Deeply Disturbing

The lowest common denominator mentality is alive and well in Glorious Britain.  “Most people” (according to a man-in-the-street soundbite on the BBC News yesterday, so it must be true) now think benefit scroungers are the ruin of the nation and treated like dogs.  Truly – the news article used this man to justify the April 1st cuts.

Also, at the last count, over 58,000 would be quite happy for the couple in this screenshot to be strung up, bashed to death in prison, hung drawn and quartered, dumped in the streets of Derby – you get the idea.

Deeply Disturbing Doubts

But this looks really bad to me.

Q. Oh!  How so?  You saw the telly last night, didn’t you?

Well actually, that’s part of the point.

• How is it that just a few hours after the three convictions for parents Mick and Mairead Philpott, and their friend Paul Mosley, how is it that three main TV channels are running in-depth full length investigations into the three and the deaths?
• How is it they all have recorded interviews with witnesses and others that knew the threesome?
• How is it that the police, weeks ago, released secretly recorded audio of the threesome while the trial was in progress?
• How is it that the Daily Mail ties the child deaths and lifestyles of the threesome to the benefit scrounging ethos of the recently introduced welfare cuts?

I’ve Seen It All Before

The media hysteria and manipulation of facts we’ve all seen before.  How do the 58k Facebook lynch mob so easily forget this?

Daily Mail Changes Headline After Vile Benefits Murder Comments Backlash

Like the cowards that the Daily Mail is, it punches up nasty headlines to get the sales, gets a backlash, then can’t stand by its own words – so changes them.  Here’s how:

Initial Headline and URL

DM Initial Welfare Headline

The URL for this page is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303120/Mick-Philpott-vile-product-Welfare-UK-Derby-man-bred-17-babies-milk-benefits-GUILTY-killing-six.html- but just try clicking it!

You’ll find that you are redirected to a wholly different page, similarly designed but with a different headline.  Click Here to try.  The original page that you should go to is on the right.

Redirected page with New Headline

DM Redirected Welfare Headline

If you clicked the link you’ll be taken here, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303120/Mick-Philpott-Judge-hears-good-father-awaits-sentencing-killing-SIX-children-house-blaze.html which looks like this image on the left.

But check it through – most images are intact, their comments and much of the text.  Key to the change is the removal of the “Vile” headline.  However, a Google search on the headline still pulls the original page from the vaults – and this is when the redirect takes effect.

Daily Mail Sales

Still, it must’ve had an effect on sales, else why else would the two journos and their odious editor do it?  The Daily Mail is not without “form” in this respect.

JIll Dando and Barry George

DM Barry George Conviction

The conviction and media witch-hunt on the run-in to George’s conviction is artfully recorded here on the Daily Mail website (image on left).  Complete with hysterical quotes from the judge over the killing of the nation’s favourite TV gal,

Mr Justice Gage told George, 41, that he was ‘unpredictable and dangerous’ – and said that there was no doubt that the murder was ‘premeditated’. But he added: ‘Why you did it will never be known.’

…the Mail continued in a salubrious investigation into George’s past.

Barry George On DM Website

Now Barry George is a troubled man, having several personality disorders and being of limited intelligence, but, as was proved eight years later, Judge Gage was seriously wrong when he said that there was no doubt that George committed premeditated murder.

In fact, the whole conviction and the media stories around it were completely wrong.

Indeed the Daily Mail has now just reported that Dando’s murder is unlikely to be solved and that George spent 8 years banged up for it.  But compare and contrast the imagery of Barry George used in the two articles and the text to tell the tales….   so very different, are they not?

Michelle Keegan Cunt Comment

But let’s thank goodness that Facebook wasn’t around in 2002 so that dishy doll psychos like Michelle Keegan couldn’t spill their vile venom under the disguise of public comment.  She now has a more recent one saying “This cunt needs hanging share if you agree”

I Disagree

Obviously.  I’m a Buddhist.

Also obviously, the man as presented and as I see him, and the others likewise, are the pits.  But this does not deserve a witch hunt with thousands up and down the country baying for their private parts to be burnt in oil.  Those doing so should better beware.

