James Lowey

Democracy, etc

2009-06-04T07:53:44Z

Not going to be too over the top, but any local kids that have me added NEED to vote today. Not even necessarily for me, but there is a terrifying chance that the BNP might get a seat in the East Midlands. I'm on the ballot across the East Midlands under the banner "Jury Team" as an accountable, independent candidate. To find out more, comment or see www.JamesLowey.eu

lowey @ 2009-01-05T03:43:00

2009-01-05T03:51:16Z

What the hell? I quote from Slashdot:

"To put things in perspective, this country is on the verge of banning kitchen knives to try to reduce violent crime"

"Actually the UK is NOT at the verge of banning kitchen knives. A group of Doctors suggested the ban of POINTED kitchen knives."

"Oh, POINTED kitchen knives. Well, that's much better, isn't it? And physicians are definitely the sort of experts we want making the decisions on kitchen cutlery."

Source

Seriously? Ban pointed kitchen knives! Oh, and we'd better ban glass bottles because they can be used as weapons too. Drinks cans can be torn to be sharp too. Fuck it, let's put everyone in plastic bubbles in foam-padded rooms - that's the only way that we'll all be truly safe.

...</rant>

(Disclaimer: Yes, I know that the government hasn't said anything about this, but the point is that a leading doctor, someone that you'd expect to be very reasonable and intelligent, has suggested this.)

Summary of 2008, Predictions for 2009

2008-12-31T18:46:15Z

The year that brought us Shannon Matthews and Sarah Palin, and took away Musharraf and Woolworths. The year that the "credit crunch" began, and that saw the price of a barrel of crude oil rocket up to $147 and then plummet back to $38.

1) Hillary drops out, Obama wins
As someone who followed the US Presidential race and specifically Barack Obama's campaign from when it was launched in February 2007, 2008 started in such a way that predictions were impossible! In September 2007, Hillary led in the first six states to hold primaries/caucuses - a lead which followed into October. At the end of October, however, she did very badly in a debate with her competitors - dodging many questions and contradicting herself - and her inevitable decline began. By the end of December, the race was already a lot tighter, and in the January 3rd Iowa caucus, she came third after Obama and Edwards. Things looked good for Obama, but then Hillary narrowly won on January 8th. A few days later, a comment by Hillary concerning Obama's race resulted in the race being polarised. It stayed tight until May, when her chances of winning were reduced to pretty much nothing. Following the final primaries on June 3rd, Obama had enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee, and on June 7th, Hillary ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.

And so began the fierce race. On August 23rd, Obama selected the relatively uninteresting Joe Biden as his running mate. In contrast, on August 29th, the world was introduced to Sarah Palin, John McCain's running mate - and oh boy, what a running mate she was. McCain must have decided satisfy his Republican critics who complained that he was too centrist by picking the most right-wing Republican that he could find. Or maybe it was just a shallow ploy to try to win the former Hillary supporters' votes. Or maybe it was both. Whichever it was, it failed. Criticism of McCain himself mostly stopped though, and new, stronger criticism focused on McCain's choice and Palin herself began. In the end, Obama won a historic election.

2) Boris Johnson became Mayor of London
The British public's general dissatisfaction of their government unfortunately reflected on Ken Livingstone, and in May this year, London elected Boris Johnson as their new Mayor.

3) Britain (and other countries) enter a recession
So far, we've lost MFI, Woolworths, and the fourth largest Investment Bank in America (Lehman Brothers). HBOS is sold to Lloyds TSB, reducing competition. The British government nationalised Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock (and then sold off the profitable bits to Santander). The British government also acquired 58% of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The American government ended up spending more than $7 trillion to try and keep the economy afloat - including acquiring 79.9% of AIG, one of the world's largest companies. Back in Britain, Whittard of Chelsea and Zavvi (formerly Virgin Megastores) both went into administration - the former quickly got sold to a private equity group, while nothing has been announced by Zavvi yet (although there's been a lot of speculation).

4) Beijing Olympics
Hey, they happened this year. I wasn't really that interested in them, but we did pretty well. Boris Johnson caused controversy a couple of times too. I'm sorry though, but our handover ceremony at the end was truly dismal.

