Political Penguin

The second bit of my adventure in Wolverhampton today, or yesterday as it was, centred around the procurement of a memory card for Mrs Penguin’s new Nokia N73 so that she can store lots of videos , photos and music.
I know I could have probably got the item cheaper from some independent shops and a particular one in West Bromwich but I wasn’t really in the mood for spending all day trying to get a couple of quid knocked off the price or waiting to have it delivered from somewhere on the interwebnet.
So I went to the following stores in the main Wolverhampton high street.
Vodafone, Phones4U, Carphone Warehouse and O2. Now these shops are all within about fifty yards of each other so we’d expect a bit of price competition, it being the free market and all with them all trying to out do each other for customers but what I actually found was that this principle of competition doesn’t seem to have made it to this marketplace.
So I’m after a 1Gb card for a Nokia N73. I actually started in O2, no particular reason and nothing to do with them being my operator. Spoke to a nice guy who gave me a price of

Hat tip to Dave Morley for this one.

I took a little trip to Wolverhampton today. I didn’t really go with any particular thing in mind, it was simply a ‘get out and about a bit’ impulse.
While I was there however, I decided to do two things. The first was to check out the new Windows operating system Vista. I’ve written the odd thing about it but thought I should at least have a play with it first and try and give it a fair evaluation despite my predisposed position of not being too keen on it.
So I wondered up to Curry’s in the Manders Centre and tried to fiddle around with it.
The computers showing it off were pre-configured with nice sales stuff about the system but ultimately I wasn’t able to actually get to the system itself.
What I wanted to know was how it worked and felt to use. Plus, boot and shutdown times.
I wasn’t able to do this in Curry’s and apparently they’re not too keen on letting customers turn their machines on and off so I tootled up to PC World on the ring road.
There I actually got into a system and my first impression was what’s the difference. They seem to have changed the menu’s around a bit, renamed things so you don’t know what you’re looking for but that’s about it.
PC World didn’t seem to mind me shutting their computers down and rebooting them, although they simply may not have noticed.
Now the PC that I was on was a reasonably good specification. An Intel Core Duo processor, a gig of RAM, fairly tasty graphics card so obviously should have been no slouch when it came to doing things but the first thing I noticed was, even given this quite good specification, it did take rather a long time to shut down and reboot.
One thing they have seemed to have sorted out and this is something XP users will probably be familiar with is the old fiddle that Microsoft pulled to speed up boot times.
When you boot up XP, your desktop appears but you’re unable to actually do anything because although you can see it, the system still hasn’t loaded properly yet. This is a marvelous example of trying to appear to be quicker but actually not. However with this in mind as soon as the desktop came up I went straight for the ‘start’ button which is now a sort of circle with the Microsoft logo on it and it came straight up so that was good. Apart from it actually took a fair time to load in the first place.
The next thing I wanted to try was multi-tasking. Windows has been historically quite poor on this but although it was hard to guage given the few number of programmes available and them not being of the more hungry variety it did seem to be an improvement on XP, but that’s not really saying that much and my Linux machine is still better at multi-tasking despite it only being an old 1Ghz Celeron with 512Mb of RAM.
The final thing I wanted to check out was the graphical user interface.
Microsoft have been playing this up for ages, the whole 3D desktop with Aero glass windows. This was a bit problematic to work out but in fairness to Vista, it’s help menus are better than previous Windows operating systems and a few minutes later I had it set up to do the whole Aero 3D thing.
The 3D desktop I quite liked. It was nice, a bit fiddly to get used to; requiring pressing the Windows key, Ctrl and Tab in various orders while scrolling the mouse but it is nice, accurate and pretty. Of course you could already flip between programmes like this in XP simple by holding Alt and clicking Tab but it is nice, I’ll give it that so there’s a really big tick for it.
Then I tried Aero glass windows. This is apparently designed to make the windows semi-transparent so you can see the things behind them. It’s crap, simple as that, it doesn’t work. The transparency is so bad that unless the text behind the window is 20pt or higher it’s completely illegible. It is the equivalent of trying to read the newspaper through a frosted glass bathroom window and this is one of the reasons Vista requires state of the art graphics cards?
There’s been a GUI (graphical user interface) for Linux systems for the past 18 months or so that does this, plus a lot more which doesn’t require half the graphics capabilities and it pisses past this. If you’d like to see it in action, try YouTube and search for ‘XGL’ personally I like the whole cube desktop thing, it’s cool.
So what’s my final evaluation of Vista?
Microsoft appear to have made multi-tasking a lot better which is a big plus. However this was a clean system not running anything particularly strenuous. How it would be after a years of use and all manner of different things having been installed and uninstalled on it, well that may be another thing.
The 3D thing is good, I will give it that. Aero is a pile of rubbish so in so far as improvements to the GUI gained, marked against the significant requirements of the graphics card I don’t think they really justify the extra expense for what you get.
Shut down and boot times are pretty poor too. I didn’t time it with a stopwatch but I’d hazard a guess it takes 4-5 times longer to load and probably the same again to shut down than my Linux box despite the vastly differing specification of the machines.
How would I sum it up in comparison to my Linux system?
I think a good analogy would be to compare US to European cars. Vista can do the stuff, it can get up to speed but it’s carrying so much extra weight and therefore needs a good 5 litre V8 engine under the bonnet to achieve it. My Linux system, it does the same thing, actually quicker, but does it with the equivalent of a 1.1 litre Volkwagon Polo engine. Which is not a bad comparison because just like a car, a Vista system requires a lot more juice. OK, maybe not a big difference in cost for a home user with one machine, but businesses and schools with whole suites of machines would be different. Vista has a bit of bad form for costing more, not only in new hardware but in the increased need for power and therefore knock-on problems for the environment.
Final word. I’m sticking to Linux. Plus, it’s free, I don’t believe in paying lots of money for crap.