Faulty Convictions Abound

Because British justice has a long running habit of throwing curved balls.  For the last few decades we’ve seen a continuous stream of high profile murders and atrocities, where;

• culprits are found,
• the media has it hysterical bitch fit,
• hanging is called for and worse,
• and then amazingly,
  • everyone was wrong,
  • apologies are made
  • and lessons must be learned.

A few are listed here, Long-standing miscarriages of justice in the UK 

But at least most of these people didn’t die for the alleged crime.  Some, appallingly, never really recovered from their time in jail and died early, sad deaths.  For not doing something.  Take Sean Hodgson for instance.  27 years inside for doing nothing, then dies three years later.

Prior to this, folks really did die for things they didn’t do – Timothy Evans had the ignominy and anguish of knowing that Christie killed his wife & daughter, yet was hanged for their murders.  (The story is curious and involved yet it’s plain, especially following the posthumous pardon, that Evans was disturbed and probably simple.)

Philpott et al certainly appear as scum, guilty of the deaths of their children.

But give it time.  The spotlight glare into which the case has been placed coupled to the hysterical benefit-loaded media commentary give good grounds for a flawed judicial process.

• At the time of Timothy Evans conviction, a similar media frenzy was in place.
• Similarly for the Birmingham Pub (not) Bombers
• and Judith Ward the M62 (not) bomber

All of these (and more) have had long drawn out media frenzies where the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade appeared, just as now, like a syphilis from the sewers of unclean thoughts.  They should be better than that, better than a killer.

Folks should learn from history.   Getting hot and bothered now will not resurrect the dead children.

UK leaders – No wonder they’re all smiling

No wonder they’re all smiling

In an astonishing move, HM Government has now enacted a law that allows any government (because it’s now part of case law) to sentence someone for breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time they “committed” an “offence“.

Worst of all, our dear labour Party let HM Gov do it!

Pardon?

Yes. You heard right.    (On the other hand, that’s consistent with my leaving the party some time ago.)

Just suppose that ten years ago, as part of your employment expenses, you were allowed to “flip” your expenses onto your work “home” and back again, yet a few years later this became illegal and you could be imprisoned.   I’m talking about the MP’s Expenses scandal of course, famous for its duck island, moat and second homes a mere hoppity-skip from the main home.   See MPs’ expenses: How Cabinet ministers have made tens of thousands ‘flipping’ their homes.

So what was “allowed” (as they thinly described it) is now “not allowed”.  Legality curiously disappears in this “allowing” farrago, yet some things were and are illegal yet hardly anyone was sent to the clink.  Just a few token stooges.

Workfare

So much for our privileged elite.

Not so good if you’re struggling in this artificially enforced time of economic restraint, wholly created by a roulette-based banking and investment class that shares the revolving door world with our politicians.

Because Iain Duncan Smith’s retrospective workfare legislation has just changed centuries of British law by making a law retrospective.

Now set in case law, the precedent has now been set for any law to be so applied.  You can now be penalised for something that was legal when you did it, but isn’t legal now.  That’s what it means.  Forget (for the moment) the injustice done to thousands of poor folks, fooled and misled into being stripped of their benefits.

The bigger picture is far worse and will have far reaching consequences.

This is really the ghastliest abomination from a whole series of actions where the freedom of the individual has been sequentially stripped over the past  decade or so.  No wonder they’re all smiling.  On top of this they’ve now gagged the press with whom they previously had such a nice cosy relationship.   They’ve made it so that if someone wins a libel case, they still have to pay all legal expenses!

Terrorism

Of course, terrorism (or the perception of terrorism through the western filter screen) is at the route of it.  The silent majority have let leaders do and say anything for so long that they’ve become accustomed to being scared and placid for so long that they can’t tell right from wrong anymore.   But consider this:

It’s always been illegal to trade with certain proscribed countries, organisations or individuals, (call them COI) at a given moment.  But it wasn’t always so.  At another moment, the list is different.

The precedent now makes it illegal for anyone to have traded with certain proscribed COI in the past even though they weren’t on the proscribed list years ago!  This is the bonkers conclusion to this daft legislation.  You can dream up any amount of scenarios.  All bonkers but now, apparently, all legal.

Further Reading:

• Labour’s Workfare Shame – A New Low For the Party That Pretends to Care About the Poor (The Void)

This is the question I asked myself over two years ago.  At the time I recommended the SynologyDS210j and I still would if they made it!

