Perseid shower tonight. I can claim no great knowledge of astronomy beyond a passing interest - ie. the names of the planets and knowing the plough when I see it. That said, I've always loved looking at the night sky, even though it's hard to find anywhere truly free of light pollution. I was in Flagstaff last year, and the same day I saw the Grand Canyon, I also saw the clearest night sky I've ever seen, with the Milky Way clearly visible - a fantastic combination of seeing the best the land and sky have to offer in the same day.

Since coming back from there, looking up at the sky back home has generally been a truly disappointing experience for me - knowing the fantastic view that's up there, but being denied a good look at it because of the light pollution. Hardly one of life's great hardships, but it bothers me. Anyway, given the Perseid shower tonight I thought I'd take a wander out onto the park and see what I could see.

The result surprised me - still not a brilliant view, but it was far better than I expected. I took the time to lie down and stare skywards for about 20 minutes, letting my eyes get used to the darkness. A few times I'd catch a flash in my peripheral vision, but it was hard to be sure if it was a meteor or just my eyes playing tricks. Eventually though I caught a clear streak, right where I was looking. Satisfying that my time paid off.

Regardless of that though, it reminded me how much I love staring at the sky. Daytime just doesn't cut it, although when there are scattered clouds I do enjoy the way it makes it easy to perceive the curvature of the earth and atmosphere, stretching way over the horizon. But at night, the view goes straight up - stars might not give a sense of specific scale, but they immediately make me very aware of being on a planet which is floating around in the void.

Given my film-viewing history my mind immediately goes to films like Star Trek: First Contact, and Contact (never drew the title parallel before) - two films which open with fantastic zooms through space. I love being made very aware of our place in the universe - a tiny planet in an infinite cosmos, with no clue of everything that's out there. If you haven't recently taken the time to stare up at the night sky I recommend it.

This is turning into a properly neglected site. While I had no great aspirations to blogging on a daily basis, leaving it this long is all manner of rubbish, so partly apologies, and partly well done for hanging in there. Although that's also made me lose just a tiny bit of respect for you.

This is barely topical, but I keep a file of things that may inspire me to write (and then, of course, don't actually write about them). This article caught my attention. Don't bother reading the whole thing - basically a UK music prize was given out last week, and a band went on a mini-rant about how it's never awarded to the fans' choice, but is normally someone fairly obscure.

Oh boo fucking hoo. Where did the idea ever come from that the majority opinion must be right? That's especially true of anything even remotely creative, like music, movies, and art. Just because something's popular doesn't make it good, and there are a lot of critics who are exceptionally well-educated in areas like this who know whether something's worth listening to or not. By all means disagree with them, but to imply that something should win an award just because it's more popular is ridiculous.

As I wrote a few weeks back, people are idiots. This covers a wide range of sins, and on occasion I'll gladly throw myself into that pile, especially when it comes to films. I saw Transformers 2 and enjoyed it, in an utterly mindless, don't think about it on any level sort of way. At the same time I'd never argue to anyone that it was a good movie. It was what I wanted to see at that point in time, which makes me mentally deficient.

However, it made an enormous amount of cash at the box office, critics tore it to shreds, and the internet lit up with claims comparing box office take to quality, and accusing critics of being out of touch with movie-goers' tastes. I can't be arsed to look up the precise quote, but Roger Ebert said something like critics shouldn't reflect popular opinion - it's their job to direct people towards good movies and away from bad ones.

I don't know if this semi-mob-mentality stems from mass insecurity at being thought of as stupid, or feeling threatened by having their taste questioned, or else just the belief that because we use democracy to vote, the public view must always be heard, but it's wrong.

That's not to say that critics are always right, of course, or that the majority is always wrong - the truth, as ever, lies somewhere in the middle. But why people insist on this blind delusion that any large group must somehow be closer to a "correct" opinion than an individual makes no sense to me. We should all accept that relatively often we'll know bugger all about a topic, regardless of our enjoyment or participation in it, and accept that those better-informed might just know more than we do. Or at least know enough that we should listen to them.

For the few of you checking in on this, it's still technically an active site, I've just partly got out of the habit of writing, and partly have been busy. Regardless I thought I'd stick something here just to keep you all dangling on my hook. And by hook, I mean hook. Filthy-minded perverts.

I'm just going to ramble on a bit here, as I've not written anything for a couple of weeks, and I've had an eventful day. Not sure if any of it will prove interesting, but thus far hardly anyone's reading it anyway, so if you've made it here, congratulations.

