Incommunique

Getting Great Things Done

2012-01-05T20:15:00.000+08:00

"Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together." -Vincent Van Gogh

I am a self confessed productivity geek; systems, methodologies & techniques for productivity, I love them. I practise a hybrid of David Allen's Getting Things Done and Leo Babauta's minimalism with a dose of techniques from Landmark Education programs. I've probably spent nearly as much time pottering around with my productivity systems and learning about new ones as I've done on actual tasks. I could argue that it's free time allowed by the increased efficiency of my systems but that's only true to a point, beyond that it's a hobby. And it's an insidious one, mucking about with ones systems looks like actual work- I know my other distractions intimately but it took a while to recognise this one.

I'm not going to give up my productivity hobby/habit just like I am not going to give up reading blogs or playing the occasional game. But I'm now on the alert for it displacing actual work. So here's my productivity tip, partially courtesy of Van Gogh; keep track of and manage your projects and tasks in some way that works for you, how isn't that important. What is important is to take actions. Little ones are best. And keep taking actions and watch them join up to cause the great things you envisaged.

NB- some shepherding is still required to ensure that the actions taken are the right ones to forward your great thing; if your aim is to build a castle, quarrying rocks is more appropriate than ship building.

Self Publishing ebook Style

2011-12-28T16:32:00.001+08:00

I'm getting to the business end of the writing for my book Living An Inspired Life- I've now written around 55k words and my goal is around 65-70k words. There's a lot to do before it will hit the shelf any-where including I expect a lot of editing. But articles on the topic of self publishing are starting to catch my eye, herewith a few worthy of review-

Why and How I Self-Published a Book by James Altucher - I can't decide whether I like James Altucher or loathe him, he does make an art of being controversial, either way this is a worthwhile read.

How I Wrote a Book: Step by Step by Ben Nesvig -I also started with Google Docs but it became unweildy when I exceeded a certain word count. I've heard numerous good things about Scrivener but unfortunately they don't make a Linux version. LibreOffice is serving my needs nicely, I do miss the clickable index in the Google Doc though.

E-books Are Not That Easy by Daniel B Markham - despite the title there is a great checklist of things to do here, including things I would never of thought of, eg. markup validation.

And a couple of great (older) posts from A Newbies Guide To Publishing by Joe Konrath - You Should Self-Publish & Time Investment

Life Changes When You Become A Parent

2011-11-05T09:51:00.003+08:00

They say life changes when you become aparent. I always wondered what they meant by that, I assumed it wassome deep and profound change in your relationship with the worldbecause you were now completely responsible for a life other thanyour own. Something unreachable for a non parent. I've been a parentnow for nearly four years, I won't claim to be a great parent, I'mnot. However I do think I've got a bit of a handle on it, I roughlyknow what this parenting thing is about and I am pretty sure I knowhow life has changed. I got it in a flash of insight as I was pickingup food off the floor – a half chewed, thoroughly masticated andslobbered on crust which I'd just stood on.

So here's how life changes when youbecome a parent- you pick up food off the floor, lots of it prettymuch after every time they eat. You get sneezed and snotted on andyou get to clean off of you and everything else pretty much everyimaginable body fluid. You get intimately involved with anotherhumans bowel movements- I've lost count of the number of times inwhich I've ended up, due to some mishap or another, wearing anotherpersons poo. You find yourself looking forward to reading “Where IsThe Green Sheep” even though you know it word for word. You havelocks on cupboards and you worry about cars and dogs and cats andstrangers and pretty much anything that is bigger than a cardboardbox and sharper than a ball and lots of things in between. A shorttrip to the shops becomes a major planning exercise and has to bestrategically approached, packed for and executed. Your friends onlysee you in the hours of daylight, if they see you at all, and youalways look like you've had about four hours of sleep - probablybecause that's all the sleep you got. And here's the real kicker-after you've been a parent for a while you think that all of that isnormal, that every-one else is doing the same.

OK and life profoundly alters in deepand meaningful ways which no non parent could ever understand.

How To Complete Anything

2011-09-21T20:51:00.000+08:00

I coach people on how to achieve the things that they've always wanted to achieve. There are a variety of tools, strategies and technologies which I train people in but if I had to boil it down to a formula it would be these steps

start right now
start with something small
keep on taking actions until you get there, or said differently: don't stop!
have a way of measuring & checking your progress

Anything else is window dressing. It might make you feel good (which can be important) but it's not strictly necessary.

See also Get To Details

Murray's Guide To Learning/Mastering Anything

2011-09-13T20:48:00.002+08:00

Start somewhere, where you are right now is the best place. Find a good book on the topic. Read web sites, journals, forums and blogs on the topic. Find a teacher or a class and learn from them. Experiment on your own. Find another different teacher and learn some more. Question a lot. Experiment yourself and make notes about your experiences. Keep what works and save what doesn't for future reflection (sometimes what doesn't work is because we are doing it wrong and sometimes it's just wrong and it takes time to work out the difference). Take a break and do something completely different for a while.

Speak with other people doing it and find out how/what they do and what works for them and how they learnt. Read lots. Keep on practising. Keep on taking notes. Find people who are masterful and hang out with them. Don't be afraid to look stupid. Make your work public and get feedback. Find a way to make any criticism constructive. Practise some more. Pause to reflect.

Read some more. Find some-one who knows nothing about the topic and explain to them or better still teach some-one what you have learnt, get them to ask the really hard questions and find out the answers for them. Read some more, practise some more, teach some more. Vary the order as required. Remember that you can never know all there is to know on any topic and there is always someone who knows more.

What's your learning tip?

GTD- Get To Details

2011-09-01T17:07:00.000+08:00

I'm a fan of productivity systems and especially GTD, Getting Things Done by David Allen. I am by no means a GTD purist- aside from continuously tweaking my structures (another blog post on this coming) I insist on keeping separate existence systems for work and home, even using separate tools in each environment.

One of the things I noticed as I implemented Getting Things Done was that I had a tasks which never got completed. When I really looked at them it was because they weren't actually tasks they were projects, sometimes even involving other people for some of the steps. When they were all bundled together as one task it could seem so big as to be overwhelming or impenetrable. But when I broke them into separate, discreet and doable tasks they suddenly progressed. The un-doable got done.

So now my mnemonic for GTD is "Get To Details". And what I've noticed is that once you get to details it's easy and natural for things to get done.

If you find you have things hanging out forever on your to-do list (or however you manage your commitments) maybe it's time to step back and have a look at it. One of two things is likely-

you aren't actually committed to doing that thing in which case it's time to acknowledge that you aren't going to do it and then do what you need to do to be able to remove it from your list- probably have conversations with whomever you promised it to in the first place or is expecting you to complete it.
or like me you haven't done sufficient thinking to break it down into steps that you (or someone else) can actually complete. It's time to step back and do the thinking. Break it down into as many small discreet tasks as required. Then you just start with the first task and complete it and then the next until they are all done, one little task at a time.

Get to details, it works.

Silently Failing

2011-08-23T15:06:00.000+08:00

Unix applications are pretty good at telling you when they break. You'll either get informative messages at the command line or you will get informative messages in a log file somewhere (/var/log for Linux boxes where I live these days) and Googling for said messages is usually rewarding too. I've had to track down a few bugs lately where I got neither helpful command line warnings or helpful log messages, in one instance it was syslogd and in another it was sshd and both were silently failing to start/run. In both instances the failure was caused by SELinux. So my new debugging rule for anything which is silently failing is to try disabling SELinux first (or changing it to permissive mode though that doesn't always work either), if the service works without SELinux the problem is with SELinux.

NB. Java programs unhelpfully break my assertion about helpful logging- Java developers seem to delight in spooling out pages of eye-gouging text instead of just telling you what broke, how and why.

Parallel Lives

2011-08-18T22:22:00.000+08:00

I first came across the drabble in a Neil Gaiman's Smoke & Mirrors anthology- Nicholas Was... I love the form and I've written a few since. Here's one I wrote some time ago, somewhat autobiographical.

Parallel Lives

We live parallel lives. He is a poet, I am a computer engineer. He thinks of philosophy, nature and love, I think of hardware, software and debugging. I go to the gym, he takes long walks. He treasures a fountain pen, I a laptop computer. His friends are arty alternatives, mine are geeky misfits. I am concerned about tax rates, mortgage rates, holidays and return on investment, he about social justice, global warming and the numinous. He lives for a better world, I live in a virtual world. He weeps, I anesthesiate. He is the dreamer. I am the dream.

A Dozen Simple Ways To Find Harmony

2011-06-20T21:39:00.000+08:00

Listen to relaxing & uplifting music, music which feeds your soul.
Tune in to positive forms of news and entertainment which nourishes you.
Start a garden or grow indoor plants, surround yourself with living things.
Go for long walks in natural settings, exercise your body whilst relaxing your mind.
Make time to meditate, become an inner explorer.
Experiment with creative expression, find a medium which enlivens you.
Practise giving thanks for all the little (and big) blessings in your life.
Read; become a philosopher of life.
Create little altars in everyday spaces to remind you that everywhere is sacred.
Live out loud: dance, play, laugh and have fun.
Make every meal an offering to divinity.
Play with the kids and chill with the grandparents.

With our thoughts we make the world

2011-05-28T20:30:00.003+08:00

Item:

Why he asked, does failure torment us so bitingly? And then, why does success sometimes leave us feeling dissatisfied all over again? Why does arrival let us down, even after we have dreamt of it for so long, have fought so hard for it along a cruel road? Why? The answer in both cases, Shukla-ji said, is because we believe the illusion of the self. I am the doer, we believe. We shout this out at the world, I am doing this, I am doing that, I, I, I. Believing in this most slippery of all illusions, we think that our failures are our fault, that they flow from the shape of this self. We think we own our victories. And yet, when we find success, we discover that this self-illusion, this illusion of the self, can only live in the future, or in the past. It is eternally separated from the present, and so as long as we believe in it we know only loss. It is only when we transcend this illusion and laugh at it that we can know the pleasure of this moment, laugh because then you are truly alive. Swami-ji aid, my children, give away your actions and discover your true nature. Know yourself. - Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games.

Item:

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. -Albert Einstein

Item:

Because our representation of reality is so much easier to grasp than reality itself, we tend to confuse the two and to take our concepts and symbols for reality. -Friitjof Capra

Item:

We see things not as they are. We see things as we are. -The Talmud

Item:

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind. -Buddha

Item:

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi

All About Me, March 2006

2011-04-05T17:09:00.000+08:00

Melbourne poet Peter Bakowski introduced me to the self portrait poem over 10 years ago. I've done a few since but far short of the one/year which I thought would make a good retrospective one day. I wrote this one in 2006 and I find it still speaks to who I am now.

All About Me, March 2006

I'm someone who appreciates
silence and tall trees.
I love beauty, harmony and paradox
I'm drawn to opposites,
and in betweens.
I like books, horses and poems,
music which sings to the soul.
I have a weakness

for catalogues, coats and stationery.

I enjoy good food-

your cooking or mine.

I play like a child
I'm a hopeless romantic
and an outrageous flirt.
I'm a seeker,
I shine
where there is something to learn.
I'm a leader-
my lifes purpose is in service
to power and creativity;
yours, mine, the worlds.

Murray Barton

Poem Of The Week - Christopher Morley

2011-02-21T11:25:00.004+08:00

I don't know if it is obvious from the commentaries on the poems I run here but for me one of the things makes a poem for me is the context; it's relationship to my life. Sometimes I read a poem that doesn't move me right then but I know that what's missing is not with the poem, it's the context. I have the right poem but not at the right time. I first encountered this poem many years ago whilst doing John Bradshaw family of origin work. I was moved by it at the time but more so now that I am a parent myself, the changed context has emphasised every line of this poem. Our little Miss is coming up to three years old in April and I can tell you that every line of this poem is truth.

To A Child

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast, and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee--

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build;
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life's queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange divinity still kept.

Being, that now absorbs you, all
Harmonious, unit, integral,
Will shred into perplexing bits,--
Oh, contradictions of the wits!

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
may make you poet, too, in time--
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!

Christopher Morley

The Fferyllt

2011-02-20T07:56:00.001+08:00

In the story of Taliesin, Ceridwen is said to boil a cauldron of "Inspiration and Science", according to "the arts of the books of the Fferyllt". She wishes to bestow knowledge of the mysteries on her son, to compensate for his ugliness. The cauldron has to boil for a year and a day and she appoints the blind Morda and a youth, Gwion Bach, to tend it. Her plans fall astray when three drops from the cauldron splash onto the thumb of Gwion Bach. As he sucks the hot liquid from his thumb he realises his danger from Ceridwen and flees. Ceridwen pursues him and they both undergo a series of transformations or shape-shiftings until as a grain of wheat Gwion is eaten by Ceridwen as a hen. Ceridwen becomes pregnant with him and when he is (re)born she sews him into a leather bag and throws it into a river because he is so beautiful she could not bear to kill him. He is rescued by Elphin who proclaims "Behold the radiant brow" on seeing his forehead. Thus he is named Taliesin. He goes on to become an important Bard and magician in the court of Elphin and through-out the land.

So Ceridwen, a Goddess of the Celtic tradition, gains the knowledge to brew her cauldron of inspiration from the "books of the Fferyllt". As we have seen just three drops from this cauldron lead to the transformation of the boy Gwion Bach into the poet and magician Taliesin, it is a very potent brew. Who or what the Fferyllt are though, we are never told, though the word fferyllt remains in modern Welsh as "fferyllydd" for chemist or pharmacist. Below are some further references to the "fferyllt", who are sometimes referred to as "Druid Alchemists". Vyvyan Ogma Wyvern offers a speculative etymology for fferyllt in the last piece.