It’s now been replaced by the DS212j, that’s it on the left.

This though, is essentially the same as my old one and in fact, in appearance it’s the same.  My DS210j has functioned perfectly for well over two years.  It just sits there, quietly doing its own thing and has never let me down.

I’ve uprated the internal operating system (called DSM) several times and it now stands as version DSM 4.2-3202.  Synology have said that this will be the last incarnation of this software and that there’ll be no further versions for me on this hardware beyond version 4.

If I was buying now, I’d just buy the latest version.  It does everything anyone would want, is quiet and reliable.

New Kid? The D-Link ShareCenter 2 Bay….

Well nearly, but it’s not for me.

My friend has just bought a D-Link ShareCenter 2 Bay Cloud Network Storage Enclosure since they didn’t want to spend so much…

It’s less than half the price of the Synology and tomorrow evening, I get to set it up!

The specifications, included software, and operating system functionality are almost identical to my Synology.  You know, stuff like media server, web server, iTunes server, backup drive, security camera monitoring, the list goes on..!

• The reviews, however, say that it is noisy, though my friend says this isn’t an issue since it’s going in a cupboard with the router and internet gateway. It does seem to have a smaller fan than my little white cutie, so that could be it.
• Some reviewers had difficulty setting it or its software up.  Well actually, I’ve had a few difficulties myself with the DSM software from Synology – if you’ve not done things like this before, it can be difficult and confusing.  It’s not Windows after all!

So, watch this space.  I’ll get back later when it’s all done.

Introduction

shared web hosting

This site used to be hosted on Site5, in Texas.  I had a shared web host account, about the cheapest there is on Site5 though by no means the cheapest around (I’ve had experience of really cheap hosts….).  It worked alright, site management was good.  Then, I got hit by spammers.  Twice.  Big time.

Each time, this slowed the site down, made life hell for other shared accounts, especially when I introduced WordPress plugins to counter this.

Naturally, Site5 advised me to stop the hits or they’d pull my account (they’d already temporarily disabled it).  They advised me to cut the plugins, using GoDaddy’s plugin testing tool, WordPress Plugin Performance Profiler (P3).  So I did this, and after some trial and error, got the running processes down.  Of course, I lost a bit of neat functionality.

Testing Times

Apart from internal WordPress testing, it pays to test your site as if you are someone else somewhere else.  Pingdom have a set of tools that does just this, testing from various global locations and I can recommend it.

Result!

I used an iterative approach, testing various combinations of plugins and systems to end up as being in the top 8% sites for speed in the world!  Not bad for free is all I can say!   You’ll see in the screenshot above, that 92% of websites are slower than mine….   So is it really free?  Here goes…..

Paid For:

• Web Hosting.  Shared.
• My domain registration.

Free:

• WordPress and all the LAMP functionality
• WordPress plugins
• CloudFlare

Pingdom Says

Automattic Issues

WordPress (which this site uses) is built by the Automattic team and naturally have expanded over time.  I’ve used their plugins for many years, Akismet from the off, which is a comment spam blocking system.  Latterly, they came out with Jetpack, where they say,

Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.

Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

P3 Selected Output

This is all well and good, except when I tested it using the P3 plugin profiler, Jetpack was the biggest drag on everything!   The worst part of it, was that actually, I was only using a small part of its features and it was still the biggest suck on performance.

• I didn’t use Carousel for photos since I had an old solution, NextGen Gallery, that I’m loathe to change.
• The comments system mucked up all other comment plugins, grabbing all for itself (a bit like Microsoft here!)
• I used the stats, and that was about all, yet they were very slow and not that informative, actually.
• Nearly all the other stuff I looked at, tried and ditched for similar reasons.

So much for the awesome cloud power.  On top of this, you’re now supposed to pay for parts of Automattic’s offerings, like Akismet, the comment spam blocker while a major offering of theirs was actually slowing my site right up!

What Did I do?

Change host!

Well not initially, actually, though the heavy-handed Site5 approach got my ire a bit I must admit.  I did do loads of tests with a host of caching, anti-spam and page load improvement plugins first…

Vidahost

I now use Vidahost in the UK.  The site is faster to manage (along with my others) since the servers are in the UK with me, and it’s cheaper, providing almost the same functionality and tools as Site 5.  I took the opportunity to clean out a few dead files in the process, but essentially, all was moved, database and files.  The lot.  Just twiddled config.php and the .htaccess file a bit.

