetting alarm that takes the form of a mat that goes under a child’s sheet. When the kid wets the bed it sets off an alarm that wakes the kid up and presumably, they will cease their weeing.

I got to thinking that if I had designed that, the alarm part of the device would be shaped in the form of a giant clown head who’s nose and eyes would light up and flash red at the same time as the clown screamed and howled at the child. I’d probably build an electric shock mechanism into it as well just to be sure the kid woke up as soon as it started wetting the bed.

The more advanced models could incorporate some learning systems that picked up on the child’s weeing patterns. Just before a predicted incident it could whisper “IF YOU DO, I AM GOING TO EAT YOU!” in a menacing voice whilst glowing, just a little…

To make this system more effective it needs to be hidden from view when the child is awake. I suspect a holographic device would be the best means of doing this and would come with the added plus that if the kid somehow got enough spine to throw something at the disembodied howling head; it would pass straight through it, adding to the mystery.

(C) Lawrie Inc. “Terrorising Small Children for over 30 years”.

There is a worrying thing happening at the moment. People are giving money to Pirate Bay so that they can buy Sealand. If you don’t know what Sealand or Pirate Bay is, then have a look here: http://buysealand.com/

The theory is that if Pirate Bay buys Sealand then a whole pile of operations varying from the mere dodgy to the sheer criminal can be run from there and nobody can touch them. So far they have raised $15,327 from donations. They state that if they can’t afford Sealand (I believe Sealand are looking at something in the region of half a billion dollars) they will buy another small island and declare independence.

Now I am a fan of Pirate Bay. If they want to give me a means of downloading episodes of Battlestar Galactica and Veronica Mars when I miss them on telly then I am all for this. If at the same time they are pissing off big companies that makes the whole thing even more fun. My problem isn’t with Pirate Bay, it is with the utter legal naivety and idioacy of these people. They seem to inhabit a world where they can own a nation state and commit illegal acts from it with no consequence. At the same time, there are wars going in in both Afganistan and Iraq against reghimes that supposedly committed illegal acts thinking they could do whatever they wanted.

Simply put; if they buy Sealand and start pissing off Sony or Murdoch, there is nothing stopping either of them getting a gunboat and blowing the thing out of the water for ever. They flaunt French Law? It’s not that hard a target for a single Exocet and those things sting! Why don’t they see this simple fact? They want to break the law and yet they want the law to protect them. Nobody out there is going to help them if someone decides they don’t like them; they are a large open target with “ABUSE ME BIG BOY” painted in neon on the side.

As I said, I rather like Pirate Bay and I’d prefer not to see it sunk for ever letting another pile of people with guns and money win. The legality of Sealand as an independent state is also very dodgy and even more so if it is sold. Nobody has ever taken that much time disputing it because previously it was just some random nutter waving a flag; as soon as they start to actually piss people off, methinks they will need a lot more than $15,327 to pay those legal fees. I have spent a good deal of my life and my money in court on issues like this over the years, it’s neither fun nor fruitful and the bastards nearly always win.

The other thing I find mildly amusing is the idiots who are giving them money. Fifteen years ago I wrote an article about the rot that sets in when things like this start asking for money - You can find it at http://lorry.org/Docs/life.cycle if you are curious. What is going to happen with all this money? Will it just end up being wasted on buying a pile of rock somewhere? It’s all very odd. Still they are Pirates, maybe it is all an elaborate scheme to relieve naive tossers of their money. If so then I wish them the best of luck!

The Technophobe News, the flagship magazine of The Technophobe Press is now open for business.

That is, it would be if the Editor, Printer, Binder, Distributor and only Author of this rather short lived journal wasn’t quite so terrified of his printer.

It happened yesterday. Previously the offices of The Technophobe Press were inhabited mostly by a comfortable old HP Laser Printer that had formerly been the property of BT and had been thrown away because it was obsolete. Obsolete is a word that the The Technophobe Press like. In our dictionary the entry for Obsolete reads:

ob-so-lete (adj): See Comfortable, Familiar and Useful.

The Technophobe Press were tempted yesterday by the offer of a supposedly obsolete colour laser printer. This offer sounded too good to be true, pretty colours would boost our readership no end and since this printer came with toners, it would save some load on the ageing HP. We were informed that it was large, we didn’t contemplate how large.

The first issue is that the offices of The Technophobe Press only have mortally sized doors. This is not a printer for mortals. The only place it would fit was in the porch so we had to clear away a whole pile of mouse eaten junk to create it a new home. At this point we were already in mild fear of it and wanted it to feel comfortable. A couple of hernias, some broken fingers and a lot of bruises later, The Printer was now settled and had power. Getting a network connection to the porch was a slightly more complicated matter involving moving a hub into there. When you have a hub in the porch, you know things are starting to get ridiculous. To make The Printer feel more at home, we introduced him to some locals, and tried to make him look as in place as possible.

