If you’re as stupid as I am… you may have made this mistake several times. Allow me to demonstrate my stupidity: I was copying a directory filled with some files (and in all honesty I am unsure if those files were fonts, conf files or whatever, although what I do remember is that the files had lots of varied extentions) and I copied the files to

/etc/

or something as hopelessly stupid as that.

So what you want to do is delete all the files you copied and pasted to the wrong place fast and easily. This example merely just does a checklist of the files you just copied from and then deletes the files if they’re from the source directory… in lamens: if unwanted file is the same as the one in the original place… delete it.

 cd /file/from/dir; for file in *; do rm /etc/$file; done;

obviously you’ll have to toy with it to do things you may want … perhaps change the chown or whatever.

I just wrote an article the other day about being complacent, then I write one about not being subtle, in which you’d get the impression that I am of two minds. I’d like to clarify that despite the complacency article lead you to believe that I wasn’t being assertive enough in what I believe….

….the reality of things is that I’m not too sure on what I mean in a general sense. Come to work related situations and I’m a diplomatic little sod where I try and not endanger my reputation; come to social things, and I’ll just emote honestly how I feel, for it is my firm believe that if you speak to someone there generally is a motive and if you share your motive to commence with you’ll be treated as an honest person. I think we can best illustrate this with a Neilistic example:

A guy walks upto a girl sitting on a bench in the park. The girl has already foreseen what the guy would want from her, even before he woke up in the morning, because of this she will automatically mount her defence system and shut out all possible social conversation to her.

So this brings me to the situation of, how do you speak to a stranger that you would like to converse with? Why have you chosen that person to converse with? In my case it generally is upon a little intuition on what the person is like and a whole load of physical attraction, sad isn’t it? Saddest part of it I would in the given situation be forthcoming with this fact. Why deny the fact that you’re talking to a pretty female you have never met before be based on her good looks?

Pfft! beats me.

Thank the holy lord Jehovah almight that I’m not in the habit of speaking to pretty ladies so frivolously, I think that it is precisely owing to the fact that I know they know that I make a strong point of not doing so… if that makes any sense whatsoever.

Tinned anchovy article pending!

I’ve recently have been told that I lack subtlety; on reflection I do believe that person is right. The problem now is overcoming this. I’ve set my whole outlook on my life around the idea of being direct with what I need to, would like and what I feel. The concept that perhaps such directness lacks tact now makes me wonder if I have been a little too harsh in the past with how I’ve exercised this directness so to speak. One would not need to lie to be subtle, merely not proclaim (so instantaneously), such demands would be less intimidating to those in which the direction is focused.

What I am really trying to say is, I totally lack the skill to speak to people civilly, I sometimes jump too deeply into what I want to communicate that I do forget to take into consideration where this person is coming from. I think it is much like writing a university paper (or any paper come to that); you have to first declare what you’re going to talk about and justify why, then go into what it all means and why it is relevant, then jump into the objective to then tackle it with the subjective and then finally conclude it all off with what you’ve just told them in a briefer rendition.

No, I’m not going to start speaking to people in that format, but what I mean to say is that I sometimes loose that consideration when speaking, and that has the unfortunate effect of scaring people off.

That being said, I’m know for a fact that my blog (this website), is a little too much for some people to handle; the vocabulary, the concepts or merely the crap I spate this site with can be just not to everybody’s interest. This only means that despite learning to be subtle will give little benefit as it does not mean that I will have universal appeal to everyone, it only secures the method I will communicate to other in; this would “up” my probability of making friends from 0% to now 0.015474575% (~rough estimation).

Stay tuned for next weeks interesting article on how they bone tinned anchovies.

I just watched it for the 5th time (at least) and I just want to make sure that those of you who have never heard of it go out and watch it. It really is a cinematic masterpiece, attention to detail, scripting, filming, grip, etc. cannot be faulted. The only thing about this film that annoys me is the fact that I do not know any other film that even roughly is on the same lines as it.

Go and find it!
Buffalo ’66 (1998)

Friday evening, site at a stand-still owing to the weather conditions (again) and there I was lingering about seeing what everyone else was doing to fill their time. I come across the ground workers (a.k.a Labradors …. labourers) lingering round the back end of the site wasting time. Me being the new guy on site I get am often picked upon for the subject of mockery and the like, so when one of the men (same one as mentioned last week who wanted me to counterfeit a Hospital letter,) approached me, locked his arm in mine and walked me to one side and asked me to do him a favour I was ready for a joke involving me being made a fool. I was rather taken aback when the request was me to sit a “Health & Safety” exam tomorrow for him in which he’d pay me a week of my wages to do it (e.g. £200 net). I’m not sure who this guy thinks I am, or whether he does this to everyone, but I most positively rejected the offer, not because it was illegal or whether I didn’t think I was competent enough to take the exam and pass, but just on principle.

The guy’s English is sooooo bad he can’t even take a mickey mouse exam, where you press A, B, C or D to answer the question and generally the questions are on the lines of:

A piece of machinery does not work; do you:

1. Hit it until it works.
2. Attempt to fix it.
3. Hide it and hope that someone else fixes it.
4. Report the piece of machinery to the Site Manager and ask for a replacement.

The amusing thing is most answers are the last one and generally bolded out anyhow so that you get it right.

Anyhooooooo £200 would of been nice cash in hand for a 30 minute test, but I’m not taking any immigrants’ money as a favour.

