Feyman

Hofmann's Potion

"As a matter of fact, I think intention is the bottom line in life anyway, for all of us, at any time."

It's July.

Hack a lil game or two

Hydra Console Game Dev. Kit - Cool!

Xerox/Apple/Microsoft and stealing TVs

A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox is a fun (and quick) read.

Using the Mac's built-in camera to auto scroll text I'm reading on the screen? Impossible! :D

Cocoa

I've been reading up on building Cocoa apps for OS X lately. I have a great idea which involves writing a free version of something like Spanning Sync. It's a great app, but I'll be buggered if I'm going to pay a yearly fee to use it! My app might not be as groovy, or as feature rich, but it'll work, and at the very least I'll use it. Also, I won't charge other people to use it, in fact it'll be open source so everyone can laugh at how badly it's written, or help me fix it.

Anyway, back to Cocoa - what a great application framework! I'm loving the interface builder, and connecting interface components to underlying code (and vice versa) using actions and outlets seems so natural and powerful. Considering how long this has been around (NeXT interface builder) this really must have been way ahead of it's time. Objective-C syntax seems quite clunky, but the fact that I'm not used to it probably has quite a bit to do with that. I have a lot more to learn about it's capabilities before I can make any kind of educated comment on that :) So far so good I say!

I'd recommend that anyone even vaguely interested in developing for OS X or just learning about OS X's application architecture check out the great developer resources available on the Apple Developer Connection website. It's really a very neat development environment. Very nice.

Useful/interesting links:

• Cocoa Application Tutorial
• Getting Started with Cocoa
• The NeXTonian

Web application idea

A framework to host screencasts of programmers at work, discussing their code and throught process as they go. How best to do that. But surely a great way to share information and knowledge, particularly about the act and process of creation.

Hope

It seems to me that hope is of central importance because it creates a "reality potential difference".

Dangerous ideas

Zen habits?

How can someone so "Zen" have so many habits?

Lift whoosh

Lift is comparatively efficient. Hard to believe how much it wees all over RoR.

simple is best

If you were going to write a web server I think it'd pay to check out simple.

Forget that they run their site using PHP on top of Apache 1.3 :)

Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) PHP/4.3.10
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.10

I reckon it's a pretty impressive treament of the "web server" though. Someone needs to write a web server in Scala. (I'm sure it's been done?)

Click, ding!

I wasn't aware of this - Google Search Box Earns Millions for Mozilla. Gruber makes a good point that this is presumably why Safari on Windows is a good financial decision for Apple as well.

There's no SDK that you need...

I agree with these guys about the announcement of "There's no SDK that you need!" for the iPhone at the WWDC 2007 keynote.

In hindsight the iPhone announcements seemed to go like:

And now, for the news you've all been waiting for...

The sound of restlessness developers...

iPhone news...

The sound of excited nervous energy...

We don't have an SDK for you!

A collective WTF?!

No no, you don't need one! You have Safari and web technologies!

I can't help feeling that sounds like a let down. It's so bad it's funny. Hey developers, thanks for coming. Go learn WebKit. Brilliant.

For the people who don't get why some developers are having a problem with this announcement, I think this comment snippet sums it up nicely:

For those that don't get what the contradiction is:

Steve Job talks about the Map application on the iPhone, and quotes: "And you can’t do that stuff in a browser."

Steve Job then announces at WWDC: "You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone."

If you still don't get it, then you don't need to.

Repeat after me: "You don't need an SDK"... "You don't need an SDK"...

Ermm, excuse me Steve, where's Firefox?

I finally watched the WWDC 2007 keynote (though not via that link) - I ended up having to download it via BitTorrent. I still can't connect to watch that stream. Anyway, I too noticed what surely must have been a discrepancy on the part of Steve Jobs while he was presenting the Safari on Windows story.

I'm sure it's obvious to most people that this world view of Safari/IE isn't going to happen and I'm not sure that's what Apple was trying to show anyway. If we give them the benefit of the doubt here though, the least they've been is careless. I think it's fairly self evident that there will always be free software and choice, or if not free software then at least open source :) If I don't like the way someone does something I will go and do a better job. That's why I did a Computer Science degree. That's why I learn everything I can get my hands on about technology, and particularly the craft of creating good software. It's a little hard to believe Apple could be so naive as to exclude the current cream of the crop (FireFox) from the picture.

Apple knows the art of presenting information, they do it better than most. I just find the potential conclusions begging to be drawn here a little disturbing^*.

^*Though perhaps not very surprising.

Simple fractals in 5 minutes!

Nodebox is pretty cool. You can make very simple fractals in 5 minutes! :)



And now for some interesting fractals. Check out the google video here. Very nicely!

Xerox and Ethernet

Interesting snippet on Xerox and the history of Ethernet over at byteCoder - Xerox 1974: “[Ethernet] would be a failure”.

WiTricity

WiTricity. Read about it a while ago - but thought it was blog worthy. I can't wait for this to hit. I wonder how efficient it is though?

I greatly dislike reality at times.

Music bits

Golan Levin: The truly soft side of software

What a fucking _name_. Pretty interesting music demo though!

Google tick-tock

Google quotes from Inside the Google machine

We're able to make money largely through advertising, and one of the benefits that I didn't expect from that was that we're able to serve everyone in the world without worrying about places that don't have that much money.

We have a tremendous ability and responsiblity to provide people with the right information, and we view ourselves like a magazine or newspaper that we should provide very objective information, and so in our search results we never accept payment for our search results we accept payment for advertising and we market it as such."

"magazine".. "newspaper".. "responsbility". Ok. I knew these guys were on to something.

E.T. go home

Why bother sending off a probe into space to communicate with other intelligent life? Why not leave a message on earth to communicate with ourselves in a couple of billion years. We'll be equally as strange and "otherwordly" as anything else "out there".

So much TED goodness

Sir Martin Rees: Earth in its final century?
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

James Watson on the double helix

Another TED talk, James Watson: The double helix and today. Very funny man. Absolutely brilliant talk. One of "those" learning experiences.

Pond universe

Why _not_ use the analogy of blustering wind whipping ripples in the surface of a pond to understand cosmic microwave background radiation? Surely the fish aren't theorising about the wind, but rather the ripples.

Who's to say the pond wouldn't be rippling without the wind anyway?

"Everyone should just try and make Rails faster"

Umm.. no.

lift/scala for web apps

A Real-World Use of Lift, a Scala Web Application Framework

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

The full transcript is a good read.

beauty

Guess who bought a beautiful new shiny little black macbook? :)

Steve "Boom" Jobs

Quite a funny compilation of "Booms".

Al Gore loves screen

Image courtesy of TIME magazine

Electronic warfare running linux

Bionic linux warriors.

Imagine spoofing friendlies, launching DOS attacks on networked infrastructure, and infecting backpacks. Linux does seem like a natural fit though. It's amazing the different technology ecosystems Linux finds itself growing in.