The story of Taliesin's initiation into knowledge and wisdom also bears resemblance to the story of Finn MacCool who whilst working under the tutelage of the druid seer Finnegas is set to tend the cooking of the Salmon of wisdom. Three drops of the salmon spit onto Finns thumb and he gains the divine knowledge that Finnegas had sought. In this story though Finnegas acknowledges Finn has the person whom the knowledge had been destined for.

NB: Lewis Spence uses an alternative spelling of "pheryllt", I have left the spelling as in his original work.

All material reproduced here is Copyright © its author.

British & Irish Mythology by Caitlin Mathews & John Mathews

"Fferyllt (W) Often translated as the Fairies, Fferyllt is probably derived from the Welsh for Virgil "Fferyll", who had a reputation in medieval times for being a magician and alchemist. Ceridwen is said to have consulted the books of the Fferylllt in preparing her cauldron of inspiration which Gwion drank. "Fferyllt" means chemist in modern Welsh."

Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom by Caitlin Mathews & John Mathews Pages: 233-234

"In the Story of Taliesen, Ceridwen's cauldron is kept brewing for a year and a day, its ingredients gathered by her in accordance with "the arts of the book of fferyllt". The fferyllt are the ancestoral alchemists of British tradition, beings who maintain the spiritual heat of the land. Their abode is in the high places of Snowdonia at Dinas Affaraon, the Fortress of the High Powers, where they are associated with the governance of the dragons, the symbolic guardians of the energy of the land."

The History & Origins of Druidry by Lewis Spence Page: 58

"In the same way the tradition concerning Pheryllt of Snowdon is in no sense accountable to authority, although fugitive allusions concerning them are occasional in the Welsh poems. They were said to be a mystical brotherhood who dwelt in the secret city of Emrys, situated on Snowdon, a site identified by Gibson, the commentator of Camden, as occupying the summit of "the Painting cliff", and with certain ruins of a fortification there known as Broich y Dinas, on the top of the height of Penmaen. In The Book Of Taliesin "the Books of the Pheryllt" are alluded to in connection with the myth of the goddess Cerdiwen. And an ancient Wlesh manuscript quoted by Dr. Thomas Williams asserts that this brotherhood maintained a college at Oxford prior to the foundation of that University! The aim for ancient metallurgical art in Welsh is Celvyddydan Pheryllt, "the arts of Pheryllt". But there is nothing to associate this tradition with Druidism in any way, and it appears as representative of that phase of legend in which a modicum of obstinate and reiterated statement gives rise to a sentiment that an ancient group of facts has been overlaid by a patina of fanciful elaboration."

The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain by Lewis Spence Page: 144

"While on the subject of Snowdon, I should like to refer to the somewhat neglected topic of the Pheryllt, who, says tradition, were a cast of priests associated with the mysteries of the secret city of Emrys, situated on Snowdon. In the Book of Taliesin we are informed that the goddess Cerdiwen was determined "agreeably to the mystery of the Books of Pheryllt to prepare for her son a cauldron of water of inspiration and knowledge", with due attention to the books, astronomy, and to the hours of the planets - that cauldron which, in fact, we read of in the myth of Taliesin, the three drops of which afforded him his bardic inspiration. The Pheryllt, or "Ancients", are occasionally mentioned by the bards of Wales and an old chronicle quoted by Dr. Thomas Williams states that this brotherhood had a college at Oxford, prior to the foundation of that University. That they were perhaps regarded by tradition as an ancient caste of alchemists appears probable from the circumstance that the term for the ancient chemistry and metallurgy is Celvyddydon Pheryllt, that is, "the arts of Pheryllt". They seem to have been associated with the cult of Ceridwen and to have had their headquarters in Emrys, in the mountains of Snowdon, the city of the dragons of Beli, which was also known to the Welsh tradition as Dinas Affaraon, or "the place of the Higher Powers". This site is alluded to in The Black Book of Carmarthen as the centre of mystical rites and by Gibson, Camden's commentator, as occupying the summit of "the Panting Cliff", on Snowdon itself. It is indeed identified with the ruins of an exceedingly strong fortification encompassed by a triple wall on a eminence known as Broich y Ddina, "the Ridge of the City", which forms part of the summit of Penmaen. If Gibson's statement be credible, this place was of immense size and solidity. It was in this city, legend assures us, that in the time of Beli and in that of Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great, those dragons were concealed which drew the car of Ceridwen and were so closely identified with important passages in British legend. Here, too, were deposited by a mysterious sow the cub of a wolf and an eaglet, according to a myth contained in one of the Welsh poems."
"All this I need scarcely say, is by no means accountable to authority, but I think that, as in the case of all tradition, it has a background. As Professor Gruffydd remarks of Iolo's authenticity in respect of a certain tradition, the old bards "must have go it from somewhere". Even the most fantastic legends possess a modicum of fact, whatever the most exacting of mythological critics may say, and in the alchemists of Emrys, their dragons and other grotesqueries, I think I see the remains of a tradition referring to some primeval brotherhood of magical predilection highly coloured by the fictional genius of an imaginative peasantry. I do not know what modern Welsh Archaeology has pronounced concerning the "ruins of Emrys" on Snowdon, and indeed can discover nothing on that head. It's conclusions, if any, could not fail to be interesting."

Etymology of Fferyllt by Vyvyan Ogma Wyverne

Hallo, I am surprised that you could find no better etymologies for the word 'feryllt' and its variant spellings. The problem might arise from a general and unjustifiable reluctance among Celtic historians to find Irish-like words in use in Roman Britain and since then.
An assumption that Ceridwen is English or Welsh could also be in the way. If you accord 'feryllt' a pre-Roman Expansion origin and allow that it is cognate with 'Vergil' who's name was associated with the feryllts' crafts, then instead of assuming that the Welsh were deeply impressed with the Roman poet of that name, you should recall that Vergil was Celtic, from Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul, and belonged to a long-standing tradition which a little research shows was widespread throughout Celtic and Celto-Germanic Europe.

It may have been active in Britain, or Ceridwen may have been among the Celtic refugees who fled to Britain during the Roman campaign in Gaul and remained there during the occupation, importing her craft and perhaps her books which have since been lost or else they were lost in the flight, her history having been recalled as we it have today.
Vergil's name was really a title, and Vergilius is a Romanised version of it. 'Ver' is a Roman spelling of a word which would be spelt in modern Irish 'bhfear', which is 'fear' meaning 'man' with the initial consonant affected by eclipsis. Gil is a variant of Cil (as in Columcille, Kildare and Killarney), again with the initial letter affected by eclipsis. It is related to Ceilidh, Coll, and of course, Keltoi, or Celt. From Coll we get 'col/aiste', 'cloister', college and the Latin derived words cult, and culture etc are cognates.

Some P-Celtic variants are the Pol of Polglaze, the Pell of Pellinor and Pwyll. It is cognate also with Palace, polis, police, and via the St Paul/Saul of the Bible, is related also to Anselm and Solomon, which means Sol of Amon. Northern Germanic variants include schul, school and skald, and it is very closely related both in form and meaning to the word Guild.

If you take the word 'guild' and lenite the initial g, it would give what the modern Irish might spell gheild, and if you then pronounce the final d hard it would be pronounced as the yllt in feryllt is pronounced.

In the Roman spelling, the gil is an eclipsised form of Kil- which would be spelt gCill in modern Irish spelling.

So Feryllt means Guildman, or similar. How much the 'guild' of Vergil or Ceridwen resembles the craft guilds well known to historians and folklorists is a matter for further research.

The above is of course carefully considered conjecture as all such studies are, but I think it is in the right direction.

I hope it is helpful to you.

Vyvyan Ogma Wyverne /|\

An Open Letter To Greg Combet

2011-02-15T21:37:00.000+08:00

I received the letter below from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and to be honest I was somewhat underwhelmed. Here is my response.

Dear Mr Combet,
thanks for your email dated February 10th whilst I appreciate you taking the time to write to me I hope you can forgive me for being less than enthusiastic about your response. We are already experiencing climate change related extreme weather and it is only expected to get worse- large storms more likely in future. And yet according to your own climate change advisor, Ross Garnaut "Australia needs to catch up to the rest of the world in it's effort to address climate change" and describes Australia as "a drag on climate change action". This shouldn't be a surprise to you Mr Combet, Government figures show that Carbon emissions are on track to soar. If that is how you intend to "continue to play a strong role in international climate change negotiations" then frankly we'd rather you didn't. The time for talking has long passed, it's time for action and yet as far as I can tell the only thing your Government has actually done with respect to climate change is to slash $1.3 billion in clean energy incentives. My inner cynic has a few explanations as to why that might be so but nothing that speaks to what the Australian people elected you and your Government to do. Kevin Rudd described climate change as "the greatest moral challenge of our time" it's time to rise to that challenge, the Australian people, our children and grand children deserve no less.

Yours Sincerely
Murray Barton

Hello,

Thank you for your correspondence on land sector accounting rules in the international climate change negotiations.

The Australian Government recognises the need for improved international treatment of human-caused emissions from the land sector. As the current international accounting rules do not encourage countries to take up carbon pollution reduction opportunities from this sector, Australia - like other countries - is seeking changes to improve the environmental effectiveness of the rules. Improving the rules could provide greater incentives for countries to include emissions from a broader range of land management activities including forestry in their carbon pollution reduction commitments. This would promote greater action to reduce emissions and increase uptake of carbon dioxide (known as sequestration).

Good progress was made at the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Cancun, Mexico in December last year, with agreement that countries should finalise the land sector accounting rules during 2011. As part of this, countries need to agree on the approach for establishing a baseline which countries can use to measure changes in carbon pollution levels from their forests. Importantly, and in line with Australia’s preferred outcome, the decision also establishes a review process, to ensure that the proposed baselines are robust and set in an open and transparent manner. The findings of the review process will be open to all countries, as well as interested stakeholders.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to my attention. I can assure you that Australia will continue to play a strong role in the international climate change negotiations.

Regards,Greg Combet

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency

Murray's authentic Asian style salad

2011-02-13T21:52:00.000+08:00

So we've been eating a lot of salad lately and I've been experimenting a bit using a tin of beans as a basis. Tonights was particularly good so I thought I'd share. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Caveat lector: I can claim many to be things but a chef I absolutely am not.

Ingredients

2 cups of wholemeal pasta cooked firm and allowed to cool
1 600g large tin 4 bean mix
1 handful of pistachio's, shelled
6 spring onions sliced thinly
1 white onion chopped finely
2 handfuls of English spinach, rinsed
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tablespoon virgin olive oil
1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil
1/2 tablespoon of Tamari sauce

Mix all ingredients. Serve. Enjoy. Feeds 4.

Bring Out Your Dead Week

2011-02-05T15:16:00.042+08:00

Our suburb recently went through it's 6 monthly cycle of verge-side bulk refuse collection, I call it "bring out your dead week". I have to admit to enjoying a bit of verge shopping but I don't make too many "purchases" (this time I did pick up a wrought iron coffee table frame which with a bit of TLC and a new top is going to look fantastic). Herewith a few observations, move along if you don't find junk interesting.

Aside from the green waste there are some things which are consistent throw away items; chipboard furniture, exercise equipment & push bikes. All items you may want to reconsider your purchase of. Chipboard furniture doesn't last, the exercise equipment I'm guessing gets used for a while and given up on. I have no idea why people throw away perfectly serviceable push-bikes. One thing I didn't see this time which has usually made a regular appearance was futon style beds, maybe there was a fad for them some time ago and they've all reached end of life?

The last few collections every second house was throwing away one or more CRT computer monitors, they must have been all replaced with LCD's now because I didn't see any this time. What I did see was a lot of very very large CRT TV's, obviously being replaced by thin screen technology. I suspect a good proportion of these CRT's are in perfect working order, they just aren't the latest thing any-more, surely they have to have some value?

Lisa and I have been out to minimalise our household (we're making progress... sporadically) and also we inheritted a lot of stuff when we brought this place so the last couple of collection times we have had a lot of stuff out. I am always pleased when our stuff gets picked up- it's nice to know we have "good junk" :)

Poem Of The Week - Roger McGough

2010-12-15T09:36:00.001+08:00

This is another in my sporadic series of poems from places where you might not expect poetry- I heard about it on Top Gear I don't remember who it was but one of the celebrities in the "Star in a reasonably priced car" section of an old re-run quoted a line from it and I had to look it up. Good poetry is the kind that is found every-where.

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

by Roger McGough

Poem Of The Week - Sylvia Plath

2010-07-10T18:45:00.001+08:00

I'm not sure where or when or how I first came across Sylvia Plath or even this poem but I love the tempo and music and sense of fun of the villanelle form and I love this poem. In it Sylvia Plath combines the madness of madly-in-love with spiritual insight. Or maybe I just made that up inside my head...

Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

by Sylvia Plath

Poem Of The Week - Pablo Neruda

2010-05-27T07:36:00.010+08:00

I discovered Pablo Neruda through the movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams. I loved the movie and loved the poem. Since then I've become a fan of all Pablo Neruda's work but this one is still my favourite. I've been dabbling with learning Spanish so I can read Pablo Neruda's work in it's original tongue as well as the works of César Vallejo and Federico García Lorca- I seem to have a soft spot for Spanish language poetry. Alas my Spanish is a long long way from being able to appreciate poetry.

