A Man and his Rant

A Collection of MiniPosts

2012-01-30T00:07:00.000+11:00

So I have some medium-size things to say, and I wanted to put them in a post all together. I've gone back and read posts from my blog in the past in the same way one might look at photos from years gone by. It can be revealing, or cathartic, or surprising, or a number of other fancy words. Basically, it's why I'm putting these thoughts together.

Someone Is Wrong On The Internet!
I've just spent my evening writing to someone I don't know to try and convince them of something they didn't ask to be convinced about, because it's something that is important to me. Not a religious argument, btw. Just something that reflects a little on me, so I wanted to advocate on behalf of those like me. Cryptic enough? ;) Anyway... I wonder sometimes why I care so much about what random strangers think of me.

Internet Dating Is Unfun
I'm paying far too much money to make new "friends", where the inverted commas define a class of person with whom I've had a couple of coffees and conversations, whom I've parted on good terms with, but who doesn't really want to pursue things any further. It's nice that it's friendly, but it's gut-wrenchingly soul-destroying that I am clearly predisposed toward being in the "friend zone". It's like my teenage years all over again, without anywhere near the degree of opportunity. Maybe I need a wingman...

Fat People Are Less Likely To Get Married (statistical fact)
Reference: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199309303291406
I'd heard this before, but had to find the reference. I think there are other studies that find the same conclusions.
So this one is hard to come to grips with, but I've thought about it lots and it does make sense. Yes, to express it in cliché: true beauty comes from within. But when you first meet someone, that person in your mind consists of perhaps 90% how they look, and maybe 10% the conversation you've had with them. Over time, as you get to know the person more, the character attributes they possess, their interests, etc., make up more of the picture, and so someone who is physically unattractive can still be found quite attractive by a member of the opposite gender based on who they are as a whole. But if you are dating outside of your normal social circle, it's not uncommon to decide after a date or two whether or not you want to continue seeing someone. And really, how you feel about that person is based fairly heavily on their appearance. This all sounds quite shallow (and let's face it - it is), but being on the statistical downside of this particular factoid, I can see that there's not going to be any changing it. And I can see that I'm doing it as much as anyone else. It's just how it is, but interesting to consider how we behave in this context.

Unrecovery
I made the following statement to my psychologist (gasp! yes, I see a psychologist occasionally):

"From my observation, a person in my situation who doesn't find their way into a new relationship doesn't recover."

She asked me a few questions about this: What situation? Any relationship? Define "recover"? When I'd answered, she rephrased the statement slightly to pinpoint what I was talking about. Something like:

"From my observation, a person who has lost a satisfying long-term committed relationship against their desire, who does not find another committed, long-term relationship, does not return to the level of emotional satisfaction they had prior to the loss." (my rather haphazard paraphrase - I don't remember the exact words now)

After saying this, she sat there and thought for a minute, and then said:

"I'd agree with that."

This both makes perfect sense, and also flies in the face of a lot of the well-meaning advice I've got along the way. Specifically, the advice that I need to "be happy on my own" in order to be emotionally healthy enough to not be on my own. Quite obviously when you're in a long term relationship, you clear other stuff out of the way to make room for it. You compromise. Sacrifice. Change plans, and make plans. When it's removed, you're not the same person you were prior, and can't just go back to being fine on your own. Ever. You have two choices: make do, or fill the gap. People make do a lot. They throw things into the gap that hide its size for a little bit. Maybe. But ultimately, there's something not right whether they'll admit it or not, and everyone else can see it.
I find often I feel bad for wanting to get married again as more than just a casual aside. I actually really want to, and am keen to persue it as a goal. But it's almost like it's socially unacceptable to be that guy or girl. The word "desperate" comes to mind. I'm not desperate. Just tired of tripping over the gap all the time.

Internet Dating Is Unfun, Part 2
Clearly, eHarmony has decided that I'm an outdoorsy kind of person, and that I should only meet other outdoorsy people.

...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

...

forever alone

Sleep, or lack thereof

I'm finding it hard to get to bed at a decent hour. This can be traced to the following:

My Playstation and Mass Effect 2
Sites that deliver a random funny image every time you click a button
General lack of motivation
Writing blog posts

The problem is, tomorrow I will regret it. Again. Just like last time.

Also, I generated a meme:

That is all.

Resolutions

2012-01-01T02:08:00.001+11:00

This evening I sat with two of my friends and celebrated the coming of a new year. Two of us have spent this year dealing with varying moments of the process of concluding our marriages, and came as single parent families with children in tow. The other was missing their spouse due to work commitments that would occupy them until 3am on New Year's Day. All of us came as sole representatives of our names.

We drank cider, and tried to control the rabble of children that outnumbered parents 3-to-1. We stumbled over how to fill time until the midnight fireworks, by which time one gaggle of children had already left, and the remainder were beginning to fall into unconsciousness on the living room floor. As soon as the fireworks ended, I helped my eldest find a collection of cards he'd brought, lost, but absolutely had to have for tomorrow, and then gathered my youngest sleeping in my arms and herded them both into the car.

I heralded the new year with friends, but this year it felt like we were soldiers looking back on a long battle behind us. A year's fight is done, but so much has been lost along the way, and the road ahead doesn't lead us back to a comfortable home and a ticker tape parade. We sit in the quiet trenches and look at each other wondering where to from here. Around us lies the fallen remains of friendships that have been lost. Ideals destroyed. Visions shattered. For some of us, we bear the wounds of betrayal - from friends we trusted, colleagues, spouses. Some of us are fed up from watching those we once admired as people of substance crumble and fall around us. All of us have pondered escape, and the sweet aroma of a new beginning in another locale I am sure will see at least one of us absent in years to come.

But as for today; today we are the stalwarts. We are the remaining steadfast few amongst the many of our cohort who said words and made commitments that now are lost; caught in the merciless crossfire of a narcissistic culture. Those who still stand, who still fight, for values they professed when such profession was easy. We are far from perfect, and God knows we are judged for it, but I for one will not fall to the shots of those who have deserted and take aim to appease their guilt. We stand guard over a way of life I believe in, and for the sake of my children I cannot in good conscience avoid the line of fire. I will not back down. I will not surrender. I will not take my life for granted.

Friendship requires trust. Marriage requires faithfulness. Love requires commitment. I will no longer tolerate friends I cannot trust. I will stand against those who are unfaithful to their marriages. And I will commit to love my children, my friends, and my God with all that I am. For me, there is no other way to live - these things I believe in, and I would be less of a man if I were to step away from them.

This is not the direction I intended to go with this post, but it's where I've ended up and I'm content with what I've written. If I can accomplish nothing else this year, I will stand. And if that's not a New Year's Resolution, I don't know what is.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Dear Santa

2011-12-18T22:00:00.000+11:00

Dear Santa,

OK, let's start by getting the elephant in the room dealt with: you're not real. Look, sorry to say it, but you know it's true. You might rightfully then ask why I'm writing you a letter. That's a fair cop, and one I'm willing to answer - I guess the fact that I know that Dad (that being the heavenly one) knows my thoughts as I write them, and that I can put a part of myself down in writing in this way is kind of appealing. So yeah, OK - I'm kind of using you. But you're not real, so I say we're even.

That being said, can I tell you something? It's been hard this year when people have asked me what I want for Christmas. I mean sure, I could put some games or DVDs on a list, but the reason I haven't is that none of it really shines for me. Honestly, there's just something much deeper missing and I've been thinking about it a little. Just every day for close to the past two years, I'd say. And so here's my Christmas list, Saint Nick - you ready for this?

Someone to love, who will love me in return.

That's it. That's all I want. I mean, I probably should be a tiny bit more specific - we're talking love of the variety that is "until death do us part" here, which means toward someone of the opposite gender, and that is deep and romantic in nature. I'd hate to give you room to be cheap on this one, Santy. Because we all know you can be cheap when you want to. I mean seriously - what good is a remote controlled car with no batteries? Yes, I do remember.

Look, I was never made to be alone. Dad knows this better than anyone, and so I'm not sure why he's let things unfold this way, but here I am. It's just been such a long time since I've looked in someone's eyes and seen that subtle softening that comes from owning a special place in the heart of the person to whom those eyes belong. I desperately long to see that again. My heart holds an empty room; furnished with hopes and dreams that began years ago; waiting for someone for whom that place is home. It's been lived in before and wasn't treated very well, but I've spent a lot of time cleaning it up; repainting the walls and scrubbing the floors. Dad even helped me fix up some of the bits that were a problem before it was trashed. When I look at it now, it seems... ready. It's a home for someone. They just aren't there yet.

So big guy, I'm doing my bit. I'm meeting, and coffeeing and generally doing things no 32 year old man with two kids should have to worry about. I'm preening and cleaning and trying to change the things about myself I look at and think could be better. But I can't make this one happen on my own. So I guess what I'm doing is being the kid writing a letter to Santa, hoping that his Dad might read it. That maybe, just maybe, it won't be as hard... or as long... or as complicated as I think it has to be. That the story of my life will give inspiration to those who tread a similarly painful path, rather than serve as example of how lonely things can end up when relationships go tragically wrong.

Well, that's about it Santa. I'll leave the rest in your white-gloved hands. Oh - and I'll leave out some beer and chocolate on Christmas Eve, but if you haven't taken them by midnight I say they're fair game.

Merry Christmas,
Justin

Well, that didn't go so well.

2011-12-07T10:50:00.001+11:00

OK, so I've been trying harder to eat right, and losing small amounts of weight. I'm thinking through what I can do about Japan, and making plans for when I can go, and that's all awesome. And I've been getting up at 6:30am... but...

As it turns out, this last change has changed the status quo of my household. My two wonderful children, who I used to have to wrestle from their beds post-7am in order to get them ready on time now wake before my alarm goes off at 6:30am, and demand breakfast amongst other things (one wanted chocolate recently for some reason), and generally ensure that I'm not spending that time peacefully contemplating passages of Scripture and in reflective prayer, as was the origial intention. So not really sure what to do about that one, but it certainly makes it hard for me to justify continuing this new tradition. That being said, I am generally more organised thanks to the getting up early and stuffs, so I guess in that way it's good.

I know I could do this stuff at the end of my day, but usually by the time I get my kids into bed my brain is already mush and I just want to soak it in sitcom, or live vicariously as a ninja through my Playstation controller. Both activities requiring as little or as much thought as I feel up to at the time. Mornings have always been my strong thought times. Post-coffee, of course, but that's just a given. So what do I do? :-s Does anyone else have some words of sage-like wisdom that might help? Maybe I should eat more sage. Or thyme. Need more of both of those.

Murphy's Law Strikes Back!

2011-11-26T10:18:00.001+11:00

I find it hilarious how as soon as you make a decision about doing something, suddenly things go dreadfully wrong in terms of making it happen. This week I was going to get more exercise. I was thinking I'd get out with the boys on their bikes, and try and do a lot more active outdoorsy stuff. And then in poured rain all week.
I started getting up half an hour earlier each day. This was hard thanks to not going to bed early enough, so I tried to make myself go to bed earlier. Then my son got sick, and was up and down all night. I slept through my alarm and woke up 20 minutes after I normally leave. I've never done that before.
I've been invited out for food a lot, which has not been good for the whole weight loss shindig. I mean, I wouldn't quite put this in the Murphy's Law category - I could have not gone, but it certainly has been a challenge. I've managed to gain a little weight, although CalorieKing tells me that could be because I've been eating a lot of salty foods. Which I did yesterday. So we'll write it off as that, and I'll keep trying to eat healthier.

All this aside though, making these goals has been a good step. I'm serious about them, and they're in my head, and as a result it's given me some direction and that feels good. Short term, I've got something to achieve. My trip to Japan looks like it might become a bit of a family thing, as my parents think about travelling to China and Korea towards the end of the year. Nothing certain yet, but I think that would make a big difference to the challenges of taking my boys on planes and that kind of thing.
The couple of mornings I managed to get up early this week, I also managed to read my Bible just for quarter of an hour and spend some time with God. It was good. And I'm keen to do it some more.
And I've had an offer of guidance from someone who has some experience with personal training and exercise and that kind of thing, which is a massive blessing. Hopefully that will be really useful in finding ways to exercise that don't seem like a chore.

Anyway - the journey continues! I'll keep updating this as I progress.

New Beginnings, New Blog Postings

2011-11-20T21:39:00.001+11:00

So, it's official. For those of you who may have missed previous goings on, as of 11/11/11 I'm officially divorced. And as the lead up and lead down to this event has unfolded, I've had to consider a lot - had to face a lot of hard truths. Life isn't fair, and never will be. The justice I want to see in my situation may not unfold in the way I'd like, or indeed at all. God is a God of love, but we should not mistake "love" for the wishywashy "do anything to make you smile" type thing we see on TV, nor should we be so narcissistic to assume that God loving us means his plans revolve around us. They don't. No no really - they don't. God has a big picture plan in Ultra Full High Definition(TM) and you are a pixel. Or possibly one colour element of one pixel. You're vital to the picture, but the picture is not about you. Or more to the point, it's not about me.

OK - so moving on from this, I've decided I need to make some goals for myself. And unless I tell people, I probably won't stick to them. So I'm telling you, Internets. And more than that (MO4R!?!?!?) I'm going to regularly update this blog with how they're going. So here's what I've got so far:

In 2012, assuming world doesn't end when Planet Nibiru hits us, I plan to:

- get my weight under 100kgs
- take my boys on a holiday to Japan
- get up half an hour earlier each morning

Now, for some important information about these. First, the weight one. I've been trying to lose weight for a long time. In the midst of my great sadness in 2010, I got down to 100kgs and then proceeded to put all the weight I had lost back on and more, up to the point where recently I was 117kgs. I'm now just under 115 and am on my way down. Very... very... slowly. It's funny how quickly you put weight on and how slowly you lose it. I'm going to make use of a website called CalorieKing to help track my progress, and you can look up how I'm doing here: http://www.calorieking.com.au/public/?member=juzzie79

The trip to Japan has been a goal of mine for ages. Just before my eldest son was born, my ex-wife and I were planning to move over there for a year and teach English just for the experience. Things changed, and as a result we didn't go. I've never been outside of Australia, so for me the experience of travelling overseas is going to be a very big deal. I'd like to expose my boys to a different culture early on while they are still young and able to adjust quickly. I don't know why, I just think it would be good for them to learn that not everyone lives the same way we do. I'm wanting to do some things like staying in traditional ryokan (ryoukan?) accommodation and going to hot springs baths and other cultural particulars so that they can get a real sense of the country's culture. At least, that's the intent. We'll see how it pans out. Anyway, finance is always an issue so trying to actually accumulate some savings is going to be the hardest part of this. I have a few plans about how to get some additional funds, but we'll see how we go...

As for getting up half an hour earlier, there's two main drivers for this. One is that I'm always running short on time in the mornings. Just being up and awake even 10 minutes earlier I think will make a significant difference. But the primary driver is that at this point I'm basically spending no time with God in my day. I pray before bed each night, but it is hardly devotional. It's a bit ritualistic to be honest, but at least it motivates some conversation and some nights that can be very valuable. A lot of the time though, it's half a practiced prayer as I slip into unconsciousness. Hardly a quality offering. So I'm going to try getting up half an hour earlier and reading my Bible, and even if it's only 10 minutes, at least it's something. A start.

Well, that's it. I'm starting on these as of tomorrow - I'm going to set my alarm half an hour earlier. I've been working on trying to improve my diet, and I'll need to get on the exercise treadlymill or something to get a bit of exercise into me. The Japan one is a little more long term, but I'll keep on working on getting funds together and how I might make all things work together to bring about great success. Ganbatte!

Watch this space for additional updates, hopefully regularly. :)

Interpretation

2011-06-21T13:15:00.002+10:00

This should have been a tweet, but was too long to fit so I've turned it into a blog post. Basically, several people I follow on twitter have retweeted the following this morning (this is the original tweet):

Now, the statement in essence is true. Google are discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 7. However, this is because they've enacted a policy of only supporting the two latest releases of any supported browser other than Chrome - which is basically IE, Firefox and Safari. The linked article explicitly explains this, and notes that at the same time as they discontinue support for IE7, they're discontinuing support for Safari 3, and Firefox 3.5.

Why is this so irritating to me? Because the people who wrote the original tweet make it sound like Google are singling out IE7. Which they aren't. So it's not truthful. And I'm big on truthiness.

Blog post done. Go about your day.

An Irregularly Shaped Peg

2011-03-12T23:44:00.000+11:00

So I said I'd write more, and so far I've done nothing. I think I need to start though, as there's so much going on in my head all the time that getting it down "on paper" might help sort some of it out, and sharing it with others has previously been very cathartic for me.

One thing that's been on my mind lately is how common my current circumstances are statistically, and yet how difficult it seems to be to now fit in with a group of people who previously I had no trouble fitting in with. It started to become apparent a few weeks back at church. I walked around looking for people to strike up conversations with, and tried striking up a few, but ultimately wound up going home as I couldn't really engage with anyone. No big deal - that happens sometimes. But then it happened the next week. And the next. And I started to wonder why, and that's when I started thinking about irregularly shaped pegs.

To generalise, I think there's two main peg shapes in church circles: those who are married, possibly with children (let's call them square pegs), and those who are single (who we'll call round pegs). The round pegs might have a knock or two out of the side of them from previous hurts or difficulties, but from my observation none of the round pegs have ever been square pegs. They're round pegs, and their friends are round pegs, and that's the sum total of their peg experience to date.

So what happens when someone was a round peg, became a square peg, and then had their corners ripped off leaving them, well, irregularly shaped? Sort of a round peg, but not really. Sort of a square peg, but not really. When we're looking at pegs in round or square holes, which in this analogy is the ability to slot into a particular social group, an irregularly shaped peg is going to struggle.

When trying to fit into a round hole, it becomes immediately apparent that the remains of corners are getting in the way. Whether those remains are age, commitments, children, or just the emotional results of dealing with relationship disaster it's fairly obvious that an irregularly shaped peg is not round, and while trying to ignore the remains of corners might be an appealing way of dealing with being older and suddenly single again, the sad reality is that you can't go back. You're not a round peg, and you never will be again.

Trying to fit into a square hole presents it's own set of problems. Truly square pegs are very much a known quantity, and represent something the irregularly shaped peg is not - a couple. The irregularly shaped peg leaves the square hole inadequately filled, and the absence is noticed by others in the peer group - particularly those of the opposite gender. Spending time as a single man with married couples, the thing I notice is that the wife of the hosting couple seems to miss the presence of another woman to balance the conversation. This makes sense, as while it would be completely appropriate for me to spend extended time 1-on-1 with another man having in depth conversations and forming a rewarding friendship, if I was to do that with a married woman it would be cause for significant concern. There's always going to be a limit to the depth a friendship can form under these circumstances, and so ultimately the irregularly shaped peg is not offering as much to the square peg couple as another square peg couple would.
[Remember I'm discussing within church circles here - I'm unsure of how things would play out if many of the limitations we apply to ourselves in church circles to avoid falling into sin were not a concern. Obviously people would fall into sin significantly more often, but perhaps in some instances both parties in a couple could form a Platonic relationship with a single party that had significant depth to it. I just don't know. I've never been confident of the reality of Platonic relationships between members of the opposite sex, and recent experience makes me question it even more.]

So what is an irregularly shaped peg to do? Well, I suppose find other irregularly shaped pegs. The problem in my small sample set is that the tiny set of people I know to be irregularly shaped pegs seem to have already disappeared from view. I don't know their reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they just didn't feel like they fitted in. Maybe they went somewhere where round peggers didn't know they used to be square, and try to keep the remains of their corners out of view. Maybe they decided to keep to themselves, and not try and find a place where they would fit - which for a peg, is a very unfulfilled place to be. Pegs were made for holes.

To throw the metaphor aside at this point, the question ultimately is where do I fit? And when you follow that through to some depth you come to a fundamental question we all seem to come to at some point: why am I here? Perhaps not "here" as in alive on the earth, but why have the sum of my choices and experience led me to this point, at this place, at this time? Is there any purpose? Given what I understand of the nature of time, I can't believe that anything is just random chance, but perhaps the path that brought me here didn't do so for a purpose - it just had to go somewhere, and here was as good as anywhere else. I know we tend to quote Jeremiah 23:11 in these circumstances, but what I see there was spoken to a very specific group of people in a specific circumstance. Not to everyone for all time. We won't all prosper. Some of us will experience harm. We can all have a hope and a future, but not necessarily here and now.

So where does that leave me? Well, at some point I'd like to think I'll remarry. But before that can happen, I have to be redefined both internally and externally as being a single man again. The internal bit is a process that I can see progressing, and that is well on the way. The external process however seems to be the hard one. It's what has inspired this whole pegs metaphor. In a group of people who have always known me as being married, can I redefine myself and be accepted into a group of peers? Or are the edges of the peg holes so rigid that someone carrying the scars of being left by an unfaithful partner will never really fit in? I suppose time will tell.

Audience Stats

2011-02-21T13:50:00.002+11:00

Today, I've had 17 page views from France. I just thought that was worth sharing.

Welcome, French visitor(s). I hope you've enjoyed your stay. :)

An Explanation

2010-12-23T10:06:00.001+11:00

I've considered carefully publishing this post. I want to tell people the truth, as I've always been honest and open, but at the same time I don't want to create bitterness or angst. There's been enough of that already, and I'm ready to move forward now. Part of that for me however, is sharing this story with all of you.

For those who don't know already, Rachel and I are no longer together. What follows is an explanation of why:

We've had some fairly big problems in our marriage. We've struggled with them for a long time, and they took their toll on both of us. We'd seen several marriage counsellors over a number of years, and still we struggled. That being said, my attitude was always that we'd keep at it until we sorted it through - that you work things out, no matter what. Rachel however found that she was unable to do that.

In late 2009, Rachel got involved with another man. The relationship continued, and despite numerous moments where she decided she should do the right thing and break it off, she was unable to bring herself to give it up. I tried very hard to win her affections back, and was as gracious and understanding as I could be through the whole thing. She has said she's sorry things unfolded the way they did, but ultimately she chose not to give up the relationship she formed with this man. Obviously, this wasn't a circumstance under which our marriage could continue.

