Tokyo has just been rocked by another earthquake. A few minutes ago a magnitude 6+ struck north Shizuoka; reports are coming in of some damage and injuries. The exact magnitude is not yet known; USGS hasn't yet released any data on the quake. The Japanese Meteorological Office has stated that this is a fresh earthquake, unconnected to the recent quakes and to the Tokai fault which Japan fears could cause "the big one"; a Tokai mega-quake could wipe out the centre of Japan and the majority of the population, but the Met Office spokesman is stressing that it is not that fault line that is involved here. There are reports of a fire at a hotel and some collapsed ceilings, but the Shizuoka nuclear power plant is unaffected.

Edit: Magnitude was 6.4, epicentre was Toruga Bay in Shizuoka.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1266020.html"; you may comment either there or here.

A query perhaps for the authors on my f-list, but indeed for any of the creative types involved in publishing.

The problem concerns a work which is just barely available commercially and is likely to be dropped unless it starts to shift units and generate sales. It's still in print - barely - but unless it starts shifting in significant numbers, the publisher is likely to give up on it and let copyright devolve back to the creator. It's at a stage where obscurity, not piracy, is the problem.

Making a nice bundle for torrenting it is easy, as is putting it up on the trackers. The question is, just what methods of publicity are effective? I'm aware of Underground and 4chan, but what other publicity methods would work?

Here's the really tricky bit: the publishing would not be onside with such "bootlegging", but jumping ship isn't an option (unless there's another publisher sniffing around and interested in picking it up pretty much immediately). So openly networking as hard as possible in the obvious manner is not likely work - and it's safe to assume the publisher is not going to spend one red cent on publicising a work that thus far is trickling its way down into obscurity and out of print.

So. Suggestions?

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1252370.html"; you may comment either there or here.

More and more unpleasantness has been creeping out over the whole CrossPostGate furore.

LJ has announced it is actually going to be the code that enables cross-posting to Twitter and FB so that it will no longer be possible to cross-post comments from a locked post, only a public one; it will not be possible to cross-post screened comments, even from a public post. However despite announcing this as a major change, they won't be implementing it for another 2 weeks.

And whilst some staff members are not happy with the whole idea of cross-posting in the first place, it seems one particular staffer - brenden has created his own sockpuppet account, getyourownbitch to actively troll LJ users on the News post. Nice, huh? [ETA] brenden has since gone through and deleted all the comments he made using his sockpuppet account; however jessicaarnold has kindly archived them here.

It's not the first time an LJ staffer has acted against LJ official policy, either; there's the case of an LJ staffer, dnewhall, using his staff admin powers to leave a creepy comment on a locked post (difficult, but possible as he had database access at the time) back in May. He tried to claim that the post was public at the time (it wasn't), it was then looked at by further LJ staffers, who changed the privacy of that post to Public and changed tag settings so tags could be added and then claimed the post had been public all along.

Just think about that for a few minutes.

And dnewhall still has admin powers. Unlike a similar incident a few years back where a female staffer leaked information from locked posts and was promptly suspended.

I still have 8 invite codes for those who want them; codes are also available at dw_codesharing, or see DW's latest news post - due to the shut-down of Vox, DW is offering free acounts to Vox users - you can create an account using the code VOX, which will work until the end of the month.

Please disseminate this information widely, and feel free to link to this entry which is being cross-posted on DW (public), my personal LJ (friends-only), integralthought (public), arkadiandreams and my IJ (public).

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1249492.html"; you may comment either there or here.

LJ has implemented a new crossposting feature. Not only does it allow you to cross-post entries to Twitter and/or Facebook, but comments too. Even if the post you are commenting on is locked to friends-only.

Even if you, personally, opt out of cross-posting and don't link your LJ and FB accounts to your LJ account, you can't stop anyone on your F-list who has linked their accounts from cross-posting a comment on a locked post of yours publically to Facebook and/or Twitter. And if you do link acounts, cross-posting is on by default unless you specifically opt out.

I have no idea what crack LJ were on when they came up with this particular little gem of privacy invasion, but this is a particularly unpleasant little option that I want nothing to do with. So consider this a warning: I will ban anyone who cross-posts a comment from my personal LJ. My LJ, FB and Twitter accounts are seperate, and I want to keep them that way.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1248729.html"; you may comment either there or here.

Yesterday a runaway engineer's train caused massive disruption to London Underground's Northern Line. There is a BBC report on it here, but there's so much more to the story than what you can read there.

In order to explain more fully what happened, first I have to give some background and explain a few things about how certain systems work on the Underground.

