Halloween is too American.
Halloween is un-Christian.
Halloween is Pagan and evil.
Righty oh then. Halloween is such a nonsensical piece of useless American ephemera is it. Like many other useless American things that we hate in our world: mobile phone, traffic lights, air conditioning (not invented by Jesus actually but if your unit was made in South America, it may have been assembled by Jesus) Lets not forget carbon dating, camera film, chocolate chip biscuits, condensed milk, suspension bridges, potato chips, the Big Mac. The USA has contributed more than enough things to current western societies that We should allow them some lenience on this one, because its IRISH!!
The Harvest Festival Samhain "Sow en" apparently originated from northern Ireland and England (Wales and Scotland weren't a thing) by the Druids (Stone Henge, the third of the henges, it came after straw henge and wood henge) Built by the Welsh and was to celebrate the end of the growing season and the start of winter.
They believed that the dead could cross into the world of the living at this time (John Edward would've been out of a job) so they would dress as ghosts etc in case they bumped into a real one so then they'd go unnoticed. Not a terribly dumb plan, it seems practical if you actually believed that.
"Oh we don't believe in ghosts and witches in Christianity" Im sure all the Wiccans reading would annoy you if they said "oh we don't believe in Christians. And ghosts, are you sure? The notion of people who have died and come back to walk among the living is completely foreign to Christianity? I'm no theology major but I distinctly remember quite a significant segment of the book being about a person being killed and them coming back and walking around with people for 40 days. He even told people what to do. he told people to not be afraid.
Halloween was an Samhain was an ingrained celebration by the time Pope Gregory I? (the one with the really big hat) made November 1st All Saints Day and 2nd All Souls Day. Hallowed days. The day before henceforth becomes All Hallows Eve and if you're good at rearranging letters (and ditching a few) you can get Halloween.
Pagan and evil? Pagan is a term for polytheistic belief systems by Christians. Non theists are also called heathens but often go on to prove things with science but I digress. Hinduism, Ghandi was clearly a devil worshipper right, with all his 'be nice to people and don't solve problems with violence'? Ancient Greeks were polytheistic and its not like they did anything useful but I wonder if I could find out the circumference of that circle? Why does the level of the water go up in the bath when a person gets in? It means worshipping more than one God but we've seemingly steered or had it steered and I wont ask "by whom?" toward the thinking that "Pagans" wear goat skulls and sacrifice babies. There are probably less polytheists less in the world as there are, at least according to census data, less theists in the world of all varieties.
So its too American? Actually its Irish and nobody's complaining about St Patrick's Day and if it were American, so what? tons of awesome stuff has come from America, like Sham-Wow, remember that?
It's Un-Christian? Well it was until a Catholic Pope decided to add two "Hallowed" days right after it like many other northern hemisphere festivals that christianity has "borrowed" for its own purposes *coughChristmas*. Plus the main thing that people consider un-Christian (people who were dead coming back to life) is clearly depicted in the Bible (I have read one before, its a long boring story and nobody likes snakes, which is sad if you're a snake). So its as un-Christian as the resurrection of Jesus?
It's Pagan and Evil? well Pagan refers to any religion that believes there is more than one God. There are still a few of those around. Have you ever met people hanging Crystals and dancing in front of trees smiling and being all nice? Totally and evil Pagan. The Hindu doctor who sewed my face back together at uni..Yeah he'd only do that if I promised to eat a kitten.
I get that people don't like it. Maybe they'll be disturbed by kids knocking on the door during their favourite tv show. Maybe they are against the commercialisation of someone's traditional religious event. So start a campaign to remember the "true meaning" of Halloween like you do for Christmas and Easter. Maybe you're against the sexualisation of young people in costumes as some look like they belong in the bedroom of adults instead of being worn o their kids, go an crusade to make all costumes floor length. Dress up as a dalek. I just cant stand the bullshit arguments against it. "It's not Australian", well Santa still wears his friggin long coat, long pants and winter hat when its 40 degrees here so deal with it. If you don't like Halloween just say "I don't like giving away lollies".
Yes I'm a non theist and I also believe wholeheartedly that everyone, including myself is a hypocrite and Halloween is a great demonstration of that hypocrisy. I have no problem with your religion reader, provided you don't use the fact it's yours to diminish someone else's, at that point I'll go to town.
