Getting ready for my third home town

At the end of this Semester, Adelle will be a qualified engineer, and we will be moving to Wodonga, Victoria, as she will be based at the army base there. This weekend I will heading down to "Border War", an SCA war event there. It's going to be interesting, interacting with gang knowing I will be a local in few months.

I'm also facing finding a new job. I don't think this will be too much of an issue, as there are some major hirers down there, and I have very solid experience.

Finding fellow geeks shouldn't be a problem, I have those skills sorted :)

This is also a shout out - who knows cool people near the area, and cool places/ things to do?

Go Blarkon!

Over in Birmo's Brisbane Times column:

"Winning" at Democracy is about the highly effective organization of idiots. Religion is the ultimate idiot organizational tool. It forms them into relatively coherent groups that are easily led by those that are clever enough to be in on the joke. The religious get pandered to by politicians because pandering to the religious is a proven electoral strategy.

Impressively sharp comment from Blarkon. 

I do not believe that religious people are all idiots. My father is religious, and one of the smartest people you would meet. I do believe that this is how many of the parties see religious parties, as toys to manipulate and bribe. And manipulating this group is one of the key ways to get elected. I wish more people could think independently.

A gamers take on the practicalities of moral rights and fair use

Ahh, the synchronicity of interests. I read a lot of Birmo's books, and his blog.  From this, I have run into some other great bloggers, many of whom feature on my blogroll now. One of them is law professor Paul Nicholas Boylan. He has just reposted a great article of his from a faded online law journal.

He said it was quite dry, but I found it interesting withing the context of better understanding the interaction between artists and companies from Europe, the Commonwealth, and the United States.

The internet is full of bush lawyers with all sorts of unproven and untested opinions. They comment on letters of demand to close down web sites, they comment on what they perceive as "draconian" restrictions of free expression, and sometimes the companies seem to work at directly opposition to the expansion of their companies.

The thing I most enjoyed about Paul's article is that it included a lot of plain, clear talk about the law, and the very principles on which the law is based, and the different jurisdictions.

One company I follow very closely is Games Workshop, being a big fan of their games and miniatures lines. They are an English company. After reading the article, I have a great understanding of the complexities of the issue, and more empathy towards those who have to make the decisions about IP for that company.

Well worth a read, and thanks Paul!

It's brilliant having brilliant friends

Dirk's Blog has some great points about State Run enterprises, Corporate enterprises, where profits go,  and where you would rather wish to live.

General reminder to everyone- please pull your heads out of the complete rubbish that is in most newspapers and think.

Brisvegas shines on like a crazy diamond

We parked in the new half built car park. Caught our flights on Virgin Blue. Caught the Airtrain in the Valley.

Grabbed a super bright long sleeved shirt from a goth botique on Brunswick street before heading up to Mana Bar.  Manabar was heaps of fun, with about 20 friends all jammed in having fun. SCA, Burgers (Cheeseburger gothic blog fans) and gamer friends represented. Medway's awesome gurning unleashed a thousand photochop memes. We even achieved the internet fame of a Mana bar advert!

Went to dinner at the Tibetan place next to the Arts Theatre. 13 fine people did the banquet. It was nice, basic stuff, breads, dip and curries. Once they knew we needed to be done by the show, they got their shuffle on and we made it comfortably. There was plenty to eat, and some small amount was left behind - impressive with that ravaging horde. Burgers and my mates are good at maths - we were $1.50 over on the bill :)

Meeting up with the crew went smoothly, and tickets were distributed. Two friends who were just winging it managed to get in - Simon generously gave one of his comp tickets to Greg, and Toni managed to get in on the standby list.

They play was good fun. A couple of roles were compressed, but the right cuts were made. The jokes from the book all hit home despite knowing they were coming, and the latest jokes slipped in perfectly as well, with the added bonus of shock of the new. There were a couple of themed return reference jokes that were played perfectly, especially the musical numbers with Beyonce's "Put a ring on it" and "The Teddy Bear's picnic"

Nat's blog did a great job of outlining last night shennanigans.

Abe's ten bucks was returned in a very Birmo way - taped onto the commemorative urinal. If you want your ten bucks that bad, Mr Frellman...

Birmo popped a reference to the evening, with better Burger lists than I can recall in the comment.

I picked up some merch, a couple of stubbie coolers and a "Team York Street" t-shirt.

Scamming for fun and naughtiness

Jen is one of my favourite bloggers, personal, lively, and fun. One of the crew. She recently did a really great post on an unfortunate incident that involved vinyl gloves, handkerchiefs, Vaseline and things in your eye that really shouldn't be there.

Then I thought about the power of the internet, and running a bit of a scam. I thought about how she uses a laptop, and how, being a I.T. Girl, she might even leave her laptop open. And she might even have her laptop pointing at her bed. And some naughty hacker might even be into her built-in notebook webcam. And how said hacker might even be vulnerable to a counter hack, and how I might even have been able to scam the scammer, and get a shot of Jen in her nightwear.

If you want the full scam, the picture is here