Big Noddy

There's a complicated news story in the US at the moment allegedly involving a grand jury, Iraq, the powerful deputy White House Chief of staff and strategy advisor to George Bush(Karl Rove), the CIA and hints towards evidence from the Vice President Dick Cheney.

The twists and turns of the story seem to revolve around whether there was a junket style trip to Africa to investigate possible nuclear sales before the Iraq war. The sequencing and trail is convoluted at every turn, yet many of the documents are a matter of public record.

So the other US secrecy news is about the National Security Agency now being able to operate inside the USA in the way it does to the rest of the world using its so named 'Big Noddy' technology, which intercepts some 650million transmissions a day.

The challenge seems to be that if a bunch of senior and well reported and documented US officials can have stories so complex to unravel, then what hope for the internal surveillance systems to find anything useful?

Maybe they will need Big Ears as well?

Mind the air gap.

Tag: NSA, CIA, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Big Noddy, noddy

yeee-haw!

The holyhoses lads were celebrating their 2,000th post a few days ago. Zowie! Their enjoyable sister pub is GuitarGAS, which I frequent as I blunder through learning the guitar.

As personifies a holyhoses debate, they talk about how the various girl guitarist models do/don't look as if they can play guitar. There is also a discernable country theme that drifts through some of their debate.

So here as a 2K celebratory post is Emily Robison in the middle of a bluegrass banjo solo, and for those with peculiarly detailed interests, its a rather funky Nechville Meteor.

..and OK, by popular request, here's Sophie Hawkins and a gratuitous girl guitar phone wallpaper advert - both clicky.

Views: : Sophie=19, GuitarGirl=42, Emily=29

Tag: music, guitar, dixie chicks, banjo

Hammers

Watched the unfortunate demise of West Ham with a few others of divided loyalties. Everything stopped for the last few minutes. Ninety seconds before the end of extra time it could have been West Ham. But after the penalties it was Liverpool.

Tag: soccer, West Ham, F A Cup

cow

Its a serious problem. Cows are disappearing. A rapidly growing collection of cow abduction evidence is being assembled to help triangulate the ways that possible alien forces are operating. Click the picture for more information and a chance to help.

Tag: cow, alien, abductions

getting my stuff done

I saw this via Amanda's at Rocketboom and decided I needed to watch it before I started to get my stuff done. It took a few minutes to down load it and whilst it down loaded I was thinking about how to get my stuff done. Then I thought it would be best to put it on the blog before I could start to get my stuff done.

So I had to upload it again to my movie folder before I could start to get my stuff done. Then I needed to set up this entry and link to it before I could start to get my stuff done. And I remembered I wanted to thank ingredientx before I could start to get my stuff done.

Tag: vlog, stuff, rocketboom

rashbre.tv - train on route 66

I filmed this on a steam train whilst taking a break from driving Route 66, on my way to California.

I was in Williams, Arizona, at the time.

You see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona. Don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino. Won't you get hip to this timely tip: when you make that California trip get your kicks on Route sixty-six.

Tag: music, guitar, vlog, Route 66, Arizona

Thursday Thirteen (V21)