I did worry that my American visitors, who are actually in the majority, would  suffer slower speed and thus I’d get hit in Google rankings, but hey, wait for later…!

I got it all working and as part of the whole “thinking” process since the very first warnings from Site 5, I’d been looking for better things.

Looking at Things Closely

• I like Related Posts.   Related Posts plugins do just that.  I love the idea of pulling out meta-data relevant stuff from a website.  Site 5 had said, as have others on the web, that this sort of plugin makes big hits on a site.  Some of them really do!  I use  YARPP, with a limited subset of features enabled which cuts down processing.
• I also like Andrew Ozz’s Shutter Reloaded which shows images nicely.   I also like his post editor, TinyMCE Advanced, it being the best of many I’ve tested over the years.
• I like NextGEN Gallery having used it since before WordPress got all image fancy.  I haven’t got time to fiddle with thousands of photos now…
• I’d like some statistics within WordPress.
• I’m not that interested, any-more (though I was) in Social Networking sharing features.  Truth be told, if someone wants to share, they will.
• I’ve read a lot on image improvements.  I’ve always shrunk images manually before uploading using the excellent IrfanView application.  But during this enforced research, other things like sprites and delayed image loading popped into the equation.

So I like certain plugins or functionality.  I try and use the one that works best for me.  Too many plugins make a big hit on the server and thus website loading.

Caching

A way round this is caching.  e.g. If a post is created and has related posts clagged on the bottom using YARPP, then the post is cached and YARRP is only running once.  How and where the caching is done is the crux of the issue…

Site 5 suggested W3 Total Cache as a better alternative to Wp Super Cache,  which I’ve used for years.    Naturally, I’ve tested this and my conclusion was that it could be fast, and it was fast for a while, but over time on each of my sites I got issues around lock-ups and the huge and complex caching system around files, databases and sprites.  This list is long.

I’ve also tested various database query caching plugins likewise over the years.  W3 Total Cache incorporates this method too, but ultimately, it made too much work for not a lot of difference IMHO, since I’m lazy.

However, it did point me to one thing!  CloudFlare.

CloudFlare

CloudFlare Admin1

Ah.  The power of the cloud is back!

Not only that – it works!

CloudFlare Admin2

You re-direct your DNS at your domain registrar (joker.com in my case) to CloudFlare’s DNS servers, set up the site malware protection level you want – then after a few hours your whole site is cached and protected.  Best of all, it’s free for a little site like this!

In fact, using CloudFlare speeded everything up even before I got caching going again…

Further Plugin Work

Now, I went back to Wp Super Cache from Doncha and it all works fine.  Site speed good.  I then ditched Jetpack after testing it again.  It really does interfere with all comment plugins, and I really like this comment one as do people who comment here:

• U Extended Comment

It works great and does everything I want.  So Jetpack, it’s bye bye.  Take all your fancy commenting system, your stats, your social media and fancy image handling.

But What About Comment Spam?

Stop Spammer Results2

Stop Spammer Results1

I’ve found the best solution is a plugin called Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin.  It needed a bit of fine tuning and a re-activation of Akismet to whip out a few wisps of spammer, but it works and seems to trap and report more spammers than ever Akismet did alone.  Akismet, by itself, does the commenting bit in tandem with the plugin, rather well.

Registration Spam

SABRE Results

Unfortunately, during testing, a few unwanted visitors managed to register on the website.  They can’t do real harm since I use the lowest role level at registration time.  So I re-enabled SABRE and since then, no more unwanted visitors.  I’ve tested SABRE as a visitor and the settings I’ve chosen are just about right – I’ve had issues with it previously when it blocked registration!  But reducing the feature set and re-uploading a clean plugin fixes that.

CloudFlare and the CDN Issue

I toyed around getting a CDN to host images.  But they (can) cost and anyway, I’ve gone off Amazon and others because of their anti-Wikileaks actions plus they don’t pay UK tax…

Delayed Image Loading

However, in the course of my reading, I found that images can be loaded just as the page comes into view, which speeds up page loading, and as a consequence the perceived nippiness of a site.  The plugin BJ Lazy Load does this for me and works brilliantly.  Check this last post about Australia which has a lot of medium sized images to see them pop into view!