As you might imagine, the past 12 or so months as this situation has unfolded have been incredibly difficult for me. But I have had to accept that what is, is; regardless of how I feel about it. As a result, Rachel and I have done the absolute best we can in maintaining amicability for the sake of the boys. We both love them immensely and want the best for them, and we're doing everything we can to soften the impact this situation will inevitably have on them.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge now and we're both in very different places. I'm taking the New Year as an opportunity to start over - to look at what it means to be a part-time carer / full-time dad, and to be suddenly single again at age 31. The boys now see quite a bit of Rachel's new partner, and I'm coming to terms with that... slowly. They are adjusting as well as children possibly could given their situation, and discussions about them with Rachel are amicable and functional, as the one common ground I know we still share is wanting the best for them even if we disagree on what that looks like from time to time. I'm trying hard to follow the path I believe God is leading me on, and I hope that He'll make it a bit clearer as time goes on. I still wrestle with why he's allowed this to happen, but I suppose ultimately I may just have to let it go.

If you're reading this, you're probably a friend or family member, and even if you aren't: Merry Christmas, and all the best for the New Year. Enjoy your family, your friends, and the time you have to share with them. Remember that eternity is the long bit, and that Jesus is the reason we can look forward to that. {/sappy bit}

These goings-on are the reason nothing has appeared on this blog in a long time. With this post out of the way, I'm hoping to post a bit more regularly. Also, I'm thinking of starting a new blog about my journey working out this new life I've got, in the hope that it might help others who find themselves in this place. I'll put details here if/when I do so you can read it if you want.

God bless,

Justin

Welcome Back, Torrential Rain!

2009-02-17T09:03:00.002+11:00

The photo above is taken out our apartment window this morning. As you can see, the clearer weather we enjoyed yesterday was short lived. What does one do in Port Macquarie in pouring rain? I guess we'll let you all know once we figure it out...

Answered Prayer

2009-02-16T13:50:00.001+11:00

I'm not sure how well this photo shows it, but the rain has gone. It's still fairly cool, so swimming is not high on our agenda, but the weather is perfect for walking along the breakwater, or enjoying a coffee by the shore. So yeah, thanks to God for the answered prayer!

Holidays in sunny Port Macquarie

2009-02-15T08:09:00.006+11:00

So it's been a long time since I've posted anything, and I fully intend to post something more deserving of being the first post in ages,but I just needed to share this.

My wife and I have been planning a get-away for ages. We booked a holiday in Port Macquarie over 6 months ago, and had my leave booked in and everything. As the time to leave drew close, things started to conspire against us. Projects that should have been well and truly completed at work were delayed massively. My offsider who was going to be holding down the fort at work got called up for jury duty. Some issues arose at home that made going away less appealing. But with unnecessarily high stress we departed, and arrived at Port Macquarie with the intention of trying to forget the stressors at home and spending a week relaxing on the beach.

This is a photo taken from the balcony of our apartment:

This has been the scene for the last 36 hours, and there's no sign of it letting up. We're so bored that my wife is now picking fights with me, and the boys are going completely stir crazy. We're trying to find things to do that are wet weather friendly, but my wife was so set on spending a week at the beach that she'd rather sit and be miserable then do things that we might well be able to do at home like take the boys to a play centre, or go bowling. Luckily, today we're spending time with some extended family but if this doesn't improve, being on holidays might turn out to be an incredibly hard week's work.

Linux on the Dektop, and Open Office

2008-06-06T20:42:00.005+10:00

So two things happened today that related to linux and open source software, so I thought I should blog about this, seeing its got me thinking. Please note, that I'm wasting time I could spend gaming to write this (kids in bed, wife at a party) so please feel incredibly privileged.

Part 1: Desktop Linux

So the first thing that happened is a few days back I decided to hunt out a linux distro, and setup a virtual machine. I thought it was about time I got some good solid linux experience, and with all these proponents of desktop linux constantly making noise on various interweb forums, I thought it was time I gave it a good solid try. So I did a search for some distros that might offer me the kind of facility I was looking for - that is, a good desktop environment. A couple of Google searches brought up Xandros linux, and Freespire linux - both which seeed to have the kind of features I might be looking for. I was aware of a few distos (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Yellow Dog) but wanted to look at something that really was aimed at being a desktop for the average joe.

First thing I discovered is that contrary to popular belief, linux is not all free, as in beer. At least, some linux distributions are, and others aren't. I knew that you had to pay for Red Hat on disc, but I thought that was more about it being on a disc then actually needing to pay for the software. It seems funny that software that has basically been crowdsourced over many years can then be profited on simply by throwing in some value add (eg: Freespire includes codecs for common proprietary media formats)
(Edit: I've since been shown that Freespire is in fact one of the free distrobutions - I just was looking in the wrong place.)

Not wanting to pay for the above-mentioned distros, I went back to what I knew: Ubuntu. I've heard several people talk about Ubuntu in a favorable light, and I'm not exactly a novice, so I'm sure I can work it out. So Ubuntu it was. I set about to downloading it, which finished late in the afternoon. I decide to leave it overnight, which then brings us to today.

So I set myself up a virtual machine with a reasonable amount of RAM, and capture the downloaded Ubuntu ISO file to boot the machine. I'm greeted with a menu offering me several options, one of which is "Install Ubuntu". Sounds great. I hit enter on that one. After half a second of thinking, the VM reports a processor error. Ah - OK, probably a graphics issue with the VM. I remember from a previous attempt with Mandrake years ago that sometimes video drivers are tricky. So I hit F4 and select safe video. Same result.

Because this will be very long if I type it all out, basically after literally hours of searching and trying different things, here's what I had to do to get it to boot:

On the CD boot screen, hit F4 and choose safe video. Then hit F6 and edit the boot commands. Add "noreplace-paravirt forcevesa vga=791" to the boot options. Then choose to Try Ubuntu from the CD.
Once it booted into the GUI, choose the Install icon.
When the install finished, restart and quickly press ESC as grub was starting
Select the default installation item, and press 'e' for edit. Select the kernal options and press 'e' again. Add "noreplace-paravirt forcevesa vga=791" and then press ESC, and then 'b' to boot.
Once loaded, open a command prompt and type "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst". Enter password. Add above mentioned command again at the appropriate location. Save this file.
Open terminal, backup xorg.conf (sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.BAK) and then make some substantial edits to get the resolution to function at 1024x768 at 16bpp. This, btw, still isn't working.
Still in terminal, sudo gedit... a file I now forget, to add an initialisation string to get the sound to work.

Is anyone else seeing why linux is SOOOOOOOO not up to desktop OS standard for average Joe user??? I'm using a VM that presents the guest OS with really basic standard hardware, and the amount of difficulty it has just dealing with it is colossal. I'm still playing around trying to get it to function as I'm typing this. I've now given up on it ever displaying a reasonable resolution and am just trying to get it to start in 800x600 which seems to be its default. And at the moment, it STILL WON'T DO IT. As soon as I log in, my desktop goes all badness.

Part 2: The parent

So today, I get a call from a parent of some students at the school. He says he has two questions for me, and the first is quickly resolved to be that the reason his email to a teacher is bouncing is because he's missing a character from the email address. Awesome, sorted. What's the second issue?

The second issue comes about like this: His child had been given an assessment task at school to create a PowerPoint presentation. Now, at home this guy tells me he avoids Microsoft products like the plague - so they have a Mac, and a couple of machines running Linux, and they use OpenOffice. They may have had a copy of Microsoft Office, I'm not sure, because he did seem to mention it a bit - however, for whatever reason, his child had done their presentation in Impress - the OO.org equivalent of PowerPoint.

Hey, I hear you say, but that's no problem - OpenOffice is 100% compatible with Microsoft Office document formats!

Fail.

You see, it appears Impress has at least one "improved" feature on PowerPoint, and that's the ability to record a narration that runs across the entire presentation, whereas PowerPoint wants you to do it slide-by-slide. Anyway, the point is that this child elected to do their project in a different product, and now, it doesn't work right when he brings it to school.

So what did the parent do? Gave the child a USB stick full of open source software to run on the school computers, so that they can present their project in something other then the proscribed software. Ah. OK then. Well, no harm done I guess. Not that I'm 100% comfortable with a parent undermining our best efforts to give their child a stable and consistent computing platform. We wouldn't want that whole "good management" and "consistency" thing getting in the way of the general anti-MS crusade.

However, the reason for his call wasn't just to tell me this. It was to make the argument that seeing as how Open Office is free and all, and doesn't require your stereotypical Windows install (registry entries, etc.), why don't we just provide it? He said "Couldn't you just put it on a server somewhere there?" Now, for me this was a little bit startling, and started a discussion between him and me that I found a bit disconcerting - primarily, because he wanted me to defend my viewpoint somewhat, and also seemed to be presenting information that I wasn't convinced was accurate. For example, apparently Office 2008 for Mac doesn't offer compliance with Microsoft's own OOXML formats. However, we're using Office 2008 for Mac, and haven't had an issue. He was quite taken aback by this, and indicated that the forums he's read tell him otherwise. Regardless of this, I wasn't really sure why the expectation was that I needed to defend my decision not to provide and support application XYZ to the entire network at a parent's request.

Now, I'm going to wrap this up, because its really long. But basically, I explained that if I was going to deploy something that I needed to be able to endorse its ability to integrate with our other systems, and also had to be able to support it. Neither of these I felt comfortable to do with Open Office, and seeing as we deploy MS Office for our office applications, I didn't really think there was a need. The parent said he understood, and generally we had a pleasant discussion where we presented our own viewpoints. But...

The thing I don't get is why people get like this. We provide some software. It's good software. It works well, and is commonly used by a massive chunk of all organizations worldwide. There's other good software, and if you like it, that's fine. But I personally tend to like some of Microsoft's products, and while I'm aware OpenOffice is a reasonable competitor, I still think Windows and Microsoft Office are far and away the best products for the desktop in their respective markets. Even if you disagree with that, I don't understand the attitude common amongst those who would know what Slashdot is to shun and reject anything that has a Microsoft brand stamped on it.

Just in case you think I'm a diehard Windows fanatic who won't stomach anything else, I'm still persisting with Ubuntu, and shortly (hopefully) will have a couple of Macs in my office to begin work on setting up an appropriate network management strategy for deploying Macs/OSX in our predominantly Windows environment. I'd like our network to be platform agnostic, but I think the more realistic perspective for us is to have multiple interlinked systems for managing common platforms, and that's what I'm going to be working towards. Besides, its all going to be web services shortly anyway, isn't it?

New Concerns

2008-05-12T11:47:00.005+10:00

For me, this blog has for a very long time now been my source of outlet when life gets difficult or frustrating. I've talked about everything from Americanism, to job and life disappointments, family tragedy, anime translation, music copyright issues, ancient relationship hangups, responding to ancient relationship hangups, circumsicion, the state of copyright law, and recently cancer.
One thing that has made this quite appealing has been the level to which I can be honest about how I feel. I've offended the occasional person in doing so, but for the most part I have written how I honestly feel, and no ill has come of displaying that level of honestly.
However, for the first time now, I'm starting to be careful what I say. You may have noticed the recent lack of content, and following slew of random photos, and this is all because I've started to feel uneasy about being honest in a forum that is so open. Actually, I've started feeling uncomfortable about being proactively honest in general. My "safe people" that I could confide in when I was feeling stressed and distressed have become fewer and further between, and so I think that's resulted in a bunch more just keeping things to myself. It's just easier that way. While there were always things that I wouldn't publish on my blog, the threshold has just dropped across the board, meaning that now the stuff that fueled my enraged blog posts of the past I don't really feel like I can share on here.
However, this isn't a close to this blog. More just an explanation of why there's less stuff on here of late, and perhaps more uninteresting or less meaningful posts. This may change - who knows? Just thought I'd fill you all in...

Redefining "updates"

2008-05-09T15:42:00.003+10:00

So I'm working on a staff member's computer today, and they've got this older CD based program that requires Quicktime in order to use, but the version on the CD is too old to work with Vista. OK, no worries, we'll install the latest version and hopefully it'll fix it up. Which is what I do. I grab the Quicktime only installer (that is, the one that isn't bundled with iTunes) and install it. When it asks about Apple Updater, I think "yeah, that'd be useful" and so install it also. That way, he'll be kept up-to-date.
Later on, I'm working on the machine doing some other stuff, and up jumps Apple Update. It has 3 updates for me to install - an update for itself, and update for Quicktime, and... iTunes. As in, it has the iTunes+Quicktime installer listed, with a check in the checkbox ready for me to obediently click "Install".
Now, last time I checked "update" meant to take a piece of software you've already chosen to install and replace the required files to bring it into line with the latest version. Not to install a piece of software that I've purposefully avoided installing onto this person's laptop. Your average user probably wouldn't even check - they'd just install whatever Apple Update told them they needed. Can you imagine the kind of fall out Microsoft would get if they tried something like this? A pre-selected Windows update installs their prefered brand of picture viewer? They've already had to pull Media Player out of the EU version of Windows because apparently bundling a media player with your OS is anti-competitive.

Anyway, gripe of the day. Enjoy.

zOMG! A black Mac Mini?!

2008-05-09T09:49:00.001+10:00

Seems some crafty Chinese PC company likes the Mac Mini form factor.

There's a helicopter on the oval!!

2008-04-08T10:57:00.002+10:00

So I'm at work today, and the Principal's PA walks in to let us know there's this helicopter parked on the school's oval. Apparently, there's an author who was coming to speak to a yeargroup at the school, and rather then battle the traffic to get out here, he decided to just fly his chopper out and land it on the oval! It's nice for some, I guess.

I do intend to do a "proper" proper blog post soonish. There's rants to be had, I just don't seem to get the time these days.

Dinner with Joel and Lisa

2008-03-30T21:10:00.003+11:00

In true random form, I thought I'd post this photo I took at dinner tonight. Happy faces all around.

Mobile blogging!

2008-03-29T23:03:00.004+11:00

I haven't blogged in ages, but I just got myself this brand new Sony Ericsson K850i mobile phone, and it has a 5Mp camera in the back - AND it'll send photos directly to my blog! So here is the first. I was strapping my son into his baby seat in the car, and thought I'd take the opportunity to take a photo. So there it is for your viewing pleasure.

Royal North Shore - Rachel's Story

2008-01-25T17:35:00.000+11:00

As some of you may know, a bit over a week ago now Rachel had surgery at Royal North Shore to treat suspected thyroid cancer. I'm not sure if I mentioned it on my blog, but because the pathology had so far been uncertain, they were going to do the operation in such a way that they could take half her thyroid, get it biopsied during the operation, and then if necissary take the rest out. They were also going to review her previous fine needle biopsy slides to see if they could get a more conclusive diagnosis.

On the day of the surgery (Wednesday last week), they advised us that they'd reviewed the pathology and it was almost certainly cancer, so as a result they were just going to take the whole thing out. It was supposed to be a fairly short operation - only a bit over an hour - but it ended up taking them three and a half. They were taking extra care around Rachel's vocal chord nerves, as they'd been told she sings, but the thyroid was apparently very close to those, and also was quite solid. The surgeon said normally you can cut it and it just kind of comes away, but with Rachel that wasn't the case.

I've found it interesting to try and find a way of describing the outcome of the surgery. Initially I was telling people that it was quite successful - the gland was out, and they believe that they got everything, eliminating the threat of cancer. However, the surgery was long and difficult, and they had to remove one of Rachel's parathyroid glands, which messed up her calcium levels for days. We actually wound up at the emergency department at Windsor Hospital on Friday night - the day Rachel was discharged from RNS - as her calcium levels dipped to the point where the muscles in her hands were starting to seize up. She had to stay in overnight. So in reality, the surgery went much worse then expected. However, the outcome of the surgery is that assuming the pathology confirms the surgeons belief that it was definately cancer, they believe they got it all and thus Rachel is now OK. It sounds like given the circumstances, the surgeons did an exceptional job, and I'm really pleased we elected to go to RNS to have this done, even though the 3 days Rachel was there was horendous for me (more about that later). Her voice appears unaffected, and her calcium levels are now starting to even out. There's still some smallish things to get sorted (calcium, thyroxin, RAI treatment) but they should hopefully be fairly straight-forward.

All in all, we're just thankful to God that we're on the other side of the surgery, and that it appears that although it was cancer, it has now been removed and will require only a fairly minor post-operative treatment to ensure it is completely gone.

Just thought I'd fill anyone in who might be looking here for updates.

Massive update post

2007-12-19T14:07:00.000+11:00

Hello readership who has waned into oblivion! This is the "I haven't blogged for so long that now I need to blog half a million things in a single post" post. So let's get to it.

Rachel's Thyroid Cancer
Following my last post re: Rachel's thyroid cancer, we had an appointment with the thyroid surgery unit at Royal North Shore Hospital. While they didn't change anything about the diagnosis or treatment ("Surprise! It's not cancer, and you need no surgery!" would have been the best possible outcome) they did reassure us quite a bit about what needs to be done, and the potential risks both of the surgery and of the cancer. Turns out this cancer is pretty non-eventful, and in someone Rachel's age is pretty much 100% cure rate. That's like having... I don't know... tonsillitis. You have to have surgery to fix it, but really, it's nothing to worry about.

Anyway - one of Rachel's biggest concerns was that her endocrinologist had indicated she'd need radioactive iodine treatment as soon as the surgery was done - or within a few weeks. Turns out he was being over reactive. The thyroid surgery people said she'd be fine to leave it as long as she needed - and that's exactly what she plans to do. The issue with this treatment was breastfeeding our 4-month old son, so she's going to finish feeding him to about a year old, and then have the treatment. Smiles and happiness all around.

Basically, this whole situation is more of an inconvenience then anything else now. Continuing prayer for complication-free surgery would be appreciated, because I think Rachel would really struggle if her voice got damaged.

The Magpie-Lark (aka Peewee)
As I type this, I have a box on my desk covered in a towel. Inside, is a very small and very frightened Peewee. The stupid bugger fell out of his nest, and can't fly. So I rang WIRES, and they told me I should make him a make-shift nest, and put it in a tree. The plan is, his parents will come and look after him and all would be well. You know what the stupid bird did? Immediately took a nose dive out of the nest, hit the ground with a thud, and casually started wandering towards the road! Anyway, I tried another time and he gracefully did the same thing, so I've now given up and someone is on their way to fix him up with a feeding cage. In the meantime, enjoy the following portrait:

Cute, isn't he? Yep - he's also a complete pain in the rear. Spent most of my morning trying to get him back to his parents at WIRES' direction, and all he was interested in doing was throwing himself in front of cars. Good times. He contributes "SKREEEEEETCH!!!" to the discussion.

Health, Weight loss and Well-being
I'm pretty unmotivated to lose weight. I've lost some, but in general, getting the kilos off is a near impossible task. A couple of people have commented recently that I look like I've lost weight, but unfortunately the scales tell a different story. Then again, maybe that's good? Who knows.

I succumb to World of Warcraft
If you're on the Dath'Remar realm, Katranda can be found wandering in Westfall at the moment. I held off on getting involved in this game for so long, and now thankfully its cheap enough that I can get a few months of play for fairly little outlay. I plan to make use of their 3 month play cards to play when I feel like it, and not when I don't. If I get half a dozen good PS3 games for Christmas, for example, I'll probably wait before cashing in the first of said cards. Priorities are important. ;)

Ok, that's it. I planned to put much more in here, but hey - when it came to it I was just unable to deliver masses of engaging content.
Merry Christmas everyone - I hope your stockings are full, and your stomachs also, but more then that I hope you remember why we celebrate Christmas at this time of year: because a bunch of pagans were having a feast, and we didn't want to miss out, so we put our own on at the same time!!! Lolz!!

In all seriousness, its nice to have a day on the calendar each year that we remember Jesus' birth, and the wondrous gift that God gave us all those years ago. Sappy as it sounds, may God bless you all this Christmas. Peace, good will, and ponies for all.

Conciousness

2007-12-19T13:41:00.000+11:00

So I've been thinking about conciousness. What makes our experience of life work? Personally, I believe it's something external - the human soul, that is joined to our physical experience in a simular vein to how things work in The Matrix. The bit of us that makes us who we are isn't tied to the same 3 (4?) dimensional world that our bodies are. I like to think of it being like our brain is an interface that our soul is plugged into.

However, I was thinking about conciousness as a product of merely a physical brain, and I can't resolve some ideas. These all revolve around the experience of the person rather then external person looking on. For example, if conciousness was purely physical, I should be able to walk into a room, copy myself exactly (technology permitting) and have the clone walk out and go on with my life as if they were me - because from their perspective, they ARE me (with not much gramatical sense either). However, even though they feel as though their conciousness has been continuous, I know that they are a copy. To everyone looking on, I've walked into a room, and I've walked back out. So is it really me? Well, no - because I can then also walk out of the room. But while I'm in the room, doing nothing, experiencing nothing... say I'm asleep or unconcious or something... is the clone "really" me? It's the me having the experience of being concious, but my conciousness has stopped - I'm unconcious. Or if you'd like to argue that unconciousness is not really no conciousness, then say the me in the room dies. Is the clone, who wasn't the original me, now the real me?

You may note there's been movies that has explored this idea like The 6th Day, or The Island, and The Matrix does the most well-known job of exploring the idea of a reality above this one, although I'm personally rather partial to The 13th Floor. The ideas are around, but as scientific research moves forward I wonder if anyone has actually considered this to an appropriate level. Say you could deconstruct someone's matter and reconstruct it somewhere else - a common science fiction idea that is being worked on in real science. From an external viewpoint, there appears to be no adverse side-effects, as the person on the other end appears externally to be the person who was deconstructed. But who is to say that the person on the sending end didn't die - that is, their experience of conciousness stopped at the point they were deconstructed. How could you tell?

Just something I've been thinking about...

Quicktime is lame

2007-12-19T10:04:00.000+11:00

This post was originally constructed in August this year, and was saved as draft. I've added the last paragraph and published. Trying to get rid of some half-written drafts I have. Expect some more soon-ish.

