Frank Skinner's Stand-up DVD - A bit of a whine

I don't really go in for reviews or panning things in this space. However, sometime over Christmas I was watching "Have I got News for You" and they had Frank Skinner on the panel. I have to confess, I always regarded him with some level of distain.
I wouldn't imagine that would really upset him, but I guess if you are an entertainer, you are supposed to entertain. Although, you can't entertain all of the people all of the time.
Anyway, HIGNfY, I thought he was rather good on it. He had matured. I adjusted my previous position to one of neutrality pending further evidence.
Introducing exhibit A
FRANK SKINNER STAND-UP
This started off rather well I thought. The inner sleeve has the performance broken down into chapters and by chapter 5 (one night stands) he, rather sadly, felt comfortable enough to regress to “amusing” stories of his sexual exploits whilst being a lad on tour. I’m afraid it all went down hill from here, with him coming across as a rather socially inexperienced, yet ladish, adolescent.
Puerile recounting of one night stands can only amuse for a limited time and this subject just went on and on. His sad reference to sexual encounters by what sounded like a juvenile scoring system, “The sexuals”, “The orals” et cetera just left me feeling rather embarrassed for him. It just all sounded so wretched that by the time he was halfway through chapter 7 (oral sex) it had descended into a world inhabited by well meaning but ill thinking leftwing teenage Jim Davidsons. The annoying thing is that I’m sure he can write funny material, but I’m really not that interested in a 50 year old man recounting his sexual history. One would imagine that with the inferred quantity, tastes and attitudes would mature, but obviously such a life style is deeply damaging. If you want to feel that you are a font of sexual sophistication over sheer quantity, maybe also including, then give it a watch and you’ll soon feel good.
The sleeve boasts “comedy gold”, but is a bit tarnished and embarrassing. Many other comics can cover similar material; they just don’t seem to wallow in it as much as Skinner.
On the upside, it was £4 in the sale and will no doubt be cheaper on line if you are so inclined.
The downside of this DVD was that it took the edge off “The Man with Two Brains” a bit. And the £4 could have contributed to a pack of beer or bottle of wine.
It was countered by Wallace and Gromit’s “Close Shave” and a glass or three of Dão.

Things I can't get to work in Linux

Despite having managed to accrue a disturbing number of Linux friendly animals over the years I am still having issues with my final install.

After Ubuntu (6.06, 8.04, 8.10), kubuntu (8.04 and 8.10), mandriva (??? and 2009) and fedora (10), I finally settled on Suse (11.1). The others got into such a mess over such things as being too brown (not really a good reason), just refusing to play (fedora), and messing up the boot sector (kubuntu 8.10 and mandriva). From all this I discovered that my preference is for better support and KDE over Gnome. The desktop image preference is also influenced by my Asus PC900 which has a KDE based Xandros OS. I want the desktop and the netbook to be able to sync. We'll see.
Issues with Suse currently are: No access to the data drive which is formatted as FAT 32 so that the XP and the Linux install can share data access for media and office (Open and MS) files.
The dual head is refusing to work. This caused the death of one of my kubuntu installs where I clicked on the advanced graphics tab; leaving me to try and change the settings back with black text on black graphics all nicely overlaid on a black background. I could see the cursor, so I shouldn't really complain too much.
Internet. I only have a 3G Huawei E220 modem. ALL other installs have seen this no problem. Suse does not. It lights up, flashes green, then blue. It doesn't appear anywhere and there are no links anywhere to configure it.

I know these are mainly user based errors, but they are problems I didn't have with the others. I have that nagging I should have stuck with kubuntu feeling; but I'm determined to stick with Suse.

Today, my favourite inanimate object is this:

It makes lovely coffee and reminds me of the fantastic (traumatic) drive to Italy in my old 1275cc mini in 2003. Thanks to Gerard for all the work with the engine/gearbox change and for recommending that I don't do it in the 998cc.
And the other day I saw this:

No gold at the end, although there was some old copper piping :o)

oh deary me

I was leaving a comment on another blog when the verification gave me this:

sometimes, I'm such a child

atheist bus campaign

I saw a bus the other day with the slogan "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy life". This I thought was a weird one, and also, possibly undermining the useful control mechanisms that religion previously had. Sadly, many of the less sentient out there will see this as a call to do what you like regardless of the consequencies. So I would like to put forward a few alternatives.


