The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

In England and Wales, the Academic Year starts in September, with holidays at Christmas and Easter, and then there is the long Summer Holidays at the end of the year from mid-July, before it all starts back up again.  This is no accident, it coincides with the Agricultural year, when schools and universities would start with a fresh intake of students after the year’s main harvest had been safely gathered in from the fields.  Holidays at Christmas and Easter would just happen to match up with other busy times on a farm, like ploughing and planting.  In the modern world, when only a handful of Britons now work in Agriculture, this is madness.

It struck me this week, that the unreliable British weather is always so much better in June and July than in August.  Also with the proximity to the Solstice there are more hours of daylight than in August.  Not only that, the number of hours of daylight is fairly stable in June and July the months either side of the Solstice is when the changes in the length of the days is least noticable.  August on the other hand is one of the months when the nights are visibly drawing in, and each day is markedly shorter than the day that preceded it, because it is so close to the Autumnal Equinox.

Another reason why the current Academic Year is bonkers is that it forces the major public examinations, the General Certificate of Secondary Education to be held in late May and early June, when the pollen levels are at their highest.  This cannot be a good thing for those students who suffer from Hayfever.

Of course, what would be the best system to replace it.  In Scotland, the Academic Year starts earlier, in mid August, and ends at the start of July.  This is because Scotland being at the north of Britain has harsher winters and the hours of darkness during the Winter are more obvious than in the softer South.  I really see no reason why this term structure should not be adopted in England and Wales.

There was a report a few years back from the Institute of Public Policy Research that was reported on by the BBC News Channel which suggested that the current system be replaced with a five eight week terms with the Summer holiday being reduced to four weeks and the other two weeks redistributed through the year.  The IPPR based argued that the six week school holiday was too long.  That children, especially those from poorer backgrounds, would get out of the practice of education during the long breaks and begin to forget what they had studied in the previous year. This report however maintained that whilst the Summer holiday should be shorter, it should remain roughly where it is now.

Whether change happens or not remains to be seen, but I for one think that change is definitely needed.

I was quite amused by an article in today’s Daily Mail.  One of the women featured is guaranteed to garner no sympathy what so ever from the female readership of that paper.  The reason is obvious from the photo on the right.  It does not matter what the poor dear imagines she looks like, she is 27, drop dead gorgeous, and the paper’s stylists have dressed her in a floaty silk summer dress.  Well, I say dress, strappy top would be more appropriate.

I image that the 17 year old girl also featured in the article, who even if she had possessed all the arrogance of youth of her peers, drew the line at the outfit in question.  She showed a great deal of sense and maturity by chosing to be photographed for the article in a rather mumsy pink coctail dress.

So, I decided to visit the Wordpress.org development blog to see what the latest situation regarding v2.8 was.  I  watched the embeded video describing the new version and realised that despite the fact my Dashboard was saying I was using v2.8, it was still apparent that I was running something more akin to v2.7.1.  So I deleted everything from my web domain hosting directory that contains my web log.  Downloaded a new copy of v2.8 from Wordpress, installed it and replaced the contents of my Uploads directory and pointed  Firefox at the freshly stripped down web log.

On the surface, everything seemed alright, the web log was there, in the default theme and when I visited the Dashboard, everything appeared to be working. So I copied over the Painter theme, complete with my customised colour settings.  Still everything was sweet.  Next I copied over the Plugins, and activated each one in turn.  When I tried to activate the Wordpress Admin Bar plugin, (v3.1.6) then things went pairshaped, so that particular plugin is  currently de-activated. This plugin is well maintained, so I am hoping its apparent incompatibility with Wordpress 2.8 will soon be solved.

With the default visual editor working again, I have de-activated the FCKEditor plugin.  It is a bit too flash for the purpose it serves.  Also, and this is the killer reason for deactivating it, there appeared to be no autosave function for regularly saving the drafts of the article I was writing.