Just a short (edit: not short) Mac bash this morning:
So I turn on my PowerBook this morning, and Apple Software Update comes up with some updates for iTunes and Quicktime and stuff. So I take a look at the update for Quicktime and observe the following:

QuickTime 7.2 addresses critical security issues and delivers:
- Support for full screen viewing in QuickTime Player

Now, this is a feature that has been in, oh I don't know, EVERY other media player since forever. Apple has witheld it up until now, because they want you to pay for Quicktime Pro which DID have this feature. So, to sum up - a feature that has been in every other media player forever is finally introduced into Quicktime today (well, within the last week), negating the need for you to pay Apple extra for it. If you had bought Windows 95 in 1996, you would have got this feature for free, and it's been a staple in Media Player, and every other media player for Windows or Linux (or 3rd party for OSX for that matter) since forever. WHY this wasn't included in Quicktime boils down to greed on the part of Apple.

But hey - this is what I've come to expect from Apple. Upgrades to their IM client are advertised as features of their paid OS upgrade. As opposed to, you know, almost every other IM client which gives you feature updates FOR FREE and for the most part already have MORE FEATURES then iChat. But still, Apple users will use iChat. And this is where I get confused - WHY!?!? And this is not specific to iChat - an advertised improvement in Leopard is having stationary in Apple Mail. Again, there are free mail clients available that do this, and everything else Apple Mail does already - and they're FREE. And sometimes, they WORK BETTER. Just try doing a simple out-of-office notification in Mail. My boss does when he's out of town - I have to check it every day to ensure it hasn't gotten confused and started sending emails to itself.

The list goes on - and features advertised as revolutionary (*cough* Time Machine *cough*) are just the equivilent of pre-existing features in Windows/Linux with a pretty UI. Previous Versions, anyone? In Vista, they've even made it exceedingly simple. Right-click on any file, and:

You can do this on a folder, and actually open and work with previous contents of that older. And if you use Windows Backup, it will record the fact that there are previous versions on specific backups and display them in the list. Revolutionary! Next year's OS, today!

Anyway - this pargraph I'm now typing months after I originally created this post, and as it turns out the great Leopard is held by the Mac zealots in my office as being buggy and unreliable, and as such, no one has upgraded their work machines to it due to software incompatiabilities with Filemaker, which I believe have just recently been resolved with a second patch (that is, they patched it once to get it just to run, and now they've patched it again to get it to work properly). Good times.

Papillary Carcenoma

2007-11-20T09:50:00.000+11:00

Papillary Carcenoma is a cancer of the thyroid. It is the most common thyroid cancer, and is 3 times more likely to occur in women then in men. It is very treatable via surgery and radioactive iodine treatment, and has a very high survival rate.

It also is, apparently, what my wife has growing in her neck. Well, we can't say for sure, but the doctor says it's the most likely scenario. As a result, she'll need her thyroid removed. This means she'll need to be on thyroxin for the rest of her life, and there's a small possibility the surgery could damage her voice.

While of all cancers she could possibly get, this is probably the "best" one to have in terms of treatment and survivability, we obviously would have much preferred that she didn't have cancer at all.

So those who know us and who pray, just some prayer that this will be easy, uncomplicated and quickly resolved would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Rachel wanted me to add an extra prayer point - The follow-up treatment for thyroid cancer is radioactive iodine. It's a very effective treatment, but it will require her to stop breastfeeding Campbell, and will mean she'll need to be isolated for a while, and then not have close contact with our boys for a while more due to the radiation. It will be very hard for all of us. Some prayer that this treatment will not be required would be awesome.

Ways I've Made Money Online

2007-11-08T20:23:00.001+11:00

This looks like spam, I know. But I've tried several different schemes over the last I-Don't-Know-How-Many years, and I've found two of them that work. Both of them are getting paid for targeted advertising. They're by no means quick money, but considering they take about 3 minutes out of your day each day, and then eventually give you real cash, that's not such a bad deal. Here they are:

PureProfile: You fill out a profile, then go to the site each day to read messages. You can setup notificiation preferences if you want to email you when there's stuff to read.

EmailCash: This has been the most lucrative for me thus far. They email you, and you click on the link in the email to indicate you've read it. You get 5 points. 1 point = 1 cent. You can get a cheque at $30 or $100, and I've had several $30 cheques and am now well on my way to a $100 one. Just for reading emails. Not bad really.

Now my wife, on the other hand, came to me quite a while ago now and asked for some money (I think it was $65 from memory) to sign up with a crowd who would hand your name around to market research companies. She has made hundreds of dollars out of it, for very little effort.

Just thought some of you might be interested. Just btw, the links above give me bonuses if you sign up using them. ;)

SMH: Piracy not raiding CD sales

2007-11-08T09:34:00.000+11:00

The enforcement arm of the Australian music industry has dismissed damaging overseas research that found illegal music sharing actually increased CD sales.

The study, conducted by two researchers at the University of London for the Canadian Government, found people downloaded songs illegally because they wanted to hear them before buying or because they were not available in stores.

Hasn't this been said before? Check the link for the story, and from there you can jump to the research. I love it that the music industry just dismisses the research because they don't like it.

The sooner we see some reform to copyright laws the better. If one of the major parties got up and started talking proactively about that, they'd certainly get my vote.

Review of Mac OS 10.5 - Leopard

2007-10-31T10:35:00.001+11:00

Click the title for the link. This is fantastically funny, and yet also Mac fan friendly.

Unpleasent

2007-10-24T16:34:00.000+10:00

I'm having an unpleasent afternoon. You know those times when everything seems unpleasent? When pleasentries seem to disappear, and the notion of pleasent is nowhere to be found? Yep, just like that.

A Conversation with a 'New Atheist'

2007-10-17T08:45:00.000+10:00

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."
Richard Feynman

"Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values."
Gerald Brenan

I've recently, once again, been engaged in conversations with people who espouse as fact, beliefs (and I call them that purposely) gleaned from a reading of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and possibly some of his other works, or suggested references. This most recent conversation had a very disturbing aspect for me, in that the primary point of contention was Dawkins' belief that religion is a form of mental illness, and that teaching your children about your religion constitutes child abuse, as based on the previous claim. The conversation occurred via a forum, so I had plenty of opportunity to research my counterpoints before I replied each time. In the second last message I posted, I spent hours researching and quoting/citing references regarding the demonstrated medical advantages of having some form of religious/spiritual belief system. From my perspective, this demonstrated that Dawkins' view could be considered to be (purposefully) ignorant of the commonly accepted research on this topic. [see references 1, 2, 3]

However, the person I was having this argument with completely ignored all references I'd made in his reply, and simply restated his belief. He presented no evidence to support his point of view, other then vague generalisations, and a summary of Google search evidence. For example: "I Googled 'religion child abuse', and got over 2 million hits, many of the first few pages from science journals." These rather vague claims I disputed- most of the results I saw for this search were opinion pieces regarding Dawkins' book, and I think number of hits is fairly non indicative of common viewpoints. Especially when your search term would match an article containing the sentence "Therefore, religion should certainly not be considered child abuse."

So why is this disturbing? This person, although he'd completely deny it I'm sure, is one of the New Atheist faithful. Seizing on teachings from Dawkins and his ilk, they will defend their viewpoint with great zeal without actually knowing any of the reasons why they believe it. Ultimately the reason they defend it because of the underlying belief behind the whole movement - that "brights" are somehow of greater value then the rest of us. The following quote is by Dawkins from the Wired article linked from the title of this post:

"Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists," he says. "Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn't add up. Either they're stupid, or they're lying. ..."

He seems to have covered the only two options off fairly well, hasn't he? (note: sarcasm)
To suggest that most intelligent people are atheists is certainly not something I'm aware has been qualified by research. What is the metric? The number of students in evolutionary biology courses that would call themselves atheists? I certainly wouldn't qualify under that banner, but my IQ of 136, university degree, and job designing software would suggest that I have at least some kind of intelligence wouldn't it? Or is that immediately disqualified by the fact that I also believe that our presently observable reality is not all there is?

I call your attention to the quote from Richard Feynmen at the start of this post. The existence of God immediately dispels all arguments that have been presented, because all arguments I have seen presented are based on the presupposition that God is not real. This presupposition comes from holding the existence of God up against the scientific method, which is the most stupid idea I personally have ever heard. As stated, on non-science issues, scientists are just as dumb as the next guy. And yet, Dawkins makes brash statements about God being "unlikely" and people believe him because he's a scientist. I'm qualified as a scientist - Computer scientist, that is. If I mix some chemicals together in a lab and tell you that drinking them will cure you from cancer, would you trust me? If so, I suggest you seek help. Your life may be in danger. However, this is what people are doing. Basing their beliefs about the supernatural on the opinions of someone who specialises in one aspect of the natural, and seems to suggest that anything that doesn't fit within his particular model of the universe must be fiction.

My purpose in talking about this is primarily because when I read Dawkins' and others arguments about this issue, I start from the viewpoint of them having some basis in fact, and so have to spend a great deal of time finding the necessary evidence to demonstrate that, particularly in the case of Dawkins, they are driven by misplaced bitterness and/or political agendas which overpower their sense of logic and reason and instead provoke them to present small, subjective, hand-picked subsets of data to support claims that further their cause. I would be far better served to acknowledge the truth: that these people are not interested in the truth. They present themselves as men of science in order to be heard, and then do things that are entirely unscientific to try and establish their case. What physicist when faced with an issue of biology would not ask a biologist? Why then does an evolutionary biologist speak on issues of theology? Of psychology? Surely claims about psychological effects of religion on children would be better authored by someone who had some degree of expertise in the subject matter? And yet, instead we get another "Da Vinci Code" - a work of fiction that the public chooses to believe as fact, in order that they might continue to justify ignoring the true questions of their own existence.

The following is a quote from Albert Mohler. I don't even know who this guy is, but he did a write up[4] on the Wired article I've linked, and I found his assessment below to be rather insightful:

The very fact that Wolf remains unconvinced by the arguments promoted by the New Atheists is itself significant. What Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett--along with the other New Atheists--really demand is that society must place itself in the hands of a new and militant atheistic priesthood. Science as defined by these new priests, would serve as the new sacrament and as the means of salvation.

While New Atheism will invoke science to create a false sense of objectivism, it is ultimately interested in becoming the "religion" of choice. That people will get a sense of value by adhering to its precepts. Ultimately though, science has nothing of permanent value to offer on its own. Knowledge is interesting and valuable, but if this is all there is, you might as well die a ignoramus as a genius. You're still dead. New Atheism is ultimately just a campaign for a new aristocracy of self-proclaimed "brights" with a policy of government-instituted atheism. Absurd? I'd say yes. And it seems that religiosity is not a prerequisite for identifying the absurdity of their claims.

Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong.
[from the linked article]

The suggestion that religion is mental illness is not only opposed by a large body of evidence, but it is also popularly unpopular. Adherence to a set of religious beliefs produces people who are healthier, happier[1], more generous with their money and their time[3], and generally of greater good to society as a whole then their atheist/agnostic counterparts.

[references]

[1] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/186_10_210507/koe10330_fm.html
Medical Journal of Australia summary of the importance of religion/spirituality in health and well being. Links numerous other articles and studies supporting it's stance.

[2] http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
Criticism of the New Atheist ideas from an acknowledged atheist, and associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He argues that regardless of the existence of God, religion has been demonstrated to be of positive social value.

[3] http://www.arthurbrooks.net/statistics.html
"People who are religious give more across the board to all causes than
their non-religious counterparts"
"There is a huge “charity gap” that follows religion: On average, religious people are far more generous than secularists with their time and money. This is not just because of giving to
churches—religious people are more generous than secularists towards explicitly non-religious charities as well. They are also more generous in informal ways, such as giving money to family members, and behaving honestly."
See the link for citations supporting this claim.

[4] http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2006-11-21

Game Launch Goodness

2007-09-28T13:04:00.000+10:00

It appears that the launch of that "Halo 3" game has interfered with the launch of the greatest FPS game known to man. Watch the video - comedic genius.

Something is wrong with the world...

2007-09-03T16:14:00.000+10:00

The following image is a screen clip of my Facebook profile page. The application it's looking at is called Compare People, and it shows you the user picture of two of your friends, and asks you a comparison question like "Who is the most intelligent?". It then adds up the votes from all your friends and shows you what categories you got the most votes for.
Please observe the image below (highlight is mine):

This must be some new definition of the word "best" that I've yet to encounter. Either that, or we've just accidentally found a bug in the matrix. I vote bug in the matrix. That would be far more interesting. :)

UPDATE: It appears that the list only recalculates when you compare other people - so I have, and I've now lost my status as person with the best body. *sigh* That was shortlived. Oh well - Back to the diet I guess...

The case of the Phantom Chicken Drumstick

2007-08-31T13:49:00.000+10:00

Before I get in to the subject of this post, I'd like to note that my last post was my 200th on this blog. One day, I shall print them all out and have them bound into a book. Why? I don't know. For kicks. OK, on with the post.

So I'm on my lunchbreak. When I'm working from home, my lunch break is usually 80/20 lunch and break. That is, I spend most of my time making and then eating my lunch. The remainder is usually then spent waiting for my lunchbreak to end. However, today I'd already spent most of my lunch break writing an enoumous rant on a gaming forum, only to decide it wasn't worth trying to argue with what are most likely 16 year old boys on the finer points of politics and it's implications for those whose primary use of the internet isn't trying to get around the porn filter their parents have installed. So I deleted my massive rant that took me half an hour to craft, and went to find some relatively quick food.
What I found was a box full of roast chicken portions in the fridge. Yum-mee. I'm quite the fan of anything roasted, and roast chicken sounded just about perfect. So I pick up a drumstick, and start to munch away at it.
While I'm doing this, I notice a courier van pull up out the front. As the guy gets out and starts walking toward the house I think to myselft "Hmm - I'm going to need to do something with this chicken." And here is where things get dodgy.
You see, one of the following two things happened:

I quickly finished off the remaining chicken, and hoiked the bone in the bin.
I saw a place that looked like it would temporarily be a good place to leave a half eaten chicken leg, and carefully placed it there.

The problem is, I don't know which it was. I checked the bin, but there didn't seem to be any sign of the bone (to be fair, I didn't search too hard), and I've searched the house for convinent places one might put a half-eaten chicken bone, but I can't see it anywhere. It appears, for all intents and purposes, to have completely vanished. Gone. Like a phantom. Did it ever really exist at all? We may never know.

Jake the Pirate

2007-08-29T14:00:00.000+10:00

Just so the boy doesn't feel neglected, here's some photos just about Jake. He was at the Kuyper open day on Saturday and had his face painted as a pirate. Very cute, so I thought I'd share some photos.

With this last photo, I decided to do some very quick tweaking. I've upped the contrast and saturation quite a bit, and also the brightness and colour temprature ever so slightly. I would have liked to have done it in something that gives me control over saturation for each of the R/G/B colour chanels, but I was just doing it quickly and didn't have that option, so the reds are a little strong. What do you think? I think it looks good for a first attempt.

Campbell's life in pictures continues...

2007-08-29T13:35:00.000+10:00

The social networking thing...

2007-08-20T11:39:00.000+10:00

So just last week, I've gotten into this whole myspace/facebook thing. I've had a myspace profile for a while, thanks to receiving a rather cryptic email that required me to sign up before I could find out it was meaningless porn-spam, but I never did anything with it after that. Primarily because all the myspace profiles I came across contained eye-destroyingly bad colours, animated backgrounds and generally looked like they belonged to 15 year old girls who were increadibly bored - which, in fact, most of them did. I did want to link an example of said horror, but it appears you can no longer see pages of the youngn's if you're not a young'n. At least, I don't seem to stumble across 15/16 year olds pages anymore, and one would imagine they're the largest userbase. Anyway, trust me they were ugly, meaningless and definately didn't encourage me to get into myspace.

Anyway, one of my friends signed up for myspace and set himself up with a profile and what not, and made mention of it on his blog. Because I remembered I had a profile, I thought I'd just add myself as a friend to his. Then I decided to enter some details about me, and while I was there upload a photo or two. Nothing to rope me in thus far. Then I did a search for people who were in my year at school, and I turn up 6 people who I haven't seen in 10 years. I'm a bit of a sucker for nostalgia, so I send them all messages, and over the next couple of days I got some back. So now I'm hooked. Hunting out people I know and have known and seeing how they're doing is awesome. I'm big on family, so I love seeing that people have gotten married and have families of their own. It's really nice.

Anyway - so I do myspace now. And facebook too. Feel free to stop by.

Children and Hospitals

2007-08-17T11:49:00.000+10:00

So last night, I'm spending a bit of time with my new 3 week old son, and I notice he looks like he might have a bit of an infection. "Hmm" I think, "I wonder how soon we need someone to look at that?"

My eldest son had some infection issues when he was born and had to be in special care for a bit, so I'm well aware that infection and newborns is bad shenanigans. However, I'd really prefer not to have my already sleep deprived wife heading out to the doctors at 9pm on a Thursday (It would be her going, because she's the one with the feeding apparatus - I really am not much use with the new bubba for any extended period of time) if it's just me being paranoid, so I decide to give KidsNet a call at the Westmead Children's Hospital to see what they think. We've learnt from experience that there's a multitude of help available for parents of young kiddies, and KidsNet is one of the most handy for medical issues.

Anyway, after some discussion the nurse on the end of the phone is about to tell us just to monitor him overnight and see a GP tomorrow, when she asks where we live, and then changes her mind. There's a GP clinic near us at the hospital, open until 10pm, and she advises we should take him there, just to be safe. She also says she didn't really want to suggest we take him to emergency, because it's relatively likely he'll pick something up in the waiting room. Thus begins a night of poor coincidence.

When my wife arrives at the GP clinic, it's about half past nine. They advise that up in emergency, there's only 4 people waiting, so they are going to send her up there to see someone for convenience sake. When she gets there, there is about 10 people waiting. However, in the first hour they get through everyone except for her. The nurses take a look at our boy, and decide that he's OK to go home. However, a nearby doctor calls out that they need to have the doctor on emergency review him, and so my wife is told she'll need to wait to see the doctor. This is at about 10pm. At this point, a series of ambulances begins to arrive, and suddenly the single doctor on emergency becomes incredibly busy.

It's 1am before they get any further information. She's told they're next in line, and she should "give them another half an hour". At 2:00am, the waiting room is empty except for her, and still no doctor, and no further information on how long she might have to wait.

Finally, at about 2:45am, the doctor calls her in. He quickly reviews the situation, and concludes that my son is fine. This takes less then 10 minutes. Meanwhile, my 3 week old son has spent over 5 hours in the emergency waiting room that has had sick people coming in and out and coughing, sneezing and vomiting everywhere, just so he can get a 10 minute review that we really didn't want from the emergency department in the first place. The KidsNet nurse I'd spoken to way back at the beginning was keen for us not to wind up in emergency for this very reason, but because she'd told us to take him to the GP clinic, we'd wound up there anyway.

So - the end of this story is that I've had 4 hours sleep, my poor wife has had about 3, and we have to just keep going on with the business of the day. Work for me, and for her looking after our 2 boys. Good times. And I mean that in the slightly sarcastic way.

Did I mention I'm just a bit tired?

Australian PS3 $999 bundle getting the axe

2007-08-07T09:41:00.000+10:00

So at E3, there was a bunch of shenanigans about the price of the Playstation 3. The US got a nice $100US price cut on the 60Gb, and the introduction of an 80Gb unit at the original price. Then Sony Europe announced European territories were not getting a price cut but instead were getting a bundle for the same price - but that's OK because the US were being lied to: their price drop was really just a clearance sale on the 60Gb units. Eventually, Sony confirmed this was true, but reminded people that they might drop the price of the 80Gb unit in the future, and everyone eventually settled down and was happy with the fact that only a completely clueless company would increase the going price of their console, and right now US PS3's were $100 cheaper.

Meanwhile, Australia being a part of Europe as we are, got the "bundle for the same price" setup, where $999 no longer just got you a console and one controller, but instead got you the console, 2 controllers and 2 of the launch games. The increased value of this is not really debatable, but it's still a lot of money for most people.
Anyway - now to the interesting bit. If you follow the link from the post title, you'll see that Sony are canceling the bundle in Australia from the end of August. Now, one way to really make people unhappy is to charge them the same price for less product, so I find it hard to believe that they're reverting to selling non-bundled PS3s for the same price as always. There are only really two options here - Sony will be releasing the 80Gb PS3 unit here, and charging $999 for it, or they'll be dropping the price. And personally, I think the price drop will be where it's at. Sony are doing fairly well here, and cementing Australia as a predominantly PS3 territory would be well worth their while as far as making shareholders a little less concerned.

Anyway - just was interested and thought I'd blog. If anyone was considering buying a PS3, right now might *not* be the time to do it. Leipzig Gaming Conference is at the end of this month, and there's a suggestion that price cuts for the "European" territories will be announced there. There's also a suggestion that the rumoured rumbling controller will be confirmed/shown/release date announced. And that in itself is worth waiting for.

OK - all done. Have a great day all.

Campbell @ Home

2007-08-02T15:19:00.000+10:00

If this is your first visit here today, there's another post below this one that has a bunch of new photos I posted a couple of hours ago. If you've already seen them, well - HERE'S SOME MORE!!!

More Campbell Pictures!

2007-08-02T12:24:00.000+10:00

Sorry for the delay - there should hopefully be two posts here in short succession with new photos of our little joybundle. As a sidenote, I should trademark "Joybundle" and start up a kids clothing line... ;)

Campbell Maitland Warner

2007-07-25T22:02:00.000+10:00

Allow me to introduce my youngest son, Campbell Maitland Warner. He was born on the 25th of July at 6:26am, weighing 3.59 kgs at a length of 52cm. Speaking of which, did anyone ever wonder at what point you stop being "long" and start being "tall"? It's a conundrum, I tell you. ;)

Anyway - Mum and Bub are doing really well, although Mum is particularly tired at this point. I just got off the phone with her, and it looks like she's going to be in for a long night.

