Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in enlivend's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 26th, 2012
8:42 am	You people have got a good case. Why aren't you publicising it? In the May 26th 1985 issue of Red Rag: Bracknell anarchists run a 24 hour squat in the old cinema and 300 people turn up to watch a film, play with paints, and enjoy a 5-band gig; the following weekend there's another gig at the same venue but with different organisers and this time the event is unashamedly money making. It'll take ten years to build a £75 million road system through Reading that will only cope with five years' worth of rush hours for the 40% of Berkshire who travel by car; we remember the fuss about the possible links between the Pill and cervical cancer; Reading Borough Council notices that advertising for playworkers in Reading's Only might result in some very undesirable characters working with Reading's children; a revolution which fails to make the reinvention of everyday life its central aim will leave us standing in paradise (or: why not to declaim at your houseplants); and Laura was unhappy about her letter not being printed in the last issue and has written a letter to complain, but we haven't printed that either. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
6:44 pm	Lattices isomorphic to their ideal lattices Today I finished reading a paper from a Maths journal ("Lattices isomorphic to their ideal lattices", by Dennis Higgs, from Algebra Universalis (1971) 1: 71-72). Actually I'm feeling really very chuffed with myself as I think it's the first time I've ever attempted an algebra paper, let alone got through the entire thing and out the other end. It's just one side long and understanding it only took me six weeks. (Not full-time, I hasten to add. But still...) I'm wondering now whether to try and write up my notes in neat as a way of winkling out any remaining misapprehensions, or to go away and generally get a life. I might be swayed by offers of supervision from anyone who understands this stuff better than I do. If any non-mathematicians are still reading and wonder what all the fuss might be about, the paper explains how - for instance - you can take a fairly small infinite set (say: all the fractions between zero and one) and by adding just one more member to that set (say: the square-root of one half) produce something whose structure is irreconcilably different. If you line both sets up in numerical order it turns out you cannot get them to match. (Whereas if you took that same set of fractions, doubled every one of them and then threw away everything greater than one, you'd end up with exactly what you started with. Even though you'd just evicted infinitely many fractions from it.) I guess that's just how it goes. It's given me plenty of food for thought along the way. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 12th, 2012
5:19 pm	Inside Greenham In the May 12th 1985 issue of Red Rag: in the first half of April over 100 women were arrested inside the airbase at USAF Greenham Common and charged with trespass. They had cut many holes in the perimeter fence, disturbed some rabbits, graffitied buildings with red paint, and made it onto the runway. Picnics are now being arranged inside the fence, not outside. Back in Reading, DHSS claimants under 26 living in Bed and Breakfasts will have to keep moving on every 4 weeks; a new, more severe Anarchist group hits the streets; someone around here's in trouble; and we consider the parental behaviour of the Mongolian Gerbil. At the pub, just ask where the meeting is. I don't know if the landlord will like Anarchists. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 28th, 2012
11:39 am	Amercian Werewolves in Britain? In the April 28th 1985 issue of Red Rag: following the cycles of the moon, the next Cruise convoy is predicted out on Salisbury Plain in May; a mass trespass onto the dispersal area is planned; this would be easier to arrange at the weekend, but the MOD refuses to co-operate over the timing. Fifteen new hospitals are to be built and then stand empty, waiting to receive American and N.A.T.O. personnel in the event of nuclear war; the Greenham Food Van will spend the summer supporting a re-opened Red Gate camp; fifty ways to kill the slugs in your back garden (some of them without flattening Reading in the process); and something quite disparaging about the situationists. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 14th, 2012
7:45 am	Swansong In the April 14th 1985 issue of Red Rag: two of the Greenham peace-campers are attacked in the night - one of them is hospitalised - and suspicion falls on U.S. servicemen; three other women have been found guilty of criminal damage at the base and one of them now faces a month in Holloway; two members of the Red Brigade are sent down for two years each, for fucking in the dock during their 1982 trial; Liz leaves Acorn; if you didn't understand what that Nosferatu article was about neither did we; and there are calls for patience as work gets under way on the two-mile road scheme that's going to solve all our traffic problems this side of 1990. Road works are expected to last for four and a half years, which means that this concrete monstrosity will be able to handle projected traffic flow for about three months. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 1st, 2012
