I have had my knuckles rapped by none other than my wife. She feels that in that last piece I got carried away and have caused offence to the worlds catholics. She gave me a good telling off I can tell you! She particularly felt that calling for the citizens of Vatican City to be hauled into St. Peter’s Square and burnt at the stake was one sentence too far and didn’t believe I had made it clear that this was just a metaphorical burning and not a real one.

So - to be fair - let me state right out that I have nothing against catholics. I think you’re wrong but I have nothing against you. I have had many, many catholic friends over the years and, as with every walk of life, there are good catholics and there are bad catholics. My argument is not with you - it is with the way your organisation has behaved over the last two thousand years, - especially the first one and a half millennia - and, I suspect, wished it still could.

From the earliest days of the intentional corrupting of the teachings of Jesus, to the final act of the Inquisition (1858) I do not know how many people have been slaughtered for their beliefs; how many wars have been waged in the name of God; how many people have been tortured into false confessions of their imagined heresy; how much land and property has been stolen to fill the church coffers; how many people have been forced into a life of poverty; how much earlier the catholic dominated world would have progressed in the areas of science and art and literature and music had these not been repressed… I do not know. But I do know that just one, single life, taken in the name of Jesus invalidates everything he stood for and corrupts beyond redemption his teachings.

This does not mean I despise catholics. I do not understand how anyone can happily belong to such an organisation but that, as they say, is between you and your God. I do not judge people or choose my friends based upon their religion.

If I gave offence then yes - I am sorry to hear that. But at the same time, I would urge you to delve into the history of your church.

There is a promotional ‘ad’ seen often on BBC News 24 where the Vatican correspondent makes the statement that the Vatican ‘works in centuries not in years’ and if that is indeed the case, then the current papal incumbent will not have been at all surprised to have just been served with a lawsuit pertaining to events 700 years ago. Must seem like only yesterday in fact.

I have to admit the news that The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ have filed a lawsuit to have their good name reinstated by the Vatican is one of those news items that gave me enormous pleasure. The Association’s members are, they claim, the rightful heirs to the famed Knights Templar.

In 1307, the King of France - Philip IV - had bankrupted his treasury waging wars and had borrowed heavily from the Templars. Following unsubstantiated rumours of heresy and ‘ungodly’ practices within the order, he saw having it outlawed a way out of his financial difficulties and persuaded the Pope - Clement V - to do just that. On Friday 13th October, in a well organised Europe-wide operation, Templars were rounded up, arrested and their lands and wealth confiscated. Hundreds were tortured to force admission of heresy and many were executed - most usually by burning at the stake. The Vatican always did have a thirst for blood-letting in imaginative and inhuman ways but of course, I am sure God instructed them to do this so it’s all right then.

The lawsuit, while claiming that it is the good name and reputation of the Templars that must be exonerated, also calculates that the value of land, money and possessions that were seized by the Vatican 700 years ago is, today, worth some 79 Billion UK Pounds (100 Billion Euros). I like that bit!

Bearing in mind I am just talking about the leadership here and not the millions of Catholics across the world who practice this cursed religion - but I’d like to see the modern day Templars storm the Vatican and burn everyone within out in St. Peters Square. The world would have been a better place over the last 2000 years without this evil spreading it’s hatred, intolerance and vile doctrines.

Good luck to them I say. But I would still go after the money - they have an excellent case.

For my photo and graphic editing needs I use Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. While Adobe have always annoyed me for their complete and arrogant disregard for UI standards, their Photoshop software has to be considered pretty good stuff and the trimmed down ‘consumer’ level Elements does more than I need. And finally, for the Mac, they recently released version 6 which runs natively on the Intel processor and has the speed and robustness previous versions lacked.

So far so good. Is there a negative coming up? Sure there is.

There is a growing tendency - and I believe Apple themselves started this trend - for a ‘black’ interface. Dialog boxes and toolbars are black with buttons and text being, well, nearly black. See for yourself on the illustration of Elements. It actually looks rather nice - I have nothing against black; I have a solid black desktop all the time. And when I am sitting in the office at my iMac with its great big screen, it is a pleasure to use.

