I was trying to avoid using any filters at all (and Windows Movie Maker doesn’t even let you adjust them), but there’s something about pure black and white that I can’t go past— especially after seeing the almost too slick Renaissance trailer.

PS: the original non-filtered version of my exciting morning drive to work can be seen .

Driving at night, from work to home, with audio kindly provided by the talented RichardN— who hopefully will create his own page for me to link to sometime. Note that the quality of the video during playback is superior to the default still image which is automatically selected when the video is uploaded.

The clip is hosted on Google Video, since I find that the quality is better than (although both degrade the video noticably during the transcoding to the native Flash video format), and more importantly Google Video recognizes the existence of other aspect ratios besides 4:3!

Although I’ve never actually read any of his books (*chagrin*) I am familiar enough with Richard Dawkins through references and extracts that I feel confident when I say that he is definitely one of the good guys. He has a new book called The God Delusion, from which the following extract is extracted:

There are two ways in which scripture might be a source of morals or rules for living. One is by direct instruction, for example through the Ten Commandments, which are the subject of such bitter contention in the culture wars of America’s boondocks. The other is by example: God, or some other biblical character, might serve as - to use the contemporary jargon - a role model. Both scriptural routes, if followed through religiously (the adverb is used in its metaphoric sense but with an eye to its origin), encourage a system of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would find - I can put it no more gently - obnoxious.

To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of our morals and rules for living. Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, in The Sins of Scripture, rightly observed.

If you continue reading the extract you will see that he goes on to reference the same repulsive bible story that I mentioned here some time ago. What’s really amazing about the story of Lot’s flight from Sodom and Gomorrah is that you can’t possibly read it without being horrified by Lot’s behaviour, and yet the story is constantly referenced by evangelicals as though it offers some sort of useful message.

With the help of a friend and a credit card I finally paid off my tax debt, hooray! So although I’m still in debt, it’s now just the usual sort of debt, rather than the ugly taxation variety. Such a stupendous waste of money— about half of it was accumulated interest.

Weirdly I received a cheque from my electricity company the same day for $310! It seems that everyone on their network gets a dividend when they make a profit, so that was a welcome surprise.

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I went and saw Talladega Nights recently, and thought it wasn’t too bad, especially Sacha Baron Cohen as the gay French antagonist. His Fronch Oxunt is fabulously awful—almost as though he went out of his way to avoid learning it.

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My laptop computer became very unstable and so I decided it was time to reinstall the OS, always a great way to waste a Sunday. The most hair-raising part of this endeavour was that since I’ve become more security conscious I’ve been using NTFS encrypted file system, meaning I had to work out how to export my security certificates so I could still access the data when I set up a new account. This article was particularly helpful, and now I feel much more confident in my ability to rescue my files from encrypted volumes should the need arise.

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I’ve also been hit with the flu (which totally sucks when you live alone), so I’m feeling pretty damn crappy at the moment, and am looking forward to climbing into bed very shortly to watch some downloaded TV on my newly invigorated laptop.

It was a very half-hearted effort from me this Speak like a Pirate day International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so as punishment I made myself draw this shitty picture.

Sorry that’s it for this entry, I’m now too sleepy to think.

Please go see this film, even if you hate Al Gore and think it’s just a giant ego trip for him (and please pay attention to the basic message, even if you notice that some of his graphs suck because they appear to have been transcribed by hand for some reason, or have no indication of scale and range). The information presented here is nothing really new; much of it has already been in the public domain for years. But we tend to let ourselves forget about it, because it’s a giant pain in the ass and it makes us all feel guilty because we know that by simply by being consumers of energy we are contributing to the problem. Of course not everyone agrees that we’re the cause of elevated CO2 levels, and not everyone agrees that elevated CO2 levels will create elevated temperatures— so until every last goddamn idiot in the entire world agrees that we need to change, we can go on pretending that we don’t have to!

One of the most important points to take away from this film: The jury is not still out on this issue.

