Philip Norton

Ever seen this symbol before?

It is called Ichthys, although I call it that stupid christian fish thing, but do you know what it means?

Well it turns out that the symbol was stolen from the Pagan religion and actually pre-dates the christian adoption of it. To the Pagans this symbol basically was all about female fertility, but was also the symbol for the vulva or female genitalia.

Take a look at this article on the Ichthys Pagan symbol.

This is quite funny, but not surprising as the christians seemed to have stolen a large section of what they do from the Pagans. Take the date of most of the christian festivals as an example.

Personally, I think the following symbol is much better. It shows an evolution from monotheism to atheism by removing just one more god.

More than that, it sticks two fingers up at the stupidity of religion!

Tags: Atheism by Philip Norton
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I downloaded the new version of iTunes (8.0.0.35) today, but only because it kept asking me to.  The really irritating thing about any new install of iTunes is that all of my short cuts get messed up.  Every time I get a new version, which seems to be quite often, I have to add all of the links back in so that I can access the program on my own terms!  I’m going to just leave it this time, I’m sick of it!

Is it an improvement?  Well you can probably guess from the title of this post that it isn’t.  I think it is a definite step backwards.  Rather than sort out all of the stupid and annoying things that this program does, they have just added on some bells and whistles to make it more pretty.

Lets start off with this Genius thing.  I don’t care what it is, if a media playing program simply stops you from using a it until you have enabled some silly little music advertisement component, then it has failed.  I found that the only way to get rid of it was to attempt to create another play list.  However, it does this every time you open the bloody program!  I had to sign up to it just to get it to stop!

What is the point of this Genius program?  When I’m listening to a song from my extensive Black Sabbath collection, I don’t want to be sold a live recording of Iron Man.  I am really not interested!  Not only that, but the thing doesn’t work with any other media, so when looking through videos or podcasts it just sticks a big bar at the side that says “Genius sidebar only works with music.”  I can’t get rid of it now!

As for the bells and whistles let me give this analogy.  Take something, anything really, and jump up and down on it for around 20 minutes, if you don’t weight much then carry something heavy whilst doing this.  Put the resulting bits and pieces of rubbish into the best looking box that money can buy.  I’m talking jewell encrusted, made of gold and silver, literally the best box you can get your hands on.  You now have the new iTunes interface.  It is like trying to paint miniature models, whilst wearing boxing gloves.  Every time you try to do anything it is kept back from you by a level of unnecessary uselessness.  The thing I hate most about using podcasts on this pile of poo is that little grey arrow to the left of the podcast title.  Well the worst bit of usability I have ever seen is still there, you just have to dig through the fluffy pillows with pretty pictures on them to get to it.  What is the point?  If isn’t broken, then don’t try to fix it.  More importantly, if it is broken, fix it, don’t put a ribbon on it and pretend that it wasn’t broken in the first place.

iTunes, pretty on the outside, unusable on the inside.

I have noticed one thing about the new interface as well.  When I have iTunes open my CPU usage goes up to 100% and my computer starts to wheeze like an anorexic hamster on a lead weighted wheel.  My computer is not particularly old or slow, but iTunes just seems to kill it off.  This makes it a little difficult to watch videos with it as it just displays a frame, waits for a few seconds and then displays another frame.  It is like going to the cinema and it consisting of some guy holding up pictures of what is going on, which he shows you one at a time.  Much like Bob Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Starting today I’m looking for alternatives.  The only requirements I have is that it syncs my iPod (although I’m shopping for something else) and that can manage my podcasts.  If you have any suggestions then please put them in the comments.

Tags: Personal by Philip Norton
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Today I had some very sad news that my Gran died.

She had been living in a nursing home for about 15 years now (at least) and had been suffering from dimentia for a while, but had really gone downhill when my Grandfather died.  I think it was in the form of Alzheimer disease or similar as her body just seemed to give up.  I don’t think she had any quality of life, she simply existed.

I never once went to visit her in the nursing home, because I wanted to remember her as the kind lady I knew, although my dad did from time to time and brought back reports of a woman who didn’t know who he was.  I don’t think she even knew who she was.

