I’ve finally done it, i’ve set up my own software.

no, it’s not a fully working flamingspork.com or anything like that.

I’ve decided to use the software Movable Type. It’s pretty cool, and complete.

http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/

i guess i’ll have to update the front page too :)

if someone wants a blog on there too, i can set that up pretty easily.

contact me, somehow :)

i may post in here sometimes, who knows. i guess i’ll have to convert my entries across… hmm… could be interesting….

http://www.flamingspork.com/photos/

busy, busy busy.

That’s been my past month.

linux.conf.au (yeap, that’s the website too) was great – and so were the parts of perth I saw.

Such notable things happened as:

• Met a whole bunch of cool people
• went down the pub
• tried microbrew of KK’s
• Had lunch with Linus
• became Vice President of Linux Australia (www.linux.org.au)
• hacked some filesystem/vfs code in the kernel (and actually did something remotely productive that i’ve got to send a patch in for)
• admitted that all the productive stuff in the kernel i had done was just cleanups
• discovered that melbourne water tastes better than perth water
• saw fireworks on australia day
• took a load of photos (which will get on the web soon)

been doing more documentation and examining of portability issues on Walnut as well. I’m desperately trying to resist the urge to say “let’s just rewrite the whole bloody thing”. There’s some code in there which needs some major reworking.

As Rusty has known to have said: “Kernel Hackers Get The Babes”

He since revised this to: “Toolchain Hackers Get The Babes”

(un)fortunately it looks like working on Walnut requires both. Just trying to work out wtf is going on is enough for a summer project. This is basically what I’m doing.

Well, just finished watching the MacWorld keynote speech, as broadcast from SF, at 9am their time (or 4am our time). Pretty cool new stuff, I wish I could go out and afford all the new hardware.

Oh well, Apple is still cool in my books :)

i’m so not.

everything still reminds me of her.

went to sexpo with friends today.

everything still reminds me of her.

i miss her,

i love her.

i’m so not coping.

just the first brief thing saying that I’m okay.

For those who haven’t heard, today there was a shooting at Monash University Clayton Campus (where I go).

I’m all right, and am writing another entry as we speak.

Greetings family and friends,

I have just spent the last hour and a half watching the news. News of my university. My campus, the building that I have gone into every semester for the past 3 years. The building that I was teaching on in friday. The building that I’m meant to teach in on friday.

At about 11:20 am today, A man in his 30s walked into a tutorial room on the 6th floor of the Robert Menzies building of the Clayton Campus of Monash University and started shooting. Two people were found dead in the room by ambulance officers. Two people jumped the gunman, I believe sustaining injuries in the process. Reports have varied between 5 and 10 people injured. It seems that 5 is the correct number. One girl was carried (or walked) into the union building health-care center who had been shot in the face. People are being treated. There are two in a serious condition, I just hope they pull through okay.

I was sitting in Wholefoods at the time. Wholefoods is the student run vegetarian and vegan restaurant on campus. It’s on the opposite side of the union building (not facing the menzies). We got told over the PA system that the doors were being locked, and if we wanted to leave the building, we could press the ‘green buttons’ that open the doors after hours.

Soon after, we got notice that there had been an incident in the menzies building. one of the guys working there managed to get out of him that it was a shooting. there were helicopters circling.

every part of the union building was locked up. people were staying put. Somewhere around this time I managed to find out that two people had been killed. Reports were starting to get through. People were still in the menzies. nobody really knew what was going on.

people were filtering in who didn’t know what had happened. i managed to fill some people in with what i knew. I’d managed to get Kristyn to try some news sources, found out a little more.

Some time soon I headed over to MSA (the Monash Student Association, our student union) to see how ppl there were coping (got friends there). For the rest of the day, until about 5:30, i was doing what i could.

Media was around like a circus. some being real fucks. All sorts of stories were flying about. We got most of our news via talkback radio and the net.

i think it’s just starting to sink in. it’s been really a strange day. I’m just looking forward to some time to relax. Hopefully I’ll be able to tonight.

Sorry if I haven’t made much sense, but I am okay. Everyone I know that I’ve managed to get hold of says they’re okay too.

until next time,
take care.

Some may ask “What is rammstein?”, others may ask “What is The Matrix?” but everyone asks “What is a Spoodle?”.

I challenge all to find out what a spoodle is, note it on this entry, and later I shall reveal all. You will win the right to say you identified the most mysterious Christmas gift I have ever received.

It’s a kitchen utensil.

Used for putting the tomato mixture on a pizza base.

It’s the funniest name for a kitchen utensil. I’ve never laughed that much at something that looks like a big spoon.

It’s not a ritual, it’s a routine. Six months from the original Yule, a mile away from any meaning that tonight has to Christian folk, I trod down the stairs to participate in the lighting of the candles.

Yes, every year we light candles, turn the lights out, look at them and then blow the candles out. One of my cousins has come down from Brisbane for a holiday, she says it’s the first time she’s seen anything like it. She’d probably be right. They’re all excited. I’m not.

It doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t beleive in it all. I’m not a JF*. I’m not a Christian, and the more I learn about it, the less I like it.

I was watching SBS last night, they had on a program about Weaton College (in the US). A Christian college. There was this program dedicated to the struggle there between the teaching of evolution theory.

Here’s how it goes. Evolution is the work of the devil. It’s all satan’s work. Genesis is correct. Ignore all this evolution theory and don’t listen to it.

Or: We should teach creationism in high-school science classes.

Now, anything pulled out of the Bible is not science. It’s religion. The two should not mix. Teach your Genesis in a class studying Christian teachings. Teach evolution in your science class. Evolution is a fucking *theory* – not “this is divine truth”. Learn something before you dismiss it.

“If my daughter were to lose her faith, I’d rather see her dead.”