XVII (I do not love you...)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

-Pablo Neruda

The Age Of Risotto

2010-05-26T06:34:00.002+08:00

I've been a vegetarian for almost 20 years now and I've noticed that restaurants go through phases with the "vegetarian option" which they offer. When I first became vegetarian back in the early 90's the option was vegetarian lasagne. I've never had a bad vegetarian lasagne but during the age of vegetarian lasagne I had some pretty ordinary ones.

The next age was a dark one. The spinach and ricotta cannelloni age. If you've never had spinach and ricotta cannelloni I can thoroughly recommend trying something else. If you ever went to a restaurant with me during this age you would have noticed a strange desperation as I studied the menu: looking and praying for anything else that was vegetarian. I spent this age wishing I'd never complained about the age of lasagne.

I notice we've now entered the age of risotto. I used to enjoy an occasional risotto when I found one on the menu during the age of cannelloni. I still enjoy a good one. They vary wildly from the divine to what is at best stodgy rice. Even the stodgy rice form is better than a cannelloni.

I can understand restaurants only having one or two vegetarian options on their menu. I don't have any complaints about that, choice is good but being able to eat is better so I appreciate that the option is there. I do wonder why it is though that the vegetarian option is common across so many different eateries, even places with completely different non-vegetarian menu's will offer the same vegetarian dish. If there is any-one in the hospitalities that can shed some light then I'd love to hear from you.

Also worth noting: the above only relates to places serving "western" cuisine. If you want good vegetarian and variety your best bet is to go Asian; my personal favourite cuisine remains Indian.

I Dreamt with the Brass Buddha

2010-05-22T16:50:00.001+08:00

Bill Barton 7/12/1921 - 10/4/2010

I Dreamt with the Brass Buddha

Smooth cold skin,
tarnished and collecting dust.
He is a twin.
His brother
was a courting gift
from my mother
to my father.

I ask the Buddha
if my father has rejected Buddhism
or embraced it so deeply
it is beyond me to recognise.
He smiles
and a drop of sweat
beads on the folds of his chest
and rushes furiously
across the sacred mound of his belly.

He invokes my childhood
walking across a paddock
with my father explaining
the essence of Buddhism;
To fully be
whatever you were doing-
walk paddock, repair car.

I dreamt with the Brass Buddha
and recognised my father,
eighty one years old
playing guitar.
Calloused hands
gripping the fret,
stroking strings.
His whole body listening,
just as he once did, walking with me.

The Brass Buddha
wipes the sweat from his brow
and returns to his contemplation.

Poem Of The Week - Percy Bysshe Shelley

2010-02-14T11:30:00.000+08:00

My Dad introduced this poem to me. He remembered only a few lines of it from his childhood and didn't know its author. I remember tracking it down on the internet for him and I think one of my sisters did the same and he was delighted. Later a trip to the book exchange found a collection of Shelley's works which he was equally delighted with. Dad is 88 now and starting to get frail, and yes starting to get frail is accurate. There is a lot I have to be thankful to Dad for, but I am especially grateful for the gift of reading which he gave by example and for the introduction to Shelley through this poem.

My own socio-political outlook in non-violence, vegetarianism and social justice is no doubt an ongoing expression of Shelley's legacy, though I have only drawn the connection much later, my inspirations coming indirectly through others including Dad. Thank-you Dad and thank-you Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poem Of The Week - Ranier Maria Rilke

2010-02-07T17:26:00.000+08:00

Rilke is one of those poets whom I felt an instant connection with, his introduction on Wikipedia says it way better than I could: "His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety". This poem came from Jaime who forwarded me a newsletter with the query "I don't know if this is of interest", it wasn't particularly but it did have a snippet of this Rilke poem and I had to hunt it down and share it with you.

I Love The Dark Hours

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

- Ranier Maria Rilke

Poem Of The Week - Mary Oliver

2010-01-14T11:40:00.000+08:00

I think my very first meeting of Mary Oliver's poetry was in Philip Carr-Gomm's "The Druid Way" where Philip quotes from "The Wild Geese", it remains one of my favourite poems. Mary Oliver combines a keen observation of the minutiae and magnificence of nature with deep insight into what it is to be human. At the same time her work has the polish of a master; the craft is invisible and the poem shines.

The Buddha's Last Instruction

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Mary Oliver

Poem Of The Week - Rudyard Kipling

2009-12-22T11:13:00.000+08:00

I am not particularly drawn to the so-called "dead white males" of poetry, you just need to browse through my previous selections to see where my tastes lie. However I don't deny these poets their rightful place in our literary history. This weeks poem continues my theme of "poems I discovered through unlikely channels" being sent to my by a work colleague in IT, yours truly being the exception rather than the rule in IT when it comes to an interest in poetry. Thank-you Vernon for Rudyard Kiplings "If..."

If...

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

25 Simple Things You Can Do To Help Save The Planet

2009-12-01T06:00:00.000+08:00

A lot of people that I speak to are both concerned about the state of the planet and resigned and cynical that there is anything they can do that will make any difference. "What difference can the actions of one person make?" they ask. Taken individually they may be right- though I have had it pointed out to me that any-one who thinks they don't make any difference has never tried sleeping in a room with a mosquito :) What is sure though is that if no-one takes action the future looks bleak at best.

So I urge every-one to become climate change activists, not the out on the streets with placards kind (though you can do that if you want to), but right in your home and in your own life. Don't go to sleep at night until you have taken at least one action to save the planet. Each day ask yourself what is the simplest thing I can do today to save the world and do that. Together we do make a big difference.

Live simply that others may simply live. - Mohandas Gandhi

If you are stuck for idea's here's some to get you started.

walk, ride a push bike or use public transport instead of taking your car

when you are not using them turn off at the wall computers, audio equipment and other electronics

grow your own vegetables- even a small planter on the balcony will help

rip out your lawn and replace it with native plants or gravel

replace incandescent globes with compact fluorescent or LED globes

recycle your household waste

start a compost bin and/or worm farm

write letters to your local and federal MP's and Newspapers telling them you are concerned and demand that they take action

don't buy products that are over packaged

buy locally grown and manufactured products

find a replacement for retail therapy- try exercise instead

buy organic

plant trees

take shorter showers

have your car serviced regularly and keep the tyres pumped up

re-plant your garden with waterwise and native plants

eat less meat, especially red meat

install a solar hot water system

install rain water collection tanks

buy "green power" from your power company

install solar panels to supply/supplement your power needs

when replacing appliances buy the ones with the highest star rating

turn off the lights when you leave a room

replace leaking tap washers

become an advocate and encourage the people around you to take action

Poem Of The Week - Georg Trakl

2009-11-29T10:00:00.000+08:00

I discovered Georg Trakl via Richard Gabriel's Dreamsongs web site which I stumbled upon while looking for a solution to a programming problem I was having. Unfortunately I can't remember what the issue was or if Richard's site was any help with it, but I am still very thankful for the introduction to Georg Trakl. If this one leaves you wanting more of Georg Trakl Richard has a pdf available, and the introduction by Robert Bly serves as a nice doorway to the man himself as well.

De Profundis

It is a stubble ﬁeld, where a black rain is falling.
It is a brown tree, that stands alone.
It is a hissing wind, that encircles empty houses.
How melancholy the evening is.

A while later,
The soft orphan garners the sparse ears of corn.
Her eyes graze, round and golden, in the twilight
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

On the way home
The shepherd found the sweet body
Decayed in a bush of thorns.

I am a shadow far from darkening villages.
I drank the silence of God
Out of the stream in the trees.

Cold metal walks on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
It is a light that goes out in my mouth.

At night, I found myself on a pasture,
Covered with rubbish and the dust of stars.
In a hazel thicket
Angels of crystal rang out once more.

Poem Of The Week - David Whyte

2009-09-04T14:03:00.005+08:00

Via my good friend Claudio who sent me David Whyte's reading of this poem on YouTube. Thank-you Claudio! Also worth hearing is Leave Everything You Know Behind.

Everything Is Waiting For You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Poem Of The Week - Goethe

2009-07-14T13:46:00.013+08:00

I've said before that I love when my seemingly diverse interests collide. I never anticipated any meaningful chemistry from the intersection of motorbikes and poetry though. And how wrong I was. Courtesy of Olaf Tiemann's gorgeous Honda CB750 Café Racer I bring you Goethe, another poem giving voice to the otherwise inexpressible. What is it that draws you in until you are lost?

The Fisher

The water rolled, the water swelled;
A fisher sat thereby,
And quitely his angle held;
Chilled to his heart was he.
The water in dreamy motion kept,
As he sat in dreamy mood;
A wave hove up - and a damsel stepped,
All dripping, from the flood.

She sang to him, she spake to him:
"Why wilt thou lure away
My sweet brood by thy human art
To the deadly light of day?
Ah! knewest thou how light of heart
The little fishes live.
Thou wouldst come down, all as thou art,
And thy true life receive."

"Bathes not the sun with all his skies?
Bathes not the moon by night,
To breathe my dew awhile, and rise
All smiling doubly bright?
And tempt the not the deep, deep skies,
Here spread in watery blue?
And tempt the not thine own dark eyes
Down through th' eternal dew?"

The water rolled, the water swelled;
It wetted his bare feet;
A something through his bosom thrilled;
He seemed his love to meet,
She spake to him, she sang to him;
With him 'twas quickly o'er:
Half she drew him, half sank he in,
And never was seen more.

Poem Of The Week- Anna Akhmatova

2009-07-02T09:40:00.005+08:00

Anna Akhmatova is another poet introduced to me by a friend and another I owe a debt of gratitude for. Anna Akhmatova tells you the truth, you catch your breath, your heart skips a beat maybe you bite your tounge but always you want more.

In Human Closeness There...

In human closeness there is a secret edge,
Nor love nor passion can pass it above,
Let lips with lips be joined in silent rage,
And hearts be burst asunder with the love.

And friendship, too, is powerless plot,
And so years of bliss with noble tends,
When your heart is free and known not,
The slow languor of the earthy sense.

And they who strive to reach this edge are mad,
But they who reached are shocked with anguish hard --
Now you know why beneath your hand
You do not feel the beating of my heart.

Poem Of The Week- Wallace Stevens

2009-05-25T19:55:00.008+08:00

This poem represents one of those odd little intersections in my life which I enjoy so much, it's read out at one of Landmark Education's courses. But it's a poem that speaks for itself.

So far male poets have dominated my selections, I'm not sure how that happened but I promise to remedy it with the next poem. Have a favourite female poet? Let me know in the comments below.

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Another 2 second guide to the Landmark Forum

2009-05-18T14:38:00.004+08:00

Landmarks programs are like Tai Chi for the mind. You discover ways to be free from the habitual patterns of the mind. The occurring world transforms. In place of struggle there is flow.

Poem Of The Week - Māris Čaklais

2009-05-15T12:23:00.003+08:00

I can't tell you a whole lot about Māris Čaklais, the best information I could find, in English at least, was sadly an announcement of his death. I was given a copy of his book Premonition by a friend otherwise I am sure I would never have encountered him. No doubt Robert Frost was correct when he said "Poetry is what gets lost in translation" nonetheless this is a gem of a book with some beautiful poems, I hope you enjoy this one.

A Little Fairy Tale

It was all in the land
Whose gates are now locked against me,
Whose keys I have lost-
In my childhood.

As in everyone's childhood,
I, too, had a fairy tale,
And like everyone's fairy-tale
Mine, too, had a princess.

She did not converse like grown-ups.
She spoke our own language.
The princess sang songs.

When, behind the window, the car
Hooted, to carry the princess away,
We clung to our princess-aunt's skirts
And we cried.

When our breath had melted them all-
Every flower of ice on the window-pane,
Only then, we remembered
To finish playing at soldiers.

It was all long ago.
And the fairy-tales
Which even now I believe in
Are of a somewhat different order.

Why do I speak of it then?

There are times when the past, like a child,
Clings to one's skirts, and cries-
And one does not know what to do.

Poem Of The Week - Rabindranath Tagore

2009-05-08T14:48:00.009+08:00

Another in my irregular Poem Of The Week series. I don't remember when/where I first encountered Rabindranath Tagore but lines from his works have been fixtures in my quote file for a long while. It was the anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore's birth yesterday so I'm a day late, I hope he and you can forgive me.

If any-one can shed light on the "Iffe" in "In the Iffe of the seeker" please comment below and also please do share your favourite poets/poems.

I

I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This 'I' beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This 'I' is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the Iffe of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself -
The 'I' that reaches everywhere.

Poem Of The Week- Redhawk

2009-04-20T22:19:00.009+08:00

I first discovered Redhawk through New Edition bookshop when it was on the café strip in Fremantle, they always had the best poetry section of any bookshop in the state, not sure if they still do but Borders in the city has a good range. I picked up a copy of the Art of Dying and I loved what I read, had to take it home with me. The copy I brought has page 69 torn out; that poem must be really good, I hope whoever has it really appreciates it. It's hard to pick a favourite from the book, for me Redhawk is good everywhere but I've been thinking about this poem all week so here it is.

Who's your favourite poet/favourite poem? Let me know in the comments, I love to discover new poets through peoples recommendations.

Some Meditations on the Art of Poetry

Given 2 good choices, both unfettered
in their meaning, the simpler is better.

Mastery of rhyme was understood by Frost:
impossible to say which rhymed word came first;

that rhyme is most sound
which surprises when it's found.

Irony is the rarest of quality in verse,
wit next; their absence is a curse.

Brevity is not only the soul of wit,
no virtue in verse overshadows it.

If the queen of virtue is brevity,
her handmaiden is humility.

