Messages

it'd be nice to see Ewing spread some toothiness over there.  I wonder if he'll change his style at all?

Elysium.  Very frustrating because the director can make things look and feel great, but the plot has some massive holes in it which I found distracting.  [spoiler]As in - the super hackable computer system, the way a computer glitch just solved everyone's problems - after we came out, I said to Roy, 'If someone hacked the computer systems of the Australian government and made every Iranian and Afghan asylum seeker an Australian citizen, do you think our government would let them all in?' [/spoiler]
  I loved the Suth Ifrikan baddie though.

I agree with Jimmy Baker's Assistant, but I miss Finn. 
   Dying is better than living forever and being awful.  The Wizard of Id is the best example I can think of, but I'm sure you all know strips that should have been knocked on the head or at least rested for ages

huzzah!  I knew about 'lost in Rio', but not about the Lucky Luke story (or stories).  I'll watch out for them.

Apart from that, it's all Get Smart and Dangerman re-runs here, and (when my son has any choice in it) Futurama and Family Guy.  I'm tired of the last two. 

I haven't seen Rabbit Proof Fence, but will make it a priority after Sauchie's rave review.
   Roy and I just finished watching a French spy parody called 'OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies'.  It's pretty stupid, but lots of fun.  The hero is that guy from 'the Artist' who has one of the most 1920s faces I've ever seen.  He was born to have a pencil-thin moustache and be French.  It's sort of like a French Leslie Nielsen, sort of, with rampant Islamophobia and huge amounts of silliness.  The cinematography is fun, if I'm using the right word there - I mean, the colour and the camera work is all very Dr No-era James Bond.
  My favourite moment is the bit with the chickens.

T4 wasn't 'hey how about that awful bit' awful, it was just a bit underwhelming, for mine.  Enough is enough.

I've just watched my first Chuck Norris movie - an early 90s effort called Hellbound.  Chuck and his annoying funky sidekick (they're cops who annoy their strait-laced boss) get involved in stopping Satan's henchperson, Prosatanus from getting a really tacky relic and taking over the world etc.
  It was pretty much as you'd expect.  My mate says it's Norris' best movie.

LorcanQ, Catch-22 is one of my favourite books ever.  A lot like Alice in Wonderland as far as paradoxes go.  Me, I'm still trying to get to the end of a pile of London Review of Books issues - fun, but time-consuming.  Just read an interesting article called 'Advantage Pyonyang' about North Korea, which was dead good.
   Rather than go without novels until the distant day when I finish the LRBs, I've started reading at least a page of Tristram Shandy a day.  Wonderful rambling stuff.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/richard-lloydparry/advantage-pyongyang  is the link to the LRB article, a critical review of a book about Nort Korea by one of Bush's people (the gist is the book makes Bush look like a tool in spite of wanting to defend him, the North Korean leadership, although horrible, aren't insane and the situation won't get better any time soon)

I'm also reading 'the Wisdom of Solomon', a book of the Bible, for the first time (it's not in the protestant bibles I grew up with).   Spoiler Alert: It's good to obey God and seeking Wisdom is a good idea.
      It's a good read and has this wonderful line: "we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been.  For the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts; when it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes and the spirit will dissolve like empty air'(this is supposedly the foolish non-believer speaking)
.......which makes great poetry and perfectly sums up the materialist position now. 

Gura mie mooar ayd* but I've found something better than that or cheese.  I have found a friendly Ubuntu whiz who is prepared to do it for me.  Turns out I didn't need that password, but did need an inordinate amount of faffing around (something I've come to accept as inevitable in the world of Ubuntu/Linux stuff). 

thanks all for your help,

yours still feeling unjustifiably happy to be typing this on ubuntu,

Floyd

*thank you

I am triply impressed!

- It's windows 7, but I don't think that's relevant, since I am dealing with the bios password

- I'm not sure how to remove the CMOS battery - the thing seems to be sealed tight.  I found a video on youtube in which a German bloke removed the keyboard easily but I'm stuffed if I can do that on my machine

- I'll check out Dogbert's blog, thanks for that.

cheers, yours doggedly,  Floyd

I have this little medion akoya e1222 netbook and I'd like to make it dual boot with ubuntu.  I can install the thing alright, but can't do the booting because the system asks for a password and I don't know the password.  My father bought the machine at ALDI and passed it on to me.
  So far, the internet can't tell me how to get around this.  Can anyone here help?

yours optimistically,

Floyd

Had to happen sometime, but I lived Sharpe.  The Wilt books were genius

The Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney

(when  graciously let my son choose the radio station) bloody annoying bogan djs with stupid matey names like Fitzy and Wippa, alternating with far too little Pitbull and Macklemore

Yoincks! An interesting post about the Trout's no-doubt-interesting work

Bah! He's deleted it

Yoincks! Speculating about what it might have been is probably more fun than the post itself

apologies to anyone who checked this thread wanting Kylie in a cat costume or David Bowie singing the Cat People music

Bump the second, to catch the attention of any Australians and/or New Zealanders who may be watching.  A big hello to my last customer whom I met outside the GPO here.