5) Large Hadron Collider
They really screwed up here, didn't they? On 10th September, they started it up, and on the 19th, a bit of it blew up. Now it won't be back on until this Summer. Good luck though. (As a side note, I've read speculation about the Many-worlds interpretation and Quantum suicide/immortality - interpretation of Quantum physics that speculate that if the LHC would destroy the world, then it will never work. However, I think this is still just pure speculation - people trying to apply meaning to a random event.)

6) Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand
Once again, the media latched on to a non-story and caused more trouble than the story itself did. Yes, they were abusive idiots, but that shouldn't cost them their careers - and it won't! Russell Brand resigned from the BBC, and then he went to work in America while his Channel 4 series got record ratings! He's due to tour the UK in the next couple of months, too, and will likely benefit from the publicity. Meanwhile, the BBC lost a good controller.

7) Mumbai attacks
In late November, there were ten co-ordinated attacks across Mumbai, killing at least 173 people and injuring over 308. These attacks are likely to define the future of Indian politics in the same way as America was changed by the September 11th attacks.

Okay, so there's seven of the most important events of the year. Now on to a few events in my life.

8) First 9-5 job, Edinburgh
I got my first proper job, working as a technical support agent, helping customers with problems with their Sky television. It lasted..a month. That was their fault though, the fools, for screwing up and approving a holiday and then claiming that they didn't realise how long that it was (despite the fact that I checked three times). My break in Edinburgh was fun as always. Pappy's were excellent, once again.

9) Eee!
Okay, this is a bit of a lame event, but I don't care. In late July, I bought myself an Eee PC. It is wonderful, and incredibly useful. It is small enough to take anywhere with me. Very satisfied with my choice. I'd recommend them to anyone and everyone.

10) Open Rights Group
I finally became a paid member of the Open Rights Group, after following the mailing list since they were founded.

11) Eradication of Windows
I finally gave up Windows completely. For a long time, I'd used it as a secondary operating system, but I finally wiped it and made better use of the disk space. Pretty much everything that I need runs fine under Wine or Ubuntu. I've not completely freed myself yet though - I have a love-hate thing going on with Opera, find Skype useful from time-to-time, have Adobe Flash as Gnash isn't quite up to scratch yet (but they're making great progress), and recently downloaded the new cross-platform BBC iPlayer (which uses Adobe AIR - and is good apart from the quality of the shows - the high quality option on the web version is far better.) The piece of open-source software that I've been most impressed with this year? VirtualBox. A fantastic alternative to VMware!

That's my (not very short) summary of 2008. Now on to 2009! Questions and my predictions. Feel free to comment with your predictions.

1) How bad is the economy going to get?
Very. It will last longer than just 2009, too.

2) What other businesses are going to go into administration / go bankrupt?
Jessops (the camera shop), not sure what else. Debenhams?

3) Will we see Windows 7?
Microsoft want to bring it out as soon as possible, but they also don't want to screw it up by rushing it. It could come out right near the end of 2009, but otherwise, I'm saying no.

4) Will we get a general election?
All depends on how well Gordon handles the economy over the next few months. I'm going to say no though.

5) Will Jacqui Smith continue her relentless attack on our fundamental rights?
Okay, so maybe this is a bit of a biased question. Of course she'll continue.

6) Will I make it to Edinburgh again (in August), and if so, what will it be like?
I hope that I do, but the current economic climate makes these things uncertain. I think that whatever happens, the festival will be smaller and quieter, as less performers will be able to afford it!

Okay, so there's my predictions. Now I'm going out to party at Junktion7, which is sadly closing tomorrow. I was going to include a "Bands of '08" section, but it'll have to wait. I'll post in 365 days to see how my predictions did, and to dwell on 2009. That's if we're not all living in small groups in the countryside, after society has completely broken down. :P

- James

PS I'm going to edit this tomorrow, and add some photos to break it up a little (and make it look more interesting).

Sheesh

2008-10-29T03:20:40Z

Okay, I know this is a bit of a lame thing to update about, especially as I update so rarely, but..

Copyright is seriously broken.

Scouting for Boys - a book written and illustrated by Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting Movement - is still under copyright. This is a book written and published over one hundred years ago, based on his childhood experiences and his time serving in the Second Boer War.

Just one of many examples.

lowey @ 2007-08-14T04:20:00

2007-08-14T03:22:44Z

Within hours, fire consumed all that had stood for a mighty empire and boundless imagination.

