I don't understand the world.

The west with all it's wonderful  ideals and patronising "we know best" politics. Ready to rush in and help at a moments notice, if it is bombing the crap out of your country and killing your leader to slapping you on the wrist and telling you not to build naughty bombs or power stations.  

  The west is willing to run stable if not morally dodgy countries and bugger them up, but not go into already shafted countries and help out, maybe attempt to do some good.  Dodgy and corrupt leader,  check, country in a state of crisis, check, inflation out of control, check. Right then we can't fuck this up any worse than it is move along.  Military rulers, check, humanitarian disaster being ignored by the rulers, check, once again nothing we can do here, move along. Despot ruler, check, great infrastructure, check, high levels of education, check, non-christian abrahamic religion, check, oil, check, wahoooooo lets go rip this mother apart, bombs, bombs, gotta have bombs.

Bugtastic

Interesting bug
Originally uploaded by jonoabroad

We found this guy on a sculpture in the botanical gardens near Newcastle. Try as I might I couldn't get him/her/it to straighten both antenna - bastard.

Dragon fly

Dragon fly
Originally uploaded by jonoabroad

I thought I should start linking through to a few of my flickr photos while I can still remember where and when I took them.

We found this guy while on a walk at Myall Lakes National Park over the christmas break.

Buying a new machine online.

  So our washing machine died last weekend after a long and some what healthy life.  We decided to try and make a vaguely informed decision and research a new one.  Choice did this for  us excellently, covering off the major categories we were interested in,  energy and water efficient, reliability oh and wash clothes.  It did cost 20 dollars for 3 months access, but the review we got was up to date and very informative - yay! 

  Once we had decided on a new machine we hunted round online for a bricks and mortar store to go and buy from and instead found Appliances Online. Appliances online were cheaper than the bricks and mortar and for most products could deliver the next day.  The website had lots of detail including energy and water ratings and rebate eligibility.  Oh and in the Sydney  area they offered to hook up the new machine AND take the old machine - yippee !

  The delivery idiot called and confirmed a time, which was nice, but the manner of the two delivery idiots was poor.  Taking the piss out of the customer and the price of the product you have just delivered is uncool, whinging about doing your job, also uncool.   Then again, what can you expect from someone who delivers washing machines for a living. 

So the only disappointing part of the entire process was a human interaction, what a surprise, apart from that, how wonderful, thing ordered, delivered and old thing taken away all from the comfort of the sun room and iMac - wahoo !

 Ummm will review of washing machine once we have had it for more than 2 days. 

 Yes this should have microformat love, but blogger lacks that love and I'm too tired to do it by hand - sorry :(

 

Social conscious Vs a consumer centric world.

How does one balance between the good of the planet and the need to earn a living in an ever increasing wired, or unwired as the case may be world. I'm living in the centre of middle classness at the moment, we drink organic free trade coffee, we buy organic veggies as much as possible, our washing products are all eco-friendly, our toilet paper is recycled, not one would assume from old toilet paper but still, we recycle, use low power bulbs and part of our energy bill is green.
We worry about global warming and whether we are on the happy or unhappy side of the climate tipping point. Is the planet screwed or just a bit buggerd. Is all the organic recycled low power goodness a waste of time because in the next 5 minutes, 2 months, 6 years Israel, Iran or the United States will get their tits in a tangle because someone said they were facists, hate mongers or reglious idiots and spit their nuclear dummy all over the rest of us and our organic coffee.
If we ignore the fact that a bunch of idiots could and probably will bugger up all our hard work, where do we stop, where do we find a level of balance and a sane source of information to help find that balance.
How do I lower my impact on the planet without jepordizing my standard of living and my work? I'm not about to go live in a mud hut and eat beetles, nor am I about to unplug my laptop
and stop buying consumer electronics ( okay just apple really ).
And there we have it, after a huge ramble, the point of this post - How as a geek to I balance my desire to not single handly be responsible for raping the planet, while staying relavent in my field.
Would an ebook reader be better for the planet than the 100 kgs of technical books I read ~100 pages from, or would it have to last me 15 years - something we know isn't going to happen. While the greens will say no tech is a good level of tech, that doesn't really cut it, I'm pretty sure that my Macbook Pro is more eco-friendly that some sub 1000 dollar laptop that I could have brought.  Not least of all, this is still a powerful machine year after I brought it and in a year or two when I get rid of it, it will serve someone else for a few more years, much like my old Powerbook which is happily meeting Mums needs for about 15 months now.
I guess the question I am asking is "When should I curb my desire/need for technology and when doesn't it make a difference?", it's not like I'm buying every device under the sun and there are practical as well as ecological benefits from curbing spending, such as having money.

