“The offences, I would say, are at the very top end to be taken in a prosecution of harassment and therefore have to be dealt with at the top end of my powers.

“You persisted in that for a considerable period of time, causing her intense distress.”

Woman who stalked July 7 victim on internet is jailed - Times Online

Felicity Jane Lowde has finally (and after her many, many demands for it) had her day in Court and been found guilty under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997.

I’d like to think that this is the end of this but with Lowde’s intention to appeal the decision and the woeful state of mental health care that we currently have I’m sure, regrettably, that this will rumble on.

Media Reports

• BBC News
• The Scotsman
• The Times
• Oxford Mail
• Oxford Mail - Editorial Comment
• Metro
• The Register

Bloggage

• Rachel North
• Benedict White
• Ministry of Truth
• Chicken Yoghurt

Posted by Mark at 7:28 AM | Permalink

Evil chuckle : strokes cat.

So, my attempts to shame Troozers back to the world of blogging have finally worked.

Over the other side of the Blogsphere, on a shiny new domain, a brand new blog is born (note to self stop listening to Johnny Mathis).

Ladies and gentlemen fire up your browsers and head over to Andy’s Blog sooth his paranoia and watch him sort out the problem he has with tubes.

My nagging attention will now move to getting Casper’s fingers off his balls long enough to let him update his blog….

Posted by Mark at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s easy to see Mika Brzezinski as eye candy on a minority station called MSNBC somewhere in the States but what she tried to do the other day live on air is symptomatic of a much larger debate going on within the media in the United States and one, perhaps, that we need to start in the UK.

Brzezinski’s name isn’t known here but she has impressive history as a “proper” journalist having worked for ABC and CBS, finding fame as the principle correspondent at Ground Zero when she was broadcasting from the scene when the south tower collapsed.

Now, live on air, she has refused to lead the news with yet more coverage of Paris Hilton which overshadowed the revelation that Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana had rebelled against President Bush on the Iraq war. Lugar, who had been seen as, “a reliable vote for President Bush on the war,” surprisingly turned against Bush saying that, “Bush’s Iraq strategy was not working and that the U.S. should downsize the military’s role”.

If you watch the clip (below) it could be interpreted as just a hissy fit from one woman but on closer inspection it’s clear that she tried three times on the hour from 06:00 am to stop this item leading the news.

This comes close on the heels of the magazine US Weekly imposing a ban on mentioning the celebrity.

Last year Time magazine’s London Bureau chief Jef McAllister said in his Poynter Fellowship Lecture “Running the World Without Really Trying: The Decline of Foreign News in America and Why It Is Dangerous.” that :

“When you’re rich and powerful — rich and powerful enough to be, in a way, the center of your universe — it’s hard to stay attuned to the threats that may be emerging at the far corners of your domain.”

Yale Bulletin and Calendar

Questioning why the American news networks turned inwards McAllister asserts :

“A combination of geo-strategic luck and market forces. Of course, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the instinctive notion that survival depended upon knowing about foreign countries in a dangerous world faded.”

Yale Bulletin and Calendar

adding that networks were :

“all taken over by big conglomerates which started taking a look at their news divisions” in relation to how they “contribute to the [network’s] bottom line.”

“In December, just two months ago, more than 40% in a survey said the United States should ‘mind its own business internationally,’ which is the highest level of isolationist sentiment since the Vietnam War, I hope it does not take further suffering, more Sept. 11ths, to get our boiler lit, to realize that we cannot any longer ‘just mind our own business internationally’ or tune out the world. But I fear it might be the case.”

Yale Bulletin and Calendar

For that reason alone American needs to stop focusing on itself and on minor celebrities. We all need more Brzezinski’s who question and remind us that what is happening in the world is much more important to us all than the life of one twenty-six year old girl.

Posted by Mark at 10:37 PM | Permalink

For a summary of the Blair Years head over to Chicken Yoghurt.

Regardless of whether you liked or disliked him, voted or didn’t vote for him, hoped he would deliver on all the promises or thought he was all spin from day one there are some sad statements on the last ten years here.

Put together like this I’m left wondering how and why we allowed it all to happen ….