Not that everything is fine in the garden.  The plugin management page is still crocked, it will start to download the plugin requested and then freezes.  Although this is a very minor problem for me as I am happy with the collection of plugins I am currently using.

At the beginning of the week, Wordpress released the latest version of their Web Log publishing software, Wordpress v2.8. I had just backed up the MySQL database that underlies The Journal of the Browncoat Cat and the important files that are unique to it, so thought I would give the new version a whiz. Am I glad I did because after the upgrade, instead of the web log in all its purple glory, there was a shed load of server errors. So I deleted the whole damn thing, did a clean installation of v2.8 altering the wp-config file so that it pointed to the database, uploaded the precious files and I was away.

Or so I thought. The published articles and pages were there, as I lanted them to be, but the Dashboard, the site administration and maintenance pages was a complete mess.The GUI had vanished and in its place was a higgledy-piggledy mixture of links and graphics. Fortunately help was at hand on the Wordpress Support Forum. Some kind soul suggested appending the line define( 'CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false ); somewhere in the middle of the wp-config file.  This tidied up my Dashboard. Its still not 100% perfect, but it is a lot better than it was.

Unfortunately, the visual editor was still not working .  All I got was white text on a white background.  Again, the support forum was invaluable, telling me to try installing Dean’s FCKEditor For Wordpress a plugin that replaces the default editor with one which is a far more comprehensive  And here I hit another snag, in that the automatic Plugin Installation and Upgrade script has been banjaxed as well.   So I had to install it via FTP.  I am not sure it all the extra options on the FCKEditor are really nescessary.  Time will tell.

The BBC has an official Web Site for Doctor Who, but since the series returned to the screen in 2005, it has not featured an official Web Forum for discussing the current series and its long and glorious history.  The slack has been taken up by Shaun Lyons’ Outpost Gallifrey web site.  The problem is that Shaun Lyons main interest is in organising Gallifrey One the annual  Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles and all the other features on the Outpost Gallifrey web site are like a cuckoo in the nest.  A few years ago, there was a sort of divorce when the Outpost Gallifrey Forum became the Doctor Who Forum and many of the extra features of Outpost Gallifrey disappeared.

At the beginning of the month, Shaun Lyons finally called time on the DWF, announcing that on 31st July, 2009 the forum would close.  At this point, in steps Steve Hill, who has been the Cheif Administrator at the DWF for a number of years, with the announcement that he and the people who had been running the DWF for the past few years would be starting up a new forum called Gallifrey Base, which would take over from the DWF when it shut down.  In fact Shaun Lyons has said that when the DWF shuts, he will be reasigning the domain www.doctorwhoforum.com to Steve Hill for him to use with Gallifrey Base, so that there should be a seemless transfer.

Gallifrey Base actually openned on Saturday, 13th June, 2009, my forty second birthday.  I thought this was absolutely brilliant, because  if I joined the day the forum openned, whenever I posted to it, it would show 13th June under my name in the Date Joined field.  Best laid plans and all that, as by the time my account was activated, it had moved onto 14th June, 2009.  I know it was a silly little detail, and I was extremely grateful to Michael Blumenthal, one of the Administrators at both Fora for changing my profile.

As for the Forum itself, it is still early days.  It still has the look and feel of the Doctor Who Forum, being powered by the vBulletin forum software that ran Doctor Who Forum. Also most of the catagories and forums from that web site reproduced on the new site.  I should imagine that most of the members of Doctor Who Forum will move over to the Gallifrey Base.

Version 1 : Subtle Addition

Over the years, there have been a lot of complaints that the Union Flag, the official flag of the United Kingdom does not contain any reference to Wales. The original Union Flag was formed by combining the England’s Cross of Saint George with Scotland’s Cross of Saint Andrew.  The modern Union Flag also contains the Ireland’s Flag of Saint Patrick.  Surely it has been argued that since Wales is now seen as a constituent part of the Union, and not just somewhere annexed by the English it should have an element in the flag.  I have seen a number of aesthetically unappealing designs that superimpose “Y Ddraig Goch”, the Red Dragon onto the centre of the flag.  However, I think that attempts to integrate the Cross of Saint David, a gold cross on a black background would be best.  Again, I have what I thought were pretty cack handed attempts to do this.

