yet another blog

Rather embarrassingly for someone who thinks themself a bit of a computer/webby/nerdy-type person, I lost my home page. No, not lost as in “Dammit, where’d I put it? Where’s it gone? I can’t find it” though given the decrepitude that periodically afflicts me (like every other minute!) that wouldn’t surprise me either.
Anyway, not lost as in that but lost as in… er… (red-faced confession) exceeded bandwidth!

Ok, let’s be a bit gentle with myself here. In fairness its only my home page, and I don’t really and truly ever expect all that many people to visit it. Maybe just one or two folks occasionally who, for whatever reason, are curious to see what “I’m about” sort of thing.
I only really set it up as a sort of token gesture… a point of contact if you like so people can, if they’re so minded, “check me out”.

Very much an afterthought really. Prompted by the fact that the webspace etc was bunged my way as a sort of freebie bonus riding on the back of the seemingly numerous services I’m splashing out for with one of my hosting providers.
“Yeah, I’ll have some of that” I thought, and decide to use it to host well, my personal “home page”.

Loadsa space available to me… but not very much bandwidth. Disgustingly small in fact. But can’t complain cos its a freebie. But there is all that webspace.

“Hmm” thinks I, “I could use that as a sort of online doc archive for the various lengthier burblings of mine, and those that might actually possess some merit or interest”. A sort of backup just in case one or t’other of my sites goes tits up.

So that’s what I do.

All well and good and sure enough it ticks over quite nicely for months on end with just a trickle of visitors. No problems. Much as I anticipated in fact. And there’s all those archived docs in a nice convenient single location for when I want to refer back to them for some reason or other… purely for my own purposes of course.

Then stupid stupid me I go and do something utterly stupid. In fairness I couldn’t have known at the time that it was utterly stupid cos I couldn’t have known at the time how much interest it would attract. Indeed, I still don’t quite believe it. But, for some bizarre reason, it did. Attract interest that is.
The full story’s in this post and this one, and I really can’t be bothered to repeat it all again now.

However, the point is, beginning of the month and, as promised by the jolly old hosting provider, my home page is once more accessible! Yippee!

All I’m hoping now is that I don’t have a repetition this month cos if I do then I’m gonna have to start thinking about upgrading the package and bunging yet more dosh in the pockets of said hosting provider… who’re already taking more than enough off me for various services and stuff.

Can’t be having that. So what I’ll probably end up doing is plonking the offending articles somewhere else entirely with a redirect in my online archive.
Meanwhile, if anyone wants to read them it really isn’t necessary to check out the archived copies cos they’re now available at yet another new(ish) blog of mine called, imaginatively, “mike’s other place” which, being hosted by WordPress (in the .com flavour, not the .org flavour like this one) shouldn’t be afflicted by such bandwidth issues.

So let’s all try and keep my personal home page live this time shall we? Thanks muchly.

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Mate of mine decides to revamp his blog. Move away from the rather innocuous “personal journal” type thing he’d set up ages ago and didn’t seem to do very much with, and change it into something rather more “in yer face”… with a new title (So who died and made you King of the Zombies?) and theme to match. Neat.

A little place of his own where he can spew forth a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse and obscenities (of which he has an impressive command) in the most narrow-minded non-politically correct blinkered way imaginable at any of the thousands of things that seem to spark his ire on a daily basis. Even neater.

Then he invites me to be a guest author, periodically contributing posts (or rather, rants) of my own in whatever manner I care to express them. Cos I tend to have a few gripes about the world now and then meself. Neater still.

Sez he to me “How about changing the link name to the blog that’s on your blog?” (no, not this one, another one of mine… I seem to have them all over the place. So many in fact I suspect I’ve lost track of one or two. Just don’t ask).
“Good idea” sez I, and promptly jumps on the computer. No. Not literally. Though heaven knows, there’ve been enough occasions in the past when I’ve felt like doing precisely that.