Here are some photos - they seem to have uploaded all out of order, so these aren't in the order they were taken. However, please enjoy. :) More will come as the days go on.

The Waiting...

2007-07-23T09:32:00.000+10:00

My wife, right now, is 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant. My first son was born 2 weeks early, and to be honest, we've been expecting the arrival of #2 since about 37 weeks. However, an early arrival seems not to have come to pass. This has produced substantial extraneous stress on both our parts, as we are kind of in this holding pattern where we don't feel like we can DO anything until the baby is born.
We've been told, that although there is a lot of suggestions of ways that you can bring on labour, ultimately they don't know what starts it off. So there's nothing we can do that is going to give us any confidence that this child is any closer to being born.
So we wait... We'll keep you all informed.

Mac OSX: Success breeds malware

2007-07-18T10:42:00.000+10:00

It’s always been claimed by Mac advocates that the lack of Mac OSX malware was not to do with the fact that malware writers were logically targeting the largest OS population, but rather was to do with the fact that OSX was inherently more secure.

It seems that with the rise in the population of OSX users, people are starting to exploit it, proving the previous assertion false.

Reading this article, this vulnerability is equivalent to the one that allowed the infamous Blaster worm on Windows to propagate – that is, a remote exploit that gives the hacker root access to deploy any code they wish to the compromised system.

My company has numbers of clients who run Mac servers that are open to the wider world sans any kind of firewall. We even have one I know of that you can get remote access to their server without a password. We've advised them that's a bad idea, but they believe their Mac will remain secure. It's a product of the misinformation by Apple that because presently there are no major threats, that the situation will continue. Hopefully, people will begin to realise that being under the radar only provides you security while you're small enough to fit there.

If you use a Mac and you're reading this - be smart. OSX is not magically all-secure. Firewalls and virus protection are good, good things.

Postscripts:
@Nathan: I certainly wouldn't describe this post as "whiny". Maybe "gloatish"? lol.
@Frances: More mind-bent philosophy/less computer-nerdish technobable post is coming soon, I promise. :)

E3 - Sony Press Conference

2007-07-12T04:56:00.000+10:00

I missed the start of this conference, so I'm not 100% sure how it kicked off. As I got on, they were introducing the PSP redesign. Smaller, lighter, in a bunch of colours - and the original will be dropping in price. Also has TV connectivity. Very nice.

Jack Trenton introduces the limited edition StarWars PSP with Chewbacca. Very cheesy. The PSP is white, with a screenprint of Darth Vader on the back. Cool design. Having Chewbacca on stage is still laden with cheese. Not quite as bad as the MS dude trying to be gangsta, but still really bad.

Phil Harison takes the stage to talk about the PS Network - 2 million sign ups since launch. New games - Echochrome, WipeOut HD, Pain, Warhawk and SOCOM: Confrontation. A couple of these (I believe Warhawk and SOCOM) will also be on BluRay. Echocrome is of particular mention, because it has increadibly simple graphics (stick figures, all in black and white) but is just a clever gameplay mechanic. It will be coming to both PSP and PSN.

Moving on to PS Home. Beta is going well for Autumn roll-out. New additions to the service - firstly, Home client on mobile phone. This is a simplified interface for communicating with Home. Phil takes a picture on the phone, and puts it back in his pocket. Shows the new lobby for Home on PS3 - It's an outdoor area which replaces the old lounge we saw previously. Showreel of some of the new spaces under construction for Home. Phil's character goes into his Norwegian Chateaux Home space, and he has Singstar on his in-game TV. Throws to a movie about SingStar.

Dev talks about the competitively of SingStar, and that it's "like iTunes meets MySpace".

Back to Home. The photo taken earlier is now on the wall in Phil's Home space. Talks about the social networking aspects of Home - online social networking website, the ability to take ingame experiences and put them out onto the web.
Last feature - can launch games from in Home with other players, and will jump straight into the game with those people. Awesome. Demos this with Motorstorm (ha - go Phil). Gets absolutely creamed. :) Any game can be launched like this, and it's seamless to jump in and out of games from Home.

Back to Jack Trenton for a Playstation 3 update. Two basic goals this year: broaden the install base, and deliver a wide selection of game services that take advantage of the system's capabilities. Talks about the new 80Gig package and says it's for the "audio visual enthusiast". Talks about the price cuts. Goal of 11 million units in homes this year. Talks about the inclusion of BluRay, and the success of the format.

Now to the games: 200 BluRay games worldwide, 120 PS Network games coming.
Announces that NCSoft is joining Playstation studios - will be developing networked games exclusively for PS3. Now about Ubisoft and Haze - exclusive this holiday season to PS3. Shows some footage. This game looks awesome. Not overly graphically intense, but lots of cool gameplay features - weapon stealing moves, vehicles, melee combat, a variety of weaponry. Looks like fun.

Epic's Unreal - Unreal engine to be fully optimised for PS3, so that game creation will improve. Unreal Tournament 3 will be a PS3 exclusive, and will allow the use of PC-written mods on the PS3. Wow. That's huge.
Shows a trailer - looks massive. Note that there's a "From the studios that brought you Gears of War" title during the trailer. Dodgy PR poke!

Game list:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Assassin's Creed
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Resident Evil 5
Burnout Paradise
Madden NFL 08
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Simpsons Game
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Rock Band (woohoo!)

Jack back to introduce one last 3rd party game as an exclusive - Metal Gear Solid 4. Kojima comes to the stage! The crowd goes wild! :) His translator relays the following:
This is the final Metal Gear Solid in the series. The story about Snake will end, and Kojima will finish his involvement in the series. All the story lines will wrap up, and mysteries be revealed. The game will include new elements of stealth in the battle field. He's going to show the new trailer. It's real-time footage from the PS3, and it will be the premiere of this new trailer.

OK - trailer rolls. Oh gosh - Graphics are incredible. Not photo realism, but very nice. Think Final Fantasy: Advent Children. If it's rendered in real-time, that's incredible. Meanwhile, the story line looks a bit disturbing, but very good. Trailer ends with a massive anime/matrix style fight scene where the characters really should have died like multiple times. But the action happens very quickly - it's good stuff. Finishes with a title indicating simultaneous worldwide release. Kojima says there will be a playable demo in Tokyo next week, and he hopes everyone can come. The crowd laughs.

Throws back to Phil for the first party line-up. His Home avatar is dressed as Ratchet, and is in the theatre in Home.

First, (obviously) Ratchet and Clank: Gives some story details - the game delves into Ratchet's past a little more. The game was only possible on PS3.

Back to Phil in the theater - now looking at Folklore: Dev says it's a good mix of genres. Talks about the controls as being immersive. Trailers play in the background - looks very nice.

Back in Home, Heavenly Sword gets it's own special theatre. Nifty! Trailer plays - Dev talks about Heavenly Sword - gives a rundown on the story. Says it's very story driven, and very graphically expressive. Without BluRay they couldn't have done it.

Back to Home again, Phil talks about NBA 08. Trailer plays - Dev talks about it: 1080p, weekly updatable content, online play. Looks a lot like the old one! :)

Now to LittleBigPlanet! Phil sums it up as "Play, Create, Share". They focused on the Play at GDC, and now they're looking at Create. Trailer plays - Dev talks about how the game won't be "out" when it's released, because the addition of content is what will make it really a fantastic game.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune now showing - Dev talks about the animation engine and the use of Cell. Main character has over 3000 animations. Going to be "the best game Naughty Dog has ever made."

Back to Phil on stage - that was 6 of the 15 exclusive games.
The makers of the PS2 game "Sly" are working on an "emergent gamplay sandbox" game called "inFamous". Sounds kind of like an action MMO, but no confirmation of it being persistently online. Will allow you to choose to be good or evil. Gameplay looks great, but doesn't show too much. Cars flying through the air. Guy running up the side of a building. Very dark. Coming 2008.

Back to Phil - talks about Gran Turismo and the success of the franchise. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is coming as a prelude to the full game. Features full online, but no indication of what else is/isn't in the game. Graphics for this, as you would expect, look phenomenal.

Jack in Home - says that Phil forgot one thing. Throw to Killzone trailer - Phil says "everything you are about to see, is realtime." Wow... like... Wow. Particle and weather effects are awesome, character animation is fluid and detailed, gameplay looks fast and crazy. This does look like a GREAT game. Kotaku made a comment about the mouth movements being a little odd, and I see what they mean. Aside from that, the facial animations are incredibly detailed. Attention to detail is really what I'd say is this game's strong point. Things like the glass effect on the gun's scope visible when you're using your weapon normally are done just right. This game will be rated quite highly too - there's a heavy use of bad language, and a lot of blood when someone gets shot heavily.

Jack on stage now - talks about their commitment to the gamers. Leading innovation, etc. Fade to black. OK - conference over. Did I miss the rumbley SIXAXIS? Surely it was there. Maybe not... Hmmm...

All in all, this was much what I was expecting. I'll need to look up what was shown at the beginning, but a PSP redesign was entirely anticipated. The things that were missing were some new announcements - these were incredibly light-on, and that's pretty disappointing. To be fair though, most of their line-up for the next 12-18 months is already on the table. The other thing, unless I missed it, was the rumble. I really want them to get that out there so I can buy some new controllers.
Anyway - all in all it was good, but perhaps slightly less on show that what I had hoped for.

Looking at the game line-ups across 360 and PS3, there's nothing that Xbox360 has that isn't matched by the Playstation, except for Katamari/Viva Pinata. However, the video service with Disney is a big punch by MS, and Sony really didn't answer that with anything. Video on demand from Sony must be on the cards, but they're cards that Sony are keeping close to it's chest at this point.

EDIT: Saw an interview with a Sony rep on Gamespot later in the day, and the rep indicated that there are people working hard on a video/music store but there's nothing ready just yet - as soon as it is ready, we'll hear about it. This was kind of known, but it's nice to have it so openly confirmed. Yes it's in development, but no it's not ready yet. I'm happy with that for now.

E3 - Microsoft Press Conference

2007-07-11T13:13:00.000+10:00

NOTE: This is typed live as I watch, so I'll clean it up later. Feel free to look though my draft though.

--

1:15pm - Waiting for live streaming to go live.

1:32pm - Some guy just announced that the event is about to begin. Nice. I've been looking at Xbox advertising for the last little while...

1:36pm - a 5 piece playing the Halo theme while game scenes display on screen. Nice effect. The violinist is particularly impressive, as she's playing the guitar lead. Decent music. Supposedly a display of inspiration provided by Halo.

1:37pm - Peter Moore takes the stage. Talks a bit about the band - apparently they love Halo. Who would have thought?

1:39pm - Every demo seen is a game that will be coming this year. Makes a point of saying "every exclusive" and that they have "all the games you want to play - right here, right now"

Harmonix hit the stage with Rock Band. Nice.
Rock band actually looks really good. But the woman doing the singing is kinda poor. For those who haven't seen, Rock Band has 4 parts - the vocal part looks similar to SingStar and displays across the top quarter of the screen. The other 3 parts (guitar, drums and bass) display across the bottom in that order using the familiar Guitar Hero format. Drums consists of 4 drum pads and a pedal. Horizontal bars across the four note columns seem to indicate where the kick drum goes. Nice system - looks smart, and the guys on stage (which includes Peter Moore on guitar) seem to be doing fairly well.

Pete accidentally pauses the game mid song. Ha, well done. Eventually works it out, and they pick up where they left off.

Not 20 seconds later, and he pauses it again... Oh gosh, you would think he'd learn.

1:43pm - Petey gives Rock Band the PR plug. Then introduces what looks to be a Viva Pinata sequel for 360. I know a lot of Gamespot editors will be really excited. Title is "Viva Pinata: Party Animals". Looks like mini game type setup, using creatures from Viva Pinata

1:45pm - Mass Effect now. Won best RPG at last years E3, apparently. The trailer looks... OK. And there's not exactly an abundance of sci-fi RPGs, so it looks kind of good. Seems to borrow a bit from Halo though...
Pete is back - says it will be on shelves in November 07.

Peter talks about growth - Xbox leading growth across not just hardware, but right across the whole market. Showing graphs of the install base. And of sales since launch of PS3/Wii. And now of games since launch. These last numbers seem a bit misleading, as they're for the period beginning November 06 to present and show games per system - however, Wii and PS3 were both kicking off their game libraries, and 360's was well established. Given that, Wii and Ps3 appear to be competing much better then they're given credit for.

$2.4 billion spent at retail since November > Wii+PS3. "Xbox360 driving this generation."

Top 5 best selling games came from 2 francises last generation - GTA and Halo. 75 million units sold end of year 2004 - GTA, Madden and Halo 2. Same 3 games this holiday season. IGN reported drive a 3rd of sales this holiday season.

Games list - about time.
Project Gotham 4
Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Stranglehold
Guitar Hero 3
Beautiful Katamari
Lost Odyssey
NBA Live 08
Mass Effect
Fatal Inertia
Medal of Honor Airborne
Tiger Woods PGA
Ace Combat 6
NHL 08
Assassin's Creed
Spider Man
The Simpsons Game
Splinter Cell
NASCAR 08
Eternal Sonata
BioShock
Madden NFL 08
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
Crash of the Titans
Harry Potter
The Orange Box
Bee Movie Game
Rock Band
Naruto: Rise of a Ninja

All done - Jeff Bell gets on stage.

Selling the idea of Xbox being good right now. Announcing a new game now...
SceneIt? - selling to the casual gamer/family demographic.

Oh my goodness... It's a Wiimote! They're announcing a controller that looks like a cross between the Buzz controllers, and a Wiimote. That is so, so wrong.

Re announcing Naruto now. Raving about it's popularity, and that it's exclusive. Time for a trailer...

1:58pm - Trailer for Naruto. Cell shaded graphics suit it well. Looks quite quick... lots of running. Dodgy Japanese rock, but I'm quite the fan, so I can't complain. Fight mechanics look good. Lots of anime stylings - big hits with power flashes and pauses for effect. Looks interesting.

Peter is back - about to announce a sports game, because he's talking about their partnership with EA Sports. Announcing that the 08 range will run twice as smooth as the last run of games. You can tell he's trying to take a roundabout dig at PS3, which is slated to run Madden at 30fps. Anyway - Reggie Bush now on stage. Obviously an NHL player.

2:01pm - Reggie and Pete play some Madden. Lolz - Reggie comments that he'll have to be careful because he knows how "you Microsoft guys like to cheat".
I have no interest in Madden - but the graphics look nice.
Pete gets schooled, then tries to talk gansta, but can't pull it off.

2:03pm - Xbox Live PR time. 7 million users registered. New member every 8 seconds. Wow. Forecasting 10 mil signed up by next E3.
Xbox Live arcade selling... 45 million game downloads... 100 games by the end of the year.
Arcade game list:
Bomberman Live!
Undertow
Hexic 2 (I have to laugh...)
Sonic the Hedgehog
War World
Sensible World of Soccer
EEEE
Wing Commander
Feeding Frenzy 2
Track & Field
Spyglass Board Games
Golden Axe
Space Giraffe
Super Puzzle Fighter
Word Puzzle
Marathon
Poker Smash
Switchball
Tetris Splash
Puzzle Quest
Boku Sudoku

2 new games available as of now - Sonic and Golden Axe.

Video store fastest growing area. Xbox the only console with this available - on demand video/movies/etc. $125 million on D/L content since launch.
Announced an agreement with Disney. Disney video content on Xbox Live.

Showreel of Disney shows - while this plays, let me speculate that their agreement includes an exclusivity clause. Sony is rumored to have a video service in development, so this might undercut them.

2:09pm - This is all available from tonight. Future releases from Disney will also be added to the content available.
By the end of the year, the service will extend to Canada and Europe, and they're looking to extend to the rest of the world. Xbox 360 Elite package will launch in Europe in August, to support the new service.

2:11pm - Shane Kim takes the stage. VP of MS Game studios.
PR talk. Talks about the success of previous games.
Demoing Project Gotham Racing 4. Bikes are being added, and we see some shots of them racing. Reflections in this game are quite impressive - water effects on the road are particularly nice. Includes the ability to share photos/videos of your races with friends.

Trailer showing now - not as nice as what we've seen of GT-HD on PS3, but still very nice graphics. Weather simulation is obviously a big focus - some shots of sliding through snow, etc.

(Note: I've now been watching for an hour.)

Talks about providing the resources for game developers. (Like that $50mil they paid for exclusive GTA episodic content.)

(Re)Announces Alan Wake, Too Human, Fable 2 and Halo Wars. Focuses on Lost Odyssey - shows the trailer. Looks quite epic - but some in game shots show less-than-stellar graphics.

The guy says that "if you're an RPG gamer, Xbox 360 is the place to be this holiday season". I'd really have to dispute that.But hey, what would I know? These guys are in PR for goodness sakes! Any RPG gamer would probably be best to pick up a PS2 if they didn't have one already... Anyway, moving on.

Games for Windows time: Viva Pinata, Gears of War (acknowledges this leaked early). Invites Gears of War creator Cliffy B to the stage.
Forgive me if I don't blog this, but this stuff is all old - GFWL was shown last year.
Oh - but they've actually added to the Gears of War story for the PC. This is interesting because it's commonly held that the story is quite lacking on the 360, although certain game sites (*cough* Gamespot *cough*) still saw fit to rate it extremely high on all counts.
Graphics are lovely, but you'd expect that on a PC. From the graphics, it's obviously DirectX 10 and some crazy high-end hardware. Like - crazy.

Peter takes a poke at PS3 by mentioning the fact that XBox Live interface is consistent across titles. Announces partners for Games for Windows Live. One of the outcomes of this is that the Unreal Engine 3 will have XBox Live connectivity built in. Which, if I can give my opinion, is crazy for a graphics engine.

GFWL games now being listed:
Flight Simulator X
Thrillville: Off the Rails
Bee Movie Game
Hellgate London
Age of Empires 3
Stranglehold
Gears of War
BioShock
Crysis
Universe at War: Earth Assault
BlackSite Area 51
World in Conflict
Age of Conan
Lost Planet
Kane & Lynch
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
Zoo Tycoon 2
Juiced 2
Viva Pinata
Spider Man: Friend or Foe

All done.
Shows off Call of Duty 4. Actual gameplay footage entirely. Graphics are pretty good. Some of it looks touched up to be honest, but my graphics view is limited - I'm watching this in 320x240.
Some guys come on stage to play COD4. Lighting and foliage is done well. To be honest, movement seems a little too fluid for realtime. I might be wrong.
Beta exclusive to Xbox Live. Recruiting as of now.

Peter is back - announces new Splinter Cell for Xbox 360 only. Turns focus to GTA4. Announces the trailer was rendered in real time on an Xbox 360. Shows Trailer 2. Talks about those 2x$25mil episodic updates.

Talks about Japanese 3rd party support - Virtua Fighter 5 exclusive online, Eternal Sonata and Devil May Cry 4. And now announces Resident Evil 5 coming next year. Still no MGS4, thank goodness. Now Assassin's Creed. My brother points out that the characters have American accents, which goes against the environment setting of ancient Jerusalem.

Live action Halo 3 trailer developed by WETA and Bungie. Obviously they didn't have anything else to do with all those assets! :) Looks great.

Halo 3 launching September and they're launching a Halo 3 themed Xbox and accesories.

2:55pm - Wrapping up - reiterates they're driving this generation. Relists the big titles. Says goodbye and throws to a Halo 3 trailer. Looks impressive - I did enjoy Halo.

And that about wraps up the press conference. All in all, it was pretty much what I was expecting. There were a few happy digs at the PS3 install base, the games catalogue today, the consistency of the online experience, etc. However, I think the biggest news was probably the agreement with Disney. That speaks volumes for families looking to get a console. The furfie of the press conference goes to the Wiimote/Buzz controller. That really is a bad idea. People are going to call it for being a clone, which it is. I suppose they're bargaining on the target audience not caring, but I think at this point a Playstation 2 with Buzz is going to be a better purchase option, especially price wise.

Basically - gloating about sales, showing of ridiculous peripherals (and money-grabbing themed console SKUs), and some more gloating, this time about exclusives. The only variation from this was the Disney announcement, which from a business perspective I would suggest Sony should see as a serious point of competition.

E3 Begins

2007-07-11T10:34:00.001+10:00

Hi all, and welcome to my entirely biased coverage of E3 2007. The following couple of posts will detail news and announcements from E3 that I deem worthy of my comment.

E3 kicks off at 1:30pm today (Wednesday) for us in Australia, and does so with Microsoft's press conference. We can expect gloating about sales, the reshowing of ridiculous peripherals, and possibly some more gloating, this time about exclusive games. Oh, and lots and lots of Halo 3.

To be honest, I hate Microsoft's gaming division. Xbox360 is a reasonable gaming platform and has lots of games, but their tactics are downright dirty. My big gripe for the day is that they've secured exclusivity for Beautiful Katamari - a game that was multiplatform, and that I was planning to buy as soon as it became available for my Playstation 3. It was coming to 360 anyway - but now it's NOT coming to PS3. Add to that the question of Metal Gear Solid 4 going multiplatform, and I'd suggest there's a heck of a lot of money being thrown around at the moment to try and ensure Sony doesn't get back on top of this generation of games consoles.

Along that line, I'd like also to throw my 2 cents into the "multiplatform is good for everyone!" argument, in case I haven't already. I see in particular a lot of Xbox 360 fans saying this when previous Playstation exclusive titles go multiplatform. However, I don't see them complaining when Microsoft pays $50 mil to secure exclusive GTA content. Or when they pay off Namco to drop Playstation 3 from Beautiful Katamari's platform line-up. Multiplatform is only good for owners of the currently dominant console. For those who own the currently less dominant console(s), multiplatform means there are less compelling reasons for others to buy the same console they did, which means a lower install base, and thus less incentive for developers to develop games for it. Multiplatform games, especially big name titles, mean a short-term gain for gamers who already have a lot of titles with a long-term loss for those who don't; for those who've invested in the non-dominant platform (read: me). The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

Anyway - stay tuned for updates if you're too bored to read games-related media for yourself. I'll give you the lowdown on all the gloating following the press conference this afternoon.

lolz

2007-07-04T10:45:00.001+10:00

Click the piccy to see context, but generally - that's just tops. LoLz!

