Apolcalypto

And a Man sat alone, drenched deep in sadness. And all the animals drew near to him and said, "We do not like to see you so sad. Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it." The Man said, "I want to have good sight." The vulture replied, "You shall have mine." The Man said, "I want to be strong." The jaguar said, "You shall be strong like me." Then the Man said, "I long to know the secrets of the earth." The serpent replied, "I will show them to you." And so it went with all the animals. And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give, he left. Then the owl said to the other animals, "Now the Man knows much, he'll be able to do many things. Suddenly I am afraid." The deer said, "The Man has all that he needs. Now his sadness will stop." But the owl replied, "No. I saw a hole in the Man, deep like a hunger he will never fill. It is what makes him sad and what makes him want. He will go on taking and taking, until one day the World will say, 'I am no more and I have nothing left to give.'

"Apolcalypto"

I watched the movie tonight on BBC-2 and by the time it finished, I was knackared.

 If you have not seen it, then you simply must. The film is about the Mayan civilisation . Jaguar Paw's journey is one viewers really connect with. It's one of those films where you simply can't describe it well enough, it must be viewed. I was left exhausted when it finished, I felt as I had run every step with Jaguar Paw!
Top class from Mel Gibson, absolutely brilliant!

"Amazon Review"

Telegraph Road - Mark Knopfler

A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness

He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came walking down the track
And they never went further, and they never went back
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, and then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the telegraph road

Then came the mines, then came the ore
Then there was the hard times, then there was a war
Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
Telegraph road got so deep and so wide
Like a rolling river

And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze
People driving home from the factories
There's six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow

I used to like to go to work, but they shut it down
I've got a right to go to work, but there's no work here to be found
Yes, and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singing out their telegraph code
All the way down the telegraph road

You know, I'd sooner forget, but I remember those nights
When life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder, like you don't seem to care
But believe in me, baby, and I'll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
'Cause I've run every red light on memory lane
I've seen desperation explode into flames
And I don't want to see it again

From all of these signs saying, "sorry, but we're closed"
All the way
Down the telegraph road

Songwriters: KNOPFLER, MARK

Telegraph Road lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Canadians Asked To Stop 'Spocking' Bank Notes....

Canadians have been asked to stop drawing Leonard Nimoy-inspired Mr Spock pictures on their $5 bank notes.

For years, fans of the famous Star Trek character have been scribbling on the face of former PM Wilfrid Laurier - Canada's first Francophone prime minister - on $5 banknotes.

This gathered pace last week with the death of the actor.

Canada's central bank said earlier in the week that it was not illegal to add Spock's pointy Vulcan ears, sharp eyebrows and signature bowl haircut to the notes.

However, it did encourage citizens to stop their scribbling.

Bank spokeswoman Josianne Menard said in an email: "There are important reasons why it should not be done."

She went on to explain the bank believed it was "inappropriate" to deface the banknote because it was a "Canadian symbol and source of national pride".

The acceleration of the trend followed the actor's death on Friday with social media users posting their own versions of Laurier's Vulcan makeover in honour of their hero.

"Spock your $5 bills for Leonard Nimoy," the Canadian Design Resource tweeted on its posting while Simon Williams tweeted: "I've had a beat up Canadian 5 buried in my wallet for years, finally found a use for it!"

Images of the altered bills were circulated widely online and attracted international media attention.

Calgary artist Tom Bagley, who posted his own Spock-Laurier hybrid on Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) and Flickr after Nimoy's death, said the original idea came about as an old bar trick to impress a waitress and he did not see anything wrong with it.

"I always thought it was OK as long as the numbers were intact - it still counted as money," he said.

"That's what I heard. Because stuff happens like, say, you spill spaghetti sauce all over it or something like that."

Complex Simplicity... W8

I tried to avoid berating Windows 8, because I really avoided using it at work for as long as possible. However, I recently purchased a Windows 8.1 touch-screen tablet (with a detachable keyboard - ala-surface)..

And boy, do I hate this abomination of an operating system. What were they thinking, and who approved this UI.  And why hasn't anybody been shot or sacrificed for this garbage.

To do a simple thing is a chore, and instead of using a single button to do stuff, you have to try and find where they have hidden that button within the hideous interface.

Networking, interfacing, printing & file sharing with other OS's is a nightmare - You can't do the simple things, and you are prevented from doing other things (this is true for Windows 7 as well, but at least Windows 7 didn't have this hideous interface & it did have a start button).

For example, I want to edit the "my.ini" file in the "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1" - so I right-click the file & try to edit it.

In Windows XP, Vista, 2000, 98 & 95 - In can edit, update & save the file in it's place - with one simple step. 

Windows 7 & 8 will let you edit the ini file, but will not let you save it in it's original location. So you edit the file, save it in another location or save it as something else in another location, rename / copy & paste back to the original location, and then confirm whether you want to overwrite the original file or not,. 3-4 steps more than the original, less advanced OS's of days gone. 

And everything else seems to work in exactly the same messed-up and over complicated way - so instead of having simple defaults with a transparent OS, we see ourselves fighting the OS in order to do the simplest of things, with all defaults set to the exact opposite to whatever any sane person might need or want - the interface of annoyance

File, folder & printer sharing is an impossibility with any version of Windows, other than 7 or 8, unless you jump naked through hoops and sacrifice a virgin to Beelzebub.

Security policies & issues.

Everything is a BIG fight, you get it to work and you learn how to do things, and Microshit decides to, literally, pull-the-rug from under your feet and stop everything from working the normal way, because somebody, god forbid, might hijack your printer. The same printer that you have on your private network. 

 It's really, really, really an unusable OS & officially - the biggest pile of SHIT on the planet. AKA. How to complicate simplicity..

 Apart from browsing the internet, I have really giving up on this OS, and I'm back using my 10 year old laptop, with Windows Vista, and you know that things are bad when you think that Windows Vista is good....

Long Live & Prosper.... :(

RIP Leonard Nimoy

I loved Mr. Spock & Star Trek 

Long live & prosper, wherever you are...