You'd want a system like this to be modular though. You definitely wouldn't want or need every killer in your army to be wearing one or at least the full rig. If I had to run around a paddock dodging bullets I'm not sure I'd want all this information being thrown at me.

Makes me think back to various hybrid strategy-first person shooter games I used to play. I wonder how much of the advancement in communication and user interface there feeds back into real world decisions about this kind of gear?

What's the security like in these new "global battlefields"?

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Warrior

Apple bapple

I've been thinking the same kinds of things about Apple for a while.

Linus on git

git homepage

Enlightenment Foundation Libraries and Rage 0.2.0

For those of you who don't know, Enlightenment is a window manager for linux.

Ever since I watched Raster's presentation at linux.conf.au 2007 earlier this year I've been thinking about the enlightenment libraries, and particularly how they'd be suited to building a media center type application for linux. During his presentation, Raster had a lot of good things to say about performance and efficiency. For a programmer, that is pretty inspiring stuff to hear :)

So today I jumped into #e on chat.freenode.net and asked around about just this question. Raster was in there and quickly let me know about Rage, something he whipped together pretty quickly and had posted about a few months ago on his website (video here). I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to get my hands dirty and learn a bit about the libraries.

To this end I've documented the process I went through to get the relevant libraries (and Rage of course) installed on my linux box. FYI - I have just upgraded to Feisty (last couple of weeks) and had no enlightenment libraries previously installed (in fact I haven't mucked around with enlightenment for probably close on 8 years). You'll see in the documented steps below that there were quite a few dependencies not met. I've deliberately left all these steps in there. If someone else has similar dependency problems, then By the Power of Google, this info might help :)

So without further ado, here are the steps I went through to get Rage built and working on Feisty. Forgive the verbosity, and enjoy! :)

0) Get rage from the enlightenment cvs with:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e login
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co misc

Find the rage source at misc/rage

1) Try running ./autogen.sh for rage

Running aclocal...
./autogen.sh: 8: aclocal: not found

2) 'automake' seems not to be installed so install it via Adept

3) Try to run ./autogen.sh again

Running aclocal...
configure.in:13: warning: macro `AM_ENABLE_SHARED' not found in library
configure.in:14: warning: macro `AM_PROG_LIBTOOL' not found in library

4) Looks like 'libtools' is not installed either, so install that via Adept too

5) Try running ./autogen.sh again

checking for EET... configure: error: Package requirements (eet) were not met:

No package 'eet' found

6) EET is an enlightenment foundation library (there's going to be a few of these dependencies), so get it from the enlightenment cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/eet

7) run ./autogen.sh from the eet directory

configure: error: "Cannot find zlib.h. Make sure your CFLAGS environment variable contains include
lines for the location of this file"

8) install 'zlib1g-dev' using Adept

9) run ./autogen.sh again

configure: error: "Cannot find jpeglib.h. Make sure your CFLAGS environment variable contains include
lines for the location of this file"

10) install 'libjpeg62-dev using Adept

11) run 'make'

12) run 'sudo make install'

13) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EVAS... configure: error: Package requirements (evas) were not met:

14) get evas from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/eet

15) run autogen.sh

checking for FREETYPE... configure: error: Package requirements (freetype2 >= 9.3.0) were not met:

16) install 'libfreetype6-dev' using Adept

17) run ./autogen.sh again

18) run 'make'

19) run 'sudo make install'

20) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EDJE... configure: error: Package requirements (edje) were not met:

No package 'edje' found

21) get edje from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/edje

22) run ./autogen.sh for edje

No package 'ecore-evas' found
No package 'ecore-job' found
No package 'embryo' found

23) get both the ecore and embryo libraries from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/ecore
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/embryo

24) run ./autogen.sh for ecore

25) run 'make' for ecore

26) run 'sudo make install' for ecore

27) run ./autogen.sh for embryo

28) run 'make' for embryo

29) run 'sudo make install' for embryo

30) try running ./autogen.sh for edje again

31) run 'make' for edje

32) run 'sudo make install' for edje

33) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EMOTION... configure: error: Package requirements (emotion) were not met:

34) get emotion from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/emotion

35) run ./autogen.sh for emotion

checking for XINE... configure: error: Package requirements (libxine >= 1.1.1) were not met:

36) install 'libxine-dev' using Adept

37) run ./autogen.sh for emotion again

38) run 'make' for emotion

edje_cc: Error. unable to load image for image "tiles.png" part entry to ../data/theme.edj. Missing PNG or JPEG loader modules for
Evas or file does not exist, or is not readable.
make[2]: *** [theme.edj] Error 255
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/adrian/development/e/e17/libs/emotion/data'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/adrian/development/e/e17/libs/emotion'
make: *** [all] Error 2

39) install 'libpng12-dev' using Adept

40) rebuild evas (./autogen.sh, make, sudo make install)

N.B. this builds png image loader support into evas which is what make was trying to use above

41) run ./autogen.sh, make and 'sudo make install' for emotion

42) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

43) run make for rage

In file included from main.h:1,
from main.c:1:
e.h:38:21: error: Ecore_X.h: No such file or directory
make[3]: *** [main.o] Error 1

45) Looks like Ecore_X.h wasn't installed. I discovered that this was an optional component that wasn't installed when I was building ecore, so after looking through ./configure in the ecore directory I discovered that I could probably fix it with:

run './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' for ecore

failed - dependency not met

46) To fix this problem I had to install 'libxcb-xlib0-dev'. So do that using Adept

47) try './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' for ecore again

dependency checking seemed to pass this time

48) run 'make' for ecore

lots of errors! (these were related to X development libraries)

49) install xorg-dev using Adept

50) run './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' and then 'make' for ecore

In file included from ecore_evas.c:4:
ecore_evas_private.h:37:40: error: Evas_Engine_Software_X11.h: No such file or directory
make[4]: *** [ecore_evas.lo] Error 1

51) Ok, so maybe when I installed evas the X11 software engine option wasn't installed, so rebuild and reinstall evas by running './autogen.sh' and 'make' and 'sudo make install' again

52) try running './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' and 'make' for ecore again

53) run 'sudo make install' for ecore

54) run './autogen.sh' for rage again

55) run 'make' for rage again

56) run 'sudo make install' for rage

The README for rage tells you how to get rage to scan your disk for media (that's currently the default way of importing or seeing your videos etc). It's fairly straightfoward.

After that just run ./rage and you'll have a working media centre based on the Enlightenment libraries :D

P.S. I was pretty impressed that it could play my phone videos, xvid anime, certain tv shows etc. Rage didn't hiccup once on any of the media I threw at it. Awesome! :D

Linux polish

Why doesn't linux look as sexy as Mac OS X? What is stopping it from achieving a far superior look and feel on the desktop? Is it X? Is it crappy fonts? Who's working on fixing this?

What we still don't know

Nothing really new here - but still thought provoking and inspiring.

