This isn't just coffee; this is mysteriously cheap M&S coffee

Whatever else you may say about Marks & Spencer's, it generally isn't cheap. M&S stuff, while it may or may not be better than other supermarkets' equivalents, will almost always be more expensive.

Except for coffee.

A rundown of coffee beans you can get in supermarkets in Dublin (all 250g bags):

Some major brand in Dunnes at 4 euro - Not great.

Starbucks in Tesco at 4.50 euro - Nice.

Tesco own brand in Tesco at 3.50 euro - Not great.

Random fairtrade brand in Tesco at 5 euro - Not great.

Java Republic in Superquinn at 5 euro - Very nice.

M&S own-brand (Fairtrade) in M&S at 2.50 euro - Very nice.

Makes no sense at all. Presumably the excessive price of the salt and pepper and other things which ared the same everywhere but more expensive in M&S subsidises the coffee.

Unfortunate Ubuntu Lucid issue on Amazon EC2

I was just setting up a test machine on EC2 last week. Of course, I used the latest, long-term support release of Ubuntu, 10.04 (Lucid). And it turns out that there's an issue where load is very high even when the machine isn't doing anything much. A number of people have reported the issue; they saw it on machines running MySQL and Postgres, but I can confirm that it's also present when running nothing but Memcached on the loopback interface; this leads me to suspect it may be some kernel network quirk. It's not clear whether it's just broken load reporting, or actual high load.

This is unfortunate because the previous version of Ubuntu (9.10 Karmic) is not a long-term support release, so support (and non-super-critical updates) will be ending soon. But for the time being Lucid is broken on EC2. I hope this is resolved soon; I really do not be wanting to set up a production environment on Karmic at this late stage.

Different for the sake of it

From the product formerly known as Flex Builder, on MacOS:

This, by the way, is from Flash Builder, which is, generally, an Eclipse-based application which looks like Eclipse. But this dialog is special. MacOS has a perfectly good yes/no dialog box, of course, but naturally, it wouldn't do to use this.

In fairness, more effort was put into this than is entirely normal; the 'Yes' and 'No' are arranged according to the MacOS human interface guidelines, not the Windows one. I didn't even notice this until I came to complain about the dialog, but it shows that there's some thought going into this.

And then there is the weird background colour, and the blue outline... And I'm not even going to mention the atypical capitalisation. No, I won't. Ugh.

Apple can't make up its mind on the current version of Safari

From Apple's Safari page.

Hmm. For what it's worth, Safari 5 is on software update, now.

WWDC streaming!

Video feed here, it seems.


The funny thing is, if one wanted to stream an Apple event... One would probably be best to use an Android phone, at least in the US. AT&T's data network will no doubt be swamped due to the high concentration of Apple users and general crapness of AT&T's data network.

1-800 Dial a Bee

Important story about bees:

Strapping a pair of mobile phones to the side of a bee hive can lead to a dramatic decline in honey and bee production, researchers have claimed.

So, erm, stop doing that, I suppose.

BEWARE THE VULGAR NUN JOKES

So I was just reading the Wikipedia page for one of my favourite webcomics, and it was mentioned that the Catholic League included a complaint about one of his cartoons in a list of things that they complain about; the Catholic League is a complaint-oriented organisation, which likes to do things like moan about how the Irish media is being mean to our beloved priests by daring to mention that some of them are child rapists and how Philip Pullman and Joan Osborne and PZ Myers are the devil  and other such hysterical nonsense, headed up by a loon called William Donohue.

Anyway, here's the page of complaints. You'll note that the Catholic League really enjoys a good complain. Some gems:

The movie "Saving Silverman" opened nationally [...] Vulgar nun jokes were included.

Vulgar nun jokes!

The plot involves a homosexual man visited by Jesus. There are various scenes involving the gay man, his boyfriend and Jesus, including a scene where the Jesus figure surprises the gay man in a bathtub and changes the water into wine.

Kinky!

The John Travolta movie, "Domestic Disturbance," contained a violent scene in a prostitute's room that showed a large crucifix on the wall and a statue of Our Blessed Mother.