Who things they've found the truth, hesitate
and when they write it down, understate.

If the choice is form or meaning,
form needs weaning.

Real art is hard, but the hardest part is
ars celare artis.

What is seen in great poems as art
is in truth the urgency of the heart.

Those who believe they are the source
sew the seeds of their remorse;

those who serve something higher
step into a holy fire

where they burn.
This is what the best poets learn.

The secret to revision is well known:
cut it to the bone.

The secret to reading well:
risk the whisper, conserve the yell;

let the poem create the spell,
chatter in-between is mostly hell;

keep it shy of an hour,
and mix wit with power,

grief
with comic relief.

From the Art Of Dying by Redhawk

Computer Meet Compressor

2009-04-14T15:45:00.007+08:00

For a while now my computer has been screaming like a banshee every time I've turned it on. I thought it was had the bomb, on it's way out, kaput. It would start off quietly enough but slowly get louder and louder until it was unbearable. I complained about it at work the other day and someone suggested that maybe it needed a bit of de-dusting. I scoffed at the idea because it's never been in any particularly dusty environment. But since I was on holidays this week and I had to move the compressor (we recently moved house and the compressor was still at the old place) and it gave me the excuse to go to the hardware shop (a treat in itself) and buy one of those funky blowing attachments I thought I would give it a go. I got all the bits home performed the essential assembly and then introduced the computer to the compressor. Wasn't there some dust and lint and, well stuff in there! I could hardly breathe for a few minutes. The blower attachment worked a treat and you know what? The computer is back to it's old quiet self now. I never thought the power tools in the garage could fix computer problems before, I wonder what other problems I can solve, the angle grinder hasn't been used for a while...

Toxic Asset

2009-03-27T10:30:00.005+09:00

Toxic Asset: A liability in an assets clothes.

I keep hearing this term in the media and I decided it was time it had a definition so that people can decipher what is being said, or hear what is not being said.

At the time of writing the top search in google for toxic asset is Yahoo! Answers where the "Best Answer" perfectly describes a liability and still fails to call it one- "Why would somebody pay for an asset that guarantees you will lose money?"- because it's a liability.

Parent & Partner

2009-03-23T20:07:00.006+09:00

Being a parent on the one hand seems like a tough job, there's all this stuff you have to do and not do and there's this little person there who just completely depends on you and at the same time has a mind and a will of their own which doesn't always agree with yours even when you have their best interests at heart. On the other hand it's pretty simple, all you have to do is love them.

Being a (parent) partner also seems like a tough job. There is all this stuff you have to do and not do and there's this other person there who has a mind and a will of their own and... on the other hand it's pretty simple, all you have to do is love them.

Jasmine Rose is growing up at a rate of knots and she surprises and delights us every day. Being a parent and a partner might seem like a tough job sometimes but it's the most rewarding one I've ever had.

Tips For Travelling With Babies

2009-02-11T12:35:00.003+09:00

Pack plenty of sleep,
it's hard to find over-seas
especially if you cross time zones.

Pack optimism and love
and an extra large serving
of look on the bright side.

One or two changes of clothes
will do for you
but pack 18 changes for them.
Plan on visiting laundries.

Pack dummies and toys,
bottles and nappies,
doodads and miscellaneous baby things.
Think about packing ear plugs then leave them at home.

If you're travelling by plane,
wear a thick skin
and take frequent doses of patience.
The flight attendants will fill in the gaps.

Plan all your sight seeing
within an hour or two of your room
so you can quickly get them
to bed, changed and fed.
Go somewhere and stay a while
break camp as little as possible.

Insist on a routine,
but not too intently.
Plan for frequent changes,
to nappies and schedules.
Plan on giving up and then
just let go.

Kite Renter

2009-02-05T14:26:00.003+09:00

John Stanley Associates just published an article I wrote on customer service Keeping Your Existing Customers stemming from our travels to Spain last year. If you are wondering who the travel agent was the (rhyming) clue is in the title of this post.

Thanks to JSA for publishing my article and look closely before you rent your next kite folks!

Quoting Hell

2009-02-04T13:02:00.007+09:00

Perl (my fav programming language) is often accused of being line noise and other atrocities so imagine my delight when a colleague forwarded me the following line of code from VBScript

retValue = objWShell.Run(""""& executable &""" -l -s " & my_period & " """ & the_file & """", 1, true)

The equivalent perl (he was rewriting a perl script I wrote to run in windows because they don't install perl there) was a very happy

my @cmd_out = `bplist -l -s $date $file 2>&1`;
my $err_status = $? / 256;

Admittedly there's some oddness (2>&1 and $? not to mention the backticks) if you don't come from a unix world but it's a world ahead of the quoting hell in the VBScript.

Exorgorating

2008-12-20T10:28:00.008+09:00

The state in which one renounces the self and the material world whilst simultaneously partaking of all the pleasures that both have to offer.

For all of you who have ever wondered (and all of you who haven't) what my Google Talk status message means. I see a lot of exorgorating going on as I look around the world, it's an egocentric state and it seems to be endemic in certain groups (I'm looking at you New Age). And since "if you can spot it, you've got it" (1), I've got it as well.

1. I think I first heard "if you can spot it, you've got it" at a Landmark Education Communications Access To Power Course but Google says it's probably older than that. BTW I no longer want an "I see stupid people" T-shirt.

A Few Notes on Chrome

2008-12-13T09:55:00.001+09:00

There's been a lot of buzz about Chrome so I installed it in my VMWare player windows instance at work and on Lisa's laptop at home and took it for a bit of a spin.

The good:

It's fast.
The "new tab" page is brilliant. It shows your most visited pages, recently closed tabs, recent bookmarks and gives you a search box.
Each tab is a separate thread with it's own memory.
Tabs are sandboxed from each other.
It has a slick uncluttered interface, I like the tabs at the very top.

The bad:

No Linux version yet :)
No auto-complete for forms.

The Ugly:

Chrome will remember passwords for you but there is no "master password" so (as far as I can tell) stored passwords are not encrypted on the disk.

While there is no Linux version I won't be going over to Chrome but I think the Firefox developers need to act fast (bring on Tracemonkey !). Oh and Firefox developers, Bug 339804 hurts.

Hymns To An Unknown God

2008-11-30T23:20:00.000+09:00

"My Life has been one long song, a hymn to an unknown God." - Sam Keen, Hymns to An Unknown God

I haven't read the book yet and I'm not sure when I'll have time to but if this quote is anything to go by it's going to be a cracker. I'll report back in due course.

Filesystems

2008-10-20T11:01:00.015+08:00

A couple of interesting ZFS posts:

Success with OpenSolaris + ZFS + MySQL in production!

ZFS snapshot visualization in GNOME

And some filesystem news from the Linux world showing definite signs of ZFS envy-

Tux3 Filesystem Announcement

"The main purpose of Tux3 is to embody my new ideas on storage data versioning. The secondary goal is to provide a more efficient snapshotting and replication method for the Zumastor NAS project, and a tertiary goal is to be better than ZFS."

Linux Summit will preview new advanced file system

The new btrfs file system will be more convenient and robust than ext4, with some key features that couldn't be incorporated without starting from scratch, and it is expected to leapfrog Sun Microsystems Inc.'s ZFS file system on several fronts.

Personally I'm hoping that the only reason that Sun hasn't GPL'd ZFS already is the lawsuit brought against them by Netapp and that as soon as litigation is over Sun will move quickly to GPL ZFS so we can have some ZFS goodness sooner rather than later on Linux (yes I know about ZFS on FUSE).

By Christ The Magician

2008-10-06T09:25:00.015+08:00

I'm wondering if this discovery will have the Church reconsider their position on Harry Potter. I think it would be a good thing if they did... it makes me feel a bit odd when the Church and I agree.

Happy Birthday Your Majesty

2008-09-29T18:35:00.004+08:00

I just wanted to take this small opportunity to wish Her Majesty the Queen a very Happy Birthday. The weather was bonza here in Perth and I thoroughly appreciated the day off in her honour. God save the Queen!

PS. Your Majesty if you are reading this having a keen organic gardener as King would be pretty cool, so please do consider handing the reins over to Charlie sometime soon. Don't worry about the day off, I'm sure the powers that be in Canberra won't mind us having a day off for his birthday if it's all OK with you.

The Aquarian Gospel Of Jesus The Christ

2008-09-25T12:10:00.002+08:00

"The most efficient prayer that men can offer to a god of any kind is helpfulness to those in need of help; for what you do for other men the Holy One will do for you". -The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus The Christ by Levi.

I've been carting this book around for over 15 years (it's not quite a 20 year book though and in more ways than one) with never the slightest inclination to read it but also unwilling to part with it because of who gave it to me. As I've been wandering through A Course In Miracles it came to mind and finally picked it up and read it.

I know Darryl well enough to be sure that it was no accident that he gave me the book in front of our circle of friends, he would have easily predicted the stirring I would receive as a result. This was around the same time as I grew my first beard and the same people ribbed me mercilessly about the "Jesus Christ look" until I shaved it off. But I never for once thought that he gave me the book just to stir me up. I figured that if Darryl was giving it to me it had some value and on that basis I've happily carted it about.

It says on the dust cover that it's about the missing 18 years of Jesus life which he spent "travelling and learning from the masters, seers and wisemen in the temples and schools of Tibet, Egypt, India, Persia and Greece". But most of the time the format is more of "Jesus goes to x and shows up the locals and teaches them and isn't he great". Interspersed amongst the Jesus flag waving there are some beautiful poetic sections and many snippets of esoteric wisdom.

I can understand why it was radical for it's time because a lot of what it espouses is at odds with the conventional teachings of the church. But most of its juice can be obtained from other texts with much less squeezing required. I'm not sure I can even suggest a target audience for it now- people like me who are interested in odd things I suppose. Maybe I would have gotten a lot more from it if I'd read it when it was given to me. Thanks for the read Darryl, sorry it took so long.

The Secret To Long Life?

2008-09-23T16:23:00.009+08:00

Run more = Live Longer

Eat less = Live Longer

Run more + eat less = live longer. What's not to like?

For bonus years you could become a vegetarian too.

Philosopher-Gardeners

2008-09-22T21:10:00.010+08:00

Philosopher-gardeners, or farmer-poets, are distinguished by their sense of wonder and real feeling for the environment. When religions cease to obliterate trees in order to build temples or human artefacts, and instead generalise love and respect to all living systems as a witness to the potential of creation, they too will join the many of us now deeply appreciating the complexity and self-sustaining properties of natural systems, from whole universes to simple molecules. Gardener, scientist, philosopher, poet and adherent of religions all can conspire in admiration of, and reverence for, this earth. We create our own life conditions, now and for the future. -Bill Mollison, Permaculture A Designers' Manual

If, as physical scientists assure us, we all contain a few molecules of Einstein, and if the atomic particles of our physical body reach to the outermost bounds of the universe, then we are all de facto components of all things. There is nowhere left for us to go if we are already every-where, and this is, in truth, all we will ever have or need. If we love ourselves at all, we should respect all things equally, and not claim any superiority over what are, in effect, our other parts. -Bill Mollison, Permaculture A Designers' Manual

When you turn your back to the moon, it no longer exists. -Robert Lanza, Discover Interview

Discipline

2008-07-26T13:11:00.026+08:00

One of the exercises in ACIM requires you to pause each half hour to contemplate the topic. I failed miserably at this for a couple of weeks remembering only a few times each day so last Thursday I added a cronjob (yes I am blessed with a Linux desktop) to email me every half an hour. This served as a suitable reminder, and to make up for the cheating I did it two days running :)

Discipline is a requirement of spirituality that is usually overlooked or outright avoided, always to the detriment of the student. So why is discipline important? As I said previously one of the most important functions of spirituality is to give us a path to freedom from the false self/identity/ego. Our identities begin forming around the age of 2 or 3 years and are never really complete though our dominant characteristics are entrenched well before we reach adulthood. And by and large our lives are run by an identity whose usual operating age is barely in it's teens if we are lucky (Many of the ills of the individual and of society can be sourced right here). The identity pulls us every which way literally at the whim of a child. Under such conditions progress in any direction will be sporadic at best. If we are to wrest any control then we must learn to be disciplined.

I don't have any answers to offer, discipline is clearly something I still have to master myself. But I can see that it will be more than worth the effort, I can't think of a single area of my life that wouldn't benefit from the application of a little discipline.

Why Do I Write

2008-07-26T04:48:00.005+08:00

I was recently asked why I write and I thought the question was interesting enough that answering it warranted a blog post. There's a few wildly different reasons why I write and any one or combination of them could be the driver for a given piece of writing.

Firstly there's a spaghetti of stuff floating about in my head and sometimes the only way to get any peace is to get it out of my head and scribble it down. It's also a great way for me to straighten out my thoughts and even discover what I really think. 99.9% of what gets written from this space isn't fit for anything but sometimes it's a place to start, and if I'm vigilant idea's and themes have a chance to draw attention to themselves.

Next is a love of words and language. I still remember the first book I ever read at age 5 or 6, it was called "Timmy in the Country" and it was about two boys visiting a farm and the adventures they had. There were pages torn out towards the end of the book and I still wonder what happened in them. Any-way that book literally opened up whole worlds for me and I've been in love with stories and myths and words and language ever since. (I don't know what happened to my copy of that book and I've searched for a replacement but haven't had any luck so far).

I publish some technical stuff here and I write that to be of service to others. I'm very grateful to all the people who've helped me (and probably don't even know it) because they took the time to write about some obscure little technical problem and I try to give back by doing the same. And to be truthful there is a hope that every-thing I write might be useful to someone.

