(Grand Old Duke Of York)

Oh the bus driver from hell

Can't see or hear that well

So that is why he missed your stop

'Cos he didn't hear the bell

When you get on he's a grump

And when you get off he's so gruff

Don't be surprised, when you flag him down

If he drives past in a huff

For example, there are ads that cover topics such as people not allowing others to leave the train before they push their own way on, people not getting to the bus stop on time causing delays for other passengers and so on.

I think they've left a huge hole in their coverage, and so I now offer a couple of extra nursery rhymes that probably should have been part of the campaign:

Sing a song of commuting

A tale full of woe

When a little drizzle falls

All the trains go slow

Peak hour trains have three cars

When they really should have six

All because the government

Are useless, tight-arsed pricks.

TransPerth, TransPerth After Dark

Just like walking through Central Park

Muggings and bashings on the Armadale Line

Trains to Midland full of tramps drinking wine

TransPerth TransPerth, In The Night

Sure to give a nasty fright

If you see any of these in poster form, let me know so I can go and claim my royalties

One of the things that I noticed recently is the sheer volume of negativity that I allow to break through the barriers, and a similarly negative slant on many of my rants and rambles. One way that this manifests itself is with sarcasm. While I appreciate the value and genuine humour to be found in sarcasm, I do find myself being overly sarcastic at times.

To be perfectly honest, as I head towards “grumpy old man” territory I find myself increasingly drained by sniping, bitching, moaning, taking the piss and ranting about socio-political injustices. In a way, I think I’ve got to the point where I understand that no matter how much I rant about something, the object of my ranting doesn’t give a toss (if indeed they are even aware of me), and my energies would be better spent in other directions.

The more I think about this, I realise that this pretty much extends to all facets of my life, and is actually getting in the way of many of the things that I wish to achieve in my life.

So, 2010 (and beyond) will be a time of positives, with anything with a potential to “drain” me being ignored or put to one side. Whether that’s the petty bitching on an Internet forum, or my ongoing despair at the way the WA public sector continues to be run by committees of amateurs – it all stops right now.

I myself am incredibly prone to this condition, and it is without doubt the number one target on my personal hit list for 2010 (and the last few days of 2009). On a personal note, I feel more confident taking this on having beaten the nicotine habit (ignoring the occasional backwards slide). I say that because, ultimately, the habit of putting things off, and the addiction to nicotine share the same cure; brain power.

This cure is simultaneously simple and seemingly difficult, yet why should that be? All it takes to give up smoking is to make a decision to never buy, beg or borrow) cigarettes again, and all it takes to cure procrastination is a decision to act now rather than some time in the future.

Simplest thing in the world, yet you find yourself in an almost schizophrenic state trying to fight the urge to buy cigarettes, or constantly beating yourself up for continuing to procrastinate.

I don’t claim to have the full explanation as to why this is, but you can be sure it’s got a lot to do with the science behind habits, their formation and their ongoing reinforcement. My theory is that it’s learned behaviour at the level of the subconscious mind, and the schizophrenic sensations are caused by the conscious mind battling the subconscious.

The trick then is to “program” the subconscious with new habits and behaviours; there’s all sorts of techniques around, including NLP and hypnotism, but ultimately I believe the key factors are persistence and being consistent. If the conscious mind keeps telling the same story over and over again, the subconscious will eventually take that on board as the new “reality”. Those other things are, perhaps, useful tools that can accelerate this process, but the core principle remains simple.

So, that’s procrastination cracked, what will I do with the rest of the year?

But anyway, this year I thought I’d simply blog about the pagan origins of Christmas and hit a wider audience

Dec 21st is an important time in the northern hemisphere; having experienced the harsh realities of winter, with the sun decreasing in strength and sunlight hours decreasing, Dec 21st marks the point where daylight hours start to increase again and the hope of spring and summer to come. With our ancient ancestors surviving on food stored for the winter months, it is welcome light at the end of the dark tunnel of winter.

The theory goes that leaders of these ancient peoples were clever enough to recognise a pattern and cyclic nature to the seasonal changes, and were able to work out ways of identifying when the shortest day occurred. Grand rituals performed at the time of the mid-winter solstice were carried out, to encourage the return or rebirth of the sun.

Lo and behold, a few days later the daylight hours were increasing noticeably, and the ritual was deemed to have been a success. With winter being such a harsh time for people to endure, this would have been cause for great celebration leading to feasting and festivities.

Scan the ancient cultures of the world and you will find many festivals around the time of the Winter Solstice, many of which follow a common death-rebirth theme. Some examples are listed on the Winter Solstice Wikipedia Page also some good solstice and festival information on ReligiousTolerance.org

It may be coincidence, but consider the phrases “birth of a sun” and “birth of a son”. Food for thought at least?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, I love hearing Christmas carols, I even get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see a good quality nativity display. But if you’re looking for the “real meaning” of Christmas I would suggest considering ALL the traditions associated with mid-winter, and realise it is a celebration of hope at many different levels. Starting with hope of a return to warmer weather and plentiful food supplies!

Anyway, all that aside I hope you have a truly meaningful, enjoyable and memorable festive season. For me that includes spending time with family, getting in touch with family, going to a boxing day football match when I have had enough of family and one critical component I refuse to compromise on; watching the musical version of “A Christmas Carol” with Albert Finney on Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas, Happy Saturnalia and Solstice Greetings to one and all!

p.s. you’ll notice that I didn’t even start on the whole issue of the southern hemisphere being in mid-summer, but maybe I’ll blog about that another time

Then my wife pointed out that the lease period on my laptop was up, and suggested a trip to Harvey Normans to see what the options were in terms of upgrades etc. A couple of hours later, and quite unexpectedly, I was playing with my new toy; a Sony VAIO (my previous machine was a VAIO as well, I love them) VGN-FW55GF with 4GB RAM, ATI graphics and Windows 7 64 Bit (Home Premium).

With the extra resources, processing power, and improved graphics adapter I am allowing Windows 7 run in its full eye candy glory, and I have to admit Microsoft seem to have produced a good-looking system that performs well.

Obviously an Ubuntu 64 Bit Live CD will be in order at some point, just to make a comparison, but for the time being I’ve rejoined the Microsoft world. I never thought I would say this, but it seems MS have finally produced an operating system that beats Windows 2000 Professional.

Of course, I still need to remove all the trial software crap, install Chrome as the default browser (IE8 is crap no matter how you look at it)

Google’s “GO” is just another C-like language with object-oriented features, supposedly making software development really easy and helping you avoid all the nastiness. They claim all the simplicity of something like Python, while providing the “safety” of C and C++.

That last bit is hilarious – C is relatively safe in the hands of an experienced developer, C++ can tie you in knots before blowing your brains out.

They also claim part of the motivation is the lack of a new systems language in the past decade. Like I say, if this had been a different solution from everything else, they would have a point, but this is just another set of syntax and semantics performing the same old same old.

Delphi only just sits outside the 10 year timeframe, C# falls within it. Both very similar in style and structure and both very easy for programmers with C/C++ backgrounds to pick up. Furthermore, options exist for compiling Python to native code.

My guess is that this is a student or work experience placement project that they thought they would put out in the wild and it’s full of meh-ness to be perfectly honest. The world needs another programming language like this, like a hole in the head.

Still, it’s more headlines for good ol’ Google eh?