Delayed Javascript Loading

I use two plugins that handle this end of the issue around JavaScript.

• WP deferred javaScript
• Use Google Libraries

Statistics

WP SlimStat1

Well, Jetpack is gone.  I won’t be using it unless some serious improvements are made, it being the prime reason for the server load that brought me to this position in  the first place.  As soon as I disabled it (and simultaneously blocked all comments to the site, which isn’t the best thing, this being a blog after all), all server loads went away.

I now use SlimStat and it works very well.  I’ve tried many over time, including Google’s analysis tools, my webhost’s stats tools, Wassup and more, but for now, this is it.

Conclusion

My site works pretty fast and is pretty protected from the bad guys.  I actually still use more plugins than what is usually recommended – 50 is a huge lot according to web gurus and sages.  Currently there are 31 in active operation with 8 inactivated.  I love trying new ones, it’s like that, that’s just the way it is.

The delayed image loading is particularly apparent on a post with a lot of images, say this recent one.  The post loads fast and you see the first images load, and as you scroll down you’ll see other images appear with a slight delay.

All the other stuff is incremental improvement, with the biggest, by far, being the free CloudFlare service which I cannot recommend highly enough.  It’s a no-brainer, go and do it?

My Full List?

These are the plugins currently running that help my site work.  Many are for security, which demonstrates the state of play versus the bad internet guys full well.

• Akismet by Automattic.
• All in one Favicon by Arne Franken.
• All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert.
• Artiss Plugins List by David Artiss.
• Audio player by Martin Laine.
• BJ Lazy Load by Bjørn Johansen.
• Block Bad Queries (BBQ) by Jeff Starr.
• Blog Copyright (by BTE) by Blog Traffic Exchange.
• BWP Google XML Sitemaps by Khang Minh.
• CloudFlare by Ian Pye, Jerome Chen, James Greene (CloudFlare Team).
• Extended Comment Options by FullThrottle Development.
• Google Analyticator by Video User Manuals.
• jQuery Vertical Accordion Menu by Lee Chestnutt.
• NextGEN Gallery by Photocrati.
• P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) by GoDaddy.com.
• SABRE by Didier Lorphelin.
• Shutter Reloaded by Andrew Ozz.
• Simple Tags by Amaury BALMER.
• Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin by Keith P. Graham.
• Strictly Auto Tags by Rob Reid.
• TinyMCE Advanced by Andrew Ozz.
• U Extended Comment by Taehan Lee.
• Use Google Libraries by Jason Penney.
• WP-DBManager by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
• WP-Optimize by Ruhani Rabin.
• WP deferred javaScript by Willy Bahuaud, Daniel Roch.
• WP Security Scan by WebsiteDefender.
• WP SlimStat by Camu.
• WP SlimStat Dashboard Widgets by Camu.
• WP Super Cache by Donncha O Caoimh.
• YARPP Experiments by mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine).
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin by mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine).

Funnel Web Spider in Mail Box

These are a few of the odd things that set Australia apart from the mother country (i.e. the UK!)  Similar, yet different, eh?

The Spider Mailbox

Most suburban houses follow the USA mailbox style, with some sort of box on the edge of the property.  But watch out for spiders when fetching the post!

Yet funnel web spiders, some of which can kill you in hours, aren’t the only strange, odd, things.

Merry Christmas in Rye, Victoria

Because just across the road, Santa awaits…  inflated to gigantic proportions in an expensive house, built on sand dunes, made in the style of a 19th century colonial house, filled with all the gadgetry and labour-saving devices of the modern world.

A walk in the country can provide a host of oddities, from the deadly to the silly.

More Pictures

These are a few I came across.  Places include Melbourne, Port Douglas in tropical Queensland and various sites across the Mornington Peninsular.  I’m fascinated by the signs that are put up for public information.  A real clue into everything, I think.

Japanese Bomb Sculpture – note the guy mowing the grass in the background. That was a noisy machine I can tell you!