Anyway, fire the infernal machine up, get on-line, and suddenly remember that before I do anything I want to download a little utility I had ages ago and then somehow lost. Web Ferret. A sort of online search tool that queries multiple search engines at the same time. Should come in real handy for a particular project that’s recently started occupying my attention. Been meaning to grab another version of it for ages and kept forgetting.

In the process of tracking that down I come across this other search tool type thingy, a desktop search app that finds offline files on your local machine not just by file name, extension or whatever but also searches the actual content of files. All sorts of files.
That’s something else I’ve been wanting to get for ages. Tried Google Desktop Search… didn’t like it for all sorts of reasons. Tried Copernic… seemed to take ages to build/update the index. Currently using Agent Ransack. Which is fine, but cos its not index-based it does take a bit of time to find things. And it doesn’t search every type of file.

So, download and install this newly-found app named… um… SearchInform. Give it a try at least. If it does the business it’ll come in real handy for quick searches of the absolute gigabytes of archived files I seem to have acquired over the years.

What next then? Ah yes, best just quickly check my mailbox. And that’s another hour or so taken care of. Quick tour of the blogs. Mine and other folks’. Back to the mailbox to deal with a couple of new arrivals. Then its just about time for bed. Power off and that’s it.

So there am I, drifting off to sleep when suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, it hits me. Wham! Bloody hell! I’d forgotten to update that link… the very task I went onto the computer for in the first place.

Oh how I wish that sometimes, just occasionally, I could actually remember what I’m supposed to be doing. Bloody bloody hell!

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As of Sunday 3rd (i.e., the day after tomorrow!) don’t expect much activity either on this blog or my photoblog for a few days. Well, prob’ly closer to a coupla weeks actually.
For I be off on my rambles again. This time to the Climate Camp that’s even now in process of being set up near Kingsnorth Power Station in northeast Kent.

Well, I say “in process of being set up”. That’s when they can manage to do the setting up in between bully-boy incursions by the local Gestapo… um, sorry, I meant political police. Um… no, what I actually meant was “officers of Kent’s constabulary”.

Apparently, within 24 hours or so of the site being “claimed” the local boys in blue swarmed all over the place, searching, using pepper spray, arresting, and generally being a bit intimidatory. Nothing new there then.

No doubt they saw it as payback time for when a police incursion was made at the Climate Camp last year, situated near Heathrow.
A detachment of cops marched on… and were very promptly marched off again by the assembled campers, who quite rightly objected to such arrogant tactics. A few red faces in the cop canteen that night probably.
In fact, thinking about it, the cops didn’t have a very good time of it last year. What with being unceremoniously ejected from the Camp and then, in Harmondsworth village, the lovely Chief Inspector Pendry sending a detachment of riot cops away with a flea in their ear (see this), they’ve got a lot of ground to make up.
Which is to say nothing of one cop being thrown from her horse in the “Battle of the Beanfield”.

So, this time around they have apparently managed to seize a number of items that they claim could be used to cause criminal damage, including such offensive things as kids’ crayons and a couple of board games. Wow!
And that’s to say nothing of their seizure of stuff intended to help construct the camp and make it a relatively comfortable, safe, and hygienic place for later arrivals. (Bearing in mind its not just your hardened activist that comes to Climate Camp, but also folk who simply want to find out about the issues, or learn the skills required to develop an environmentally friendly and sustainable lifestyle, and elderly people, and disabled folk, and kids… in other words, a fairly representative cross-section of society as a whole.)

This article on Indymedia has the full story.

Yet the Camp’s not toally without supporters in the Establishment. Check out this article by the parliamentarian Chris Davies published in today’s Guardian newspaper, which also gives some background to the issues that the Camp’s all about.

