Grrrr

I would normally do this on my own blog, but my hosting company are being untypically unresponsive to the fact that my server is down.

How hard is it to keep a server running? My day job is designing resiliant computer systems with redundancy built in at every level. When I look to design something, these are the first considerations I have, because ultimately, that is the cost factor. Unless someone cuts two cables, none of anything I have designed will fail.

The guys who I do my hosting with are good. I have been with them for nearly seven years now, but to let a server be down for over 2 hours is outrageous. What you do is arrange that the connections to the SAN are connected to two servers - a kind of crossover if you like. And then you have a virtual IP that maps to a cluster of the servers that are connected to the SAN. Not rocket science! For just doing that, you reduce your outage probability by a factor of 4. Even if your luck really bums out, it should be a matter of minutes before you can reconfigure another server to access the bits that are rendered inaccessible.

In the immortal words of my wife "Oy vey". How annoying is it that your server is down?

Stan finds Middle East hard to understand - shock !

(1) Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler and Kafka - Jewish people are great. Their culture is rich, they bake the best bread, tell the best jokes and in the face of millenia of hatred they have kept their faith alive.

(2) Israel is a deeply flawed country - their mistreatment of the Palestinians is shameful.

Apparently by saying (2) I'm anti-semitic, even though I believe (1).

When did it become impossible to criticize Israel ?

The Jews are more than Israel, and Israel is more than the Jews. In a similar way, just because I think American foreign policy (and American beer) suck, doesn't mean I'm anti-American.

I just don't get it. Maybe if I bang my head off the desk a few times it'll become clear. Wait a minute ...

(Thud) (Ow)

(Thud) (Ow)

(Thud) (Ouch)

Nope, still a mystery.

Underground Downhill

OK so it's irresponsible and dangerous, but I had to admire the bloke who skied down the up-escalator at Angel tube station in London (the longest in Europe). Here's a bloke who has managed to extract some fun from one of the world's most depressing places.

I just hope that Stanetta doesn't fancy a go.

Footage here courtesy of You Tube (strangely relevant name).

The Most Serene Republic of Free Stan

I had a few minutes spare, so I set up a country.

Come visit The Most Serene Republic of Free Stan. It's somewhere in the Caribbean, and has stolen the flag of St.Vincent and the Grenadines (sounds like a 1950s band ...)

Should be interesting to see what happens when a blogger actually has to govern instead of just making noise.

I predict a riot.

Can't

I watched Shaun of the Dead on ITV2 tonight.

The Nick Frost character is an unlovable, shiftless, gutter-mouthed slob with zero social skills. This is perfectly communicated by making his first line in the film :-

"Can I get... any of you c*nts... a drink?

I've blanked the offending letter "u", because I'm chicken about getting my blog closed down. The "c" word is still THAT offensive to a number of people, which is why it is perfectly right to use it in this context. Artistically justified, maybe even artistically necessary.

But someone did an inexpert made-for-TV edit and dubbed the word "cocks" over the top.

I wouldn't have minded the kind of edit they do to make radio versions of gangsta rap records; just slurring the word so you can't be offended by it.

My gripe is with the substitution of the word "cocks" and the god-awful editing, which kills the whole scene dead.

Comedy (and Art in general) sometimes needs to say shocking things to work. When you mess with that you need to do it carefully.