Being an atheist I look at life in a slightly different way to what is considered normal, at least by some people.  The life you are living is the only life you will ever live, there is nothing else after you die except the chance to be fertilizer.  I live life by that philosophy and try to take many opportunities that come along just because they seem like the only chance I will ever get.  Life is the only chance you get at being alive so I live it.

However, there is vast casm of difference between being alive and being dead but still moving.  Although I am sad at my Grans passing I also feel a great sense of relief at her finally being released from the torment of memory loss.  I cannot imagine what it must have felt like, although I can guess as I have some bad days myself.  I would hate to live like that, not knowing who these people are around you, who you are or what you did with your life.  I find it very hard to believe that anyone can think there is such a thing as a soul when there are a number of diseases (like Alzheimers) that can take a perfectly healthy mind and completely destroy it.  Surely if the soul existed then there wouldn’t be such a thing as brain damage of any sort.  What is going on is very complicated (I don’t deny that) but we are just beginning to figure some of it out.  Explaining it away on a whim of an idea only goes towards belittling the person who is suffering.

I remember my Gran as this great old lady who used to make me ham sandwiches (the taste of which I can still remember).  I am kind of relieved that I never saw her after my Grandad died as all of the fantasic childhood memories that I had would have been tainted by the image of this confused and frail old woman, who wouldn’t have any idea who I was.

I can still remember when my Grandad died.  It was around 1994.  He had been ill for a few weeks and we had gone to visit him in hospital, as we had been doing since he went in.  We had just arrived at their home to pick up my Grandmother who didn’t drive and had no other way of getting to the hospital.  We never made that journey.  Just after we all sat down at their home the phone rang and my dad was informed that Grandad had just passed away.  That was one of the strangest nights I can remember as I had not had to deal with death on a personal level before, and still at school age I didn’t know what to expect.  You kind of think that they will be back next week and walk through the door and all will be fine.

So what about her life?  I wouldn’t say she had a career as such as she had lots of different jobs.  She used to work as a boiler makers mate at the Great Western Reailway works in Swindon, as a Sunday School Teacher, and at a photogrophers shop developing film.  My family once went into a hardware store where she had a job (this was quite a few years ago) and she looked at my dad straight in the face and said “Can I help you sir?”  I think we were there to pick her up or something.

Most of important of all, she leaves behind a legacy of family who will remember her.  Her and my Grandad had 4 children, each of which had children of their own, so the Norton clan is quite large really.  I haven’t seen some of then for years, but I’m sure that the memory of my Grandparents lives on in the next generation.

Tags: Family by Philip Norton
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Visit Think Atheist

I just found this rather nice social networking site called Think Atheist. Definitely worth a look if you are in any way interested.

Or even if you are not!

Tags: Atheism by Philip Norton
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I went to lunch today with a group of people from work.  The pub down the road is nice enough to allow us to book our meals before hand so that we don’t overrun our lunch break into working hours.  This means that we all look at a menu and pick what we want from it up to 2 days in advance.

There is one person (I won’t name them and will hereto refer to them in the same way) who ordered a jacket potato with cheese and chilli.

When the waiter was collecting the plates this person took the opportunity to ask him if his meal contained any meat.

“It’s chilli…” He says.

“Yes, but does it have any meat in it?”

“Yes.  It’s mince meat.  That’s what chilli is.”

“Oh…”

This person thought that chilli would be chili as in the hot pepper things, not chilli as in chilli con carne.  After learning it contained meat they went to the toilet and, well, lets just say that they “un-ate” or “de-consumed” it.

I don’t blame them for not seeing the difference as they are from a different culture and therefore wouldn’t necessarily know about this difference.  Although I would have asked for clarification before I started eating it.  I found the fact that they un-ate it a little odd.  Even though I am not vegetarian, if I was I wouldn’t make myself sick just because I had accidentally eaten meat.

My position is that I eat meat, but I always treat it with respect.  After an animal gave its life to feed me I make sure that it isn’t wasted. When I buy some I make sure that it always gets eaten, even if that means that some vegetable goes off waiting for me to eat it.

So I found this a little disrespectful to the animal, regardless of this person’s belief.

What would you do?