What we still don't know 1
What we still don't know 2<sup>1

1</sup>Look for the person cycling backwards in the second film.

Patent idea #1

I want to be able hum at my computer and have it return the song in my music collection which most closely matches.

Chris calls it "Hum Search". I think it's not a bad name.

The Unix Legacy

Just read The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy by Rob Pike. Great read.

The Hunt

Blink blink.

Dewy grass clutches hidden easter egg
and half chewed puree apple.
The bold red of the Shiraz is disembodied
against this overcast sky.

Gum boot kids feign sprinter postures
and we shout..
"Ready...
Setty...
Goooooo!"
Tiny water drops alight fly-away
blonde hair as they race down hill.
"Comeon girls, beat the boooys!"

So they scurry in their little bodies,
plodding short stepped curves,
legs moving fast to keep upright,
bumping into each other in their excitement.
Nappy bottoms crouch and small hands grab at grass.
Whole tufts are brought up with pink and blue,
green and glittering gold.

She returns first, panting and proudly
showing us her tiny, shivering outstretched fingers.
Her colourful foil prizes!
Her pale blue eyes.

Our laughter rattles the window panes.
The fog swirls in the valley below us.
You smile.

Blink blink.

Flash advertising with sound on smh.com.au?!

My God!

This is so annoying. smh.com.au has started using a flash ad which plays an intrusive "glass breaking" sound.

The shockwave file is played in a loop, so you could be busy trying to concentrate on a Java implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm listening to some soothing music by Nick Drake, with a smh page open in a Firefox tab somewhere and you'd be constantly bombarded by a low quality sound byte of shattering glass. What the hell? Are these guys serious?

My God - it drives me mad. Who decided it would be a great idea to draw people's attention to some advertising by placing sound in a flash ad? Who do they think they are - a GeoCities site circa 1997?

This is the offending flash file in question. Thank god for ad blocking Firefox extensions.

Dearth of Music?

No! That's no typo!

Interesting critique of RIAA strong-arming from an ex record store owner.

the sound of curl

imagine the curl of a flower
and the way its brief shadow strikes
at its feet.

60 minutes of Earth

Why not televise Earth Hour?

Welcome to a new blind sense of community. I won't know if everyone is participating will I? I can travel into the city and watch the lights go out, but I'm hardly going to do that.

Linux Boy

I like this ad. I also find it interesting that IBM paints a picture where Linux is learning from "The Big Players". I particularly like that the opposite is more than likely closer to the truth. Still - cool concept and clean execution.

Google themes

are pretty purty/nice :)



Update: and the themes change with time of day (and apparently weather). It's a very nice little touch. The pic above was taken while it was late afternoon/dusk here. Now it's night and here's what my google page looks like now.



Another update: Oh, and another pic :) I'm so easily amused I guess. Check out the little fox who's decided to start star gazing. Lol.

Bush Leaguer - Pearl Jam

How does he do it? How do they do it? Uncanny and immutable.
This is such a happening tailpipe of a party.
Like sugar, the guests are so refined, (look like melting mice)

A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?
He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer
Swinging for the fence, got lucky with a strike
Drilling for fear, makes the job simple
Born on third, thinks he got a triple

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

A think tank of aloof multiplication
A nicotine wish and a columbus decanter
Retrenchment and hoggishness
The aristocrat choir sings
"What's the ruckus?"
The haves have not a clue
The immenseness of suffering
And the odd negotiation, a rarity
With onionskin plausibility of life,
And a keyboard reaffirmation

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel

Have a gander at Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel. Good read.

Feynman point

Subtyping Java Generics: A lion cage is not an animal cage!

from Generics > Subtyping.

If on the one hand you maintain that English is ambiguous;

But what about an "animal cage"? English is ambiguous, so to be precise let's assume we're talking about an "all-animal cage"...

and then follow up with a justification which for all intents and purposes seems to be based on that ambiguousness;

Since a lion is a kind of animal (Lion is a subtype of Animal), the question then becomes, "Is a lion cage a kind of animal cage? Is Cage<Lion> a subtype of Cage<Animal>?". By the above definition of animal cage, the answer must be "no". This is surprising! But it makes perfect sense when you think about it: A lion cage cannot be assumed to keep in butterflies, and a butterfly cage cannot be assumed to hold in lions. Therefore, neither cage can be considered an "all-animal" cage:

I think you have a problem.

I guess that's the price you pay for trying to fit a less expressive language (Java) into something as "ambiguous" as English? Either way, to deduce that it's perfectly natural to conclude that a lion cage isn't the same as an animal cage in such a fashion seems a bit far fetched.

How about admitting that type inheritance doesn't work here? A lion cage certainly *is* a type of animal cage goddamnit. I can see that mixing types like this could break polymorphism - I take the point that a butterfly cage wouldn't be suitable to hold lions, and vice versa. However it seems like an awful kludge to expect people to understand polymorphism in terms of single classes in one way, and then tell them that generics "improves" on this to prevent lion cages from trying to hold butterflies. Mother of Mary!

Update:

Haha! Hillarious. Let's invent another concept and call it bounded wildcards to fix this problem. This seems like a hack though doesn't it? My god:

While Cage<Lion> and Cage<Butterfly> are not subtypes of Cage<Animal>, they are in fact subtypes of Cage<? extends Animal>

I'm sure this has to do with covariance, but I don't understand this, and I'm pretty sure Larry Wall would cry into his moustache while agreeing with me (though he might like the punctuation character syntax :)).


Other Java Generics links:

Java theory and practice: Generics gotchas
The Java Tutorials - Lesson: Generics
Generics in the Java Programming Language

A conservative encyclopedia you can trust?!

Welcome to Conservapedia, a conservative encyclopedia you can trust.

Conservapedia has over 3,800 educational, clean and concise entries on historical...

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses...

Finally a site where there is no censorship or bias, just good honest "cleansed", "conservative" content. I guess the need to use the labels conservative and/or "clean" isn't supposed to raise alarm bells that perhaps we're getting one particular (most likely warped) view of the world on this site.

What a ridiculous concept.

The Fall of Rome - W. H. Auden

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.


Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.


Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.


Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.


Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.


Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.


Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

What type of programmer are you?

Take the Programmer Personality Test.

I'm a PLTB apparently :)

What the hell does this mean? Who knows, but this is what the site reckons.

You're a Planner.
You may be slow, but you'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.


You like coding at a Low level.
You're from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an intimate relationship with the computer. You don't mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.


You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.


You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible.

Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye

Metamorphosis - Kafka

'Stay where you are, I don't need you! You think you have enough strength to come here, and are merely staying back because that's what you have chosen to do. You are mistaken! I am still by far the stronger of us. Alone, I might have had to give best to you, but your mother left me all her strength. I have made a wonderful pact with your friend, and I have all your customers right here in my pocket!

'So he's even got pockets in his shirt!'* Georg said under his breath, and thought the remark would make his father impossible in the world. The thought came and went, as everything did, because he was continually forgetting everything.