Mistake

2007-07-03T13:58:00.000+10:00

Before I left home this morning, I thought to myself:

"Hmm, I'm feeling a little under the weather. Maybe I should bring some Panadol to work with me today."

And then, I didn't. Obviously I need an opera singer.

(You all know the whole story was just an excuse to post this video, right? Right?)

Random post

2007-06-28T10:21:00.000+10:00

"In our real lives, there's also always the next level we're chasing after....But really, there are few blessings in life that are quite so great as to be able to spend one's days laboring creatively in the service of something that one genuinely loves. This is really the dream all game creators are living with all the time."
- Alex Rigopulos, Harmonix Music Systems

I believe this quote is from a keynote at GDC06. With E3 '07 coming up I thought it was worth posting. I've had it sitting on my desktop for a while. It just... sounds good. It's sort of the explanation of where I wish I was. And hey - yay for E3!

On a different note, I've just deleted a whole lot of long draft posts from my blogger account. Most of them were disections of topics I feel strongly about - science vs. God, family, politics, etc. Mostly they were motivated by something I'd read and felt compelled to respond. However, I deleted them because of the realisation that my posting them achieves nothing. I can have very little impact on anything that goes beyond my immediate circle of influence. So I give up. I think that's why I've stopped posting so much on here. Random life events aren't something people care about reading, and the rants I post have little affect on anything.

I'll probably post more family-related stuff once the new bubba arrives, but beyond that... I don't know.

BSOD-ing Fun.

2007-05-30T11:05:00.000+10:00

Today is the second-last day that Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 will run on the two machines I have it installed on. At the end of tomorrow, it will expire and will only be able to boot for 2 hours at a time to enable data retrieval - something I must admit I am quite glad about. The two machines are my work PC, and my home PC. At home, I plan to install a copy of Vista RTM that I have handy, and try and purchase a license within the max 120 days you can evaluate it for. At work, I have an install of XP on a secondary partition, so my plan is to simply roll back to that. However, fate would not have it that way...

This morning, I decided to get stuck straight into rolling back my PC. The next time I'll be in the office is next Monday, and I really wanted to have this resolved prior to Vista switching into "2 hours at a time" mode. So I copied across all the relevant data I could find, cleared my desktop and got to that point where I decided that I no longer needed Vista. So I switched the boot manager to default to XP, and rebooted my machine. On launching into my old WinXP install, I discovered there was a small problem that could make the system unstable on startup. So, I did some quick clicking and found a system update I needed to resolve the issue. At this point, someone in my office asked me if I'd like a cup of coffee. This is relevant, and in a moment, you'll see why. I downloaded the update, and clicked to install. It did it's system checks and started to install, when suddenly...

*click*

The screen went blank, and the coffee which had been noisily bubbling in the background went quiet. I hurried over to our switch box, and saw that the circuit breaker had tripped. Oh bugger. I look back - there's coffee everywhere. The coffee machine had gone somewhat mental and bubbled over, tripping the circuit breaker in the process. I quickly switched the breaker back on, and hurried over to my machine. As it moved to the XP boot screen I breathed a sigh of relief - but unfortunately, too soon. The system rebooted. And then it did it again. And again. I finally woke up enough to realise something was wrong, and set Windows not to reboot on error. The next time, I was greeted by a glaring great BSOD with the message "BOOT_DISK_UNMOUNTABLE".

Oh...

Crap.

So I boot into the recovery console using a copy of XP I have lying around, but unfortunately it won't let me. I can only log on to the Vista install, and by default Vista uses a random Administrator password. Useful.So I start hunting around for NTFS-enabled boot disks so that I can do a disk repair. Can't find any, but stumble across Bart's PE. Having used Windows PE before, I know this is my saviour, so I download it and use a Win2003Srv virtual machine on my Mac to create the CD. Once I boot it up on my Windows box, I start a disc check and the errors it's fixing start to fill up the screen. About half an hour later, it finishes. I reboot... I hold my breath... and...

WOOOOHOOOO!!!! IT LIVES!!!! :D

Anyway, moral of the story is that Bart is my new hero. And could be yours too. I recommend anyone who has vague technical competence and uses Windows beyond WinME should have a PE disk lying around, and Bart's is free and easy to use. Having a functioning (while very, very limited) Windows install on a bootable CD is just awesome, and allows you to fix stuff you otherwise couldn't.

Anyway, rant done. Computer works. Back to work I guess.

Crazy, crazy drums

2007-05-03T11:22:00.000+10:00

Randomness of the Day

2007-04-20T08:51:00.000+10:00

I thought this image was so funny, I had to share it with you all:

As predicted, Microsoft + consoles = big bad.

2007-04-10T09:34:00.000+10:00

I've always said that Microsoft's entry to the console market was a bad thing. I've always said that their history in all things PC showed trends that would be highly detremental to what makes console gaming appealing, at least for me. And now, they unveil their latest monstrosity:

So that I'm being fair, this keyboard thingy is an add-on to the controller, but the fact that it exists at all is an abomination. You're putting a keyboard in the hands of a console gamer as he plays games, so that he can type stuff. The implications of this are increadible. For one, it won't be long before developers start using keystrokes to control games - I mean, how handy to be able to select weapons directly without cycling through. But then it will become a requirement for games. And hell, if we're going to make people buy a keyboard, why not a mouse as well? Windows Vista - Xbox edition, anyone? IT'S NOT A PC. IT'S A GAMING CONSOLE!!

Microsoft and gaming is t3h 3v1L, end of story. Their recent moves all parallel their movements in the computing industry, and while I can cope with them for my PC, I'm not willling to do the same for my console. I bought a console for the very fact that it worked different to PCs - one piece of hardware that just works with all games for years, no upgrades, simple control schemes, and a very specific focus - games. Microsoft are making it all about Live. I don't want Live. I want to sit down and play some games - often on my own, uninterrupted by random chat buddies, without needing to type stuff, or make microtransactions. *sigh* It's not going to stop though, is it? My PS3 has a lot of the same stuff now, and as the MS fanbois all cry "Ha ha - we've got and you don't!" Sony will respond by adding that abominable feature to their console, so they can keep up with the Joneses. Meanwhile, I, who love RPGs with epic stories, and really am not overly fussed about online play, will be lost in a rising sea of those who think the defining feature of a game is how many people you can have online to shoot in any one map. Don't get me wrong - I love a good bit of FPS every now and then, but I'd really much rather be playing against half a dozen friends in the same room/house then 40+ people who I've never met on the other side of the world. Why aren't people designing consoles to better facilitate this? Obviously I'm a minority, I guess.

This from the linked article:

Windows Live Messenger, big deal. While the slick friend list integration and nifty keyboard are impressive, the addition of Messenger to the Live service is really more of a harbinger of things to come. Don't be surprised to see your MSN and Hotmail email accounts added to the mix in future updates to Xbox Live and, with a little wheeling and dealing on Microsoft's part, you shouldn't be surprised to see a service like MySpace taking part. Of course, the keypad to me signals the coming of an integrated Web browser.

*sigh* Add a copy of Remote Desktop, and I could do my job on an Xbox360. Awesome. Just what console gaming needs. Not.

Change is a good thing

2007-04-10T09:33:00.000+10:00

Watch the linked video. It's hilariously funny, and yet also very disturbing. It makes me not want to ever visit the south of the USA, and although the US was probably my highest ranking wishlist destination when I was younger (Disneyland - I mean, what more could you want?), I've pretty much decided that if I die never having visited the "land of the free" I'll be none the worse for having missed it.

See, the thing that angers me in particular is that videos like this (the Chasers' War on Everything clips also come to mind) solicit similar responses from Americans. They believe that we've singled out the stupid people in their country in order to make them look bad. In the comments, people suggest that the video is staged, that the presenters deserved the violent response they got, that they should be shot for doing what they did. The problem is that Americans don't see the image that the rest of the world has of them and go "oh no... we should really do something to fix that", they see it and decide that we're picking on them. That we're singling them out for ridicule by creating false situations. But it's JUST NOT THE CASE.

If you're a citizen of the USA, and you're reading this, please be aware that you have a really bad image in the rest of the world, and truth be told, you deserve it. Perhaps you could do something about it? Go and vote. Educate your kids about the rest of the world, and identify things about other countries and their cultures that are better then your own. It's just worth identifying that you're not perfect - it reminds you that you should constantly be improving.

Rant done - go about your business, citizens.

More US Copyright goodness

2007-04-10T09:14:00.000+10:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6379309.stm

Interesting read...

The Economics Of Abundance Is Not A Moral Issue

2007-03-06T14:27:00.000+11:00

The point of a copyright is not to say "no one may copy this product unless the copyright holder has been compensated". It is to say "IF there is any money to be made from the duplication and distribution of this material, THEN the copyright holder has the sole right to make that money".
- Alexander Pensky, Comment #42 on the above-linked article.

This text is taken from the comments on the above linked article. This is *precicely* the problem I have with the current tension between media companies and consumers. Copyright wasn't about forcing consumers to pay full price for a product they're not sure they want. Make a copy, have a listen - if you like it, then buy it. If you wouldn't pay money for it, but might listen to it occasionally, why should it be illegal to copy it? You weren't going to buy it anyway. If it's got 2 good songs on it, why should you have to pay for the other 8 suckfest ones the band had to write to satisfy their contract?

Here's the model I see for artists in the future: Abandon the idea of the "albumn." It's dead, get over it. Go to work each day to write songs with your band. Release them online at prices that are simpler then trying to find a download for them. Release new tracks as you produce them. Yes, your songs will get copied and distributed elsewhere, but if it's easy to go to your site and buy a track for a buck fifty, plenty of people WILL do it. I know I would. Especially when I know the money directly goes into making more of the music I'm enjoying, rather then paying the legal fees to sue small children and grandparents. And hey - the band gets ALL the profits. Not some miniscule cut after the record company takes their share.

The above linked article is part of a series, and although I've only read this one, I'd recommend them all. Very logical well thought out discussion.

A Call to Action

2007-02-26T13:20:00.000+11:00

The above-linked article is a plan to boycott paying the RIAA any money in the month of March, while still getting money to artists through attending live performances or buying merchendise. Awesome. The ARIA are just their lapdogs, so feel free to participate if you can. Personally, I don't spend money on CDs right now because I don't have any money to spend. Therefore attending concerts and buying merch are a bit out of my reach. Still, I'll send some emails to artists letting them know I appreciate them more when they don't make me pay a bunch of lawyers and business types lots of money so that they can get a little.

First ISPs, and now BANKS.

2007-02-19T11:24:00.000+11:00

Following on from my indepth explanation of why my ISP is "t3h suxx0r", let me now explain why banks, or specifically this bank, also are deserving of that title.

I'm a member of emailcash, and although it took me 3 years to earn my first $30 with them, I hopefully will shortly earn my second in about 6 months. Considering the work involved is effectively nil, that's not a bad deal. Anyway, the reason I'm up for cheque number two is that the above-mentioned bank offered me 1000 reward points if I successfully applied for their credit card. After looking into the card's details ($60-something application fee, 9.99% interest on cash/purchases, 0% on balance transfers for 6 months) I thought it sounded like a good deal, and given that the 1000 points would tip me over another $30 emailcash cheque, that sealed the deal.

So I applied. I included on my application the details of my existing credit card balance, and because it was an existing expense, I also included the $200 a fortnight we put into the credit card to pay it off. Bad move, but I'll get to that in a second. Anyway, time passes and eventually I get an email letting me know that my application has been approved and the cards are in the mail. Given the application fee and the second card fee, that brings the total spend to $80.

Today, I decided I'd like some details. Namely, how much have I been approved for, and when will my balance transfer go through? So I give them a call, explain I don't have my card yet, and then ask the first of my two questions. The answer I get is a good $3000 below the balance transfer I'd specified.
{insert shock and frustration}
How flipping stupid can a bank be to not realise that if I want to transfer a balance of x dollars onto a new credit card, that approving me for x - 3000 dollars is not going to make me very happy? How about giving me a call prior to putting the approval through and asking me if I want to go forward? How about asking me how much I'd like to apply for, so that you can deny it if I don't make enough to get that much credit?

Anyway, my only recourse is to wait until the cards arrive and then apply for a reassessment. More time, more details needed, and I'm already $80 out of pocket. I'm not impressed. However, I did realise part of the problem is probably the fact I'd used my fortnightly salary allocation spreadsheet to do my monthly living expences. We put $200 a fortnight on the credit card to try and pay the debt down, but my minimum payment is WAAAAAYYY less then that. Hopefully I can get this resolved quickly. However, I still hold that the bank is completely idiotic for approving an application for a card that logically requires a limit higher then what they're approving. Do you want to make your customers crazy!??! Gah.

My ISP is t3h suxx0r.

2007-02-12T13:03:00.000+11:00

So I'm at work today, like most days, and I fire up Internet Explorer which opens about half a dozen tabs of my selected homepages. Two of these, are mailboxes on my mail server at home. Running my own mail server means that if I change ISP, I don't need to change my email address, and that is a good, good thing. So anyway, I'm greeted with that "friendly" screen that indicates the server could not be contacted, and assume the problem must be the connection at home. Every now and then, the connection will drop out and I'll need to tell it to reconnect. No biggy, I'll give my wife a call and we'll get it sorted...

When I call my wife, I learn that she's had no internet all morning, and is quite keen for me to resolve it. So we reboot the modem, and everything comes up as it should, but still no internet access for her, and no mail for me. What's going on?

So I do a tracert to my home server's IP, and what do I find? Please observe:

Tracing route to mail.warners.net.au [202.134.252.185]over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 203.26.89.254
2 1 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.1
3 2 ms 8 ms 202.59.24.50
4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 202.59.16.49
5 255 ms 315 ms 343 ms 61.31.59.202.static.soulaustralia.com.au [202.59.31.61]
6 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms 97.25.194.203.static.comindico.com.au [203.194.25.97]
7 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms ge6-2.bdr03-kent-syd.comindico.com.au [203.194.28.249]
8 13 ms 11 ms 28 ms POS2-1-0.un1.optus.net.au [202.139.129.221]
9 20 ms 25 ms 31 ms ge-wan5-1.o2gsc76f03.optus.net.au [61.88.178.230]
10 13 ms 17 ms 13 ms 59.154.19.54
11 14 ms 15 ms 20 ms ains-202-126-99-205.ains.net.au [202.126.99.205]
12 19 ms 16 ms 15 ms ains-l2tp-lns2-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.99]
13 18 ms 15 ms 15 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
14 79 ms 49 ms 54 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
15 19 ms 21 ms 18 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
16 18 ms 15 ms 19 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
17 24 ms 16 ms 25 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
18 37 ms 42 ms 42 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
19 23 ms 21 ms 19 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
20 24 ms 21 ms 23 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
21 25 ms 48 ms 97 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
22 205 ms 133 ms 130 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
23 32 ms 29 ms 27 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
24 25 ms 21 ms 27 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
25 27 ms 26 ms 30 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
26 21 ms 23 ms 22 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
27 36 ms 26 ms 26 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
28 21 ms 38 ms 24 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
29 23 ms 21 ms 30 ms nbb-nbrt20201-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.209]
30 41 ms 24 ms 24 ms ains-l2tp-lns1-syd.ains.net.au [202.126.99.210]
Trace complete.

For the slightly less tech savvy amongst us, let me explain that what you're looking at is the path taken across the internet from me at work to my computer at home. This path should jump from point to point until it reaches my home PC. However, if you look at line 13, and then line 15, and then line 17, etc. etc. you'll notice that they're the same. Also, lines 14, 16, 18, etc. are all the same. And then right down at line 30 - does that look like the address I asked it to get to? Ah, no. Why? Because after it goes past 30 hops, it gives up in disgust.

What does this mean? It means my craphouse ISP whom I won't mention by name (*cough*) have pointed two routers at each other and said to Router A:

"If you're trying to get to Justin's PC, go to Router B"

and then turned to Router B and said:

"If you're trying to get to Justin's PC, go to Router A".

Have you ever been in a public toilet cubicle, and read on one wall "Toilet Tennis: Look other side", and then turned and looked at the other wall, only to find the words "Toilet Tennis: Look other side"?? No?? Well, you're missing out. But basically, that's what's going on here.

Sound intelligent? Yes well - this from a provider who when I first signed up had their mail server blacklisted by Bigpond for being a spam relay. I emailed to let them know and they fixed it, but... that's just BAD. At the time, they were on half a dozen other well-known DNSBL servers as well.

Anyway - the moral of the story is less of a moral and more of a cry for help. I NEEEEEED a decent internet provider who will give me unlimited 512kbps ADSL for a flat monthly rate. Dodo had crap customer service, and this new provider is slow, and breaks regularly. And I don't like them. I have a suspicion they use Macs, and that alone would cause me to run screaming away from them at the speed of light. People who use Macs shouldn't run ISPs.

'Nuf said. Hopefully by the time this posts, my connection will be back up. I don't think I'll hold my breath...

Windows Vista

2007-02-01T09:03:00.000+11:00

So I was looking around at Windows Vista today, which I'm interested in getting but because I want both the home stuff (like Media Centre) and the business stuff (like Remote Desktop) I need the Ultimate edition which is retailing for around $750 for the full retail package. However, if one was to take themselves over to Amazon.com you'd find that Vista Ultimate full retail package is US$379.99 - which works out to AU$486.23. Unless you're going to be paying a couple of hundred dollars in shipping, that looks like a much better deal to me, and is the way I'll be going if and when I decided to buy this software. Just thought I'd share.

EDIT: As it turns out, closer inspection has revealed that Amazon won't ship this product outside of the US. So yeah - no Vista for me in the near, non-finacially enabled, future.

Privately, Hollywood admits DRM is not about piracy

2007-01-17T11:28:00.000+11:00

For me, it's interesting to be able to bear witness to something that critics of DRM have been predicting, that being the demise of DRM. It's technology that doesn't work logically, is designed to inhibit the use of a product both legitimate and otherwise, and ultimately is more useful at frustrating Joe Consumer who just wants to listen to some music on his MP3 player then it is at stopping Bill the Pirate from uploading CDs to The Pirate Bay. So the "it stops piracy" argument is obviously flawed - why then has DRM continued for so long to be such a big issue? Well, I think the linked article sums it up nicely. It was never about the pirates.

Do you know, I never realised that the very problem that copyright was invented to solve is now the problem that it legally enforces. Copyright was created to move content INTO the public domain, and now it's being used to keep content OUT of the public domain. Something has got to change. How on earth did companies who manage artists get so much power?

Certified!

2007-01-12T09:27:00.000+11:00

I can place this logo here without fear of legal retribution, as I am now officially a Filemaker 8 Certified Developer. Yaaay!!! Wooooo!!! I'm excited about the fact that I now have some form of IT certification, given that I've been working in this industry for quite a while and have been intending to get certified in SOMETHING for ages. Well, Filemaker is my first.

Now for the legal requirement:
The FileMaker 8 Certified Developer logo is a trademark of FileMaker, Inc. in the United States and other countries

Yay for legal requirements! Well, OK so no. But still!

iPhone, and "The Device Formerly Known As iTV"

2007-01-10T09:10:00.000+11:00

So the Church of Steve all got together overnight to be told what new tech they should get excited about. Here's the run down of the keynote:

1.) iPhone. This year, for US zealots.
2.) Partnerships involving iPhone - Google and Yahoo. Singular/AT&T for carrier.
3.) *TV, where "*" represents an Apple symbol. From here on, called AppleTV.
4.) "Apple Computer Inc." now called "Apple Inc."

Here's my POV on these:

1.) iPhone
Firstly, expect a lawsuit involving Apple vs. Linksys and Cisco shortly about the name.
Second, we all knew this was coming. It's an iPod and a phone. Together. In one box. Now, out of everything announced at this keynote, this is the only thing of any real merit. The iPod brand is strong and the design recognition is also. iPhone adheres to the iPod simplicity of design and interface, and generally is an impressive looking device. Now here's where my praise of it ends.
Firstly, it's running OSX. I hate OSX. But aside from my personal distaste of it, putting a desktop OS on a phone seems like a bad idea to me. Memory management and OS functions surely are built with assumptions of cache/memory/processor/storage configurations that are just not possible in a phone. However, I'm willing to be proven wrong.
The next thing that irked me was Steve making a big ol' claim about owning the patents for multi-touch touchscreen interfaces. OH MY GOSH. While none of the linked videos prove that Apple don't own the patent, I'd like to note also I've seen video of HP and another company demoing multitouch screens in coffee tables at tech shows. I can't see that Apple's patent could be on anything other then their specific design implementation. Expect to see the competition doing simular things shortly, despite Steve's claims of exclusivity.

2.) Partnerships for iPhone
Google, Yahoo, Singular and AT&T (I don't know the relationships between the last two) were all showcased as providers with services for iPhone. Looks like they haven't done particularly much - I don't really understand it all, but Yahoo's push-email service seems... expected? a requirement? It's a shame my Exchange server at home will do this, and has been able to do this for quite a while - to ANY Windows Mobile phone, and I believe Palm ones too. Not impressed. But hey - nice that they've set these up for people who buy the iPhone. Seriously - I think iPhone is a reasonable offering, minus the OSX factor.

3.) The Device Formally Known as "iTV"
There was only one piece of information about this I don't remember being in last year's keynote, and that's that it will output 720p resolution via HDMI. Whoo. As I predicted previously, iTV *is* just an iTunes player.
Justin's official line on this product is that it blows. Why? Because you can do everything it does for cheaper, and without being locked in to Apple's iTunes/iPod model for content, and DRM scheme. And, as previously stated, it's yet ANOTHER device for your livingroom that does one very specific subset of what you need to do. It doesn't record TV. It doesn't play DVDs. It doesn't connect to your cable/satelite box. It sure as heck doesn't do anything with HD-DVD/BluRay technology. So why waste your money? Buy a cheap-ass hard disk recorder that will play back DivX/XVID/Mpeg4 content, and get your content from wherever you like. If you're willing to spend a bit more, a PC running Media Center (with AMD LIVE! for added value) and you'll get an easy to use system for displaying digital content in the living room that does a million bazillion times more useful stuff then AppleTV. Perhaps even a brazillian times more.
If you buy this product, you are nothing more then a zealot. So either suck it up and admit that Steve is your pimp, or be sensible and buy a device that is more then just a glorified expensive iPod with HDMI.

