Rambling - 4

Since 2002 the city of Brussels has organised a bunch of live music events around town each summer, and last year it came to my front door. Despite certain folk petitioning against its return, it has once again graced my neighbourhood and presented me with some new talent to consider.

As always, this year I missed several events, and certainly the festival lasts longer than the three days presented here. Nevertheless, once it arrives on my doorstep I cannot ignore the Brussels Summer Festival.

Scams will always exist as long as the general population of the world remain stupid and ignorant. I attribute any rise in the number of scams to be directly related to the state of the economy — any increase from the “normal” level of scams usually corresponds directly with any economic uncertainty within the market.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last twelve months, you have surely noticed that there is a bit of a problem with the global economy. If you haven't noticed then you must have at least noticed that scams are on the rise; Ingenious as some of them may be, now is a good time to use your brain.

My audits are in full swing at work this month, which is why I'm fairly quiet lately. Each year I get dragged into several audits because of my line of work, including an internal audit, an external audit, and a federal audit.

Needless to say, it's a pain. More-so, it's a terrible detriment to the environment. The photo shown here is one security report from our system in a format that our external auditors prefer. Each year, a small tree gets printed, each page signed by management, and approved by the auditors, all in the name of Sarbanes-Oxley — Ha.

I'm sick of fixing other people's code. I love the open-source community for all of the free and high-quality software that's out there. I've even contributed my own little bits and pieces, mostly in the form of patches, here and there.

What I hate about the open-source movement are the egos. The problem is that the people who started a project end up actually belittling the project because of their own arrogance. Suggest something, or even provide a patch, and these particular people will tell you that your idea is wrong, that you don't know what you're doing, and so forth. On the other hand, they may never respond. I can understand this to a certain extent; I work in IT, and we're all control-freaks at some level.

Over the next year or so, I'm going to start rewriting my blog from the ground up, because this is ultimately the only way I can get the performance and feature-set I want without hacking at someone else's system. This also means my little DVD collection database will be frozen and remain incomplete until I rewrite that part too.

I like movies.

I hate cinemas.

I'm a home theatre kind of guy.

While I may not actually have the fantastic home theatre setup now, my DVD collection has grown significantly over the last two years. People around me have taken notice, and it's become a common gift for me, especially since I'm a difficult person to buy presents for.

This collection has grown to the point where it's become somewhat of an addiction: I'm now faced with a queue of DVDs I've bought or been given as gifts that I still haven't watched!

Today the Vatican announced the first update to the list of deadly sins since the 6^th-century, expanding the list from seven sins to fourteen sins.

Each sin on the list is guaranteed to give you a nice warm spot writhing in agony amongst fire and brimstone and all that good stuff, so I thought I'd have a look at the list from my agnostic perspective.

I am, at heart, a bit of a greenie, although not the kind that would rush off to chain myself to trees or destructively paint slogans on the side of Japanese “fishing” vessels. I am however strongly opposed to so many things that are permanently scaring the natural world, such as the aforementioned logging and whaling, and my opinion on climate change is that while it's a natural process, we have done so much to speed up the process.

Recently, to my absolute revulsion, a disgusting court case that epitomises the insalubrious legal system of the USA has once again highlighted the human obsession with sweeping major problems under the proverbial rug in order to convince ourselves that someone else will deal with the problem.

The problem is — as I realise every time I need to vacuum my apartment — that this mysterious “someone else” won't deal with the problem.

I'm flying home today, surrendering the fantastically warm and sunny weather here in Melbourne and returning to the gloomy, miserable, cold weather in Brussels.

This also means psyching myself up to return to the office: Urgh.

Sadly I missed out on seeing a few of my friends, but maybe you lot can come over to Brussels at some stage!

So long Melbourne; I'll be back!

Being back in Melbourne feels weird. It's been two years since I was last here, but this time around I feel like a tourist in my own home town. Melbourne is a city that has always grown fairly rapidly, and much has changed — new structures and the conversion of many shops into yuppie fruit-shake bars being the most prevalent.

At the end of the day though, is it the city that's changed, or have I changed?

˙ʇsǝɹ ǝɯos ʎΙΙnɟǝdoɥ puɐ uns ǝɯos qɐɹɓ oʇ ǝɔuɐɥɔ ɐ
— sɹɐǝʎ-ʍǝu puɐ sɐɯʇsᴉɹɥƆ ɹoɟ suoᴉʇdɐɹʇuoɔ ǝqnʇ ɓuᴉʎΙɟ
Ιɐʇǝɯ snoᴉɹnxnΙΙᴉ puɐ ǝΙqɐɹǝsᴉɯ ǝsoɥʇ ɟo ǝuo uᴉ ʞɔnʇs
„‘pΙɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo puǝ-ǝsɹɐ„ ǝɥʇ oʇ ʞɔɐq ʎɐʍ ʎɯ uo ɯ,I ‘ʎɐʍʎu∀

˙sɹǝuǝɥʇɹoN ʎpooΙq noʎ ‘ʇᴉ ɹǝʌo ʇǝ⅁

¡pɐoɹ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝpᴉs „ɓuoɹʍ„ ǝɥʇ uo ǝʌᴉɹp
ǝʍ ʍoɥ ʇnoqɐ ɓuᴉuɐoɯ ɟo ʇuᴉod ǝɥʇ oʇ uǝʌǝ
‘ʎΙsnoᴉɹǝS ˙spɹɐʍʞɔɐq ʇsɐǝΙ ʇɐ ɹo ‘uʍop-ǝpᴉsdn
ɓuᴉɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ op suɐᴉΙɐɹʇsn∀ sn ‘ǝɹǝɥsᴉɯǝH
-uɹǝɥʇɹoN ǝɥʇ uᴉ ǝΙdoǝd ʇsoɯ oʇ ɓuᴉpɹoɔɔ∀

After eleven years and four terms in office, Australians finally decided today to say goodbye to Mr. Sheen, and replace him with the hopefully more sensible Milky Bar Kid. In fact, it was such a resounding victory for Rudd that Howard may even become the second P.M. in Australian history to completely lose his seat.

Once again this proves that democracy can bring down the destructive “axis of evil” between George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard — Two down, one more to go!

I'm having a hell of a time trying to wake up on weekday mornings these days. Oversleeping has become so regular that my boss has even given up on joking about arriving an hour late in the morning.

I rely heavily on my E70 to drag me out of bed in the morning because I have some particular requirements for my alarms. To this end, I decided to revive one of my old distractions and create some new alarms.

It was one year ago today since I started a little experiment, and that little experiment has since grown into somewhat of an outlet for my thoughts and frustrations. In fact, through the hundred-odd articles of the past year there's been a fair bit of relentless bitterness unleashed upon the masses.