'Just you try slipping your arm in your fiancee's and coming to meet me! I'll swat her away from you, you have no idea!

Georg pulled a face, as though of disbelief. His father merely nodded towards George's corner, in confirmation of what he had said.

'How you amused me today when you came along and asked me whether you should tell your friend about the engagement. He knows everything, you silly boy, everything! I wrote to him, because you forgot to deprive me of my writing implements. That's why he hasn't come for years, he knows everything a hundred times better than you. In his left hand he crumples up your letters unopened, while in his right he holds mine in front of him to read!'

In his enthusiasm, he swung his arm over his head. 'He knows everything a thousand times better!' he shouted.

"Ten thousand times!' said Georg, to mock his father, but even as he spoke them the words sounded deadly earnest.

'For years I've been waiting for you to approach me with your question. Do you think anything else had the least interest for me? Do you imagine I read the newspapers? Here!' and he tossed Georg a page from the newspaper, which had somehow been carried into bed with him. An old newspaper, with a name that didn't sound at all familiar to Georg.

'How long you dilly-dallied before reaching maturity! Your mother was unable to witness the joyful day, she had to die first, your friend is going under in Russia; three years ago he was so yellow he was obviously not long for the world, and as for me, you see what condition I'm in. It seems you have enough vision to see that!

'So you were lying in wait for me! shouted Georg.

Pityingly, his father remarked: 'I expect you meant to say that earlier. It doesn't fit in here.'

And then, louder: 'So now you know what else there was besides yourself; up till now all you knew was you! You were an innocent child, really, but it would be truer to say you were a veritable fiend! - And now hear: I sentence you to death by drowning!

Georg felt himself expelled from he room, the crash with which his father came down on the bed ringing in his ears as he sprinted away. On the stairs, which he took like a smooth incline, he collided with the charwoman, who was just on her way upstairs to give the flat its morning clean. 'Oh my God!' she exclaimed, and buried her face in her apron but was already gone. he sprang through the gate, crossed the road, and raced towards the river. Already he was gripping at the rails, like a hungry man his food. He swung himself over them, like the excellent gymnast he had been in his early years, to the pride of his parents. His grip was beginning to weaken, when through the rails he spied a motor omnibus that would easily cover the sound of his fall, softly he called out, 'Dear parents, I have always loved you,' and let himself drop.

At that moment, a quite unending flow of traffic streamed over the bridge.'

^{* Kafka's variation on the German proverb that says the last shirt - the shroud - has no pockets in it.}

Calculus of existence? :)

I thought therefore I was. I think therefore I am. What happened in between?

The Bad Writing Contest

Have a luke at The Bad Writing Contest. Now try and read this:

Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self). This is the real exteriority of the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision of the shining of the light breaking the dark is the other-identity of the light. The precision of the absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in “self-alienation,” not “self-identity, itself in self-alienation” “released” in and by “otherness,” and “actual other,” “itself,” not the abysmal inversion of the light, the reality of the darkness equivocally, absolute identity equivocally predicated of the self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of identity which is the identification person-self).

This isn't for Scott.

Rain lust

Not even a first draft.

The girls you fuck after walking dark dripping streets of rain are just mothers. They mope about, painting faces, placing make-up, worrying about paunches and stockings that smell like piss.

You want something that doesn't exist. Your disease. Wake up man! Stop trudging around "The Rocks" assaying crevices and divining rocks for impressions of sexual lust. It's stupidity.

Better to sit to warm bread and tales of Ulysses in warm comfort. Or Gaelic passion fiddled for tourists, and a kiss on cheek. Reciprocal, meaningless kisses. Chalk studied bodies poised like waxen gelatin. They simulate the perfect cadaver, model the correct density for brachytherapy studies. A slight gelatinous cheese cloth density - a skin, a cheek. A touch of friendship.

So it was we wandered, as I had hunted years before, homeless, forlorn and lost in indiscriminate passion. Or lust. But this time with friends.

And a cure, curled in brick wall cavities, molded for reasons other than drunken proclivities - meaningless actions caught on film. Digital print flaunting youth and extravagant meaninglessness. Pose. Flash. Harsh light and smiles stumble ahead. So lost - so climb illegal fences like immigrants. Boat people slapping car mirrors. Shame to not be understood. But then I'm a hypocrite. Oh to be as staid as they think I am...

A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

So, I bought this book today¹.

¹ I lost my book of Feynman down the toilet this afternoon at work, and this is what I end up with.

Ulysses - James Joyce

Finally got around to starting this again. My god, what a book! I'm utterly gobsmacked.

Links

http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/

Quote II

"A belief system that preaches innate imperfection and guilt has to have as it's centrum a gospel of self-hate."

Quote I

"Removing poverty and inequality isn't going to work. That would remove one of the main institutions of fear, which in turn would remove one of our main fulcrums of control."

Right to die?

Excuse the equivocal nature of the title of this post.

This morning the papers are awash with a story concerning the euthanasia of Dr John Elliot in a Swiss clinic last Thursday. This is a well written, objective article. It had me in tears.

Then we turn to a smh.com.au opinion piece titled "The line that must never be crossed" in which the author makes his intention clear very early:

However, emotion cannot be allowed to cloud the ethical and practical principles that must inform the euthanasia debate. Whatever the circumstances of Dr Elliott's case, the principles remain the same. So, too, is the conclusion to be drawn from those principles: the law must continue to prohibit euthanasia.

Fair enough - state your position up front. But let's look at the article. What reasoning is given? Does the author successfully steer clear of emotional motivations and arguments? Does the author make arguments that could be applied universally? Does the author argue from a utilitarian perspective? If so are contradictions avoided? Is the author simply justifying a stance (stated at the outset) or are we seeing an example of clearly reasoned, logical thought?

The author seems intent on drawing a distinction between euthanasia and other avenues of hastening death.

Yet a string of surveys here and overseas suggests doctors are readier than ever to administer pain-killing drugs or to withdraw or withhold treatment even when that will hasten death. Such relief for the terminally ill is to be welcomed, and the law's application is appropriately sensitive to this need. Such surveys of doctors' actual practice undermine the common argument by euthanasia advocates that patients suffer unnecessarily because doctors fear criminal prosecution. How often are doctors criminally prosecuted? Patients who suffer pain at the end of life can expect an easeful death, and that the law will not stand in the way.

It seems clear that the author is agreeing that some doctors are already hastening the death of certain patients in some cases. We should note carefully that the author justifies this by stating that the law is "sensitive" to such cases; that is, the medical practitioners in question won't be prosecuted, and that "Patients who suffer pain at the end of life can expect an easeful death, and that the law will not stand in the way."

