I’m sorry to hear this and hope it works out. Marriage is a freaky thing. From what I remember, 75% to 100% loss of deposit wasn’t unusual within the month. And to be fair, they’re not going to get another booking within three weeks (although they’re not going to be paying their casual waiting staff for work they didn’t do either).

It’s a complete pisser but I think by dropping it to below 50% they may be being more than reasonable. Sorry. =:(

If the contract doesn’t have cancellation policies (or you haven’t signed a contract), then tell them to whistle.

Mnnnnooooo… Think of it the other way around: someone promises to pay you GBP100 to replace a boiler at their house on Monday morning. On Sunday night, they call you and tell you not to bother. You don’t think they’re liable to you for *anything*?

Unfortunately, an iPod won’t do the crossfade, just iTunes.

brick – I was in the same position. If you have a definitive song list and you’re happy doing it all in advance:

1) Drop them all into iTunes;

2) set them up in the order you want to play them in a playlist;
then set up iTunes so it does its automatic crossfade over e.g. 15 seconds;

3) then (this is the bit that takes all the buggering about) for each track set the points where song begins and ends so that when the iTunes crossfade kicks in, it’s not too jarring. The point of this step is so that you don’t end up having the fade up and the fade down of singing going over each other for example – and also you are not going to want to play the full 4-5 minutes album version of every song necessarily;

4) then once you have everything playing/fading in a “super disco mix” just like you want it in iTunes, download Audacity, which is a free sound recorder. You then hit record on Audacity, hit play on iTunes and record the whole mix.

5) Then you export the mix from Audacity to MP3 or CD format, and then just burn a CD of it. Audacity gives you an option to split a recording up into separate (seamless) tracks, which might be a good idea e.g. in case it gets scratched so you don’t have to start the music right back from the beginning! And make 2-3 copies just in case.

This worked really well for the people I was doing it for – they only had about 30-45 minutes of disco music in the end (Scottish wedding meant ceilidh music etc) but it was no different from having a DJ that is just given a list of stuff to play.

The bonus of having it on CD is that you can just give it to anyone to play on the machine and you don’t have to watch it.

All of the above is very easy – if you can edit a Word document, you can make it work. Try not to do it the night before, like I did…

Alternatively, you can still do it all from a laptop running iTunes if you’re willing to stand in front of it. I would recommend still doing steps 1-3 so that the transitions are less crunchy/painful – but if you wanted to skip songs or fade up/down or throw another request in, you’d still have the flexibility to do that too.

Check out these:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1471353
http://ask.metafilter.com/35689/Burn-baby-burn-ambient-inferno
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/tutorial_common_ed_3.html

I think those are all fair questions and it’s easy to believe that heavy/ excessive/ abusive use of any substance from crack to corn will cause you problems sooner or later.

But that’s a million miles away from saying “gore blimey ecstasy gives you mental health problems and causes delayed early death” (whatever that is supposed to mean)…

Skydrive (the other part of Windows Live) supposedly has 25gb of free online storage…but unfortunately it appears to be offline at the moment: http://skydrive.live.com/

No its the mental disorders/depression in later life that gets them in the end. A delayed early-death in alot of cases I bet.

Sigh. Got any evidence for that?

that is…..if….he isnt working for comrade Brown of course.

You think Brown might be borrowing ideas from Slobodan Milosevic and Robert Mugabe?
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/06/zimbabwe.tsvangirai.accident/
http://212.58.226.17:8080/1/hi/world/europe/464123.stm

obviously it’s the ramblers on E that are by far the worst

no one ever died from heat exhaustion and taking E in a club, quite a few died from drinking too much.

Unfortunately, that’s not true. It’s a (relatively) easily managed risk but certainly quite a few people have died from heatstroke after taking E.

There is tons of information out there on E + hyperthermia e.g. “The most common cause of MDMA-related death, however, is due to the drug inducing a rise in body temperature to the point of hyperthermia (overheating)” http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/e_guide.html , which is about as far from hysterical frothing Daily Mail moral panic as you can get.

There needs to be a party that has the immigration policy of Australia – entry considered if a) you have money and can support yourself for a period of time so as not to consume limited state resources, and b) you are able to demonstrate ability or education to a standard which is desirable to others.

Except that a) you’re missing out another fifty ways to enter/live in Australia and b) this system already exists in the UK: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/tier1/general/

Also interesting that you chose to talk about immigration in the context of the BNP. No-one ever wants to talk about their economic, environmental, education, health or pensions policy. It’s almost as if their entire policy was banging on about foreigners and the EU…

(UKIP are blazer-wearing members of the bowls club that don’t like foreigners, dark-skinned people, wreckers of law and order, Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists, union leaders, Communist union leaders, atheists, agnostics, long-haired weirdos, short-haired weirdos, vandals, hooligans, football supporters, namby-pamby probation officers, rapists, papists, papist rapists, foreign surgeons, headshrinkers who ought to be locked up, Wedgwood Benn, keg bitter, punk rock, glue-sniffers, ‘Play For Today’, squatters and Chinese restaurants, but whose arthritis is too bad to actually go out and chuck bricks through their windows. The BNP are the people who’d be willing to chuck bricks.)

does anyone know whether Muslims or any other religion accept gay leaders?

