Audience Survey Time

Okay, so it's been about two months since I started my new regime of posting every Wednesday. And I dunno how youse fellas feel about it, but so far, things couldn't be better on my end. Being able to sit down and write a bunch of posts at once, and then feed them out at set intervals has made managing this whole thing about 1000% easier.

Of course, as I said when I first brought up this idea, it does mean that you're going to get more and more "stale" material covered on here (I think I currently have about 2 months worth already in the pipeline). So, the first thing I wanted to do is just check in and make sure that everybody's still okay with this arrangement.

The second thing I wanted to do is float the idea of putting up more posts that just feature stuff I'm into at the moment. It'd probably end up being a lot of links to music, pictures, artwork, websites, software, ASMR videos, podcasts, YouTube political videos, news items, etc; and there wouldn't be much in the way of commentary—just like, "Hey, here's a thing that I like or find interesting."

Now, it really makes no difference to me whether or not I post this stuff. I mean, if I'm posting about something, I obviously already know it exists, so I'm not "getting" anything out of doing so. It's not like my "Wednesday Waffles", where I'm genuinely happy to be able to ask questions and talk about difficult issues with you guys.

So, my question is, is this something that sounds appealing to youse mob, or does it just sound like a lot of noise and clutter that you're not really interested in?

The Assange Affair

16th April 2019

I thought I'd bump my waiting list this week, to tackle something that's actually topical.

When Wikileaks unleashed the "collateral murder" tapes on the internet, everybody I knew was behind Assange. Understandably, most people do not like it when their government tries to hide the shitty things their military gets involved in. And even though there was debate over what sort of punishment Bradley Manning should receive, nobody was talking about going after Assange. After all, he was just ONE of the publishers who collaborated on breaking that story (wasn't it the Guardian and the Washington Post as well?), and we don't lock up people for publishing leaked government secrets in the free-world, do we …?

When "cable-gate" landed, embarrassing politicians and bureaucrats all over the world, the people I knew cheered. When then prime minister Julia Gillard announced that she had directed the attorney general to find a legal way of stripping Assange of his Australian citizenship, those same people booed. They booed loudly enough that Gillard quickly dropped the matter. It was then, though, that I suspected Julian was fucked. The fact that our PM was willing to publicly state her intention to take such drastic action against a bloke who hadn't been charged with a crime, much less been convicted of anything, told me that there was seriously heavy shit going on behind the scenes.

When Swedish authorities announced that Assange was wanted for questioning in regard to issues of sexual misconduct, most of the people I knew leapt to the conclusion that it was a frame-up. I remained sceptical. Assange always struck me as a bit of a narcissistic prick, and from what I've heard, Sweden has some pretty tight laws around sexual misbehaviour. As time went on though, I became suspicious that, even if there was a kernel of truth to the allegations, the Swedish authorities were using it as a means to an end. At this point, I would like to point out that I have heard many many different versions of what Assange is actually accused of doing, but since he's never been formally charged (as far as I know), and has only ever been wanted for questioning, there is no "official" version of events at this time. This is why I scratch my head every time I hear a news report saying that he has been "charged with rape". Am I missing something, or is this just another case of some incorrect information that's been repeated over and over, until everyone, including the vast majority of lazy lazy journos, believe it to be true?

So now, Assange has been booted by the Ecuadorians, arrested by the Poms, and if BradleyChelsea Manning's current incarceration is anything to go by, it seems the Yanks are gearing up to charge him over his involvement with the "collateral murder" leaks. That's right; not the "cable-gate" stuff, not his supposed collusion with big bad Vlad during the 2016 election (of which I am yet to see any proof whatsoever), but the one thing that everybody—EVERYBODY—said they couldn't touch him on.

My, how the world can change in 15 years.

But what I find really confusing, is the reaction I've gotten from people I know over this. I had this conversation with a work colleague the other day:

Them:

I'm glad the bastard's finally getting what he has coming to him.

Me:

Whadda ya mean?

Them:

Well, he's finally going to face justice, isn't he?

Me:

What, for like, the the sex stuff?

Them:

Nah, anybody can see that was a frame job.

Me:

So, d'ya mean, like, for the Wikileaks stuff?

Them:

Nah, that stuff's brilliant. Those cunts deserve medals for that.

Me:

So, you mean, like, for constin' Hillary the election?

Them:

Nah, not really.

Me:

So, then, what for?

Them:

Ah, I dunno. I've never really liked the cunt. Always thought there was somethin' off about him, 'ay? An' now he's gonna have'ta face the music. Y'know, ya make ya bed and then ya have to lie in it, right?

Me:

… ???

By the way, My memory is long enough that I know for a fact, that this particular person did not always think there was something "off" about Assange. But the weird thing is, that as strange as this seems, I've probably had over a dozen conversations like that one in the past few days. Even the people who used to be 100% pro Assange—like he was the second coming of Jesus—now seem to think that he's a dodgy cunt who probably deserves to be behind bars … but when I press them as to why, none of them seem to be able to give me a straight answer.

It's fuckin' weird. And I'm finding it a little bit eerie, to tell you truth. What about the people you know? How have they reacted. And what's your opinion on the subject?

