a momentary glimpse of reason
As we approach the end of yet another year, it is only natural to look back, reflect, and contemplate the year ahead. In my case, 2009 has been particularly eventful. This year I hit 40, celebrated the arrival of a wonderful baby son, and said a sad farewell to our 4-legged Greyhound "daughter" Billie. It’s [...]
Depending on where you are in the world, today is either the Winter Solstice (shortest day) or the Summer Solstice (longest day). Now a funny thing happens at this time every year, I usually start telling anyone who will listen that the celebration of Christmas on Dec 25th is a hijacking of much older pagan [...]
Having spent the last few years running Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop, I had started to believe I would never go back to Windows. Then a couple of things happened; firstly I was evaluating Windows 7 on a laptop that would handle XP but not Vista. Once I’d switched off the eye candy, had things [...]
I’m a little late putting this info out this year but… I am once again growing a moustache for Movember – team name ‘Caught by the Fuzz’. After going from 70s porno, through “The Chopper”, to a bizarre creation that went the full width of my face last year, I decided to go “minimal” this [...]
So, Google have decided the world needs another programming language huh? They might have a point, if they had produced something radically different, but they didn’t. 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 [...]
And so the highly predictable, depressingly familiar pattern of a “right of centre” conservative regime continues, with Barnett’s mob now intent on privatisation of public services as a “solution”. As reported in The West Online, Colin Barnett and the blue-rinse set have plans to privatise public sector services, in an attempt to rein in spiralling [...]
Vivendi can go stick this up their arse as far as I am concerned… http://expressurl.net/ws/338 Like it or lump it, the Internet is a playground where people are still relatively free. Piracy of content has always gone on – tape recorders were never banned, so why should file sharing? I can tell you right now [...]
In an environment where Western Australia’s prisons are overcrowded, the police are overstretched, and with no sign of any easing of the pressure, what would be the most obvious thing to do? Apparently, according to our “esteemed” State Premier Colin Barnett, what you should do in this situation is insist on 3% “efficiency savings” across [...]
Having spent the best part of 20 years developing business software, it occurs to me that the business software industry, and the business users/consumers of the software, have (perhaps unwittingly) led us down the garden path. The idea of a computerised system that captures and models the very essence of a business, automating the decision-making process, [...]
It’s true, humans in general (or should I say, inhabitants of 21st century westernised societies) have a tendency to over-plan, over-analyse and put off doing something until everything is in place. I often wonder if this is a throwback to the days of the Roman Empire, with it’s meticulously drilled legions, straight roads and urban [...]