I.M
Tuesday, 31 October 2017
Friday, 27 October 2017
Technologically Me
Jeff Biscuits, named after the famous Roman Emperor Jeffryus Buscuitus, is my 2006 Mac Mini. Now during my last "low" period in Adelaide I resorted to retail therapy on a budget. I bought a mac mini for $10 with the idea to run Linux on it to learn a little more for next year. My DOS command line skills are probably rusty but ok, Unix on the other hand is non existent. When the G4 mini I bought turned out (at this stage to not be working) I kept an eye out for a cheap mini (under $100). When I got home I noticed an ad that was a few weeks old for an Intel based mini for $90 that had been for sale for a few weeks. I called and offered $40 and it was accepted. Dad lovingly collected Jeff, packed him and sent him up on the bus.
I knew it was working but I wanted more than the 60gb of hard drive. A kind chap had given me two salvaged laptop drives for free 320gb apiece (one was a Seagate Barracuda). I set to installing one and after some swearing and complaining about not having Foxconn fingers I got it back together.
I booted the mac knowing that I'd have to root around to find the Snow Leopard DVD to install on it when I noticed that windows 10 was trying to boot. This got me thinking about whether this could be the answer to my windows problem.
I have been running a virtualised machine on my MacBook but am a bit sick of losing half my SSD for it. I use it for work (normally twice a year) to write reports and keep it current because We have changed software a few times already and each time we've changed it is Windows only until I cause a fuss. So I'd been thinking about a dedicated Windows machine. Sure I could've bought a Dell Optilex (I think thats the name) off Gumtree and be where I am now, but where's the fun in that. Plus I think the mini is better to look at than the Dell and I dare say probably better made (I mean it is a Dell).
I discovered this video from the 8-Bit Guy (formerly the iBook Guy) and thought about upping the memory in the mini to its max 2GB. I hit ebay and bought 2GB for $8 (posted) it arrived in many pieces because the seller had taped the two dimms together and stuck them in an envelope. Again a kind and anonymous person found two replacement dimms from scrapped notebooks and I was in biz again.
That is until I saw this and this, I put two and two together, actually got four and hit ebay for a Core 2 Duo CPU for Jeff. After 20 minutes I located Gary in NSW who had a stack of laptop CPUs for sale on Gumtree, among them were two Intel T7200s. I bought the pair for $3 plus $1.44 postage.
Now up to this point my Mac Mini 1.66ghz with 1gb of ram and 320gb hard drive was already running Windows 10 at work, slowly but reliably (there is a Realtek sound driver I need to find). I mean Jeff did everything I wanted, email was working, I could upload homework to my Google Drive and send out messages via Remind. I even installed Office 2016 (which requires 2gb of memory) and worked.
Tonight was a quest to see if I could not only, not break Jeff but also to improve Jeff to be a reliable workhorse again and free my MacBook's SSD from it's Windows partition. Success ensued the mismatched Hynix and Samsung dimms work fine, the CPU makes booting much more reasonable and the mini went back together well. Jeff's new specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz 2GB memory and 320GB hard drive. Via an boot assistant called REfit It boots to windows in 1:18sec (not bad for an obsolete machine) and Mac OS in 20.2sec from the bot selector.
I have chosen to keep a tiny MacOS partition as: 1. Windows cant recognise the Mac partition of the drive to delete it. 2. I have just bought a ridiculously cheap Time Capsule for a mini network at work and Apple's Airport Utility is better for configuring, plus Time Machine will backup all of the Hard Disk including the 300GB Windows Partition.
So there you have it, a post about something nerdy, positive, ambitious and successful.
BTW I can now update the firmware in OS X to take 3GB of memory which will make it even faster if I can track down some DDR2 667 laptop ram.
Jeff Biscuits costs.
Purchase $40
Memory $8
Hard Drives $0
CPU $4.44
Thermal Paste $4.95
Total Cost $57.39 not bad for a recycling job.
I.M
I knew it was working but I wanted more than the 60gb of hard drive. A kind chap had given me two salvaged laptop drives for free 320gb apiece (one was a Seagate Barracuda). I set to installing one and after some swearing and complaining about not having Foxconn fingers I got it back together.
I booted the mac knowing that I'd have to root around to find the Snow Leopard DVD to install on it when I noticed that windows 10 was trying to boot. This got me thinking about whether this could be the answer to my windows problem.
I have been running a virtualised machine on my MacBook but am a bit sick of losing half my SSD for it. I use it for work (normally twice a year) to write reports and keep it current because We have changed software a few times already and each time we've changed it is Windows only until I cause a fuss. So I'd been thinking about a dedicated Windows machine. Sure I could've bought a Dell Optilex (I think thats the name) off Gumtree and be where I am now, but where's the fun in that. Plus I think the mini is better to look at than the Dell and I dare say probably better made (I mean it is a Dell).