To begin with, for the record, I used to be a line controller on the District Line, and did half of my training at Baker Street where the north half of the Circle Line, the upper part of the Hammersmith & City and the whole of the Metropolitan Line are controlled from; the Bakerloo Line is run from the control room down the hall from the Met. Both the District & Piccadilly Lines are run from the same room at Earl's Court. The Central Line control room is at White City, and the Northern & Jubilee Lines are run from Cranbourne Street. The East London Line and the Waterloo & City are run by, effectively, glorified signallers - they're not very complex and don't require the special touch of an LC or SDM (Service Duty Manager).

So this whole incident was being monitored from Cranbourne Street by the Northern Line SDMs and signallers - principally the signal operator on the Camden Town desk. Remember this person - they become incredibly important during the story.

Now, the next bit of info concerns the braking systems - and specifically the train protection systems as used on all London Underground trains, with very few exceptions.

Next to each signal, there's a device down on the track called a trainstop; when the signal is red, the trainstop is raised. It's a pneumatic device designed to fail to the up position, just as any failure of a signal results in it turning red.

There is a trainstop and associated signal at each end of a station platform, to govern movement both forward and reverse from that platform.

On the underside of each tube train there is a trip cock; it is connected to the brakes so that if the trip cock hits the trainstop, the brakes are automatically applied and the train stops. There's one at each end of the train as trains can be driven from either end. Like the trainstops, a train's main brakes are operated pneumatically and are designed to fail with the brakes fully on.

Engineer's trains are slightly different; many of them don't run on electricity for a start, being diesel-driven, and not all of them have trip cocks.

Yesterday's incident involved an engineering train that became defective and had to be towed by an out-of-service passenger train. Unfortunately as it was travelling northbound towards Archway, the couplings broke and began to run back down the track towards Camden, out of control and without brakes - they had been isolated so it could be towed, so it ouldn't have stopped even if it had had a trip cock. Thankfully it was just before the start of peak time so the service was spaced out and there were no northbound trains in its path at that point.

One of the handy things about the platforms at Camden is that trains can be reversed from any platform to pretty much any other. So the Camden signaller set up the points so the runaway train would cross from the northbound High Barnet branch platform to the southbound track on the Charing Cross branch (which at that time of the morning would have had fewer trains than the southbound Bank branch).

The SDMs at the same time ordered all southbound trains on the Charing Cross branch to nonstop stations as far as possible until ordered to stop, to increase the distance between them and the runaway train. The driver of the rearmost train also requested all his passengers to move up to the front car, so if the engineer's train caught up to them it would minimise injuries; however due to the prompt actions of the service control staff and the excellent response fro the drivers, the runaway train never came any closer than half a mile to the nearest passenger train.

The track at Warren Street goes up a slight incline on the approach to the southbound platform; this is to slow the forward speed and aid the braking of a train coming into the platform, and it was that incline which halted the engineer's train.

The service was disrupted for quite some time afterwards as the service had to be rerouted through to run only down the Bank branch and up to Edgware, with services on the Charing Cross branch and up to High Barnet suspended until the engineer's train could be safely moved again.

I do hope the signaller, SDMs and drivers concerned all get the commendations they so justly deserve for their quick thinking, professionalism and outstanding teamwork during this incident.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1247857.html"; you may comment either there or here.

Liverpool ST station is on fire. It's been declared a major incident. The TfL site simply reports it's closed due to a fire alert.

BBC News is reporting the fire broke out in a restaurant on the upper floor, which is consistent with the photos.
There are no mainline rail services into or out of Liverpool Street at this time; all services are cancelled.
Underground services are not affected at this time, but there is no exit from the Underground station to the mainline station.

40 firefighters are currently in attendance. No reports yet of any confirmed injuries or extent of the damage.

Update at 00:56: Liverpool Street station has just reopened; first departure will be the 0103 to Chingford. All services in and out of Liverpool St station will be subject to delays and cancellations. A City of London Police spokesman said roads in the surrounding area of Bishopsgate are closed from Great Eastern Street in the north to Wormwood Street in the south.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1236801.html"; you may comment either there or here.

According to a Reuters report, Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler has stated that methane levels in Gulf waters are "astonishingly high", in some places as much as a million times higher than what would normally be expected, causing "dead zones" in the Gulf that are devoid of life.

That report actually downplays the most disturbing aspect of the methane presence, which is that it could cause a massive tsunami that would wipe out life along the Gulf coastline and all of Florida.

