Cory Doctorow, ORG Advisory Council member, famous novelist, copyright activist and one of the driving forces behind BoingBoing, has kindly donated a Razr mobile phone and a signed fist edition of his novel Eastern Standard Tribe, to the Open Rights Group for us to auction. We have duly put both together as one lot on eBay, with a starting price of just £5. (Rather fuzzy photo.)
Bargain!
Details for the Motorola Razr:
Flipphone
Condition: New
GSM/GPRS 850/900/1800/1900 Mzh
Unlocked
Camera with 4x zoom
Bundled Items: Battery, Wall Charger
Features: Bluetooth, Colour Screen, Email / Web, GPRS, MMS enabled, Polyphonic ringtones, Streaming video, Vibration
And the blurb for Eastern Standard Tribe:
Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He's doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world
Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. he may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.
The comm – instant wireless communication – puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. but one thing hasn't changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by common time zones, less than families and more than nations. And Art is working oto humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people.
The world of next week is overflowing with ubiquitous computing, where an idea scribbled onto one's comm can revolutionize an industry. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted – not happiness, not money, and, most certainly, not love.
Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on teh roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain. Happiness or smarts? What's it going to be, Art?
If you want to check out Cory's book before you buy this signed hardback, then you can – he's made it available for download under a Creative Commons licence.
So, whilst you're checking out the full spec for the ultra-slim Razr and reading through Cory's download to make sure you're into time-shifting double-dealing hackers, why not bid? Just in case…
And if you don't want to bid, but want to support ORG, please blog the links!
The clocks have gone forward. I've got that strange, dislocated seasonal jetlag feeling. The sun is only just now going down, and it's 7.30pm. It feels like 4pm instead. I suppose I should go home and get some dinner.
Or alternatively, I could enjoy the high-speed wifi here at Stanhope whilst I still can, and eat chocolate instead.
I'd forgotten what it was like. No, really. I'd totally forgotten.
You click a link.
You wait.
The browser pane goes white.
You wait.
You wait.
You wait.
The title comes up at the top of the window. The progress bar has hardly moved.
You wait.
Skeletons of graphics appear, outlining where the images will eventually be. If you're lucky, the alt text tells you what's coming.
You wait.
Slowly, slowly, the page fills in.
You wait.
At last, it is done.
My god, the pain. I'll never accuse a 10 second page load of being slow ever again. When it takes 5 – 10 minutes to load a page, now that's slow.
It took me over 45 minutes to order broadband. Partly, this was Virgin.net's dire site design, which has you going round and round and round in circles before you finally reach escape velocity and it spits you out one some random page that may or may not be the one you want. (It took me half an hour to find the page in their customer service section that told me what the phone number for dial-up was, and that was on a proper broadband connection at Stanhope.)
According to all the line checks, we are hooked up to a shitty exchange that couldn't poop its way out of a wet paper bag. Our connection speed is likely to be 512kbps, possibly hitting 1mbps on a good day going downhill with the wind behind it.
Allegedly, our exchange is going to be upgraded in April 2006, but I will believe it when I see it. At that point, we are promised by a number of providers that speeds of 'up to 8mbps' will be available. I'll believe that when I see it too.
How on earth can this be, in this day and age, and in London? I mean, come on. Bustling metropolis. Nine million inhabitants. How can the telecommunications infrastructure be so shite as to put the existence of decent speed broadband in doubt? It's not like I'm living in Nowhereton-cum-Shitesham in rural Dorsetshire. I'm in Zone Two, ffs. Sheesh.
Also, what is it with dial-up these days? When my modem attempts to connect (and my god, I'm glad I still have an old-fashioned modem in my iBook), I have to pick up the phone and dial a number, then when it rings I click 'OK' on the dialogue box and put the phone down again. What a monumental pain in the arse.
If we're lucky, at some point within the next two weeks we shall have our pathetic excuse of a broadband connection up and running. Until then, I eschew all forms of internet communications during non-work hours. You want me? Call me.
Right, I'm off to go read one of those funny flappy things with words in…
When you think of the abolition of Parliament, you think of various moves made by various Bad People in England's dim and distant past. Kings who arbitrarily suspended democracy. People who decided blowing up the Palace of Westminster was a nice idea. That sort of thing.