I discovered this video from the 8-Bit Guy (formerly the iBook Guy) and thought about upping the memory in the mini to its max 2GB. I hit ebay and bought 2GB for $8 (posted) it arrived in many pieces because the seller had taped the two dimms together and stuck them in an envelope. Again a kind and anonymous person found two replacement dimms from scrapped notebooks and I was in biz again.
That is until I saw this and this, I put two and two together, actually got four and hit ebay for a Core 2 Duo CPU for Jeff. After 20 minutes I located Gary in NSW who had a stack of laptop CPUs for sale on Gumtree, among them were two Intel T7200s. I bought the pair for $3 plus $1.44 postage.
Now up to this point my Mac Mini 1.66ghz with 1gb of ram and 320gb hard drive was already running Windows 10 at work, slowly but reliably (there is a Realtek sound driver I need to find). I mean Jeff did everything I wanted, email was working, I could upload homework to my Google Drive and send out messages via Remind. I even installed Office 2016 (which requires 2gb of memory) and worked.
Tonight was a quest to see if I could not only, not break Jeff but also to improve Jeff to be a reliable workhorse again and free my MacBook's SSD from it's Windows partition. Success ensued the mismatched Hynix and Samsung dimms work fine, the CPU makes booting much more reasonable and the mini went back together well. Jeff's new specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz 2GB memory and 320GB hard drive. Via an boot assistant called REfit It boots to windows in 1:18sec (not bad for an obsolete machine) and Mac OS in 20.2sec from the bot selector.
I have chosen to keep a tiny MacOS partition as: 1. Windows cant recognise the Mac partition of the drive to delete it. 2. I have just bought a ridiculously cheap Time Capsule for a mini network at work and Apple's Airport Utility is better for configuring, plus Time Machine will backup all of the Hard Disk including the 300GB Windows Partition.
So there you have it, a post about something nerdy, positive, ambitious and successful.
BTW I can now update the firmware in OS X to take 3GB of memory which will make it even faster if I can track down some DDR2 667 laptop ram.
Jeff Biscuits costs.
Purchase $40
Memory $8
Hard Drives $0
CPU $4.44
Thermal Paste $4.95
Total Cost $57.39 not bad for a recycling job.
I.M
Monday, 23 October 2017
Narratable Me
This blog isn't narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker in my head but I'd love to know how she managed to make money from writing about the mundane. I'm happy to not make money but maybe accept donations of sneakers and technology or car parts would be handy. Handy as in helpful and not the german for mobile phone 'mein handy'.
When did we decide that suits were the thing to do so men can look professional? if your plumber came wearing a suit you may think he isn't going to do a good job. When I wear a suit I spend the day trying to fix the collar and try not to look like I'm entering an early guilty plea. I'd assume tailoring is essential but not many people have the physique to fill out suits properly. Does this cover my ankles, not touch the floor cover, my wrists but not my hands and hold onto my waist? Sold.
Suits are find if you're sitting down but you never go into a dress shop and see people miming tying a shoelace do you? They say "go for a walk. How does that feel?" To be honest it feels like I'm about to spend a large sum of money on cloths that aren't comfortable, make me look like I wasn't in the room when they were sized and will evidently look like a knob when I tie my shoelaces in.
Who decided? There was a meeting. All the business owners were there, Mr Cola, Dr Pepper and Colonel Sanders. At some point someone said, "our working men just look too darn comfortable. Surely we can make them feel awkward somehow without making them suspicious". After some deliberation they all came to the conclusion of when most boys feel awkward, school formals. And thats how the suit was made into the uniform of the professional.
My workplace has a corporate casual approach. I had to google it. Don't dress like a CEO, well you can but not one of a wealthy company. Well you can but not one of the really, really rich ones, because they wear jeans and thats just too casual. What is the corporate? where is the casual? I honestly don't understand and haven't for a long time while being able o dress in an appropriate manner. I can dress like a door to door insurance salesperson but not the CEO of a fortune 500 company? Which screams confidence and success, cheap and ill fitting Target polyester doesn't for me. Maybe I just have too expensive a taste in fashion (evident and laughable of you've ever met me). I believe its suit; sans tie and jacket (unless its cold and it becomes shirt, pants, shoes and pneumonia.
