Category Archives: Observation

Oops! I’ve started something I can’t finish

Posted on by
Reply

Apparently bullying Iran is subtlety different from bullying idiots who have more money than sense. The dictator of the USA is now criticising other heads of government for not joining in with his now failed flight of fancy to ‘free the oppressed’ folks of Iran. But hey, Russia now benefits, by being allowed to sell it’s oil at an even higher price, helping them to kill more innocent folk in Ukraine. All of this from the bag of wind that said he would end the Russia-Ukraine conflict in one day.

Trump has said one thing that is stark staringly obvious. European countries should spend more on defence. Zelensky has recently underlined the simple truth that Europe should prepare for war, not defence. Defence is passive, waiting for shit to land on your doorstep.
America run by a dictator, cannot be trusted. Single-handedly, the man who had forsworn any more foreign wars, has pushed millions of innocent families in to paying more for energy than ever before, with no end in sight, and is now calling for help to pull him out of the shit he has created. My question is this. How does this make America great again? My perspective of Trump supporters is a gaggle of racist, religious bigots, that are no better that the bunch of fascists ruling Iran. Shame they can’t scrap without destroying those around them.
God isn’t on your side, God is a creation by men for one reason, to control you. Wake up and hear the noise.

The Blurred Horizon Post Office Project

Posted on by
Reply

Fujitsu looked at the UK National Lottery and saw a cash cow, so bought ICL.
I’m not in the business but know a good deal when I see it. So apparently did Fujitsu.
ICL had a longish history when that deal was done, that goes back to the days of punched cards to program a computer. Good stuff in it’s day.

There had been one previous abortive effort to modernise the Post Offices 19th century rubber stamp business practices, and I can’t comment further on that.

After a short contract with the Midland Bank I attended an interview and was awarded the post of Technical Design Authority (TDA) for the Post office project at ICL Pathway in Feltham.
The existing ‘design’ documents amounted to no more than ‘wordy’ wish lists. The authors, some of whom I met, were familiar with client-server technology and damn-all else. My conclusion, a collection of ICL dinosaurs, that should have been extinct fifteen years before.
The coding team were mostly Visual Basic ‘programmers’, sporting MCP badges. (Microsoft Certified Professional) Experience with them demonstrated that they couldn’t have programmed their way to escape from a paper bag.
There were two teams that were exemplary, that of Configuration Management, and the Security Team.
The pilot scheme was running and there were a large number of problems, I asked Configuration Management for access to their ‘fault’ stack and gave advice on fixes. One idiot in the coding team had specified the name of the Post Office printer, rather than using the default. A replacement printer didn’t work. The fundamental issue was communications with the Post offices The software was proprietary, and I was disallowed from reviewing it. A visit to the manager of this debacle and my statement to him that my title of TDA was a stupid joke, was dismissed. I did not renew my contract.

Previously I cooperated with Epson on the development of the FORTH programming language on their laptop. This was with Japanese engineers.I could not fault their knowledge or co-operation.
It grieves me that it is always Fujitsu’s name that is constantly mentioned. The only mistake they made was buying ICL, and the bunch of no-hopers that worked for it.

I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there..

Posted on by
Reply

I didn’t do it. I wasn’t there. I didn’t wannit. I wouldn’t dare.

With grateful thanks to 10cc.

Well good morning Judge, how are you today?
I’m in trouble, please put me away
A pretty thing took a shine to me
I couldn’t stop it so I let it be

Update 22/04/26
Much earlier I published a small post on joebrown.org.uk (look at the ‘wayback’ machine)
I lost Seth in 2022, and he is still sorely missed. Early in 2013, when we met, it seemed as if we recognised in each the other, the hurt we both felt.

The last post I ever did on joebrown.org.uk on Dec. 17th 2021 was regarding Seth. Whether this was a premonition of what was to happen in 2022, I really don’t know. I append my post below:

Seth. Seth means ‘given’ – a gift.

When Adam lost his son Abel to his murderous sibling Cane. God provided a ‘replacement’ for Abel, a new son, destined to be the Biblical ancestor of the whole human race. Adam called his new son Seth, meaning ‘given’ or ‘gift’, for he was totally unexpected. Seth later pleaded with Michael, the keeper of the gates, to to let his father back in to ‘The Garden’, excluded as he had been after Abel’s death. Seth was reputed to have lived for over 900 years, and because he was the ancestor of Noah, it is believed that every living human-being owes his existence to Seth. He is revered in every branch of modern religion whether Judaic, Christian, or Islam.