I have no idea why this came into my head but I thought I’d share it. Although I’m probably one of the worst consumers from a marketing executives perspective and am not induced into purchasing a product because it’s been splashed across my TV screen, I actually like adverts from an analytical angle.
I like to spot the little twists and uses of psychology in them, the visual aspects and the targetting of consumers. Some are very clever and others are downright crap but as I was thinking through past adverts this one came to mind.
Personally I hate bland adverts that pander to physical appearances, Laboritoir Garniere (or however you spell it, can’t be bothered to look it up) really annoy me but that may be because I’m definitely not in their target audience. Personally I like adverts that have a bit of a twist to them, make you think you know what it’s about and then turn it on it’s head, either that or comedic adverts. Of these probably the best examples are for tobacco and alcohol. I know a number of my readers are in their late teens and early twenties so they won’t remember these or the advert I decided to post here. The classic adverts were for Hamlet cigars with the old Gregor Fisher combing his hair in the photo booth probably being the most memorable.
For what it’s worth, this one is for Woodpecker Cider and is probably my favourite advert of all time. I hope those too young to remember it will enjoy, and perhaps it will raise a smile from my older readers. Just to note, it didn’t make me want drink Woodpecker cider. I think I tried it once or twice in my life and couldn’t stand the stuff. I was much more predisposed towards Dry Blackthorn and Scrumpy for the first six months at university, then I discovered vodka and have hardly drank a cider since.
Anyway, enjoy…

This passed my way today. It’s a petition on 10 Downing Street’s website. It goes like this:

Dudley council West midlands is considering spending twenty million building a mosque and comunity centre next to it in this Medevil Town which has a town centre run down and like a Ghost town, the Muslim population is two and a half per cent and they have a mosque already in a listed building. it is time to wake up in Dudley the Traffic problems not to mention the eye sore, and yet just less than a mile away we have a Hospital with a shortage of beds staff and parking no we dont want a Twenty million pound mosque but the Town centre with not one Resturant in it to be regenerated, It seems the Muslim Population have already purchased the land for the Mosque yet the Planning Department have not given the go ahead yet for another Two weeks, They must be very confident to buy the land I am very concerned.

Apart from the author’s pisspoor quality of English it is an interesting example of the limitations of the petitions system set up on Downing Street’s website. I say this because it is a complete load of bullshit and lies which fits ever so neatly into the realms of those who wish to propagate such nonsense.
So here’s the facts just for the record. An application has gone to Dudley Council for Planning Permission to build a mosque. The funding for it is nowhere near

