tcpip | Summer Solstice, New Zealand, Chronic Wounds, Red Friday, Rogue, KLF!

Summer solstice usually is my opportunity to reflect and report on the past year. Except my activities this year haven't really been that exciting. I worked, I earned some money and I did a bit of study and I wrote numerous papers for various publications and gave several presentations. I did a fair bit of gaming, and travelled to New Zealand and Western Australia. Actually come to think of it I did do a fair bit this year. *shrug* I'm just so busy with current events that I feel like I'm psychologically missing the traditional "end of year" festivities. I also suspect that one of the reasons I'm feeling a little frustrated with 2005 is that there were several major projects which I'm not going to finish in time simply because I spent so many months doing business. Damn work, it's a sink eating up valuable research and publication time! Vivre sans temps mort!

Anyway,

caseopaya and I are all booked for a little holiday in New Zealand. Most of our time we'll be in Dunedin where I'll be attending Linux Conf, which comes with a hefty program.

caseopaya gets to see the sights, the lucky girl.

Friends will know that I have a recurring wound on my feet for some time. Having been twice given a course of antibiotics on the assumption that it was a serious bacterial infection, and think that a recent recurrence was suggesting something as serious as a chronic wound, it turns out (according to the latest medical assessment) that it's nothing more exciting than plain old-fashioned Athlete's Foot. Boring!

Having had a break last month, time for a double issue of Red Friday, including a feature article aimed for those interested in changing to Linux ("Adopting a Penguin") and my recently published article on IT development in East Timor ('Wrestling the Crocodile'). For a tutorial there is and part 1 of an advanced article for network administrators on configuring a secure router "Cisco Router Security: Principles and Practise".

Rogue has gotten himself into trouble again. Having lost a toe to Monte when he was little, then climbing through a 9ft wire fence to end up face to face with a cat, he's also managed to get himself caught in the knothole of a tree, climb a tree further than his capacity to get down, drink too much champagne causing a rather inelegant fall from a height, most recently, he's also managed to sprain his foot after scampering underneath a lit oven. He's been hobbling around quietly for the past couple of days, but he seems better now. 'Trouble' be thy name, rodent.

Season's greetings to you all, fine friends. I am honoured to be sharing time with you all and I thank you all for your contributions and thoughts. You have are outstanding bunch of people.

Sheer brilliance (thanks to

artbroken) comes in the form of What we need is Bill Drummond to go fuckiing semi-automatic Commando on these dutch trancecracker pussies. - one of the funniest and insightful pieces of pop-culture work I've seen for years.