Had a wedding to go to today, of a friend of mine I don't see all that often, because she lives a while away, so was nice to catch up with her and other people in her loop that I rarely see. I normally only see them once a year when she has a birthday barbecue, which I feel bad about, because ideally I'd be able to drag them up to my neck of the woods, but I just don't really get the opportunity, and while we all get on well we're not really close enough to warrant a mass journey for no particular reason, as opposed to a wedding. Plus pretty much everyone in this group is married with children, adding an extra complication to organising random gatherings.

Anyway, good to chat to them all, but I do get weirded out by the contrast between them and my friends back home, which is all the weirder because of the similarities, if that makes sense. Broadly speaking, they're a group of friends who have known each other since school, with a few additions and subtractions, both partners and other friends, which is exactly the same as my friends where I live. However, us up north have a mix of marriages, long and short-term relationships, and singletons, with only one recently-born child, whereas down south they're pretty much all married with multiple kids.

It's a very odd difference - partly because we're all similar ages, but mostly because it's so consistent. I could understand if, say, half of each group was married with kids and the other half weren't, but having such a clear split makes me wonder what's going on. Obviously not any grand plan, but whether it's a lifestyle thing, or whether because one couple got married and pregnant quite early (by my standards, anyway - 21/22ish), the seed was sown in the others, and things kicked off. Hmm.

Personally I'm happy being in the childless section, partly because, well, I just am, but also being single myself it's frankly less worrisome rather than being constantly surrounded by happy couples. Actually, a couple of guys in this group are single too, and chatting today we became fairly certain there were no single women at this wedding whatsoever, beyond the waitresses who all looked 12 anyway. Probably 20ish, but still weird. So while the day itself was fantastic (even got a ride in a hot air balloon, which was an unexpected bonus), mildly disappointing that there were no available women to be rejected by. Ah well.

Although on the plus side, when driving home, just as I got back to the bottom of town where most of the pubs/clubs are, a fight broke out and a load of policemen immediately dove in, bundling one guy to the ground right in front of my car - luckily far enough in front I could brake in time, rather than just driving over them.

Three thoughts occurred - the first was on my usual "people are fuckwits" theme, namely this moron thinking it was a good idea to start a fight with so many coppers nearby, and then to try taking them on as well. Alcohol or no alcohol, you don't do that unless you're a fucking retard.

The second was the coincidences in daily life. I'd had an hour-long drive and this fight fell literally feet in front of my car, causing the police to hold up traffic for a bit with me having a front-row view. If I'd left the wedding just a few seconds earlier or later, or driven a tiny bit slower or faster, I'd have either gone by just before it started, and I'd never have seen it, or else I'd have been stuck several cars back not seeing what the holdup was, or else I'd have arrived after everything and not known anything had happened. Makes you wonder about all the events and opportunities in life that we come so close to without ever knowing it. Or of course all those moments we're lucky enough to have experienced which we very nearly didn't.

And the third thought was how young all the policemen and women looked. Crap, I'm so old.

Only a brief musing, because I've written nothing here this week - not really in the habit yet. Just caught a tiny fraction of an Outer Limits episode with Heather Graham in it - don't know which, or when it was, although obsessive researcher that I am I'll now have to look it up...

It was called "Resurrection", and was broadcast early '96, so right around the time Heather Graham started getting famous. She's always an example I use of someone who's been around far longer than you expect - did you know she played the twins' mother in Twins? When giving birth, obviously, not the old ladt at the end. I didn't even have to look that up - that's how detailed and sad my film knowledge is.

I digress. The basic premise is that humanity's wiped itself out, leaving a few hundred androids on earth, getting by as best they can. Reading the plot summary online there's more to it than that, but it's that bit that piqued my interest.

Assuming we get to the point of realistic AI in the future, or maybe even to genuine "I", just in an artificial lifeform, I find it hard to imagine that they'd be too bothered about self-preservation. Let's start with the premise that life is ultimately pointless. I really need to get comments working on this blog, because people will probably disagree, but I'll explain.

If you're religious, then broadly speaking life is a gift from God (or gods, or whoever, but we'll keep it simple) that you should be grateful for, worship appropriately, etc. If you're not, then that's not a factor. For either camp, however, life is largely self-preservation, enjoying yourself, fulfilling responsibilities to others, etc. Whether you're religious or not, the day to day necessities boil down to that. I felt I should mention religion because it's an obvious factor given our culture, but given that both groups generally get on with life in much the same way, it's clearly not a significant difference.

The end is different, of course - you could argue that believers are playing the long game, hoping to do well enough in this life to prove themselves worthy for the next. By contrast the non-believers, with nothing to aim for after death, don't have to worry about specific behaviours beyond the laws and conventions of wherever they happen to live. Which by and large match up with religious behaviours anyway.