Political parties are remarkably good at exploiting people’s aversion to guilt— It’s far easier to assure us that there’s nothing wrong with our lifestyles (and that we are the fairest creatures that ever walked God’s green earth) than it is to tell us we are irreparably damaging the biosphere. I cringed when Gore made the point that only two developed nations have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse emissions: The USA and Australia. This is a source of real embarrassment to me (I am an Australian citizen).

From :

Despite the fact that Australia was at the time of the negotiation already one of the biggest emitters on per capita basis, the country was granted a target of 8% increase. This is because Australia used its relative smallness as a negotiation tool while other big players were negotiating. The result of the negotiation was reported in the Australian media as being to Australia’s advantage.

Nonetheless, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has refused to sign the Agreement and has argued that the protocol would cost Australians jobs, and that Australia is already doing enough to cut emissions. This is despite the fact that the Australian government is keen to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions and has pledged $300 million over the next three years. The Federal Opposition, the Australian Labor Party, is in full support of the protocol and it is currently a heavily debated issue within the political establishment. The opposition claims signing the protocol is a "risk free" prospect as they claim Australia would already be meeting the obligations the protocol would impose. This claim relies heavily on changes to land clearing policies that can only occur once, while ongoing emission sources have all increased substantially. As of 2005, Australia was the world’s largest emitter per capita of greenhouse gases.

To be honest I dont give a toss if it would hurt the country economically— the Australian government never shuts up about this age of prosperity they’ve ushered in, so I think we can afford it. If everyone ratified Kyoto it would greatly strengthen the perception that something can and will be done to curb emissions, and so long as these two nations hold out they will be undermining the idea that anything needs to be done at all. If there is anything inherently unfair about Kyoto then maybe it is best amended from within, and having the US on your side would be of great assistance here (Australia is BFF with the US thanks to their unwavering support for the invasion of Iraq).

(from memory)

I always thought of Robbie (Forbidden Planet) and Robot (Lost in Space) as being very similar, but now that I draw them I realize the only thing they have in common is a plexiglass head. The giant robot from Dr Who I can’t remember very well at all— that’s supposed to be him third from the left. I would have drawn Hector, but unfortunately I can’t remember what he looked like, except that his (organic) brain was inside his torso, and where his head should be were only glowing eyes on a mechanical arm. The floating midget bot is V.I.N.CENT (The Black Hole), and is also how I remember Huey, Dewey and Louie (Silent Running)— except I don’t think they could hover, so I’ve no idea what their undercarriage looked like.

Belated props to the creator of Robbie for not resorting to flexible plastic ducting for his limbs :)

It was about a year ago now that I told the Australian Tax Office that I would pay them back the money I owe (+ the extra 100% due to their extortionate goddam interest rate), and now it seems they want to collect the balance outstanding.

So I’m going to give it to them, all of it, even though it’s going to squeeze me to the limit and max out my credit. I am not going to ask for an extension, I am just going to pay the bastards, just so I don’t have to get their obnoxious "you must comply with us or else" letters anymore. Read the earlier post regarding my attempt to negotiate terms with them and you’ll know why this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

This is my street at night, taken with a long exposure. I really like this eerie look with multiple shadows, and plan to try some more night photography, now that I’ve worked out how to use my camera.

The harmless and elusive phenomenon known as ribbon lightning …

Similar to Ball lightning in its mysteriousness, but slightly more playful, in that rather than chasing people and exploding it merely tends to swirl around them.

Today I realized that it’s been a while since I logged in to Cafepress, so I checked in to see if my account was still active, and not only was it still active, but someone had actually bought something!

That’s right, I’m now $2 wealthier as a result of publishing my work in T-shirt form, so now the capitalist madness has taken me and I have expanded my range with several different designs, which the consumer whore masses will not be able to resist… Buy now!

BTW The shirt which sold was the I ♥ UTF-8 design, which you can learn more about here.