digitaldust

There’s a whole bunch or talk flying around at the moment about Donald Rumsfeld admitting that Saddam might have destroyed his stocks of bacterial and chemical weapons before the war. Hang on a second, that’s exactly what they wanted them to do. Except that the US govt is now trying to back away from that and hide behind the Regime Change defence, that it was a regime change not a war over a clear and immanent threat to use WOMD. The party line was “We’re going to war with Iraq cause they’ve got weapons they can and will use against us.” Now it’s been reduced to “They might have had and might in the future do this.” So what happened to all the evidence that Rumsfeld, Powell and Blair produced to show that they knew where it all was? Was this just lies?

Now I believe that Saddam Hussein should have gone, and that some kind of military action was probably needed to do this, I just believe that it could have been done better and with universal world support. Not personally motivated and run by a coalition of the morally wanting. So should starting a war under false pretences be a war crime?

Guardian Unlimited | Blair faces revolt as US admits doubts.
The BBC view
And a claim by a senior official that the UK weapons dossier was rewritten to make it “sexier.”

Here’s a bunch of my digital photos from Barcelona.

Some very nice street art, bits of Sagrada Familia, pics of Heather and me at Primavera and also a great pic of Neil (a guy I know from work who also went) and some fountains I think. Generally lots of Gaudi things going on too.

I was poking about in my referrers log and saw an commonly occuring but completely mysterious URL from China. I thought. “This is interesting, someone linking to me, lets see what they have to say.” I went there and what did I find…. my site staring back at me, well almost.

Now I’m not sure if I should be flattered or a bit annoyed for myself and the nice person I asked to borrow their design from. The most annoying thing there is a big fat “design, all rights reserved” at the bottom of the front page. At least it don’t appear on other pages.

Annoyed though is probably too strong a word, I’m more amused by it. I’ve just checked the source and the meta data is all identical to mine, down to including bits of RDF XML in the body too. They’ve even used my user tracking gif at the bottom of the page as an email button.

I think I will try contacting them and seeing if they reply, could be fun…

Yay!! Broadband back on. I just installed a new linksys ADSL modem/router/wireless box and not only is it pretty but easy to setup and a breeze to use. I’m yet to try the wireless, but as soon as I get a laptop I will check it out… unless anyone wants to bring over their’s and try the techno-whizzy benefits of WiFi here in my garden.

It was more commercial than I expected. I sort of thought it would be downbeat and a bit like the big chill but with guitars. Not to be.

Queues queues everywhere!
And how my feet they do ache.
Queues queues everywhere!
just for a beer my thirst to slake.

The organisation was shit, the queues weird and unfathomable but Primavera was fun anyway. The opening night party with GSYBE! was brilliant. The friday night was mostly very dull and shit, spent most of it wandering from stage to stage looking for inspiration. At the end of Friday night, well very early saturday morning we tried to see 2manyDJs, but Heather and I both lost our steam lieing down before they came on and only stayed for 20 mins. Sunday however was great even if it did piss down with rain and we had to loose all fashion cred by wearing plastic bags with arm holes (thanks heather for the girl scout push to be sensible). The best part had to be the Kills followed by the White Stripes, a winning combination. The White Stripes suprised me by being a lot more funny live than I thought they would be. Their studio stuff seems all very serious, but the two of them were just messin round and have a laugh when they played live. End of the night was Peaches, which Heather and Neil and I waltzed into via a backstage route, straight past the thousands of people queueing to get in. A rock and roll moment pulled off with panache. But Peaches was crap.
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I´m in Barcelona right now (recovering from 3 nights of music festival) and I have to say it´s one of the friendliest and liveliest cities I´ve been too. The first thing I noticed was that there are sooo many cafe´s. Which is great for me cause I love everything about cafes… the style of food, the relaxed atmosphere, the social hubbub and most of all the coffee. When a cafe here gets it right, it gets it reeaally right on all counts. The decor in these places is spectacular, half the city´s population must be interior designers, every place looks hyper-designed, even the grungy ones look grunged up for effect. The other half of the city is just there to hang out in them, looking very cool wearing trendy clothes and sporting piercings and tattoos.

Barcelona is a very livable place, well at least I think I would be happy to live here. It´s also a more urbane place than I expected. I think it has the charm of an italian city but feels a lot more laid back, the people don´t seem to be trying as hard as the italians. Heather and I were also discussing that it also feels a lot like Paris, but not as big (obviously) and less formal; it just doesn´t feel like it has to make an effort to be elegant. All in all a great place, and well worth a repeat visit to go cafe crawling and tapas trawling.

How to Hurt the Hackers: The Scoop on Internet Cheating and How You Can Combat It. An interesting article on how games will always be hacked and how you can beat it. Reminds me of the things I keep saying about building social software at the Beeb. We can’t protect against everything we need to build stuff that watches for the attacks and/or malicious behaviour and then finds ways to convince the offender that they have succeeded when in fact they haven’t. Always keep them on your radar, don’t block them or ban them, have systems in place so you can keep an eye on them. I’m mostly thinking here about social software and those who are trying to misuse the systems, game them.

As JG Ballard seems to be a recent addition to the “must read all his most important works cause he’s very slipstream scifi” type person and as my girlfriend recently read crash this rung a wee bell with me. Fire..Cuffs and Guts, it’s someone’s fotoblog of vehicular misadventures. I found it on boingboing I think, though it’s been in draft for a while and can’t quite remember.

Very spiffy looking cantauroid spiderlike exoskeleton by Stelarc. Reminds me of drow striders, complete with big pincer like things on his arms.

In the form of Robot vacuum cleaners. This is good news for me, now I’m hanging out for a robot iron.