Seth was ‘given’ to me in 2013. His original name was an unpronounceable German word meaning strength. The circumstances were certainly not Biblical. He was 7 months old, vicious, unfriendly, and ill-at-ease with himself and almost everyone else. Not a little unlike me then. Over the early period of nearly two years, it was remarked that Seth had been ‘re-habiltated’. then, as now, he has the rare gift of bringing out the very best in almost every human he meets. I am still humbled by his transformation, and blessed by his presence. I still strive to succeed in doing what it seems he finds so easy – being loving, kind and accepting to almost everyone.

He is indeed a gift, and a gift that keeps on giving.

Adding a comment
Wordpress apparently expect readers of my posts to understand the rubbish about ‘blocks’, given when you attempt to make a comment. Simply ignore the inane instruction ‘Type / to choose a block’ and make your comment.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Green Man Review

Posted on by
Reply

It isn’t often I refer directly to another site, other than to pass an opinion. But I suggest folks look at A Green Man Review.
The theme rings very true. Though I find it very hard to think kindly of several folks, starting with His Most Absurdly PumpedUpNish, Mr Donald Trump. What are the the good folks of America thinking about? All he and his cronies see, is more dollars, and more power to themselves. Screw everyone else.

What are you? ‘Sinistro’ or ‘Destro’

Posted on by
Reply

The BBC have posted an interesting article on the merits or demerits of being left-handed.

Devils Hand

The main reason for reserving one hand for eating and one for using a pebble to clean yourself after the waste has been expunged, was one of simple good sense. No-one I know enjoys eating shit.

Sadly, even when good facilities for cleaning both hands became available, folks who preferred to use their left hand were stigmatised. My experience as a child, an example of ignorance and stigma by my father. Picking up my knife with my left hand at the dinner table resulted in being struck on the knuckles with whatever he held in his right hand, and I was lambasted as being ‘cack-handed’ – IOW shit-handed. Even later there were similar remarks when I used a screwdriver to remove a screw. ‘They never made anything for left-handed people Joe!’. Probably true, but turning a screw anti-clockwise is easier with the left hand, than it is with the right – at least for me. I drive a screw in with my right hand and remove it with my left.
Later on, I worked with him on open steel work, building the extension to a switch-house at Blyth Power station (another project I’ve out-lived) He was embarrassed when I unloosened a reluctant nut, using a spanner in my left hand – one he couldn’t budge.

The simple truth is he’d created a ‘monster’ someone who made best use of his body, irrespective of the nonsense preached by others.

The BBC article highlights the use of latin in language. Sinistro and Destro are Italian adjectives for left and right. In the UK left-handed folks are ‘sinister’, right-handed folks are ‘dexterous’.
So good sense in early human behaviour has been handed down to us as an insult and a compliment. Complete twaddle.

Intelligence? IQ tests demonstrate how good you are at IQ tests. They serve no other purpose than to categorise folk, and provide yet another label that psyche’s love to stick on people. If I was wearing them all, I would resemble a badly misdirected parcel by the once-Royal Mail.

Me? I thank my father’s ignorance and stupidity for making me virtually ambidextrous. I thank myself for the endless irritating questions I asked him, and for cross-questioning the rubbish told by some teachers at school.

AI chips communicate faster than the speed of light?

Posted on by
Reply

A recent post by the BBC regarding AI Data Centres What’s the big deal about AI data centres? by Michael Dempsey Technology Reporter, asks the following important question:

Why is proximity so important?
Every metre of distance between two chips adds a nanosecond, one billionth of a second, to the processing time.

Really?

The definition of the speed of light is: 299,792,458 metres per second.

So light can travel 0.299792458 metres in 1 nanosecond.
A rough multiplication shows that it takes approximately 3 nanoseconds for light to travel 1 metre.

Information cannot be conveyed at a speed faster than that of light.

On first principles then, the article is incorrect.
I could go on regarding inter-chip comms, but won’t.

Footnote. I investigated into making a comment on the article to the BBC, but was faced with spending time giving details, that I considered were not important, and I simply gave up. No, they didn’t ask what colour toilet paper I use..

‘Motionless Wind Energy’ ? BBC Have you lost the plot?