Posted by Mark at 7:46 AM | Permalink

Luckily today I didn’t have to express regret at the deaths of more soldiers in Iraq. Nor did I have the luxury of batting aside a stupid question with the line, “I think I’m really not bothered about that one.”

I’m trying to leave with everything done, he got to walk out with the following (amongst others) left undone :

• on sleaze Blair said in October 1994 “I support the Prime Minister’s establishment of the Nolan inquiry into standards of conduct in public life, but its remit is narrow. In at least one crucial respect it is seriously flawed, as the funding of political parties is excluded from investigation”. As he leaves he has admitted exploiting a loophole in the party funding rules he introduced after coming to power in 1997 to secure £14 million in “secret” loans to fund Labour’s last general election campaign.

• on the economy Blair said “New Labour will be wise spenders not big spenders… New Labour will establish a new trust on tax with the British people.” As he leaves office economists have calculated the tax burden is now rising at £1 million a minute. This equates to an income of £490 billion for last year, compared with £271 billion when Mr Blair took office.

• on health Blair said in 1996 “No more hospitals fighting hospitals. No more doctor competing with doctor. No more bogus red tape and expensive bureaucracy”. Government figures show that the cost of bureaucracy in the NHS rose by £1.3 billion between 2000 and 2004. At the same time the number of administrators employed leapt by a third from 159,141 to 211,690.

• On dentistry Tony Blair said at the 1999 Labour Party conference, “And everyone with the chance to go back on the NHS to see their dentist. And working with the British Dental Association, everyone within the next two years will be able once again to see an NHS dentist just by phoning NHS Direct. So much more to do, but it will be done”. Today one in 10 dentists has rejected a new NHS contract outright and many more have registered objections. Recently 3,000 people queued to register for a new NHS dental surgery in Ceredigion, Wales.

I’ve often been frustrated and angry. He managed to wage war (perhaps justly and unjustly) committing British forces to action more often, and in more conflicts, than any Prime Minister since 1945.

He got generous expressions of good will from his colleagues. I doubt I will get that.

He walked into another job - I’m waiting for a call from my manager…..

Posted by Mark at 10:44 PM | Permalink

I’ll spare you all the details except to say that it finally stopped around 3:30 this morning.

Today was a long, slow day accompanied by a lot of flat water, a lot of waiting for things to happen and a sprinkling of despair …

Posted by Mark at 7:08 PM | Permalink

By the way I’m shaking, cold and feel lousy I’m guessing I’m not very well …

This feels like it’s going to be a long night…

Posted by Mark at 7:38 PM | Permalink

It seems odd to think as we sat in the garden with the smells of paella drifting from the barbecue that it will be at least a month until we are all together again.

Even odd is that when we are all back it won’t be long before the wedding and the day after we have a date with a band of aged rockers …

Posted by Mark at 7:32 PM | Permalink

Take oysters and champagne to start; smoked salmon blinis; crab and crayfish tail served on lettuce with a lime mayonnaise; steak with a mushroom, marsala and creme fraiche sauce; homemade pizza; cheese and port to finish.

Add to that some presents, great company, a late night showing of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and midnight games of Mancala.

All in all a great party and a memorable day.

Happy Birthday Martin !

Posted by Mark at 11:57 PM | Permalink

K and M
Sitting in a tree
K.I.S.T.I.N.G…

“That’s kisting !”, we all shout at Joanne, whose sitting in the back of Martin’s car en route to Anne’s.

“I don’t care, that’s how I sing it”, is the reply as we pull up for an evening of presents, champagne, pizza and pasta and some Serbian plum brandy….

Posted by Mark at 11:35 PM | Permalink

To celebrate the one thousandth post here I’m bringing in a new look and some new features.

As you can see as with most things which get old we’ve spread a little around the middle to a three column layout.

There are now three RSS feeds to subscribe to : the full site feed gives you all of the postings from the blog; the photo feed shows all the pictures posted in the gallery and my Flickr feed shows all the pictures I’m sharing on Flickr.

I’ve moved from categories to tags to sort entries and in the right hand sidebar you see the new sparkly tag cloud grow.