1. Yesterday I noticed that some Thursday Thirteens had already started to appear before my day had flipped. I resisted the temptation to pre-load anything.
2. Actually, I was so tired last night that I don't think it would have made any sense in any case.
3. Like a week ago, I'd been on some late video link ups to Atlanta and Sweden. It sure beats travelling for some purposes, but on this occasion we had a slight delay on the line, which meant we kept interrupting one another.
4. So it was a Thai chicken ready-meal when I finally got home yesterday, before I departed to the land of nod.
5. I'm ashamed to admit that I looked in a neglected part of my inbox yesterday and found just over 4000 unread inmails. Now you are right to surmise they were 'Bulk Mail', but at least my force fields were set to 'High' so there wasn't really any 'bad hotmail' in there. You know what I'm talking about. Now clean and tidy again.
6. I have been trying to edit another piece of video for the Vlog, but it keeps going wrong with a file error. It's a shame, because I quite like the piece. My backup is a fellah playing banjo on a train by route 66. I expect I will post that instead.
7. I packed away my Final Cut Pro DVDs and some other bits and pieces and sent them to Apple in Ireland a couple of days ago. They say they will exchange them (for a fee) for the Universal format version, which means I should be able to edit with FCP on my Intel Mac. Frankly the iMovie on there is already quite useful for a lot of basic editing in any case.
8. I started a post about the daleks yesterday, before I remembered it was supposed to be Wordless Wednesday. I was going to do a text with holes blown in it by the daleks. They have a new catchphrase now - instead of 'EX-TER-MIN-ATE' they also say 'You will be deleted'. Scary.
9. I was with Tatiana yesterday looking out at the grey skies whilst we waited for a coffee to finish making that coffee shooshing noise. She said 'beautiful day' and meant it. I realised she was referring to the green leaves of spring. Its all about perspective.
10. However one looks at it, today is an excellent day around here.
11. Is still my favourite number.
12. TT is a kind of meme. I can remember when a lot of people didn't know what a meme was. I bet a lot of people still don't know what a mneme is, although its actually an older concept as a unit of social evolution.
13. I'm sitting writing this about 4 metres from some freshly brewed Java. The aroma is overpowering and I need some right now.

Add a comment, trackback or a link if you are a Thursday Thirteener!


Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday

OTA Wordless Wednesday

Tag: Wordless Wednesday, open trackback alliance, OTA

impossible alien bill

Tonight was one of those interesting moments in television channel scheduling. I didn't get home until quite late and flicked on the box. Then I spotted that ITV was running Mission Impossible 2 and concurrently Sky was showing Kill Bill 2. And over on another channel was Alien. Nothing for it but to regain the missing hours of the early evening by watching all three at once.

Now I've seen them all before so a real-time edit isn't too difficult, keeping up with the plotlines and channel hopping between the 'alien popout' and our heroine kicking her way out of a coffin, whilst still being able to see the elaborate choreography of the motor cycles ridden by Tom.

Blippy.

Tag: television, time compression

Fallaces sunt rerum species

I see Doris posted a picture of another of her encounters, this time with Dubya and the Pope, but had managed to clip off an important part of the shot.

Above, see Doris's original photo, but then, below, see the full picture - and guess what? there's my distant relative Bishop Rashbre, reading from one of the early manuscript blogs. The room where the picture was taken is the famous deo Bloggarium - which was also featured in da Vinci Code author Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons".

Quite a co-incidence!


Tag: pope, dubya, rashbre

rashbre.tv - i don't

I'm still experimenting on how to get video rendering for internet to look good.

My attempts last week were fuzzy compared with Rocketboom so I'm experimenting with 3ivx after checking out Amanda's vlog.

wannabe

Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
really really wanna zigazig ha.

Thank you, Spice Girls and this is brilliant fun...Thanks, Aginoth, for inventing it.

Googalise a search with your name eg. 'XXX needs' and then 'XXX wants'. Write down 10 of each and pass it on.
Doesn't take long...

rashbre needs:
rashbre needs threadless T shirts
rashbre needs a Los Angeles photographer
rashbre needs a travelling wanderer
rashbre needs mentoring, healing and studying the soul
rashbre needs to brainstorm ideas
rashbre needs a news on demand video player
rashbre needs a sensitive and empathic component of psyche
rashbre needs to pony up part of the cost of room and board
rashbre needs the time and date you observed the fireball tapes
rashbre needs pretty extensive notes

rashbre wants:
rashbre wants a wireless acquisition
rashbre wants loadsa airflow (!)
rashbre wants 5000000 members (!)
rashbre wants to figure out the value of the x's
rashbre wants the heart to be free
rashbre wants to create a long term discovery
rashbre wants to groove the night away
rashbre wants to talk to you
rashbre wants to go jungle massive
rashbre wants to be happy

So there.