Just received news that my dad is no longer in the intensive care unit and is not only breathing on his own but can eat on his own too. My eternal thanks and appreciation go to all the doctors, nurses and supporting staff that have helped make this happen.

Science, it works. Bitches.

PETA are trying to politicize Bob Parsons yearly hunting trips where he helps cull trouble animals that destroy crops and ruin lives for people already well below the poverty line. Fuck you PETA. Here are the stats for what PETA does with animals:

Pets Killed By PETA

Official PETA documents (pdf) filed with State of Virginia:
http://tinyurl.com/PetaKillsAnimals-pdf
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

Not so fucking pious now, eh?

I got back to England on Saturday night, back to Cambridge itself just before 11pm and proceeded straight to the nearest club and drank till 3am with some friends. Hardcore!

My dad is improving, although still on a respirator, things are looking much better than they did a week ago so here's hoping he continues to get better at a steady pace.

Now all I have to do is complete Dragon Age 2...

"The only real freedom we have is integrity, and it is the one thing that can never be taken away, it can only be surrendered"

- Alan Moore

Having built and played with the latest gnome-shell I have to admit it's improved a lot compared to the packages in the maverick repos however there are still 1 or 2 nitpicky issues.

Firstly I still found myself depending on AWN to keep track of my windows across my workspaces, alt-tab is all very well but if you're in bed using a wireless mouse just to surf and the keyboard is a way away then it can become a pain.

I do like the way in which the workspaces have been implemented but I also deplore the lack of a minimise button. Sometimes it's really handy to be able to put a window in a bar somewhere whilst you do something else, ESPECIALLY if you're on a netbook and screen space isn't exactly abundant.

It's a lot faster and the animations are definitely improved compared to the old packages but there are still areas where it feels a little slow (this wasn't a game stopper for me, I'm actually quite impressed by the amount they've improved the performance metrics).

There's still no way to hide that top bar or even simply replace it. I really want to be able to simply use AWN as my primary panel, if we could do away with any kind of forced default panel system and keep the workspaces activation by moving the mouse to the top left corner then that would be just fine.

As it is I'm back to gnome-2.x (sans gnome-panel) with AWN and compiz. When I get back to the UK I'll install the Natty alpha on a spare partition and have another look at Unity.

Haven't slept much during the last few days. I've mostly been hanging around the ICU, keeping an eye on dad. He's been stable for a couple of days now so hopefully they'll be able to take him off the respirator soon.

The last few days have been the hardest of my life, on Friday I was woken up by a phone call from my sister to tell me my father had gone into intensive care. My father has been recently diagnosed a recurrence of leukemia. We'd thought this had been cured in 2009 but it was back. To make matters worse he has managed to catch some kind of infection because the chemo has killed his immune system and for a week or so he's had a raging fever.

When I arrived at the hospital a few days ago he could still talk, he was on oxygen and hooked up to all sorts of machines but things weren't looking too bad considering. Last night his lungs collapsed and they've had him on a respirator since, I spent most of today holding his hand whilst he was partially sedated. A couple of times an hour the nurses would come in and use suction to try to get the fluid out of his lungs and he would partially wake from the discomfort. He looked disoriented and as if he was in pain and there was nothing I could do. I could only watch and cry.

He's fully sedated now and the doctors have asked us to let him rest but things seem to be going from bad to worse. I keep thinking that maybe it's all just a bad dream, maybe I'll blink and wake up but I'm still waiting for that and I don't think it's going to happen any time soon.

I'm rewriting a load of backend code and subsequently stuff may break. Sure, I could set up a dev site to do this on but where's the fun in that?

Sony have subpoena'd a wide ranging amount of data in its attempt to shut down George Hotz' release of data pertaining to PS3 hacking, including the IP addresses of people who have visited his site, going back as far as 2009. Not only does this smack of massive infringement of Hotz' right to privacy but it goes far beyond any kind of reasonable disclosure.

Sony are showing once again just how little they care about consumers and people who want to innovate on their hardware. Hotz is an advocate of homebrew software, NOT piracy. He clearly states that he fully supports Sonys right to ban pirates and mod-cheaters from PSN and I agree with him. I see no problem in Microsoft or Sony banning people for using pirated games and modded consoles from their online services. It's their network, their rules. Don't like it? Don't use the service. I, for one, prefer to know that if I'm playing against someone online that they're not cheating or getting an unfair advantage. MS have also gone as far as to provide SDK's for independent game designers and home brewers alike. Unlike Sony who went so far as to sue a guy for hacking his AIBO robot dog so it could do more than the original firmware allowed.

That's right, Sony sued a guy for improving the software in a device he'd bought and owned and then provided the code to other people for the same benefit. What he'd done could have improved AIBO sales and Sony could have collaborated with him to make an even better product. Makes sense right? Not to Sony's legal team.

So here it is, I don't own a PS3 but I'm going to visit George Hotz' site. Hell I might even find a copy of his hypervisor research that he released and download it. I can't do anything with it. I won't redistribute it. But let Sony get my IP (I live in the UK anyway) and let them attempt to locate me (not fucking likely), the more people that visit www.geohot.com the better. Sony can't sue everyone and with the publicity this is receiving they can't even prove that the IP's harvested are a result of anythinge more than people visiting the site as a result of the Streisand Effect.

All this makes the data they get less and less useful and should help Hotz' defense. So please, visit the site. Have a good read. Stick two fingers up to Sony and tell them where to shove it.

Click Charlies face!

I think we can safely say that Gadaffi has gone totally batshit insane.