Cyberpunk, Spirituality and Technology - The Voidspace Blogspot

Cyberpunk Search Engine

I've created a search engine dedicated to Cyberpunk.

If you need to research anything related to the cyber-underground, or cyberpunk fiction, you need to be using Cyber Search.

It currently indexes around 600 domains - and so it only returns results from websites relevant to cyberpunk. If you have a website that you think ought to be included in the index, then use my Contact Form to let me know.

For those who may want to know, it is written in Python and uses Yahoo Web Services. Interestingly (or not), the Yahoo web services are much faster than google.

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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2005-11-18 09:40:58 | |
Categories: Website, Cyberpunk

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Changes, Changes

Everything changes, often for the worse.

Internet restrictions at work have got worse. That means I may be able to post less frequently. Maybe it means the posts will be of better quality though.

I've also made a decision recently about the future direction of my life (sounds heavy doesn't it). Anyway - the fit may be gently deflecting from the shan as a result.

Things are bad enough as they are; why go and change them ?

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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2005-11-18 09:35:15 | |
Categories: Work, Life

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Permission to Stay

A few weeks ago I told you about my wife's clash with Romanian bureaucracy. She was trying to renew her Romanian passport. It all became too much effort; so Delia decided to wait until she was granted permanent leave to remain in Britain. Then she would be entitled to apply for British citizenship.

Unfortunately, British bureaucracy seemed likely to be as intractable as the east-European red-tape. They (the immigration office) wanted us to prove we've been living together for the last two years. This is fair enough, except for the way they ask you to prove it.

The requirement in the home office form, is that you provide ten official pieces of documentation showing that you reside at the same address. They accept as official all the sorts of things we don't have because we live in community; things like bank account statements, phone bills, utility bills, and so on.

We did actually manage to cobble together more than ten documents - driving licenses, medical cards, a letter about a NI number, and so on.

It was then a bit worrying to get the following letter, a couple of weeks later :

Dear Mrs Foord,

In order for us to process your application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK, please forward to us the following items :

• Detailed bank account statements for the last three months.
• At least ten pieces of official documentation, showing that you and your husband have resided together at the same address for the last two years.

Failure to do this within the next seven days may result in a delay in your application...

I wrote them a slightly snotty letter pointing out that we didn't have a bank account (we'd explained about community in the original application). I also carefully listed the documents we'd provided. As well as eleven official type documents we'd sent the community residency records for every week since August 2003 - when we got married. These pretty clearly show our residence together at river farm house.

We were a bit worried about all this as our circumstances are unusual. They say they aim to deal with most applications within three months, but we weren't holding out too much hope for a speedy resolution. My Chinese friend, Wei Loon, applied for a one year student visa in June 2004. In September 2004 he received a letter from the home office saying that they were processing his application.

He'd now like to apply for a work visa. So he rang the home office to ask about his application. They informed him that they were still processing it. When he explained that his course had actually finished in July 2005 and he'd like his papers back to make a new application, they said tough, we're still processing your application.

Imagine our surprise when two weeks after sending the snotty letter we got a package from the immigration department. It contained all our documents and a letter. Indefinite leave to remain granted !

By the way - I'm working on the book reviews I promised.

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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2005-11-14 09:29:09 | |
Categories: River Farm House, Life

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