Comments on things I’ve written have been moved up to make them easier to read and I’m now sharing items I’ve read in Google Reader and think are interesting in the left hand sidebar.

I’ll be rolling out this new layout to the archives over the next few days.

Here’s to the next thousand posts !

Posted by Mark at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today marks the one hundredth day in captivity for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter seized and held in Gaza.

Across the BBC events are being held to mark this sad day and to show support. Details of the coverage on News 24 and BBC World are here.

Please show your support for the campaign to free Alan by signing the petition here or by displaying the button at the top of this blog. Instructions on how to do this are here.

Both you and I woke up happy, perhaps with people who love us and with our liberty. Let us hope that very, very soon Alan can enjoy these pleasures as well.

Posted by Mark at 6:15 AM | Permalink

Down the hill and over the road there is a nice empty field.

It used to be allotment land but somewhere along the way (and thankfully after I’d taken some pictures) the collection of shed and pea sticks were removed.

Housing nowadays isn’t just housing. There’s private, affordable and social. I guess that once-upon-a-time all of this could be found in the same street and probably next to each other. Today social housing is packaged neatly away in a corner far away from the private (expensive) houses.

Looking at the plans this evening the social housing was squashed away in one corner of the development next to four lines of London bound railway line and away from the expensive flats built a few years ago. Mixing all forms of housing liberally across the development (which I learnt is called pepper potting) is no longer the thing to do. Apparently the housing associations don’t like it. “It’s hard to police”. said the Housing Consultant. We both let the police word fall loudly to the floor and he looked a little crestfallen at the Freudian association that social housing is for the less lawful elements of society.

This is the second proposal for the site and there’s a dance the developer plays. It goes like this. They say “Of course the parking is 0.7% above the County Council recommendation”, hoping you will be impressed that they have allowed for an additional wheel or the odd tappet for every car.

The problem with all these car spaces is the access to and from this development. Access as in singular and traffic light controlled - onto a dual carriageway. I tried to explain that the most likely thing that will happen is that cars will be left on this side of the road where the traffic light won’t slow up the parking or the rush to work. Of course if this happens then we’ll need residents parking to “protect” what we have now and that will cost me to have the right to park in my road and to have people visit and park.

This didn’t seem to be a problem to the Housing Consultant but then he won’t be living there and neither will the deer.

Who knows by then if I will be…

Posted by Mark at 9:50 PM | Permalink

The call came unexpectedly and the request was even more unexpected.

I guess the fact that she had asked someone else to call didn’t surprise me I was more surprised that any of them called at all.

There was no point in arguing and ranting. I tried to be as helpful as I could but I didn’t rush to help. Which for me is unusual.

“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.”
Oscar Wilde

Posted by Mark at 8:37 PM | Permalink

“Sure you don’t want some ?”, I asked K who was looking rather hesitantly at her glass of white wine.

“It means pick-me-up in Italian”, I continued, watching her push the glass away.

I guess considering the day had started with the observation, “I think I’ve died and gone to hell” we hadn’t done badly.

Holiday shopping has started …

Posted by Mark at 10:35 PM | Permalink

“There’s another police motorcyclist behind us - I think someone important is about to appear.”, I said.

All of sudden the motorcycles were around us waving at drivers to move over and darting between cars to close off another slip road. Rather than risk a tap on the roof of the car by a police gloved hand (which I saw one cars behind us get) I moved over as the convoy of police cars and Jaguars sped past us.

“Beatrice or Eugenie”, said K as I filtered back behind the last car a red “POLICE - KEEP BACK” sign in the rear window, wondering just how far back really was.

The next time we saw them was in The Mall in an open landau as we watched Trooping The Colour pass by.

“I’m really annoyed”, said K, “I could do that”, as we turned away and headed back to the Tube to find some lunch and swap a Russian camera.

Posted by Mark at 11:47 PM | Permalink

There’s not much to say about today.

I’m tired, it’s been a long day of stress and issues.

I’ve lost my mobile somewhere in the house and it’s on silent so I can’t call it to find it and the battery has gone on the TV remote so the program is stuck on Big Brother.