The final reason why I write is because I believe that as human beings a part of our essential nature is to be creative. In some way or another we all long to be and strive to be creative. So I cook and write computer programs and I potter about with music and I write.

Why do you write, or do the thing you do?

Reiki

2008-07-06T19:12:00.002+08:00

"Let me know this brother as myself." -the healers prayer, A Course In Miracles.

My ongoing fascination with the human condition has led me to explore a variety of healing modalities both as practitioner and patient. At its heart a good healing modality is a study of the human condition, they are a bit like religions in that regard and it's not surprising the two are often connected in some way. All of the modalities I've encountered are some combination of energy work and suggestion or programming plus a liberal dose of "grace" to account for whatever hasn't been accounted for yet. I like both Reiki and Hypnotherapy because they get closest to the fundamentals. Also in both cases there have been clinical studies undertaken which show their benneficial effects as a complementary therapy, though not some of the wilder claims you might see made.

I first trained in Reiki in the late 80's when I did Reiki 1 in the "Western" style. I wasn't really impressed by the material presented and left the course regarding the modality in a poor light. Then, more than 10 years later, I had a range of people from completely different circles all suggest I should learn Reiki and after the however many-th person I decided I better listen and set about looking for a teacher. I chose Tracy Wilkinson of Free Spirit who teaches Usui Reiki.

Tracy is a fabulous teacher and a gifted practitioner. I did Reiki 1 and Reiki 2 with Tracy and appreciated her down to earth and practical approach. "We don't heal" she said, "we are not special, any-one can learn to do this, our job is to presence the vibration of wellness, what happens from there is up to them". And by "them" she meant the persons whole self. I worked with enough clients to take my Reiki 1 certification to practitioner level and I started doing the same for Reiki 2 before stepping sideways to study hypnotherapy and then participate in the Team Management Leadership program at Landmark Education. Add a little of life to the mix and I've done very little Reiki in the last couple of years.

A Course In Miracles (hereafter ACIM) comes in three parts. A text, a workbook for students and a manual for teachers. I'm working through the exercises of the workbook at the same time as reading the text. The text is at times laborious but it contains a lot that is gold. Chapter 5 is "Healing and Wholeness" and the approach presented by ACIM is congruent with what I learnt in Reiki. ACIM defines healing beautifully as "Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their one-nes and become glad". The language is different but the message is essentially the same; presence wholeness/wellness here and it can become present there.

All of which got me thinking it was time to do some Reiki again. So our friend Bee came up to baby sit Jasmine and Lisa spent a very pleasant (she says) hour on my table, though I suspect any new mum would acclaim anything that granted her an hours lay down without having to be concerned about the baby :) Reiki could well be all placebo effect and people feeling better for attention and I'm OK with that, the only way it could be a bad thing would be if I were to pretend it was otherwise. And if you are sick go and see a Doctor, there is a reason why these are also known as "complementary" therapies. Sure miracles happen and they also don't happen, get the best care you can from every-where you can.

The results have been less than stunning though, since I gave Lisa Reiki all three of us, Lisa, Jasmine and I have been down with a sniffly coughy lurgy thing. I guess there is a way for me to go yet :)

Bike Jackets

2008-07-03T09:09:00.000+08:00

I've been riding bikes for about two years now and I already own four different jackets. Number one was a deliberate purchase of a "cheapy" it's a DriRider Aspen and you really do get what you pay for. My biggest complaint with this jacket is it's not even slightly waterproof (it claims to be 100% but hasn't been even from new), as soon as it rains with any sort of determination the arms soak through and the seams around the shoulders leak. I probably wouldn't buy another DriRider based on this experience. Jacket number two is a Teknic mesh jacket for summer, I love it, it was a great purchase and worth every penny. Jacket number three I got for $50 with a full service at the Honda Shop, it's another DriRider this time the Racer-X, and it's a pretty good fair weather jacket. Jacket number four was brought on by winter commuting and the desire to stay warm and dry. I asked a number of blokes about how good their jackets were in the wet and only one person was really willing to vouch for his jacket. It's a BMW Tourance 2 and whilst you pay for the BMW tag so far I think it was worth it. It keeps the rain out exactly as advertised, 100% dry even in heavy rain. I did take the lining out though, it was just a little bit too cozy, I guess it's designed more for European cold weather than what passes for winter here in Perth.

First Emergency Ward Visit

2008-07-02T06:12:00.001+08:00

Lisa and I had our first (and hopefully last) occasion to visit the emergency ward as parents on Sunday night. Jasmine has a bit of a cold and she was coughing, sniffling and wheezing a little when she breathed. Nothing to cause concern in a bigger human but in a baby not worth taking any risks with. The diagnosis was bronchiolitis and the Doctor was concerned that she was working a bit hard at breathing but at her age the only thing they can do is put her on oxygen and thankfully she didn't need that. We were discharged with a very helpful flyer on bronchiolitis and instructions to get back to the hospital pronto if her breathing got worse.

It's often in the news that the public hospital system is under pressure and whilst we were out of the waiting room and into the ward after about an hour it then took over two hours to see a Doctor and all up the visit was well over 4 hours. There was no-one (apart from us that is) standing around doing nothing though it was just very, very busy. Nonetheless every-one was very polite and helpful (holding a cute little baby might have helped there).

Jasmine is definitely on the mend and she's been a plucky little soul all through it smiling and taking an interest in everything going on around her at the hospital and very patient with her L-Plate Dad.

Firefox Extensions June 2008

2008-06-29T09:45:00.001+08:00

To help celebrate the release of Firefox 3 and since I haven't done this for a while here are the Firefox extensions I'm currently using.

del.icio.us Bookmarks

DictionarySearch -none of the online ones can match a real dictionary but still very handy.

Duplicate Tab -a must have, why this isn't built in I don't know.

FxIF - view EXIF data in image properties

Google Notebook -I'm not completely sold on the notebook but I keep playing about with it.

NoScript -another must have, browse safe kiddies!

SQLite Manager -if you do anything with SQLite databases this is very cool

text/plain (I switched from Plain Text Links because I didn't like how it behaves now, *I* want to highlight and click thanks)

FireFTP -a decent FTP client in your browser.

(in no particular order)

Jasmine Rose

2008-06-26T21:12:00.001+08:00

Age: 11 weeks. Weight: 6kgs Height: 59cm. She's healthy, happy and an absolute joy to behold (no parental bias here!)

Craziness, Religion and the Human Condition

2008-06-25T20:14:00.001+08:00

One of the reasons I struggle to write about my spirituality is I write for a tough audience, and I don't mean you, I mean the audience I write to in my head. Stan (name changed) is a very old friend who I have not seen or heard from in years. My recollection of him is of someone who is very very intelligent, very rational and judgemental and not afraid to let you know what he thinks. As I write I wonder to myself what would Stan think about this or what would he say about that. And some topics just get to hard to write about because I desperately don't want to let Stan find out that I am crazy.

I know it's nuts. But then again I'm nuts. You are probably nuts. We are pretty much all nuts. Crazy. That is the human condition. We have socially acceptable norms which wax and wane with the times and provided your outward behaviour doesn't deviate too far those norms then you are considered sane. But inside our heads we are nuts. If you don't believe me try spending a few days (hours will do) recording all of the thoughts that cross your mind. Only a crazy person would think some of the things that you and I think every-day.

One of the functions of religious traditions is to give us a way out of, or relief from, the trap of our own minds and to be less trite about it I am talking here about the ego or false self. God (or Gods if you prefer) being outside of the self and greater than the self offer a way out. Different traditions have different approaches and give a different emphasis to this aspect but it is there in at least some vestigial form in all religions.

In a moment of synchronicity while I was drafting this piece I read Philip Carr-Gomm's recent post where he quotes Catholic priest Sean O’Laoire who says that "we have to become serial killers in order to reach enlightenment". And the first death he prescribes is the ego's. Most of the pathologies of religion which I referred to in my last post exist because the false self will use anything and especially the most sacred to further it's own survival and only rarely does any-one take the first step let alone any of the others.

I'm a couple of weeks into A Course In Miracles and whilst this line of thinking isn't new to me the course has certainly made it clearer. The religious language aside the course says (so far at least) that we are crazy and it offers a way out. I've explored other ways in the past, it's been a more than a twenty year pre-occupation. I don't know if A Course In Miracles can deliver on the goods, or maybe if it can I'm too crazy for it to work any-way. But as I said before I think it is the only path worth walking. So Stan, thanks for everything but I am crazy and I'm going to do my best to stop trying to convince you otherwise, this work is too important to me.

On Spirituality

2008-06-16T07:45:00.002+08:00

I've been writing this post in my mind for quite some time but while I've had many thoughts about what I want to say I've had few answers to the questions that then arise. The thing that has triggered my decision to actually write it now is not a sudden insight or rush of answers; if you want a neat conclusion I would warn you to read elsewhere. No, what triggered this post is that I picked up a copy of A Course In Miracles with the intention and commitment to spend a year (or how long it takes) working through the exercises. I also thought it would be a good topic to write about over the year. And if I was going to do that I would have to address, somehow, the topic of spirituality.

I started A Course in Miracles once before (I don't want to think about how long ago) and gave up because it was "too Christian in language". In the time since then I haven't embraced Christianity or any other religion and while I'm not going to try and say what A Course in Miracles is about at this end of the journey I am approaching it within the context of what I call my spirituality.

To give you a bit of a flavour of my inner world, over the last year I read both The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Creation Spirituality by Matthew Fox. I loved both books and didn't find they contradicted each other. Both in their own ways address the pathology of religion with Richard Dawkins distinctly diagnosing the patient and Matthew Fox looking to the cure. I have an engineering background and I do not question science’s eminence in figuring out the ‘what's so’ of what’s out there. Being grounded in the scientific method I also don't have any interest in belief or faith.

But I am aware that I have a spiritual self, a spirituality, and I feel that I have a duty and obligation to myself and the world to nurture this aspect of myself. One only has to follow the news for a while to conclude that there is something missing in our culture, that something is going wrong in how we humans are relating to ourselves, each other and the world. I think what’s missing is what religion in the past has provided (or attempted to provide) and that's why the cure, which Matthew Fox is talking of, is required.

So what do I really mean by having a spiritual self or by spirituality? As I have alluded to it's not something that can ever contradict science (not that I regard science as infallible but that’s another topic) and it's also not something that requires belief or faith. Put simply it is my relationship to myself, to others and ultimately to everything. There is a ‘me’ who I have witnessed occasionally who deeply moves and inspires me. It's the bringing forth of that me which I regard as spirituality. And it is only through the true self that authentic relationship is possible. I accept that it's a path fraught with all the dangers that Richard Dawkins alerts us to and more; the egoic or false self is out to trip us up. But ultimately I think it is the only path worth following.

Which brings me back to A Course In Miracles. It starts very reassuringly with the words "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists." Which says to me, in the words of another of my champions, "Don't Panic!". Douglas Adams also posited in his essay "Is There an Artificial God" that maybe if there wasn't a God we would have had to have made one up. I'm not searching for God or even Gods but I do accept that it's a pitfall of the path that I may encounter one, or even more than one. If that happens I intend to take Mr Adams advice and firstly not panic. We'll see what happens after that.

My Latest Paranoia

2008-06-11T18:18:00.002+08:00

Riding a bike you pretty soon work out that in the absence of recklessness and really bad luck you can expect to be able to out-brake the car in front of you. Initially this was of great comfort to me but sometime in the last week or two it occurred to me that out-braking the tintop in front is only half the problem if the tintop behind is incapable of out-braking me (if they were paying attention to begin with that is). So my latest paranoia is the sound of squealing tyres, behind me! You have to have your wits about you if you want to live long and prosper on a bike.

Actually I have another paranoia which is new as well- that I might accidentally drop, scratch, bruise or otherwise traumatise our baby girl. But they tell me that's pretty normal for a first time Dad.

Rain, Dark, Traffic- choose any two

2008-05-28T21:14:00.000+08:00

Anecdotal evidence suggests that most motorcycle deaths on Western Australian roads happen in the Spring months, late September through to early December. And again from anecdotal evidence most of those are riders whose bike sat all, or most of, the winter out. We have a term for them- fair weather cowboys, because they only ride when the sun is out. I love being on the bike and I've tried to get experience in all road conditions. Experience makes the rider and you never know when you might get caught out. I commute to work most days and I've become pretty comfortable riding in traffic. Cornering in the dark can be hair raising as can judging road surface condition but again I'm comfortable, especially for the route of my commute. Rain still makes me nervous but it doesn't freak me out. I even cope well with combinations of two of the three. But tonights trip home it was dark, raining and the traffic was thick. Which leads me to the title of this post. Choose any two.

Artistic Immunity

2008-05-28T10:12:00.001+08:00

There's a whole lot of hooha going around over Bill Henson's latest exhibition. As far as I can tell the opinions on both sides completely miss the point. Every-one is focussed on either his right to "artistic expression" or "protecting the children". This has nothing to do with art. It's to do with the law. But none of the people speaking about this are asking if the law was broken. If the Police have reasonable grounds to suspect that the law was broken then they must investigate. Every-one else should butt out until the investigation is complete and charges are laid or not laid. No criminal act should be forgiven in the name of "artistic expression". If you break the law then artist or not you should face the consequences. Crime is crime. You can't have "artistic immunity" for committing crime.

Update: Seems like I spoke too soon:

Senator Brandis says artists must act within the boundaries of the law. "No artist has a carte blanche to say, 'Because I'm an artist, I'm entitled to breach the criminal law in relation to matters like child pornography'," he said.

