01 Dec 07
Right wing Christians call to boycott a film they haven’t seen (and a book they most likely haven’t read), even though gutless Hollywood has watered the book’s themes down. Ignorant conservative Christian sensibilities dictating our culture. AARGHH!
Just read the books, they’re brilliant.
15 Nov 07
Here’s an edifying little piece of paper someone placed in my mailbox today. I can only assume this poor misguided loony had some kind of unfortunate run-in with the legal system, and has responded in the only effective means they know—wandering the streets slipping bits of paper into people’s mailboxes calling down the wrath of God on corrupt public servants. I suppose this beats walking into the department waving a shotgun, but let’s hope he’s not holding that option in reserve. After all, God’s on his side, right?
Personally I wouldn’t get too excited about the Lord above punishing all those naughty folk who rob the helpless and pronounce the guilty innocent. A quick flip through any history book shows the whole divine justice theory isn’t panning out too well.
It’s a federal election here in Australia in a week. I wonder if the People Putting Politicians in Prison Group (PPPPG? 4Ps Group?) is running? They might just get my vote!
12 Nov 07
In the course of my working day, I innocently type the word ‘certainty’ into Thesaurus.com. But lest I get too excited by the results, Christians are always working hard to save my soul from eternal damnation …
11 Nov 07
For some reason, my girl and I share the same affliction: we tend not to carry our loose change around much. We had two very full coin bowls in the house, and another bagful she’d been lugging from house to house for a few years. So we decided to finally count all these coins and take them down to the bank. And as we started counting, I started laying them out in neat rows on our tiled floor … OK, so I have a mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Anyway, it looked good. And it made them easy to count.
How much you ask? $1,128. In coins. Onto the mortgage.
07 Nov 07
Comments Off on Son of Boardgame Reference Sheets
More goodies for gamers on the Boardgame Reference Sheets page. A rules summary and reference sheet for the Fantasy Flight Games Runebound expansion Sands of Al-Kalim (and a slight update to the Runebound sheet itself); a slight fix to the sheets for the Viking game Fire & Axe; and finally I’ve uploaded my rules summary and reference sheet for the classic Puerto Rico. Il Principe by Z-Man Games coming soon!
28 Oct 07
Occasionally someone does something that reminds you that there are thoughtful, kind people in the world. Those visitors to this blog who play boardgames are aware of the Freebies page where I share all the PDF rules summaries and reference sheets I have made for boardgames in my collection. Well, out of the blue, a member of BoardgameGeek decided that he wanted to show his appreciation for my work in a tangible way, and made a donation to me for the buying of new games. A completely unsolicited act of generosity.
There are some nice people out there.
25 Oct 07
I just had to share this quote from today’s Sydney Morning Herald from the Cathoic Archbishop and all-round orthodox conservative busybody George Pell, ‘prominent religious sceptic of climate change’, also recently quoted as saying “Jesus had nothing to say on global warming”.
“My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people’s minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes.
“Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don’t need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense.”
Engage with reality. Open people’s minds. Allergic to nonsense. Yep. Uh-huh. Riiiight.
24 Oct 07
Warning: geeky programming content follows!
This blog started on Blogger, then moved to Movable Type, and now, with the release of MT4, it’s time to move again. I’ve had it with Movable Type. In this day and age of visual communication, Movable Type persists in being the most complex and user-unfriendly content management system I have yet to come across. It may be venerable, it may be powerful, but the company can’t seem to get a decent set of tutorials together, leaving 90% designer/10% programmer types like me floundering in an ocean of wikis, messy documentation, and articles that assume so much knowledge on the part of the reader that it’s virtually impossible to get anywhere.
In start contrast, there’s Expression Engine. I’ve only just started going through the tutorials and already it’s starting to make perfect sense.
Take note companies–if you’re trying to sell to the public, then you have to put as much effort into communicating to them how to use the product as you put into your product itself. MT may be the best content management system in the world, but if I can’t find clear, easy-to-understand documentation on how to use it, how will I ever know?
Things may get a little messy round here as I change it all around to the new system. Bear with me readers!
22 Oct 07
Comments Off on It’s a Hard Life
My girl and I visited the Hyde Park Barracks the other day and took in some excellent exhibitions about the harsh life of convicts aboard prison hulks and the early female immigrants to Australia.
I feel a small personal attachment to the restored Barracks building as I was one of the 250 or so volunteers back in 1980/81 that spent time sifting through the dust and dirt that had been vacuumed up from between the floorboards. I vaguely remember that a friend discovered an old matchbox, but I don’t think I found anything. I did get a chance to scramble up into the pidgeon-infested clocktower though.
Today, the barracks houses exhibitions about the building and its many uses over the years, and early Sydney in general, and its spacious courtyard is also the venue for various Sydney Festival events–bands, temporary clubs, etc. There’s also a great little restaurant where we had lunch in the sun, eating salad and vegetable tempura and listening to the crows in the nearby trees.
As I looked over the scattered ephemera of people’s lives dredged up from the sea where rotting prison hulks lie, or picked out from rat’s nests between the floorboards, I couldn’t help but reflect on what a lucky bastard I am. A couple of centuries ago I probably would have experienced the days of my (short) life in one of two ways–unremitting tedium or relentless drudgery. Considering the history of at least one side of my family, probably the latter (there’s at least one horse thief and one axe murderer in there). Throughout the small span of years that human beings have occupied this planet, most people have had a pretty rough time of it. They certainly have had very little choice, counting themselves extremely lucky indeed to simply be able to earn enough to put food in their mouth, or have a place to sleep at night.
Whether a domestic servant, a convict working off his fourteen years for stealing a hat, a clerk hunched over paperwork in a stuffy office, an immigrant coming to a new country in search of a life–millions have lived a life where only rarely one could snatch just a few moments of happiness here and there.
After viewing the exhibitions I sat outside in the sun, was served a high quality meal, and sipped a cold beer in a chilled glass. I live in my own home that I can’t be thrown out of (as long as I keep paying the mortgage of course) with the woman I love, and get to do something everyday that is creative and remarkably easy in contrast with most jobs throughout history. I am, and so is just about everybody I know, obscenely privileged in contrast with all of those souls that came before.
It really puts things into perspective.
Image: Jacks (detail) Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, c1880
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