Like Losing An Old Friend

18th March 2019

Emacs is an amazing piece of software which I have been using for well over ten years. If you don't know (and you probably don't) Emacs is an interactive environment for programming in Lisp. Lisp, if you don't know (and you probably don't) is a (family of) programming language(s) which was widely used in the later half of last century, but have been largely superseded by more programmer-friendly languages (like Python), except in certain niche fields.

Do I spend a lot of time working in one of these niche fields? No. Well then, what am I doing using Emacs? I'm glad you asked. You see, the genius of Emacs is in its simplicity. The program generates work-spaces, known as buffers. Each buffer looks like a blank page, but is actually an invisible grid of squares. Each square can hold one character of text. You can then use Lisp code to manipulate this text in any way you see fit. What this means is that any task which can be accomplished using a plain text interface, can be done inside Emacs, provided you know how to write the accompanying program in Lisp.

Emacs is free and open source software, and users who modify existing Lisp programs or write their own, are encouraged to contribute their efforts back to the community. As you might imagine, there are thousands of Lisp programs out there that run in Emacs. This means that Emacs can be used …

• as a basic text editor
• as a computer code editor
• as a word processor
• as a spreadsheet
• as a file manager
• as an email client
• as a web browser
• as a chat client
• as an RSS feed reader
• as a calculator
• as a calendar
• as a day-planner
• as a music player
• as a computer command terminal
• for accessing files on other computers
• for about a thousand other things

Being able to do so much in the one application is pretty neat, especially since most of Emacs' "modes" (ie: Lisp programs) use the same keyboard shortcuts, meaning you can do 99% of your work without ever having to take your hands of the home-keys.

Of course, I don't use Emacs as a web-browser. Given the way websites are coded these days, using a text-based browser just doesn't cut it anymore. Oh, and I don't use it to play music while I work. Clementine is a really pretty looking music player with a tray icon that shows me how far through a track is, and has a quick access menu for all the important features. And I haven't used it as a command terminal since I switched to TMUX a while back. And since I started using ZSH as a command shell, I rarely need to open the calculator mode anymore. As for email, contacts, and calendar, I made the switch to Thunderbird last year. It was handy to be able to render HTML in emails properly, and the calendar and contacts features are really, really nice. I've also recently been using an RSS feed reader with proper HTML rendering capabilities, and can't see myself going back. I've switched to VSCode for writing computer code (as well as blog posts). Not only does it look gorgeous, it has features built into it that would take me months to replicate in Emacs Lisp code, as well as a few flashy graphical features which simply couldn't be implemented in a text-only environment—on top of which, maintaining them and keeping them up to date would probably be close to a full-time job. Oh, and I'm also looking at the possibility of switching to a separate text-based file-manager called Ranger, though I haven't made up my mind on that one just yet.

You see what's happening though, right? Bit by bit, I've been replacing my beloved Emacs with a gaggle of other applications, each of which just happens to do that one specific task a little bit better. At this point, the only thing Emacs is still unchallenged at is as a day-planner/project-manager/to-do-list. If I find a better alternative for doing that stuff … well, that's going to be the final curtain.

I suppose I should be happy that I've found superior alternatives that make my life better and my work easier; but strangely, I'm actually a little bit melancholy about the whole situation. I dunno how to put it exactly, but I guess it's a little bit like getting a new job in a new town and having to leave friends and family behind. Well, maybe not quite like that … but you get my drift, right?

Retarded

19th March 2019

My dad and myself are the only people in my immediate family who aren't either current or former teachers. That should give you some understanding as to why, when we all get together, education is regularly featured in our conversations. Recently, on the blog, we discussed the education system in Finland, and it jogged my memory about something one of my sisters-in-law mentioned when we were all together on Christmas Australia Day.

You see, she's just spent a couple of years teaching in a special education facility. The experience has literally sent her grey.

I think there are some people out there who think of special-needs kids as these plucky little blighters, either in wheelchairs, or who just happen to be a tiny bit thick. Sadly, that's not the case. In reality, a lot of them are complete handfuls. They can be incredibly disobedient; some of them talk uncontrollably; some of them scream uncontrollably; some of them can't keep their hands to themselves; some of them are quite violent; some of them self-harm; some of them regularly piss and shit themselves; some of them play with themselves constantly; and some of them will just spontaneously get up and run away.

Anyway, over the course of the Christmas holidays, her school decided to demolish its special-ed facility and start integrating the kids into regular classes. You see, segregating special-needs kids is apparently discriminatory, and creates a stigma around disability that harms not only them, but the rest of the students as well.

My sis said that, while she knew it was happening, arriving at the school on the first day of the year, and seeing all of the facilities and equipment gone, was almost enough to make her cry.

I can still remember my mother, decades ago, ranting about the education department, when they first started pushing this line of thinking. Every minute that a teacher spends dealing with a kid who's done a runner, or is rolling on the floor screaming, or has stabbed the kid next to them with a pencil, or has hitched up their skirt and started fingering themselves; that's a minute less they have to spend on teaching the rest of the class. Put three or four of these kids into a single classroom, and you can imagine the results. And when you consider the fact that most of these kids struggle to learn anything in a regular classroom environment anyway, it makes you wonder how far removed from reality the people who push this rubbish actually are.

Of course, there's always the possibility that it's just a load of compassionate rhetoric, used to disguise some rather cynical cost-cutting measures. Either way, I struggle to see this as being a net positive for the public education system. I'm open to other opinions though.