To put it into layman's terms:

There is a huge bubble of methane gas sitting just below the ocean floor. The Deepwater Horizon drill punched down through this bubble. The broken pipe is spewing forth a mixture of 60% raw crude and 40% methane (most spills are normally only 5% methane). The methane displaces and replaces the oxygen in areas of the ocean, thus creating the dead zones where marine life cannot live; this is already happening now. But it's what could come next that is truly terrifying.

The drilling has weakened the ocean floor over the bubble and the entire area is fragile and unstable. The presence of cracks in the ocean floor indicate that it is about to lose structural integrity and could collapse at any moment, releasing all the methane at once.

When a body of water is suddenly inundated with several million cubic metres of gas at once, it completely loses all bouyancy; anything on the surface of the sea will sink. You can replicate this on a smaller scale in a jacuzzi; float a model ship on the surface then turn on the bubbles full - the model will sink immediately.

The explosive outward force of the methane - which was compressed under pressure beneath the ocean floor - as it decompresses up and out will trigger a tsunami up to 100' high which will travel at between 400-600 mph across the ocean. Bear in mind that much of Louisiana and Florida is only a few inches above sea level. Whatever survives the tsunami likely won't survive the choking cloud of methane that will follow it.

The ocean floor will collapse down into the cavity that contained the methane bubble, and the sea will follow; there is every chance that when this happens there will be an explosion of steam that could trigger a second tsunami, but there won't be much of anything left to be affected by this point.

Sources:
AP report
Helium.com report
Risk assessment by DK Matai at the Huffington Post.

I've been following these reports with unease, understanding the implications too well, geology being one of my little areas of interest. I'm not entirely sure ignorance would be bliss in this instance, but it might enable me to sleep better at night. I feel completely impotent over the whole situation; I can see the danger but can't do a single damned thing about it. I can only take comfort in knowing that smarter, better-educated and better-placed people than I are already aware of the danger and working with the US government to try and raise awareness of the implications and formulate a response.

It's utterly terrifying to think that this whole mess orchestrated by BP could result in disaster on such a scale as to make Katrina seem almost like a love-tap by comparison to its effects.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1232982.html"; you may comment either there or here.

I've had my first ever submission rejection from a group on deviantART; it's a bit of a surprise, having been on dA for over 6 years now. The grounds for rejection?

The photo was taken on my Blackberry.

That was it. Because I didn't take it on a "proper camera", it was deemed a "snapshot" - artistic merit such as composition etc was not considered at all.

Interrestingly, the other photo submitted at the same time was accepted - despite the fact it was taken on a camera with lower specs than the camera on my Blackberry (2.1MP vs 3.2MP). On technical merit, it was inferior to the photo that was rejected.

It's like having a painting be rejected because it was painted using synthetic brushes instead of sable ones. It's basically hardware snobbery, pure and simple. It's missing the point.

Photography isn't about who has the more expensive kit. It's about knowing what to do with it. That $10K of equipment in your hand is worthless if you don't have the artistic talent to compose the perfect image.

From now on all photos I upload to dA will have the EXIF data stripped out. The quality of my work will speak for itself.

The worst thing about this? It's not something I can "improve" upon, skillwise; the only way in the moderators' eyes I could improve the supposed quality of my work would be solely through spending a large amount of cash. Which upon reflection speaks far more about their close-mindedness than about my skills and talent. Rejection still hurts though. :-/

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1229232.html"; you may comment either there or here.

Plans are afoot to have the pope arrested upon arrival in the UK (see also here where Dawkins clarifies that he is not the one behind the intended arrest but he is in full support of the idea). Comparisons have been drawn with Pinochet's arrest a few years back, but the situation isn't quite the same - there was already an outstanding warrant for Pinochet's arrest for war crimes, which is not the situation with Ratzinger. It's been argued that he could be persecuted for crimes against humanity by allowing the continued abuse of children at the hands of paedophile priests and knowingly covering up their offenses, allowing said priests to move to parishes where it was known they'd come in contact with more vulnerable children.

Whether or not it is actually possible to arrest the pope from a legal point of view, what is likely to happen when they try?

There could be an international outcry from all the Catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico etc. But there's another way it could all pan out.

