Scottish lass seeks…

A relative commented earlier today that there were traffic jams …turns out this was related to vehicles being diverted due to an apparent terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport where men in a car tried to ram through the customer entrance of the terminal, the car was on fire at the time.

Raw footage from Glasgow Airport Terror Attack (contains audio) [liveleak.com]
Thank God: No one killed. This looks like a pretty clumsy attempt at terrorism or even the plot of a lousy Hollywood action film, even so it could have been much, much worse. Thankfully there’s no loss of life a pundit reckons if the propane devices had exploded inside the terminal there could have been deaths into the hundreds. This should have been one of the busiest weekends of the year at Glasgow Airport as local schools have just finished for their holidays so many family holidays would be commencing. With the recent activity around the investigations into the Lockerbie bombings it brings terrorism to Scotland once again. Talk about a baptism of fire for new leaders Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown.
Thanks to:

1. The bravery of Strathclyde Police who were on the scene immediately and apprehended the suspects. Following a press conference they released a Strathclyde Police statement with details of a phone number for witnesses.
2. The Scottish “have-a-go” heros like Stephen Clarkson who along with others helped knock one of the men to the ground when he was resisting arrest. watched United 93 for the first time a few days ago, very good,moving and thought-provoking, what would you do in a terror situation? I’m proud that folk intervened.
3. The courage of the Strathclyde Fire and Rescue again on the scene promptly and tackling an unknown situation where further incendiary devices/explosives might be present.
4. Medical staff at Royal Alexandra Hospital treating a suspect for serious burns - it was feared that he had a suicide belt in his possession when he arrived! (Update: suspect device later found to not be explosive)
   
5. Mohammad Sarwar who is already making moves to quell racial tensions in relation to this incident. Race relations in Glasgow have been uneasy in recent years, the last thing we need is any reprisals by numpties.

One of the stranger aspects has been the relative lack of news coverage on the main UK TV channels BBC1 and ITV1 other than normal bulletins. Both stayed with their normal evening programming with the exception of the sensible postponing of latenight screening of the “Die Hard 4″ premier. There was of course rolling non-stop coverage on BBC 24 but that’s not much use if you don’t know something has happened to warrant switching! I can’t help but thinking that in the days before 24hr news channels the BBC would have broken into normal shows and gone to the newsroom for a substantial time instead. I’m sure there’ll be a large number of British people who only watched their normal evening entertainment in blissful ignorance who will be shocked tomorrow morning picking up their Sunday papers.

Technorati Tags: Glasgow Airport, terrorism, Strathclyde Police, heros, Glasgow

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Just had to look out the window to see if there were any pigs flying. Little did I guess that when I sat down to watch the start of the election coverage that I would be awake for over 30 hours now. I tried to sleep but I was just too excited. This one came right down to the last regional vote announced. If I had a heart condition I think I would have been carted away with a coronary by now. I’m pretty stunned by the result. Putting all the ghastly spoiled ballot problems to the side for a moment. Labour lose an election…in Scotland? Jesus. I have to be honest I didn’t think the Nats were going to pull it off. It’s going to take a while to get used to. But who’s going to form our government - that’s still from certain. I think if I was Annabel Goldie of the Conservatives I would be chuckling with glee - they quietly beat the LibDems, noone was expecting that but she’d already said her party wasn’t up for coalition so if parties want Conservative support they’re going to have to say their pleases and thankyous. Sad though to see the smaller parties and independents squeezed out by the SNP/Lab fight. It’s like spinning a roulette wheel, no body know where it’ll stop.

Annoyances trying to get official regional vote counts - think the web editors have buggered off from the council sites Aberdeen City/Highland and Lothian - they’re probably on one hell of an overtime bonus so still some details of names to fill in at Election Scotland.

I’m away to crash out. Tell me I’m not dreaming all this?