Of course, there’s a subtext to this recent escapade by the cops. Quite aside from any “legitimate” reason they may claim to have for such heavy-handed policing, one can’t help but wonder whether part of their ploy is not just to “assert their authority” but also to deter others from coming to the Camp.
That motivation (i.e., the suppression of political dissent and activism) quite clearly has a large part to play in their deployment of FIT officers at “political” events, so its reasonable to suppose that such motivation may well have informed this recent “raid”.

So when are they gonna wake up and realise that if anything it just makes the committed activist even more determined to act, as much in protest against the repression as against the issue at hand.

And talking of FIT, fitwatch have today circulated a callout for fitwatchers to come to the Camp. I quote:

“please forward x

Celebrate Fitwatch’s 1st Birthday at Climate Camp

This year’s Climate Camp will also celebrate Fitwatch’s first outing to a major protest. Since then we have gone from strength to strength.
Use Fitwatch tactics all week, and join us to celebrate our anniversary on the day of mass action (9th August). Together we can render the FIT ineffective, and you too can experience the pleasure of forcing a cameraman to retreat.

During the year, we have received criticism on our blog for being “professional protesters”. However, we agree. We take protest seriously. We want to be effective, and to do this we need reclaim our anonymity.
Fitwatch – bring the professional back into protesting!”

Needless to say, this heightened cop activity right from the off won’t deter me from my plans, as I suspect goes for a lot of other folk as well.

So there you have it. Blogging silence from me for at least a week or so (who was that who just said “Phew, thank heaven for that”?).

Oh, almost forgot to mention… the Climate Camp website’s here!

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Since I’ve got involved in this photography lark I’ve posted quite a few bits and pieces here about my escapades, which is not really what I’d intended for this blog in the beginning.

So, as it doesn’t appear that my photographic exploits are stopping anytime soon, and as its therefore likely that I’ll have more photo-related stuff to post, it seemed the most sensible thing would be to set up a dedicated photo-related blog.

Pinching a few of the posts from here just to get it off the ground, I’ve also borrowed one of this blog’s category labels as its name…

Adventures of an Idiot. Please do check it out if you have a few moments, you’re so inclined, and you fancy a bit of a giggle.

(However, the present intention is for it not to be all humour and self-deprecation… hoping to include a few kit reviews, think pieces, and stuff like that over time.)

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Never let it be said that I allow experience to get in the way of stupidity.

Due to an unexpected absence of internet connection (see previous post) meaning that virtually all computer-related tasks were put on hold, I decided I’d indulge a little photo session.

It’d been quite a murky day, overcast and with a definite dampness in the air, so the lighting conditions seemed quite interesting.
And there’s a little public footpath a bit off the beaten track that I’d promised myself I’d explore with a camera at some point.

So, pack my kit up (couple of cameras, tripod, spare batteries, spare memory cards, lens-cleaning kit, hat, gloves, waterproofs – everything bar the kitchen sink practically) and off wandering.

This particular public footpath runs alongside some fields; in fact, its actually part of the fields.
And quite clearly its not used very much by those for whom it was intended as the local farmer has encroached quite extensively upon its width with his ploughing etc.

Now farmland has a tendency to get a bit muddy, particularly in wet weather. And we’ve had quite a few rainy days here recently.

You’d think that with my experience of fields (gleaned from a) having been born and raised in the country, and b) having camped out for days at a time in quite a few fields all over the country, and not always in the best of weather), I’d make all the right connections (fields + rain = mud) wouldn’t you?

Wrong!

So off I traipse up this narrow trackway that’s getting increasingly muddy the further I walk, in pursuit of things worth snapping that, it has to be said, seem few and far between.

Then, about a half-mile into the walk it all runs out – the track, every sign of anything in the least bit inspiring, and all suggestion of solid ground.

And in the homeward walk I’m reminded of something else that experience should in fact have warned me about – mud sticks! Especially to boots.

Still harbouring depression over loss of internet connection (previous post, as if you needed reminding), this is now compounded by precious few photos to show for my expedition and spending the next hour or so cleaning half-a-ton of mud off my boots.

Dammit! I really should have known better.

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