There's probably no God, but that's no excuse to abandon your moral and ethical standards.


There's probably no God, so take responsibility for society and the effects you have on it.


It's just possible I could go on for ages here as regardless of your belief structure, most civilisations recognise the relationship between cause and effect. Most civilisations recognise the same undesirable traits regardless of the adoption of a state sanctioned religion.

So,

There's probably no God, but you're meant to be a mature civilisation. Pull your socks up!!!

The world, linux and old monitors

Another beautiful morning. There's a nice layer of cloud in the distance, just over the Campsie Fells, adding a transition between city, hills and sky. Bit chilly again, but who cares. I'd rather have zero degrees and this view than five degrees and the city wrapped in a dull grey duvet.
As the number of linux installs on my new desktop machine mounts up, I can now discount Fedora 10. It all seemed to install fine until it got to the "reboot your machine" after which nothing would work. This is probably down to the still piddling amount of memory the creature is trying to cope with. By the time it gets to the kitchen it has forgotten whether it went there to feed the cat, make some tea, or just put the light out.
Additionally, my other monitor (AOC LM727) which was living in the loft space for a while, seems to be as ill as it ever was. Seems the problem of it switching to black screen after a few seconds is fairly common and due to oxidation of the solder points on a couple of inductance coils. So that's stripped down and now I just need to locate my soldering iron...

No Eden in Glasgow

I found out yesterday that the hairdresser that I use in Glasgow had "ceased trading". Which is horrible news.
It was a nice place and surely everyone needs a haircut and a nice place to eat cake and drink nice coffee. I can't imagine there has been a run on electric clippers and Home Hairdressing books. So I can only assume that people have decided to stop cutting their hair and go feral.

Image found via google images on Massmind. Specifically here *

If you click on the hairdressing book link, notice that the book is cheaper new than second hand. If that is not faith in a product, I don't know what is.

Alternative Ubuntu wallpaper

I have installed Ubuntu as part of the available operating systems on my new computer, as some may know. The dreadful background, which initially I really liked, just became too drab. With this in mind, I put this together.

If anyone likes it, but would like the logo moved, let me know.

what I did on my holidays

I've been rather busy doing stuff.
I helped with the engine change on SB's car. This went well except we forgot to transfer the module strapped to the engine, would it start? No sirs. After that it was fine until there was the faulty spanner icon. By this point it was around -5 degrees C outside and we decided that perhaps a garage could just plug in their little computer thing which would tell them which sensor had stopped playing. More news later...

I got a processor for my shuttle box, a cute little 3.2GHz P4. Main reason for this was I'd painted myself into a corner as I was going to rob the CPU from the old Dell Optiplex. This turned out to be too old to be compatible for the motherboard I'd bought so now the Dell is housed in the breadbox which still needs the Ubuntu logo/grille done on the front; breathe...
I finally got around to looking for a new bike, after looking at the sorry state of my old one which has been sitting in a damp garage since its last use. Picture will follow. I went shopping with my budget firmly capped at £250. I went to Dales in Glasgow, the chap was very nice but kept showing me a) Bikes that were around £450 b) Bikes that did not comply with my desires. Went to Evans out at Braehead and met up with an evil friend who did not talk me down after I begun to fixate on a bike which was considerable more expensive than i wanted to pay. In fact, he may as well have been mockingly shouting "jump!"

I bought the bike.

It's nice.

I went into collect it today, where upon I saw a girl manage to blag a 10% discount. That my dears, is the price of a lock, and I realised that it is indeed a dog eat dog world.

The shuttle box has been set up as a dual boot with XP and Ubuntu and is just waiting for me to connect the 320 Gb SATA HDD and start adding the software. Need to make a list.

I want to do my routing and go out on my bike.

Bike image stolen from here