What's wrong with the argument pointing out that swift death at the behest of the patient is more humane? How is forcing someone who wants to end their life to live in pain and take expensive pain-killing drugs, more ethical than giving them the freedom to end their life? We're not talking about people who aren't judged fit to make such a decision. We're talking about people with terminal illnesses in excruciating pain making a clear-minded and considered decision about their situation. From a consequentialist perspective what is the difference? In the former case, the patient undergoes severe pain. Family members, rendered helpless, stand by and watch. We have a course of action that results in substantial pain for the patient, considerable distress for the family and the potential shortening of patient life due to medical treatment or lack thereof. What about the latter case? The patient and family, along with professional medical advice make the decision to end the person's life. There is no more physical pain for the terminally ill patient. The family is saved the distress of watching their loved one suffer avoidable pain. In short, the patient is empowered to make a decision which allows death with dignity.

The whole argument which outlaws euthanasia almost smacks of typical authoritarian reasoning. "We" know better than you. What if you regret it? I'll make the decisions about this on your behalf, because it'll be better for you in the end. Just hold on tight, denying you the right to end your life is the "ethical" thing to do. If the patient were to ask why, the answer is simple. You're not in a "correct" state of mind. You can't be thinking clearly. I wonder how much of this attitude is motivated by society's deep seated need to control its citizens?

Why doesn't an autonomous, sentient person have the right to end their life? For that matter, why is it ok to deliberately keep the area "grey" and allow ad hoc decisions to be made by patients and doctors to use treatments which may shorten their life or to not use treatments that could extend it? What moral code makes this ok? Is it just because the whole situation is then somehow distanced from a black and white ethical decision? Are we supposed to feel ok about this approach because it dilutes the reality of hastening someone's death? What about the benefits of opening the issue up, and clearly attempting to demarcate it?

I think we need stronger arguments than:

There is no knowing where euthanasia law would take us once it had a foothold in the statutes. Overwhelmingly, families wanting to hasten the death of loved ones are motivated by love and compassion. But removing existing criminal sanctions could leave little to inhibit family members conniving with compliant doctors to end a patient's life for other, unacceptable motives such as greed or impatience. And cash-strapped health systems will surely find it cheaper to institutionalise death than care for the physical and emotional wellbeing of the old and frail.

And what stops that from happening now? How is this an argument against euthanasia, but not against procedures which could shorten a persons life substantially and keep them in a semi-comatose state for the rest of their "life"? Surely this is a non sequitur.

I think there needs to be open and logical debate resting on current ethical theory, rather than proposing hypothetical "doomsday" situations which obviously support a given view. To my mind this is another clear example of the author "justifying" a stance, rather than reasoning about it.

Honestly, it's disgusting to consider such sub-standard pseudo-intellectual drivel is/could become the modus operandi of a paper as widely read as smh.com.au.

Link

Is Philosophy Progressive?

Question II

Why is Marijuana or Mescaline illegal but Alcohol is not?

Question I

Is anything not an abstraction?

Tastes of Yukio Mishima

Corruscating excerpts from Yukio Mishima.

Once I sat for hours on the grass watching a colony of ants engaged in transporting minute particles of red earth. It wasn't a matter of the ants having aroused my interest. On another occasion I stood for ages outside the university, staring like a dolt at the thin wisp of smoke that rose from a factory chimney at the back. It wasn't that the smoke had caught my fancy. At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself. The world outside me had cooled down in parts and had then been reheated. How shall I put it? I felt that the outside world was spotted and again that it was striped. My inner being and the outer world slowly and irregularly changed places. The meaningless scene that surrounded me shone before my eyes; as it shone, it forced its way into me and only those parts of the scene that had not entered continued to glitter vividly in a place beyond.

'What about it?' he said. 'Something broke inside you just now, didn't it?' I can't bear to see a friend of mine living with something inside him that is so easy to break. My entire kindness lies in destroying such things.'

I did not expect that I should encounter the sea here on any intimate terms, although of course a jeep might come along from behind and push me into the sea just for fun.

The mouth of the river was unexpectedly narrow. The sea lay there indistinctly mingled with the dark cumuli of clouds, melting into the river, assaulting it. In order to get a tactile perception of this sea, I still had to walk a considerable distance with the wind blowing fiercely on me from across the plains and the rice fields. The wind was drawing its patterns over the entire surface of the sea. It was because of the sea that the wind was thus wasting its violent energy on these deserted fields. And the sea was a sea of vapor that covered this wintry area, a peremptory, dominant, invisible sea.

from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima

The Leaf Patch

A man is walking home from work along the side of a busy road. There is only one path and it is narrow. He sees a collection of leaves on the path in front of him. It is a matted collection of leafy vegetation, matted from a soggy cycle of rain and sun. Rain and sun.

He sees a woman walking towards him. She is an older woman and well dressed with a certain allure smarting about her hips and finely cut business accouterment.

She veers towards him.

Man: I am going to walk straight. This is ridiculous. I am not going to move for this woman. Why can't she walk straight? Does this woman think she owns the path? This path was here before both of us. I have intimated "straightness" in my journey for the last 30 minutes.

The woman continues to veer closer to him. It is evidently self evident that she is attempting to circumnavigate the matted leaf patch. She shows no concern for the imminent meeting of their trajectories.

Man: Oh come off it! She's going to walk into me to avoid the leaf patch? The leaf patch is on her side of the path. The burden of leaf patch is hers to deal with! Why must she confer this responsibility on me? It seems such a particular act and yet we're total strangers!

The woman comes to within two metres of the man. The man looks at the woman, being careful to express his look of severe annoyance. The woman continues unabated in her veering, for she is power-suited and exercising her right of post-feminist womanhood.

The man's body jerkily responds. One foot after another betrays his resolute promise to practice self-worth. He admonishes himself privately. He sinks to the primitive role of hunter-gatherer. The man sidesteps and lets the woman take the clear path. He has been displaced. He is on the grass beside the path. She is on the clear path. He is on the grass.

Man: "Ergghh!!"

The woman acknowledges his grunt with a look. The man tries to focus his frustration in his eyes and shoot it at her....

Woman: "I can't walk on the LEAVES!!"

Man: "Is it going to murder you?"

The woman shows the man a look of obvious disdain. They pass each other and keep walking. The man has learned his place.

Bourgeois hate

... it is as from the moment when a typist earning twenty pounds a month recognises herself in the big wedding of the bourgeoisie that bourgeois ex-nomination achieves its full effect.

Mythologies - Roland Barthes

The Art of Procrastination and The Order of Things

I'm only documenting this because it happens throughout most of the day. Every day. I understand that I will have necessarily had to procrastinate equally as long to observe this compulsive procrastination, but I have to keep telling myself that I'm doing this for the betterment of humanity.

Here is a small snippet in time (approximately 45 odd minutes) which describes the actions of possibly the most extreme and perverted procrastinator I've ever seen. He's been at my current place of work for just on 2 weeks. I haven't seen him do any work the entire time he's been there. He's had conversations about hypothetical situations and potential ideas or designs, but I haven't seen him actually *do* anything.

Update: for those of you who don't believe this actually happened - believe me. I typed this in exactly the correct order and at precisely timed intervals while he did it.