Disclaimer: I am not an ecclesiastical lawyer; these are simply the musings of an interested layperson. Make of them what you will, YMMV, etc. :-)

If the higher ups in the Catholic Church are smart, the pope's arrest could be the ideal opportunity to deal with a very embarassing situation and save face in a major way - using a tactic that has precedent within the annals of the Church itself. The Vatican will be well aware of the plans to arrest Ratzinger, and no doubt politicking has been going on behind closed doors. His election was controversial from the start, and no doubt his actions since his election will have caused more than a few cardinals to regret their voting choice. He has certainly been one of the more unpopular and, indeed, hated popes in recent history. It is rare indeed that a pope is referred to by his birth name instead of his assumed name as pope – how often, indeed was the Venerable Pope John-Paul II referred to as Karol WojtyÅ‚a by anyone whilst pope? Even his fiercest critics referred to him by his pontiffical name, and continue to do so – whereas Pope Benedict XIV is often referred to as Ratzinger (and insulting diminutives such as “Rat†or “Ratzyâ€) in the popular media and by his (numerous) critics. He has made few friends but a great many enemies.

The moment he sets foot on British soil, the police swoop and he is arrested. Cue outcry and protests worldwide... and cue the convening of the College of Cardinals in an enclave to formally depose him and elect a new Pope. Ratzinger is denounced as the protector of paedophiles and failure to protect the innocents in all the parishes where he knowingly allowed paedophiles to lurk, defrocked and excommunicated in absentia, and left to the hands of the secular authorities to prosecute as they see fit. At one stroke, the Church has handed over a sacrificial goat, be seen to have done something, and placated the hundreds upon thousands of voices baying for his resignation. (Funnily enough, the last time this happened was to another Pope Benedict - the XIII, to be precise, in 1417.)

In order for the Church to survive though, I suspect such events would rapidly be followed by a Vatican III, I think.

Unlike the secular attempt at arrest and charging of Ratzinger, the deposing of a pope does at least have plenty of ecclesiastical precedent. From the Church's point of view, solving the issue of the troublesome pope with a very dubious and murky past is fairly simple however.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1225928.html"; you may comment either there or here.

David broke the news to Freda this morning that he wouldn't be coming back home again this evening. She immediately started crying, heartbroken and distraught; it took a little time to calm her down again. It was only when we told her that Daddy was going on a plane, and we were going to go on a train to go and see him off that she perked up with interest; she's inherited my fascination with trains and planes (her favourite toy at the moment is her Brio-clone wooden train set).

She was very good at the airport when it was time to say goodbye to Daddy at the departure gate; she gave him a kiss and a cuddle, and posed beautifully for a last pic with Mummy for Daddy to show to Graddad Wayne before waving bye-bye to him as he walked through the gate.

Two hours on trains back home after a long tiring day had her nodding off in my arms on the warm Tube ride home, and I had to carry the last half of the walk home from the station. She perked up a bit when food arrived (I ordered pizza, it being far too late to start cooking by the time we got back), but she was still a very tired little Pickle and was quite happy to toddle up to bed clutching her favourite Hello Kitty "Niow" and her purple kitty "blanket" (actually just an offcut of fleece left over from the little coat I made for her that she promptly claimed as a bedtime security blanket). She insisted on watching me feeding the fish on the four different fish games she insists I play on Facebook, but fell asleep before we got to Petville.

At the moment, David is somewhere in the air over Iraq (yes, I'm enough of a plane geek to be tracking his flight in realtime). He'll be landing in Dubai soon (7am tomorrow morning local time). He'll hang around there for a few hours before boarding an Airbus to Perth, Australia, arriving there at a quarter past one in the morning on Wednesday. He'll be staying there a week with only dial-up from his sister's place (oh noes!) and lots of phonecalls home as he'll be missing his little Pickle as much as she'll be missing her daddy. We'll all be looking forward to his return a week on Wednesday.

I'm missing him too; I've been cheered up though by the reaction of a friend to a surprise she received this morning. I could only have been happier at the outcome if I could have been a fly on the wall to see her face when she opened the box. :-)

I'm also looking forward to the arrival of Christine, my CP Lishe, who is all paid for and will be posted off to me tomorrow; she'll (hopefully) be here on Wednesday, and I'm looking forward to painting her face-up, stringning her together and then dressing her in her magnificent outfit. She's going to look gorgeous.

I'm also hopeful that a teeny little Pukifee might be joining my resin tribe as well, so I'm waiting to hear on that. So a few little things to keep me occupied (along with the usual teen- and toddler-wrangling!) until David gets back home again. :-)

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1223889.html"; you may comment either there or here.

A heads-up to all on Facebook: there is a page here called "Hitting Women"; the disturbing mission statement is "Keeping her in line, one fist at a time."