When I use my MacBook Pro however, and this is the machine I use the most, I am usually out in the conservatory or on the patio under a sunshade. The screen is smaller. The ambient light is brighter. I load up Elements. And all I can see is… black. I can just about make out the text on that toolbar but there is no way I can see the textbox. Or the dropdown control. Or make out which tool is which in the tool palette. The very first time I installed and opened it up I was, in fact, outside and it was one of those ‘wtf’ moments as all I could see was black. Bloody black everywhere.

Take the test. See the bottom toolbar? Look along it until you find the word ‘Normal’. This is a drop down selection list so somewhere to the right is a little down arrow. Can you see it? Wait until night time and then turn out all the lights. You’ll be able to see it then. And if you can see it now tilt the screen to pretend you are working in a lighter room.

Professional software like this will go through hundreds of hours of design work and possibly thousands of hours of UI and usability testing. I am forced to assume that it was all done in a darkened room and nobody thought to turn the fucking lights on. Either that or everyone who works at Adobe has a mental age of 12.

And before anyone says anything - yes I have scoured the options, the help files, the documentation and nowhere does it say you can change it. ‘Bridge’ - the library program that comes bundled also has black on black and that can be changed. I even posted on the support forum and sent them a support request and guess what? Never even got a reply. That’s Adobe for you.

If you know how to fix this I will be indebted for the information. If you don’t, and like me prefer to be able to work at places of your own choosing, then I’d avoid this if I were you. Unless you’re under 12 that is.

Cuil: an old Irish word for knowledge. Apparently!

Anyone who knows me well may have heard my rant on the evils of Google. I loathe and distrust Google. They may well have started out as a nice little fluffy, ethical company - just like Adolf Hitler started out as a landscape painter, but, like Hitler, their status has almost grown into a religion and their power and stranglehold is beyond belief.

And yes - I use Google. It’s become a verb and you almost do it without thinking, the way Catholics genuflect and cross themselves. And yes - like a Nazi salute. You are so used to it that when you want to search the web - you just hit the ubiquitous ‘Google’ button that appears on every browser. But, at the same time, I have tried all the other search engines - and there are an astounding number out there - desperate to find one that stands up to the jolly blue giant.

Enter Cuil. OK - so some of the founders once worked for Google but this could just be the engine to give Google a run for it’s billions. (And yes - I know Google is now more than just a search engine but that’s the part I hate the most!).

You can find out more about Cuil here. I have been using it just for a day and I am already won over. At least give it a try.

It’s a can of Sardines right? From Sainsbury’s as it happens. Little fish - related to the Sprat and Herring.

Printed on the back it says:

Allergy Advice:
Contains Fish

Can I kill someone now?

Some time back in the early ’80s, I remember seeing, on the much missed science and technology programme Tomorrow’s World, a quite remarkable demonstration of a method for cleaning up oil spills at sea. It came in the form of a powder and was, I believe, developed in Japan. You just sprinkled some of this powder on the floating oil and within seconds it had turned into a sheet, described as being like soft chewing gum, that could literally be lifted off the ocean surface.

Did we ever see this technology used on subsequent and environmentally damaging oil spills? Of course we didn’t. For sure, there may have been all sorts of flaws and problems associated with the stuff - maybe it had other knock-on effects that made it unviable. Who knows. But it had many, many technological siblings as so much that was showcased on this excellent programme seemed to disappear just as quickly into obscurity.

In a comment left by fractiverse on a recent item, I was given a link to what is, to me, a technology that sounds just as revolutionary and necessary as the Japanese magic powder. This is a machine that, using microwaves, converts waste plastics back into diesel oil and other useful stuff from which it was made. As I have said quite recently, the science behind all this sort of thing just evaporates in my brain a minute or two after I have read it but I still said ‘Wow’!

OK - so there may be 101 reasons why this is not a good idea. But I would have thought there were equally 101 reasons why it is - many of which are covered by the article in the New Scientist link above. Seems to me the more of this sort of technology we embrace, the closer we can get to reversing the harm we are doing to our planet - and it’s still the only one we’ve got.