Version 2 : More Obvious

To the left are my attempts, although they are probably none too original. Two versions, one very subtle, like the way the Cross of Saint Patrick was incorporated into the original Anglo-Scottish design, and the second a more in your face addition. Which one do you, my faithful readers prefer?

It is almost a year since I bought my E-System 1201 laptop.  It took me a while, but with the help of my friend Ruth,  the built in Realtek RTL8182  Wireless Network Card to works under Ubuntu Linux.  Unfortunately, since the upgrade to Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty), I have having problems with the WIFI set-up on my Laptop again. At first I thought that it was a problem with my ageing  wireless router, so I started using the T-Mobile  3G dongle I use down the caravan whenever I wanted to go online with the laptop.  However, my iPod Touch found my network strait away, without any problems. The WPA2 encryption system that keeps unwanted users out of my network will not work.  When I tried switching this of and leaving an open network, hey presto I got connected.  So I downloaded the latest version of NDISWrapper, WPA_Supplicant and WPAGUI hoping that the latest versions of these peices of software would solve the problem.  No joy there.

Some research suggested that the problem was with the latest version of the Linux kernel.  Other network cards do not work with  2.6.28-11-Generic kernel, and reverting to the previous edition might do the trick.  This is only partially successful my laptop connected to my home network for about 30 seconds and then disconnected again, it tried to get back in, but after a few minute with the little icon in the panel spinning away, it just gave up. Obviously something further up in the system was objecting to the downgrade in the kernel and was squishing the secure connection to my home network.

At the moment I obviously don’t want an unsecure network, so I still have the WPA2 set on the router,  or stop using my iPod,  I am back to using the 3G dongle on the laptop.  I hope that as this is a known bug in the Linux Kernel, then it will not be too difficult for the people who devote their spare time to constantly improving Linux, the open source operating system, will find a solution to this bug for the end users like myself, and I will be able to use my home network.  I am only sorry that I cannot provide any detailed information that might make their job easier.

Last night, whilst scanning through the Doctor Who Forum, I spotted a discussion about whether Karen Gillan’s character should be from the past, the present or the future.  It started me wondering what would her character look like if she were from the 1880’s for example.  I knew that there was a photo of Miss Gillan online when she was modelling a very Victorian hairstyle, so using GIMP, the Linux image manipulation software, I cut her head from that picture, and superimposed it onto a suitable picture of a woman wearing something from c1884.  And below is the finished article. Even in the full rig Victorianna, Miss Gillan would still be absolutely gorgeous.

And whilst I have far too much time on my hands whilst I am waiting for the pain in my feet to subside, I will probably do more of this cack-handed image manipulation.

I went to the Tesco in Talbot Green yesterday, and when I got home, my left foot was extremely sore.  I didn’t think anything about it, but when I got up this morning, the big toe on my left foot would not move, and each step was screaming agony.  I  took two paracetamol tablets with my breakfast but they didn’t come close to stopping the pain.  I struggled down to work, but it was no good, I had to get some sort of medical assistance.  So off to the Casualty department of Llwynypia Hospital.  I was seen remarkably quickly at the hospital.  The Nurse-Practitioner who examined my foot told me that it was probably not a fracture, but most likely Gout that had flared up overnight.  I was prescribed co-dydramol and told to go home and rest my foot for the rest of the week.

Gout!  I never thought I would ever suffer from that.  According to the cliché it is something that Upper Class men who have drunk too much fine port and eaten too much strong cheese get in the later years of their lives.  So I am off work, resting my sore foot.