Why doesn't the flake come in a plastic tray to catch all the broken bits? Or why doesn't it come in smaller chunks to: 1. Prevent unnecessary breakage and 2. be more ice cream friendly. Did you ever just eat the flake as a kid? My dad never ate his flake. He was always very good about it. When the Twirl came out it should've been called Flake 2.0 because they just made the flake less messy to eat. Have you ever seen someone who can eat a flake without making a mess? I have, and its the same person who can eat a crumbly pie sans mess as well. Its unnerving to meet people who make you feel like you eat barnyard style.
Off for a flake (fetching the dustpan first)
I.M
Dear Cadbury please sponsor my blog with Twirl bars and bring back the Take 5.
Thank you
I.M
When did we decide that suits were the thing to do so men can look professional? if your plumber came wearing a suit you may think he isn't going to do a good job. When I wear a suit I spend the day trying to fix the collar and try not to look like I'm entering an early guilty plea. I'd assume tailoring is essential but not many people have the physique to fill out suits properly. Does this cover my ankles, not touch the floor cover, my wrists but not my hands and hold onto my waist? Sold.
Suits are find if you're sitting down but you never go into a dress shop and see people miming tying a shoelace do you? They say "go for a walk. How does that feel?" To be honest it feels like I'm about to spend a large sum of money on cloths that aren't comfortable, make me look like I wasn't in the room when they were sized and will evidently look like a knob when I tie my shoelaces in.
Who decided? There was a meeting. All the business owners were there, Mr Cola, Dr Pepper and Colonel Sanders. At some point someone said, "our working men just look too darn comfortable. Surely we can make them feel awkward somehow without making them suspicious". After some deliberation they all came to the conclusion of when most boys feel awkward, school formals. And thats how the suit was made into the uniform of the professional.
My workplace has a corporate casual approach. I had to google it. Don't dress like a CEO, well you can but not one of a wealthy company. Well you can but not one of the really, really rich ones, because they wear jeans and thats just too casual. What is the corporate? where is the casual? I honestly don't understand and haven't for a long time while being able o dress in an appropriate manner. I can dress like a door to door insurance salesperson but not the CEO of a fortune 500 company? Which screams confidence and success, cheap and ill fitting Target polyester doesn't for me. Maybe I just have too expensive a taste in fashion (evident and laughable of you've ever met me). I believe its suit; sans tie and jacket (unless its cold and it becomes shirt, pants, shoes and pneumonia.
Why doesn't the flake come in a plastic tray to catch all the broken bits? Or why doesn't it come in smaller chunks to: 1. Prevent unnecessary breakage and 2. be more ice cream friendly. Did you ever just eat the flake as a kid? My dad never ate his flake. He was always very good about it. When the Twirl came out it should've been called Flake 2.0 because they just made the flake less messy to eat. Have you ever seen someone who can eat a flake without making a mess? I have, and its the same person who can eat a crumbly pie sans mess as well. Its unnerving to meet people who make you feel like you eat barnyard style.
Off for a flake (fetching the dustpan first)
I.M
Dear Cadbury please sponsor my blog with Twirl bars and bring back the Take 5.
Thank you
I.M
Sunday, 22 October 2017
Unrateable Me
In the year of 2017 there was a blog which did not yet reach its former lofty heights of reaching more than 55 people, this is that blog. My quest is to gain readership and then slowly filter crap into your minds via clever suggestion and mention of monkeys.
When being a standup was not going to become a reality something in my head said, "yeah, schoolteacher man! Be a teacher captive audience to try jokes on". Based on 13 years of classroom experience I shall now use my best received jokes: penis.......poo.........Uranus........(student) have you got the sheet and I'm not doing a South American accent. There you go, proof of why I'm not a comic.
Being that the laptop is down to 2% I thought I should give a big shout to the wonderful people from today. The Science Alive crew and all who came and helped out and made the day memorable, Lee, Mat, Jason. Also a big thank you to my wife, whom I abandoned today to go play robots.
Now for some sleep.
I.M
When being a standup was not going to become a reality something in my head said, "yeah, schoolteacher man! Be a teacher captive audience to try jokes on". Based on 13 years of classroom experience I shall now use my best received jokes: penis.......poo.........Uranus........(student) have you got the sheet and I'm not doing a South American accent. There you go, proof of why I'm not a comic.
Being that the laptop is down to 2% I thought I should give a big shout to the wonderful people from today. The Science Alive crew and all who came and helped out and made the day memorable, Lee, Mat, Jason. Also a big thank you to my wife, whom I abandoned today to go play robots.
Now for some sleep.