[4:30pm]
clicking repeatedly on individual days in a Lotus Notes weekly calendar view.. then back to clicking repeatedly through windows.. staring at screen.. clicking through windows again.. scroll down 10 lines through code.. click through windows repeatedly.. click repeatedly through individual days in a Lotus Notes weekly calendar view.. click repeatedly through windows.. stare at a command prompt with output text in it.. rub hair repeatedly.. stare at a command prompt with output text in it.. rub hair.. click through windows.. scroll up through code by about 100 lines.. stare at code and rub chin thoughtfully.. click through windows.. scroll down through code by about 100 lines.. click through windows repeatedly (for about 2 minutes this time).. scroll up through code by about 10 lines.. rub hair and face repeatedly.. click through windows repeatedly.. scroll up and down through java code repeatedly.. look at code and rub hair.. click through windows repeatedly..

[4:45]
use the keyboard! go to yahoo mail.. check mail.. read email from Peoplebank¹.. click through windows repeatedly.. stare at empty MS Word window (no open document).. click repeatedly through windows.. rub hair repeatedly.. scroll up and down through yahoo mail inbox.. open email.. pick up the phone.. put the phone down (without calling anyone).. appear to be reading email²..

[4:50]
click repeatedly through windows.. open email from Peoplebank.. click repeatedly through windows.. rub hair repeatedly.. stare at intranet homepage.. type(!) url in window (without pressing enter).. click through several windows.. go back to browser and ponder url.. alt tab to yahoo mail window.. logout of yahoo mail.. log back into yahoo mail.. open previous email.. pick up phone.. dial a number.. click through a few windows..

[4:55]
speak to someone in Chinese³..

[5:01]
hang up.. start clicking repeatedly through windows again.. rub hair repeatedly.. go back to clicking repeatedly through windows again.. sigh⁴.. stare at code.. rub hair.. click repeatedly through windows (for several minutes).. rub face and hair and stare at command prompt.. go back to clicking through multiple windows..

[5:07]
start scrolling through code with the keyboard.. stop.. rub hair.. pick up pen.. look around.. put pen down.. lean back and start repeatedly stroking hair.. go back to clicking through windows..

[5:13] Get out of chair.. walk outside..

[5:15] Sit back down.. begin clicking through windows repeatedly again.. click repeatedly on individual days in a Lotus Notes weekly calendar view (which he continues for the next minute or so)..

And we've come full circle.

What is to be done with such people? I really don't know, but I would like to leave you with a quote from peoplebank.com.au:

"Some agencies throw up resumes in a shotgun approach. Peoplebank don't do that. They are willing to spend time getting to know my business, and that allows them to put up quality candidates, with the right technical skills who will fit into my team.

¹ http://www.peoplebank.com.au - "Are you ready to deal with a company
that is empowered to perform?"
² perhaps the first thing that could result in work?
³ using torturously stretched, sighing phrases...
⁴ this is obviously becoming quite taxing

Ofelia, Linda, Jenny, Anna, Sarah, Caroline...

You like Swedish librarians huh?

Poets worth reading

Ted Hughes
W.H. Auden
William Carlos Williams
Dylan Thomas
Ezra Pound
Sylvia Plath
Seamus Heaney

The Red Wheelbarrow

Classic by WCW. Am going to pick up a book of his poems this weekend as a priority.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

Never read Homer?

How about:

Odysseus
I rule.

Poseidon
For your sin of pride, I curse you for all eternity.

(Unfazed, Odysseus boards his ship and sets SAIL for Greece, where his family is awaiting his RETURN from Troy. A STORM happens, and it drives them off course into the MEDITERRANEAN, where they come upon a strange LAND owned by the giant Cyclops POLYPHEMUS who eats some of the men ALL UP, but then they ESCAPE. Still lost, they run into the island of the sorceress CIRCE who turns some of Odysseus' men into ANIMALS, and it takes YEARS before they escape, and then they sail by some singing SIRENS, but they can't hear because they have STUFF in their ears. Then they come upon an island where there is a field of HERBS, and they all get HIGH, until Odysseus says it's time to GO. Then Odysseus' men let a WIND out of a BAG, and some more men DIE. And they sail on to HADES to talk to some DEAD people, and some more men DIE. And they steer the ship between the six headed monster SCYLLA and the torrential whirlpool CHARYBDIS, and Scylla makes some more men DIE, and Charybdis makes the rest of them DIE. Then the ship busts up into a JILLION pieces, but Odysseus is SAVED by the nymph Calypso who confines him to her ISLAND because she thinks he's HOT, and she wants his BODY. Then years later she lets him GO, but Poseidon is determined to terrorize him FURTHER. And then SUDDENLY Odysseus has an IDEA.)

Odysseus
Poseidon, I am sorry.

Poseidon
Ok, you can go home now.

(Odysseus goes home.)

from Book-a-minute Classics. Classic take on the classics! ;) Check it out.

Why is it cool to "cross things out" in blogs and on the web generally?

Answer: it's not.

The Literary Life

We climbed Marianne Moore's narrow stair
To her bower-bird bric-a-brac nest, in Brooklyn
Daintiest curio relic of Americana.
Her talk, a needle
Unresting - darning incessantly
Chain-mail with crewel-work flowers,
Birds and fish of the reef
In phosphor-bronze wire.
Her face, a tiny American treen bobbin
On a spindle,
Her voice the flickering hum of the old wheel.
Then the coin, compulsory,
For the subway
Back to our quotidian scramble.
Why shouldn't we cherish her?

You sent her carbon copies of your poems.
Everything about them -
The ghost gloom, the constriction,
The bell-jar air-conditioning - made her gasp
For oxygen and cheer. She sent them back.
(Whoever has her letter has her exact words.)
'Since these seem to be valuable cabon copies
(Somewhat smudged) I shall not engross them.'
I took the point of that 'engross'
Precisely, like a bristle of glass
Snapped off deep in my thumb.
You wept
And hurled yourself down a floor or two
Further from the Empyrean.
I carred you back up.
And she, Marianne, tight, brisk,
Neat and hard as an ant,
Slid into the second or third circle
Of my Inferno.

A decade later, on her last visit to England,
Holding court at a party, she was sitting
Bowed over her knees, her face,
Under her great hat-brim's floppy petal,
Dainty and bright as a piece of confetti -
She wanted me to know, she insisted
(It was all she wanted to say)
With that Missouri needle, drawing each stitch
Tight in my ear,
That your little near-posthumous memoir
'OCEAN 1212'
Was 'so wonderful, so lit, so wonderful' -

She bowed so low I had to kneel. I kneeled and
bowed my face close to her upturned face
That seemed tinier than ever,
And studied, as through a grille,
Her lips that put me in mind of a child's purse
Made of the skin of a dormouse,
Her cheek, as if she had powdered the crumpled silk
Of a bat's wing.
And I listened, heavy as a graveyard
While she searched for the grave
Where she could lay down her little wreath.

