I may upset a couple of my friends here; if so, I apologise in advance. Sorry, but I've got to say it.

I like Twitter. I really do.

I couldn't say why I like it so much, but I really do like it. I've got my own twitter account (@budgie, if you're interested) and I twitter a couple of times a day or more usually...

Now I have to say all of the above upfront... because while I enjoy reading tweets from friends, people I know and the occasional person I've been recommended, reading tweets once is usually enough, thanks all the same.

I don't need to read them several times. In fact, I don't enjoy reading, nor do I particularly want to read, people's tweets three times: once on Twitter, once on Facebook and again on Livejournal.

Now before anyone rushes to justify the practice, you don't need to, ok? I completely understand why people do it: not everyone (in fact, I'd guess, fairly few people) have the same readership on all three platforms. People who follow your twitter feed don't necessarily follow you on Livejournal, nor on Facebook.

And vice versa: not everyone reads someone else's Twitter, facebook and livejournal.

Thing is... I usually do.

So I was delighted when someone came up with a Firefox edit that 'silenced' the feeds from Loudtwitter in Livejournal; it didn't hide the posts per se, merely the content. It meant that if I wanted to read them, I could open up the post itself and I'd see the tweets, but on my friends' page, I still got to read the non-LoudTwitter posts without having to scroll through the twitter feeds that had a dozen or so tweets daily.

(And before anyone says "well, there was a setting to allow people to cut down that number to exclude replies in conversations", I never understood why someone should have to use that setting - it's their journal/Twitter, they should be able to do whatever the hell they like...)

But once I used the edit... at once, my friends' page returned to something approaching normalcy. (Actually, given the postings of some of my friends, that's an arguable point...)

However, LoudTwitter died over the weekend. I'm genuinely sorry for two reasons. Again, there are good reasons for people to have used it, and I hate it when something that makes live more convenient for people goes away. The other reason is that it's been replaced by twittinesis.com (yes, I'm aware of the danger of pointing it out to everyone who did use LoudTwitter), and my friends' page is no doubt about to get swamped by people's tweets again.

All of the above said, if anyone's aware of a twittinesis.com suppressor, please let me know?

No particular reason for this, other than that there's some tv programmes over the next few weeks leading up to the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing.

On 27^th January 1967, three astronauts - Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee - died when pure oxygen in the capsule of what would have been Apollo 1 ignited.

On the following Monday, flight director Eugene Kranz (the bloke portrayed by Ed Harris in the movie Apollo 13) called a meeting of his branch and flight control team. During that meeting , he said the following, what became known in NASA as The Kranz Dictum:

"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!'

I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause!

We were not ready! We did not do our job.

We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.'

Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.

Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.

When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."