Tags: Personal by Philip Norton
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I recently inherited an iPod from my dad and have therefore been forced to install iTunes on my computer. This program sucks a big pile of broken glass up my nose! If it wasn’t for the fact that I like to listen to music and podcasts on the way to work I wouldn’t have bothered. Here are a few of the problems that I have come across.

1) When you rip music to your computer it helps if you can find it again. This is why you would expect your media ripper to create a folder structure of Artist->Album and put all of the songs in there. This just isn’t good enough for iTunes and it had totally ruined my music collection by putting files all over the place. For some reason, if the album has ANY (and I mean ANY!) other person contributing to a song in addition to the artist who has written the song it puts the entire album into a folder called “compilations”.  It doesn’t do this all of the time however and will also create literally hundreds of folders called Artist feat. Another Artist.  What the difference is I can’t figure out, and it has utterly ruined by Cypress Hill collection by creating literally 30 folders.  I wish Apple(spit!) wouldn’t do this.  Why is this even a good idea?  Who in the world would want it this way?  The gauling thing is that there isn’t even a way (that I can find) to stop it doing this.  Why not categorise the music by Artist and then Ablum?  Why bother even looking at the composing meta data?

2) If this wasn’t bad enough, when I try to sort out the terrible state my music collection has got into iTunes will come along and put it back the way it was before.  Not only that.  (Oh no, that would be too simple!)  It also leaves in all of the broken back references to the music which it has just moved.

3) For some odd reason when ripping my vast CD collection using iTunes it not only puts random beeps and jumps in some tracks but will also stop ripping 30 seconds from the end of the CD.  So when you are listening to the last track on the album you are treated to it simply stopping.  This doesn’t happen when I use Windows Media Player, and I can get the same effect when I use different computers so it is clear that this is not just my machine playing about.  Why, oh why would you ever want this to happen?

4) I have been using iTunes for about 3 months to listen to podcasts and it was only LAST WEEK that I found out how to play any track I wanted from a particular podcast. For weeks I have been messing around with settings, pushing buttons, right clicking and generally having a hard time trying to listen to the back catalogue from some of my favourite podcasts.  All utterly futile.  When you have a podcast downloaded you will see a little grey arrow (triangle really) to the left hand side.  I ACCIDENTALLY clicked on this arrow one day and the podcast title expanded and revealed the entirety of the episodes of the podcast I had clicked on.  I was astonished!  This arrow looks more like a decoration than a button!  Why didn’t they just create the NORMAL sort of plus and minus system that everyone else on the entire planet uses?  No.  They have to mess about with the stupid interface and confuse everyone.

5) Lets say you just downloaded a podcast that has 100 episodes, which isn’t all that rare.  Want to listen to episode 53 on the way to work?  Tough!  iTunes will only let you listen to lots of stupid combinations of “Most recent 10 unlistened” or “Least recent 5 unlistened” from any podcasts that you select.  You can select them all to be uploaded, but this tends to fill anyone who doesn’t have a 16GB iPod.  You can create a playlist and use this, but this just breaks the way that an iPod plays podcasts and is totally wothless.

I will stick with Windows Media Player (which is a vastly better program - with a vastly better name!) to listen, rip and watch my media.  I will only use iTunes to sync my iPod and download podcasts.  I am seriously thinking about buying a Creative Zen simply so that I don’t have to use this broken bile of monkey poo.

Finally, there is another thing that really annoy me. Podcasts. This makes it seem like it can only be listened to on an iPod. WRONG! When you subscribe to a podcast you are just downloading a syndication feed that links to some audio or video files. Lots of different software is available to download and manage podcasts, not just the broken rubbish from Apple(spit!). However, the name seems to have stuck with people in the industry, and I can’t think of a better one than blogcasts. Which is kind of different really…

If anyone else has had trouble with iTunes then let me know by commenting on this article.

Tags: Personal by Philip Norton
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Every year (sometimes twice a year) my parents go to a small camp site just outside Rhyader, usually for a bank holiday weekend. This time we went with them. Some friends of the family who were already there and the plan was to meet up with them.

Phoneing up the camp site before hand we heard that it was very water-logged and that they had even shut down some of the site due to it being so wet. The weather forcast said that it would rain on the Thursday, but that it should be better on the Friday, and Saturday should be much better.