4.) The name change
Personally, I see this as an "about time" event. Apple's computer offerings have picked up some new sales recently, granted, but overall - it's not what's keeping them afloat as a business. In particular, Apple will claim OSX as a superior OS in one breath, and then say they're not a software company in the next. Let's be honest - Apple is now about consumer electronics, and one of those items just happens to be a shiney white plastic coated computer, which is now completely capable of running OS's other then Mac's OSX. For those of you who remember Dvorak's prediction that Macs would eventually be running Windows full-time, note that we're already halfway there. Every Mac in my office now has a copy of Windows installed on it, even though the users are all die hard Mac adherents. Why is that? Because they need Windows to run an effective business. It's just life, zealots, get over it. Windows dominates because it's a good OS, where "good" is not necissarily defined as being built on *nix. (Not saying *nix based OS's are bad... just that Windows can be good without being based on it) I have more points, but I really should get to work now...

Summary:
Less then impressive keynote, with one impressive device - iPhone. iPhone still needs to be identified as being functional as well as pretty before I'll give it too much credit. I guess we'll see.
Mac zealots to buy millons worth of iTVs, even though they already own multiple devices that do the same job.
Apple finally identify themselves as not being a computer company. Something Windows users have known for years.

First Pictures

2007-01-04T11:58:00.000+11:00

This is the first photo that has ever been taken of our new baby, now affectionatley given the in-utero name of "Button". For those that don't know, our son was named "Pud" (short for pudding) before he was born, and we've decided to make it somewhat of a tradition that we select names for them that they'll be called while they're still enjoying the comforts of my wife's internal organs.
The only thing this scan was to tell us is how far along we are, and today we are officially 11 weeks and 2 days. Woohoo! Just slightly further then we thought. As a side note, the scan also told us our baby has 2 legs, and 2 arms - which I'm sure you'll agree is the best number of legs and arms.
I also now have a vague suspicion we *may* be having another boy. Just was looking at that picture again and suspecting there may be some male bits in view. Anyway - I'm no sonographer or whatever they're called, so we shall see... :)

Useless weapon in new game

2006-12-31T10:22:00.000+11:00

The above link will take you to a description of a weapon in the upcoming game Hellgate: London, which looks to be a fairly epic 1st person shooter. However, when I saw the description of this weapon, I had to laugh. Quote:

The Cricketbat
Max mod slots: 1 relic
A common item used for generations on pitches around the world, these sanctified versions can crush the skull of a demon as swiftly as England winning the Ashes.
...

So... use this weapon and die? :) Probably not the most choice of description, seeing as how England almost never win the Ashes, and we flog the pants of them on a regular basis. Maybe we should revise it to read "...can crush the skull of a demon as swiftly as England getting absoluely trounced by Australia in the Ashes." Probably would better convey the imagery they're aiming for...
lol

The Church of Faith-Based Science

2006-12-21T11:22:00.000+11:00

I've been struggling lately with the emergence of science as a substitute for a belief in God, and the promotion of said belief system. While adherents will deny it adamantly, the belief that humans have the capasity and facility to understand the universe from an external perspective I believe requires as much faith as a belief in God, as if you follow the logic of that idea through, it very quickly becomes infinitely recursive, as it would require us to have a capasity to fully understand ourselves and all our understanding, which in turn would require us to have the capasity to understand ourselves and all our understanding, etc. etc. Presently, the issue of this recursion is resolved with a simple "it just is", which people choose to believe. The same result is used to explain away the advent of life, and the understanding of what it means to be concious, as well as my personal favorite, where did the empty space come from? Whenever something is finite, it must be contained by something else yes? So what contains the now-believed-to-be-finite universe? Ah, we don't know - but obviously something does.

The argument against the existance of God is that his existance can't be proved using experiments which produce consistant results. Possible results are all-encompasing, and therefore aren't real experiments, which leads scientists to believe God to be "made up" as his nature isn't testable. However, that doesn't prove God doesn't exist.
In a recent video I watched of a Q&A with Richard Dawkins, someone said to him:
"The problem is that you're applying natural laws to God, when He claims to exist outside of them."
Dawkins' response was: "Well that's awfully convenient, isn't it?"
While Dawkins is suggesting that the inability to apply natural laws to God's existance is ultimately evidence of his non-existance, that is not necissarily the case. It's just a fairly typical humanistic stance to take when faced with questions that don't fit in with our current understanding. It's just as convenient to ridicule an avenue of possibility simply because you find another more appealing (and in Dawkin's case, I'd suggest "comforting", but that's another discussion...).
Here's an example:

The rules of this universe are as follows: There are three school boys - Billy, Timmy and Freddy. Billy's mum and dad work overseas, and so Billy has to talk to them on the phone. Timmy and Freddy have never seen Billy's mum and dad, and so don't believe he has parents. Billy can talk to his mum and dad on the phone, but they screen their calls and will only answer phone calls from his home phone. Timmy and Freddy can't go to Billy's house, because they told their parents that Billy lives on his own, and thus are not allowed. Obviously Timmy and Freddy are school children, and can't travel overseas to verify Billy's parents existance. For the purpose of this experiment, the boys' universe is their town.

Timmy says to Billy: "You don't have parents Billy. I've never seen them."
Billy: "Yes I do. I talk to them every night, and they talk to me. Just only on the phone. But they send me presents and stuff."
Timmy: OK then, ask them to send you a scooter. Then I'll know that they're real.

Billy goes home, asks his parents for a scooter. They send one.

Billy: See, I have a scooter. My parents are real.
Timmy: No, see, that could have been a coincidence. You might have already had a scooter, or maybe you went out and bought one, or maybe another one of our friends sent it to you. Hang on a sec. (turns to Freddy) Freddy! Come here!
Freddy: What?
Timmy: Billy says he has parents, but I don't believe him. I got him to ask them for a scooter, and he got one, but now I need you to verify my findings. Get him to ask for something.
Freddy: OK... Um... Billy - ask your parents for a soccer ball.

Billy goes home, asks his parents for a soccer ball. His parents say no, as sometimes parents do.

Billy: My parents said no.
Timmy: No they didn't. They don't exist. You're just pretending they're real. You didn't get a soccer ball, so they're not real.

Timmy doesn't believe Billy, because Billy's parents exist outside of the confines of Timmy's explainable universe. This is a simplified analogy of why the science vs. religion argument will never be resolved. Science likes problems with mutually exclusive answers. You have to find an experiment that will either come back positive or negative. This doesn't work with God, as he doesn't necissarily choose to respond the way we want him to, and in particular he's not so big on being tested. Imagine if Billy's parents were getting calls from Billy every night asking them to provide evidence of their existance? What's important to Billy's parents here? Meaningful conversation with their son, or the belief of his friends? I'm going with option one. God isn't really into satisfying sceptics, and while sceptics will say that's evidence of his non-existance, logically that doesn't work. If I choose not to answer a question for you, that doesn't mean I don't have an answer.

I'm going to take this one step further - I don't think it's the place of science to be suggesting that it can answer these kind of questions. Science might be able to tell me that sometimes my wife acts in a way I find irrational because of her hormones, it can't tell me the right thing to say to make her feel better every time. It's just not a "science" question. In the same way, science can make observations about the laws the govern the universe, but it can't answer the question of why they did, do, and will behave that way. It's just the way it is, and that's as far as it can go.

This is why I think it's important to recognise the growing number of faith-based science adherents who believe that ultimately, science holds all the answers. That our current scientific understanding shows the existance of God to be false. And most scarily of all, that steps should be taken to stop people being allowed to think, speak and act based on a belief in God, as they're "obviously deluded/irrational/unintelligent". The general consensus from the reading I've been doing seems to be that these faith-based science adherents (who would cry out in disgust at being called that, by the way) see people's right to hold a religious belief as a right to believe in something imaginary if that's what you want, but ultimately it IS imaginary, and the law, education, etc. should treat it as such. Well, I'm not up for that. I believe that God is real. Not just in my head, but that he's real in your world, even if you don't believe it. And believe me, I'm starting to get fired up about this. A short read of the forums on www.richarddawkins.com will show there's plenty of support for this idea, and as a Christian, I can see this as a possible threat to my freedom to continue to be a Christian in the way I can today.

Having just watched some short video on the above mentioned site, I'd like to prove the existance of what I describe as faith-based science adherants with the following quote from Richard Dawkins himself:

It is, of course, a very difficult question to ask how things began at the very beginning of the universe. It's very difficult to even know what the word 'beginning' even means with respect to the universe, that any scientist, any biologist, any reasonable person would accept. However, when you ask what is the
alternative - if the alternative that's being offered to what physists now talk about; a big bang, a spontaneous singularity which gave rise to the origin of the universe - if the alternative to that is a divine intelligence; a creator that would have to have been complicated, statistically improbable, the very kind of thing which scientific theory such as Darwin's exists to explain, then immediately we see that however difficult and apparently inadequate the theory of the physist is, the theory of the theologians; that the first cause was a complicated intelligence, is even more difficult to accept. They're both difficult. But the theory of the cosmic intelligence is even worse.

Well, Dick, that's your opinion. And that's just the thing - it's just opinion. Not science. But because it's a scientist's opinion, that makes it gospel in the church of faith-based science. Believing in the unprovable option you find most easy to rationalise is as much faith as believing in the one that you persieve offers the least rationalisation, but is the most universally applicable solution (which is why it's seen as being "convenient"). You want to believe that something sprang from nothing, even though it flies in the face of the rest of accepted scientific theory? Go ahead. I guess we'll all either see for ourselves or not exist in the end.

And then, there were four.

2006-12-12T22:52:00.000+11:00

It is my wonderous pleasure to inform you, oh reader of my blog, that my lovely wife is currently just over seven weeks pregnant. :D

YAAAYYY!!! I'm going to be a Dadda all over again!!

More to come, but right now, I'm off to bed...

ICQ makes me mad

2006-12-05T08:53:00.001+11:00

I can't remember how old I was when I first starting using the internet regularly, but it would have been during my early teens. We had a 33.6kbps modem, and an internet package where we recieved a certain amount of hours per month, and after that we started paying rather hefty by the hour charges. It was the ungolden age of the internet - before Google, MSN Messenger or MySpace. However, there was ICQ. ICQ was, from my understanding, the first really accessable IM program. Everyone I knew who had the internet also had ICQ. So I signed up for a number, and started meeting people. I've made some great friends over ICQ, and there's been periods where I haven't connected to my account, and then remembered it was there, and would connect and chat with people I hadn't spoken to in ages. Having a ICQ number in the low 2,000,000s was kind of a status symbol for me - I've been in this since the beginning.

Well, all that is now gone. About a week ago, I logged on to my Mac at work on which I run Adium. I have all my IM accounts linked up to it, and it's quite handy. Anyway, it springs a message telling me to enter my ICQ password. This kind of thing is not uncommon, so I figured it must just have lost my password locally and need updating. So I enter it. It prompts again. After a couple of attempts, I decide it must be a server issue and leave it for the day...
Today, it's been a good week since then, and I've been trying every password I've ever used every day since then. Nothing is working. The password retrieval page won't accept any of my previous email addresses either. My password changed itself, and now I can't get back into my ICQ account, which contains a list of all my old friends who occasionally come online. The only solution I'm offered is to register a new ICQ number. But a new number won't carry with it the history the old one did. It's all gone, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. *sigh* Not only that, but all my details are still in the old one (you can look it up online) but I can't get access to it anymore. It's not very fun.

Gah. Don't you hate it when stuff like this happens?

Professionalism

2006-11-20T14:56:00.000+11:00

I was thinking... what constitutes professionalism?
See me - I don't wear ties. I don't own a pair of dress trousers. I don't take many things very seriously, and I talk to myself often while I work. I take great plessure in pursuits some would describe as immature, or even childish. I don't seperate the work me from the not-at-work me - if I'm having trouble at home and am upset, I don't become happy-go-lucky guy when I get to work.

However - give me a Windows server to admin, and I'm a machine. I might change the background to an image of an animated Japanese girl in a costume that resembles a skimpy school uniform, but that server will run as smooth as silk. And if something goes wrong, I'll fix it. Because I'm good at that. That's what I do. Do I need to be Mr. Conformity? Do only conformists really succeed in life? I don't know... This is a concerning thought. I'd rather not change who I am to succeed profesionally. But I'd like to be successful, because I think I'm good at what I do.
Hrmm....

Old Draft: "My life blows"

2006-11-16T16:18:00.000+11:00

I was digging through the list of posts that I'd made previously on blogger, and came across this one, saved as draft. While it is increadibly negative about my situation, I read through it and thought "Wow, that's really cool!" just because of it's style and oddness. So I present it for you all to read. So you know, I don't feel like this at all now. Things are generally goodness. But yes - like I say, very clever I think. It's unfinished, and I'm not really in the same place so I can't really go back and complete it, but hey - enjoy. Or not. Or be dragged down into it's beapfam-ish depression. You'll see... ;)

Hi. I'm sure some people still read this, but I know things have gone downhill as far as readership goes. So here's a quick... ah, thing...

Someone commented once that the tone of my blog seems to be somewhat downcast, and wondered if maybe I only blog when I'm unhappy. Sans technical stuff or random weirdness, my answer would be:

Yep - absolutely.

Only blog when I'm unhappy.

Which is why I'm blogging now.

See, that long wide corner on the rollercoaster that is my life has just straightened out to throw me down the biggest crapstick of a downhill.

Anything serious? Not really.

Things just generally suck. Or blow. Or whatever. I feel like crap - but the worst part is the hopelessness.

Black. And dark.

I don't see a solution. To any of it.

I'm screwed.

Metaphorically of course; I'm screwed as an imaginary description of how bad things are. Although, if I was being screwed - that would normally be a good thing, yeah? I mean, not to bring the moral tone of my illustrious blog down too far, but "screwing" is normally considered to be a good thing, isn't it?

Hmm.

That metaphore is not very apt. Instead, why don't we say I'm being eaten alive by piranah-faced monkeys. Actually, let's make an acronym. Being Eaten Alive by Piranah-FAced Monkeys. BEAPFAM. I'm totally BEAPFAMed.

There. That's a better metaphore.

So my life is beapfamed at the moment, and I feel I'm very quickly losing places of comfort to which I previously might have retreated. My life now revolves around being involved in nothing.

What? What do I mean?

Example?

If my lovely wife was to spend the evening in front of a riverting TV show, while I wandered around her general vacinity, aimlessly bumping my head into hardwood cupboards, that would be OK by her.

...however...

If I was to spend an evening engrossed in something I enjoy which she finds to be uninteresting, and she also was unable to find something to keep her amused, that would NOT be OK by her.

So in order to prevent large bumps on my head, I spend most evenings sitting on the couch watching crap on TV that I honestly couldn't care less about. Some nights the TV is good.

Or OK.

But mostly, it's less about me watching TV, and more about me not doing something that I would enjoy.

Crazy? Yes.

Yes I am.

And I think perhaps this is the issue. I am crazy.

Completely.

Nuts.

I, in the not so distant past, moved from one job I didn't really enjoy to another job I don't really enjoy. Different reasons for the non-enjoyment, but the warning signs were there. Why did I not heed them?

Why?!?

Why?

MONEY.

I had always thought to myself that the money controlled man would never be me.

Never.

But he is! And I am! Money is a funny thing like that. I mean, really, why is buying a house the epitome of a family man's financial life goals? I mean, he might have more after that, but that's the top of the hill - the one that makes it all good. Anything after that is a bonus.

B-O-N-U-S!!!!!

Like making squares with red orbs around blue orbs to get gold rings.

From my perspective, buying a house has increased my stress levels. It has enouraged me to take a job based on just one factor. It has stopped me from having dates with my wife, as even though people say you can do dates on the cheap, no one likes a cheapskate. And no one likes a cheap date. You know what rhymes with dates?

Rates.

Mine came today. Never paid rates before. Yesterday, we were celebrating the fact that thanks to my tax cheque, we could live a limited number of days without enourmous overdue bills hanging over our heads. True, they'd only be a week or two away, but perhaps just a few days of ignorant bliss. Just a few days... How many?

None.

I paid all our bills this morning. Our rates arrived this afternoon. It's like this is some collosal TV show where everyone is laughing at my rollercoaster of hope.

<...incomplete...>

Je te ve te ve!

2006-11-09T09:50:00.000+11:00

I've always had a less then favourable opinion of the French in general.

But all that has changed...

Not Your Place

2006-11-02T09:22:00.000+11:00

NOTE: This post is ultimately about circumsision, so if discussion of that kind of thing urks you, you might not want to read.

I have some interesting quirks. One of these, is that I cry pretty easy. For a guy, that's not something that's particularly admirable, but I don't care - it's who I am, and I like it. However, there are very specific things that get me emotionally choked up. One of the absolute worst for making me an emotional mess is things to do with family and children. For example, we were watching season 5 of 24, and without giving too much of the story away for those who might like to watch it, there's a bit where some nerve gas gets released into a shopping mall, and a handful of people die. The main character, Jack, knows this is happening and has raced out to try and get people outside, but for some people he's too late. He runs up and sees this little girl, possibly around 10 years old, collapse on the ground and so picks her up and runs outside while telling her to stay with him and all that usual stuff people say when they're trying to stop someone dying. They get her outside and inject her with... something, I dunno, and eventually she comes to. Anyway, as you'd imagine, it's done with that TV drama intensity that you'd expect in a scene like that. The point of the story is that by the end of that scene, I was a blubbering mess. My wife was sitting there having a bit of a giggle, not sure how to respond to my sudden display of emotion, but there was nothing I could do, I just was honestly drawn in to being concerned that the little girl might not make it, and how increadibly sad that would be if it were real.

Anyway, this is not the point of my post.

I stumbled across this site about circumsision the other day, and emailed it to myself so I could read it later. Why? Because the tiny bit that I read at work really hurt me, and that's the point of this post (and of the preceeding diatribe, btw). I had my son circumsised, and I am, and my father is also. I'm pretty sure his dad is too. When my son was born, my wife and I discussed whether or not we would. We researched, we spoke with people. It was important to us that we didn't make a decision on this based on false understanding and information. The understanding we came to was this: opinion on whether circumsision is OK are pretty much divided down the middle. There are plenty of people who will argue that you shouldn't for a variety of reasons, primarily that it's unnecessary in a number of ways. Some argue that it's a positive thing, that it prevents disease and has some other medical and non-medical benefits.

The thing that fires me up about the site above, is that it basically calls me a child abuser. It says that I've mutilated my child. I'm fine with people having opinions, I really am, but this isn't about opinion - it's about someone trying to put legislation in (admittedly not in australia, but that's not really my point) to call illegal actions that I and many, many others made a rational decision on based on weighed up evidence. More then that, the only option that is allowed for a parent not to be an evil child mutilator, is if you were misinformed. So the options are: ignorance, or abuse. I LOVE my son. My priorities in life start like this: God, Wife, Son... and then proceed on from there. I have given up a lot of things for those three, and I have already made the decision that if it was ever needed, I'd give my life up for any of them. I will protect my son from things that will be detrimental to him, but that doesn't mean that I will never let him be hurt. The day he was born, I watched a pediatrition bend his hand over flat against his arm and shove a needle into it. As it turns out, it was completely unnessisary - the needle was antibiotics in case he had an infection, but he didn't. He was just dehydrated because he wasn't feeding well. Should I resent that man for doing what he did? He caused my son unnessisary pain - surely I should feel some anger? The answer of course is no. He was doing what he believed, and we still believe, was best for our son. The same is true of my decision to have him circumsied.

How dare you, writters of that site? Your opinions don't justify the stigma you place on people who actively disagree. Nothing you've said on your site about the physical and mental side-effects of circumsision apply to ANYONE I know who is circumsised. I've never "missed" that part of my body - I don't care that it's not there. Who would? Oh, I know who would - those who would also say you shouldn't discipline your kids, because they need to make their minds up for themselves. That you should expose them to everything you possibly can, because then they'll be able to make decisions based on a full experience. That religious beliefs should be kept out of everywhere except churches with their doors closed, and that you shouldn't teach kids about them because they need to decide for themselves. Loving discipline makes good kids. Direction produces leadership and purpose. Religious beliefs produce and understanding that there are things more important then YOURSELF. And I think that's what this comes down to. The movement of people who says that we need to legislate against circumsision are those who are looking to blame something for their own lack of direction and purpose, and it might as well be this. There are things far more important then your foreskinless penis! There are people dying in your own country for lack of food and housing, and yet you're busy looking at yourself. Grow up, I swear. The same people will happly put half a dosen holes through their kids ear if they feel like. And don't say those just heal - I'm yet to see a person who had pierced ears who isn't left with a scar. A little hard pea-like piece of scar tissue in their earlobe. But you know what? No one will ever rally political support against piercing kids ears because everyone recognises it DOESN'T MATTER. In our sexually-focused society, where your own pleasure in life is all that matters, blaming your missing foreskin for your feeling of emptiness or incompletion might seem like a good idea. But let me put this to you: If it was there, you wouldn't feel any different. How do I know? Well, I don't have a foreskin - but I don't feel empty. Or hurt. Or abused. Or incomplete. I'm just one person - but I'm a 100% bonafide example of someone for whom this has had zero negative impact. My son will be exactly the same, because I'll teach him there's far more important things in life. He's circumsised because it's a reminder that he is a part of something that goes beyond the here and now. He's a part of our family. He's a part of God's family. I don't mind if people don't agree and don't want this for their kids - that's fine, and not a bad thing. Having a choice is a good thing. Just as long as they're willing to accept that there's two sides to the coin and not everybody has to be on your side.

