Anniversary Service, Firefox, Workload Issues, Land Tax

[tcpip]

Gave the 152nd Anniversary Service at the Melbourne Unitarian Church yesterday. An extremely good turnout, over 80 people, with the Brigidine nun, Sister Brigid Arthur giving an address on the human face of asylum seekers. As the above link indicates, I made sure the readings and words were in a common theme. After lunch Actors for Refugees provided a troubling performance based on real interviews and experiences ("Something to Declare". Very pleased to discover that the group was actually co-founded with an old friend of mine, Kate Atkinson (Karen in SeaChange).

On Friday I attended the Melbourne launch party of Firefox which was a pleasant gathering of hackers at the Vault Bar. Is there anyone out their in el-jay land who reads this who is still using Internet Explorer? If so, why?

My workload last week, and this upcoming week, is going into overload. I now have another major website to develop, including lots of Flash, whistles and bells etc, for James Nicholson, who is an extremely competent hair stylist who won the Apprentice of the Year award in 1995, worked for Chrissie Parrot, has had his worked splashed on every major glossy in Australia and spend some time working in Paris and Tokyo.

With four major paying webdesign clients and my usual networking tasks, I'm finding time management difficult - although I have managed however to squeeze in almost daily modifications to my PhD in the quest to reduce it from 160,000 words to 95,000. Damn, I have to include footnotes in the word count. Grrrr.

One thing that I must admit is time consuming is my weekly ICT newsletter, Red Friday. The latest issue has a feature article on how to be kind to people who work in technical support, along with the second article in a series on networking and the first in a series on on maths for computer programming

I've started little nation in Jennifer Government/Nation States, just to see how the game engine works. It seems pretty limited, but unlike many, I've been trying to play the game sensibly. On other gaming related news, Ten Thousand Islands is still running surprisingly well - play be email normally has a reputation for falling apart - and my favourite old gaming magazine Different Worlds has returned - after almost twenty years!

The Age is wrong on land tax. To claim that "Soaring land tax costs jobs, investment" is utterly false. Land tax is the only tax which encourages investment in productive activity rather than speculation. Meanwhile in Australian politics, the Labor Party has lost the plot</>, as
progressive policies continue to be dumped as Labor attempts to appeal to "aspirational voters", a strategy which will effectively destroy the very existence of the Party. Meanwhile, Family First now wants
biblical creation stories taught alongside evolution.

Comments

[catbiscuit.livejournal.com]

Nationstates is nice.. if a little limited. I was serious about mine too.. just discovered it deleted as I haven't played with it in months, but I might start another one. I enjoyed the constant little decisions - a few of them were somewhat thought-provoking.

I do like the Unitarians.

James.. I've forgotten the name of the shop he worked at, but is that James from Perth? If so, good to hear he's doing so well with his career.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the constant little decisions - a few of them were somewhat thought-provoking.

It's not bad. I wouldn't mind a closer look at the engine that drives it.

I do like the Unitarians.

We're a nice bunch of heretics ;-)

If so, good to hear he's doing so well with his career.

Yep, it's that James.... He's working at Oxey & Bushey on Grey Street.

[icepick666.livejournal.com]

labor really need to reduce the voting power of the unions too...ideally to zero.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

labor really need to reduce the voting power of the unions too...ideally to zero.

The Union/Membership voting ratio for determing elected representatives is 30/70.

The Union/Membership contribution to Party income is 23/1

What we have is Labor MPs who don't have much affiliation to the union movement, whereas almost all the Party's money comes from the union movement.

So perhaps increasing the voting power to 100% is a viable alternative.

[shocko.livejournal.com]

Is there anyone out their in el-jay land who reads this who is still using Internet Explorer?

Not any more, I bloody don't. Fucking spyware/malware/scumware magnet, it is.

And thank God (moo hoo hah hah) that education remains in the hands of the states - it means that Family First's push to include tendetious gibberish and fairy tales in a science syllabus will remain still-born.

Truly amazing, isn't it? A party barely 2% of the population voted for have the gall to demand that the children of the other 98% have their education compromised with this twaddle for the sake of their own demented fear of death and the dark.

But then I think that nincompoop religious fundamentalists of ANY stripe are primitive vermin that should be ground into slurry for my azaleas, so don't mind me.

Where's an AC130 gunship when we really need one?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

And thank God (moo hoo hah hah) that education remains in the hands of the states - it means that Family First's push to include tendetious gibberish and fairy tales in a science syllabus will remain still-born.

Heh. They probably haven't realized that yet.

However, this sort of nonsense is going to cost all of us in the long run. Can you imagine how far behind Australia's science and economy would fall if our education system was run by Family First? :/

[unsworn-nomore.livejournal.com]

Different Worlds! That takes me back.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ummm... Wouldn't have any back issues lying around? I'm still missing a couple..

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I <3 Firefox :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You should with a user name like yours!