Greenpeace shit me, they are a huge marketing machine that don't let truth or fact get in the way of a good press release - see the last stories on apple products, that were widly inacturate - not quite the vim and vigore to get a correction to the PR. Hence fools, possibly well meaning, but fools non the less.

  Anna and I had the mega veggie India food cook up yesterday. Out of the 5 dishes we got 9/10's there, missing only the Naan.  We have Naan dough,  just not Naan cooked, they are looking like lunch with left overs.  Everything came from Mader Jaffrey, although the dal is suspiciously similar to the recipe that Ash and Mitul gave me a few years ago. 

  I think next time we will start a bit earlier and possibly do a little preplanning, small kitchen, lots of new dishes and short on time is not a good mix.

Cayne's been here almost a week and everyone is still talking which is a good thing. 

I haven't blogged in a long time.  

oh well.

Ventriloquist flatulence - ability to throw your farts. It turned out it was just Anna's phone in a different room, but still - the idea is interesting.

Just watched Across The Great Divide, it made me think about how little I got into local music while I was in the UK. It was a mistake, local music everywhere is good and should be embraced.

I've just looked through the photos from the Madgex party photos and a couple of things struck me.

• I can keep in touch with my friends who are geographically disparate.
• I've never given a lot of credence with the sociology and other humanity studies that have been going on into how technology is advancing at a rate greater than we can adopt it. Until tonight, when looking through the photos, I was struck by the idea that Jane had put them on flickr for the local Brightonians and the medium used to tell them about it also allowed me to "listen in". The thought of listening in made me wonder if I should be looking through the photos, if it was some how an invasion of my friends personal space.
  
• No matter how connected you are with people digitally, nothing counts for physical time.
  

This all brought me to the following conclusions:

• Technology is reducing the distance between people, but it isn't quite there. It misses some of the intimacies and that I guess exacerbates the distance, not being able to talk to people or see them dulls them, seeing and hearing them just out of reach is some times harder.
• How does the speed of adoption allow people to understand and fully comprehend what they are immersing themselves in?
• Being along way away from friend is still pants
• The party looked good.
• Seeing happy people you know is a wonderful feeling.
  

I'm hanging out for some screen shots of Sublime Text, sounds like a cool idea.

Looks as though we may we finally get good bars in Sydney, read here.

I just bumped into a guy from school, how cool.

Really don't understand people who don't want to live forever, or at least for the very long term. Different perspectivies I guess.

On a different note, my song of the moment is 32-20 Blues a very strong second is Come On in My Kitchen, from the same album.

Getting well back into blues and jazz.

So regicide isn't the killing of Reggie ?

Moose milk.

Hmmm google maps have lost there Satellite view for the entire world from Australian IP addressed, one would assume this is due to APEC and terrorist being A) so disorganized so as to not already have there maps ( because the CBD moves so much b) already be in Australia.

Then again, it could just be that google has lost all satellite image data for the entire world for people from AU IPs.

Google earth works, although one would assume it is cached data.

gah gah GAH HCF has to be the worst website I've had to use in a while, payment only works in IE and the morons don't understand * required means. I've just filled in a form for notification that didn't * all required fields, Possibly because depending on the information depended on what was required, but I'm thinking javascript would get ya round that, seeing as you have destroyed the usability of the rest of your site with it, why not finish the job.

honestly you should be able to charge people for wasting your time with websites that don't work.


GAH

I'm back from Blighty, have given notice at Travelocity, left and am now working for Spiral Arm full time. All rather exciting. I'm also spending far to much time pissing about with twitter and Linked In. I have several things to blog about including new toys and a couple of weddings, I'll also attempt to get my photos sorted and onto flickr.
Sorry no links, I'm sure you can all work them out if you are interested.