Thursday 21 June 2012

Sense at last

A US father who found his five-year-old daughter being raped, then beat the attacker to death will not be charged, prosecutors have said.


Good !! 


I don't think any father would disagree with what this man had done to the attacker of his five year old daughter..... He obviously didn't mean to kill the man because of his 911 call after the attack.... personally I couldn't give a toss that the rapist died as a result of his injuries...


I've been reading through some of the liberal wishy washy comments on the BBC news website about it, and quite frankly either these people don't have children or think it's perfectly ok for somebody to rape anyone, let alone a defenceless child. ..... such as .....

"

84.

 
I think you're all missing the point. This father took the law into his own hands. He savagely beat a man to death and then phoned the police. What right had he to beat anyone in such a way? The police are there for these things and then justice must prevail. If police had beaten the deceased man, would you all be saying the same thing?"

lets pick this statement apart ..... "I think you're all missing the point" .... erm I think not ......"This father took the law into his own hands. he savagely beat a man to death and then phoned the police" .... Well yes and the problem with that is ? what was he supposed to do tap the man on shoulder mid rape and ask him for ID ? or just call the police and stand there waiting for them to turn up while the rapist continued ?
Some people need their heads examining !!!
Anyway brilliant result for the father, as for his daughter lets hope she's too young to remember what happened in later years and lets hope the father can put behind him what he's done.... I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep over slotting him ......















Wednesday 20 June 2012

To save heartache with a Garmin Forerunner 205/305 on Debian

As you will have discovered Garmin have NO support for Linux so their Windoze only plugin doesn't work with Linux at all (even under Wine.... don't bother.... you'll never get that portion of your life back)

No....I'm afraid the only way to weld a Garmin Forerunner 205/305 (and others probably) into your lovely shiny Debian Linux is to do the following :-

( I apologise for laying it out "idiot's guide" style but you have to appreciate not everybody is an old code monkey)

go to this gentleman's website here and download either the Debian 386 or AMD64 bit deb file depending on your particular flavour and install it (Lucid is about the closest to Debian Squeeze)..... right click on the deb file and install with gdebi (it's quick and dirty and works)

Then once you've done that you'll need to do some semi scary stuff..... open a terminal as root or sudo/su once you're in the terminal and type or copy and paste :-

(red for filenames blue for content of files)

nano /etc/udev/rules.d/51-garmin.rules

once the file comes up cut and paste this into its first line

SYSFS{idVendor}=="091e", SYSFS{idProduct}=="0003", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

(this has been deprecated so it "may" suddenly stop working on an update)

(also add yourself to the "plugdev" group later)

saved it by pressing "Ctrl O then Ctrl X" and you should drop back to terminal prompt

cut and paste this into the terminal 

nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

enter at the bottom of that file (or new line if nothing is in the file) the following 


# prevent garmin_gps from being loaded 
blacklist garmin_gps


save it (see above)

shutdown & reboot, plug in garmin forerunner 205/305 

go here and test it works or here
Enjoy

Sunday 17 June 2012

1979 Praktica L2 Camera & Déjà vu

There I was doing my monthly internet stalking of my two daughters Emma and Rhiannon, To see if I can pick up things about what they are doing with themselves..... Rhiannon is a bit of a Ninja stealth daughter, I have never really found much out about Rhiannon, she is obviously less prolific on the internet or simply hides better.


 They both have facebook and various other accounts which I've found but I'd never intrude.... it's up to them if they want to contact me...... I'm slightly easier than oxygen to find ......


Emma is getting much easier to find and I was trawling through twitter when I came across this Twitpic ......Ironic isn't it that my daughter Emma is now a photographer (and a very good one by all accounts)  and here she is posting a picture of my old Praktica L2 (center) and my trusty old (Russian made) light meter....(far right) Which I might add was bought in 1979 in Caernarvon directly after my passing out parade from the Royal Signals in Ouston on the way home on leave...(I loved that camera and light meter).... 


It was about a year before I met her mother.... happy days .... If I remember rightly the light meter has a little chip out of the wheel and the L2 has a bit of a dodgy shutter mechanism when you wind it on (age I guess... but still works...or did....).... like most things nothing lasts forever.... 


Well I'm glad they are getting some use even if it is in a glass cabinet displaying photography relics of yesteryear......it used to have a case as well bought at the same time a faux leather shiny effort.... but I took it off because it just got in the way and it also made the camera much heavier to use......that camera and light meter cost me a months wages back in 1979 !!! 