[drjon.livejournal.com]

> On Friday I attended the Melbourne launch party of Firefox...

How does one get in the loop for things like this?

> I've started little nation in Jennifer Government/Nation States...

If'n ye're interested, the MSFC is doing Jennifer Government for its next Bookclub, late January...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

How does one get in the loop for things like this?

http://www.2600.org.au/

the MSFC is doing Jennifer Government for its next Bookclub, late January...

Hmmm... That would require me getting into science fiction again....

[greg.livejournal.com]

Lots of things I need to catch up on when I land! But for now, I remember that you had offered web hosting, I was wondering whether I might be able to contract you to colo a machine in the new year?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Let me check up on colo's for you... I don't think it will be a problem..

Sorry I didn't get back to you about Aust's privacy laws either... Email me again, and with a little more detail, because it varies a great deal from state to state and content.. Poor ol' Oz doesn't have anything sensible like a Bill of Rights :/

[greg.livejournal.com]

How do I get on the mailing list for red friday?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Send me an email to lev _ lafayette AT speedymail DOT org ;-)

[angel80.livejournal.com]

I have always been a Netscape user. Was puzzled why you didn't mention it as an alternative to IE. Anyway I switched to Firefox and then discovered it was built from Netscape. That's fine, because recent versions of Netscape are full of commercial crap.

One thing that bugs me though. When I installed Firefox, it asked me if I wanted to keep my Netscape bookmarks. I said yes which was handy for the personal ones, but I've deleted all the built-in ones and don't know how to get hold of Firefox's built-in ones.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's fine, because recent versions of Netscape are full of commercial crap.

That's why... Firefox is the open source version of Netscape. It's done pretty well I reckon ;-)

I said yes which was handy for the personal ones, but I've deleted all the built-in ones and don't know how to get hold of Firefox's built-in ones.

The easiest way to do this would be to backup your bookmarks (bookmarks - manage - export), then reinstall the 'fox...

[lardarsegreg.livejournal.com]

The only problem with Firefox is that there is one site that I use a lot which has a Java top frame, and it always seems to shit itself whenever I go there...

Before you've asked, yes, I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Java run-time stuff (the Sun version, not the shitty M$ version), but it still hasn't helped.

It's the one thing that I have to use IE for now, after deciding that I won't touch SP2 with a bargepole...

BTW, to get your newsletter, we e-mail the address you mentioned in an earlier comment, yes?

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

THe site you go to needs to get its shit together.

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

I had a NationStates nation from 21 Nov 2002 (? year of launch), until quite recently when I got busy at home and forgot to check it for a few weeks.
The population of Zen was somewhere around 3.7 billion when my 'little' nation died of neglect.

They introduced player designed 'dillemas' a few months back, which was a small improvement, but the UN forum had gotten fairly pointless for a game, with people trying to either troll or replicate every UN Charter/Declaration/Treaty on record (which in some ways could also be considered a troll).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The population of Zen was somewhere around 3.7 billion when my 'little' nation died of neglect.

That's quite some nation!

My understanding is that population growth is an indication of how powerful one's nation is. I'm pretty happy with how mine is going - from 5 million to 12 under a week.

The other thing I'm pleased with is that my economy hasn't fallen apart. The worst offendors economically tend to be the well-meaning socialist states... with punitive taxes.

[ktwhoopi.livejournal.com]

i still use explorer!

can i delete it if i get firefox?? you'll have to teach me how to swap over!

[cptjohnc.livejournal.com]

Don't delete -- there are still some occasional sites that do not support Mozilla in my experience. Perhaps nothing you'd want... but still

[nvcarnie.livejournal.com]

I still use IE, out of a lack of knowledge about anything else. =P

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Mozilla is easier to use than IE, includes more features and is better for security.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

[aurickandrien.livejournal.com]

There's a saying where I come from: If your main platform is a 486 with a 485 meg Hard Drive and 21 megs of RAM running win95, and the only thing your browser does wrong on occassion is crash when you're using Google, don't fix it.

Maybe when I upgrade to a new platform, where I actually have room for mucking around installing and uninstalling software, I'll try something different.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I agree with the sentiments entirely. You must remember, not only have I worked in nation-states where what you're describing is advanced technology, I'm also old enough to consider the above new technology.

If that is your system, your best bet is Firefox. Small, fast, secure and stable. If something crashes when you're using Google that's a serious problem. :/

Actually, if that's you're system, I'd be using something that was appropriate for the technology. Like
Mosiac. ;-)

Mind you, I still test all my websites on Lynx, just to make sure...

Installing Firefox takes less than 2 minutes. There's nothing complicated about it.

[mystic-one.livejournal.com]

'red friday' - i love it :)

Finally got 5 minutes to read up on a few journals and took a wander to your red friday page, it's currently doing the rounds of my own IT pals here in WA. You most definately have a captivating way with words.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Cool! More subscribers the better... Tell them to sign up if they like...

And thanks for the kind words...