11:25 am	Ink on the page I get sufficiently distracted by the sight of package prefixes that I tend to make rather heavy use of use-package — enough to call attention to myself in some circles. Reading Cyrus Harmon's piece on Cheminformatics this morning got me wondering whether there was a local alternative to package use... CL-USER 46 > (defmacro using ((&rest packages) &body body) (let ((packages (mapcar 'find-package packages))) (labels ((symbol-try (symbol package) (multiple-value-bind (symbol status) (find-symbol (symbol-name symbol) package) (when (eq status :external) ;; being lazy here about foo:nil symbol))) (symbol (symbol) (let ((possibles (remove nil (mapcar (lambda (package) (symbol-try symbol package)) packages)))) (cond ((cdr possibles) (error "Symbol ~a exported from more than one package: ~{~a~^, ~}" symbol (mapcar 'package-name possibles))) (possibles (car possibles))))) (form (form) (loop for thing in form collect (cond ((symbolp thing) (or (symbol thing) thing)) ((consp thing) (form thing)) (t thing))))) (let ((expansion (form body))) (if (cdr expansion) `(progn ,@expansion) (car expansion)))))) USING CL-USER 47 > (pprint (macroexpand-1 '(using (java) (with-open-file (out-stream pathname :direction :output :if-exists :supersede :element-type :default) (let* ((r (jnew |AtomContainerRenderer| (jlist (jnew |BasicAtomGenerator|) (jnew |BasicBondGenerator|) (jnew |BasicSceneGenerator|)) (jnew |AWTFontManager|))) (vg (jnew |SVGGraphics2D| (jcall "getWrappedOutputStream" out-stream) (jnew |Dimension| 320 320))) (adv (jnew |AWTDrawVisitor| vg))) (jcall "startExport" vg) (jcall "generateCoordinates" (jnew |StructureDiagramGenerator| mol)) (jcall "setup" r mol (jnew |Rectangle| 0 0 100 100)) (jcall "paint" r mol adv (jnew (jconstructor |Rectangle2D$Double| 4) 10 10 300 300) +true+) (jcall "endExport" vg)))) )) (WITH-OPEN-FILE (OUT-STREAM PATHNAME :DIRECTION :OUTPUT :IF-EXISTS :SUPERSEDE :ELEMENT-TYPE :DEFAULT) (LET* ((R (JAVA:JNEW |AtomContainerRenderer| (JLIST (JAVA:JNEW |BasicAtomGenerator|) (JAVA:JNEW |BasicBondGenerator|) (JAVA:JNEW |BasicSceneGenerator|)) (JAVA:JNEW |AWTFontManager|))) (VG (JAVA:JNEW |SVGGraphics2D| (JAVA:JCALL "getWrappedOutputStream" OUT-STREAM) (JAVA:JNEW |Dimension| 320 320))) (ADV (JAVA:JNEW |AWTDrawVisitor| VG))) (JAVA:JCALL "startExport" VG) (JAVA:JCALL "generateCoordinates" (JAVA:JNEW |StructureDiagramGenerator| MOL)) (JAVA:JCALL "setup" R MOL (JAVA:JNEW |Rectangle| 0 0 100 100)) (JAVA:JCALL "paint" R MOL ADV (JAVA:JNEW (JAVA:JCONSTRUCTOR |Rectangle2D$Double| 4) 10 10 300 300) JAVA:+TRUE+) (JAVA:JCALL "endExport" VG))) CL-USER 48 > (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
6:45 pm	A Useful Occupation In the March 31st 1985 issue of Red Rag: several hundred people pass through the doors of the old dole offices in South Street during a ten day Squat, with over a hundred and fifty attending the various workshops. They produce the largest screenprint in Reading, some 30 foot long by 12 high. The miners are still on strike but you'd have to look hard to notice it; Wokingham Tory M.P. William van Straubenzee gets quite uppity when he's told that smoking can result in cancer and cancer can result in death; Ladybird proposes a new method of timekeeping; and the Women's Press launch their sci fi series. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 17th, 2012
12:11 pm	Are You Occupied? In the March 17th 1985 issue of Red Rag: the old Unemployment Benefit Office in South Street is squatted for ten days and hosts a series of workshops and projects: from music to video, screenprinting to street theatre, Tai Chi to Red Rag production. The media might think that the Greenham Womens' Peace Camp has faded away, but Newbury Council have set aside £52,700 for evictions during the current financial year; one of the student halls of residence goes Nuclear Free and its president writes with great enthusiasm to Red Rag in the apparent if unfounded belief that Reading's Only Newspaper is the body that can bring this change about; and Woozy Wombat is keen about something but we don't know what. This is where you get a reputation for oddness, sneaking around town with rucksacks of nettles or bags of rotten vegetation. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012
10:35 am	Free Kronstadt! In the March 3rd 1985 issue of Red Rag: one year into miner's strike is marked with a brace of benefit gigs and a march in London; we also note the anniversary of the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. (March 5th: Trotsky arrives in Petrograd. Aircraft drop leaflets on Kronstadt ordering the population to surrender at once or "be shot like partridges".) The Greenham Support Group celebrates International Women's Day by organising Veggie Dining; after the government's show of muscle at last month's overnight invasion of Molesworth peace camp the Easter demo there may be even bigger; and a small cavalcade proceeds onto a snowy Salisbury Plain in search of the Cruise Missile Convoy hidden nearby (pretending to have melted into the British countryside, as Heseltine would have us believe). We joined hands (no, not with the soldiers, who were too busy). (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