It’s going to be a very long night ….

Posted by Mark at 8:42 PM | Permalink

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

I just hope that all this planning and micro-management pays off. We’ve got I’ve got two weeks to sort this and time is running out …

Posted by Mark at 8:24 PM | Permalink

I have just 1 GB to fill and surrounding me are stacks and stacks of CDs.

Since I ditched the Matsui MAT110MR in favour of the Creative MuVo V100 the only thing I’ve really used my MP3 player for has been podcasts.

Now I have a long journey ahead of me I’m planning to use it for music. The question is just what to take ?

I’ve had an initial trawl through the shelves but what can I live with for a few weeks and should I take a few podcasts ? So many decisions…

Worst of all I’ve just discovered LibriVox where volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Their goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

Maybe 1GB isn’t enough ?

Posted by Mark at 9:04 PM | Permalink

Camping isn’t something I’ve done much in my life. I’m more of a five star traveler.

That said I do enjoy cooking outside and have done ever since I was a child and spent the summers in my parents garden. Back in those days the fire was made with a few bricks and some wood to burn : sausages were the limit of my culinary skills.

Today I have a garden with a barbecue and a wood burning stove to cook on. I also have a camping stove which doesn’t get as much use as it should.

I’m trying this year to spend more time in the garden and that includes cooking so tonight, rather than spending my time smelling of wood smoke or charcoal, I’m burning bottled fossil fuel.

Paella means frying pan in Valencian (the language of the Alicante, Valencia and Castellón regions of Spain) and the small one I bought with the stove managed to produce a very good meal made with fresh prawns and ham.

Now I just need to add gas to my stock of fuels if I want to keep up this five star cooking…

Posted by Mark at 10:58 PM | Permalink

While I was struggling with a copy of Firebug trying to make some CSS work properly, then trying to make a tag cloud in Movable Type (hat tip to Jay Buys at Code Scene for these instructions which worked and hiss and boo to Cloud Nine whose plugin I couldn’t get to work and whose site seems a little light on support and updates) other people were using their time more profitably.

Diamond Geezer mourns the sealing off of the Olympic Park; Jason Kottke answers my need to get my waistline down for my holiday with a new diet pill and Francis Strand’s enjoyment of dressing up gets interrupted by China’s President Hu Jintao.

Tonight Alan Johnston faces his ninety-first day in captivity. Join the 148,000 people who have signed the petition demanding his immediate release here.

Posted by Mark at 10:32 PM | Permalink

“That plane’s just wobbled”, said K.

Today in our search for sun we were in Windsor Great Park for a picnic albeit in the shade of an English Oak….

Posted by Mark at 10:54 PM | Permalink

“Is that fog ?”, said K as we pulled into the car park.

With a holiday rapidly approaching what better idea than to go to the coast and top up the tan ? As we walked along the beach it was a little hard to see where the sea was for all the fog.

Luckily, after our fish and chips, it had cleared so we could spend a little time going brown - or red.

Driving back, and ten minutes away from the beach, it was raining.

This evening, after the rain had gone, we sat outside with a glass or two of wine, candles and the new solar powered disco light …

Posted by Mark at 11:51 PM | Permalink

“And we’re doing the Romans again but that’s OK as I’ve done them before”, said Richard as we sat outside by the fire.

It seems his new school is going well and he has settled in well and is happy there. The best thing seems to be that you can play football every lunchtime as there’s no rota for who goes where every lunchtime.

As the evening drew into night we lit the fire, sat outside and talked of beaches far away.

Posted by Mark at 11:37 PM | Permalink

Amazing news !

Cyberstalker Felicity Jane Lowde has been caught by police as she sat in an Internet cafe typing away.

But last night Lowde was in custody after police arrested her in a cybercafé in Brick Lane in east London.

Police have been trying to trace Lowde through her internet usage and asked the Oxford Mail for IP addresses of computers she was believed to be using to post messages on the newspaper’s website, www.oxfordmail.net It is understood someone began communicating with Lowde over the Internet this week, allowing officers to trace her to the cybercafe and arrest her.

