Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
Flickle
Note to self: Stop obsessing about ephemeral rankings and arbitrary list-type things.
Interestingness is a strange thing is it not? One minute you can have several of your photos hogging the front pages of several days, and the next they're dispersed throughout the 500 as though someone's taken them and shuffled them in that really cool way that sleight-of-hand people do.
At one point yesterday, I had a 3rd, a 4th, a 5th and a 6th, and this morning my 3rd is now about 108th and even my trusty "Ready" picture has slipped down a little.
I dunno why this bothers me (or if it bothers me at all really — maybe it's just interesting). Sometimes I try to neatly bundle up fears of attention-seeking and general vanity in some kind of "Yes, but I'm doing it for the good of the Community"-type heroics ... but maybe I should just accept the reality that I am completely self-obsessed, and get on with things.
...
Last night, whilst ever-so-slightly (ie. totally) drunk, I thought that this would be a nice idea, and signed up.
*sigh* — once again, the little trannie trys to fit in, and play with the big boys...
Very true (and something I should really tell myself more often). I'm going to spend a large chunk of time making nice things in Second Life to compensate 
Island
Because I only log in rarely, everytime I visit my home something new has happened around it. Someone's put some rather lovely islands next to it — much nicer than the big shop that was there a few weeks ago
Good design!
cacheop1
I dunno, some people will do anything for traffic
Damm spammers 
Just because I'm absorbed in SL, they think they can wheedle some links in while I'm not looking
/me dives into vi
yeah, its outgrageous isnt it
Trampamoline!
All I need is a wedding dress...
iSync 2.2: Read before updating to Mac OS X 10.4.6
And apparently, the 10.4.6 update will restart a PPC Mac twice ... odd
Lefty Rantings
rant trade-unions lefty politics
It should be pretty obvious by now, just how much I detest the way that a consumerist-based model has encroached its insipid way into much (if not all) aspects of life.
I find it a horribly lazy way of analysing things and restricting access to things — as it effectively rewards the rich, and punishes the poor.
/me breaks into a chorus of The Internationale
But before I go all Wolfie Smith on you, and get too obsessed with the notion of students as paying 'customers', the reason why I'm feeling slightly ranty is because this article about Jet2 slagging off French Air Traffic Controllers just popped into my News Reader.
I should probably read a bit more about the specifics of it all, but the jist seems to be:
[...] industrial action against their government's plan to make it easier to sack young staff.
That sounds like a Good Thing™ to me — the industrial action, not the sacking of young staff. Job insecurity is one of the things which plagues the current working environment, and the idea of businesses being able to sack people willy-nilly is one that I find unjust.
What bugs me though, about the way this (and other types of industrial action) get interpreted — in the press, by the public — is how those trying to stand up for themselves are presented as the bad guys all the time.
Philip Meeson's reactions...
"You choose to do the job you do and it's appalling that you are taking advantage of your dominant position by neglecting the responsibility you have to your customers."
...to me sound like someone trying to shift the blame away from themselves. It is, surely, his (and others like him) fault that there's the desire to make sacking easier, and the onus of blame for the industrial action should lie with him.
"Yes that's right, holidaymakers pay your wages."
They also pay his though don't they? His being a lot more than the young staff facing the chop.
What I really object to the most though, is the idea that a group of people wanting to lie on their backs in the Algarve for a week, are more valuable than a group of young Air Traffic Controllers, just because they have money.
Industrial — engaged in work
Action — the doing of something
So why is "industrial action" used when people are deliberately not working?
Perhaps because they ARE trying to do something. Whether the action is ever effective is another question, but, as I find myself, sometimes you just have to DO something (rather than nothing).
Re: naked day, that might explain why I just found someone wandering around starkers on Hastings' beach. Seeming as I'd gone down there to take pictures it was a bit off-putting really.
Action — the doing of something
Or, more specifically in this case, the doing of something about how you're engaged in work (which is probably what April said. I'm going back to bed for a kip)
Argh no, don't side with the French. The protestors aren't 'bad guys' but they are, by and large, dumb guys — privileged students who still want job-for-life security when the vast majority of young French people can't get a job at all. This is the opinion of all the French people I know (well, straw poll of five), as well as the President of the Sorbonne.