That's such a beautiful sentence, but awful.

Ideals

2007-06-25T23:38:48Z

I'm in love with an ideal.
The good side is that an ideal can never hurt you,
the bad is that an ideal can never love you back.

I've been waking up after strange, alien dreams,
wondering what they mean.

Do they mean anything really?
If not, why am I having them?

I feel that alcohol can make me more creative,
but maybe it just makes me
drunk.

Drunk,
don't you hate that.
I'm not drunk though..
Tipsy and sleep-deprived, maybe.

An ideal can never be close to you,
no matter how hard you want it to be.
You can look for an ideal,
but it's useless.
Just an ideal.

Instead,
just bounce along.
Happy music makes it all better in the end.
Bounce bounce bounce.

Meme-tastic!

2007-06-07T01:37:14Z

Okay, so i saw something like this on someone else's LJ. You take ten of your favourite films, check their keywords on IMDB, and list five keywords for each film. You guys have to guess what each film is! I made these quite hard, but most should be okay to work out.

~~1. cat, future, telephone, belly button, prophecy~~ The Matrix - airlight
~~2. amnesia, betrayal, frozen river, train, hair~~ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - airlight
~~3. quirky, satirical, mind control, surrealism, dystopic future~~ A Clockwork Orange - forevernobody
~~4. british empire, corset, monkey, gold, dog~~ Pirates of the Caribbean - airlight
~~5. car accident, photography, london, strip club, jealousy~~ Closer - Christa
~~6. book, enigmatic, driven mad, numerology, paranoid~~ The Number 23 - airlight
~~7. imaginary friend, surreal, troubled teen, arson, school~~ Donnie Darko - airlight
~~8. catholic, concert, reckless driving, car stunt, taxes~~ The Blues Brothers - airlight
~~9. electric shaver, violence, narration, exploding building, airplane~~ Fight Club - airlight
~~10. cliff, revenge, quicksand, book, pirate~~ The Princess Bride - airlight

Good luck! Some should be way easier than others.

Edit: I swear to god. I need to do another one of these at a time that other people are awake.. or lock it to everyone except my sister.

Edit Two:
Right, got five bonus ones. There's one rule though. My sister is not allowed to participate in these bonus ones.

~~11. brutality, car crash, corruption, neo noir, detective~~ Sin City - featherfinyipp
~~12. london, virus, hospital, monkeys, apocalyptic~~ 28 Days Later.. - forevernobody
~~13. sex shop, bicycle, shyness, idealism, innocence~~ Amelie - forevernobody
~~14. plotless, drunk, countryside, actor, darkness~~ Withnail & I - featherfinyipp
~~15. molotov cocktail, british comedy, dart, flatulence, generation x~~ Shaun of the Dead - forevernobody

These are for you guys who didn't get a chance!

lowey @ 2007-06-03T19:29:00

2007-06-03T18:29:58Z

Orange mixed with Lemonade tastes of summer. :)

Livejournal!

2007-04-02T23:48:20Z

My long lost friend! Just fyi, i've locked all old posts to old friends only. Long story, don't ask.

Just had an urge to start updating again.. Dunno why. When i went to Connexions, the ~~bint~~ woman told me to keep a journal about what i do. I don't like keeping a proper journal though, i just keep random thoughts which i jot down when i feel odd/unwell.. Hmm. And i'm not exactly going to show some random Connexions woman my livejournal, hah. So yeah. Whatever.

A lot has happened since my last update. If you're reading this, you probably know most of it though.

I got put on anti-stress medication, but still ended up dropping out of college. Meh.

Anyway, the real reason for me deciding to update was that i wanted a place to jot down the thoughts that i noted down in my phone last night just before going to sleep.. and any similar thoughts that i have.

"Growing up sucks. Things were much simpler when we were young. Thunderbirds, Blue Peter, Scouts, School, Triangles. No job hunting, no sleep patterns, no meals at strange times. No planning the future. No money problems. Love meant something; sex didn't mean anything. Love is now just an empty concept in a world that has rejected it. Sex is an empty concept in a world that has abused it. Who means what? What means what? Even close friends are afar. So we traded the triangles, books with pictures, simplicity, and blissful ignorance for what? Hormones and emotions, poetry and novels, alcohol and responsibility, and sex? I preferred childhood."