My boss (God bless him), is limited to only speaking in colloquialisms and idioms, which to me is great as all he ever says is “in the first instance…”, “within reason”, “to a degree” and so on… and I can quite happily mock him behind his back. Anyhow, he was telling a story about when he had a fight when he was younger (and wilder) in which he punched a guy on the chin and caused the guy to fall through a shop window. The story was enriched by the idiom: “So I went to give him the good news, and much to my surprise he fell through the shop window behind him.“. It was one of those funny moments that catch you by surprise.
Which was much like the occassion where he was telling me how he punched a horse in the “face” for biting him on the shoulder. The whole idea of punching an animal had never seemed to have crossed my mind until he spurted it out so liberally.

Subject change:
Good news! got my results for simester 1:

• Eng. design A-,
• Building technology B+,
• Prof. practice A,
• Bridging studies B

I’m really happy about that!

Having watched Alfie (1966) a few weeks ago I decided to watch what the modern version. Having heard from many people how bad it was I was ready to embrace a poor rendition of a 60s classic. However, I was really surprised. Granted, the story is not the same, some of the characters are merged changed/added/removed and so on, but that was not what impressed me the most. What did impress me however, was the fact that they turned Alfie into a human being. Michael Cain in the 1960s version was a callous, cold hearted beast of a man that somehow lacked depth. Jude Law on the other hand, held a role of a guy with a high sex drive, a fear of commitment and the uncanny ability of making many mistakes.

Granted I am no Casanova, but from my experiences and feelings from these endeavours I can really relate and agree with the reality of the character of Alfie, the feelings he portrayed are true without any flaw. I really did enjoy this film; it was one of those things you like because you can see yourself in it… much like those songs you like because it chants about things you’ve felt and you like it because of it.

…now, Rob did say after having seen it in the cinema; that: “it was about a stupid man who didn’t learn from his mistakes.” (or something on those lines). However, I disagree. He just keeps making more mistakes because he is unsure of himself. Well thats how I explain my own mistakes.

Go and watch it again if you have already; otherwise, watch both!

This week has lead me to a couple of self loathing incidents where complacency and placidness stole the moment. Firstly, allow me to explain both situations, then I’ll endeavour to explain.

In the first part of this working week, I was approached by a work colleague who needed an English citizen to act as a referee for some immigration paperwork, he asked me repeatedly and I declined jokingly with gutless responses.

Today, one of the Romanian concrete gang members …(not to say there are any other nationality concrete gangs)…. approached me and asked me whether I’d assist him with counterfeiting a hospital letter addressed to himself amending the dates to suit. I also declined on this, stating that my printer at home was only black and white and that it was out of service (which is all true).

Now these two incidents have been twisting and turning inside me, causing considerable unease. I diplomatically achieved my objective without comprimising the true reasoning. I’ll spare you the self-righteous blurb I generally kick into. The point really lies beyond the fact that I do not advocate exploitation of my country’s medical / immigration systems; the thing that really bothers me about this is how I dealt with the situation. I settled for a lousy “nice” finish. I am angry with myself for not standing up for that which I believe in so strongly, which was out of fear that the implications of stating my mind would loose the respect I have built for myself.

I do believe that from now on I shall be more prudent with how I deal with these situations, there seems to be little point in building a respect for myself through other people when there is nothing about myself that I respect. Surely, that adhering to my beliefs and facing the consequences that this may imply, would make me more respectable eventually to more than just myself.

I feel as though I have something draining away all my energy, I think very little (in comparrison to my usual) and before I know it, it is already bed time and I have not even eaten dinner.

Having said this, while I was on the bus yesterday and had the pleasure of being forced to hear a conversation between a cretin female speaking with her friend over her mobile telephone about some friend of “carla” who was “in her face” about “who she was doing” and how it was “aint none of her business, you get me?”. The conversation lasted the whole bus ride from Dulwich to Kirkdale (some 10-15 minutes).

Toward the end of my journey the most amusing part of the whole experience came into play; it so happened that this friend of “carla” wasn’t worth the time to be “mc’ed” about (whatever M.C. is). However, what did occur to me having heard her reitterate her colloquial statements about how worthless this said individual was, she happened to have plently of time to speak about her and her so called involvement with being “in her face”.

Oh Lord, I am not here to whinge on about scum on the streets of London, not being worth the air that I breath…. oh wait, I am!

It strikes me incredible, the intellectual distance between the technology that enables people to communicate wirelessly in the “civilized world” and the low-life worthless statistical mass that actually uses it. I could quite easily scale up in that very moment, that no future generation from this peon could ever summount the intellectual capacity to even grasp a single concept that would be required to understand how a satelite stays in orbit recieving and sending signals from the earth whilst being powered by the sun’s energy. Such concepts of photo-sensitive energy producing cells, the gravitational pull of the earth’s core, air-bound signals or the signal algorithm involved with communicating with satelites or merely the principles of zero-g robotics are so beyond the realms of this individuals understanding that it makes me wonder; how intelligent people with a “liberal” political stance consider me a monster. The evidence is so clear and only following our natural instinct you can scale up a person and know enough about them to tell their worth. Why need the humble, (like me) need to be dragged down by utter crap like that?

Please do not get me wrong, I have a very low estimation of myself, I am by no means a member of any elite. I would also go as far as to say: on the scale of humanity I figure at the bottom, subservient to those above. It just happens that scum such as that mentioned, contributes only to inflict strife on those who wish to progress such as myself. Why do people find this so hard to understand?

Owing to the lack of interesting vistitor statistics. I have removed the webstats.