That Jet2 guy is a moron though ("peasant freight market"! — I {heart} The Register).
Argh no, don't side with the French
Ah 
You're forgetting that I spent part of my childhood growing up in Paris...
There's one bit of that article I don't quite follow:
He added that tens of thousands of students were taking degrees in subjects with no relevance to the employment market but were then demanding jobs linked to their studies.
I don't quite get what he's trying to say there 
This is what I meant earlier, BTW, when I sasid I should read more about this. I've been shutting myself off from world events recently — for no partcular reason — and a lot of this passes me by.
(Where the hell has my passion gone? I used to care so much about stuff like this...)
Just reading through that article, I found myself split. The "Bah — kids today (etc)" part of my brain was agreeing wholeheartedly with:
"Today's youth don't have dreams, they have illusions. To dream is to want to accomplish something difficult that is a challenge. Instead youngsters believe they have a right to everything and if things don't go the way they want it's someone else's fault."
....whereas I just couldn't quite see how "a work contract for the under-26s that allows them to be dismissed without cause during the first two years on the job" was the solution.
Hmm — people do have an "I want everything now" mentality hence the huge amount of credit card debt around but I can't see either how what they propose would help that in any way. And remember if they can bring that sort of thing in in France there's every chance our lovely government might try the same sort of thing here.
Sorry for the duff graphic by the way.
Tidy
Sorry for the duff graphic by the way
I rather like it, actually. Especially now you've enlarged it
You know, the thing that bugs me the most about the French labour law thing — is the bit that says:
dismissed without cause
I can understand how, if you are over protective of workers' rights, you can end up with a situation where it becomes almost impossible to fire people. Lengthy tribunals, and people getting away with incompetence and laziness do business no good whatsoever.
And I can understand the argument from the employers side: "We want to hire lots of people, but we need a way to get rid of them if they're not up to scratch without having to go through lengthy procedures".
But the thing is, the carte blanche approach of giving an employer the right to dismiss an employee without cause, is widly open to abuse.
Suppose I'm working for some guy in — I dunno — a shop that sells fudge. And I'm the best fudge salesperson in the world. EVER. You know — people come in just to ask for directions, and leave with 500kg of the finest Rum and Raisin.
Or something.
And then one day, my boss finds out that I'm a transvestite, and, being the homophobic numpty that he is, he fires me on the spot.
Power needs to be distributed evenly between employer and employee. I thought we'd learnt that last century
ummmm....theres a really bad joke in there somewhere...but I am not going to make it...I'm not even going to think about it...
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala
You have a job selling FUDGE. PACKer it in and get a real job.
An anonymous coward
Oooh, crowbar that one in.
Weak, very weak
Actually, I should run some kind of competition for the best fudge- based punchline. Perhaps
i'm glad i don't have to pat a (tof)fee for these jokes! 
Beki
That should have been pay.
Damn you no preview!! {shaking fist}
Beki
Thinking about it (possibly too much now), pun would have been better. I'm not saying anything else tonight, I've reach my 3 posts per month limit now.
Beki
*ahem* (clears throat)
"Working in the fudge shop was OK at times, but some times it was boring. Sometimes people didn't come in for hours on end and I used to go out to the storeroom to amuse myself.
"One of the games I played, was constructing complicated series of arches out of carefully trimmed fudge segments. I would cut them into 'keystone' shapes, and see how many arches I could build adjacent to each other.
"Like I said, sometimes I was very bored
"One day though, we were quite busy, and running out of fudge rather quickly. I was busy serving someone, so the boss went round the back to get some double cream to make more fudge.
"Suddenly, there was an enormous CRASH from the back of the shop. I ran into the storeroom, to see that a whole pile of boxes had fallen off one of the shelves and landed on my boss.
