Use .htaccess!!! *Ebook Admin/Secure Apache I’ve mentioned it before – and the technique I used to use a lot with a huge list of blocked IP addresses. I then decided that the list was too time consuming to maintain and stopped using it except in extreme cases about the end of last year. Such a...
I’ve kept up with all the upgrades etc for WordPress and all the add-ons I use. But two days ago the internal stats system that is http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/ stopped working. It took these last few days to sort but it turns out a key line was missing from my new theme, illacrimo. However, it turns out...
Josiei Toda: in an impassioned speech calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons on September 8, 1957
This is Ron and his flower, a dahlia.
It reminds me of this picture taken of Josei Toda, a Buddhist, just before he announced his opinion that nuclear weapons were a curse on the world and humanity.
Toda’s flower is a chrysanthemum, but the similarities are obvious.
I’m off for a few days of Buddhist activity in delightful Devon. So no posting, wahay! “Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity, decline, disgrace, honour, praise, censure, suffering, and pleasure.” – The Eight Winds – The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol.1, page 794...
FYI: Two Things About Nichiren One: While fishing around back-links to this website, I came across two pages on the BBC website that explain Nichiren’s Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) quite well. Go for it Robert!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/subdivisions/nichiren_1.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/content/articles/2005/03/17/sgi_uk_feature.shtml Two: I’ve just seen this ridiculous rat with a Nichiren t-Shirt on the Amazon website....
The significance to myself is that it’s where my father was a Charge Engineer and the care that he and his fellow ‘Charges’ as they were called, and all the Unit Engineers as well, in no small part contributed to the sets in the “A” Station setting operational records in the Guinness Book of Records that are unlikely to be surpassed.
Amazingly, it’s my mum in the left foreground (standing) and my step-dad (seated) watching the chimneys come down. Myself? I’m in the bottom left taking my own video of the event. The smaller person next to me is my son, who’s now bigger than me!
Windows 7 Ultimate Install To say that I’m seriously impressed is an understatement! Having an MSDN subscription confers certain benefits, but for most Microsoft stuff that I have to use, it’s usually an exercise in teeth-gritting somewhere from the banal to the infuriating as I plod on through. My personal experience of Vista comes into...
Initial Test on Bing Search Engine Following the initial release, I demonstrated the new Bing to Alice using this search here: http://www.bing.com/search?q=alice+rees&first=1&FORM=PERE The second result was for a Facebook entry. Naturally we had to look…. If you check out the webpage; http://www.facebook.com/people/Alice-Rees/787904218 …you’ll find it’s not our Alice… but weirdly, the face is like one of...
Each one of the fuzzy white bits in the photo above is a galaxy containing billions of stars and thus many, many life-forms, all at various stages of evolution. This statement is derived from the work of thousands of intellectuals using the powers of observation and deduction available to us all.
Journey's End (Doctor Who)
Tonight there was a show highlighting bits of the top BBC show, Doctor Who.
It was a reminder, for me, of the most cataclysmic scene, from the final (proper) episode called Journey’s End, where “The Doctor” has to wipe the mind of Donna, his companion, to save herself from going mad. (this was because she’d inherited his Time-Lord powers in the picture here, which are too much for a human).
Flowers For Algernon (S.F. Masterworks) (Paperback )by Daniel Keyes
This scene I can fully empathise with because of my own experience of an under-active thyroid gland which removed my powers of intellect and concentration, and almost removed my concept of “self”, before I was diagnosed. At the time, when I was recovering, I called it my “Flowers for Algernon” experience.
“Flowers for Algernon” is an all-time great science fiction story. Charlie Gordon, the story-telling diarist, like Donna Noble in Doctor Who, and like myself earlier, we were all crushingly aware of the powers we once had, but now were losing, visibly.
Socrates
In many respects, it’s much worse than death. People sometimes worry about death and try not to think about it, hoping it will go away. Myself, I’ve always pondered it, sometimes to gloomy distraction. It’s like the great unknown.
Socrates said;
Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.
With this, I fully agree, and can thus explain away my gloomy dallyings with the words of one of the greatest thinkers of all time.
Nichiren, the Buddhist monk of a later age said;
Life at each moment permeates the entire realm of phenomena and is revealed in all phenomena. To be awakened to this principle is itself the mutually inclusive relationship of life at each moment and all phenomena. – WND page 3, On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime
I think that with this in mind, for my next existence I’ll go somewhere different to this Earth….
Since I’ve been born I’ve always felt ‘old’, as if I’m returning here to ‘fix’ something, a devoir-faire.
Maybe I’ll be in these red centres of creation, a truly glorious image emphasising the hydrogen clouds.
"Mountains of Creation" by Spitzer. These towering pillars of cool gas and dust are illuminated at their tips with light from warm, embryonic stars. The pillars in the Spitzer image are part of a region called W5, in the Cassiopeia constellation 7,000 light-years away and 50 light-years across. In the image, hundreds of forming stars (white/yellow) can seen for the first time inside the central pillar, and dozens inside the tall pillar to the left.
It’s truly a great privilege to be able to go out on an evening and stare at our night sky and the Milky Way, pondering on the gems that must exist, both in front of our eyes and those ones hidden by vast distance.
Our Milky Way by Spitzer Telescope - click for source page with VERY high resolution pictures!
Exploring the Simultaneous Nature of Cause & Effect Star Trek: The Next Generation: Finale, Episode - “All Good Things…” I’ve just watched the double episode finale to the TNG Picard series just after the cyclists finished their ascent of Mont Ventoux in this years Tour de France. It was “All Good Things…”(see link, link &...
Crikey! I Never Realised! Maybe certain days have relevance above their station and mere numerical nomenclature? Who knows. So read on. See what happened today! 622 AD – The Hijra of Muhammad Muhammad runs away from Mecca to escape persecution. From this point forward, huge swathes of the globe took up Islam, Islamic empires spread...
The DWP are advertising for a News Manager with experience of ‘crisis management’ to take charge of the endless stream of bullshit which pours out of the DWP Press Office. The advert, spotted by @SmithTonyD over on twitter, explains: “The … Continue reading → […]
From Defend London NHS Saturday 18 May, Assemble 12 noon Concert Hall Approach /Belvedere Rd, Waterloo http://goo.gl/maps/Lg6MT March to Downing Street then rally in Whitehall at 2pm This demonstration has been called by an unprecedented coalition of London residents, medical staff, … Continue reading → […]