No, no, no, the Ern police says you’re not allowed to be interested in the matter unless you’re a paid-up member of that congregation.

“I thought she was shown to have died of water intoxication ??”

Yes, that woman has it backwards. Betts died of water poisoning at home, not at licensed premises from a lack of water. What is she is confusing it with is something that happened at the same time: people kept going to clubs, taking E, not being able to drink water and keeling over on the dancefloor. I think it was (some) local councils that made it a condition of club/alcohol licenses that they had to give free water to the punters.

Israel is kept afloat by dosh from the USA – so indirectly at least USA is funding its nukes.

That’s a completely different statement (itself of questionable accuracy) to the earlier one.

Its idiots interpretation of a ancient novel (which was probably amended in later years to persecute homosexuality in the faithful)

I don’t get it – why is it so easy to believe that ancient Jewish scholars were *more* progressive on the issue of homosexuality than their successors?

I’ve given up reading a daily paper, they all just annoy me too much. But The Guardian was my choice in the past. I think buying Saturdays would probably be the optimal.

Amercia is funding Israel’s illegal nuclear programme.

Is it? I thought (from my mate’s dad who was in the South African military and spent a suspiciously long time in Israel) that the story was that Israel had hidden development of nuclear weapons from the US by co-operating with apartheid South Africa.

The briefest of google searches on this fails to bring up any reliable info on that, though, but plenty of stuff that has US law as requiring sanctions on any country that violates anti-proliferation treaties. (Not that that’s worked with India or Pakistan, apparently). :(

c) Go back to garage and say “sorry, boys, the council only gave me 75% of what you quoted me (and here’s the letter) – can you still do it?”.

I’d at least give them the option. Offer to pay cash so no card charges. I bet the garage has a little padding in there. And no-one expects every quote to turn into business.

Bets on this being buried?

Naah, the issue is sure to rise again…

I’ve never managed to work out what business the church (or anyone else for that matter) has with what I or anyone else gets up to in their own bedroom

Because, err, each Church is in the business of moralizing about people’s behaviour, it believes God (the Almighty Creator of the Universe) has laid down some pretty definite rules about how to conduct yourself, that if you disobey those rules, you will be damned to torment in hell, and their calling is to shepherd as many people as possible to heaven by following the example of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

That 2000 year old mission doesn’t stop because a few poncy middle class Northern European men developed a theory of liberalism that includes a distinction between the public and private spheres (as far as it’s concerned).

You may suggest the Church (any church) take its opinions about what you do in your bedroom and ram them; you may certainly fight any attempt by the Church to impose its beliefs on homosexuality, mixing fibres or shellfish on you; but you can’t really be surprised that they’re interested in people’s private lives…

TJ, yes, sorry – I think Junkyard is much more convincing. Directly relevant statute has got to be a better source for age of sexual consent than a precedent that relates to medical treatment and is subjective on the child.

Edit: if it does have ATF, how does it smell and what does it look like? New ATF looks like Ribena and smells OK, burned/old ATF looks like chocolate milkshake and smells terrible.

Back when I had a crap car with a conventional automatic gearbox, the traditional advice for any initial problem was to change the Automatic Transmission Fluid. It works a lot of the time and even if it doesn’t, it’s still a good thing to do and relatively cheap.

But I have no idea whether that would help you here.

TJ – no, surely Gillick is about consent to medical treatment, not consent to sex?

Whoever posts the most under their many logins.

The guy on my right shoulder says BELLend, the guy on my left says LEGend

lol

In the same vein as my shed link yesterday: http://gizmodo.com/5267992/surely-mehrzelles-inhalt-multicellular-caravan-is-a-mistake

“And even with Tesco on my doorstep, I’d rather not shop there for ethical reasons. “

Heh – “I’d rather eat the decaying corpses of my relatives than shop at Tesco” could be a great campaign slogan!

PS

Rest of the poster on the right reads
“to San Jose
without delay,
by the way”

unless you’re a member of the Baptist Church, I can’t see why you might be interested.

Did anyone actually read the article?

The appointment is to a position within the Church of Scotland. The Church of Scotland is not the same as the/any Baptist Church. This particular Zion Baptist Church is a single, evangelical church in Glasgow. It is not part of the Church of Scotland.

The appointment of a gay (well, apparently happy and openly gay, unlike the others) minister is potentially of interest to people who aren’t Baptists – like, for instance, members of the Church of Scotland or anyone that’s interested in justice and religion (not that those two things go together than often).

