guapacha.com

Yes, Prince Charles is a funny old fellow and Camilla is, well, rather indescribable, but we here at guapacha.com would like to pass on our congratulations and best wishes for the future.

There are two big problems with the UK election process. First, you don’t get to vote for the government like you do in the USA. Rather, you vote for your local member of parliament and its the total of MPs that determines who gets to choose the prime minister. So you might desperately want a Liberal Democrat government but your local LibDem candidate might be a loser or, in many cases, there might not even be in your area to vote for. So do you vote tactically or for who will do the best job for your city?

The second problem is that the result is determined using the first past the post system. The winner of each constituency is chosen by the person with the most votes. And then the government is chosen by whoever gets the most consituency victories. It has become a pattern for each party to promise to switch the election voting to proportional representation but it has never happened: once elected the winning party quickly realises that they would never have been elected under that scheme and so the idea is shelved until the next time…

So his holy royal all-knowing majesty Tony Blair today announced that the UK election will take place on May 5th. I had been trying to get a postal vote so I could contribute to his smacking but its proven beyond me to fill in the form (where was I living 15 years ago?). I’ll be in England for my sister’s wedding so perhaps I’ll get the joy of watching Tony eat some humble pie on the TV. Man, I never thought I’d find myself rooting for the Conservative party but Tony needs to go!

In cool news, google maps now has a satellite view. Look up your address and see what it will look like before you get there – very cool! And I already love the way they present the maps. Is there nothing these people can’t do?

the sun is shining… the sheep are grazing in the fields…. and the first song you hear on the radio is the Jam’s Beat Surrender

Got this little quizlet from our friends at Robot Shuffle. What’s your ecological footprint?.

Apparantly mine is 30 acres which, if everyone was as greedy as me, would require 6.7 planets to keep us all going. It says the average for the US is 24 acres per person and I tend to think of myself as pretty eco-friendly, especially compared to most. So I’m not sure why I came out so bad. And now if you’ll excuse me I have some forest I need to burn down…

Every year at the Infosecurity Europe conference, the organisers try to get the pulse of the local population by seeing how easy it is to coax their secret password information from them. Previous years had 70% of the respondents giving up their information for chocolate, this year it was theatre tickets.

Of 200 people who were surveyed in London on their thoughts about theatre:

• 100% provided their names upon request
• 94% provided pet’s names (common passwords) and their mother’s maiden name (common second form of authentication) when told actors frequently use both to create stage names
• 98% gave their address in order to receive a winning voucher.
• 96% divulged the name of their first school.
• 92% provided their date of birth and the same number supplied their home phone number

What good is spending $thousands on security when people give it up this easily!

The lowlight of the week must be tonight’s American rewrite of The Office. Now I haven’t seen it but every British sitcom that’s been adapted to the US screen has been a complete disaster; Coupling and Men Behaving Badly to name just two.

The highlight has to be the new Dr Who episode this weekend. All over the UK people will be watching from behind their sofa just as we used to as kids.

Bummer of the week has to be that I’ll be here in the US unable to watch it. Hopefully someone will DVR it and push it out for us to download. Not that I condone such illegal activities of course!

Back from my trip home, had a very good stay with my family and especially my mother. Out of hospital only 4 days after surgery, she is almost as if she had never had any symptoms. And we almost had to tie her down to stop her from running around the house. It was great to see her back to her old self after the previous visit. Hopefully she will be able to keep the previous symptoms away for a long time; she’s a fighter.

Coming back into San Diego late last night I enjoyed the first uncomfortable landing (outside of my own!) in a long time. High winds, low cloud and heavy rain made it for a bumpy last 20 minutes. Much to my delight we flew over the airport (not that we could see it) and did a 180-turn to land to the east. I could feel the cross wind pushing us north and we made a great crosswind landing. Now, some time I want an east bound takeoff so that we takeoff over the city, I think that would be a trip.

On a whim I bought Beautiful South’s Painting It Red album at the weekend from the iTunes music store and I heartily recommend it. You can find it for yourself at this link if you are an iTunes user. Actually, it will still be there even if you’re not.

I should be writing this tomorrow but I will be back on a plane heading for England.

Every year I get frustrated by St Patricks Day here in the US. People wear green, dredge their family trees for a glimmer of Irish to justify it all, and then get drunk on piss poor beer. Why oh why is it such a big deal, what happened to the St Andrew’s day celebrations, poor St David, or any of the other countries that helped seed the US.

Maybe I’m just jealous that no one wants to be English, or perhaps that I don’t look good in green, or that I have no Irish in me (almost certainly being the offspring of raping vikings), but mostly I think its because of the piss poor beer. Whats a celebration without a decent beer? Note to Brian: send Tuppers 🙂