Arts Minister Peter Garrett says artists have a right to confront audiences but must operate within the law.

Support This

2008-05-19T12:24:00.000+08:00

For Bee:
Inspire Journal -a new bi-monthly journal dedicated to bringing a positive focus to life.

For Jaime:
Recreate Incorporated -dedicated to improving the lives of vulnerable young people.

For the Hills:
Save Perth Hills -advocating sensible and sustainable development in the Perth Hills (video).

For the green world (my old and ongoing favourites):
The Wilderness Society
The Australian Conservation Foundation

deTabbed

2008-05-02T13:04:00.000+08:00

Finances
Squanderville versus Thriftville (by Warren Buffet) The Dow Is Crashing, Germans Fear Meltdown of Financial System (and apparently so do the Brits-) Bank bail-outs to be kept secret, The Story of the Mexican Fisherman

Interesting
Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing -it may be all speculation but I found it interesting and thought provoking.

Pirate Box look for "Stories For Parents, Children and Grandchildren" found via the very cool Pirate Coelho Paulo Coelho is way cool, buy his books.

Funny
Whose line is it anyway? -Best Stand, Sit, Bend

Sledge Of The Week
J.K. Rowling, Lexicon and Oz -Orson Scott Card gives J.K. Rowling a damn fine sledging "Rowling has now shown herself to lack a brain, a heart and courage. Clearly, she needs to visit Oz."

First Nappy Change

2008-04-26T08:50:00.001+08:00

So I changed my first nappy yesterday, yes Lisa has been very patient with me this first two weeks. I thought I'd seen some bad user interface decisions in computer software but that's nothing compared to the design ("intelligent design"? huh!) of babies.

I got the dirty nappy off without too much of a bother and whilst there was a bit of crying and complaining (all from Jasmine up to this point) I managed to get her cleaned up nicely as well. It all went down hill from there though. She wee'd on the first new nappy before I could get it done up. Then she pooed on the next one (what sort of process turns breast milk into that foul green muck?). Then she wee'd on another one. All of this was accompanied by furious kicking of the legs making it almost impossible to do anything and a high pitched screaming and wailing which made it impossible to think. Clean nappy number four was successfully applied (these things are worse than a Microsoft service pack) and it was discovered that wee number one or two had soaked the singlet. So I had to remove three or four layers of clothes to change the wet singlet none of which was appreciated by our little angel. By the end of it all I'm not sure who was more distressed, Jasmine or me.

Lisa thought the whole thing was hilarious. But she's been doing this for a couple of weeks now so she's probably just a bit hysterical and not laughing at me at all.

Afterwoods I seriously considered installing Windows on my desktop just for a bit of light relief... nah just kidding still 100% Linux here nothing could be that bad :)

Olympus C-350 Deleting all photos

2008-04-23T09:12:00.001+08:00

I've owned this camera for a while and when I first got it someone told me to be cautious of using the PC to delete photo's because they experienced borking their memory card doing that. Ever since I've been deleting the photo's one at a time after I have transfered them. This morning I finally got jack of doing that (lots of baby photo's on the card!) and dug out the user manual out only to discover it's all in Chinese! I found an online User Manual and the solution is on page 91, it's a little hard to read in the user manual so here it is in my words-

In the playback mode (ie shutter closed and press "quick view"),
press OK (the centre button!),
select "MODE MENU" (right),
select "CARD" (down twice),
select "CARD SETUP' (right twice),
select "ALL ERASE" (up/down will toggle between "ALL ERASE" and "FORMAT"), press OK,
select "YES" (up),
press OK.

That's it you are done.

Two Weeks Old Tomorrow

2008-04-23T08:28:00.001+08:00

Jasmine is two weeks old tomorrow and I thought it high time I post a few more photo's :) She's about four days old in this first shot-

And here we are from yesterday the 22nd.

As I said last time Lisa and I have been very blessed, for the most part you would hardly know Jasmine is here she is a very content baby. Thanks again to all the friends and family who have been here for us (you guys are fabulous!).

Jasmine Rose

2008-04-14T09:42:00.002+08:00

Born 10th April 2008 at 10:10am to very proud parents Lisa and Murray. At birth she was a healthy 3.555 kgs and 49cm's long.

I can now completely understand all the gushy effusive stuff that comes out of the mouths of new parents, if you don't get it you haven't been there. I've never felt so much in such a short time- proud, excited, relieved, concerned, terrified, over-joyed. So far it's all been smooth sailing. She is beautiful and Lisa and I are very blessed.

Our special thanks to Linda (Lisa's Mum) and to Jannie and all the staff at the King Edward Family Birthing Centre, we could not have wished for better care. Thanks also to every-one who has wished us well and supported us (ya all know who you are).

Vantage Point

2008-03-31T13:07:00.000+08:00

Lisa and I got to the movies on Friday night in what was probably our last trip to the cinema as non-parents. So we whooped it up and went gold lounge with drinks, nibbles and Connoisseur ice-creams. I thought from the previews that Vantage Point would be worth the cinema admission price but hadn't expected it to be as good as it was. The basic plot is an assassination attempt on the US President but the movie follows the action through from a number of different perspective each time letting you see a little more of the behind the scenes detail and taking the story a little further. It worked very well. I kept thinking that I was going to have to go back and see it again but the story was told well and if you looked away from the screen to open your chocolate obsession or find your bourbon you didn't lose the plot, the story isn't reliant on piecing together all the little details- although because I didn't know that it kept me paying attention so maybe just forget I mentioned it :) If you don't like on the edge of your seat suspense then pick something else but I give it a double thumbs up, go see it.

Role Playing

2008-03-31T11:49:00.001+08:00

I saw this headline "Marine threw himself onto grenade" and it reminded me of the old days role playing:

DM: You're searching through the enemy compound for bomb making apparatus when someone trips a hand grenade booby trap, what do you do?
Zig: it was the cleric wasn't it? OK jump on the grenade and absorb the explosion with my backpack
DM: wtf? your shitting me.
Zig: it's a small target, with my dex I should land on it with a 12 or higher on a d20
DM: it's a frickin handgranade... you're going to jump on it?
Random Party Member: dude don't do it, we can make our saves
Zig: listen you mamby pamby elf loving vapid wastrel if I don't do this you'll all take damage, some of you will probably even die. I have the hit points and the con and I'm not interested in hanging out in this shit hole doing sentry duty and fighting off fuck knows what while you wine and complain and heal your wimpy arses. Roll initiative if you want to try and stop me.
Random Party Member: he's right you know it should be much easier to make the save for dodging pieces of Zig.
Zig: Elf lover.
DM: (shrugs) OK... roll me a d20
Zig: 20!
DM: yep you land fair and square on the grenade. Now roll a- shit is this a save or a critical? Forget it, it doesn't matter. Just roll a d100 for me, and make it good!
Zig: 42!
DM: (shaking head) OK lets see... your backpack is toast, don't even ask me if it gets a save. And you have a, yep you have a bloody nose. And you should give me chocolate before I change my mind. The rest of you make saving throws to avoid being hit by Zig's backpack on the way back down.

Zig where-ever you are I hope you're still rolling them high.

Dodging traffic

2008-02-22T15:30:00.000+09:00

I commute to work on my motorbike at least a few times a week. Lisa can tell the days when I'm going to ride in because I'm always smiling and eager to head off. Just like when you are driving riding in traffic isn't much fun but on the bike it's made more bearable by lane splitting; the gentle art of slipping down the dashed high-way between the cars ("tintops").

I tend to err on the side of caution- I won't lane split if the traffic is moving beyond around 40-50kms/hr. By and large the traffic is very courteous and a lot of drivers will even move towards the curb when they see you coming- not that it's usually necessary. Sometimes the traffic is so close together that you can't go any further so you just have to stop and wait.

One thing that has fascinated me is that I'll often be able to slip in between huge trucks and 4 wheel drives only to get stuck by some little two door buzz box. I puzzled about this for the longest time but I think I finally worked it out this morning. It's not that people who drive these things are mean and vindictive and out to stop lane splitting, and it's not that they are incompetent. It's just that they are nearly small enough to lane split themselves. So they sit on the dotted line looking down between the traffic saying things to themselves like "I'm small enough to fit down there" or "I wish I could make it down there". Hey guys, wake up, if you want to lane split get a bike!

What Are They Trying To Tell Me

2008-02-20T12:50:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I had occasion to spend time waiting for service in two different banks, Bankwest and ANZ. Both banks provide chairs and TV's to make the wait more comfortable although at ANZ the set was muted. At Bankwest they were showing the Criminal Investigation channel and at ANZ they always show Mr Bean. It made me stop and think if they were trying to tell us (the customers) something; the Criminal Investigation channel is like badly done real life CSI with lots of violence and hype. Mr Bean is well Mr Bean and still manages to be amusing even without sound, but maybe I'm just the perfect ANZ customer and easily amused. How do they choose their programs? Is there a match up between the audience demographics for those programs and who the banks see themselves marketing to?

2 second guide to the Landmark Forum

2008-02-04T10:20:00.001+09:00

I did Landmark Education's Landmark Forum in 2002 and I've been participating in their programs on and off ever since. I've gotten so much out of their programs that I keep on going back- both as a housekeeping process for my own development and for the opportunity to make a difference for others. Here's my 2 second summary of what I got from the Landmark Forum:

Don't believe everything you think (the "it's 90% junk" rule).
Be of service.
Take action now.

I think if every-one embodied all of those things all the time the world would be a much healthier place; I know that my life is richer where I am good at those things and poorer where I am weak.

Wild horses and economists

2008-01-28T07:48:00.000+09:00

In the US they are having economic troubles (presumably unrelated to the billion dollar wars they are currently waging because stopping the killing hasn't been considered as a measure to fix their economy). People in the US can't afford to pay their mortgages and are defaulting on them which is resulting in various lending institutions suffering considerable losses. The response in the US is to slash interest rates in order to stimulate the economy.

Here in Australia our share market has dumped a heap of value because companies here are exposed to losses in the US but otherwise we are told our economy is strong. In fact it is too strong because inflation is rising "driven by petrol prices, banking costs rising rents and domestic holidays" ie the cost of living is going up, making it harder for the average Aussie to pay the bills. In response to that the Reserve Bank will most likely raise interest rates again, making it still harder for the average Aussie- even in our supposedly booming economy eviction rates in NSW were up 67% last year as an example.

I remember a John Clarke and Bryan Dawe skit about Paul Keating where they said "he appears not to manage the economy so much as ride it like a bucking horse". It's still a pretty good analogy but the economy has real world impacts so what is this "bucking horse' that our economics managers are riding? What gets the spurs as they do their best to hang on? We do. Fiscal management seems to be a matter of reacting by squeezing as hard as you possibly can and hoping it's not so hard that people "burst" en masse. And if they do burst then you release the squeezing until they start breathing again then get back to squeezing. The Australian government is looking for the bursting point and the US found it. Yeeha!

Last Post for 2007

2007-12-31T15:21:00.000+09:00

My birthday was a great day, thanks to every-one who sent well wishes and participated, the birthday elves were very kind to me and organised all sorts of dinners and treats. My reading list now includes Robert Kiyosaki's Before You Quit Your Job and Terry Pratchett's Making Money as well as Why We Want You To Be Rich by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki not sure how the finance theme managed to overtake my "pleasure" reading list as well but lets hope it's a good sign for the new year :-)

On Saturday a group of us went up to the Quiet Cone in Parkerville. The quiet cone is a kind of Tipi shaped structure made out of metal and lined with something with acoustic properties. You lay down and relax whilst the "Gong Master" plays several large gongs and some other resonant instruments. The whole process takes around an hour inside the cone. I'm sure people go all metaphysical about it but I found it a very relaxing and uplifting experience. Worth a revisit.

My New Years resolutions are tonights job I suppose and just as well because nothing brand new leaps out for me right now except to continue the work of this year in terms of health and wealth. I've lost a few kilo's and I'm looking and feeling much better but there is still a way to go. Financially I'm still making other people more wealthy than myself and trading off lifestyle (or just literally life, mine!) for it, this coming year is the time to turn that around. This is the year of the baby though and as a first time going-to-be Dad I'm clear that I don't know what to expect, so long as Mum and bub are healthy I'm sure we will muddle our way through the rest.

We are seeing in 2008 quietly, or at least that's the plan right now at 3:35pm! Where-ever you are and what-ever you are doing be safe. I hope that in 2008 you are kind to the earth and all beings and that the year brings you peace, joy and fulfillment.

Birthday Wishes

2007-12-28T09:27:00.001+09:00

Seeing as Linus Torvalds and I have our birthday today I thought I would send out best wishes to every-one and especially to all you mad Capricorns that I love so much: Lisa, Sandra, Penny, Glenn, David, Janet. Whenever yours is I hope you have a beautiful day for your birthday and a great year!

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

2007-12-27T20:59:00.000+09:00

We went and saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets last night. It was the hottest December day on record here in Perth and with the air-con out of order in our lounge the cinema was the next best place to be. Book of Secrets continues the treasure hunting and defence of the Gates family name themes from the original National Treasure in a sort of a Indiana Jones meets the Da Vinci Code way which, fortunately, doesn't take itself too seriously. Nothing high brow here just good clean fun, if you like the genre you won't be disappointed.

Christmas Activity

2007-12-22T22:23:00.000+09:00

A few days off over Christmas and I've completed or made a valiant start on a couple of projects that have been requiring attention for some time. My desktop is now running Fedora 8. (I still keep wanting to say "Fedora Core 8"). Fedora 8 comes with no surprises, so far everything has just worked, but nothing has leapt out as being new and exciting either.