I'm digressing to cover bases. From a non-believer's viewpoint, life is ultimately meaningless. It's a fascinating experience, of course, with plenty of things to appreciate, people to love, etc. etc., but there's no end result, so arguably what's the point? Of course we can answer that - we have human experiences, pain, pleasure, all sorts of things. However fleeting or good/bad our lives may be, the vast majority of people want to see them through to their natural conclusion, otherwise as soon as we could string a thought together we'd think "it's all the same in the end, might as well kill myself now".

Perhaps that's what some suicidal people think - I'd argue that's perfect clarity (or impatience), but I'm fairly sure if that ever happens, those people are a tiny tiny proportion. Anyway.

My point is that in the Outer Limits scenario, androids are essentially in the non-believer position, but hampered by computer-like logic. These aren't robots many generations down the line which have evolved, developed, formed their own culture and forgotten about people, hence, their origins. These are relatively recent creations, left with no "masters".

Given that, I find it hard to imagine that they'd bother carrying on. They're intelligent, rather than just programmed to behave a certain way, they know there's nothing awaiting them after death/shutdown, but equally there are no earthly pleasures, for want of a better phrase, to particuarly entertain them on earth. As such, knowing the futility of pretty much any actions they take, I'd imagine they'd just deactivate themselves after the last human died, rather than continuing on as best they can.

That's perhaps slightly nihilistic, and the thought that's just occurred to me won't change that - perhaps they just keep on going through fear of the unknown. Given they're alive/functioning, provided it's not too unpleasant there's no real need to stop. Which could well apply to lots of real people too. There's a cheery thought...

In case you've missed this (in which case congratulations), a "baby shaking" application was recently available on the Apple App Store - a baby cries, and you shake your iPod/iPhone to shut it up. Hardly in the best taste, but considering everything that goes on in the world, it's not exactly bringing about the decline of civilisation. That hasn't stopped large numbers of people objecting to it, eventually forcing Apple to remove it from the store and apologise. But...

When did freedom of speech/expression stop meaning anything? It's not "freedom of expression unless you're offending someone". Of course there should be limits if harm is being done, and I realise that different people will have different definitions of "harm", but this is my blog, so we're going with mine - suck it up. Being offended is not being harmed. If someone is being offensive to the point of encouraging activity which would have wider negative implications on society, then that's probably over the line too. Looking into the limitations of freedom of speech, I've come across John Stuart Mill - a British philosopher born in 1806 whose name I've only ever heard as part of the Monty Python "Philosophers Song". My education may be questionable. Anyway, he wrote about freedom of speech and made a very similar point to the one I made above about what's over the line. I wish I could claim an equal level of intellectual brilliance, but it's most likely just because his musings have filtered through the generations.

Anyway. He believed "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." He also noted the distinction in terms of what qualifies as harm, along the line that expressing an opinion against someone in a newspaper was one thing, but expressing that same opinion to an angry mob, armed and ready for blood was something else. The first wouldn't cause harm, the second might.

Some people argue that a baby-shaking application will whet the appetite of all the keen potential babyshakers out there, making it tantamount to the "angry mob" argument above. Which seems to overestimate the number of people just waiting for an excuse to give a baby a damn good shake. Plus that attitude assumes that people can't really differentiate between a small electronic rectangle and a living child. Of course actually shaking a child is an appalling thing to do, and I have every sympathy for those affected by that, but that's an entirely different thing from a stupid game which references such behaviour. I'm not advocating that the application should be made available until the first baby dies as a direct cause of its release...although I'll admit that's how a very small bit of me thinks, protected quite strongly by the firm belief that no baby will be shaken as a result of this game - if anyone uses that justification they're either lying or such a rage-fuelled moron that they'd have done it with or without the game. I just worry that this is a slippery slope, which to be honest as a society we've been on for quite some time - the belief that anything which has the potential to cause harm must be prevented, lest it ever cause harm.

Of course the problem with that is that we end up in a hugely sanitised state where nothing remotely risky is ever allowed. It's easier talking about things like this in abstract rather than up close and personal, but I recall someone making the argument not too long ago that a few children dying as a result of playground accidents was a worthwhile price to pay for the benefits which playground activities bring to all those children who manage to live through them (ie. 99.99%). Of course on a basic human level that's a fairly unpleasant thought, but aside from the knee-jerk reaction of "a child's life is priceless" I challenge anyone to disprove it. Not that children should be sacrificed in the street, but life involves risk, and while you can reduce that risk you can't eliminate it without losing a lot more.

And it's not like we don't already condone certain risky behaviour - cars kill people on a daily basis, and yet they're so vital to daily life and the economy that anyone claiming they should be banned or that they should be limited to crawling speed anywhere near pedestrians is ignored. Obviously the beneficial effects of this application are minimal, if that, but it's representative of my general irritation at people drawing connections that don't really exist, or having reactions which can't really be justified once you stop and think.

