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09:31 pm
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Domestic Violence
I know a lot of people reading this respect Patrick Stewart so I thought it worthwhile posting this article he wrote for the Guardian yesterday. He is promoting Refuge's campaign http://www.fourwaystospeakout.com/ - "Speak out against domestic violence" (note - the site has audio on the homepage)
switched off comments. If you want to discuss this please do it in your journal or face to face
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08:26 am
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Pub with WiFi fined!
We were discussing this possibility in the ZZ9 pub meeting a little while back. I had no idea that there was a case under consideration at that time...
A pub owner has been fined £8,000 because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over their open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud.
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10:38 am
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ABS CDOs
The paper I most often enjoy reading is the Financial Times. It is kind of like New Scientist - but for important matters that affect you and me *now* rather than in five years time. :-)
Anyway.
What I want to draw your attention to today is an article by an academic from the University of Edinburgh who has written a very interesting article about the main trigger for the credit crunch financial crisis. He has been (quite correctly) looking at things from a sociology point of view - and that has been missing from the public mind lately when all it wants to do is find people to blame.
Donald MacKenzie writes about ABS CDOs and the people who value them. (page 36 of the paper FT) I have a little professional experience of these products - but I think you should be able to grasp the main concepts without any formal training. I am in no way speaking for any of my clients or giving financial advice.
Basically Asset Backed Securities (ABS) are what your mortgage lender uses to raise funds to lend you money. (Assets might be houses, but aren't always. Sometimes they are cars, or other things). The mortgage lender basically uses your loan to raise money itself - but since it is "safer" than you it gets a better credit rating, and should be able to do it more cheaply than you.
There are teams of people who know how to value the assets and so value ABS products. I call these the ABS Desk.
Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) are typically ways in which you join together a bunch of loans "to make them safer". So for example if I make ten loans to different people I expect not to lose much money because I only expect one or two to be unable to pay me back. This only works if there is no correlation between the loans. If, say, the people all work for the same company then there could be a reason why they all become unable to pay me: eg the employer company might go bust and they all lose their jobs at the same time.
There are people whose role it is to understand these credit issues - especially correlation between loans - and I call these the Credit Desk.
What MacKenzie does in his article is to point out that when these two types of product were combined neither the ABS Desk people or the Credit Desk people understood the whole product: ABS CDOs
ABS CDOs reduced the risk *most of the time* but when things got bad they got really bad.
When a particularly bad type of ABS based upon sub prime mortgages began to fail it was an irritating problem - but when it happened time and time again then the ABS CDOs really hurt badly. And that hurt companies which weren't mortgage lenders or particularly experts in credit.
It is understanding how this came about which is important to me. I don't think he is saying that the problem was the people concerned were paid too much, or in the wrong style. I think he is saying that the system and human nature conspired to create a situation where people didnt understand the products they were selling (and buying).
Tags: finance
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10:59 pm
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Lie to Me
You know, there must be something about writers of comics which make them suited to microblogging formats like Twitter. For example
warrenellis: LIE TO ME is all I want from evening television: a bloke from London shouting at people and then slapping them around a bit.
How true is that. He has captured the whole essence of a major American tv program in less than 140 characters. I don't think I will bother writing a review ever again.
Maybe I am channelling Warren Ellis because of the very large Red Bull I had for lunch.
So what is the protocol for Retweeting this. I mean: Am I supposed to limit it to *important* stuff?
Tags: twitter
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11:42 pm
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Ubuntu Kharmic Slip up
So that was exciting. My main desktop machine which I sit at most days just got turned into a brick for approximately five hours. But it seems ok now.
( Just the Fax Ma'am )
Tags: tech
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05:07 pm
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Recycled printer supplies
I don't like waste. So sometimes I salvage stuff which is on sale or going to be thrown out. Ages ago I picked up a ream of laser printer paper going cheap and only just put it in my printer today. It was 100% recycled and came in green and white wrapping claiming that it was environmentally friendly. And yes it was green: pale green
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04:55 pm
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iProfile?
Does anyone still use iProfile to find work and/or distribute your CV to recruitment agencies?
I have used it a few times over the last few years but I can't seem to get hold of my account any more. I'm wondering whether to just create a new one, hunt down my old account, or just leave the system alone.... http://iprofilecentral.com
Tags: work
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11:01 am
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VW Golf GTi for Sale - 1000UKP
So, my local VW garage has my J reg Mk2 8V VW Golf GTi. I think that it would be a very good car for someone able to source and change their own water pump/radiator/axle bushes. But for me... No.
[EDIT: Since writing this my car has passed its MOT so I am bumping up the price to market value :-) ]
I'm looking for offers around 1000UKP, though I suspect the garage will offer a lot less. Oh - the MOT runs out today. It is not clear to me what things are MOT failures and what things are just "advisory". [EDIT: And it has 12 months MOT. Hooray]
105K miles. I did less than 2000 miles last year because whenever I left London it was usually in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) annafdd's car. I should have been on a classic car restricted mileage insurance policy.