Presently there are 102 fans of this page; this may be a troll page, but frankly I think that is no excuse - that such a page exists on FB is pretty disgusting. Please click on the "Report page" at the bottom of the page and flag it as inappropriate content; if FB gets enough reports, they'll shut it down.

Please do spread word of this on Twitter and on your own LJs/DW.

[ETA] The first group has been shut down, but two more have appeared here and here.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1222777.html"; you may comment either there or here.

The following is the text of the complaint I have just sent to Sainsburys Online after they cancelled our booked delivery for this evening.




The "dangerously icy" road in question.

In the meantime, I'm placing the order with ASDA instead. I heartily recomment mysupermarket.co.uk, BTW; it keeps track of your most recent orders, so you can place an order made with one supermarket with another - very useful for just such an event as today's failure by Sainsburys.

[Addendum] I ended up placing the order with Tesco, as the earliest ASDA delivery slot available is Thursday but Tesco could deliver on Tuesday. As we were almost out of milk, I walked round to the local Co-op to do some shopping to keep us going for the next few days. WHilst out I saw home delivery vans from Ocado, Tesco and ASDA. This makes Sainsburys look even worse in comparison.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1220879.html"; you may comment either there or here.

WTF indeed.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1219924.html"; you may comment either there or here.

Trafigura and Carter-Ruck backed down shortly before the 2pm High Court hearing and lifted the gagging order; it must have been obvious it was going to be overturned even to them. The overwhelming response from the blogosphere and Twitter must have been a very nasty surprise for them!

Kudos also to the Spectator, which was the only other media outlet to report on the story. And a big thumbs-down to the BBC and Channel 4 who refused to report on it even when directly asked. Even now that reporting restrictions have been lifted, there is NO mention of it on the BBC website. Shame on you, BBC.

It has been revealed that Trafigura were indeed trying to cover up the injunction against reporting in the British press of the Minton report, on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura. In several incidents, Trafigura dumped thousands of tons of sulphurous coker naptha mixed with caustic soda off Côte d’Ivoire in 2006, with full knowledge as detailed in internal emails that doing so would likely cause thousands of injuries and deaths. The chemical waste came from a ship called Probo Koala and in August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was illegally fly-tipped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast. This led to 16 deaths and 31000 injured.

Trafigura can now thank Carter-Ruck for having ensured that by trying to gag the British press, pretty much the whole world now knows exactly what Trafigura did.

[Edit to add] The BBC finally reported on the lifting of the gag nearly three hours afterwards with a very mealymouthed piece.

Originally posted at "http://arkady.dreamwidth.org/1216556.html"; you may comment either there or here.

Yesterday was the headache that would not go away, despite several doses of co-codamol (the serious stuff with 20mg codeine per tablet, not the poxy OTC stuff) which suddenly worsened into feeling incredibly ill around 6pm to the point that I just had to go upstairs and lie down. Today has been the raging sore throat, headache, temperature yo-yoing all over the place and a bone-deep ache in all my joints. I think it's safe to assume I've caught Freda's swine flu.

David will be going to pick up Tamiflu for me tomorrow, but in the meantime I've taken a couple of Freda's left-over stuff (hers were 30mg tablets, adult dose is 75mg) because I want to knock this on the head quickly - Freda's dental appointment at Bart's is next Wednesday, and I need to be well and non-infectious for that.

David and the girls have been doing wonderfully, wrangling Freda, cooking and cleaning whilst I've been out of action so I could just rest and sleep it off as much as possible. We're all keeping our fingers crossed that David doesn't get it, as that would be Seriously Bad. :-/

Disclaimer: these are only my personally-held beliefs; they are not taken from any faith, book or path, simply what has developed in my own journey through faith over the course of nearly 30 years. I couldn't tell you where or how I came by these beliefs; it's as though the knowledge were there from the start and I've simply become gradually aware of the knowledge unfolding within. These beliefs as they stand now have been in roughly this form for some 10-15 years now with some "fine-tuning" here and there; I've been thinking more about it recently however. Whilst I have written about them elsewhere before, this is pretty much the most in-depth version I have ever written down.

( Read more... )

I'm sure this is going to be all over the internet very shortly.

Michael Jackson is reported to be dead of a heart attack at the age of 50; he was not breathing and had no pulse when found, according to TMZ.com and attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

[Edit] His death has now been confirmed by the LA Times and the BBC.

I have been a quiet fan of Michael Jackson since I was 14; he was an innovative singer, dancer and performer. Tonight, my 14-year-old daughter is crying herself to sleep. Doubtless thousands of sick jokes will be flying around in the week to come; this account will be a sick-joke-free zone, thank you.