And if you're now convinced that I'm some baby-hating freak who wants to see children killed off at every available opportunity, a few points. Firstly you're clearly the sort of person who has knee-jerk reactions to what you believe a point is, rather than the actual point. I encourage you to read more carefully and think things through, rather than just blindly reacting to what you feel the tone is. Doing that often will serve you well in life. Secondly, I'll add comments soon, so you can share your thoughts. Finally, I direct you back to John Stuart Mill, who said "There ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered." Which neatly brings me back to my original point - no matter how distasteful you may find something, that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.

Bike gears are a pain in the arse. You'd hope with all the technological advances in life that adjusting gears would be at best unnecessary and at worst involve moving a lever or two. But no. For the non-bike-riders among you, it's a pain in the arse. Front and back gears each involve two small screws, a quarter turn of which can have a surprisingly large effect. But wait, there's more. On the back there's an extra screw which adjusts the tension of the spring mechanism, and on the front shifter there's a manually adjustable...thing, which also changes the setup.

As such, the whole thing becomes a balancing act, and thinking about it I can't recall ever having a completely perfect setup. Either the back gears don't shift quite right, or something rattles, or there's chain noise, or....aaargh. Recently I've had an irritating chain noise in the position I use most often, and finally got around to fixing it. I say "fixing it" - fiddled with every possible screw and dial (by "fiddled", I mean "adjusted properly" - I've learned from bitter experience that if you try fiddling, turning a screw here or there, everything gest worse and there's no way to put it back to how it was).

And after about an hour, no more noise - but...I now can't shift from the smallest chainring to the middle one, at least without pushing the lever partway towards the next step up. But frankly that's a less irritating problem. Oh, and there's now a bit of chain noise in a different position too, but balls to it.

I'm currently a single man, reflected on my Facebook page, because I have no particular shame about it. I'm slightly taken aback though by the volume of ads I see on Facebook for "single girls", "looking for a date?", "meet a girl like this!", and just now, rather scarily, "Chinese Women for Love".

One site was plugging "girls date for free", which I'm sure may appeal to some men and women, but the cynic in me just has doubts about it - it'll surely be swamped by women who have no qualms about throwing themselves into a gigantic pool of other women (powerful image), despite the knowledge that the numbers of available men will probably be tiny. Plus any men on that site will most likely only be on there because they figure the ratio of women to men will be so in their favour that they can't fail to find someone, anyone, please, etc.

I think it just sums up my general attitude to online dating - of course it works for people (no-one I know directly, but a few friends of friends have had success), but my overwhelming feeling towards it is that the online dating world is full of desperate flawed people, clutching at the final few straws available to them before age takes its inevitable lonely toll.

Chirpy, I know. And the stupid thing is that I know that's not a particularly fair, or indeed accurate way of looking at it, but it's a constant niggling thought in the back of my head I can't quite shift. So I'll continue to trawl the bars and back alleys of the real world for desperate flawed people, because that makes it easier to pretend I'm not one of them...

Well, the site's a mess, the code's half-finished, I've not particularly thought things through, it's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tanks of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. OK, some of those last bits aren't entirely true, although I've actually got some sunglasses next to me which I could put on just to up the truth quotient, but frankly I can't be arsed.

I've had this site being half-worked on for such a long time that I've finally figured balls to it, it's at least functional, so rather than perfect it before going live, I'll feel far more motivated if I know it's up, with people looking at it in judgment. So welcome to my half-finished, half-thought out collection of witterings.

This is actually one of two sites, loosely connected, but the other one exists in no way...yet. The basic theory is that the other site will consist entirely of amusing/entertaining links which I stumble across over the course of a day. Yeah, hardly original, but I come across a lot, and I feel an urge to share.

This one will be the wordier of the two - partly thoughts and opinions on the links on the other site, plus those prompted by...anything else which occurs to me - likely to be a mix of films, politics, news, life in general... Yeah, it's a broad definition, I know. The inspiration for this site was the realisation that being self-employed and working from home (my main job's running another site, but I'm going to try and keep it separate), over the course of a day I tend not to speak to anyone!

That sounds more pathetic than I mean it to - I've got friends, family, and a flatmate, so it's not like I'm cut off from the world. But during general daytime hours there's no-one around to vocalise thoughts to, so I figured a blog made sense. The statistic I came across recently was that the average office worker spends 45 minutes a day chatting to co-workers - it's that window this is meant to fill.

In due course things will get proper tags so you can filter out posts which are more likely to interest you, a way to contact me, comments on posts, and an RSS feed if you're REALLY keen to keep track of my ramblings, and more, but for now this is fairly basic.

Oh, and the reason for the name...well, I just like that phrase. A nice mix of kind-hearted abuse.