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tcpipYes, furniture. Not something that is often discussed here. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya found some lovely chairs that suit our dining table and a beautiful liquour cabinet to adorn our deco apartment. Mmmm... old dark wood. More of that please, it makes me go weak at the knees (along with old Mont Blanc pens, automatic winding Longines watches and neoclassical statuettes). If I wasn't such an egg-head I'm sure I could happily become an antiques dealer.
Have recently been in correspondence with the esteemed Greg Costikyan about using his wargame, Barbarian Kings, for our DragonQuest world (to whichanthanum has been introduced to). Also recently received items (French Glorantha map and Hero Wars Deluxe) from Greg Stafford however he neglected to give a dedication as agreed; it's hard to be an aging fanboy when the object of your fandom is forgetful.
Twice this week have travelled to deepest darkest suburbia (Boronoia) to introduce a very sharp elderly lady (86 years with a exceptional intellect and motor skills) to the joys of Ubuntu. Have consistently received a "mount: function not implemented error" which has been quite frustrating. One downside of the first visit was that I turned off her monitor (a sensible matter of course). Unfortunately with her hearing and vision not being spot on she couldn't hear the POST, the MS-Windows start-up and couldn't tell that her monitor was switched off (I did ask all these questions). A three hours of travel for a 2 second repair task.. Last night wore many hats at the Linux Users of Victoria general meeting as Lider sin Miedo was ill. Almost 60 people in attendence; David Jones from Intel (core architecture and roadmap) and Michael Still from Google (hacking Linksys NSLU2) were the superb speakers.
The Bulletin pulls apart the $100bn of utter nonsense that the Australian government is purchasing for defense over the next ten years. Fromanthony_baxter. Feel rather "in the know" having had two officers complain about some of these upcoming white elephants some time past. The United States HoR passes a bill to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. While we're at it, lederhosen points out the retroactive end of habeas corpus in the United States. baralier follows up with more detail.
This Sunday I'm presenting at the Melbourne Unitarian Church (110 Grey St East Melbourne) at 11am on the topic "The Age of Spiritual Machines", mainly derived from the book of the same title by Ray Kurzweil.
caseopaya found some lovely chairs that suit our dining table and a beautiful liquour cabinet to adorn our deco apartment. Mmmm... old dark wood. More of that please, it makes me go weak at the knees (along with old Mont Blanc pens, automatic winding Longines watches and neoclassical statuettes). If I wasn't such an egg-head I'm sure I could happily become an antiques dealer.Have recently been in correspondence with the esteemed Greg Costikyan about using his wargame, Barbarian Kings, for our DragonQuest world (to which
anthanum has been introduced to). Also recently received items (French Glorantha map and Hero Wars Deluxe) from Greg Stafford however he neglected to give a dedication as agreed; it's hard to be an aging fanboy when the object of your fandom is forgetful.Twice this week have travelled to deepest darkest suburbia (Boronoia) to introduce a very sharp elderly lady (86 years with a exceptional intellect and motor skills) to the joys of Ubuntu. Have consistently received a "mount: function not implemented error" which has been quite frustrating. One downside of the first visit was that I turned off her monitor (a sensible matter of course). Unfortunately with her hearing and vision not being spot on she couldn't hear the POST, the MS-Windows start-up and couldn't tell that her monitor was switched off (I did ask all these questions). A three hours of travel for a 2 second repair task.. Last night wore many hats at the Linux Users of Victoria general meeting as Lider sin Miedo was ill. Almost 60 people in attendence; David Jones from Intel (core architecture and roadmap) and Michael Still from Google (hacking Linksys NSLU2) were the superb speakers.
The Bulletin pulls apart the $100bn of utter nonsense that the Australian government is purchasing for defense over the next ten years. From
anthony_baxter. Feel rather "in the know" having had two officers complain about some of these upcoming white elephants some time past. The United States HoR passes a bill to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. While we're at it, lederhosen points out the retroactive end of habeas corpus in the United States. baralier follows up with more detail.This Sunday I'm presenting at the Melbourne Unitarian Church (110 Grey St East Melbourne) at 11am on the topic "The Age of Spiritual Machines", mainly derived from the book of the same title by Ray Kurzweil.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 03:36 pm (UTC)I'm very curious to know which elements in particular they regarded as white elephants. Haven't researched a much about this, but I've definitely got the feeling the Abrams are ridiculous & informed (from appearances) opinions JSF are remarkably split... I've seen major criticisms of the JSF on the grounds of range, but since then the supposed range on wikipedia has been upgraded by ~1000km (?!?!?)... JSF is the one that concerns me most, personally. Australia really seems to need an independant long-range fighter/bomber, which seems to be something most other 'first world' nations don't really need.
Kinda funny, on the one hand I can't stand the entire military thing - we really shouldn't need one - on the other hand... as T-Bird put it, "This is the really real world" - hence it's idiotic to try and ignore fundamental things like defense, no matter how peaceful our nation might be within its own borders.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 10:58 pm (UTC)Yeah, the Abrams received top billing for stupid purchases. They are utterly useless in providing any sort of defense whatsoever in Australia. It was pointed out however (and the article confirms) they would be very useful in say... the MidEast.
I think you're absolutely spot-on with the JSF.
You'll be pleased to know that from my (somewhat limited experience) there is quite a lot of Australian soldiers of all levels who have utter contempt for warmongers.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-07 04:29 am (UTC)Yah, that is reassuring - my very limited experience with Aussie soldiers is only with them out partying, and they tended to party hard but not party stupid (aka a football player). I think that as a nation, we really went down the right path for our circumstances when we went with a smaller professional army.
Nelson seems to have more of a clue than Hill did, and I'm all for maintaining/increasing interoperability with the Yanks, but let them supply the predominantly grunt classical land-forces army and let us provide supplimentary specialists/special-forces (good real-world training, morality issues aside). Although the yanks seem to be realising that they need a higher proportion of specialists to cannon-fodder, which is one reassuring element to Iraq/Afghanistan/Wherever-they-invade-next.
In some ways I've got a degree of trepidation on behalf of our armed forces, because I think the public has strong inclinations towards heading down the "they're so special we should never get them dirty by using them" path, although thankfully we still seem to have popular support for the relatively pure peacekeeping style missions of Timor, the Solomons and (god forbid) potentially Papua New Guinea. The fact the public remembers the Vietnam War and doesn't remember things like the Malayan "Emergency" (*cough* war) is also concerning.
That said, it really is one field where it's very hard for someone without any form of prior involvement to judge the situation - dunno if you've noticed, but I tend to quite deliberately stay away from specific commentary on composition of the army etc...
no subject
Date: 2006-10-07 05:09 am (UTC)The other advantage is that Australia, largely, doesn't have a tradition of an ingrained officer class derived from royal families. Such people tend to have an attitude that it's OK to lead from the rear and to lose foot soldiers for a "higher purpose".