Technorati Tags: Scottish elections, SNP, Annabel Goldie, Labour, Scottish Parliament

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Strange net day today. Three British websites I visit regularly are down including one high profile newspaper site and a couple of smaller sector-specific players. Doesn’t seem to be DNS problems but technical faults on the sites themselves. (look like MS SQL related judging by the error pages). Probably just sheer coincidence but it does makes you wonder if there’s some coordinated attack exploiting some vulnerabilty going on. Don the tin foil hats. Incoming.

Technorati Tags: MSSQL, hacking

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Move over darling Elizabeth, I’ve been crowned. Not once, not twice, thrice naw, in the name of the wee man I had four crowns fitted today…on my teeth, some sort of porcelain/ceramic concoction fixed with dental cement. Weird, weird, weird feeling. They’re ‘normal’ teeth. But I’ve never had normal teeth (always a peg-shaped front tooth and massive overbite that Glasgow Dental School could never fix when I was a teenager) so they feel a bit strange and they’ll take a bit of getting used to. They’re also how shall we put it, whiter than my natural teeth and suspiciously straight and smooth, they look a bit like a gleaming block of yuppie flats in amongst a slum area. Haven’t quite worked up enough courage to try biting yet. Dentist said I didn’t look too excited looking at them in the mirror. Again I’m just not a visual person, looks don’t thrill me, functionality every time. Maybe part of me was also thinking “Christ I could have bought a MacBook Pro for what I’ve just had put into my mouth”.

I’ve gone through this pretty gory,gruelling treatment programme not for looks but to try to restore by biting ability, still some fillings to get done on the back teeth. When it comes to the crunch - my test will be can I bite into an apple without leaving a trail of blood round the bite, with my old decayed teeth there were plenty of foods I just wouldn’t contemplate eating for fear of breaking/snapping off teeth. Because the front teeth are straight now rather than concave previously the net effect is that right now they feel like buck teeth, sticking out more, so I better do some Janet Street Porter impressions quickly before they settle down. Will I be able to whistle again? Friends and family are hoping not.

Technorati Tags: dentist, crowns

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I had a dream. A bit unusual really because I normally don’t remember dreams but this one had a pair of characters from a previous attempt at NaNoWriMo turning up and dutifully supplying a storyline that would have taken me over the 50K finish line (I ran out of plot/steam). Thing was it was not for 2006 but 2005. Where have these dormant characters been? Better late than never? What to do now though, dig out the documents and write it up just for the hell of it? Too late to ‘win’. Let it pass? Frustrating when you have the creativity you don’t have the time and when you have the time you don’t have the creativity. Grrr.

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo, creativity

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Well happy 2007 everybody. Each year I go through the same dilemma. Should I make any New Year’s resolutions. As years go I by I get less and less minded to do as I’ve been concentrating a lot more on enjoying the moment rather than planning for the future. Still, what the hell, here’s some of my geekier wishes for the year ahead.

• Learn Gaelic, I’d like to know enough to understand what singers are saying at the Mod (I’ve had two abortive attempts at this already, third time lucky?)
• Write a native app for the Mac using Carbon and Objective-C, even a Hello World will do.
• Build a feed management tool in Java
• Provide a comprehensive stats website for the Scottish Parliament elections in May
• Relaunch Quine Online, yes I know, I know, could have said that every year for the last decade but there’s been real progress this year but there’s nothing visible to show for it yet. I’ve spent a lot of the last quarter doing boring consolidation of my domain portfolio of over 30 names, sorting out new hosting arrangements, separating friends and family sites from Quine infrastructure, tidying up many project sites from over 10 years on the web with different technologies hasn’t been simple.
• Been working on some fun projects with my pal Katie Meldrum, hope these make her dulcet tones known around the world.