Great fucking example there hey boys and girls? Always looking for a crusade. Always wanting to be rightous. Wanting life to be simple. Wanting someone to serve. Not taking responsibility for your own actions. Being a Christian fanatic.

It scares me that a parent would rather see their child dead than finding their own source of happiness.

But maybe this is just me, being big in the “an it harm none, do as ye will”. Maybe some got the wrong translation or something – “an it harm some, do thy will”. perhaps we’ll never know.

Christianity is the biggest perversion of anything their Christ would have preached I could imagine. Someone who promoted tolerance, love and caring. I haven’t met too many people who’ve come back from the dead saying “please kill a whole bunch of people in my name”. Obviously, we’re not talking about big fluffy bunnies with bad teeth.

We won’t have hope for world peace until we accept people for who they are and respect their personal rights. Or maybe you’d find it easier to tie me to a stake and burn me. Perhaps that would make life easier. Just don’t toast fucking marshmallows (unless they’re vegan).

* u know who that reference is for, and i hope you laugh. It’s a *joke* :)

It’s not a million miles an hour and i’m not flying away from here. I’m talking about Friday night. It was a party, a fair way out and I wasn’t driving.

I wasn’t drinking either. I’ve gone off it a bit. The last time I had a fair whack to drink I couldn’t eat for like 12 hours the next day… not particularly fun, especially when you have to drive for an hour to get home. Anyway, back to the party….

Started off with people whacking down a few weird concoctions, we shot some pool (Hayden and I won, twice! – we *so* rock :) and had strange conversations at the round table in the kitchen. I also lamented over the lack of heavy guitar music. I would have killed for some Led Zeppelin or Hendrix – even some Manson would have sufficed.

There was a girl there who likes me. This is where this OD entry ends. Incomplete, unfinished and confusing. It’s a literary interpretation of life and one which you can draw no concrlusions from and has nothing to do with what I’m thinking. It’s purely here to muddle your brain, ’cause hopefully it’ll be yours, and not mine.

It’s that time of year again, where half the country goes mad for a celebration of something they barely beleive in. There’ll be lies told to our children and drunken antics at the company’s expense.

As a child, Christmas was a source of presents and an opportunity to light candles. On Christmas eve I would head into the city with mum and my brother and end up coming home after (or close to) dark. It was never a religous deal, I wasn’t brought up that way and would never develop an affinity for any Christian based faith.

As a young teen, it was something that always came along. I viewed it as a time where I could get some stuf I wanted without having to save for years or really try and convince mum and dad to get it for me.

Growing up, many of my friends didn’t celebrate it at all. Be it because of being Jewish, coming from another country or smiply not doing it. I began to see my own thoughts echoed here. It’s not part of my religion. It’s not something I care about the Christian heratage of. I’m not into the Christian Imagery, the songs or a concept of there being one time of year when you’re meant to be nice.

If you can’t be nice and generous all year then you should probably just walk off the edge of the world – you’re not helping it get any better. Go on, fuck off.

One word was interesting though. Yule. What did it mean? Where did it come from? Why is there a yule log, yuletidings being brought and it’s christmas? Well, it’s not christmas – and technically, it’s not yule either. It’s doubtful that the majority of people in Australia care, they’re happy to live in ignorant bliss. Ignorant in bliss of so many other things. Blissfully ignorant of so many other things.

With those ignorant around me, I say merry Litha. Look it up, learn something, capture something over the break – your mind. Get off your arse and think.

A Melbourne man diagnosed with cancer is bigger than the war in Afghanistan. The heroin toll continues to play catchup with the ever increasing road toll – on page 20. The world-wide economic downturn barely rates a mention. And safe-sex and drink-driving? Well, we’ve all read that before, it’s last week’s news.

John Howard is a good polititian. I hate him as a leader. He has shown nothing but disdain for those in need and revels in a 1950s ideal which simply disgusts me. It came as no surprise when he started to lock up distressed children. The innocents of our lives, those yet to be touched by our prejudices and our unjust society. I am, of course, talking about asylum seekers and our habit of ignoring those in need.

For most of us it is a foreign feeling to be forced by circumstances to flee our homeland. To feel so much in danger that we must travel half-way around the world, no matter what the expense or means. We have no concept of the horror of shooting our own daughter to save her from the beating, rape and torture our wife was subjected to the year before by the last invading army. We are not likely to be stopped on the way home from work and instructed to slit an 11 year old boys throught and hear the most awful blood scream from one who reminds you so much of your own son. But we have no problem in those subjected to this trauma in a detention centre. A place where 67% of people have had suicidal thoughts.

The fact that Australians applauded the policy of the government makes me sick to my stomach. “Mandatory detention” or with the Tampa, ship them off to some poor island with no money and a corrupt government. Make it a S.E.P (Somebody Else’s Problem). It doesn’t work that way. It will bite us on the arse and bring up pustules of unbelievable pain. Telling people that nobody cares will only lead them to beleive it – a beleif which we try furiously to steer our youth away from.

But is anybody out ther listening? Is it all last weeks news? Are you really all that apathetic that you’ll no longer take an interest just because it’s been a week and we should all just get over it already. People starve to death everyday while we live in a gross excess of fat and laziness that is only surpassed by a country which trains those who attack it. Go fucking figure.

If you’re too lazy to get off your ass and do something then you’re wasting your time, I’m here to tell you you’re the problem. Those who help, in any way they can – be it helping a friend, helping a stranger, giving directions to lost ones in the street, offering a safe haven for a refugee – you are the ones i admire. You are the ones that will inherit the earth and it will be better for it. Help and love those around you, every day make sure they know it. We aren’t in uncertain times, we always are. Nothing is certain and there is only the destiny we put ourselves towards.