Will Knott

I’m going to foolishly make three predictions.

1. The number of Sun on Sundays (aka the 7th Day Sun, aka The Sun Of The World) purchased on its inaugural printing will be approximately equal to the number of the last edition of The News Of The World purchased.

2. The number for the second issue of the Sun On Sunday sold will be a good bit lower.

3. The LBC crew will be wondering why I’m not talking about this week’s topic, especially since its one of my suggestions this week. Sorry guys.

The call came from my Mum. “Will you buy me a copy”. This is the same request I received for the last edition of the News of the Screws. It’s not a paper that gets read in the house.

That is not to say that its never been purchased. Occasionally a CD or DVD was purchased with a free copy of the paper attached, but without the media bribe it, for us, remained on the shelf.

The numbers for the first issue will be trumpeted while its publisher remains under a legal cloud following its phone and computer hacking scandal continues. This is the scandal that prevented the Murdoch purchase of the remaining share of British Sky Broadcasting and lead to the closure of the Sunday paper that the new Sun is printing.

I did notice that the glossy “Fabulous” magazine that used to be bundled with the old title and continued to appear in the Sun On Saturday is now returned to a Sunday title. Back with the old.

One interesting thorn that will be pulled at is, will this new paper be treated as a new paper, or will it be smeared with the sins of the former title for a while? Time is going to tell this one. I guess that the April ABC figures will be the ones that show the greater truth. Unless, of course, they start attaching more media bribes I’ll be asked to collect.

Take care,
Will

UPDATE: 2012-06-07

Should have added this earlier but… “Rupert Murdoch confirms first Sun on Sunday sold 3.26m copies” and inside a later article “Sun on Sunday’s sale slips away“.

Hacking used to have a different meaning.

Once it meant to chop something inexpertly (obviously after seeing me carve), then it became to make something designed to do one function go and do another function. Related to this is making a computer or a piece of software work to your bidding and not the bidding of another, such as the manufacturer. Or the actual owner.

So I hacked so hardware.

As in I went to the hardware shop to get some screws.

Did you expect me to talking about me doing something illegal (and not just illegal in certain US states)? And so to the subject of this Loose Blogging Consortium post “Things I Don’t Tell About Myself”. I’m going to show you an Ikea Hack, and show you something few have seen; my bedroom.

This is what my bedroom, and bed looked like before I changed things. A little dull? Oh yeah. The “headboard” is actually a piece of carpet offcut from when I moved in.

Anyway, time to change things, and Ikea opening in Ireland gave me the chance to check out the classic “as is” section for stuff to use for a hack. It won’t be the best headboard Ikea hack, but its mine.

The ingredients for this are…

One set of Antonius adjustable desk legs:

One plain white Pax Ballstad door (slightly chipped):

Six wood screws (as the ones which came with the legs were too meant for a different purpose), Six washers and a few felt pads to protect the wall.
A screwdriver and a drill to make guide holes for the screws.

Simply attach the legs to the back of the door using the pre-drilled holes in the legs with the screws to make a support, add the felt pads to protect the wall, and its done.

Remove the carpet “headboard” and move the new one in to place. But I went a bit further…

I added a touch of colour to the room with,
A Flyn Beata printed curtain (now discontinued but you could use any fabric):

A set of Dignitet curtain clips:

A picture hook (already in position), a piece of string and a long bamboo pole left over from a garden project.

Attach the string to the pole, clip the curtain clips on to the pole (it worked better to clip rather than to slide as, well, bamboo is not a smooth metal pole) and attach the fabric.

Then the bed looks very different.

Since the photo was taken I’ve tightened the hanging string and added additional hooks so the pole is now level and against the ceiling, which means the panels hang better now.

It was a fairly easy job,but it changed the room completely.

The picture which was above the bed turned out to be the perfect fit for a Saxas frame and now hangs elsewhere in the room.

Well it is not something I share with many people, so I think it counts as “things I don’t tell”, but since you asked…

If you are interested, the full set of photographs are available on my Pix.ie account.

This is a Loose Bloggers Consortium post on the theme of “Things I Don’t Tell About Myself”; chosen by Gaelikaa and Anu. To find out that the others in the consortium think, check out, Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie 11, Nema, Noor, Padmini, Paul, Plain Joe, Ramana, Rohit, The Silver Fox Whispers and The Student Diaries.

p.s.
Just to keep this slightly technical… here is Misha Glenny advocating the hiring of hackers.

Ubuntu, as well as being a very good operating system translates roughly from the South African root (not sure which language, sorry) in to English as “pleasure derived from the good fortune of others”. Its direct counterpart is found in German, namely Schadenfreude; “the pleasure derived from the bad fortune of others”.

For the last two weeks, its been a guilty pleasure working its way through the UK after the shock and anger has subsided. All of this has been aimed squarely at Rupert Murdoch.

I’m actually writing about this due to asking about the Loose Bloggers Consortium (LBC) that Grannymar writes with. That and I need a deadline to work with. This week’s topic, nominated by Anu is “Guilty Pleasures”.

And for many in in UK at least, there is pleasure to be derived… let’s ask John Finnemore on the BBC’s “Now Show“…

If you have been living in a cave (or in a compound using only dead letter drops containing USB disks for news updates) for the last few years you would have missed the power of Rupert Murdoch and News International. This man owns media properties throughout the world (and a few satellites above it) most famously a stable of newspapers in the UK and Fox News in the US. The man has had power, power to undermine and control the thrones of power in very high places. Prime Ministers, arguably Presidents, but certainly congressmen and Senators and, if the allegations are true, police were under his sway. And now he is falling from grace because of a child called Milly.

Allegations that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked set off a chain of events which have brought Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to its knees, or at least crouching a lot. Today, he tried to stop the rot and anger by telling the Dowler family and all the other victims of phone hacking that he was deeply sorry.

He is currently facing investigations in the UK, and the allegations of possible hacking of the telephones of 9/11 victims and their families have sparked FBI and Senate investigations in the US. Its conceivable that News International, now a US based company, may either be broken up, or will be forced to shed all the Murdoch family members at its heart.

It turns out that hacking a mobile phone, in Ireland at least, is actually pathetically easy. You have to know your victims phone number, say 081-1234567. If you dial 081-5-1234567 you go directly to their voicemail, and can attempt a remote  login. Depending on the network the default password is 0000 or 1234. Given that most people dial in to their voicemail account from their registered phone, few people realise that there is a password to be changed and that they can access it from any handset. And if you can get hold of their phone, you can change the password in 20 seconds. Thanks to Brian Greene for the research (and he will never get to borrow my phone).

When someone generally disliked falls, you tend to find a few gleeful at the drop in power. Its a guilty pleasure.

But of course its not my guilty pleasure. Mine is the Transformers toys. I like the way they give you the impression of being one thing, guiding you one way, then uncovering that its something else. Or maybe slight of hand is my pleasure? Maybe. But its not as interesting as the still ongoing news story.

To find out that the others in the consortium think, check out, in alphabetical order: AKANKSHA (Anki), ANU, ASHOK, CONRAD, DELIRIOUS, GAELIKAA, GRANNYMAR, MAGPIE 11, MARIA, PADMUM and the GOM of LBC, RAMANA SIR.