Technorati Tags: Gaelic, New Year, resolutions, Carbon, Scottish Parliament, Quine, Katie Meldrum

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Had an absolute nightmare of a time at the dentist today. On Monday I’d had a root canal and a temporary filling placed over it with a proper filling due to replace it today, it was an uncomfortable process but not painful during treatment. Afterwards though, it was sore for a solid couple of days but seemed OK today for the next phase. Then in the treatment room he utters the fateful words

“The X-Rays look good. Since we’ve removed the nerve you shouldn’t feel anything in that tooth. Let’s do this without a local (anaesthetic)”. I meekly replied “Are you sure?”, he “Yes”. “OK”

Famous Last Words. He was drilling half-way into the earth core before he noticed the tears spilling down my cheeks, I was too shocked, pained and stressed to raise my hand to alert him to stop and when he did stop I could barely speak for crying. Just what kind of mutant teeth do I have? The nerve physically *removed* but I’m still feeling pain from the drill work, if I hadn’t been having treatment I would have said it was a toothache kind of pain, throbbing but what the feck was causing it? He changed the drill bit and that seemed to be a little better but still painful. I feel bad for the very sweet young dental assistant, she looked mortified. Apologies all round but he still looked non-plussed and didn’t have an explanation for what might be causing the hurting. I’ve spent more than 5 hours in the chair already and maybe 3 or 4 sessions still to go. This episode has really spooked me. If you’ll forgive the pun, will I get my nerve back?

Technorati Tags: dentist, root canal, pain

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Just switched to full RSS feeds on this blog rather than summaries. There are twice as many subscribers to Scottish lass than there are to my Big Brother feed, wee sister bigger than big brother? Interesting times.

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I had a couple of teeth pulled yesterday including a wisdom tooth. I’ve spent today working on my Marlon Brando impersonations now that my jaw is puffed out to where my cheekbone is, which would be fine if I had a square face but as it’s me it’s the Don Corleone look instead. Next week root treatments. Fun, fun, fun. You can just about see the gleam of pound signs in my dentist’s eyes. Amidst the pain I have to acknowledge that my abuse of the hard stuff, i.e. Irn Bru and Pepsi is partly responsible for my current malaise with my own negligence. I do the worst possible thing with sugary chemical drinks and that’s the girly thing of sipping, take a sip, put the bottle down, half an hour later another sip and repeat. I don’t like hot drinks while I’m working because the gap between sips means drinks go cold. Guys just glug down fizzy drinks whereas I bathe my mouth in acid all day, nae wunner the teeth are crumbling, the Acropolis is probably in a better state than my teeth right now. Inspite of it all I wouldn’t have changed my behaviour, I wouldn’t have swapped the sheer pleasure gained from consuming ‘ginger’ which refreshes me like no other concoction and I speak as a tee-totaller. Fair trade?

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Mildly amusing this blogging scene. I feel a bit like a grandparent stumbling into a teenage party. I’d ‘retired’ from blogging after over 5 years only as it was starting to take off. It’s more than a wee bit strange starting again and seeing how much simpler the systems have become. Jeez things are so easy these days for you kids. So many free gizmos. WYSIWYG, Christ you don’t even have to “Select All” these days these blog tools just add their whizzy JavaScript to do it for you, how lazy can you get.

I been through quite a few self-publishing tools over the years as well as ye olde world hand coding, let’s see Userland Frontier (I paid hundreds of quid for this in the late nineties and now it’s free!) maybe a spot of claybasket, Manilla, Radio Userland, Moveable Type, Blogger and now WordPress. Not sure if I’m staying with WordPress yet, I’m really liking Drupal that I’m using at work and it seems more multi-purpose and developer-oriented and I’m already using it for my Scottish Election site, the taxonomy system is amazingly powerful but Drupal in turn isn’t so strong on the blogging side.

I got a real shock when I totalled up my stats over the years for this domain or at least since I started recording traffic, over 3 million hits recorded since 2001 and it’s been pretty dead the last couple of years, that’s insane, again probably 99% traffic TV blog related, no me.

I’ve duly been faffing and adding my del.ici.ous tags, setting up FeedBurner, Google Analytics and Google Adsense and claiming my Technorati feed and still had time to watch Corrie. No bad. Don’t expect this site to look good visually any time soon though. This stuff used to take an eternity now a few clicks and you’re done. What? It willnae dae the writing fir me? Ach gie it time.

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