Lowde is due to be sentenced by Stratford magistrates on June 28 for the harrassment charge. The maximum sentence she could face is six months in jail or a £5,000 fine.

Speaking after Lowde’s arrest, Miss North said: “I’m very relieved, because all I’ve ever wanted is for her to leave me alone. The fact that she is now in custody means tonight I can sleep safely.

“It’s great that she has finally been brought to justice after attempting to evade it for so long.”

Daniel Hart, 34, from Cowley, revealed last week that he was also subjected to 15 months of harassment after he designed graphics for Lowde’s blog.

Mr Hart has taken on a solicitor to have the offensive material removed from the Internet but the bizarre postings are still largely in place.

Mr Hart said last night: “I am extremely relieved that she is now in custody because she will not be able to continue these bizarre postings. I feel much more relaxed and I am hoping that court action will start the process of removing the offensive material from the website.”

Lowde has previously declined a request to speak to the Oxford Mail, but maintained her innocence on her blog, in which she claims to be ‘an authorised Special Branch researcher’.

Sgt Colin Brooker, of Thames Valley Police, confirmed yesterday that Lowde had been arrested on Wednesday night.
Cyberstalker Caught (from Oxford Mail)

As many, many blogger have said this wasn’t a vendetta it was as much about getting help for Lowde as it was preventing this happening to other people.

I’m so happy for Rachel, Daniel and all the others that this seems a closed case.

Congratulations to everyone involved who did their part.

Posted by Mark at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When I started this blog some four years ago Movable Type was the premier blogging platform.

In the heady days of MT2 it was all very exciting. After a quick download and upload (but not as quick as today - the increasing speed of Internet connections now being added to those other sure things of death and taxes) I was left wondering just who Melody Nelson was (there’s an explanation here if you’re still wondering) and why the first thing I had to do was delete her account.

It seemed amazing that you could take a single download and with it write and publish your own web pages quickly and easily with no knowledge of HTML or CSS. Add to that the kudos that you were doing something so cutting edge it had a new name : blogging.

Being a creature of habit, and because I still believe in the product, I’ve stuck with them ever since. Which is odd as I like to tinker with things in the hope that I can make myself believe that I still work in IT and I can still do technical things.

I have to admit that my loyalty was rocked, along with many others, when in 2004 Six Apart decided to charge for versions of it’s product. Many bloggers turned their backs on MT and embraced the world of Matt Mullenweg’s Wordpress.

Now, Six Apart are trying to regain that lost ground and those lost bloggers. In the last few days Movable Type 4 has moved into beta release.

MT4 offers 50 new features to capture those long lost days of excitement including :

• new dashboard look
• WYSIWYG editing
• Built-in member registration system for reader and comment authentication
• Open Id support (sadly needed more and more today to stop people trolling and stop spam)
• User group management and publishing
• better scalability

In addition to all these goodies Six Apart have also announced their intention to release an Open Source version of the product to give people “a version of Movable Type that they were free to modify for their own needs”.

So is this an attempt to kiss and make up with the blogging community or is there something else going on here ?

There’s a clue in this statement :

“There are new features in Movable Type 4 which make it easier to grow and manage large blogs, sites and communities.”

Movable Type Blogging Platform Beta Release Questions & Answers

What that means is that bloggers using MT4 can allow people to join their sites and permit them to upload their own “assets” (which seems to be the new term for photos, videos and audio) and create posts on your blog.

For me the jury is still out on this feature. Most bloggers work alone but welcome comments (subtle hint there - did ya notice?). We “exist” in a community by creating links and trackbacks (another hint) to each others work and we have that now and it works very well. In my mind if we wanted to build communities we would be running something like Joomla! which deals well with communities, user accounts and “assets” and has an extensive army of people supporting it and making it extensible via Open Source authors such as Troozers.

To celebrate the new template management features in MT4 I fixed all the issues with my templates today and, despite my concerns, I am playing around with the beta to see what all the fuss is about and because I can do something technical - honest.

Posted by Mark at 11:52 PM | Permalink

Things seem to be picking up again at work so perhaps this is the final push of this project.