I decided to step back slightly from this whole debate that is going on in the British blogosphere of late and have a think.
There’s about a dozen blogs that I read on a daily basis. Probably a lot less than many other people on the scene but I simply have many other commitments in life that restricts my time.
Of these they are all either generally Labour supporting or non-aligned blogs.
Why do I read them? Well mainly some shared values and picking up on ideas and the thoughts of others that I hadn’t considered but more importantly a personal desire to absorb informed reasonings and the odd debate.
So here I will admit if I’ve ever visited either Guido AKA Paul whatever his other name is Staines, Iain (the liar) Dale, PratTory AKA Dominic Fisher, or Fox News Lite AKA 18 Tory Street a sum total of a dozen times each then that’s about it. I’ve never watched a party political broadcast for the Tories, sorry news item on 18 Tory Street and I actually have no desire to.
I know there’s a mantra in the blogging world that one should read the blogs of the ‘other side’ but much in the same way that I wouldn’t read the Sun newspaper because it’s poor quality and crap journalism, I don’t read the aforementioned blogs because of their pisspoor quality and content.
PratTory took a swipe at me in the comments section on Tom Watson’s website the other week inferring that the lack of comments on my site somehow elevated his own self-importance in relation to mine and that I was impolite to commentators. Of course if someone were to be impolite to me I would have no problems in giving as good as I get. Of course I could do what the kiddies of the blogosphere do and delete comments from people who disagree with me or set up some convenient anonymous trolls to fight my corner but I don’t. I pointed out that I know how many people visit my site on a daily basis and that I was quite happy. No doubt more people probably visit his site, he seems at pains to put silly little graphs over inflating his significance and with all the accuracy of a LibDem bar chart saying that if his readership grows as it has done he’ll be over the million mark by the end of 2007. Interesting his top referrers reads like a who’s who of the trash end of the blogosphere too, nice company he keeps.
I was very tempted to point out that the Sun outsells all the broadsheets put together and I know how I would personally like my own blog to be perceived but I didn’t. Ironically an almost identical swipe at Unity brought that same response from another commentator.
So just for the record, this is where I’m happy to exist. If it is the desire of some in the blogosphere to stroke their own egos and make up for whatever deficiencies in their life they may have by attracting large numbers of brain dead sycophants to their site then I wish them well with their little worlds and hope it brings them happiness in some small way.

I haven’t had much time to do any proper research and write something meaningful the last few days so here’s a simple run down of a few films that might be interesting to watch.
As I stay up late most nights I tend to have the TV on mute so as not to disturb Mrs Penguin and the little one and as subtitles don’t seem to work for normal TV I’ve taken to watching a lot of foreign films on Film Four. Some but not all of this list are ones that I’ve picked up from there.

1. Cube

This is the only English language film that makes the list coming from Canada. Simple enough premise, a bunch of people wake up in a large cube that contains other smaller moving cube rooms. They have to try and find their way out using some interesting mathematics and avoiding rooms with rather nasty traps in. Not one for the children this one.

2. Batoru Rowaiaru (Battle Royale)

The first Japanese offering. Japanese cinema is something you either take to or not. Mrs Penguin is not keen on it at all but for some reason I’ve developed a bit of a taste for it of late. Battle Royale is like most Japanese films, a bit weird. It’s set in a slightly screwed up Japanese society in the future where the traditional cultural norms of yound people respecting their elders has broken down. The adults therefore devise a game whereby every year a school class is chosen at random, sent off to an island, given a vast array of weapons and told to kill each other. The premise being that only one child can survive at the end of the contest, if more than one is alive, everyone dies ala exploding necklaces (think The Running Man).
Very very bloody in parts but lots of really good character development from the main protaganists, especially as all the actors are quite inexperienced, young and virtual unknowns. The role played by the psychotic kid is particularly dark and worryingly well done. It also gets a hat tip for unlike virtually all films that involve anything remotely techie, the script that the kids uses to crack the network is actually a proper hacking tool. Fyodor’s nmap if you were wondering, that’s a nice touch.
However if you see this film, whatever you do, do no be tempted to see the sequel, it is, probably without doubt the worst film ever made and takes the shine off what a masterpiece the original is.

3. La Petite Lola (Clubbed to Death)

French obviously. Personally I think the English title is better. Centres around a young French girl who misses her bus and goes with her friend to what is probably an illegal and very dodgy nightclub in the suburbs.
Lots of techno-dance music (not my personal taste) but it works well. Atmospheric, not that much in the way of dialogue.
Anyway, girl falls in love with a guy who I’m assuming is of Algerian decent but he is trapped in his life and can’t get out until he does one last prize fighting contest (at least that’s how I read the story anyway).

4. Goodbye Lenin

German this time. About the only film in the list you could let the kids watch. Set in East Berlin just before the fall of the wall, it centres around a woman who is heavily involved and dedicated to the East German Communist Party. She collapses one night and goes into a coma to wake up after the reunification of Germany.
The doctors say she can’t have anything that will shock her, her son sort of points out that everything she’s ever believed in has just come to an end and to keep her away from the truth takes her home and dreams up ever more elaborate ways of convincing her nothing has changed.
A truly heart-warming and extremely funny at times film, but ultimately quite sad at the end.