Well, our lovely Labour government (and yes, I voted them in, and no, I won't be voting for them again – I had no idea they'd turn out to be such appalling control freaks) is attempting to abolish Parliament under the guise of legislative reform. From the Save Parliament site:
The boringly-named Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is in fact a very dangerous piece of legislation. It grants any minister the ability to amend, replace, or repeal existing legislation. The frightening thing is this: they would be able to make major changes to the law without Parliament being able to examine it properly, taking away the ability of Parliament to meaningfully represent the citizens of this country.
That really should alarm you. Democracy is not a perfect system, but this bill will destroy any pretence at democracy we have here in the UK and will instead institute a sort of collaborative dictatorship, with power to summarily change the law shared between ministers who, ultimately, will be steered by Blair.
What more can I say, other than take action. Your parliament needs you!
Slowly, the floor in our lounge is being revealed. Books are on shelves, clothes are in drawers and hanging in wardrobes. Food is in fridge, crockery is in cupboards (both plates, both bowls, both cups, both glasses), cutlery is… erm, not in a drawer.
For some strange reason, the designers of our kitchen decided that drawers were just so last century that they couldn't bear to put any in. So I'm not sure what I am going to do with our various and assorted hand-held non-mechanical food preparation and eating tools, because they just don't really like being in cupboards.
I have a phone number. This is the first step in getting broadband, which I will admit I am missing dreadfully. Not missing the TV at all, though. Badly missing radio.
Location is fantastic. Half an hour for T'Other to get to work, 40 mins for me. Waitrose, Morrisons, Marks and Sparks, cinema and leisure centre all within a stone's throw. New Arsenal stadium possibly within rocket launcher range. Shame I don't have one.
Intentions to get fit, sort out diet, start writing (damn) book abound. All good, all somewhat resembling paving slabs. Or possibly cobbles. If it were up to me, I'd cobble the road to hell, just for that extra scrap of ankle-twisting-ness.
So, in short, I am a happy bunny. And who knows… maybe once we have internet access, I might blog more and attempt to regain my previous heights bloggy excellence. Or maybe you'll just have to continue putting up with this old shite.
What did I used to write about, anyways?
Done. Phew. It was a long day yesterday, but we managed to get all our stuff from Euston to Islington without too much pain. The flat wasn't as clean as I would have liked, so I spent much of the afternoon scrubbing the skirting boards and floors in our bedroom, which were filthy. Will have to do the lounge at a later date, when the skirting boards and floors are visible again. At the moment they are obscured by large amounts of stuff.
Just done the last Copyfighter's Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop at Stanhope – from next month it will be a picnic in Hyde Park instead. Whilst I'm here, thought I'd steal a moment to blog. Still need to get BT to connect our phone, and then to get broadband.
Anyway, still alive, and just about to go carry on unpacking.
My boyfriend's friend's friend's boyfriend to his boss:
“I really am trying to see things from your point of view, but I just can't stick my head that far up my ass.”
Just sitting in the new flat*, waiting for the agent to come back with a second set of keys. Can't wait to get moved in tomorrow, to get all of our stuff here, if not unpacked.
Of course, there's no broadband yet, so no wifi, so no answering emails late at night or any of that such malarky. Perhaps that will be a good thing for a couple of weeks. Make us get everything sorted out rather than sit around reading blogs and chatting on IM.
Not that I ever do that, of course, but y'know, just sayin'…
* Well, I was. Obviously not now…
I didn't want to blog about this before it was all confirmed, in case somehow I jinxed the whole thing, but T'Other and I have located somewhere to live, and will be moving in on Saturday. I just got a phone call from the agent now, and we're all set. We're going to be living, technically, in Islington, which is all terribly nice. In actual fact, we're not in Islington proper, but the location is good: handy for work, big supermarket nearby, and also a leisure centre with gym which caught T'Other's eye immediately he saw it. Has a climbing wall too, so I might get back into climbing again, something I've not done for about 10 years.
The flat itself is a small one-bedroom place with open-plan lounge and kitchen, newly refurbished with really nice work surfaces made of granite, which appeals mightily to my geologist side, and a dishwasher which appeals to my lazy-ass side. It's all nicely decorated, and there's lots of storage in a loft room, which is just great. It's not huge, but if one can get all of one's suitcases and crap stored out of the way, then that does make it easier to keep things tidy.
So, keep your fingers crossed at around 2.30pm this Saturday afternoon that our move goes smoothly. I have the van booked, and am pretty much ready to go.
I can't wait. This will be, in essence, the first time I will have felt that I'm living in my own space in nearly three years. Finally, and properly, I can pack away that mental yurt and leave it behind. I cannot begin to tell you how happy this makes me.