Oddly, with fewer people in the office as everyone was traveling today I was busier than ever today. It seemed that just after I’d sat down to work it was four o’clock.

The good news outside was that the sun was back all day long. The back news is that overnight the slugs seem to be enjoying the vegetables I’ve planted. It seems the potatoes, tomatoes and carrots are immune but the peas, pak choi and cucumbers will never make it onto a plate…

Posted by Mark at 10:54 PM | Permalink

If you have been reading this for a while you will be aware of the campaign by bloggers to publicise the issue of Felicity Jane Lowde and her cyberstalking of people such as Rachel North and Daniel Hart.

Now, over at Ministry of Truth Unity offers this analysis of Lowde and just why Rachel, and others, became a target.

It’s an intelligent and somewhat chilling analysis of the effects of the Internet on someone who may have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

As Unity writes :

“Lowde is not the first online obsessive I’ve been able to observe in action, although her particular brand of stalking ranks amongst the worst I’ve ever seen…”

“An NPD expects, if not demands, to be recognised as a superior individual on the strength of their false personae alone, without providing any evidence to validate their claim to such status. NPDs not only go to great lengths to elevate their social status by means of creating and outward promoting a false persona but the also make strenuous efforts to control how they are perceived by others. Anyone who challenges or questions their claim to superiority will, at best, be treated in an entirely dismissive manner. At worst a failure to buy in to their fictional character will be treated as a mortal insult and the NPD will respond abusively and aggressively in an attempt to browbeat their antagonist back into line.”

“As might be obvious, NPDs are highly manipulative and exhibit little concern for the feelings, abilities or personal reputation of other. All that matters is the validation of their own, claimed, high status and they tend to have few scruples when it comes to climbing on the backs of others to sustain their artificially elevated social position.”

Ministry of Truth » Narcissus has turned to a flower… a flower?

After a very interesting description of NPD Unity goes on to explain Lowde’s campaign to be seen as an “expert” within the online Jack The Ripper discussion boards before she moved her attention to Rachel and the Kings Cross United group.

I’d urge everyone to take the time to read this piece. Aside from how I may feel personally on the morals and tactics of Lowde it is well written piece which takes a complex and emotive issue and describes it thoughtfully and in an approachable way that seeks to support what a lot of bloggers want, Lowde’s arrest to stop this person hurting anyone else :

“she may well wind up in prison but at least there she has a chance of receiving the treatment she certainly appears to need, which she isn’t going to get while she still on the run.”

Ministry of Truth » Narcissus has turned to a flower… a flower?

Posted by Mark at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

“I don’t see what’s wrong with having the odd affair ..”

“Paul ? Whose Paul ?” “That’s your son in law sitting over there”

“There’s a lot of custard left over” “That’s because we haven’t eaten dessert yet”

Must be the hot weather …

Posted by Mark at 10:13 PM | Permalink

After a morning checking what seemed like every shop in London for a Wii Play I finally picked one up just off Oxford Street.

I was really surprised at how few bits and pieces were readily available in the shops for these games systems and how many people were for them. At one point I was seeing the same faces scanning the shelves in every shop I was looking in.

My next shopping quest was a lot less stressful. After a walk along The Thames under the watchful eyes of the Gormley statues I wandered around Borough Market looking for some cheese for after lunch tomorrow.

Back home there was just enough time to wrap and deliver Elizabeth’s presents before an evening eating outside and watching stars …

Posted by Mark at 11:25 PM | Permalink

Here’s a day in my life …

The released video of Alan Johnston made sure we all had a good morning, good morning.

With a little help from my friends I managed to get my missing files back onto my laptop and clear the backlog of email that had built up.

The cold I’ve had for the last few days made me feel sixty-four but, perhaps, I am getting better.

Happy Birthday Sgt. Pepper…

Posted by Mark at 10:53 PM | Permalink

News is coming in this morning that The Army of Islam have posted a video showing Alan alive and well.

The UK Foreign Office and the BBC are trying to determine if this is a genuine report. More soon.

** update **

Video available (in part) here

Posted by Mark at 8:31 AM | Permalink