You know how your mind plays tricks on you in the early hours ? Well, the thought process that went through my head a few minutes ago was something like "It's Helen's birthday soon. I must think of something that'd be appropriate and useful for her. Coo... It was my birthday. That means I'll be away on the 19th. Pity I don't know anyone who'd like to go with me. Hmm... I could tell Helen that I've got an extra ticket if she wanted it. No. That's silly. She'd not be interested. Or I'd mess it up and say I had two tickets and she'd take it the wrong way and I'd not get to go. What am I thinking ? There's no way she'd be interested in Les Miserables."

Strange thoughts...

The new harddrive arrived today. I've stuck it in the server and when I'm away from the computer I leave it copying things across. I reckon it'll take around 24 hours solidly to copy everything, so it might be all copied in a few weeks .

There's no such thing as a winnable war, It's a lie we don't believe any more. Mr Regan says "We will protect you", I don't subscribe to this point of view; Believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too. We share the same biology, Regardless of ideology; What might save us, me and you, is if the Russians love their children too. [ Russians, by Sting ]

We're sitting here, watching the news in fascination (and horror) as what will become known as World War III begins. It's not like any other war. It's a war that's not against a definite enemy, but an obscure concept. It's been described as a "Crusade" - such a terrible analogy, but one which might be real all too soon. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

"Russians" is a track that harks back to the eighties (obviously) and the fear that that provoked. Now it's not Regan. It's Bush. What's he saying ? "We will fight for the free world". Or words to that effect. With the side line that "if you don't fall in line with us, then you will be our enemy". That sort of rhetoric is the sort of thing that promotes division. It's not the sort of statement you might hope from the "defender of free world". Sounds more like dictating rules, rather than attempting to pursue prosecution of a (as yet unknown, I believe) terrorist.

Does an attack on a country by an individual grant the right to invade the country in which that individual is located ? That's an issue for politicians to decide. There have been a lot of arrests in conjuction with the attack. I find it hard to believe that that many people can all have had something to do with it. To my mind, the simplest requirement for such an attack is one meeting in a random room, six months previously. Now I'm being cynical.

What it comes down to, though, is that we are sitting on the edge of our seats with no idea what's coming next. The World Health Organisation issuing a warning about the use of chemical or biological weapons, and reassuring the public that it isn't something to be concerned about isn't exactly reassuring. Not that I really expect that to happen. Polls on Sky today seem to indicate that I'm in a small minority though. Maybe that's just because I still have the 'nothing can happen to me; things just don't work like that' attitude (even in the face of all prior evidence!).

In a fit of madness, I've improved the 'currently playing track page to automatically update itself a few seconds after the track changes here. That should give the uploader chance to upload it.

Now we need never wonder what you're listening to again. [ Now playing; Olly Betts ]

Gave Helen a quick ring today; she seems ok - she started University yesterday .

Most of today has been spent playing with AMSpectre and the Browser, fighting to find a single browser that actually follows the specification. Of course, only Fresco does - just to be awkward. Everything else it gets vastly wrong, but the stream handling actually works the way it's documented to .

AMSpectre can now use arbitrary LEDs which is pretty neat.

My birthday present arrived today! Two tickets to Les Miserables . Since I've not got any friends that I know would enjoy it, Dad and I are going down to London to see it. That's 19th October, so it's a month away, but you know how time flies.

Wow. I'm 25. I don't feel older.

Played with xsltproc again today; something strange is happening with XML catalogs that I think is a fault but am finding hard to trace.

That's actually about it for today, I think.

Today has been a documentation and XML day. So, I've been looking for a copy of the SGML specification. It seems that it's only available as a 'to buy' document. I did find this lovely reference in the 'Not comp.text.sgml FAQ'.

Q. What's so great about ISO standardization? A. It is often said that one of the advantages of SGML over some other, proprietary, generic markup scheme is that "nobody owns the standard". While this is not strictly true, the ISO's pricing policy certainly has helped to keep the number of people who do own a copy of the Standard at an absolute minimum. [ Not The SGML FAQ ]

I can't stress this enough. I hate roast. I hate roast chicken. I hate roast beef. I really, really hate them.

I've had my hair cut today. It's not amazingly short, but a lot shorter than it has been for a while. Other than that I've been very tired today. That's about it.

Well, wouldn't you know it. I do the libxml2-2.4.4 port and then Daniel only goes and fixes some bugs and releases 2.4.5 today . Give the guy credit, he doesn't want to have broken versions floating around. I'm not complaining at all.

By now my site should have 2.4.5 on it as well, which is quite nice. It's only a 40 minute port, and it is just a fixed version of libxml2-2.4.4.

