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In the Star Wars universe the Force sensitive characters view it and use it in different ways. The Jedi try to give themselves over to the will of the Force, in effect becoming puppets inside their own skins as the Force controls their movements. The Sith try to bend the Force to their own aims. This means the Force is a character in it's own right, and as such it must have motivations or goals but what are they?

Ever since the US started their campaign against Sadaam something hasn't sat right with me, beyond the obvious that others have been over inside and out. The claim is that it's a fight against terrorism, which is fine until you look at what the definition of terrorism actually is. Terrorism is an intentional aim to achieve a political goal. You terrorise your enemy into accepting your chosen policies. It can come in many forms.

For a while now I've tried to get a balance of a really useful thumbdrive that I can carry around. I've found a solution which appears to be rather cool and multifaceted, so without further ado, let's dive in.

Over the last couple of months I've been in a dispute with O2 via email. I've created a separate page detailing the full story with my letter / emails and responses. At this stage phase one is over, phase two is Trading Standards and the Advertising Standards Authority. I'll be doing that next week when I have some spare time. For now feel free to read the full exchange of phase one.

The archived page has comments disabled and will be updated as the story continues.

For a long time now I've autojoined servers and channels on XChat, recently I added one and today I finally snapped and removed one. The channel for the Techrights.org website (formerly known as Boycott Novell) becomes a joke at times, and today I finally had enough. They have 2 channels; the old one #boycottnovell and the new one #techrights. Apparently the old one is a kinda off topic area and not a lot of people join the new one as of yet. Until about 5 minutes ago I autojoined #boycottnovell.

I've found an unusual solution to using Identi.ca on my old P4 desktop that I thought I'd share. To be fair it's a split solution between my desktop my new Samsung Galaxy Portal Android phone. I found that any GUI Twitter / Identi.ca client consumes quite a few resources to have sitting open all the time on the notification applet, some are worse than others. So I now split it with Twidge, Shorten URL and Mustard.

I have an ebook reader and I love it. For people who enjoy reading for fun and who are fine with the whole electronic screen thing they can be a great investment. They are not cheap however, so it's not a throwaway purchase by any means. I happened to get a great deal on mine and only spend £150 on it. It is still a niche product, so how can this change?

For those people using XMarks and NoScript in Firefox who are having issues with the latest update not being allowed to sync here's a solution I've found. Other solutions may be available. I am using Linux Mint 8 XFCE with Firefox 3.6.6.

This letter relates to McCoys crisps (chips to those in the US) which I found out are owned by United Biscuits. I've noticed a pattern which is becoming incredibly annoying, and I'm hoping that this letter at least comes to the attention of those who can make a difference. If there was a tagline to this letter it would be "Give Flavours A Chance".

This post is a look at expectations, both realistic and unrealistic. It's also a look at comparing teams on paper. I'll be looking at England in this respect, but the same thing applies to every team. For years I've never quite put my finger on the exact term for England until a German commentator called them "self proclaimed world champions". It's very apt.