Ted Hughes - Birthday Letters

How to write about book(s) you probably haven't read...

I'm guessing Letter From America: Atheists throw down the gauntlet by Richard Bernstein is a fine example. I wonder if Bernstein has read Dawkin's "The God Delusion"? He certainly quotes Sam Harris from "Letter to a Christian Nation". Perhaps he's flicked through that at least?

From the article:

What is going on? One conclusion is not so far-reaching. It could be simply that there's a market for just about anything in this country — whether atheism or psychic channeling.

I can imagine it must have taken about 2 minutes to come up with this stunning insight. What informs a view such as this? A guess perhaps? A rumination over coffee and stale toast? How novel!

and

The best-sellerdom of books like those of Harris and Dawkins shows that there is a market for militant atheism, but the market for religious belief is bigger. I wouldn't imagine any candidate for office winning on a platform of disbelief in God. I would similarly suppose that Billy Graham and other televangelists will have far vaster audiences than Harris does.

Does Bernstein realise that (at least) Dawkins deals directly with these issues in his book? He certainly doesn't comment on it. If we're supposed to accept that Bernstein is presenting an informed opinion on the subject he certainly succeeds in looking absurd.

Harris is obviously bothered by the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the United States, which has coincided with the very violent rise of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East, one product of which was the attacks of Sept. 11.

The two movements are almost entirely dissimilar, of course, with Christian fundamentalism engaging in no violence or threats.

Again, Dawkins deals with this in his book. Having read both "The God Delusion" and this watered down mental prolixity from Bernstein I can't help feeling that perhaps he hasn't.

This article is banal. All we're getting is an oversimplified, recycled, mediocre mess. This smacks of someone paid to write about the first thing that comes to mind on any given topic. Imagine actually adding to the debate, rather than regurgitating commonly held views which are addressed in some depth by (at least one of) the books mentioned?

Will he succeed? It is doubtful. There are no available statistics on who exactly is buying the books by Harris and Dawkins, but it seems reasonable to suppose that the majority of them are already solid members of the rationalist choir.

I kid you not - Bernstein doesn't justify this statement. For all we know it probably just "felt right" at the time.

What trivial thinking. What shitty writing. Way to go iht.com!

How to write a thank you note...

Groovy. What's with all my inane, pointless posts lately?

1. This is a blog


2. I'm still on holidays

Bring. It!

New Years Resolutions

This Year I Resolve to... This has to become my standard reply to people asking me what my new years resolutions are :)

David Hicks

Bento has a good post on his blog showing a bomb¹ of a photo he shot somewhere in North Sydney :)

¹Note terrorist allusion

Advertising in Oz

Why would NRMA Insurance feature a woman in their ads who has different coloured eyebrows from her hair (red vs. brown)? Wrong.

The mind boggles.

Poor Poms

What's wrong with the English? To say that two of their best bowlers struggled to get two of our best bowlers out is a massive understatement (Warney and Clarke batting?!). The Poms were slapped all over the place.

One of the crummiest English teams I can remember watching¹. Poor buggers.

¹Update [05/01/2007] - How does "2 wickets remaining. England leads by 20 runs" sound?

Kolahstudio

Kolahstudio.com Iranian underground Art and Artists Media

Foucault: Madness and Civilization

Update: As Scottio rightly pointed out, this is hard to read without me letting on that each paragraph is a separate excerpt :D

Enjoy! (and buy and read this book - phenomenal!)

An important phenomenon, this invention of a site of constraint, where morality castigates by means of administrative enforcement. For the first time, institutions of morality are established in which an astonishing synthesis of moral obligation and civil law is effected. The law of nations will no longer countenance the disorder of hearts. To be sure, this is not the first time in European culture that moral error, even in its most private form, has assumed the aspect of a transgression against the written or unwritten laws of the community. But in this great confinement of the classical age, the essential thing -- and the new event -- is that men were confined in cities of pure morality, where the law that should reign in all hearts was to be applied without compromise, without concession, in the rigorous forms of physical constraint.Morality permitted itself to be administered like trade or economy.

Confinement hid away unreason, and betrayed the shame it aroused; but it explicitly drew attention to madness, pointed to it. If, in the case of unreason, the chief intention was to avoid scandal, in the case of madness that intention was to organize it. A strange contradiction: the classical age enveloped madness in a total experience of unreason; it reabsorbed its particular forms, which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had clearly individualized into a general apprehension in which madness consorted indiscriminately with all the forms of unreason. But at the same time it assigned to this same madness a special sign: not that of sickness, but that of glorified scandal. Yet there is nothing in common between this organized exhibition of madness in the eighteenth century and the freedom with which it came to light during the Renaissance.

There comes a moment in the course of passion when laws are suspended as though of their own accord, when movement either abruptly stops, without collision or absorption of any kind of active force, or is propagated, the action ceasing only at the climax of the paroxysm.

Madness designates the equinox between the vanity of night's hallucinations and the non-being of light's judgments.

Madness and Civilization - Foucault

Katatonia - The Great Cold Distance

I've been really impressed by this album from Katatonia - particularly a track called "My Twin".

Get it somewhere. You're looking for album cover that looks like this :D



It's as "listenable" as the legendary Tool album - Lateralus (big call), or A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step etc.

Same kind of adrenaline inducing rawness :)

The Century of the Self

Go and watch The Century of the Self (documentary by Adam Curtis shown on BBC Four).

Brilliant overview of the different techniques employed to control the masses and shape the idea of "democracy" that the US seems so intent on exporting.

The Century of the Self Episode 1 2 3 4

N.B. This is approx 4 hours of documentary :)

Trial of a dead man

Saddam Hussein (1937-2006)

From an article on the International Herald Tribune:

A trial on the far more sweeping charges that he directed the killing of 50,000 Kurds in an organized ethnic-cleansing campaign is still under way and will continue despite Hussein's execution.

and

Iraqi officials said the execution would be filmed, both for the historical record and as proof for those who may doubt the word of both the Americans and Iraqis.

From an article on aljazeera.net:

The US-based rights group Human Rights Watch condemned the hanging, saying history would judge his trial and execution harshly.

Richard Dicker, a Human Rights Watch director, said: "Saddam Hussein was responsible for horrific, widespread human rights violations, but those acts, however brutal, cannot justify his execution, a cruel and inhuman punishment.

When will George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert be held responsible for their crimes against humanity? Will they hang?

41 emails and 2 days later

41 emails and 2 days to delete one file and move a redirect page through 4 environments.

That's when you know you're dealing with process overkill at work. I've never in my entire life had to deal with so much bullshit to delete a file off a freaking test environment. Why the hell a company would pay tens of thousands of dollars for software which can do this for you out of the box with full transactional deployments and audit trails, and not use it is beyond me.

I'm laughing about it as I type this in fact. A squeaky, desperate slightly maniacal little laugh.