WTF it has to do with the rentamob from Zion Baptist Church is less clear – perhaps it just makes a change from protesting outside Marilyn Manson gigs. (I bet Brian would have been touched by their presence and appreciated the kerfuffle – it’s been ages since anyone found him outrageous). And I have no idea why the BBC bothered mentioning those Kansas bampots, as they have no presence in Scotland and are nothing to do with the issue whatsoever.

Ahh, just saw this supercool structure and thought I would post it up:
http://gizmodo.com/5266490/portable-french-log-cabin-would-not-have-pleased-honest-abe

Flake House by OLGGA Architects

The question is, konabunny, what alternatives would you come up with that don’t already exist?…Would it really be better to have no prisons at all?

Well, most likely we’d have a better idea of what methods worked if we were clearer on what exactly we were trying to achieve. At the moment, English law tries to achieve a whole bunch of different and often contradictory aims all at the same time. Deterrence, condemnation, punishment and rehabilitation all often point in different directions, for instance. IMO this leads to none of the objectives being achieved satisfactorily.

Consequently (and ignoring your sarcastic tone for a second ;) ), I don’t necessarily think that abolishing prisons would be a good idea because we don’t know what the purpose is supposed to be.

It’s a bit like coming across a guy beating his car engine with a mallet to try to make it work. You ask him, “what the hell are you trying to do with that mallet?” and he replies, “well, the **** screwdriver isn’t going to be any better, is it? So I’ll just keep doing this…”

(The analogy obviously doesn’t work if he’s trying to give the bushes a bit of a nudge because in that case a mallet might be the perfect tool).

Prison isn’t meant to be an oubliette where we chuck repugnant people to rot.

I dunno – you ask what prison is for, you look at what happens in real life and then you’re kind of left with the conclusion that the main reason prison still exists is because it’s already in use and no proven alternatives exist.

“it actually means that she has to serve at least 10 years and is eligible for parole after 5.”

There are lots of different factors that go into sentencing, some to do with the nature of the crime, the offender’s characteristics, and some are outward facing (deterrance, retribution etc).

If she managed to tick every box to do with her 100% and every possible outward-facing factor was 100% in favour of early release, it would technically be possible for her to be released on licence after 5 years.

This will not happen.

The Indian factory just launched a new model, I believe…

Grumm – that made me LOL. I don’t have a source because I don’t remember where I read it!

I don’t expect the police to be called in and someone to be accused of being a paedophile on the merest suspicion that they perhaps spent too long cleaning the gush on a child’s leg…But the church always needs to investigate any suspicions it might have to establish whether there is a basis for the police to be called in. Bleeding obvious I would have thought.

Actually, you’re wrong. If there’s a suspicion or allegation of child abuse, the appropriate step is to inform social services and/or the police, and to let them decide how to pursue the matter. You don’t try to play Columbo and investigate it yourself. Investigations are not easy to conduct in the first place, doubly so where there’s criminal or civil liability, and triply so when the (possible) victims are children.

And that especially applies if you’re an organisation that has actively covered up and facilitated child abuse in the past. Asking the Catholic Church to investigate claims of child abuse is like asking La Cosa Nostra to investigate claims of tax exasion.

only a few years ago the nspcc were discovered to be taking something like 88p+ in every £1 donated for ‘admin’.

Don’t forget that any “admin” figure includes salaries for people that actually know WTF they are talking about. Friend was director of a charity that helped social services/orphanages etc in E Europe reform/restructe. They were able to retain experts in the field on a salary to pursue long-term reforms and projects. Then a few major donors started jumping up and down about high “admin” costs which mean they stopped giving – the charity had to lay off the experts and switch off the long term projects – and now they are stuck with jumping from short-term project to short-term project depending on what’s fashionable in grantwriting this year, and their experts (and their knowledge) has been scattered to the four winds.

Why are people so credulous when it comes to the belief that other people’s jobs are cushy and luxurious? Charity workers, civil servants, teachers, prisoners…

“Now four percent seems a pretty high figure to me – are four percent of all people generally accused of sexual abuse? “

Dunno – but forty to sixty percent of women have been sexually abused, so it hardly seems that high. (I don’t have a source for that statistic, obviously).

“Absolute rubbish but due the nature of it difficult to either prove or disprove, and lack of prrof is taken as evidence.”

People with faith don’t want or need evidence.

http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?frmGB=1&frmPartyID=682&frmType=partydetail

Curious!

I agree entirely, which is why ErnieFredRudeboy’s suggestion that there is a conflict between believing that the Church should disclose and the Church shouldn’t be expected to investigate itself is nonsense.

There is a difference between disclosure and co-operation on one hand, and on self-investigation/regulation on the other. A bleeding obvious difference, in fact.

Meanwhile, although I would hardly describe Australia as a developing country, this is an interesting/related article: “A NUMBER of Catholic priests living in Sydney are expected to be implicated in child abuse when a long-awaited report is published today…The report could have serious implications in Australia, as it is believed many of the offending priests were moved after complaints were made against them.”
http://www.smh.com.au/national/irish-report-likely-to-implicate-sydney-priests-on-sex-abuse-20090519-beao.html