The car is in Woodford Leytonstone, East London.
And before you buy you get to see the full MOT and service report details to see what my garage says needs doing.
Tags: car, for sale
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08:09 am
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Synchronicity: Characters
So I have done zero words on my NaNoWriMo. The problem is that I want to plan enough so that the story just falls out. Yeah, right.
Anyway I have been thinking about software to display character interactions and suddenly XKCD does a comic about precisely that
Tags: comics, writing
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03:35 pm
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Sporting Countdown: The Big Event
So, that is it then. The count down has started. As a Londoner I am a bit worried about next time this great sporting event will be in the UK. We've been impressed by the facilities in the past and are concerned that the UK won't come up to scratch. The deadline is coming far too quickly for my liking.
Can we really spend the millions of pounds needed on the venue? Will the sponsorship and publicity generate enough business to make the whole thing worthwhile?
All I know is... One hundred and thirty three days to the next Formula One Grand Prix.
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01:23 pm
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Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Baaad.
[No Spoilers] So I saw the MotoGP motorbike race on the telly this morning. Valentino Rossi made a big thing of his hen logo on his helmet and t-shirt. For those who aren't Italian and aren't used to Italian idioms annafdd translated for me:
what's going on with Valentino Rossi's t-shirt: his fans provided him with a t-shirt with an Italian saying: "old hen makes a good soup". On the back, the hen is pictured squatting over a great many eggs, and thinking grumpily: "Soup my ****ing ass."
Tags: motorbikes
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08:41 am
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A Very British Protest
I like a city where we can't even take a protest seriously....
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/failblog_rss/470539.html
Tags: humour
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08:33 am
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SciFi Film Festival (mini version)
I haven't yet been to the London Sci Fi film festival - perhaps because it is normally in the week when I am working - but in a couple of weekend's time they are doing a mini festival. I'm thinking of going... how about you?
(I'd probably want to see the Anime all nighter)
Tags: film, london
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08:34 am
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The cutting edge of current affairs (Link spam)
It's a fix!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8295818.stm
University College London has beaten Oxford to be named the fourth best educational institute in the world.
The university has climbed three places since 2008 in The Times Higher Education Magazine's annual list.
Imperial College London came in fifth along with Oxford. London School of Economics was rated as the top specialist social science university.
The city institutes were beaten by Harvard at number one, followed by Cambridge and then Yale University.
Current Mood:  amused
Tags: college
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02:41 pm
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Which Webcomics do you read?
jon_a_five and I were talking about web comics as I have just started reading a few more. Monday was pretty much entirely taken up with reading them. He has written an article about which ones he reads and asks you to recommend some more.
Comments disabled. Please go there to suggest anything not on his list.
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01:59 pm
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Birthday Paddlings
Happy Birthday to Simba who is 13 today.
(I didnt actually know when his birthday was but I just spotted it on a PetPlan form, and realised "Gosh, that is today!". I hope he will forgive me)
Tags: cat, simba
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01:27 pm
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Tech: SPF on mail server
If you run a mail server (for sake of argument postfix on an old Ubuntu) would you to try and identify whether mail is coming from the right box. I am thinking of SPF or Domain Keys, or both, or nothing at all, or something else.
( read more )
Tags: postfix, spam, tech
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09:05 am
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Building Regulations, Law and Ethics
So for several days the builders next door have made my house very very noisy. (I "work" from home right now). They have been scraping and doing stuff to the wall between our houses. Now however it seems like they want to put a steel beam in to that wall. I havent spoken to the builders concerned yet - they should be round in an hour.
My initial reaction is to tell them to go away and not do it until they have shown me the survey which tells me that it will not structurally change the building infrastructure. What can builders do to the wall between two houses? Am I right to refuse them or is that just going to start up a fight between new neighbours. What is to stop them from just doing it anyway...?
It also suggests to me that they are turning the house into two flats.
[Edit: I do realise this makes me sound NIMBYish and middle class] [EDIT: Have chatted to the builders. The owners are on holiday. As well as decorating and moving the kitchen they are joining two rooms together - and thus need to put in a large lintel from outside wall to outside wall. They *arent* turning it into flats. ]
Tags: building
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07:49 am
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Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll
So I am giving up this life of clubbing, and parties because I want to be a Drunken (Chess) Master
Roistering Russian grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev, long famed as the Oliver Reed of the international pro chess circuit, reportedly passed out drunk during a tournament match in India and "had to be carried off"
From The Register.
Tags: blog
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01:50 pm
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Comics In London ?
Any recommendations for things to go see in London with a kid who is into comics?
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