I.M
Sunday, 15 October 2017
Moody Me
There a post not beginning with "I".
I have been to see a counsellor, is it counsellor or councillor? Sorry had to go and take the nose vacuum off the stove as it was about to boil over. Someone please make voice recognition software so that my hands don't have to keep up with my brain!
Anyway it was the one that doesn't care about property values (unless they are deeply concerned that they bought a house just before the GFC like I did) and she has put me onto a service called "Moodgym" you can google it if you'd like, no Im not giving my permission, simply stating the fact.
The online assessments of my mood started out quite well but as I suspect they were beginning to trend toward aspects of my personality which I am not really concerned with; they became irrelevant in a short time. Not totally but just to one side or another on certain issues: an example, imagine a Likert Scale (take that Kari Dunn Buron) I sincerely hope you've been threatened with legal action for copyright of a tool in the public domain like I was, but I digress..
So an attitude scale with statements and some Agree to Disagree options.
Statement: If I do not have nice things I will consider myself a failure... Well I had to disagree but if the statement were "I am undeserving of nice things" or "I feel guilty for having nice things" then I'd have wholeheartedly agreed. So it'll be interesting to see how this thing works out. I was asked to write down my "stressors" but Im not very good with lists and I tend to lose them although the note for the benchtop dimensions in the kitchen is still synched to my phone (three generations later).
Maybe next test I'll need to write the alternative questions and then I can take the "anti-test"?
This stream of garbage has been inspired by Eddie Izzard. His voice is currently providing narration in my head.
Oh that was the other thing. Voices in heads.
I don't "hear voices" as in James Mason (or Eddie Izzard doing an impersonation of him) isn't audibly telling me to "go an buy all the finger buns at the bakery". But I do have an internal voice (some may say soul, spirit, conscience but I don't use such terms as I feel they may convince people that I believe in things which aren't) maybe internal narration is better or internal narration of low resonance thought (sounds like a thing). Anyway; at particularly low points in the year which strike at times of "stress" I do have this non auditory internal narration (some might say thought) which doesn't say to do things or people would be better off if..... but that I am the worst person in the world. If you read back to the end of 2015 you will find a very similar thread. I know they are irrational and non factual but there they are. I am working on ways of living with them like a housemate who walks around naked and cooks strange smelling food and doesn't wash dishes.
I.M
I have been to see a counsellor, is it counsellor or councillor? Sorry had to go and take the nose vacuum off the stove as it was about to boil over. Someone please make voice recognition software so that my hands don't have to keep up with my brain!
Anyway it was the one that doesn't care about property values (unless they are deeply concerned that they bought a house just before the GFC like I did) and she has put me onto a service called "Moodgym" you can google it if you'd like, no Im not giving my permission, simply stating the fact.
The online assessments of my mood started out quite well but as I suspect they were beginning to trend toward aspects of my personality which I am not really concerned with; they became irrelevant in a short time. Not totally but just to one side or another on certain issues: an example, imagine a Likert Scale (take that Kari Dunn Buron) I sincerely hope you've been threatened with legal action for copyright of a tool in the public domain like I was, but I digress..
So an attitude scale with statements and some Agree to Disagree options.
Statement: If I do not have nice things I will consider myself a failure... Well I had to disagree but if the statement were "I am undeserving of nice things" or "I feel guilty for having nice things" then I'd have wholeheartedly agreed. So it'll be interesting to see how this thing works out. I was asked to write down my "stressors" but Im not very good with lists and I tend to lose them although the note for the benchtop dimensions in the kitchen is still synched to my phone (three generations later).
Maybe next test I'll need to write the alternative questions and then I can take the "anti-test"?
This stream of garbage has been inspired by Eddie Izzard. His voice is currently providing narration in my head.
Oh that was the other thing. Voices in heads.
I don't "hear voices" as in James Mason (or Eddie Izzard doing an impersonation of him) isn't audibly telling me to "go an buy all the finger buns at the bakery". But I do have an internal voice (some may say soul, spirit, conscience but I don't use such terms as I feel they may convince people that I believe in things which aren't) maybe internal narration is better or internal narration of low resonance thought (sounds like a thing). Anyway; at particularly low points in the year which strike at times of "stress" I do have this non auditory internal narration (some might say thought) which doesn't say to do things or people would be better off if..... but that I am the worst person in the world. If you read back to the end of 2015 you will find a very similar thread. I know they are irrational and non factual but there they are. I am working on ways of living with them like a housemate who walks around naked and cooks strange smelling food and doesn't wash dishes.
I.M
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