I'd always wondered where I'd put my old camera.... now I know.....mind you I left practically everything behind when I left my then wife.... I had very little desire to be reminded about anything to do with her..(except the kids of course...but hey ho) ...I hope she is happy now, I certainly am..... :)
I think I've even got some undeveloped black and white film rolls taken around that time with it somewhere.... they probably won't come out now it's been a few years since they were shot.... nice camera, trusty, dependable and it gave very good photographs in its time....even though it only had a 50mm lens....:) 


the Déjà vu bit was Stewarts passing out parade on the 15th June (amazingly close to my own passing out parade back in 1979) but then there have been other similarities such as Stewarts rifle butt number was 133 and mine was 132.....(bizarre).... 
He did extremely well on his passing out and the training beforehand overall he's thoroughly enjoyed it, he's off for 9 days leave now then back to do phase two training or Trade Training as it used to be called back in the Cold War Days...... 
Well we are eagerly anticipating the summer, but thus far it's just been a damp squib and from what the weather forecast says it's not going to be a scorcher anyway, now there is a shock.....


Well that about covers the news from our end......I will update when something exciting happens....... (sigh)

Thursday 14 June 2012

1984 is here



(Shamelessly stolen from the BBC News website to comment on it)

Details of internet use in the UK will have to be stored for a year to allow police and intelligence services to access it, under government plans.
Records will include people's activity on social network sites, webmail, internet phone calls and online gaming.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the change was needed to keep up with how criminals were using new technology.
But senior Tory David Davis said it was "incredibly intrusive" and would only "catch the innocent and incompetent". (At last a politician with a bit of sense)
The Communications Bill is to be published in draft form on Thursday - but the government faces a battle to get it through Parliament intact, with Lib Dem MPs and Conservatives such as Mr Davis calling for it to be watered down or abandoned altogether.
Local authorities are likely to be stripped of their current powers to access phone call data in an effort to win over critics but the proposals have still been branded a "snooper's charter" by civil liberties campaigners.
Rachel Robinson, policy officer for Liberty, said: "It's good that local councils won't be able to watch the entire population but even law enforcement should be targeting suspects - not all citizens.
"Just like the internet, any private home can be a crime scene, but should we install hidden cameras and microphones in every bedroom in the land?"
'Stopping terrorists' (Bullshit.....)
Under current legislation, communications companies must keep phone records and information about messages sent via their own email services for 12 months.
The new proposals would require UK communications companies to keep details of a much wider range of data including use of social network sites, webmail, voice calls over the internet, and gaming. Websites visited could be recorded, although pages within sites would not be. (yeah and my name is Boris Yeltsin and I can fly like superman)
Mrs May told BBC Breakfast: "It's not about the content, it's not about reading people's emails or listening to their telephone calls. (YES IT IS, We aren't all morons you know)
"This is purely about the who, when and where made these communications and it's about ensuring we catch criminals and stop terrorists." (What a load of tosh...... so all they will be gathering is who they talked to when they talked to and where they talked to.... all of which they will need to view the entire communication to get that information)
The police and security services are concerned that criminals and terrorists are increasingly evading detection by using social media and online gaming sites to communicate with each other.
Officers would still need to obtain a warrant to gain access to the content of the online communication.
But the government would be able to request any service provider to keep data about internet usage, although initially it will involve about a dozen firms including BT, Virgin and Sky.
'Total war'
The previous government was forced to abandon plans to store every citizen's internet data on a single, giant database following protests - and Mrs May says she has no plan to resurrect this idea.The proposals will be subject to scrutiny by a joint parliamentary committee before the legislative process begins in earnest. (lets hope it falls at the first fence)
Metropolitan Police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, writing in the Times, said having greater powers to access data was essential in waging a "total war on crime" - and he warned that police risked losing the fight against crime unless MPs passed a law enabling them to collect more communications data. (So I guess the data protection act doesn't apply should this go through ?)
He wrote: "Put simply, the police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals who bring so much harm to victims and our society." 
Tory backbencher David Davis, a former shadow home secretary who fought a by-election in the last Parliament on the issue of civil liberties, described the proposals as "incredibly intrusive".
He said the ban on local authority officials accessing data was "important but minor".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If they really want to do things like this - and we all accept they use data to catch criminals - get a warrant. Get a judge to sign a warrant, not the guy at the next desk, not somebody else in the same organisation.
"The only people who will avoid this are the actual criminals, because there are ways around this - you use an internet cafe, you hack into somebody's wi-fi, you use what's called proxy servers, and they are just the easy ways."



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18434112