Heresy

If the Conservative party had sounded like this before the election, and not been banging on about immigration then they'd have got more interest.  Heck, I'd be tempted to vote for this person if he wasn't associated with some real bastards.

If we believe in economic freedoms then we should believe in wider social freedoms as well. You just have to stop bossing people around and that means taking a much more relaxed view of everything from drugs to the diversity of modern families. In the old days, people used to say they were dry in economics and wet in social policy. That cliché became so tiresome that you became desperate for someone who would say they were wet in economics and dry in social policy - perhaps believing in a prices and incomes policy enforced by corporal punishment.

Nowadays, people say they are economically and socially liberal. This strand of modernisation recognises that our culture is far more tolerant than many Conservatives appear to believe. Social liberals see that we just have to be much more comfortable with our own country as it is today.

Modern Programming is Rubbish

Today's conclusive proving that one of Andy's theories is right:

Events make debugging much, much harder.

When your code reads:
Do A
Do B
Do C

it's easy to follow the chain of logic and see where The Bad Thing is happening.

When your code reads:

DoEvent Something

and then events can hook into it from _anywhere_, it means stepping through the code until you find the place where it all goes wrong, usually in a piece of code miles from everything else, and written in a way that worked fine until last week, when you fixed something else - but didn't know to update this bit of code as well, as it wesn't clear it was there!

Things done

Took the SCART switch back to Argos and bought a rather more expensive model online.  I've discovered that the current one corrupted the widescreen signal, and was also causing minor picture degradation - a decent one will men a higher quality picture, and the TV should switch formats automatically.

Ed's computer didn't like the new power supply - it died after about a week with it - and switching out the power supply worked - so I now have to return the old one to dabs and make a mental note to stop buying cheap things - they cause more hassle than they're worth in the long run.  I've got a returns number, but with Ed being away from Tuesday for a week there'll be nobody in for the courier, so that's delayed until his return.

The MVP is resolutely dead, and the tech support lines are Monday-Friday 9-6, which isn't terribly useful, as Tuesday is the first day I'll be able to call them.  So I emailed them, and will hopefully get a reply before then.

I've finally got to my hair - which is somewhat scary, but now back under control again.

Washing machine filled, dishwasher filled - freezer currently defreezing (pans of water boiling while I type).

Still to do: have shower, meet Nick at 5pm at the UGC to give him keys, help Lilian sort out her iPod synching and go to the supermarket to pick up some food, dishwasher tables and miscellanious nonsense.

5 year anniversary

Omnis tuus castra sunt inesse nos

Huzzah for The Doctor

I'm willing to bet that yonmei is currently the happiest person on the planet.