Genius

everyone needs bringing back down to earth

every now

and

again.


Why does everyone think I'm a genius?

The God Delusion

Read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It's a brilliant and enlightening read.

Quotes to come in later posts.

Every "Christian" should read this...

Why won't God heal amputees?

Dinner conversation:

Mary: "I believe in God. I've believed in him since I was 7"

You: "Yeah? I want to because there's reams of hot ass at Hillsong but he doesn't heal amputees"

Mary: "Huh?"

You: "If he regenerated legs he'd get my vote."

Mary: "You're sick"

You: "Hey, I don't claim to be able to regenerate legs."

And so on.

Fucking ridiculous.

The Squid and the Whale

Scott is Jeff Daniels in the Squid and the Whale. Only he's studying philosophy and not a PhD in literature (yet).

Another Kubuntu screenshot-fest

Amarok pictured here is the out of the box music player in Kubuntu and just another reason why Kubuntu lords it over your puny-assed little OS.

Mmm.. let me see - you want song lyrics? Click. Artist or band info (sourced from Wikipedia)? Click. A summary of all the albums you have by a given artist and which songs you listen to most often? Click. Want to grab missing album art? Click. Download track info to supplement your crappy ID3 tags on your mp3 collection because you're a pirate and BitTorrent rocks? Click!

The wonders of open source eh?

More Zune rants

I've already blogged about most of these points here, but the author of this article, "Avoid the loony Zune" makes some good points about Microsoft and its dealings with the wider music industry.

There are far more positive reviews at the Zune scene's Zune Owner Reviews page, and I guess this helps to balance all the bad press Zune has been getting since release.

Despite reading 100 "good reviews", I still find it hard to look past the DRM, lack of podcast support, next to useless WiFi and the Zune points system for buying tracks. The sad thing is, Microsoft's famous marketing prowess will probably convince most users that these things aren't important.

Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

Educate yourself about the recent Novell and Microsoft agreement, and then decide if you want to sign the protest against it (written by Bruce Perens). I did.

IE and Kubuntu are go!

I was having a discussion with a web developer friend of mine the other day about Kubuntu. He made the very valid point that he still needs a windows install around to do thorough testing of IE browser support on a windows box.

Well I have IE 5.5 and 6.0 running on Kubuntu (and no I'm not using VMWare). I found a very nifty little script in my blog reading this morning which installs IE 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 for you (you can choose which versions you want). The magic all happens with IEs4Linux (also check out his blog - looks like IE7 support is there too - maybe this will convince me to finally install IE7). It installs with a minimum of fuss and hassle. In fact with ADSL2+ the install is lightning fast.

The only requirement is that you have Wine installed and cabextract (a program to extract Microsoft Cabinet files). Using Adept Manager I had these installed in minutes. Following the Kubuntu instructions on the IEs4Linux was incredibly straightfoward. Within minutes I had two fancy looking IE icons on my desktop (an upside down IE logo in what looks like a cocktail glass), and I was ready to go.

I have a screenshot of IE 5.5, IE 6.0 and Firefox running behind it. No hacks, no pain. It Just Works. Very impressive. Just to prove that it really is IE I've loaded up Bento's blog Waffle which proudly gives IE the middle finger. You can see what I mean in the screenshot :)

So while it's not IE on Windows, it's about as close as you'll get whilst running a Linux distro. I say give it a whirl :)

Elitist mumbo jumbo

I stumbled across this article today. Reminds me of someone who recently bought a mac to do Rails development on, but wasn't particularly happy a few days after buying it.

Anyone who swears by a particular platform to do development for a particular web framework needs their head checked. And as far as David Hansson's comments? Mere elitist hype-generating mumbo jumbo.

At least this guy backs up his claims.

Working for the man? I don't think so!

This was a pleasurable read. Another poignant article considering yesterday was my last day at Insane Asylum Group (you all know the acronym). I'm officially unemployed. First time in almost 7 years. What the fuck. It's awesome.

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

GUI koans and The Art of Unix Programming

I've been reading a chapter of 'The Art of Unix Programming' by ESR every morning before work lately. I was also having drinks with a few guys who organised and spoke at World Usability Day yesterday at the State Library in Sydney. Anyway, reading this koan this morning seemed particularly poignant and funny :) Enjoy!

Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface

One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.

“The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward”, he scoffed. “Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface”.

Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand.

“I don't understand you!” said the programmer.

Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.

“What are you trying to tell me?” asked the programmer.

Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock.

“Why can't you make yourself clear?” demanded the programmer.

Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.

As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.

At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.

Quoted from: Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface

Kubuntu - Oh What a Feeling :D

Ok - so I'm typing this post from my newly installed Kubuntu (which is pretty much just Ubuntu with KDE as the default window manager). It's very very nice.

I'm just copying across my mp3s from my USB external hard disk and we'll be good to go. I have Gaim installed and configured (which I was using on Windows anyway - it wees all over MSN and Trillian (which is just plain ugly)). Kubuntu pre-installs OpenOffice which I was also using on my Windows XP box, and I have Firefox 2.0 up and running.

It's been about 9 years since I ran Linux exclusively on my desktop at home, and that only lasted about 18 months. Boy o boy has Linux come a long way. I haven't had to go hunting around for my XConfig file. I haven't spent days looking for an obscure X server driver. Everything Just Works. In fact, it's interesting to note that I've installed and configured Kubuntu to my tastes faster than it normally takes to download, configure and install Cygwin (a tool that any serious programmer familiar with *nixs would usually install on their Windows boxen).

Ah, I love it. Let me see, I have Adept which appears to be a kickarse GUI interface to the powerful apt-get packaging system we've all been envious of from Debian. I have an audio player already installed (mp3s work with barely any fuss). I have CD and DVD burning software, a powerful media player in Kaffeine. I have an RSS reader pre-installed. I have Bluetooth chat (!), a bittorrent client, an IRC client, a PDF reader out of the box, Konqueror - a kick arse web browser (arguably better than Firefox in some sense - just ask Apple - Safari heart KHTML and all that). I have all that Linux brings to the development table (Windows has nothing on Linux - and no I'm not convinced that Powershell will make much of a difference), and all of this is wrapped up in a really quite beautiful GUI (I rate it way higher than XP or other MS derivatives - Mac OS X still rocks - though Ubuntu is definitely up there).

For those who want to take a peek you can click on the smaller image below for a full res screenshot of what Kubuntu looks like on my desktop (1280x1024). Even the process of taking this image was effortless. Hitting printscreen on your keyboard automatically brings up a snapshot program which wants to save your desktop as a PNG for you. Excellent :)



I'll get to know Kubuntu better over the next week or so and post some more, so stay tuned :)

One last point. People who are interested in Linux, or Free Software in general (there is a convincingly philosophical argument behind this) should definitely check Ubuntu out. You can download it here. Give it a go. If you're a developer and you're happy to put the time in I can't imagine you'd fail to be impressed.