General | Life in chunkville

Jan 21, 2010

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Secure Browsing on the Internet

Over the past week there’s been a multitude of reports of the Chinese Government hacking Google, amongst other companies such as Yahoo, and other businesses too numerable to mention. In all honesty, I doubt the validity of some, or even the the cause of others, as I’m on of those people who are particularly paranoid of the Facebook/Google/Twitter machine, that seems to relish the idea of mining every byte of available data for the sake of advertising, and even possibly more nefarious means, as the CEO of google himself seems to have no concept or appreciation of how important anonymity is.

Jan 10, 2010

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Moving, Flu and having a case of the dumb

Rule number…Well, let’s face it, it’s probably top ten, but not number 1 – is that moving is always stressful; Always. I’m currently typing from a wireless keyboard (that I hate), with my monitor positioned on the bedside cabinet at my folks house while my new flat gets made ready for me by the landlord. It’s not especially a hassle, but to say that I’m looking forward to being able to live the lifestyle of a chronic insomniac from a desk and chair is going to be most welcome, come next saturday. Still. Most of it is out the way now, and I don’t really have to venture out in the cold after this week aside from needing to go pick up my new specs perscription, and obviously, move in. Nice…Considering UK has been the equivalent of a deep freeze, and I have an impending flu to deal with. I’m told by mother that I’m dealing with it like a man, which in her language means I’m being a complete pussy – I contest this claim, and merely assert that I am using said flu time to take stock and do a little writing.

Jan 3, 2010

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New Year’s Resolutions

2009 in many ways was quite a scary year in the UK all in all; the Digital Britain bill is basically a precursor to the home secretary being allowed to pass any new laws for surveillance on the internet arbitrarily and without consultation of parliament, with the added bonus of protecting the corporations as opposed to the consumer. Google offered a definition of privacy that simply stated that if a person chose to use Google’s services, they should be free to mine any and all data stored on their servers by you for advertising purposes. This of course, means that the fact that data can be stored on Google servers for anywhere between 18 months to 5 years, leaves Google in the rather precarious position of being of interest to governments that have something of an overzealous attitude to monitoring the internet…And its people.

Jan 3, 2010

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The Obligatory 2009 round up: Avatar

Being honest, Christmas wasn’t as big of an entertainment disappointment as some people would have you believe, especially if you happen to be British; We had Eddie Izzard performing really quite well in the BBC remake of the day of the triffids, David Tennant bowed out not so gracefully in what surely has to be the longest goodbye in recent TV history, not to mention Doctor Who history – but was seen again on a good number of BBC stations, reading kids bedtime stories, and the not so light hearted Hamlet. We’ll get to all of that shortly, but I think the big thing, at least for me was the viewing of the awesome, utterly brilliant Avatar.