It was time for a test print. After pressing buttons randomlyfor a while, a noise like a small jet engine started to issue from the innards of this beast; it rattled somewhat in the way the Tardis used to rattle back in the days when Dr Who had more comfortable special effects and after a little whine, it started to shoot out sheets of paper faster than should be possible. They weren’t blank sheets of paper, they were all full of tecnical stuff that looked important. At this point, we started to get suspicious that we may have allowed a Trojan Printer into our midst.

After downloading new drivers, setting the IP address and things that are not too complicated, and permissable to us here, we sent a few colour photos to The Printer. The house shook, the Tardis spoke and the colour pictures appeared as if from nowhere. Somewhat curled up but none the less excellent quality. Something that would have taken about 5 minutes on a mere mortal printer.

Now firmly convinced that something was wrong, it was time to search the Interwebs for details of this beastie. The results were shocking. It can print 28 sheets a minute in full colour and just under 40 a minute in black and white. It can take just about any size of paper you throw at it, it can print it on both sides and it has four drums inside it so that it can simulateneously print all the colours at once in a single pass. As if that isn’t enough, it can print its 1st print in less than 10 seconds and can hold over 3,000 sheets of paper inside it.

The staff of The Technophobe Press are now in fear. The porch has become out of bounds because we are scared to breath on it lest one of those hundred zillion parts gets a slight warp and breaks everything inside there. If this happens, it may well cause chaos not just to the porch but to the Universe as a whole. We can see it, on the network staring at us, begging us to use it but so far, we are resisting temptation whilst we ponder our fundamental position on this matter. What if we start to get attached to it and one of the zillion irreplacable parts breaks? Who will look after it? And importantly… What does it eat?

Come to think of it… If it eats mice, it can stay for ever.

The offices of The Technophobe Press will keep you informed. Watch this space.

After long and careful study of the world in general I have finally identified a foolproof one step plan for fame, fortune, success, power and wealth beyond your wildest dreams.

I realise I could sell my success formula for an absolute fortune but frankly, that would be hard work and I can’t be arsed so, in this one time exclusive offer, I am prepared to offer my secret for free.

My secret is simple, all you have to do is to change your middle name to “the”.

Think of it - Throughout history anyone who has ever had the middle name “the” has been a great success and if you don’t believe me ask Ivan the Dread, Vlad the Impaler, Erik the Memorable, Magnus the Law-Mender, Conan the Barbarian and his chum Conan the Crooked, William the Conquerer, Edward the Confessor, Henry the Rich, Ulrich the Beloved, Pliny the Elder, Pitt the Younger, Martin the Humane, Ernest the Iron, Robert the Magnificent, Lorenzo the Magnificent, John the Perfect Prince, Canute the Great, Fulk the Surly, Aethelred the Unready, Albert the Great or Canute the Great.

Aint it great? I am right… You know I am right so there. Just remember when you are rich and famous it was all my doing and send me some cash. Thank you.

Sardonic though this journal may be, it still has my name attached to it so I am not going to take that dangerous step of posting online test results into it. That aside, I spotted an odd looking online test in Sherrie’s journal yesterday called “Do You Want the Terrorists to Win” and scored 96%.

Later on that day, in the mistaken belief that I still know anything at all about anything, I was asked to write an opinion on 9/11 with regard to all of the conspiracy theories. Did I think they had any merit? Did I think there was a government coverup?

Reading over my reply it struck me that contrary to what the test said I was becoming something of a woolly liberal, hell, I am even fence sitting on the spelling of the word wooly now (both are valid).

In the true spirit of oversharing, I shall include a copy of the summary. It’s not edited for publication so it’s not been tidied up much. It’s a bloody journal, live with it!

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I don’t have a single theory but if I had to write one I would say that my conclusion is that the Whitehouse are probably as confused as we are. They know somebody did it and they have more military intelligence than we do but they still rely on the civilian intelligence they get from the newspapers and broadcast news networks for much of their information. Given that this more often than not conflicts with what they say, things must get quite complicated for the poor dears.

After the attacks happened they quickly came up with a party line that al Qaeda did it; even though there are many questions about whether al Qaeda even existed as an organisation at the time. This conclusion was made on the basis of the quickest evidence found, in response to a nation that was baying for somebody to blame and for somebody to strike back at. Having committed to this belief, the Whitehouse had take appropriate action and wars were started which at the time were good for the Presidency, for many large US businesses and for a perceived majority of the American people. By committing to this conclusion they closed the doors on other avenues of investigation which may well be the biggest mistake of this whole affair. Picking al Qaeda made everything simple because they were the one culprit who were never going to deny, argue, or in any way challenge the accusations.

It would be surprising if many people at the Whitehouse actually believe all of their initial conclusions are completely true any more. Some of the conspiracy theories have some bits of merit and equal amounts of bunkum and there is confusion and bad evidence everywhere. At this point in time, unless somebody who actually planned or organised the act ever comes forward, the whole thing is now buried under so much misinformation, conflicting politics and business interests that we will almost certainly never know what really happened.