Japanese Bomb Sign – little girl was the only casualty of WW2 on the East Australian mainland. (This contrasts sharply with the tens of thousands killed NOT on the mainland)

Crocodiles and Stinger Signs Next to Each Other!
Just off the Captain Cook Highway.

Lotus Blossom in McClelland Art Gallery – contrasts to the large sculptures…

Tourism is Big – this is the Puffing Billy train in the Dandenongs

Big, forward control lorries are common in Australia even in urban areas. They hammer along everywhere, apparently in all lanes.

Graffiti All Over Melbourne – despite the sun and wealth, many of man’s creations are amended with random ink. Cops go on trains in fives.

Even Cats Get Banned from a Vineyard

Man-made Floating Island – this is on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. The breaking surf is The Coral Sea

View from a Yacht – Queensland and it’s hills round Port Douglas. You just point and click, there are views everywhere.

More Views – from near Cpt Cook Hwy. Banana fields just out of sight.

Fascination with Olden Days – signs all over, this is Daintree

Daintree River Crocodile Sign – no paddling and keep your eyes open – they’ve had crocs in excess of 5m long here.

Humourous Daintree Crocodile Signs on the WC Publics

My own image of Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas

Cape Tribulation – here the tropical jungle hits the Great Barrier Reef via the mangrove swamps and beach.
It’s where Cook’s ship “Endeavour” was dragged ashore to be fixed after crashing into a coral reef (now named after the ship).

Cassowary v Range Rover; not so fair.

Dangerous Pedestrians! They can injure and kill people when provoked.

Views! Along Captain Cook Highway. Australia is full of views. Loads. All over the place.

Tropical Rain Forest, Hot. This is Mossman Gorge, Queensland.

Garbage Recycling, Queensland Style.
In Packers Creek, upstream from Port Douglas, they just dump their boats and leave them to the crocodiles when they’re finished with them.

Sign Overload, some graphically scary – Stingers are not nice

View at Port Douglas, Queensland

Melbourne Memorial to a war on the opposite side of the world – beautiful quotes from Wilfred Own in there.

Another sign

Random Public Art – McClelland Gallery, Frankston.

Odd Signs with Humour

Serious Melbourne Tram System

Odd Signs

Ancient “cold” Tropical Rainforest in the South (Dandenongs)

Odd signs

Odd Signs and characteristic Oz Humour

Blue-ringed octopus in a pool at Cape Schanck – there is no known anti-venom!!! It is there in a crack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ringed_octopus

Sudden Waves don’t reach the odd sign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-bellied_black_snake
Red-bellied black snake taken walking down to Cape Schanck

Conclusion

Australia is a strange, deadly place, filled with amazing natural resources.

The quirky humour of the people is to be treasured.

They try to be uppity with their restaurants, vineyards, big boys toys and gadgets, yet underneath, the wild west existence is evident all around.

It’s all in the nature of the place.

We are a mixture of the land we live in and the land we came from.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana

This is a revision of the earlier video with something that I consider more appropriate both to us at the time, the feel of the piece, and how I feel right now.  The music is the same and I’ve edited lots of WW2 video archive material to fit, where possible, to the sounds.
Recorded circa 1980-81
The music was created by Crawling Chaos as accompaniment to a performance piece by Zyclon B Zombies called Dionysian Heights, a morbid and gory on-stage blood fest with real offal and copious quantities of ketchup.
See http://crawlingchaos.co.uk/1145/zyklon-b-zombies-death/

All music copyright Crawling Chaos
All video and images are in the public domain, free of copyright or under creative commons’ licences.  They’re all available here on the wayback machine.  These are what I used:

NewsMaga00_2_edit.mp4
Into_the_wind_at_leyte_gulfRedoRedo_mpeg2video.mpg
gov.dod.dimoc.26524.mpeg
gov.archives.arc.65631_512kb.mp4
gov.archives.arc.35904_512kb.mp4
gov.archives.arc.3483_512kb.mp4
gov.archives.arc.2765_512kb.mp4
1944-12-20_Allies_Fight_Fierce_Nazi_Counter-Blow.mpeg

n.b. My dad missed The Battle of Leyte Gulf (some of the footage here) though he was at D-Day and then was part of the British Task Force  57 at Okinawa on his ship, HMS Slinger.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet
This piece is dedicated to my dad and folks like him

Back along, Crawling Chaos were asked by Curly Jhon and Mackie to do some background music for a performance they intended to do under their moniker Zyklon B Zombies.  The performance was called Dionysian Heights, the name appearing as a band name on the Foetus Products’ compilation Blood Samples From The Pox Clinic.