9:17 am	Aid for AIDS In this Dymo Labelled February 17th 1985 issue of Red Rag: in between the Greenham evictions, Molesworth blockades, Citizen Cain prize for the most interesting leak, new premises needed for the Women's Centre, Reagan setting the CIA on the Sandinistas, Real Time Video's newsletter, and Red Rag's computer problems: a sobering account of current understanding of a new sexually transmitted disease, and where you can go for help locally. AIDS is caused by a virus, called LAV, which is thought to be passed on in two ways: during sex, or if a person comes into contact with infected blood. It is also possible that the AIDS virus is passed on through saliva, but there is no reason to think that the virus can be spread through the air or by touch. It seems that not everyone who has the virus develops the symptoms of AIDS, but that everyone who does develop the symptoms dies, sometimes quickly, sometimes after two or more years. There is no immediate prospect of a cure for AIDS itself, although doctors are becoming more expert at treating the infections and illnesses which follow the failure of the immune system. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 13th, 2012
8:40 am	Mini weekend break in Bury St Edmunds. A charming hotel, a slap up dinner, some abbey ruins in the snow, and the end of the world. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
4:28 pm	70% still on strike In this most OCR-unfriendly February 3rd 1985 issue of Red Rag: the strike has by no means been lost, and even if the demand of No Pit Closures cannot be won, the Miners will not accept defeat, but will go on as will their supporters to fight this tide of destruction this Government has launched upon us. Most of us are stuck between the unslightly and the serene, floundering in a love like blood and can do without "Lifelines" from Nietzschean superwomen, unless it's to bring on the clowns in the twilight of idols; Veggie Dining becomes co-ordinator free and the Vegan Ramble will now have to deny that they check your sandwich box for salami sarnies; two rival teams appear to be running courses at the Centre for the Jobfree; and Acorn becomes a Workers' Co-operative, but Ian and Liz are leaving. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
11:38 am	Painting the Town In the January 20th 1985 issue of Red Rag: the Freedom Association, their friends in Ratepayers Against Greenham Encampments, and the Coalition for Peace through Security attempt to get the Greenham women struck off the electoral roll on the grounds that they are there for political reasons; Box Office takes on the Reading Festival Fringe and some plywood hoarding; Citizen Cain get rebranded; Red Rag takes on the politics of censorship; and the Free Festival benefit gig makes a profit of £3:20 (thanks to the £1:20 they found on the floor). (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 7th, 2012
3:25 pm	International Year of the Hug In the January 6th 1985 issue of Red Rag: the Evening Post leads an unprincipled attack against local "bedsit barons" for attracting the unemployed and homeless with advertisements which they themselves are quite willing to print; food van deliveries continue to take hot meals to the women camped at Greenham Common; the Anarchist Group forges ahead with plans for a free festival to celebrate its 20th anniversary; the Ant Hill Mob play at the Paradise Club, all proceeds going to the Gwent food fund for the families of the pits in South Wales, adopted by the Reading Miners Support Group committee; and the Reading contingent at the action in London marking the fifth anniversary of the NATO decision to site cruise missiles in Europe is an affinity group of one person (about the ideal size for quick consensus decision making). (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 10th, 2011
11:29 pm	Red Rag Bag In the December 9th 1984 issue of Red Rag: the families of Miners striking to defend 70,000 jobs against the closure of 70 pits are faced with a cut in Social Security; magistrates in Acorn Bookshop's court case deem that books and comics which presuppose familiarity with drugs are obscene, liable to corrupt, and so to be pulped later this month; the personal remains political; Reading's Only Cassette Album is launched; and what to do if you wake up on Christmas mornng and don't fancy talking to anybody until - say - Friday. Those present at the editorial meeting found the following letter sexist, racist and very offensive. However we thought it was necessary to print it, in full. This is because we felt it was a criticism of the Rag and everything the Rag stands for. We cannot simply ignore this kind of attitude as it is only a blatant expression of the attitudes that we are surrounded by every day. We feel it is more dangerous to ignore this than to print it and let the readership see for themselves. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
