Nifty app

Found Reader Notifier, a handy little tool that sits in your menubar and tells you when you have new items to read in your Google Reader.

Awesome

This is awesome.

Also, The List (see earlier post) seems to have died. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'll be able to revive it over my christmas break.

The News

This is going to be a rather intense rant about the news and humanity, so if you're not in the mood, feel free to skip this posting. It's also pretty sweary.

Since becoming a parent, I've started to notice a couple of things about myself: I'm starting to accept that ratings on things regarding adult content are a Good Thing; and I tend to get a lot more upset about some of the things I see on the news.

First things first: our eldest son is, like most seven year old boys, fascinated by violence. We try to keep a reasonably strong leash on his viewing, because he'd love to be watching all of the hideously violent sci-fi action films that come out these days. So many sci fi franchises (I'm looking at you, Star Wars and Transformers) that were formerly kid-friendly are starting to release M-rated films. Poor Eldest Son doesn't get to watch M-rated films, so he's missing out. The worst of it is that most of his friends are taken to watch them by their parents, leaving our poor boy a social pariah who only learns the content of movies by rumour. He's pretty good at explaining the plot of several movies he's never seen, simply because a lot of these films are Required Watching in his social milieu.

What really gives me the shits, however, is the 6 o'clock news. If the content of the news was made into a film, it would typically be M-rated, and frequently R. It's basically What's Happening In The Wars, plus the Daily Pedophile Update. Often with a side dose of gang rape. While I want my kids to be wary of the dangers adults can pose, They Don't Fucking Need To Know Specifically How Many Pedophiles Are Out There And What They Did. I don't get why they can't have a decent news update at 6pm, saying at the worst "25 more soldiers dead", with no details, and then the full R-rated parade of humanity's hideous monstrosity after 9pm. It would be so easy. I mean, really, news of one pedophile is not something that everyone in the country needs to know.

It wouldn't be a problem for me, except that we frequently have dinner with my in-laws, who insist on the daily news being watched. I frequently find myself cringing through the more horrifying news reports, talking loudly and hoping the kids aren't listening to the news. How do you answer the question "Daddy, what does 'rape' mean?" from a little boy who hasn't yet been taught the birds and the bees? Trust me, it isn't easy.

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My second, related, issue, is personal sensitivity to the events in the world. I used to be quite jaded about things - I watch sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films, and enjoy a good dose of violence and nastiness in them. But since having kids, the distinction between fiction and reality has been emphasised, and I often find myself close to tears or wanting to go and kill someone after reading the news. Some people are fucking savages, and deserve brutal, swift and harsh punishment.

I mean, fuck, there's this. Don't read it if you are sensitive to cruelty to small children. It put me off my lunch today, and it was all I could do not to break down in tears in the restaurant (I had Thai). The guy who did it is an obscene parody of a human being, and if someone told me they were starting a mob to go and kick him to death, I'd sign up straight away. I guess I lose my pacifist cred by saying that, but really, people like that don't deserve to be treated with the dignity normally accorded to human beings or animals.

And there was this. Again, not something to read if hideous injustice and inhumanity upsets you. It certainly did me. It's things like this that make me want to ban religions, simply because they give wondrously convenient excuses to psychopaths wanting to hurt and kill innocent people. I'm aware that Somalia is a basket case, and pretty much needs someone to go there, put every fucker holding a gun in jail forever, and to have the African Union peacekeepers run the place for fifty years until there are a couple of generations of people not completely shattered by the turmoil and horror that fills the place now, who can actually set up a civilised government. But even so, I can't imagine a better case study for the separation of church and state than the above. "Cautious Agnostic" should be a requirement on CVs of anyone seeking a position of authority.

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Well, I think I've got that out of my system for now. I should add a disclaimer that I'm absolutely against the death penalty. Just because someone doesn't deserve to live, doesn't mean you've a right to kill them. There's just a part of me that would join in on some mob justice now and then, when small children have been tortured to death.