5. Switchblade Romance

French film, no idea if there is an original French title. This one’s a gore-fest slasher pic which normally aren’t my cup of tea and to be honest this wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for the twist at the end. The bit where the police watch the CCTV footage and you suddenly have to think, hang on, did I miss something here? That’s the bit everything suddenly falls into place. There’s lots of hints throughout the film that I completely missed the first time around but are so bloody obvious after you’ve watched it once.
Storyline is like this: Two college room mates go to the ones parents for summer, psycho killer breaks in, kills the family, kidnaps the one girl and the other chases after them.

6. Ju on (The Grudge)

Original Japanese version, remade by Hollywood but haven’t seen that version yet although by the same director. Very very scary film. Not lots of blood or gore, it’s a lot cleverer than that and the horror is more inferred at rather than splashed across the screen. Scene to watch out for is the woman crawling down the stairs. Think woman coming out of the TV in The Ring. However, by far the most spine tingling moments are when the small boy pops up, he just simply puts the shits up you.
Simple story, cursed house, various people go in, some don’t come out, others disappear in strange circumstances elsewhere but a thoroughly well made film.

7. Leningrad Cowboys Go America

Finnish film, apart from the first five minutes it’s all in English. Centres around a Finnish band called the Leningrad Cowboys, who btw actually exist. Bob Piper had them on his blog a while back I seem to remember. They go to find their fortune in America and all amounts of daft antics and Monty Pythonesque situations ensue. Personally I like the beer cans when they open the car door gag, but that’s probably something about Finnish humour.

Right, I think that’s enough for now, must go and do something more constructive.

It’s my son’s (Little Penguin’s) first birthday today, so I’m doing the family/fatherly things.
Back tomorrow.