I also transferred a (substantial) chunk of the data from Insubstantial over to here. Insubstantial was supposed to be a website not a blog but most (all?) of what I wrote over there was more journal type stuff than anything else, or maybe living with blogs for so long now has changed how I think about stuff. I've done my best not to change history and leave everything as close to how it was as possible- some editing has been inevitable though, mostly to go from Kwiki formatting to what Blogger uses. Lessons learnt; Kwiki is a fine wiki but made an ordinary blog. Data transfer is important. Wiki's don't necessarily lend themselves to ease of data transfer, formatting shortcuts differ between wiki's and is useless outside of a wiki, I dumped and transferred mostly as html but I would be somewhat cautious about using wiki syntax again.

Sometime in the next few days I will redirect Insubstantial to here and enable custom domain in Blogger settings and the transition will be done.

We had christmas dinner 3 times- christmas eve with Lisa's mum and family, christmas day lunch with Lisa's dad and family and then boxing day lunch with my lot. Favourite dish from the three meals: Lisa's mums nut roast is the only thing that really leaps out. Will have to get the recipe. Lisa made a pretty damn fine bruschetta one night too. I made a bean salad to take to my parents, my own recipe and it is great.

Lisa bought me an 8G thumb drive which she thought was a pretty ordinary gift but which I loved. I bought her some diamond ear studs and the reverse was true :-)

Gift I didn't get that I hope comes for my birthday: Making Money by PTerry :)

What did the jolly fat redman bring for you?

Beowulf

2007-12-22T17:07:00.000+09:00

I finally saw Beowulf the other day. It's an animated(ish), drinking, fighting, carousing, jumpy out and get you kind of a story. Imagine crossing Shrek with Aliens with The Three Muskateers and you would be in the right realm. It's a good fun movie though the Aliens aspects mean it's probably not safe for the kiddies- "intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity " just about covers it; yes you get to see Angelina Jolie with her gear off, or at least a digitally rendered version of her. It's a much brighter production than the 1999 Beowulf though for my money Christopher Lambert was a better Beowulf. If you've got them then pack the kids of to the baby sitter and enjoy.

Desktops and applications

2007-12-19T21:06:00.002+09:00

I tend to be more of a GNOME fanboy than KDE. (This stems from right back when Qt was proprietary). I've tried KDE every year or two and most notably the last time I stuck it out for a good few weeks before going back to GNOME. Over the years I've watched configuration options disappear from GNOME (sorry can't think of a single one of them though) and generally lamented their disappearance at the time and then forgotten I could ever tweak "that" after a few weeks; whilst of course remaining indignant at the design philosophy that took it away from me. But for reasons I can't really express (and it could be just familiarity) I like GNOME. Because of that I also tend to favour the GNOMEish applications (AbiWord and Gnumeric are my word processor and spreadsheet of choice). So when a KDE application stands out as simply better then to me it really stands out. The two KDE applications I turn to first at the moment are K3b for CD/DVD burning and KTorrent for downloading all those BitTorrent goodies, unlike their GNOME (and other) equivalents in both cases they just work and in just the way I expect.

Backing up Veritas configurations

2007-12-19T20:43:00.001+09:00

Over at Symantec they recommend you backup your Veritas configurations for disaster recovery but then say "What is not a good idea is to set up a cron job to back them up often." Well why not? Because you could be backing up a dodgy configuration is their reasoning I suppose. Sounds like we need to keep a few copies if there have been changes then. Perl is my usual weapon of choice but this seemed like a good fit with shell. Use the code at your own risk but it seems to work OK for the environment I'm currently working in...




#!/bin/ksh
#
# backup veritas configurations
#
# as specified at http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/180321.htm
#
# saves the last x differing copies of your veritas config, a config is only saved
# if it is different to what has already been saved
#


DIR="/path/to/someplace/to/store/veritas_configs"
NUM_OF_BACKUPS=5        # we keep the newest this many...

device_to_os_native () {
device="$1"
# use vxdisk -e list as vxdisk path doesn't work for all versions
os_native=`vxdisk -e list | grep "^$device" | awk '{print $NF}'`
echo $os_native
}

if [ ! -f "/etc/vx/volboot" ]; then
[ -t 1 ] && echo "Veritas not running here, exiting"
exit
fi

if [ `/usr/bin/id | grep -c "^uid=0(root)"` -ne 1 ]; then
[ -t 1 ] && echo "$0 can only be run as root"
exit
fi

HOST=`uname -n`
DATE=`date +"%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"`

vxdisk_list="${DIR}/${HOST}_vxdisk_list.${DATE}"
vxdisk_list_detail="${DIR}/${HOST}_vxdisk_list_detail.${DATE}"
prtvtoc_all_disk="${DIR}/${HOST}_prtvtoc_all_disk.${DATE}"
vxdg_detail="${DIR}/${HOST}_vxdg_detail.${DATE}"

>$vxdisk_list
>$vxdisk_list_detail
>$prtvtoc_all_disk
>$vxdg_detail

vxdisk list >>$vxdisk_list
vxdisk -q list | awk '{print $1}' | xargs vxdisk list >>$vxdisk_list_detail

for disk in `vxdisk -q list | awk '{ if ($2 != "simple") print $1 }'` ; do
if [ `echo $disk | grep -c 'c.*t.*d.*s.*'` -ge 1 ]; then
   disk="/dev/rdsk/$disk"
else
   os_native=`device_to_os_native $disk`
   disk="/dev/rdsk/$os_native"
fi
prtvtoc $disk >>$prtvtoc_all_disk
done



for vxdg in `vxdg -q list | awk '{print $1}'`; do
vxprint -g $vxdg -rhmvps  >>$vxdg_detail
done



for file in vxdisk_list vxdisk_list_detail prtvtoc_all_disk vxdg_detail ; do
# get the second last file (last file is the one we just created)
last=`ls -1tr ${DIR}/${HOST}_${file}.* 2>/dev/null | tail -2 | head -1`

eval "current=\${$file}"
# if $last == $current then it's then we have no previous data
# for this host
if [ "$last" != "$current" ]; then

   # if current has the same contents as last then delete current
   # diff exits 0 if the files are the same...
   /usr/bin/diff $current $last >/dev/null 2>&1
   if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
       # files are the same
       [ -t 1 ] && echo "Configuration unchanged removing $current"
       rm -f $current
   fi
fi

# if there are more than 5 copies of file
# delete the oldest copies down to 5

files=`ls -1tr ${DIR}/${HOST}_${file}.* 2>/dev/null`
num_of_files=`echo "$files" | wc -l | sed -e "s/ //g"`
if [ $num_of_files -gt $NUM_OF_BACKUPS ]; then
   num_to_del=$(($num_of_files - $NUM_OF_BACKUPS))
   count=0
   for file in $files ; do
       [ $count -eq $num_to_del ] && break
       [ -t 1 ] && echo "Removing older version of $file"
       rm -f $file
       count=$(($count + 1))
   done

fi
done

How to mount a USB drive with exec on

2007-10-05T17:45:00.001+08:00

Normally when you plug a USB drive in HAL/Gnome mounts it up with the noexec option set. This might be want you want but I have a bunch of scripts that I want to be able to run straight from the thumb drive and I'm also confident that I won't run anything that will break things so I want my thumb drive to mount with exec on. Herewith is the fix.

Open gconf-editor (Applications->System Tools->Configuration Editor) and navigate your way to /system/storage/default_options/vfat/ double click on "mount_options" and add "exec" to the list. Remount the USB drive and you are done.

FWIW I'm in the old style Unix camp on this and would prefer to see the option configured from a flat file somewhere in /etc, the stuff configurable by gconf-editor is baroque enough that GUI-only type users probably shouldn't be touching it any-way and having the option buried in a database somewhere meant that I couldn't find it with find/grep and had to resort to Google. Life is tough at the command line :)

Daylight Savings, A Minor Rant

2007-10-05T14:47:00.001+08:00

We are about to start daylight savings here in WA for the second summer of our three year government forced trial. This in spite of the fact that we have had three previous trials followed by referendums and each time the response has been no. Democracy any-one? But that's an aside and not my biggest objection to daylight savings.

We have very hot summer temperatures here typically being in the high 30's to low 40's (that's degrees Celsius) for months. During the day I'm at the office where it's air conditioned and the outside temperature doesn't effect me, but when I get home after work it's different. As the summer progresses the house takes longer and longer to cool down in the evening which then results in getting to sleep later and later- if you wander around any office in Perth during the hottest periods you can pick plenty of people who are looking warn from the degraded summer sleep cycle. What daylight savings means is that I lose another hour of sleeping time: I don't get to sleep until the house cools down (which doesn't care what time the clock says) and then I have to get up an hour earlier, when it *is* nice and cool for sleeping. So unlike the cooler Northern Hemisphere climes where it originated in this climate daylight savings is completely counter intuitive. The typical rebuff to this argument against is to be told to buy air-conditioning... isn't one of the stated benefits of daylight savings that it saves power by reducing the need for domestic lighting? For those who want it I thoroughly recommend they get up an hour earlier and leave the rest of us to our very sensible sleep.

Stardust

2007-10-03T13:58:00.000+08:00

"Narrator: A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really...”Do the stars gaze back?" Now *that's* a question."- Neil Gaiman

Lisa and I saw Stardust over the weekend. Trips to the movies will be harder to come by once the baby arrives so we are trying to fit a few in whilst we can, next trip out it is likely to be the other Neil Gaiman title, Beowulf. It's a while since I read the novel so I can't compare in minutiae with the book (who goes to the movies expecting a "book experience" any-way?). The casting was great, I especially enjoyed Robert de Niro as Captain Shakespeare, and Neil Gaimans story more than survived the adaptation. It's a genre I enjoy and Stardust is up there with the best, not so quirky as The Princess Bride but more risque than Willow. Overall, a double thumbs up, go see it.

Health Kick

2007-09-26T07:24:00.000+08:00

In January of this year I visited my very good friend Andrew in Singapore and he royally berated me (and justifiably so) for my physical condition. It wasn't news to me that I wasn't in great shape but no one had approached the subject so directly as Andrew and to be honest I had been mostly avoiding it up until then.

Fast forward six months and my diet has improved no end (thanks mostly to Lisa), but exercise is still on the low side and my job has me sitting all day. There's two things to do if you want to lose weight- eat less and exercise more and I've not been doing enough of either. I've also been having some lower back problems. Last week I went to see an osteopath to get my back fixed and they said that they could sort me out in three visits (and they did!) but that if I don't start doing exercise to build the supporting muscles I will just be back every other week. They recommended to me a personal trainer who I saw last night.

Andrew Budge from Trysport started me off on the scales and I discovered that I'm not the "around 10kgs" higher than my optimal weight that I thought I was but a whopping 25kgs. He told me that I'm at a crossroads and that I can do something about my weight now and live long and happily or I can do nothing and in around 10 years take out a mortgage on a cardiologists new Mercedes (don't you just love dealing with people who will tell you how it is straight up?). He further promised that if I did nothing other than lose that weight my lower back problems would disappear. So it's exercise time. The game is to lose 25kgs by March 2008 (yep around the due date!). To start off with I will mostly be walking and then once I have upgraded my broken down mountain bike I will throw in come cycling (commuting to work) and in a couple of months when my current commitments to the Team Management & Leadership Program finish I will get into the gym as well.

Why am I telling the world? Because I want your partnership. Cheer from the sidelines, hold me to account if I slip up or come join me and do something positive for your health and well being.

Coco Lounge - Glen Waverley Victoria

2007-08-29T09:24:00.002+08:00

I was in Melbourne for the weekend as part of my participation in Landmark Educations Team, Management and Leadership Program and I stopped for a couple of extra days to visit with friends and family who live there. Once we had caught up on all the news from East and West the obvious question was "where shall we go for breakfast?". And the answer was the Coco Lounge. It's a licensed cafe/restaurant and to be honest it's nothing particularly special to look at, they saved all the effort for what's most important to any diner, the food. I love to visit Melbourne for the sheer range and diversity of top notch eating places, Perth Restraunters could learn a lot from spending a couple of weeks in Melbourne experiencing the pride and detail that goes into making a meal extra special. Coco Lounge is one of those places you could visit again and again, which in fact we did eating there for three meals in two days; one dinner and two breakfasts. For breakfast both days I had the mushrooms on rye, just delicious. Of an evening they serve cocktails and the dinner menu is scrumptious with plenty of choices even for a vegetarian like me. Add to that prompt friendly service and welcome to a foodies heaven.

Only Truth

2007-08-24T08:22:00.000+08:00

Melbourne poet Peter Bakowski was recently on Poetica. I was lucky enough to spend some time with Peter and his family when he was doing a residency at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre a few years ago and he has become one of my favourite poets. His poetry speaks for itself, he is very readable. Go listen to it or get yourself some google action or even better still track down his books.

The title refers to a line in his poem "Some beliefs of mine", "Only truth can make a poem last longer than a candle".

Unfortunately ABC didn't provide a podcast for this one so no mp3 format, if you want to save it for later you are going to have to jump through some hoops, I'm still working out how from my Linux box here :)

Brekky at The Globe

2007-08-23T15:28:00.002+08:00

Breaking free from the constraints of downtown Subiaco the breakfast crew gathered for a bite of brekky goodness at "The Globe", the restaurant attached to the Parmelia Hilton in Perth. The buffet, like the menu, was comprehensive but daunting- a future outing is being contemplated just to road-test it, the buffet that is, alternate uses for the poster sized menu's were proposed but on this outing we stuck to just ordering from them. The Globe is not the place to head if you are looking for value for money but the food was good and the service good too. Unfortunately the coffee was cold and ordinary.