OK, I'm done speaking to people who will never read this anyway. Needless to say, family is a big deal for me. When I get my faux political party policies written, family will feature pretty solidly. Not that I know how to write policy - it'll just be more a collection of what I think should happen politically. However, I've come to the realisation that family as I know it is being erroded and attacked, and I could use that to sound like we should rise up against the oppressors or whatever, but the fact of the matter is it's not going to get any better. People will redefine family based on their own agendas, and legislate to try and tear honest families apart. Eventually I'm sure they'll make it illegal for parents to talk to their kids about God, because that's indoctrinating them, and they have the "right" to make up their own mind. The generation of children who's parents are prevented from raising them - those children I feel sorry for. From where will they draw their direction? Being taught nothing of meaning, they will have to start with nothing, and try and build from there. They'll probably fail for generations to come as they try and regain what their greatgrandparents just took for granted.

Anyway....

Moon, consider yourself barked.

2006-10-12T20:15:00.000+10:00

Ozzy Osborne eat your heart out. Actually, maybe I better rethink that comment - he may actually do it.

I have, just this evening, completed Guitar Hero on the expert difficulty. Here, lookit:

Not the best of pictures, but you can definatley make out the important bits. My legendary show will be talked about for years.

So yay - mostly because now I can focus my attention on Kingdom Hearts II which I preordered so I could play it as soon as it came out, and yet for some reason I was completely distracted by the fact that I was yet to master Guitar Hero. Oh well - consider itself mastered.

w00t! I am a GUITAR LEGEND!!!

Telemarketing = FIREY HATE!!!!!

2006-10-10T16:06:00.000+10:00

Here's a roughly acurate transcript of a conversation that just took place on my phone this afternoon:

{ring ring.... ring ring....}

{I pick up. Background noise.}

Me: Hello?

Phone: Hello sir, my name is Raj, I'm calling from (didn't hear company name) and I'm just ringing to congratulate you. Your phone number has been randomly selected to win a free LG #### flip phone. Now before I ship the package to you, I'd just like to ask you a couple of questions. Is your current phone pre-paid or on a contract?

Me: Pre-paid.

Phone: And how much would you spend per month on phone credit?

Me: Oh, not much. About $20 every three months?

Phone: {pause} $20 every three months?

Me: Yep.

Phone: {beep... beep... beep... beep... beep...}

I am quite cranky about this, and if I could remember the name of the company, I'd ring Fair Trading and get them to give them stick. It's so SO wrong. Telemarketing sucks when they're selling you stuff, but when they pretend you've won something free, and then hang up on you when you don't meet their "minimum spend" it's just gone to the realms of completely not right.

This probably will achieve nothing, but if anyone reads this and then gets the same phone call, could you please let me know the company name, and I'll ring the Department of Fair Trading about it? It's about time I took a stand about some of this stuff - it's just not right.

In other news, my next post will be about my political party. I'm adding a new thing to the party agenda - national, enforced, telco independant, do-not-call list that is easy for consumers to opt in to, and where the responsobility rests with the companies doing telemarketing to not call those people, else hefty fines. Like, "go out of business" type fines for repeat offenders.

My boy rocks out!!!

2006-10-04T22:32:00.000+10:00

In the midst of completing "Bark At The Moon" on Expert difficulty, a sudden flash from a camera momentarily distracts our protagonist, but he quickly regains his composure, and completes a blistering solo without so much as breaking a sweat.

They're On To Me!

2006-09-26T13:22:00.000+10:00

Well, it seems Apple now hate me. Awesome. :D
Check it:

This is what I was greeted with when I followed links on Apple's website to their knowlegebase. I guess they must be on to my scheme to free the minds of deluded computer users from the grip of Steve.

Seeing I'm on a Mac-bagging train of thought, can I just sing the unpraises of Apple's iTV? While I entirely agree with bringing the computer to the living room TV, there are so many products out there that do such a better job of the small feature set this product is set to provide, and they do it without locking you into ONLY being able to use iTunes and ONLY letting you play content bought from the iTunes store. Not to mention they offer you a much, much broader feature set. Steve himself calles it an "iTunes player" in the keynote, and basically that's ALL it does. Plays stuff shared in your iTunes library on your TV.
Now, I've done a little bit of talking to people, and it seems to me that the number one problem that needs solving in the living room is not how to get your iTunes library onto your TV, but how to cut down on the number of devices, and therefore remotes, that you have to deal with. So wouldn't it be sensible to make a box that can do everything via just one remote? Not only that, but if that one remote had like a stupidly limited number of buttons on it, it would even fit in with Apple's "we make stuff for idiots" mentatlity that seems to permiate all their products.

But see, they won't compete there - because Windows Media Center already does the whole all-in-one thing, and does it INCREADIBLY well. It's just silly the way Apple go about things. Compete, Apple. Make a media center that does everything Windows MCE does, but better. I dare you. But they won't... the pansies. :P

Like Pr0n Through The Internet, So Are The Days Of My Life

2006-09-25T13:25:00.000+10:00

The first thing that came to mind that moves in greater quantity, and thus higher speed then sands through an hourglass...

Anyway, this is one of those posts where I unload about the blunter points of my existence, and in particular, my day today. The saga begins last night...

My son has been ill for a bit over a week with some virus or other that has had him coughing like a crazy person, particularly at night. Well, I've caught it. And last night, we were both coughing like crazy people into the wee small hours of the morning.

Feeling generally ill, and like my brain was about to explode thanks to all the coughing, I commented to my wife that maybe I'd call in sick to work today. Spend a day in bed destressing and healing. My doctor tells me I'm over stressed, and that's what is causing some of my recent physical ills.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I contemplated for a while and decided that the extra push of the snooze button I'd just finished enjoying meant I was now able-bodied enough to join the rest of the rat race in resuming normal employment for the week.

The next thing that happened was that the phone rang. It was my boss, letting me know that I should probably work from home today. Power was out at his house, and living in close proximity to our workplace, he assumed that the office would be the same. After organising to move an appointment I'd organised this morning, I mused on the wonderful fortune that had just befallen me - I now had an hour before I needed to start working, and I didn't need to commute home either! Overlooking sickness, this might turn out to be a reasonable day.

However, this was not to be. As I began working, the first thing I discovered is that neither of my two computers was able to connect to the office network. Figuring this must be the power, I shrugged and kept on working. However, as the hours wore on, and people from work began popping up on IM, I realised that this was not the case.

During the course of coming to this realisation, the phone rang. It was a client, who I couldn't help due to the fact I was not connected to the office. Then the phone rang again. And again. And each time, it was the same story. I sensed the unspoken frustration of my boss and coleagues as I had to hand off every single call to someone else.

I started trying to fix my problem with connecting to the work network as the phone thankfully took a rest from it's relentless ringing. I was feeling decidedly stressed because I'd fielded several support calls, and actually helped none of them. As I tried to resolve the issue, I got more and more bermused by the lack of logic apparent in the problem's continuing existance. It was at this point that one of my workmates, whom I was talking with via IM, suggested that perhaps it was an issue with the telephone exchange due to the recent blackouts.

Aha, I thought, that could well be it! However, we never lost power, and the phone works fine! I picked it up to check my supposed tautolegy, and was greeted by deathly silence. I hung up, and tried again. Again, the phone screamed silently in my ear. By this point I was getting increadibly stressed and frustrated about the lack of things that function and also exist in my vicinity. I rang our phone from my mobile, and without even ringing the phone beeped loudly in my ear, and displayed "Connection Error" on the screen. I tried calling the phone from Skype, and was connected to a constant beep, which didn't sound at all like the kind of language my phone would normally use.
Great, I thought, no phone, no VPN. My boss will never let me work from home again.

It was at this point that my wife, who had recently returned home from shopping, emerged from having put our son in bed for his afternoon sleep, and commented: "Is that my mobile ringing?" It was, and in my wife's answering it my day got profoundly more crazy. It was a friend of my wife's who has been going through some pretty full-on personal stuff, and for reasons I won't disclose, needed urgently for someone to drive her to Wollongong. Faced with the prospect of trying to keep Jake amused while working while being sick and very tired, I decided it was time to fall back to Plan A, and take the rest of the day as sick leave. So I messaged my boss, and he responded that it was OK. I had previously mentioned to him that if I couldn't sort out my connectivity issues, I may need to do this, so at least he was prepared. Only problem is that my boss is very non-readable in these situations, so he may be wildly frustrated at me to the point of near dismissal, or he may be completely fine with the whole arrangement; I just don't know.

So, I desperately try to sort out handing off the phone messages that had accumulated unnoticed while the phone wasn't working, and my wife starts hunting down directions to an unknown location in Wollongong. I then tried to call the phone company from my mobile, and after several layers of push-button phone menus, followed by several layers of those annoying "I can understand what you say!" voice menus that never actually can understand what you say, I finally arrived at my destination: a young woman by the name of Bree from AAPT. After asking me to confirm the same information the "speak to me!" menus had just asked me for, I described to her the situation, to which she replied that I should do an equiptment isolation test so that I can be sure its not my problem, because if it is, they'll charge me a bunch of money for a service call. Remembering previous dealings with Telstra, I ask if she can test the line. Yes she can, but I'll need to disconnect my ADSL modem. I do. My wife frowns at me disapprovingly as her Whereis search times out.
"Oh I'm sorry," Bree says flattly, "I can't seem to test it. I'll need to call Telstra and get them to do it. Do you mind holding?"
"Sure" I reply, "But I'm on my mobile, so I might run out of credit."
"If it does, I'll call you back." she replies swiftly, and without waiting for a response places me on hold.

DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE A PROBLEM HERE?!?!?
We seem to have neglected the multi-digit key required to jack me into your intellegence-deficient matrix.

Sure enough, within a couple of minutes of annoying electronified Bach, my phone beeps rudely at me, signalling that I have an inhumanly short quantity of time left to wrap up my conversation. Seeing as how the only conversation I'm engaged in at this time is the one with my inner psycho killer, itching wildly to get out and modify the popular venacular from "going Postal" to "going Justin", I sit in silent stupor until my phone promptly beeps again, notifying me my call and my sanity are now at an end. My inner psycho killer promptly gives up and caps himself, restoring me to a state of defeatest apathy. However, there's still the issue of not having a phone...

Thankfully, through some twist of fate, my ADSL connection continues to work. So I jump on Skype (who's creators are my official "Heros of the Day") and give AAPT a call back on their "13-" number, which should mean it's charged like a local call. Well, I was paying 32 cents a minute, and it took me two and a half minutes to navigate through the previously mentioned menu system, even though I was interrupting the annoying "you can talk to me!" woman at every chance I had. Finally, I end up speaking to some guy whose name I now completely don't care about, who once again reconfirms all the information I've just provided.

Yes yes, he can see that I was speaking to Bree, blah blah... Oh wow, there's a fault. Really?? No way! Who would of thought? Technician will be dispatched, etc... expected resolution is close of business tomorrow.

That's right boys and girls, I am officially without a phone for a day and a half for no good reason I can see. It was working, and then it wasn't. And now it won't be for another day and a half. The worst part is that I was working from home today and tomorrow, and now, I'll be driving to the office tomorrow. Not only that, but I'm pretty convinced my boss doesn't like me working from home anymore, but doesn't feel like he can now withdraw the offer. Well - the truth is that he can't. Thanks to rising petrol prices, we only have enough money to pay for the petrol for me to commute the 3 days in 5 I now do, and there's no public transport. If my boss were to change his mind, I'd be forced to find a new job.

So that brings us to now. Having dispatched my wife to Wollongong with the only working phone that still has credit, and being home sick with my sick son who really should be asleep but is right now coughing like a crazy person, I'm now about to reformat my perfectly good computer because I didn't believe the Vista upgrade advisor when it said "these things will cause you untold trouble!", and proceeded to upgrade anyway.

I guess I still have a lot to work on...

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
- John 16:33 (NIV)

EDIT (much later that evening): As it turns out, I'd also forgotten for the third time that I promised a client that today, I'd upload some system updates I'd done for them. So at twenty to ten on a Monday night when I'd called in sick to work, I'm working. I think I'm going insane.

Small PS3 Happiness

2006-09-18T09:50:00.000+10:00

Some of you may have shared or at least noted my recent angst over the delay of the Playstation3 in PAL regions. Extending the wait until March makes it feel very much like an eternity away, and knowing that people in the US and Japan will be playing their PS3s for months before I get mine is a little... devaluing? As a consumer, Sony's Playstation division consider me less important then their US and Japanese consumers. It's not nice. However, it's obvious they had to shaft someone due to assembly issues, and hey - it's not really worth getting too cut up over a product delay.

Some small amount of previously unnoticed goodness suddenly caught my eye about the PS3 today, and renewed my confidence in my selected gaming platform. On the newly constructed Playstation3 website for us "Europeans", I was checking out the specs on the version of the console I am intending to purchase. Now, the console comes in two different versions - one with a 20Gb hard disk, and the one I'm getting: the 60gb version. However, there's one small note in the tooltip for the hard disk on the spec page that made me happy. It says this:

"However, it is possible to upgrade the storage still further by using a standard 2.5" hdd."

Did you see that? A standard 2.5" hard disk. No modding to store TV episodes on your PS3 - just throw in a bigger hard disk. ANY bigger hard disk - not Sony's proprietary PS3 branded hard disk at twice the normal cost, but a standard 2.5" hdd. I can see that being incredibly handy, myself. But hey, most people probably wouldn't care. It's just me I guess.

Alright - that's it. Go about your business, citizens.

PS: I think it's funny that Blogger's spellcheck wanted to replace "Playstation3" with "fluctuations."

My life doesn't suck

2006-09-11T13:23:00.000+10:00

...but that doesn't mean bad things don't happen. In order to maintain a sense of balance, here is a post where each thing I want to complain about is balanced by one I think is awesome.

1p.) GUITAR HERO ROCKS MY WORLD!!!! This game is so much fun and I've been playing it like mad. Love it to bits. It's like they took my daydreams, and made a GAME out of them! Now, if they just could release Drum Hero with a drumkit controller...
1n.) PS3 has been delayed until March. SO SO bitter at Sony. Why? Primarily because it's not delayed in the US or Japan. See, if they'd delayed the world-wide launch by 3 months, I'd be OK. It's because they chose to snub us specifically.

2p.) My son is the most gorgeous amazing child to ever live. I love him to bits, and the other day I took him out for the morning, and bought him a babycino, and he was so appreciative, he kept saying "Babycino?" over and over again for the rest of the morning, and it was EXTREMELY cute.
2n.) My son is "terrible two", and drives my wife crazy, and then she's unhappy. He's wonderful, and I love him, but he knows how to push his Mumma off the edge, and does so on almost a daily basis. As you might imagine, this makes coming home from work a not-so-fun experience for Dadda, as Mumma just wants a warm, dark corner to curl up in and sleep, and me being home is the first opportunity for such things to happen. Not so tops.

3p.) I'm still employed! I have a job where I get paid holidays and sick leave, and they pay me well.
3n.) My job isn't much fun. I really don't enjoy the work, and *most days* I drive an hour to the office so that I can sit here on my own, or with one other guy who isn't really big on talking, and work. However, I am able to work from home, and do so a couple of days a week - so why am I coming to an empty office? I honestly don't know. I mean, from my boss's perspective, I guess it's some assurance that I won't be distracted by home stuff - except that there's this thing called the internet that constantly lures me away...

4p.) I'm currently trying to pimp a multi-level marketing system in order to make myself some extra cash!
4n.) I'm having to pimp a multi-level marketing system in order to make myself some extra cash.
But seriously on this point - it blows that Amway in Australia has made everyone wary of MLM systems. Amway was a huge unweildy unrewarding monster long before it ever hit Australian shores in force, and as a result, people would jump on board and then find they had to work their butt off to get any payout at all. Those people taught their kids that these "direct marketing" things are a waste of time and money, and now when I tell someone about Club Freedom they're extremely negative before they've even heard what it's about. Meanwhile, I've mentioned this thing to a couple of my friends thinking they might just be interested (travel and cash for next to no effort? If it works, who wouldn't be?) and got some serious cold shoulders. It's like "Whoa, hold up. If you're going to talk about this stuff, we can't be friends." and yet all I'm doing is putting it out there as an option to get some extra income. I'm cool with "Oh, cheers but not for me" but it's the embedded addition of "you are evil for trying to succeed" that gets me unhappy. Bah. Suxx0rs.

5p.) I'm really enjoying being involved with music at church, and we go to an awesome church.
5n.) My personal relationship with God is at an all-time low, and it's entirely because I can't pull my finger out and do the things I need to do. It's the same as me getting exercise - I KNOW I need to do it. It'll save my life. But do you think I'm going to make time in my day? I have no idea why I'm so adverse to doing the truely important things with my time, but if I ever figure it out, I'll let you know. I spend occasional moments in prayer, but all in all there's just not a lot of effort from the Justin camp on this one. I feel distant from God, and like I'm slacking off. The thing that is truely bad about this, is that we go to a really great church and I'm in a great place to flourish spiritually. I probably would if I could pull my finger out...

6p.) Last time they took a scan, I had a healthy spleen. That's good. :)
6n.) I have had a headache for 6 weeks straight. Nothing to do with my spleen, or other abdomonal organs. Not sure why, but get the feeling it could be to do with a combination of a non-ergonomic work environment, and an aging mattress. The wife is suffering from some muscular/skelletal pain as well which she swears is due to the mattress, hence that idea. Must see the doctor about it all...

7p.) I'm at lunch
7n.) Should probably get back to work...

Time for some drool

2006-08-25T14:20:00.000+10:00

Just in case I haven't mentioned previously, I have a Playstation 3 on pre-order, and I now actually have enough money to pay for the thing. The more photos and stuff I see, and games I see footage/screenshots of, the more happy I am with my choice to layout the dosh for a new PS3, and wait until the Xbox360/Wiiiiiiiii come down in price. If there's one console I want to be playing, it's this one.

I had a discussion with my gamez 'n anime pimp (aka local game shop attendant) last night about the possible play-out of next gen domination, and he's actually putting his money on the Wii. Why? Because parents will buy it for their kids for Christmas. AU$350 vs. AU$849 (for the cheaper version of the PS3) is not a hard choice in a non-gaming parent's mind. Then again, maybe they'll buy their kids that "Leapfrog" thing that pretends to be a gaming console so it can trick kids into learning stuff... :P

Just as a post-script, my understanding is that although the above image has an IGN watermark on it, it's actually an official press picture of the PS3 and thus freely available. If I'm wrong, and you stumble across this page and are all upset about me stealing your image, just leave a comment and I'll remove and replace it with a different one. Cheers.

Shameless (and once only) Plug

2006-08-24T10:38:00.000+10:00

Note to first time readers: The presence of an ad banner does not imply my blog is full of advertising. This is my one-and-only post about my newly acquired "buisness"/MLM-scheme unless it makes me craploads of money. If you're offended by advertising, then dig a hole and hide in it for the rest of your life.

Well, I've gone and done it. I've joined up with a multi-level marketing program, and now am looking to pimp my business to anyone who's interested. Kind of. I'm not really the right kind of person for these things, because I hate selling stuff, but I did want to blog about it for that reason...
I'll explain:

I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues one day at work about how money is pretty difficult for my family at the moment. Rising cost of fuel, and multiple debts with increasing interest rates makes keeping on top of things quite difficult, even though I make a decent salary. I was also lamenting the fact that the things I really love doing are completely unrelated to the job that I do. My workmate said that he might be able to offer me something, and would explain it to me sometime when I'm not at work. Straight away I suspected something Amway-ish, but this guy is so far from being Anthony Robbins that I couldn't imagine it being something where you have to sell like crazy...

So he explains this Club Freedom thing to me. Apparently, his family know the people who are starting it, and it's legit and legal and all that jazz. Not only that, but it doesn't kick off in earnest until September, so if I get involved now there's a massive advantage to be had.

So I do some reading, and sure enough, the whole concept makes sense, and the total workload for your average freeloader (like myself) is putting down a deposit on some travel of US$150, then finding two people who are interested in making some money, who think they can sign two people up as well. Payoff? US$3500 in travel, and the same in cash. The premise behind this is that you're earning your travel/cash by marketing the product to your two people. Now, there's a little more to it then that, but basically that's the gist. You wait, then the money comes in. Now if that's all the work you ever do with it (and it is all I'm planning to do), you're not going to get rich off this. As more people sign up, you'll cycle through their system slower and slower - and we don't even know how quickly it's going to go when it starts. I might not get any return before the end of the year - but hey, I decided it's about time I started taking some risks instead of just wishing someone would pay my way.

So this is my one-and-only shameless plug: I think this thing makes sense, and could make me (and you if you're interested) some money. US$150 approximately is equal to AU$213, and someone has said to me "If you get in, you'll get paid at least once this year" - they might be wrong, but it's not so much money that it's an unreasonable risk. If you're interested at all, let me know, or click the banner at the top of this post and do some reading for yourself.

I'm sorry if you're offended by the blatent advertising in this post, but to me, being involved in this thing is fun and interesting, and might make me a buck. I'm quite happy to share that with people. If you want to know more, the banner at the top of this post will take you to the site, and the "Travel Plan" button tells you all about how it works.

That's it - plug done. Go about your business, citizens.

Link: Wow...

2006-08-22T09:57:00.000+10:00

If this turns out to be true... wow...

On a side topic, dark matter has apparently now been proved to exist. Mind you, a lot of this is based on inference and supposition, but that's good enough, isn't it?

Now in my wallet, I have some "dark money". It's completely invisible, and although it's effects cannot be demonstrated through conventional means, I can demonstrate to you in my computer simulation and with the use of ultra-high-tech equiptment that it's just as real as real money. Anyone want to sell me a 30" LCD monitor? I've got more dark money then I know what to do with!

Ask The Readership #1

2006-08-16T13:55:00.000+10:00

I don't know if I still actually have a readership, but assuming for a moment that I do, I've decided I should ask you all to help me answer a question.
Today is the 3rd day in a row that I've been completely dismotivated at work. There are things that contribute to this about the work and the buisness's practices, but ultimately I just need to pull the metaphorical finger out.
So what do people do to get/stay motivated? When you're in a rut, how do you get out? Are there things you find help? What about things that hinder that you can avoid? Please make comment - I'd be quite keen to hear how people get through periods of no motivation.