It is very easy to blame Bush and the Whitehouse but in a country and culture where two people knowing a secret is two people too many, it is almost inconceivable that this was an operation planned, controlled and covered up by them. In Financial Crime 101 the first thing taught is to “Follow The Money”. In this case the money trails simply don’t lead to the government. Big business interests, arms manufacturers, oil companies, the Nation of Israel all fit the frame and religious or political extremists operate outside of normal financial interests so they end up as likely suspects too but in this case, however clever I think Bush may be in secret, I don’t really think he pushed too many buttons that day.
Many truths are out there - Your choice is probably as valid as any.

It is 7.30am and I have just realised that I didn’t post that I was going to bed a few hours ago at just after 4am. Now I am a Master Blogger I realise that it is vital that I record such events with accuracy so I am feeling pretty crappy about all of this. As it happened, I just went to bed and read Sue Townsend’s “Ghost Children” but admitting that makes me realise that now I will have to write a review of it; quote endlessley from it and all that sort of thing.

All I can say is that it is jolly hard work being a blogger, I am amazed that us Master Bloggers have time for anything else at all!

It is now 7.37 and I am going to have scrambled eggs for breakfast.

I am currently trying to buy a car in Canadia. I don’t want anything special, I don’t want to pay much, I just need something solid that will work well for a few weeks. Unfortunately, it has to be a big chunky 4*4; not for cosmetic reasons but because I need to be in the middle of nowhere in places with no roads in the middle of winter in Canadia.

The European in me is getting more and more distressed. I never really saw myself as a major environmentalist - My view on Global Warming is that if I get rasberries in December and Holland becomes one big swimming pool then that is a generally good thing. The problem is that I am opposed to very literally burning money which I don’t have and wasting fuel the planet is running out of. Is it too much to ask for fuel consumption figures to be posted with car reviews? Is it possible to get fuel consumption figures without digging through tonnes and tonnes of data hidden away in the digital equivalent of a hay-barn? Ha! Is it buggery!

What I find odd is that North Americans have started complaining about the cost of petrol nowadays and with fuel in Canadia at just under a dollar a litre you’d think they’d start to want to know how much of it their 1997 Chevrolet Tahoe LTs are drinking on an average drive from the Lumberjackery to Tim Hortons and back (11 miles per gallon is the best figure I can get, though that is probably US gallons, and I think they are smaller than real ones).

If you are ever bored one day go to a US or Canadian car sales site, have a look for a few cheap cars and then set yourself the task of working out which you should buy in terms of how much fuel they waste. Remember! You can’t use the European figures most of the time because the American ones tend to come with different engine configurations with especially big fuel burning bits. It’s fun, I promise you!

Well… Chavez is back as president of Venezuela, Pinochet is still on his deathbed and Britain is still a nuclear power.

Kofi Annan is still saying that Iraq and a mess, and he wishes he’d done more and Hezbollah is still causing trouble in Lebanon (which oddly, is no longer called The Lebanon). America is still torturing people in prison camps and holding show trials, the British government and security services are alienating Muslim communities just when they need their co-operation most, trains are not running because there is “too much dust” and gyppos are still nicking copper wire from train tracks and electricity substations.

I guess everything is back to 21st Century normal after the little aside of the last couple of weeks; that seems something of a shame. It was fun for a while anyway.

What an odd couple of weeks this has been in England as far as Terrorism and Espionage is concerned.

The first and most obvious event is this whole Alexander Litvinenko poisoning story. A former spy, poisoned by highly radioactive Polonium-210 hidden in his Sushi with a deathbead claim that it was the Russian President wot did it. All this followed by geiger counter weilding policemen finding various signs of Polonium on his trail, in hotels, on British Airways planes and inside the stomachs of a larger than life, publicity seeking Italian Security Expert.

Almost missed in the shadow of this true-life competition for the new Bond Film was Michael Stone’s attack on Stormont (The Northern Irish Parliament). Stone, a very well known Loyalist terrorist from the old days entered the building carrying six to eight “fairly amateurish” bombs, a gun and a knife and was pretty much stopped in the first few seconds by civillian security guards and disarmed. One assumes he will now get 30 years in prison for carrying a knife and a few extra years added on for the other stuff.

Whilst all of this has kept the newspapers and telly amused for hours it has provided a nice little flashback to the times when terrorists were people with proper names and causes that were at least understandable. A time when the Spy Game at least seemed to make some sense and was more concerned with spying on foreign agents than spying on the population as a whole.

It was quite a pleasant flashback, oddly. But I bet it won’t last.

I learned a useful thing this week when researching the origin of Quince Cheese. It all rests on the definition of the word cheese, which includes

Cheese:
A mass of pomace, or ground apples, pressed together in the form of a cheese.

From now on, every time I fuck up my jam making and make it so hard that you can barely stick a knife into it, I will declare it to be cheese. I have 5 kilogrammes of plum cheese in the cupboard, I am happy about this.

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Apart from the rather cryptic “She made me tea.” posted at 06:43 on August the 18th, 2003 and a prior posting on March the 20th, 2002 at 01:29 which simply said “Poo” (my considered review of Livejournal, I believe) - This is the only thing I ever really wrote in my previous weblog. I figured I should move it over to here anyway.