The question that floats in my head now is "Are we seeing the beginnings of World War III ?" It will be nothing like the previous two wars, and isn't likely to be fought on the same terms, but it seems that even with the restraint being exercised in the time immediately after this attack the mood is going to be stronger. Whether the 'war' ends up being about the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon or not, is likely to be irrelevant.

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, and maybe thinking this way is bad, but it is something to consider and be very wary of.

Last night, Daniel released 2.4.4 of LibXML and the LibXSLT 1.0.4. I started my port at about 5:20 am. Because I was also trying out the new exslt date support, the RISC OS port took until 7 am. But, we now have a RISC OS port before anyone else. Well, obviously not before unix, but before Windows or Amiga or any other strange system.

What is there to say about today ?

The World Trade Centre is no more, thousands are dead and the civilised world is in mourning.

The little girl she said to me, "What are these things that I can see, Each night when I come home from school, When mumma calls me in for tea. Oh, every night a baby dies, And every night her mumma cries. What makes those men do they do ? To make that person black and blue ? ... Tell me there's a heaven. Tell me that it's true. Tell me they're all happy now, Papa, tell me that it's true. So do I tell her that it's true ? That there's a place for me and you ? ... That every painful crack of bones, is a step along the way, Every wrong done, is a game plan, to that great and joyful day ? ... And I'm looking at the father and the son. And I'm looking at the mother and the daughter. And I'm watching them in tears of pain. And I'm watching them suffer. Don't tell that little girl; Tell me. [ Tell me there's a heaven, from The Road To Hell, by Chris Rea ]

I sent out a brief note to people to say Happy Billennium last night.

Do you say this stuff to girls? [ Chandler, to Ross; Joseph citing 'Friends' ]

I've had lots of complementary feedback on the XML tools over the last few days. I'm actually very surprised as I didn't think anyone would really care one jot about that lot, but I'm wrong again, it seems.

I had forgotten how amazingly addictive The Shawshank Redemption was. It's an amazingly good film.

Saw Lost In Space and eXistenZ tonight. Both were reasonable, but the sound seemed absolutely awful on Lost In Space for some reason. eXistenZ was strange, though. It's very much an arty film, although you wouldn't think so from the production. I enjoyed it, I think.

The Billennium tonight was passed in the company of Ian, Chris (drobe), and Penguin42 (Dave Gilbert). A fun morning was had by all. To everyone who missed it, happy new Billennium.

Notice that it's 1E9 tomorrow. That is, at 1:46:40 am on the 9th, the unix time function will return a value which is 1,000,000,000. That's a quite big and important number if you ask me. The Millenium was something visible and important. This is something insignificant but probably very important as well. The significance of 1E9 ? Well, consider the use of nine 9's as a magic number. That's quite likely. We're human and we like things being regular like that. And that time is tomorrow.

The West Wing was actually two nights ago, but I'll make my comments here anyhow. I was quite shocked to hear the ten o'clock news music on the... um... I think it was 'Capital beat' or something similar. I don't know, it just seemed so strange to have the same music in the States. Actually, I'm sure I've heard it on things before like that, but I always assumed it was someone taking the mick.

Buffy night tonight, too. It's interesting; last week was very much an episode for Buffy's sister, the first week was Dracula and Xander, and this week we have an episode focusing on Xander. Ok, maybe interesting is the wrong word. But I found it such.

Diary has been very quiet of late. I'm going to try to write 'little bits' here and there as I used to before. It's not that I don't want to tell people what's going on, but more that I've just not bothered. I'm not doing very much at the moment though.

What's the brief news at the moment, though ? Well, I've just had a week away for a mini-working holiday - about the closest I'm likely to get to a holiday this year - and I'm catching up on emails. It takes time. If I've not mailed people, I do tend to put things on one side.

Not much been happenin' here, Think I gotta job, they're gonna call me next week. I'll be working out of town, But it sure beats hangin' around. What's that ? Tomorrow at 2 ? You're kiddin' me ? No ? Is it alright with you ? I don't know what to say. It'll be like a holiday... [ Orchard Road, by Leo Sayer ]

It's pretty. It's also quite nice, 'cos it's just a phone call and collection of thoughts.

No plug-in necessary. [ Dell lie ]

Dell laptop page has a nice little link to a '360 demo' - I assume there's meant to be a degree symbol there, but you can't expect them to understand HTML, can you ? Well, not when it says that 'No plugin is necessary' for the page and yet it requires Java. Technically competent ? By that example, you'd have to lean towards 'nah'.