When we got there it was wet, and due to the activity of people walking about it was also very muddy. We booked until Sunday just in case the rain didn’t stop. Not being perturbed we set up our tents and hoped that there would be no more rain for a couple of days. It was muddy enough that some people went into town and bought wellington boots just so that they didn’t have to stand ankle deep in mud. I stayed in my trusty walking boots, which now need a good wash!

No such luck on hoping it wasn’t going to rain! It was sunny for just long enough on Friday night and Saturday to lull us into a false sense of security. By dinner time on Saturday it was raining quite steadily and any drying out that had been done was basically wasted. The ground just got wetter and wetter until everything we did or owned was just caked in mud.

Anyway, I had the plan that we would go Hay-on-Wye at some point during the weekend, so we went there on Saturday. We eventually decided that Mandy and I should go and Matthew would stay behind and go to the Rhyader “fun day”. Apparently the fun day wasn’t all that fun, and consisted of a few giant games (like a large connect four) and was very “small town” if you know what I mean.

For those of you who don’t know Hay-on-Wye is a town that has more book shops (mainly second hand) per mile than just about anywhere else on the face of the Earth. Just walking around it for a while you are hit by the amount of books that are present in the town. There are millions! Mandy and I went there with a certain number of authors in mind, but unfortunately found nothing. I was a little disapointed, but I realised that there are a few reasons why I didn’t find what I was looking for.

1. There are a lot of books. So therefore asking if anything is there just gets you blank looks. Most shop owners don’t know what they have in their stock, just due to the numbers of books there, but also due to the fact that lots of books also come in.
2. Looking through each bookstore takes a while and different stores have different ways of stocking and categorising books. I didn’t have all week to look through every store, but you could easily do that.
3. I assume that, although there are books coming in to the shops, there are a lot of people walking around and buying them. So the good and popular books go quite quickly and so finding them can be a little tricky.

I am back home now, and drying off. Everything in and around the tent is wet and muddy and I will probably spend tomorrow cleaning everything 50 times over as it is all caked with mud. Joy…

It would be nice to go camping and it not rain and spoil things. I’m thinking that we should just book ourselves into a hotel next time.

Tags: Family by Philip Norton
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I just took the current survey from A List Apart, the online web design and development blog. The results last year showed that I fit right into the normal demographic for a web developer. I also found it amazing that almost 10% of the people who filled out the survey had more than 10 jobs! Who has that amount of time on their hands?

Try it out for yourself.

Tags: Job by Philip Norton
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We have had our bikes sat in our shed for a good number of months now complete with rust and punctures.  So this weekend we decided to go and get our bikes repaired.  We phoned up a shop in Congleton that does bike repairs, but the guy was rude on the phone and not really all that helpful so we took them to Halfords.  I can’t fault Halfords for their service.  We had originally booked the bikes in for the 29th, but we got a call yesterday saying that things had been quiet there so the girl had done them herself.

We had to walk in order to pick them up, which is about 4 miles, but we needed to take Matthew with us.  He enjoyed riding on my bike (although he is a little small for it).  After getting home we put them back in the shed with the plan to go for a bike ride today.

However, when I got the bike out of the shed I found it had a puncture in the front tyre.  After getting quite angry, but still being able to repair it I then attached a bike seat so that Matthew could ride on the back of my bike.

Our little trip nearly started out as a disaster as as soon as I picked my bike off of the wall (with Matthew attached) it fell sideways and I had to struggle to bring the bike back up again from a funny angle.  I’m not certain that the seat is entirely safe as it makes the bike very top heavy and when I slowed down (for the hills) I ended up falling sideways.

Still, it was a plesant bike ride.  We went up to the cannal at the end of a lane near our house.  I didn’ remember, the last time I took that lane, just how hilly it was.  Plus, I am quite out of shape and so I wasn’t able to peddle all the way up in one go.  I just need to get more practice in!

Tags: Family by Philip Norton
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I’m not from the USA, nor do I live in their country, and therefore not eligible to vote in their election. However, I still have an opinion and I think that a potted plant is a definite step UP from the current idiot.

Tags: Funny by Philip Norton
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