Politics and Religion

2006-08-14T12:30:00.000+10:00

Got a religious belief? Want to maintain the right to base your personal beliefs on your religious beliefs and then speak in a political forum? (sounds sensible, right? Saying the stuff you believe?) Go here: http://www.democrats.org.au/survey2/survey/GodGovt_v2

Can I just say "flippn' Democrats" before I say anything else? They seem to be forever causing trouble for people who like to base their personal convictions on something other then popular culture. If you believe that open relationships are tops, and gays and lesibians deserve more rights then the average joe, and that being of Aboriginal descent means that all the European-descent people in Australia have done you some horrible wrong and so should give you land/money, then your choice is clear: join the Democrats! Forget that all those things have 50 bazillion inheirent problems - they're popular! Don't step on me, man! Live for the now! I guess if you're an Aboriginal lesbian in an open relationship, you've got it MADE!

I added this to my survey response:

In question 7, the question's text puts Intelligent Design as an opponent of "scientific process". However, supporters of Intelligent Design propose it as scientific theory and regardless of whether or not you as the surveyer agree with that, the wording of question 7 biases your sample's response to question 8. That is, you've just stated Intelligent Design opposes science - so why would anyone suggest it should be taught in science classes? However, this is incorrect, as the fundamentals of Intelligent Design are based around it being a scientifically valid theory for the creation of the universe and life. This kind of obvious bias has no place in a survey of this nature, as you are attempting to direct your audience to prove your point. Just because someone bases their personal beliefs on their religious beliefs doesn't make them less valid then your personal belief that religious beliefs don't belong in politics. You are trying to direct politics based on YOUR personal beliefs - why are mine any less valid if I follow a religion? I'm rather put-out at the obvious anti-religious leading apparent in what presents itself as a non-biased survey, and unless I hear of a change in your policies, you can be sure I'll be exercising my belief that the democrats don't deserve any political power at the next election.

See, that question 7 really irked me. I'm not a big advocate of Intelligent Design, personally. My personal belief is that public schools shouldn't teach stuff about the origins of the universe or of humanity - including evolution. With so many different people and different beliefs and no sure way of anyone ever proving anything, you're always going to offend someone so why is it necissary? In order to study a pig's eye, you don't need to know anything about evolution. It might be interesting to contemplate from a scientific perspective (ie: natural selection producing particular biological features in different species) but for a high-school level education, it's completely unnecissary.
The survey is trying to lead the public who respond towards answering in the manner that the surveyors, being the Democrats, desire in order to prove their point. The questions are worded to appeal to popular misconceptions - for example, the question about "church and state" is worded to bring to mind people's TV-knowlege of American law (most Australian's would know about the U.S.'s 1st and 3rd ammendment to their constitution: their right to "free speech" and their right to "bear arms", even though it has nothing to do with Australia or Australia's law/constitution). The idea of "church and state" coexisting is always shown to be negative in American media due to a legal sepration under American law, and so by wording the question to include that phrase, people automatically respond negitively. Forget the fact that the phrase "church and state" comes from a time where churches had significant authority amongst the general population, hence the need for the seperation. In Australia, no one cares what the church thinks unless they've made some mistake. Why the need for the seperation? To give those who follow the church of Popular Culture the freedom to rule as they see fit.
It sucks, and I don't like it. I think it's about time I did something about it...

...now to work out what...

Wasting Time

2006-08-14T10:37:00.000+10:00

I'd just like to note that I've been at work for 2 hours now, and aside from catching up on my emails, I've done very little. That sucks, because I had no intention of wasting that much time - yet that's precisely what I've done.

On a side note, if anyone has an ingenious idea about how I could get a job like Rich Gallup's or Carrie Gouskos's (who wrote this piece of genious), I'd like to know about it. Playing, and then writing/talking about video games sounds like a pretty sweet deal...

On The Virtues Of Killing Children (link)

2006-08-14T09:41:00.000+10:00

This would have to be the scariest and most profound thing I've read in a long time. I don't know that I can say much more about it, but read it yourself and consider what this guy has said because personally I believe that he's right. I think conflicts like the war in Iraq will never see a conclusion, simply because people are denying the fact that you go to war to kill people. Innocent people. Why? Because they're the ones whose lives carry the most weight. No one cares if 100 soldiers die in war, but if 100 innocents - that's an attrocity. So our "enemies" will kill our innocents. And we will kill theirs. Look at how World War 2 ended. The US killed hundreds and thousands of innocent Japanese citizens. Devestated by the colossal loss of innocent life, Japan was forced to surrender. Why did they surrender? Because the US demonstrated it had the power to kill their innocents in staggering numbers. I mean, they nuked cities - places people live and work; not millitary facilities. But who would suggest in retrospect that they should have NOT ended the war? It was us or them, and we chose them. A terrible and tragic choice, but one that needed to be made. How many lives were saved by that choice, on both sides? It'd be nice to have a "what if?" machine that could answer that question for us, but I guess we'll just have to think about it for ourselves.

Anyway - something worth pondering I guess in a world where the media will bring the horrors of war to our living rooms. The horrors were always there - we just didn't get to see them. Maybe it's time we wised up and realised what we've gotten ourselves into...

Previousity

2006-07-31T23:04:00.000+10:00

The comment below was left on my blog by one Mr Philip Walsh, teacher of computing-type subjects at my old workplace:

*snip*

Hi Justin, showing Yr10 blogs and thought I would show them yours. Cheers, Phil Walsh

*/snip*

In light of this, I say howdy doody to all possible St Paul's people who occasionally visit my blog. I have to comment that I can't vouch for the content being particuarly responsible or interesting, but I appreciate the thought. ;)

While I'm speaking of St Paulites, I should also appologise to "luke" who commented (off topic, I should add) on this post and asked me to contact him in regards to some IT questions he had, and then I never did. Sorry man, but seriously... It was never going to happen. In the credits of my life, you would appear as "Random student with question #1295", and I've got a job and a wife and a kid and stuff. Keeps me busy. But hey, feel honoured that I now, multiple months later, have mentioned you in the context of another blog post. And remember, most IT problems can be solved with a suitable application of excessive physical force. Or of money to my wallet. That works too.

Funny...

2006-07-31T22:47:00.000+10:00

Interface Design

2006-07-24T16:49:00.000+10:00

Pop a copy of Filemaker Pro 8 in your CD drive, and you'll be presented with the following screen:

Now, these buttons don't have tooltips or text labels. So you tell me - what do they do? Now, one assumes that the first button will be "install" and so that makes guessing that one pretty easy. But what about the other two? Without some substantial pondering, their purpose is about as clear as Turkish coffee.

Yay for form over function!

A Year in the Making

2006-07-20T11:48:00.000+10:00

Last year in September, I posted this post which contained a small number of fairly useless crazy facts about myself. Note that point number one was:

1. My current location in the StarOcean:TTEoT universe: The town of Whipple, Elcoor 3.

Do you know, I was about 15 hours into the game when I posted that. I finished that game about 2 weeks ago. Nearly a year later. It took me over a year to get through Final Fantasy X-2 with 100% story completion. I was like 80% through it when my son was born and then didn't finish it until almost a year later. As in, there was playing during that time. I maxed out the play timer.

Conlusion? I'm REALLY SLOW at playing RPG games. Changing games once every 12 months is just plain wrong when there's so many good games to play.

Decline in value

2006-07-20T11:24:00.000+10:00

Some of you may (or probably "may not") notice that I've removed the "how much is your blog worth?" box from the sidebar of my blog. There are two reasons for this. Number one: the image, which was hosted on Flikr, is no longer available so it looks a little odd with a "image not available" picture in it. The other reason, is that when I noticed this had happened, I went back to the original site to see if maybe they'd updated the code they provide to retrieve the image from another location. So I typed in my blog's address, and was shocked and dismayed by what I discovered: My blog, which was worth $2,258.16, is now worth less then a quarter of that amount. True, the methodology by which this value is calculated is based on external links to your blog from the Technorati website (which I think hosts other blogs...) and therefore if Technorati suffered a decline in popularity, so your blog's value would fall, but personally I believe it's probably more to do with the marketability of things like photos of mouth-ulcers. Mind you, I had a photo of me as a ninja, so I'm not really sure why my value didn't go into the millions following that one. After all, ninjas are the epitome of cool.

Small Helpdesk Rant

2006-07-17T10:16:00.000+10:00

So I just got an email from a client with some files attached. The message went along the lines of :

"Here's our <....> module. It's not working, and we need it fixed urgently."

Problem is, this module isn't actually part of our product. It's something one of our developers here built specifically for this client, and that guy is currently on holidays. There is no developer documentation, no user documentation - heck, I don't even know what it's supposed to do. However, my boss tells me I need to fix it for them. See, I don't boast a bunch of industry experience, but if I was running a company and one of my developers built a client an undocumented database module, and the client then rang up for support on that module while the original developer was on holidays, I'd apologise to the client that we couldn't help them at the moment, and then fire the developer. Or at least give him a warning. How on earth am I supposed to support something that the client knows more about then I do? It's worth saying that there's no policy in regards to developer documentation at my work, but personally I think it's a bit of a given - especially where you're doing something that's client-specific.

OK, end rant. If you're reading this and you're a developer: DOCUMENT YOUR WORK, BUGNUT!!!!! Some poor schmuck will be supporting it long after you've forgotten you wrote it.

Ninjas and pirates = cool

2006-07-14T11:34:00.000+10:00

I just thought I'd try something different, and title a post something completely unrelated to the actual content.

So what is this post about? It's a musing on Apple's Universal binary... thing. Idea? Concept? Standard? Framework? Whatever. It's about Universal binaries.

So you might be reading this as part of the sensible 95% of the world's computer users, and you might say to me "Justin, oh man with a rant, what pray tell is a Universal binary?"
To which I'd probably reply "Well, first we need some very quick history..."

Apple Macs have run on PowerPC chips now for many years. I've asked around, and it appears that when they changed to the PowerPC chips from the Motorolla chips, the compatability issues were all but overcome by embedding a Motorolla emulator in the ROM. Nice idea, but apparently it still caused some issues because it didn't do any of the floating point stuff. But hey, this was before Quake, so who needed floating point?
Anyway, the PowerPC architecture is RISC and likes to sort it's bytes using a different "end" to the rest of us Intel/AMD people. PowerPC likes the big end of Ian, and Intel/AMD prefer the small end of Ian - whoever Ian is. That's why they call these different approaches Big EndIan and Small EndIan. So writing a single piece of code that will run on both is nigh impossible - and seeing as how the computer can't tell one end of Ian from the other, it does make life difficult. There is other... stuff... involved but this isn't a technical blog per se, so I'm not going to bother explaining. Basically, if you write and compile code for one, it sure as heck isn't going to run on the other.

Fast-forward to today when suddenly we have Apple's OSX running on both PowerPC AND Intel CPUs. There's a bunch of software out there that was written for the PowerPC chips, and so cannot run natively on these new fangled machines. However, see people don't get that, and wouldn't get that. So the first thing Apple did was bung in an emulator, and give it a trendy name. Why? Well, because that's what Apple do - give things trendy names. It's not an MP3 player - it's an iPod (C)(R)(TM)(Patent will bite you in the ass). It's not an internet Macintosh, it's an iMac. Are we seeing the sparkles here? I know I am. Sorry - tangent.
So Rossetta. Named so after the Rossetta stone, although from my limited understanding, the stone helped translate between 3 almost forgotten languages, and Apple's version only seems to translate the one: Macintosh software. Now you can go out and spend double what it's worth on a new Mac, and have it run most stuff SLOWER then your old one. "This will never do" says Steve. And so, he comes up with a brilliant idea. (note that I can't support Steve Jobs actually comming up with this idea personally...)

UNIVERSAL BINARIES!!!
(You knew I'd get to my point sooner or later, right?)

The first Apple product with a name less-then-vaguely related to it's purpose! What is it?
Well, at first glance you might think "Binaries, that are universal". And hey, that actually was my first guess. But from our discussion of Ian's ends earlier, you may remember that this is "nigh on impossible". You can't just take once piece of compiled code, and have it run on both platforms, can you? Well... no. Or yes. Or maybe.
Apple simplifies this as follows: From a user's perspective, a Universal program such as Filemaker can be run on either a PowerPC or an Intel Mac and for all intents and purposes they use the same set of files on either architecture. However, what isn't obvious is that it's not the same code. Actually, each executable file contains two seperate applications - one compiled for PowerPC and one for Intel chips - wrapped up together in a nice compiled Universal wrapper so that they can't be seperated. This, for your average user, works fantastically as anything carrying the Universal logo can be run on any recent Mac.
However, here I come to my gripe with this. Most Mac users will bandy about the term "bloatware" in reference to Windows and Microsoft software in general, and on occasions I can see their point. However, I have never seen something so wasteful as using double the necissary hard disk space for an application, simply so that your users don't have to remember the word "Intel" when they're buying software. Doesn't this seem like going a little too far with the "It Just Works"(C)(R)(TM)(Patent will bite you in the ass) mentality? If I were to say fill 100Gb on my Intel Mac with executables, (on avaerage) 50Gb of that would be useless padding that will never be referenced. Ever. Seems just a little wasteful to me.

So why would I write this post? I mean, the Mac users seem happy enough - what's the problem? The problem is that the arguments that I hear from Mac users on a daily basis about why Macs are so much better then Windows PCs are based on bad computing practices. Inefficientcy, supported user ignorance, data hiding. The Mac OS is like one giant rootkit, perminantly hiding files in the GUI that Steve doesn't think users should need to see. There's no option to show them - they're just never there. And Mac users are fine with this, because why should the graphical representation of files on your disk actually represent the files on your disk? That would just be confusing. And now with Universal binaries, you can fill 50% of your hard disk with superflous code, just so we can continue to support the users' right to be completely ignorant of their computer as a computer. Because your Mac isn't a computer - it's like a trendy 20-something guy in jeans and a t-shirt who starred in that "Ed" TV show. I don't know about you, but that guy always seemed like a bit of a useless dork to me, and I prefer my computer to be useful, even if it doesn't come in indigo.

Alright - through writing this post (and viewing the link immediately above), I've become so fired up about my anti-Mac-ness for the day, that I'm going to write another post.

Here, here.

2006-06-27T14:14:00.000+10:00

The link above is to a political party that has just set up in the US, following in the footsteps of Sweden's own Pirate Party - a party who are advocating reforms to copyright and IP law, amongst other things.

Now, this whole issue is something I feel quite strongly about. In this article, it discusses how the US government used the threat of trade sanctions against Sweden in order to get their government's ministries to take unconstitutional action against The Pirate Bay; a bittorrent tracker that is extremely popular - and most of my tiny readership are quite familiar with ({cough}Tam{/cough}).

See, the thing that makes me really quite angry about this, is that they weren't tracking down terrorists who'd killed hundreds of people. They didn't force the hand of the Swedish government against it's own constitution to protect anything of real value. They did it to protect the potential profits of a multi-corporate conglomerate of media labels. They did it to stop individuals from being able to obtain something for free, that these corporations would like to be able to sell them - that is assuming of course, that someone would like to buy it. Is it something they produced by the labor of their own hands? Ah, no. It's something which they obtained by contracting artists - artists who they then underpay and exploit for their own benefit.

Anyhow, just thought I'd mention - if anyone ever bothers to set up an Australian party supporting the same ideals, I'd be more then happy to send my votes in their direction. I'm appalled that the US used the Free Trade Agreement with this country to enforce portions of the DMCA onto us; legislation that has been universally acknowleged as significantly flawed. What Australian laws did the US adopt? What concessions did they make on our behalf? I'd hazard a guess: none.

Grrrr... OK, stopping now.

t3h n1nj4!!

2006-06-07T13:54:00.000+10:00

What happens when I get bored while working from home...

(Taken yesterday with my DV camera while busily fixing someone's mundane support issue)

Birthdays

2006-06-07T09:55:00.000+10:00

Today is my son's 2nd birthday, and while I've only really had half an hour before work to share it with him, it's been really exciting to see him be aware for the first time that this is a special day all about him. We made the mistake of breaking out the good present first, and so it was hard to break his attention for long enough to give him the others, but in the end he has some shiny new toys to add to the mountain of stuff that he owns. When we (eventually) have our next child, they're getting 100% hand-me-downs for toys until they're old enough to know the difference. Either that, or we'll have an enormous eBay sale at some stage...
Anyway - I'll post some photos of the big day on here tonight when I can get at the home PC. For now, this is an internet-enabled "happy birthday" to my special little boy. Feel free to leave birthday wishes in the comments, and I'll pass them on to him.

American Political Awesomeness

2006-06-05T15:26:00.000+10:00

The following quote is from this article in the New York Times (registration may be required) which was spoken by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.:

"There is a looming threat. There is a threat of a capacity to be able to demonstrate a real threat to the United States and our allies down the road, but there's nothing imminent at this point."

Oh my gosh. Have you ever seen a less specific statement? A threat of a capasity to demonstrate a threat. I think Australia poses a threat of a capasity to be able to demonstrate a real threat to the U.S. I mean, there's people here. So that's a threat of a capasity to demonstrate a threat, isn't it? Crazy. Pure crazy.

Cross-platform Blues

2006-06-02T12:13:00.000+10:00

OK people - new idea. Let's all use the same desktop platform. Let's stuff off this choose your prefered OS idea, and play OS Survivor to see who wins:

And the winner is WINDOWS with 19 votes to 1*. Too bad other OS's - the tribe has spoken. Get stuffed.

Awesome. Everyone uses Windows on their clients from now on. You can screw around with whatever OS you like on servers, and hey - I know *nix has it's place in the world with developers and server farms and whatnot - but the people who use those machines for those purposes can deal with the differences between the two platforms, and generally acknowelge that you're a tool if you try and put linux on your mum's PC and expect her to be able to use it. It's only the fanboys who cry out that all is equal. Let's be honest: it's SO SO not.

And hey, don't get me started about Mac OSX. I now work with OSX on a daily basis and all I've had my eyes opened to is that Mac users are increadibly fanatical to the point of blindness.

OMG!!! It has a MAGNIFYING GLASS in the top corner that lets you SEARCH FOR STUFF! This craps all over Windows!!!! LOL!!!

Ah, who cares if they've put a search button on your menu bar? All OS's have had search capabilities for a very very long time. Yes, Spotlight does search in places that the current itteration of the Windows OS search doesn't, but that, a new desktop skin, and widgets is so not impressive for a major OS release - and isn't worth the money that all the fanboys farmed out to aquire it. Also, if you want to pick nits, there are a myriad of little add-ons out there (Google Desktop Search, MSN Desktop search, blah de blah) that do more even then Spotlight does. They don't count because they're 3rd party? OK, then Mac blows because they don't have globally-available video and audio CODECS!! Quicktime supports codecs, but hey, Quicktime is about as 3rd party as MSN desktop search, isn't it? No? Could that conlusion perhaps have been reached beacuse you're a complete fanboy?

And this is what I have ultimatley discovered: The reason that Mac users think that Mac rocks, and that iTunes/iPhoto/iChat/iMovie is the best music/photo/IM/movie editing software ever, is because Steve told the Mac users that it is. It all comes bundled, it works well with other Apple products (well DUH!), and as long as you're happy to be told how to do things, you'll be completely happy. However, if you perhaps don't want to work within the tight framework of Steve Job's fandom, you're screwed. What if I'd like something other then the included templates on my web-based iPhoto slideshow? I CAN'T!! The Javascript that makes the trendy little reflective shelf under your photos lives on the .Mac servers, and is completely static. You can only choose what they tell you that you can choose. Not only that, but if you publish to somewhere besides .Mac, you don't get the trendy Javascript effects. Why? Well... that's a good question. Why would you make the prettyness specific to only .Mac? Unless of course paying for .Mac was built into your OS, and also into every single bundled application, and you weren't offered the choice of using a different service. That sounds a bit like... anti-trust... to me. I sure as heck don't see a "Select your web-based storage/publishing service" dropdown list. You see, "It just works" means "If you only use our services, and our software - exactly the way we say you will - and pay us money, things will work. Mostly. And we'll lock you out of using the trendy stuff anywhere else but on our products and services."

Anyway, this whole rant was spawned by the fact that I got abused by a client because I'd done some work for them in Filemaker (which is supposedly 100% cross-platform happy) and when I uploaded it to his server, some elements were just the tiniest bit out of alignment - but enough to make the whole thing fall over. Yay for cross-platform compatability hey.

*Because yes, Windows has 19/20ths of the market.

The Internet sees all

2006-06-02T09:57:00.000+10:00

Due to a couple of not-fun things that have happened this morning, I was all fired up to get on my blog and have a little chat about my life, and in particular my current state of employment.

It was at this moment, that I realised that at least one of my colleagues has my blog address, and has read it on several occasions. In a small company, this would mean that if I said anything about how I was feeling about my job, I'd probably end up discussing it with my boss - not necissarily in a bad way, but in this particular case I'd prefer just to feel generally angsted about it, and then get over it on the weekend. Lets just say I'm my job satisfaction is having a bit of a trough at the moment for various reasons. Not the least of which is that non-work things are hard, and my company is under a little bit of presure to get through a largeish quantity of work, so I'm feeling the push to put work before things that work shouldn't go before.

Anyway - recovering from a rather nasty headcold that my whole family has experienced, so I'll leave it at this. More angst to follow, I promise.

~vore

2006-05-25T13:42:00.000+10:00

Filled with hunger, I sink my teeth into the soft flesh,
Juices drip from the lifeless form in my hands, as with vigor,
I extract my fill

Bite after bite, I rip and tear this raw meat,
enjoying the sounds it emits as I tear it ravenously away,
satisfying my need

Finally, only the very core remains and I am fulfilled,
I survey the destruction wreaked by my ravenous onslaught,
and muse:

"Damn, that pear was tasty."