Following up on a hot lead we went to Ristretto in the Paragon arcade for a second coffee, if you are in the city check out Ristretto, the coffee is indeed good.

Breakfast, it gets in your bones.

First Post

2007-08-21T20:18:00.000+08:00

Every Blog has to have a first post and this is mine. I set out to do this blogging thing once before but being a full time unix head I got sidetracked playing with software on my own web host and as a result spent more time fiddling and twiddling than I did writing. Since I get plenty of time to fiddle and twiddle in my regular job I decided this time to leave it to the proffesionals and concentrate on just writing.

What can you expect me to write about? Just about anything that interests me but I'm sure there will be some recurring themes; technology, politics, poetry, gardening, motor bikes, the human condition and food. Oh and my girlfriend is pregnant with our first child so you can probably expect a few posts on being a new dad.

The title of the Blog is a reference to the Dire Straits song Communique

But in the communique you know he's gonna come clean
Think what he say, say what he mean

I always thought Uncle Mark (he's not really my Uncle but he feels like part of the family) was singing "incommunique" not "in the communique" but since "communique" and "incommunicado" were already taken as Blogger titles Incommunique it is and I'll be, in communication.

Pseudo Vegetarians

2006-11-14T15:21:00.002+08:00

Pseudo vegetarians annoy me. Those people who eat chicken and fish and call themselves vegetarian. When did fish and chicken become vegetables? Why does the colour of the meat make it not meat?

Besides just being very silly they make it hard for a real vegetarian to get a feed. You go into a restaurant and the waiters start pointing at the fish and chicken dishes when you ask about vegetarian food. And when you point out that fish and chicken aren't vegetables they say "Oh so you are a strict vegetarian". No I'm a vegetarian, it's those other dick heads who aren't.

Here's a clue: if you eat anything that had its most recent incarnation as a member of the animal kingdom then you aren't a vegetarian. Pretty simple? And for you confused people out there who need a term for your no red meat diet try this one "speciest carnivore".

Update: there is an official term for this- "pescetarian", though it is pronounced "pestetarian" to describe those that still insist they are vegetarian :-)

Command Line Image Manipulation

2006-11-14T08:35:00.000+08:00

Proportionally resizing of images

djpeg p1010070.jpg | pnmscale -reduce 2 | cjpeg > p1010070s.jpg

Graphics from the command line

rotate image right:
convert -rotate 90 inmput.jpg output.jpg

rotate image left:
convert -rotate -90 inmput.jpg output.jpg

display image info
identify -verbose image.jpg

resize an image:
convert -sample 640x480 P7110022.JPG sunrise.jpg

Books

2006-09-07T08:10:00.000+08:00

I tend to read a lot. I like to think I have eclectic tastes but I probably don't really, one day I will know what connects Peter Pan to Big Ideas from the Computer Age and Abandonment to Divine Providence in the mean time I'll leave you to puzzle on it with me :) For a really good read you can't go past Charles de Lint, I also like, Douglas Adams, Terry Prachett, JRR Tolkein, Patricia McKillip, Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson.

Wishlist

An assortment of books I am interested in. You can laso find them on my Amazon wishlist.

Solstice Wood by Patricia A. McKillip
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
The Artist's Way at Work Riding the Dragon by Mark Bryan, Julia Cameron
The Faery Reel by Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow
Adventures in Unhistory Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends by Avram Davidson
Adventures in the Dream Trade -by Neil Gaiman
Celtic Totem Animals -by John Matthews
King Arthur and the Goddess of the Land -The Divine Feminine in the Mabinogion by Caitlin Matthews
Mabon and the Guardians of Celtic Britain -Hero Myths in the Mabinogion by Caitlin Matthews

Recently Purchased Books

Original Blessing by Matthew Fox
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two by Mary Oliver
Incredible Good Fortune New Poems by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Well of Light From Faery Healing to Earth Healing by R.J. Stewart
The Celtic Way of Seeing Meditations on the Irish Spirit Wheel by Frank MacEowen
The Way of Power Poems by Red Hawk
Wreckage with a Beating Heart by Red Hawk
Ashtanga Yoga: The Practice Manual -by David Swenson
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki
American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) by Richard Erdoes & Alfonso Ortiz
Abandonment to Divine Providence -by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
The Book of Ballads -by Charles Vess
Peter Pan -by J. M. Barrie, illustrated by Charles Vess

Happiness

2006-06-20T19:35:00.000+08:00

The top ten list for improving happiness (found here via here)

1) Don't equate happiness with money. People adapt to income shifts relatively quickly, the long lasting benefits are essentially zero.

2) Exercise regularly. Regular exercise is an effective cure for mild depression and anxiety. It also stimulates more energy, and is good for the mind and body.

3) Have sex (preferably with someone you love). Need I say more?

4) Devote time and effort to close relationships. Confiding and discussing problems and issues is good for happiness, so work on these relationships.

5) Pause for reflection, meditate on the good things in life. Focusing on the good aspects of life helps to prevent hedonic adaptation.

6) Seek work that engages your skills, look to enjoy your job. Doing well at work creates happiness, and the easiest way of doing well at work, is doing a job you enjoy.

7) Give your body the sleep it needs. Too many people have a sleep deficit, resulting in fatigue, gloomy moods and lack of concentration.

8) Don't pursue happiness for its own sake, enjoy the moment. Because people don't understand what makes them happy, pursuing happiness can be self-defeating. Additionally, if people start to aim for happiness they are doing activities for happiness's sake rather than actually enjoying the activity itself.

9) Take control of your life, set yourself achievable goals. People are happiest when they achieve their aims, so set yourself goals which stretch you, but are achievable.

10) Remember to follow rules 1-9. Following these guidelines sounds easy, but actually requires willpower and effort.

To which I would add- spend some time in nature every day.

Writing Resources

2006-03-24T12:54:00.000+08:00

A collection of resources for writers.

Books On Writing

Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg
Writing for Your Life by Deena Metzger
Writing Alone, Writing Together by Judy Reeves
The Artists Way by Julia Cameron
Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language by Don Watson
Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Elements Of Style Strunk & Waite

Online Resources

Where Where do you get your Ideas? Essay by Neil Gaiman
Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for writing

Just For Poets

Rules For the Dance and A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Occam's Razor

2005-09-21T14:28:00.001+08:00

I listened to two colleagues working on a problem for 40 minutes or so yesterday. Normally I wouldn't have payed them any attention but my ears were perked because my fellow system administrator had suggested to them that they get my help as he was off for the day. It took a while but eventually one of them stuck his head around the partition and asked me to take a look at the problem which they characterised as "this user/script is not reading the environment settings".

Once I had established the nature of the problem, they were running a script on two different hosts which worked on one and failed on the other, my first question was "are the scripts identical?". They were absolutely certain the scripts were identical and quickly went back to the discussion about reading the environment settings. I asked again a couple of times in different ways with no success so I inserted myself on the keyboard and typed "more script_name" and then alt+tabbed to the other host and
typed the same thing. Alt+tabbing between the two showed right up the top of the script one had java /some/stuff and the other had ${some_var}/java /some/stuff

Sherlock Holmes said "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Which is good advice but you have to take the time and do the work to eliminate all the other possibilities first. I prefer Occam's Razor
myself, "The simplest explanation is the best."

Star Kits

2005-09-14T09:03:00.000+08:00

I've recently become obsessed by starkit and starkit applications. Let me tell you why. I have a linux desktop at work. I have a windows laptop for work use. I sometimes sit at other peoples windows boxes. Where-ever I happen to be sitting there are some things I want access to. Starkits let me do that. The datafile is the same, the application code is the same, I just need one starkit (one file) per architecture. And it just works. I use gorilla for passwords and wikit (a wiki in a file) for general notes. It's very cool.

The only problem is that some applications I want don't exist yet as starkits. I want a general purpose address book which can import and export data to my nokia phone and to evolution email and possibly in the future to Thunderbird. I want a notetaker database the same as I had on my hp200lx, in fact I want to import all that old hp200lx data into it. So I could go off and refine my tcl and learn the starkit and database API's and write my little applications and at the end of the day all the pleasure would be stolen from me because I don't like programming in TCL. I like programming in Perl.

Why can't I do this in Perl? There is no equivalent of a starkit for Perl. A starkit is one executable here that contains everything you need to run your GUI application and database.

I recently came across SQLite.pm which covers the database side of it. But it still requires a complete perl install, a complete install of some GUI and then installing SQLite and then my app code.

I have to admit that I do have a bias against the Perl Tk library. Not because there is anything wrong with it in and of itself. Its just that under Linux the resulting applications look pretty ordinary and 1980's. I keep waiting for another GUI toolkit for Perl to develop a userbase so I could go with it, preferably one that is so popular it becomes ubiquitously installed where-ever Perl is, part of the core even. So far it hasn't happened. GTK seemed like it might be a contender for a while but I am still waiting.

I don't want to have to install anything. Not just out of laziness either. It might not be my machine. The tclkit for windows is about 930k. The application kits are about 200k each. Nicely sized for my thumb drive.

I can already here people wondering if I want write once run everywhere why don't I write in Java (or language x), and it's mostly because I like Perl. And Perl already runs OK everywhere I want to work. It just needs to be made easier.

Take Back The Web

2005-09-10T12:38:00.000+08:00

I have been an iiNet customer since 1994. They send out a regular newsletter, which this month has a theme of security. Here is a letter I sent to iiNet explaining why I was dissapointed with their security recommendations.

Hello,
I read through your newsletter eager to see what security recommendations you made. No mention of Linux (nearly 10 years on my desktop and not one virus!), OK I can guess at why you might not have mentioned Linux. But I was shocked you didn't mention Firefox. The standalone Mozilla web browser. The one that blocks the spyware which arrives on users computers through Internet Explorer. The web browser which won all these awards.

You didn't make the one recommendation which would have made a real difference for users. Get Firefox now!

Take back the web. Pass it on to your clients, they will thank-you for it.

Update: I got a nice email from iiNet support saying that the newsletter was written by marketing and that iiNet do indeed recomend Firefox to their users- mostly in response to queries on how to block pop-ups. Any-way I wasn't the only one to write in about Firefox and they are going to address it in the next newsletter.

Update 2: The September newletter quotes me :) The writer/editor omits that the Mozilla based browsers are more secure by design and because they are not implemented as part of the OS and instead say that they are more secure because they are "often overlooked by virus and spyware creators" bleh!

VNC Server patch

2005-09-10T04:36:00.001+08:00

A quick and dirty patch I wrote for the vncserver because it wasn't telling me why it was failing.


$ diff -c vncserver /usr/local/bin/vncserver
*** vncserver   Tue Jul  5 14:41:27 2005
--- /usr/local/bin/vncserver    Tue Jul  5 14:39:15 2005
***************
*** 264,271 ****
     socket(S, $AF_INET, $SOCK_STREAM, 0) || die "$prog: socket failed: $!\n";
     eval 'setsockopt(S, &SOL_SOCKET, &SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1))';
     if (!bind(S, pack('S n x12', $AF_INET, 6000 + $n))) {
-                       my $port = 6000 + $n;
-                       warn "Could not setsockopt on port $port\n";
       close(S);
       return 0;
     }
--- 264,269 ----
***************
*** 274,281 ****
     socket(S, $AF_INET, $SOCK_STREAM, 0) || die "$prog: socket failed: $!\n";
     eval 'setsockopt(S, &SOL_SOCKET, &SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1))';
     if (!bind(S, pack('S n x12', $AF_INET, 5900 + $n))) {
-                       my $port = 5900 + $n;
-                       warn "Could not setsockopt on port  $port\n";
       close(S);
       return 0;
     }
--- 272,277 ----

Values Statement

2005-09-08T06:33:00.001+08:00

These are the values I am committed to in my life and for the world.

Peace Relating from the soul. Harmony and empowerment.

Family Love at the source. Family as the hearth stone. Youth as the future. Return of the elders.

Environment Everything is entitled to its place. Sustainable development and preservation of the wild places. Partnership with the land.

Spirit Acknowledging and honouring the spirit in all things. Life as a spiritual journey. The expression of spirit through creativity.

Service Joy, laughter and play. Life as service, work as service. Seeking my contribution.

Fedora Core 4

2005-09-03T07:30:00.001+08:00

My desktop got an Linux upgrade last night. I installed a shiny new (as shiny as beige gets any-way) dual layer DVD burner and then popped in a Fedora Core 4 DVD from Everything Linux. The install went without a hitch and I was up and running in fairly short order. I followed these instructions to get sound and video stuff working. Fedora Core 4 was able to recognise my motherboards on board sound card which is great because FC3 didn't. DVD playback through Xine even works.

The only thing I haven't tested is CD/DVD burning- I didn't have any blank media last night. FC2 burnt CD's fine but it stopped working in FC3 so I am hoping it is working again in FC4.

Update: CD burning works fine. I generally prefer Gnome to KDE but when it comes to creating CD's K3b rocks! I tried using Nautilus first since Fedora helpfully auto-ran it when I popped in the blank CD, it seemed straight forward but hitting the burn button did nothing and didn't give me any errors. I then started up X-CD-Roast but gave up fairly quickly in the face of the completely non intuitive interface (I shouldn't have to look at a manual for this stuff). With K3b I had a backup of my home directory burning away within a few seconds. That's how an application should work.