So this critique led me to the same authors notes on infoliberalism which led me to his notes on a monetary system which led me to the link to Ripplepay & Ripple Project.

So back to being ‘on the outside’ – The issue of homeless people has really been sticking in my mind lately. Once you are on the streets, and you have no phone, no address, no clean clothes etc and worst of all, once you have it in your mind “this is what I am” and you begin to look invisible to the thousands of people who walk past you each day without a thought (or maybe we do??), how do you get out of it? How do you change your mind about who and what you are, first of all because that is the biggest challenge of them all.

I had an experience on Friday night where I did ‘a bit more’ than usual for a homeless guy and I saw the look in the guys eyes and he reached out to shake my hand. He wasn’t an alcoholic, a drug user or visibly mentally ill. It was raining in Sydney, it was about 10pm and he had no shoes and was probably mid to late 30′s. All I have thought since then is that I didn’t do enough, that I could have done more. I have told myself, it’s a start. I’m sure Mother Theresa even questioned her own efforts at times.

If this kind of thing interests you, be sure to check out these links:

Street Kids in India run their own Bank
54 Ways you can help the homeless
Homeless.org.au and forums.homeless.org.au – A Sydney based home for the homeless run by a 31yo guy from Brisbane, which seems to have been originally self-funded. Some great stuff there.
The Homeless Guy Blog
GrandCentral – Project Care program – A phone number for everyone – I can think of a mini way of doing this in Australia using Oztell’s WebPABX or using Asterisk and using extension numbers with mailboxes where people can give out their phone number and their extension. They can collect their voicemail via a phone or have the messages emailed to them. You would just need one DID.

Obviously, a man living on the street in Australia has an experience far different to a child living on the street of South America, India or Africa. Here’s an NGO organisation in Peru started by a husband and wife in 2001 called BrucePeru – youtube video below. You can volunteer there starting at $395 US per month, including all your meals and accommodation. Prices decline depending on your length of stay.

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Technorati Tags: django, python, ripplepay, ripple project, microfinance, monetary system, lets, homelessness

I spent much of my schoolhood attending a nice, good ol’ Baptist School – we had a “non-contact” rule, or a “2 inch rule” ie: males and females who attended the same school were not supposed to go within 2 inches of each other and here’s the best part. This was in Australia in the late 80′s / early 90′s – we had been using the metric system for some 20-30 years already?

Anyway – here’s why Christianity needs to have a good rethink about it’s current situation.

1. Adopt a Nun – I just don’t get the whole idea of priests, nuns etc retiring? What do they retire from? Serving God? Did Mother Theresa ever retire? What about Saint Francis of Assisi? I’ve never heard of an Indian Yogi or Buddhist Monk retire, though maybe they do and I don’t know it.
2. The Christian version of ‘eternal life’ – let’s just get a ‘reference point’ – a few definitions of ‘eternity’

1. Time without beginning or end; infinite time.
2. infinite time; duration without beginning or end.

This one really gets me and I really understand Lewis Black’s frustration here because a common phrase in Christian rhetoric is “will have eternal life…” – now, I may be one for semantics but considering that eternity is without beginning or end, does it not stand to reason that  I have always existed, am existing and will exist forever more into the ‘future’ ie: that I already have eternal life? The normal Christian dialogue here is that I only get eternal ‘life’ when I ‘die’ and it’s just a matter of which direction I go – up or down, to the nice guy or the bad guy, the hot place or the one with eternal air conditioning. Eternity is simply not eternity if it had a beginning ie: I only came into existence when I entered this physical body.

Now, let’s talk about ‘idolatry‘ – ooh, this one get’s me going. A friend of mine was once advised by his christian lady friend that she did not want to have a certain object in their house that was gifted to him by his Buddhist uncle because it was an idol. Seriously, I just love the little representations that we give atom and neutrons spinning around each other. When does something become an idol? Those familiar with ‘A Course in Miracles’ may remember one of the first lessons – “I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me”. If I were to sit and pray under a tree, is that tree now an idol? If I stand in awe of a tall mountain, is that an idol? And what’s the whole issue with idols anyway? Here’s the lowdown

“I am the LORD your God…You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 2:2-5).

Backup there because I somehow think that either Mr Author of Exodus has made a bit of an error, something got lost in translation or the God that Mr. Author of Exodus is talking about is just not the kind of God I think worth of listening to. Jealousy huh? How many Christians would stand up and say “jealousy is a Godly trait” – hey, I bitch-slapped my woman because I was jealous of her talking to that guy at church.. and the congregation says “amen”, yea right.

Seriously idolators, we put our work first, our ipod first, our relationship’s first, our mum and dad first, our family first, our blog first, our tv first.. so, that little buddhist statue thing is no worse than your little photo of Jesus now, isn’t it? Here’s one to ask your Christian friend who is offended about your little ‘idol’ – “Show me somewhere where God isn’t” 

Another one of my favourites – Harry Potter is the work of the devil. You know, these Christians really belittle their God. Here’s the devil – he makes movies, he writes books, he’s out making fossils – I mean the guy’s really a bit of a happening dude and seems to be the omnipresent / omnipotent one here. Where’s God? Oh, he’s the quiet pacifist, who sits back and let’s the devil do his business.

It doesn’t stop there. The devil was apparently a fallen angel who want’s to usurp God’s position.. what’s that position? I mean, according to the Christian’s about the only useful purpose God has is to heal sick people (through human prayer – because until someone prayed, he just didn’t care right?) and his other purpose is to sit on some cool, golden throne with 24 elders passing judgement on those people who didn’t ‘believe Jesus died on the cross for them’ – nice guy..it kind of reminds me of the film “Baraka” where the baby chicks are getting sorted and debeaked. Now, the Christian version of God is definitely the kind of guy you’d want to be ‘your’ father right?

