Monday Monday... (text version)

Been a good day today. Got an upbeat feeling about this week.

Chloe's back in the UK, the ship she was on docked into Portsmouth this evening. I'm glad to know that she's back in old blighty. I'm just a tad amazed that she didn't manage to start a major international incident, war with France, ejection from the European Union or something...

Her priorities are right on though. She was more worried that she'd missed some youtube videos from Yog's cast. (something to do with that Minecraft game she plays incessantly).

 It's now the second month of life with my HTC Wildfire S. I am still rather impressed with the nifty little thing. I'm getting more used to it, and have managed (as you would have seen) to shoot some video on the go with it, and use that to include into my (v)blog.

I have completely forgotten all the excitement that temporarily besotted me about the prospect of an Iphone (4 or otherwise). They still haven't deigned to announce to the world what the future looks like. Personally I think they like messing with us.

No, not feeling like I missed out Iphone wise. I am, however still longing for the Blackberry. I lament about the battery life of the Wildfire S, and although that's got better since I got the Juice Defender App, it does run low to unusable after a day's work, and that's without me really using it that much throughout the day. It's the lack of the keyboard, and the frequency of updates that I could comfortably get on my Blackberry (without shedding loads of battery life). The decision to not pay for unlimited usage, when I don't need that much has worked out ok, I don't actually use it all. I'm not exactly being frugal with my internet usage on the phone, just careful, and I'm not running out of the 1 GB I got with it (£20 a month). Nowhere near running out of voice or text messages.

Either way, it's not possible for me to change this phone, there's no way in hell I can afford to buy a simfree handset to use with this sim, or to get a different contract just on the whimsey that I have yearnings for the joyous ease of the Blackberry real keyboard. Touch type is all well and good, but it's annoyingly inaccurate. It's that couple of milliseconds slow (not anything like the unusable of the old Windows Mobile in the late 90s. God that was torture) and the faff of typing with my fingers.

Maybe I should file my fingers down, to make them easier to use with my phone ? Sharpen them to a point or something. That'd work, right ?

Atheism is the new religion

While the world fights over itself to say how stupid, irrational, bigoted and down right idiotic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, amongst the postulating, and postering.. and general 'we're tougher than you are' stuff, has anyone considered what a curious situation it is where the thought of bombing a place where nuclear material is produced is considered to be a 'good' idea?

When I say curious, I mean 'dangerous', or perhaps 'frightening'. When I say 'good' idea.... well, let's be thankful that George Bush isn't still in residence at The White House, as he probably would have already bombed the shit out of the place.

You've got to like the 'dammit we got caught' reaction from the Iranians, realising that their secret nuclear base had been discovered, was to admit to having it to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Not even worth trying for a minute to say that it's someting else ? Well, that's progress. Now they're almost admitting to stuff after they've been caught.

Let's just hope that the 'intelligence' on this occassion is a little more robust than some grad student armed with nothing more than a furtile imagination and Google.

But still, hey, it's ok, because the most trustworthy countries in the world, (USA, UK, France and Israel) have all said that they're sure the Iranians are 'up to no good'. The Iranians say that they aren't. It gets more and more like when teacher tries to figure out who really started the playground fight. 'He pushed me first', 'He said I was a .....', etc. etc. Usually in that scenario, they all end up getting detention. Not quite sure I like how the punishment stacks up on this one though.

Don't get me wrong, If I was Iran, I'd hardly want to believe their neighbours' promises that they don't really need such powerful weapons. Think I'd stop an awful way short of such mindless bigotry (like there's any other kind) about the hollocaust, and how wiping an entire race of people out would be a good idea. Mad. Scary mad.

The people I really feel sorry for, in all of this, are the Iranians. Because either way, they're the ones that are going to end up suffering, and I don't think any amount of tweeting is going to save them from that.

It's the civilians that are going to get hurt by the bombs, it's the ordinary people that are really going to pay the price of any further sanctions. What can we do ?

Sometimes, you have to think that it's easier and cheaper to quietly give money to the people who want to overthrow the government you hate in their own country. (Wonder if anyone's paying to do that here). It was a policy that worked so well before, right ? When I say worked..... That stupid and shortsighted idea that the enemies of our enemies are our friends is, was and still is.. well shortsighted, and stupid. I mean that lead to such fantastic ideas as the west training the resistance fighters in Afghanistan, helping them get rid of the Soviet invasion. Giving money, weapons and training to such regular stand up fellows as Osama Bin Laden. There was an awful lot of money shoved the way of a certain Saddam Hussein and his rather brutal regime, because the alternatives, or his enemies seemed like a worse bet.

It's true that sometimes there just are NO GOOD CHOICES, and only bad or terrible ones. Lesser of two evils. I wonder if 'keeping your ore out' and leaving it to the people that actually live there to figure out what they want is a strategy worth trying.