"'HELP!' came the muffled cries of woe from under the boxes. 'I've taken refuge under those adjacent arches of fudge that were handily here'
"'Quick!' I called. 'Slide yourself up my fudge tunnel. Be careful, it's quite tight, and you don't want your cream going all over the place'"
...
I will understand if none of you ever visit my website ever again.
oh my god — thats sicker than me!
Potentially All I'm doing is offering up potentials for Ms Everson 
's 'Quotables' series
No, there's no potentially about it at all. You ARE sicker than me. Its fucking official now!
(wasnt there an earlier conversation about gaining credibility for your site...hmmmmm....)
Credibility and popularity are two distinctly seperate things
Having seen you mention it a couple of times i thought i would head over to the Second Life website..Im sure i just read you can pay $5000 for an island PLUS $195 a month for maintaince.
Am i missing out on something?!
Yes. Things from Amazon
That's true, a copy of CSS Mastery...Everything else is here though.
Wired News: The Time Is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
(See also http://www.flickr.com/photos/si08han/sets/1789826/)
Relax... we have another month yet....
|Pogue writes: Late tonight -- specifically, 123 |seconds after 1:00 a.m. -- the time and date, for |the first time in all of humanity, will be |01:02:03 04/05/06.
|
|And, Pogue points out, this moment will never come |again.
Bllx. The same set of criteria came about in 1906 and will do so again in 2106.
|Power needs to be distributed evenly between |employer and employee. I thought we'd learnt |that last century
We now move to Devil's Advocate mode.
I have a house. I let it to tenants. If the moment occurs that I wish to sell the house, I give them a month's notice and they are out. No argument as to how long they have lived there.
Or again, I have a business. I am losing money. I either make people redundant or don't pay them. Where is the choice?
Sorry (and I haven't looked into what the French dispute is all about either) but there are always two sides. And, yes, big business normally has ways of getting round these problems (they are normally called "investments"). But there are two sides to the argument, and the fudge employer who finds himself strapped for cash may need to lay staff off no matter how good they are at selling fudge — or any other confectionery, for that matter. Is this a law to defend the small business?
Don't forget, even distribution of power works both ways. An employee normally needs to give a number of week's notice that they wish to leave employment without any reason at all. Why should the employer be at a bigger disadvantage?
Oh you fickle asterisk — one day I'll get you right!!!!!
Why should the employer be at a bigger disadvantage?
They shouldn't — but the weighting of this French law puts them at the advantage. And that's just wrong. In the grand scheme of things, both the employer and the employee are people. And that's what capitalists, and consumerists often forget.
Never use the pipe character BTW — it's my comment delimeter, and it gets escaped automatically
Hellloooooo, I am sat here in shock dont you know
"Even distribution of power" is never more than an illusion because of the dynamism in the relationship between employers and employees.
The power at any given time is with whoever possesses the most scarce resource — when that's a skill (or even just manpower), it's with the employee, therefore wages and conditions will tend to improve. When it's jobs that are scarce, employers can be more autocratic, and rewards will tend to shrink (many working in IT over the last few years can testify to this).
Anything that alters that model — e.g. employment law — is just interference. Periods of comparative stability have often obscured this but globalisation is going to make it very clear indeed.
Lisa
I have a house. I let it to tenants. If the moment occurs that I wish to sell the house, I give them a month's notice and they are out. No argument as to how long they have lived there.
Now leagaly, if your tenants have lived in the house for more than 6 months and you have not issued a new contract, in the eyes of the law you have to give them 2 months notice to the date when rent is due. So if they pay on the 31st of the month, you give them notice on the 1st of Janurary, you can not get them to leave before the 31st March.
Of course, come 31st of March if they refuse to leave you have to goto Court and get an eviction order, which will give them 2 months from that date, depending on where you live and the court load, it can take upto a month to get a court date, so thats 31st of June. If they still refuse you can then send the balifs/police in. But thats possibly a 6month period before you do get them out of your house.
The moral of the story is to make sure you give your tennents a new contract every 6months.
An anonymous coward
The more time you spend looking at how popular you might be, means less time on creating things (to make you more popular).