No wonder we have so many choosing aetheism these days. I see it more as a revolt against Christianity than anything else.

Anyway, on with my debeaking of Christianity – check this out.

The evil of any kind of ‘extra sensory’ powers like clairvoyance, clairsentience, psychics and the like. All of that stuff is from the devil also and yet, these are traits that Jesus displayed – notice any kind of contradiction when you read Mar 8? Ol’ Jesus was out there healing people, asking about reincarnation and predicting his death. His own people would call him the work of the devil, even today.

The Healing of a Blind Man at Bethsaida
22They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

24He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

25Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t go into the village.[a]“
Peter’s Confession of Christ
27Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

28They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

29″But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Christ.[b]“

30Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

Jesus Predicts His Death
31He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

33But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

34Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life[c] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

I specifically like this part: Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him
and they went and told the whole world! They obviously can’t be trusted now, can they.

And here’s where Lewis Black wraps it all up into one well said piece.

Technorati Tags: christianity, rant, philosophy

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I am not one to normally be involved in politics but I think this man has put the peace of the world at stake. U.S foreign and economic policies leave no country out of site. Good ól GWB has dragged Australia (and others) into a war that is illegal at best and at worst.. well who knows what’s to come yet.

Why do our leaders follow Señor GWB into his crazy schemes? Without fully scoping out Johnny Howard’s brain cells on this one, maybe he is like the little child who is afraid to lose the love of his daddy. You know what they call John Howard here? Bonzai (ie: Little Bush). Whilst I am not going to articulate some words of honour for our Australian prime minister – we get the choice of two here – that is.. slightly left and far right and neither candidate or party show any real outstanding credentials, humour, wit or intelligence. We once had a party popup called “One Nation” that’s big claim to fame was a kind of “xenophobian” attitude to migrants but like I said, I don’t really follow Australian politics, frankly because the way I see it here is that nothing much really changes. This is very much unlike the situations of the Ukraine, East Timor, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia etc.. where a change in government can bring a massive change in the day to day situation of the people.

The point is, that Señor George W. has demonstrated, distributed the mass hysteria of destruction, a completely twisted take on “christian values” or maybe he’s just following tradition of these examples of the warped interpretations of men doing things in the name of religion. Hitler also made claim to many a Christian value.

So all complaining aside, I think there is hope for the American people today. I truly wish we had a politician in this country who has the humane, thoughtful intelligence of this man.

Here’s a great interview with the guy

Technorati Tags: politics, us policy

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Well, mostly it’s the tagging capabilities that Amarok offers. Yes, Listen and a few other have musicbrainz support but most of my music is so left of field that it’s not on Musicbrainz and this is where Amarok let’s you use “guess tag from filename” and you can also do this quickly and easily for groups of files. Plus I discovered Amarok has “smart playlist” which works in a similar way that Listen does by selecting songs it thinks you are going to like from your music collection. I am not sure what action it uses to do this but it seems to work pretty good so far.

Now.. why Yakuake over Tilda? Well, there’s a few reasons for this.

1. While running ‘top’ in a Yakuake window, if you drop it hide it and reshow, it causes top to core dump.
2. Try using gnu ‘screen’ for split windows in Tilda and if you hide it and reshow, your (screen) split window is gone.. kaput.
3. There’s no way to speed up the drop down beyond 150ms in Tilda, which makes it not so good when using NX for remote desktop. Yakuake can have a 0s delay, so it’s on or off.

and I still haven’t found a photo management application that I like. The closest is Digikam (another KDE app) because it gives me better access to the underlying file system than most other apps BUT I love the export options in F-spot Photo Manager – including flickr, picasaweb or smugmug. Digikam seems to be the most comprehensive and gives me a great deal more flexibility on what information I want to see and how I want to see it. F-spot is just sexier and sex appeal goes a long way for me. I am mostly using F-spot and a bit of Digikam but occasionally open Picasa (using wine) but I still haven’t found one that really grabs me.

So, I really am having a hot/cold relationship with Gnome apps at the moment. The only native gnome app I really use is Evolution and Nautilus but I still find myself missing the ability to use tabs. Yes, I have installed PCMan File Manager but it’s not so well integrated as Nautilus is with Gnome though I recently saw a post on Lifehacker that showed how to replace Nautilus with PCMan.. when I get time maybe.

Technorati Tags: gnome, kde, yakuake, tilda, amarok, listen, ubuntu, PCman, nautilus

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• To upgrade from ESX 3.0 Starter to Standard or Enterprise, you have to be an ‘Enterprise Partner’
• To become an Enterprise partner, you need to pay US$1000 and ALSO
• You need to have a Vmware Certified Professional as an employee

Did I get that right? They won’t sell me their product unless I get a VMware Certified Employee? That can’t be right.. come to think of it, maybe the licensing team at Ingram Micro who told me this information must think that the client is onselling the license… I will double-check that tomorrow. That half makes sense.

Anyway, to become a VMware certified Professional you can’t just go in and sit the exam after reviewing the some book. You need to do one of their courses @ US$2200, then and only then can you book your exam. It just happens I am booked to do the course next week in Canberra.

Maybe, it would all seem a little less relevant if I had bought some VMware shares when they were released, I read they jumped 75% in 1day while the rest of the market was near-crashing. The problem that occurs when a company goes public is that less importance gets place on the end customer because they now have two customers.. the share holders and the end-users.

Now that VT Processors are in the marketplace, it seems there’s some pretty decent reasons to take XenSource much more seriously. Although, they seem to have jumped into bed with MS of late also.

Technorati Tags: rant, vmware, xensource, xen, virtualization

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