Cats and Eurovision

I've had my cat now for about 9 months and he's been a good pet for the most part until he decides to do his own thing. I can now read how feels but one of the things of confusion is a cat's wagging tail. A lot of resources tell you that the cat is either angry or indecisive, which to me is not a good thing but it can also mean showing affection and contentedness if the tail is wagging by the tip for instance.

A lot has been said about the Eurovision song contest. The UK have done so badly in recent years and this year's entry from x-factor hopeful Andy Abraham was fairly decent and yet it came joint last. Basically, each country seem to be voting for neighbouring countries and hence Russia came out on top. It could be argued that neighbouring countries would be familiar with the country's artists. However if someone big represent UK came to sing in the competition would they win? The only other way I can see the UK doing well is get a famous Russian to perform the song. For example, we could have Boris Yeltzin. (Note, my good friend says it always comes up as Boris Yeltzin instead of Boris Gardner on his media player)

The bloc voting is a joke and Sir Terry Wogan who commentates on the the event for the BBC is threatening to quit over it in disgust. Mind you, I thought the reason why he's commentating and why we love it so much, is that he takes the mickey out of the show.

Also it looks like the UK could lose their bye into the final. That would be interesting, it's unclear if the UK will cut their funding as a result as the main reason why they don't have to qualify is that they are part of the big four (with France, Germany and Spain) that do the bulk of the funding for the event.

The other thing that could improve the situation is have regional qualification and have one song represent say Scandinavia, the Baltics, the Med, etc...

Lucky Buck Futter that Daniel Bedingfield is...

You know just looking at some old music videos floating about. One is of Daniel Bedingfield's "Gotta get thru this", which was a UK #1 hit in both 2001 and 2002. There are two versions of the video. The UK version that is set all over London but primarily in the Docklands and the Millennium Bridge. The US version was in a studio but I am pretty sure some of the scenes were from Toronto, there's one scene where he passes a bus stop which distinctly says "Ontario". I know a Toronto bus stop when I see one. Anyways the director is Canadian!

Anyhow old Daniel was such a lucky duck to work with two very cute girls. The UK version, the girl looked a like much cuter version of Sophie Ellis Bextor. Whilst the girl in the US version looks a little like Jessica Alba.

Buck Futter was coined in a skit from Saturday Night Live...

Ubuntu and Caviar don't mix

I finally got round to looking at a PC that I bought way back in December. I wanted to use a different hard drive to the one that came with the PC (which has Windows XP installed). I stripped another computer down and tried to use the hard drive from it. The drive in question was an old Western Digital Caviar, model WD450AA. This is 45GB hard drive running at 5400rpm. But it has been around seen 2000. Very old. Anyways I tried to install ubuntu (server) on it. Ubuntu did not recognise the hard drive and complained that "No hard drive was detected". Windows 98 fdisk did find the drive and anyways that hard drive had been running Windows 2000. I replaced that drive with the hard disk that came with the PC (a seagate 40GB drive) and that was recognised by the ubuntu installation. Of course, I terminated the installation at the point.

I was seriously trying to bash my head and get it to work. But sanity or more to point sleep got the better of me and I gave up.

I could ghost the seagate and then ghost the image on to the caviar. But it is an old device. I am trying to save money at the moment but I've decided to bit the bullet on this one and ordered a seagate 80gb drive for 25 quid.