Also, I'm not against Islam. Evil psychopaths crop up anywhere there are Rules Which Must Be Obeyed, and mechanisms for adding to those rules. Christianity, Communism, Fascism, and any number of other dogmas have exactly the same potential for evil; it's just that the current geopolitical situation means that those in Islam are getting the most press these days.

The Power of Lists

One nifty thing I have installed on my iPhone is Zenbe Lists. As a list application, it's pretty average, but it's got the awesome feature of allowing sharing of lists. Our shopping list is finally electronic, and I can add stuff to it whenever I think of it, rather than having to wait until I'm in the kitchen with a pen.

Another list I've got is my Home Projects list, which is basically just non-work stuff I've been meaning to do for ages but haven't gotten around to. Now that they're on the list, they're getting done. Some things that I've done since they've been added to The List:

• restructured home network completely, to take use new ADSL 2+ modem (which has been in its box for 18 months
• converted video on DV tapes to movies we can watch on the computer whenever we want (some movies date back to 2000)
• fixed the broken soap holder in the shower
• set up a new Mac for my mother (nearly finished)
• arranged to do our tax less than 8 months late (we usually do it in February, and it's only August!)
• bought new chairs for the kitchen, and started painting them
• booked in to get my full licence

I've never been so organized in my life. It's kind of scary.

Bloody Blood!

I'd like to donate some blood to the Red Cross, but it seems like they don't want it. They keep sending me letters and SMSes asking me for blood (they want my blood in particular - I'm O negative, which means they can use it for anything. It's good to know there's one thing I'm useful for).

They've sent a letter and a couple of emails asking me to donate this week at Sydney Uni. Can I book a time online? No, of course not. After all, it's 1998 and not everyone is online yet.

So I called up to book a time (which is a big thing for me. I hate calling call centres, so I only do it if I really have to). But it was shortly after 5pm, and they'll be buggered if they'll wait around until people who have jobs have time to call them.

So I called them back today, in business hours, I get a rather surly sounding gentleman. Telling me they're busy. He doesn't mention that he'd appreciate me waiting, or act in any way grateful. After all, he's doing me a favour by telling me they are busy. After he's told me that three or four times (and the phone line is silent in between, so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to wait or not, especially since he hasn't asked me to wait), another recorded voice comes on and tells me to leave my name and number, and they'll call back. They could've told me that when I first called, but they kept me on the line for ages instead. Odds are, when they call back I won't be at my desk, so I won't get their message.

So, no blood for them. Even though I'd quite like to give it to them.

Anyway, donate some blood to the ARCBS. It's difficult, but I've found in the past they'll occasionally let you.

Totalitarian Olympics

I'm usually pretty annoyed when the Olympics come around - 2 weeks of tedious blather about overly fit people doing things slightly faster or better than each other. But this time it's being hosted by a totalitarian regime that kills, oppresses, and censors its citizens, so there's even more reason to boycott anything Olympics-related.

Amnesty International are running a campaign to try to raise awareness about the censorship that's going on (which has been increased for the Olympics, to ensure that as few people as possible get worried about the police state they're running).



Have a look, and try to do something to support them.

Fedora Shenanigans

I'm still debugging my Fedora Core 9 upgrade. It doesn't help that I've got about a bazillion old RPMs installed, from the Fedora Core 4 I had before the upgrade, plus remnants of a previous Redhat 9 install, plus some old Ximian stuff that might be from the RH9 era, or might be even older (I remember using it in the RH7 era).

Also, Red Hat were very silly with Fedora Core 9, and seem to have shipped a dodgy version of the X11 server (well, a pre-release version), which meant that getting the right drivers for my NVidia card was impossible - all sources of RPMs, and the driver direct from NVidia didn't work. I eventually found worthwhile advice: install the Fedora Core 8 version of Xorg.

Now I have a working X which lets me see stuff on my TV and my monitor properly. Next thing is to see why Terminal won't run...