Been having a few thoughts about the idea of sticking microchips in people’s bins to charge people according to how much rubbish they put out.
I’ve reached the conclusion it’s a crap idea and here’s why.
1. This is another example of over use of technology to address a problem that could be sorted out in a lot easier way, encompassing yet more databases and IT systems that lets be honest the public sector doesn’t have a good track record on.
2. I’m not going to go as far as brand it a new Poll Tax but I think you’ll get my drift that this is a structure of charging people according to waste produced. How do we account for the fact that on the whole, those with larger families occupy the lower socio-economic strata of our society and therefore would be hit harder even though they are the ones least able to adapt to the new situation or afford it?
3. This system is another example of the privatisation of society. Bear with me on this as I give a little example. I live on a main road in the centre of my town (Willenhall). My wheelie bin sits outside my house about two yards from the public footpath. On a daily basis all odds and ends from coke cans to chip wrappers end up in my bin, deposited by passing pedestrians and I don’t mind one bit. Being quite environmentally aware we don’t get anywhere near filling our bin on a weekly basis so if other passing people’s rubbish ends up in my wheelie bin then quite frankly I’d rather have it there than blowing around the street. (actually as my house is set back and creates a natural wind trap it all ends up on my drive anyway). This is what I would term a bit of the old social society. I’m allowing my bin to be used for the common good, in this case making my road a bit cleaner. Equally I’m also offsetting the work of Walsall Council by picking up what is street litter that blows onto my drive and putting it in my bin. Now I’m sure I’m not the only person who does this although the wind trap situation probably makes it more acute an issue in my case but if we are to be charged according to what goes in our bins then this encourages those such as myself who perform this civic duty to say no, this is my bin, for my rubbish and screw the state of the street because that’s the council’s job to clean up.
Equally, what would happen if I removed the ‘street rubbish’ from my drive and brushed it back onto the public highway? A charge for littering? So there you go, the increasing privatisation of life, the concept that we retract from such civic and publicly minded activities into a defensive personal sphere for which I personally believe there’s too much of already. Not to mention people being suspicious of their neighbours who might be sneaking a bag into your bin while your not looking.
4. This system assumes the issue can be addressed by individual households. Yes, there is scope for changing certain practices but not a lot so the return is actually less than might be imagined. People will continue to consume their usual products for which in many cases there is little in terms of alternative. This then becomes a highly complex, open to errors and contention by householders and quite frankly a pretty crap way of raising part of local taxation.
5. Again, social class and opportunity. Some items that at times are quite heavy are deposited by households who do not have access to a vehicle to take it to the local tip. This then means that removal of such items are placed in the hands of either the local authority or private contractors for which there is little conpetition in service provision, meaning that those least able to pay are hit hardest by a removal cartel between the local authority and maybe, if they’re lucky a private company. Not to mention the incentive to fly-tip.
Right, that’s the criticism. Here’s a few answers.
The onus of this scheme is very much on the householder. Why? A quick rumage through our household waste reveals that the vast majority relates to either plastic wrapping/containers and nappies.
Let’s do nappies first. Yes, we have a little bundle of joy. If I’m honest I would ideologically prefer to use terry towels, however I bow to the wishes of Mrs Penguin on this one. We’ve done the bit about poorer people having larger families so obviously they’ll get hit by this but there are two other things to consider.
Nappies are quite heavy, in weight terms they’re easily the largest proportion of our household waste when it comes to sheer weight. It does not take a genius to work out that for some families, particularly those who may have a hard time making ends meet, that when posed with whether to put the nappies in the bin and incur a fair bit of extra tax or to flush them down the toilet will take the latter option. Which incidentally reminds me of the case of a Councillor in Sandwell who told me about their neighbour doing this, blocking up the drains and all the sewage backing up till it overflowed in his place. Not a nice prospect.
Now before someone tells me there are nappies that you can get that are re-usable and have an inner disposable section that can be safely flushed down the toilet, yes, I already know. I wasn’t aware of them when our first child came along but should another little bundle happen upon us then I think that’s going to be the option, however, the only place that sells then that is even remotely close to me is the Waitrose store in Wolverhampton which is a bugger to get to on public transport and therefore again another example of the system being worse for those who don’t have their own transport.
So that leaves plastics. Things like bottles of pop or milk, well there’s not much that can be done, I’ve made a few small greenhouses out of some for various plants but the supply outstrips the demand so they have to go.
Plastic wrapping is kept very much to a minimum by the fact that we try to grow some of our food and purchase others lose or at least with as little packaging as possible. Almost forgot, non-recyclable paper. Things litle Tetra-Pak and this really annoys me. The milk we buy comes in non-recyclable plastic bottles. We buy this mainly because we cannot source glass milk bottles or recycle those in cartons. Here’s an interesting fact for you which comes from my time living in Finland.
In Finland you can’t get milk in plastic bottles, it all comes in Tetra-Pak cartons which you can quite happily throw in with the other paper in the recycling bin. You can’t do that in the UK, because, at least the last time I checked (a few month ago) the UK does not have a single recycling facility capable of handling Tetra-Pak – how bloody silly is that?
OK, more solutions and here I’m getting into the real nub of the issue.
Again, from my time in Finland, the first thing I noticed when living there was that as you walk into any supermarket, even the small ones, the first thing you come across are these bloody big machines, usually painted green. They have a little hole in them where you put your bottles. The machine scans what type of bottle it is and the digital readout tots up how much money you get on a token that you can then use at the checkout.
Now here’s the really clever part. We’re not just talking your average glass bottle of beer here, no, they do plastic too and anyone who happens upon a stay in Finland will notice this. Plastic bottles are considerably thicker than they are here. Your average bottle of coke or whatever in th UK is under a millimetre but in Finland they’re a good 2 millimetre thick. Why? Well, it’s simple, they’re more durable. So instead of the situation here where plastic bottles are un-reuseable there they are sent off, cleaned, filled with something new and put back on the shelves. They’re also very clever in that instead of the vast array of sizes and shapes you find here, (this goes for glass bottles of beer etc as well) there’s only a few different shapes and sizes so sorting out the bottles is far easier too, all they need is the different brand label stuck on them. This has the benefit of not needing as would be the case in the UK to send off all the glass to be melted down and bottles re-made which requires a lot of energy. You simply wash them out and re-use them, not hard really when you think about it is it?
That brings me on to the final subject. Our over emphasis on individual households. The system in Finland is geared, as it is in Germany too to a lesser degree, on these processes taking place through the retail stores. It ups the bulk, eases the distribution system and allows for a far more efficient way of doing the whole recycling process than the route we are going down.
What it requires? Well, not much really. A bit of regulation to harmonise shapes and types of containers, the requirement for supermarkets to do this and that’s about it. Far more efficient and for the householder, a lot easier too.
I might note that things haven’t always been this way in the UK. I’m probably just about old enough to remember Lucozade coming in glass bottles wrapped in orange plastic. I remember taking the bottles back to the store for a few pence when I was a kid. Ironically we seem to be moving in the wrong direction on this when the solution is so simple. Oh, and I lived in Finland nearly ten years ago so if they were doing that there then, when why the hell can’t we do it here now?