Posted on by
Reply

Read this: Motionless Wind Energy

Now unpick the article: ‘It features wing-like vertical aerofoils that create a vacuum effect, drawing air behind an internal propeller’.

Hmmm. A ‘propeller’. Let’s look at that..
All of the definitions I’ve looked at convey a sense that a ‘propeller’ does just that, propels water or some gas, usually air. The propeller is the delivery system from a source of energy, NOT as is implied in the article, a ‘receiver’ of energy, in this case wind.
The word Galya Dimitrova is ‘TURBINE’.

Moving on to ‘motionless’. The article is a monumental bag of crap. Just because the ‘propeller’ is hidden, doesn’t justify it as motionless.

Thank you, and good night BBC.

Free Speech or Me Speech?

Posted on by
Reply

Some considerable time ago I wrote on a Facebook post, about effective blackmail of politicians because of their behaviour whilst still at ‘Public School’. I used an epithet that apparently didn’t pass Facebooks ‘standards’, and the post never made it. I was accused both by them, and by someone else, who should know me better, of being ‘homophobic’. Quite clearly they were unable to distinguish illegal sex with a minor from sex between two same-sexed adults.
Later, the performance whilst on Facebook was appallingly slow, as every word I typed was being monitored. I ditched Facebook, and I no longer use ‘social media’, which has become distinctly ‘anti-social’.

The rich and powerful are free to spout their nonsense, whilst condemning others that oppose their views.
This morning I read a post on BBC News by Nick Robinson. His article references the US Historian Tim Snyder’s views regarding ‘the direction America is heading under Trump’, and I quote:

The US historian Tim Snyder, who is an outspoken public critic of the direction America is heading under Trump believes that free speech should be distinguished from what he calls "me speech".
"Me speech is a common practice among rich and influential Americans," writes Mr Snyder. "Practitioners of 'me speech' use the phrase 'free speech' quite a bit. But what they mean is free speech for themselves. They want a monopoly on it.
They believe that they are right about everything, and so they should always have giant platforms, in real life or on social media.
The people with whom they disagree, however, should be called out and intimidated in an organised way on social media, or subjected to algorithmic discrimination so that their voices are not heard."

Read the full article here

Faded Pictures

Posted on by
Reply

Yes, I have several prints I had purchased circa 1986, which have since faded to the point of misery. Each pic I bought was with cash I didn’t spend on roll-your-own tobacco.
I started smoking at age 12, add that to my birthday, and that would be 1959. So, totalling up I smoked for 27 years, and haven’t for 39 years.

Despite both personal and physical problem which I’ve had since the ‘puffing’ ended, I believe I’m in better shape that the prints I bought when I quit.

Some time ago, one English guy commented on how well-preserved I was. I had replied “You haven’t seen my picture in the attic.” He laughed. If he saw the photo of myself, taken some time ago, he would understand fully my reference to Oscar Wilde’s brilliant ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
No, I didn’t sell my ‘soul’ to the Devil – that was stolen from me some time ago, when I began to understand what ‘God’ had created as men – A likeness of himself? An incredibly awful aberration?

So, time to remove the faded pics, and replace with more images of loveliness. Hopefully I don’t live long enough to see them also fade away to almost nothing once again.

Like the pics, other ‘favourites’ have also faded. One photo that hasn’t, is of my 4th Form taken when at Elgin Sec. Tech School in Gateshead. This has too many ‘ticks’ pencilled on it for those who have ‘moved on’.

Recently a trawl on the web, revealed a good friend who had unknowingly played an important part in carving out my future. Sadly, I was unaware of his demise, until a year too late.

Arsehole billionaires trump on about ‘living forever’. Who, in their right mind would want to experience the non-stop fading of photos, and the passing away of friends and lovers?

The band Queen recorded one song that encapsulates my feelings precisely. Written by Brian May, it is probably the best Queen ever did and featured in the movie ‘Highlander’, another allegorical tale of the world being dominated by one man.


There's no time for us.
There's no place for us.
What is this thing that builds our dreams
Yet tips 'em 'way from us?

Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?

There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment
Set aside for us

Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?
Who?

Who dares to love forever?
When love must die

But touch my tears with your lips
Touch my world with your fingertips
And we can have forever
And we can love forever
Forever is our today

Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?
Forever is our today
Who waits forever anyway?