9:58 am	Lisp Community Microphone Vsevolod Dyomkin blogs about his video recordings of the recent ECLM: "the sound quality is not stellar, because, unfortunetely, there was a laying of the ground 50Hz signal on the mic's signal at the site. But judging from my experiences in organizing TEDxKyiv, sound is the usual point of failure at conferences, and it's pretty hard to get it right. Yet, I hope, that next meeting will have a more professional recording set up..." If anyone is organising a lisp meeting (or any other, I'm not that fussed) and would like to borrow the Lisp Community Microphone, please get in touch. It's a Crown PCC 160, originally bought for recording ILC 2007. I also have an M-Audio USB preamp. The whole thing takes moments to set up and the sound quality is very good. From memory, it will pick up indistinct waffling from across the room, but without that 50Hz ground signal. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 26th, 2011
2:41 pm	Never get off the train at Reading In the November 25th 1984 issue of Red Rag: food collections in Woodley for the Gwent Miners are obstructed by police threatening to charge the collectors with vagrancy; public-minded citizens motivated enough to address planning contradictions to council officers are told point blank, "leave it to us" and are handed one of the old Labour party internal memorandums: "do right, respect those in authority over you, go to the council meetings and always work"; whenever any Labour or Liberal Councillor mentions a piece of land at a Reading Borough Council meeting the so-called Chairman of the Housing Committee leaps to his feet with a silly grin all over his face and says "Sell it"; customs officers in London raid Gay's the Word Bookshop; and a new pinball machine is installed in The Dove. Occupy the empty office blocks and turn them into stamping grounds. In every empty space, drums should be beaten, full speed and pagan, to bodies daubed with secret insignia in rhythm with ancestors of their neurons, as part of the liberation of this green and pleasant land. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 12th, 2011
3:12 pm	Politicks In the November 11th 1984 issue of Red Rag: embarking on a policy of closing geriatric wards and hospitals because it says the institutional care they provide is unnecessary, the government pays out huge sums to the owners of private rest homes. Locally the supply of places fails miserably to meet the demand. The Reading Labour Party believes that the town needs 5 sex shops in spite of a Council subcommittee report recommending the refusal of licences to all five; Cosmo Girl explains how to hold down more than one relationship at a time; shop-keepers in Newbury oppose cruise missiles at USAF Greenham Common because the USAF Seargeants Association is pressing for USAF personnel at the base to be given a 10% discount in their shops; and the Rag goes dangerously mainstream with its first astrology column. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 11th, 2011
4:39 pm	Recovering the laptop Notes as a consequence of rebuilding my hard disk this week. 1. How to get emacs (Windows) to display pdf files This was the second time I've done this, working from totally inadequate hints out in google land. I don't want to have to calculate it ever again. a) Install libpng and zlib from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html b) Copy libpng12.dll and zlib1.dll from c:/Program Files/GnuWin32/bin/ into the Emacs bin directory c) Install ghostscript from http://www.ghostscript.com/download/gsdnld.html d) Copy gswin32c.exe from c:/Program Files/gs/gs9.04/bin to gs.exe in the Emacs bin directory Simple when you know how! 2. Problems with mod_lisp  Apache won't start if http.conf includes:   LoadModule lisp_module modules/mod_lisp2.so If it does, I get the following error message:  httpd.exe: Syntax error on line 130 of C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/modules/mod_lisp2.so into server: This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this  problem. Have anyone seen anything like this before? (I was planning to ask this question to lispweb, but the list appears to have gone away.) (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
6:06 am	Happy 5th Birthday In the October 28th 1984 issue of Red Rag: the marked increase of stillbirths among women in Reading shows a significant connection with the release of radioactive waste from Burghfield; there are calls at the Labour Party Conference for the soon-to-be privatised British Telecom to be taken back into the public sector; part-time consultants on hospital cleaning services might be on £100,000 a year but hospital cleaners are lucky to get £1.72 an hour; IBM takes a European handout; Halloween comes a day early; we find out what a futon is; and Reading's Only Newspaper celebrates its fifth birthday in style. (Comment on this)