I’ve just found a tape with most of the performance on it……    So I’m digitising it for release.  And pretty cool it is too.  Watch this space!

CJ with Dionysian Heights Props

The tape is the actual performance tape, I think, with the first minute or two being either my old racing car noises, some set-up test tones for, and the final major bounce track (sans vocals) of “Sex Machine”.  This latter is actually very, very good, and shows the guitar overdubs done by Jeff (Doomage Khult) very clearly and wonderfully – I may release this as it is just so folks can hear the guitar work.

The Actual Performance

Curly Jhon (CJ) has recently found a photo of one of his props.  It’s a little white bull, prior to its coat of gold paint.  I mentioned it here last month on the Crawling Chaos website…    Curly John Pops Up with Dionysian Heights Props

Other stuff I recall is heaps of ivy and copious amounts of offal.   The guys were doing some sort of Dionysian re-enactment for folks’ entertainment.  The offal stunk under the hot lights.  Bacchus was in on it as well….

Description of the Music

The two pieces Jeff & I created are called “Life” and “Death” and the boys used them as they saw fit, synchronising it with their dialogue and actions.  CJ & Mackie directed us, in a general way, as to the feel of the sounds for a given amount of time.  Hence each section is fairly drawn and thus doesn’t particularly matter too much where it’s fed in or out as the performance demanded.

Q.    Why have I called this post “Zyklon Zombies B, Life and Death Work”?

A.    Because that’s what’s written on the tape!  Jeff’s handwriting.

Back along, Crawling Chaos were asked by Curly Jhon and Mackie to do some background music for a performance they intended to do under their moniker Zyklon B Zombies.

I’ve just found a tape with most of the performance on it……    So I’m digitising it for release.  And pretty cool it is too.

The tape is the performance tape, I think, with the first minute or two being either my old racing car noises or a final major bounce track (sans vocals) of “Sex Machine”.  This latter is actually very, very good, and shows the guitar overdubs done by Jeff (Doomage Khult) very clearly and wonderfully – I may release this as it is just so folks can hear

Adobe Flash Not Working on the Adobe site!

For some time now, any web page that uses Flash has resolutely refused to work correctly in the Chrome browser for me.  I use Windows 8 – 64 bit.  Amazingly it all works fine in Firefox, 64-bit Firefox Nightly, Opera, IE10 in 32 & 64 bit incarnations….?

The solution from the chrome help page, is to enable Flash from the plugins menu.  You type this  the address bar to get show all the plugins.

   chrome://plugins/

Chrome Plugins Normal

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work!

Checking the plugin, I see it is apparently working alright!  See the screenshot.

Testing, Testing

I decided to try a “flip” – turning off Flash still didn’t make it work – and neither did it work when I turned it back on.  There’s an Enable/Disable toggle link for this which you can see in the screenshot.

But then, in the top right of the plugins screen, I spied a “detail” link!  So I clicked it to expand it – and all is revealed!

Chrome Plugins Expanded

Problem Solved!

Adobe Flash Now Working

The issue is that there are two Flash plugins; one is the default “pepper” that comes with Chrome; the other is installed manually and works in all other browsers.

The solution, after a little trial and error, is to disable the native, cross-platform Flash player, “Pepper”, and to enable the manually installed, most-recent, version.  It still won’t work if Pepper is enabled and the installed version disabled.  The Adobe Flash test page now works in Chrome, as you can see.

Below is a screenshot of how it should look (well for me at least!) to get it all working properly.

Chrome Plugins Expanded Flash Working Settings

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I was fishing around the inter-web-tubes today and came across an old show detailing the swearing and start of punk, and more.  A good listen and viewing, watching ourselves get older and older….    The guy at 1:11 is Tony Bulley, who led us (as the band Crawling Chaos) in a roundabout way into the welcoming (surely shome mishtake) arms of Tony Wilson and Factory Records.

Was it a good thing?  Who knows?  Could we have done better?  Probably.   But it is what it is, it is.

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