Fitheach


A view on life, from the Highlands of Scotland.
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Obama comments on Independence Referendum

The New York Daily News reported Barack Obama as saying:

"Refusing to answer the details of your policies until after the election, that’s not change. That’s the oldest trick in the book."

Obama wasn't commenting on the 2014 independence referendum, of course, but we only...


Independence March and Rally 2012

The March and Rally for Independence 2012 took place in Edinburgh on the 22nd September.

The night before the march and rally many parts of Scotland were treated to a meteor shower which must have been a good omen. Whatever the reason after weeks of miserable summer weather we were treated to blue skies and blazing sunshine.We arrived at the north end of Jawbone Walk, in The Meadows around 11am...


GVim and printing

The last time I printed directly from GVim, or for that matter Vim, was so many years ago that I had forgotten the details of how it works. Most of my content in GVim is either never printed or it gets compiled to Postscipt or PDF and only then is printed. It therefore surprised me today when I pressed the Print button and I didn't get a print options GUI.

Traditionally, Vim uses the command :hardcopy...


Roderick versus Gnasher

We have a peanut (groundnut) feeder made of wood and shaped like a house. On the top of the feeder are two slates which form the roof. However, there is a gap between the slates which allows water to drip down into the nuts. In a wet West Highland climate it doesn't take long for the peanuts to rot when constantly supplied by dripping water. To prevent water ingress we fashioned a metal strip to act as ridging. This worked really well until last winter when we would constantly find it...


Positive case for the union

Prologue

The union between Scotland and England began in 1707, Ireland "joined" the union in 1801 and most of Ireland "left" again in 1922. So, the union has existed in a form for 305, 211 or 90 years depending on your definition. After such a long time it would be expected that successive Westminster governments operating what was recently heralded as a "Posted by fitheach on Thu 05 July 2012


Cui bono

As the independence debate increases, both by the number of participants and in volume, how can we judge the veracity of the contributions? It would be wise to consider Cicero's maxim when hearing some of the arguments put forward by the detractors of self-determination.

"A good political speech is not one in which you can prove that the man is telling the truth; it is...

God save the King

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save the King

King Charles III

Charles Edward Stuart or 'Bonnie...


Creating lined writing paper using GLE

First steps

My journey began when I was searching for a way to produce some lined paper, with a very particular layout, that my girlfriend could use to practice her calligraphy skills. Initially, I investigated some graphical applications with the usual point-and-click interfaces such as GIMP, Scribus and


Lorem ipsum alternatives

For decades designers have been using filler text when creating mock-ups of flyers, brochures, advertisements, websites etc. The most common filler text is the venerable lorem ipsum which has been extracted from some Latin text but has many words changed so it no longer carries any meaning.

Example lorem ipsum text: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur...

GVim and Firefox together

I was curious about the structure of a web page and, did what I do dozens of times every week, right-clicked and selected View Page Source. However, in this case the web page was horribly complex and had all of the white space removed. I needed something more than the built-in Firefox/Iceweasel source viewer. After a little configuration I was able to bring GVim to the rescue. This is how I did it.

  • In the browser address bar...

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