NO JESUS FOR SLATTERNS.

A section entitled "Confessional" shows a priest with green hair and an earring, with the Go-Go's logo on his priestly garb. 

NO HAIR DYE FOR PRIESTS!

Cartoon artwork accompanying the story in the Cleveland Scene depicts an eye-shadowed Jesus with nipple rings.

More kinky Jesus, it seems.

The New York Times ran a photo of Peter Vallone, Speaker of the City Council of New York, with the caption stating that "Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone goes to Mass every day, but he's not so charitable to his political opponents these days."

Just looking for things to complain about...

The New York Daily News published a photo of a Holy Week procession in Spain. The caption explained that in the 15th century, penitents wore hoods to protect their identities. The photo, however, showed the penitents wearing white hoods with cone heads that Americans could easily mistake for hooded Klansmen.

But, erm, that's an actual tradition. Surely it is anti-Catholic bigotry for the Catholic League to complain about Catholic traditions?

A photo of a man dressed as a Catholic bishop appeared in theLos Angeles Times with the caption stating that "Archbishop Edmund Gilbert could face death by hanging." The story noted that a "prominent churchmen stands accused of murdering a 15-year-old schoolgirl." It was not until six paragraphs into the story that it is noted that the accused "archbishop" is a Baptist.

Baptists stealing the Holy Mother Church's fashion designers.

 On Easter Sunday, Suburban Trends ran a front-page picture of a local homeowner's display of the Last Supper which substituted pink plastic flamingos for the Apostles. 

Hehehe.

Parishioners at a Mass at St. Mary's in Rutherford were seen raising their right arms in a way that the newspaper compared to the Nazi salute. In a follow-up editorial the papers did not apologize, commenting instead that if "a non-Catholic popped into Mass during the blessing, he or she would likely be confused or offended." To which the Catholic League replied, "had you not been so ignorant of Roman Catholicism you would never have been offended in the first place." 

Erm, okay, so the Catholic League attacks Spanish Catholics for looking like the KKK, but defends other Catholics for looking like Nazis? What?

Accompanying a column on the national embryonic stem cell research by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, the Commercial Appeal printed a cartoon showing those opposed to the federal funding of the research as living in a cave and opposing scientific advances throughout history. It clearly stoked the fires of anti-Catholicism.

IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU.

 The strip, which was too vulgar for the Catholic League to reproduce in its 2001 Annual Report featured a conversation between a teddy bear-like character and Jesus. The non-sensical conversation ended with the bear aluding to a homosexual experience only to tell Jesus, “Relax Jesus, I’m just f------ with ya.”

More sexy, sexy Jesus.

The alternative newspaper The Wave published a satirical piece about unusual phobias. Among them was "Papaphobia," or fear of the pope. 

That's not an unusual phobia.

FOX’s "Ally McBeal" depicted a dream sequence where the main character is on a flight to visit her boyfriend. A nun sitting next to her questions her about her sex life with her boyfriend and begins to recommend various contraceptives such as condoms, diaphragms, etc. 

More vulgar nuns.


And then there are a bunch of complaints about weird fetish websites about the pope, too obscene, or possibly boring, to reproduce here.


By the way, this same group which is so upset if somebody should make fun of its beloved Catholic Church also likes to publish articles with headlines like 'JEWISH GAY AGNOSTIC HERO MADE A SAINT' with snide comments from Donohue about Harvey Milk. And, from the same source:

No, this is not a news release about Rahm Emanuel, though it could have been. After all, he is the pro-abortion Jew who is working quietly to shape the health bill. But I wouldn't have characterized his lobbying that way. Why? Because to do so would have smacked of Jew-baiting.

Oh, I wouldn't do that! Well, I just did, but I wouldn't!


More about the charming old bigot:

William A. Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has made 23 guest appearances on TV news programs in 2004. Donohue uses his appearances primarily to attack gays and progressives. He has referred to the "gay death style," remarked, "God forbid we'd run out of little gay kids," claimed that Senator John Kerry "never found an abortion he couldn't justify," and claimed that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular ... Hollywood likes anal sex."

Oh, no! Secular gay abortion-Jews!