I don’t actually live in Sydney anymore, but I still think of it as where I live. That said, I have never really appreciated it all that much, because I find any place boring if I a) have no money to spend, and b) have no one interesting to hang out with. Going somewhere pretty does nothing for me if I’m on my own… I’d generally rather be napping or watching TV in my own house. This is probably why I have travelled so little.

Anyway, today I had several hours to kill while my car was getting a scheduled service, and thought since it was such a nice day I’d go wander the legendary Sydney foreshore with the tourists. And I took a bunch of photos around the Opera House, since I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at it closely before.

It really is quite a striking building up close. Still, I would rather have been napping.

The reason I like Sydney is not the sunshine or the atmosphere; it’s mainly that it has people in it who I like… and everything else is window-dressing. As rents continue to rise to stupid levels I start to see the appeal of starting a commune in the middle of nowhere (but I also recognize the hideousness of that idea, see Sartre et al).

PS: Anyone who has read this blog for long has probably worked this out already, but in case it wasn’t abundantly clear I’m not much of a ‘going out’ person. I much prefer home. I like my bed, my bath, my stuff.

So as of today I’m renewing it, because it seems for now I still need that external consequence to keep me straight:

COMMITMENT

I hereby commit to not purchasing any products containing tobacco for one year, covering the period from UTC 12PM, 1st May, 2012 to UTC 12PM, 1st May 2013.

PENALTY FOR NON-COMPLIANCE

Should I break the Commitment within the designated time period, I hereby promise to publicly acknowledge this lapse and donate AU$1000 to the Liberal Party of Australia* within 48 hours, after which the Commitment will be terminated or renewed at my discretion.

Part of last year’s compact was that upon success I would donate US$500 to a secular charity of my choosing. To be honest I was thinking of delaying this, since I didn’t specify a particular time-frame for that outcome and my cash-flow isn’t exactly awesome right now. But for these things to mean anything it’s important to hold to the original intention. So now I’m looking for a secular charity deserving of funds, but have’t decided on one yet. Please chime in in the comments if you know of one that is recognized for its good works and efficacy.

* In Australia the Liberal Party are the conservative jerkwads who court the reactionary bigot vote. We Australians are terrified of refugees on boats and gay marriage apparently, although you wouldn’t know it if you asked the average person on the street. They’re not as bat-shit crazy as the GOP in the US but who the hell is? It’s unfortunate in that I would otherwise describe myself as a liberal but it’s not worth it here because you have to explain you mean “small el” rather than “large el”

And not only have I signed up once again, but this time I might need to grovel to get my app privileges reinstated, since they seem to have decided I am not worthy:

You can no longer create apps because our systems indicated that your account may not be authentic. Facebook requires users to provide their real first and last names, and fake accounts are a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR 4.1), even when used to host or test apps.

Oh what fun!

The codes become a lot cuter when you customize them, as this overly complicated tutorial shows you. In a nutshell you can just plonk an image in the middle as long as it isn’t too big, because QR codes (can) exploit a high level of redundancy for error correction.

If I needed to make a business card I would definitely use this technique.

I’m quite pleased with the cosy-neat look, so I’m totally ready to get loads of work done now!

BTW this is an old photo showing the grim blue-grey that I had before (above the picture rail it is still that color but I’m leaving it to avoid orange overload).

The website explains how awesome this is by pointing out that the traditional left-right spectrum is woefully inadequate and that we therefore require the autho/liber Y-axis to better describe a person’s worldview. I basically agree with this as far as it goes, but the problem is that it still utterly fails to meaningfully capture a person’s position and especially the overall likelihood of them being a total douche you’d like to punch in the face.

This is best exemplified by the site’s own projected plots of existing US presidential candidates:

There’s me for reference down in the bottom left. And look up there clustered together are Romney, Obama, Gingrich and Santorum. Even assuming that their answers on the idiotically worded questions are correctly interpolated– and that may be a long shot– the fact that they appear to be so close together shows that just one extra dimension isn’t enough to be truly meaningful.

After answering the questions I can think of two addtional axes that would easily distinguish these candidates from each other.

1. Something like pragmatic/flexible <–> idealistic/stubborn, ie how much you see the world as you think it should be versus how much you see things as they are. In this sense Romney and Obama would still be close, but Santorum and Gingrich would be off the chart in the other direction. I would probably be near the middle for that one.
2. reality-based  <–> faith-based, in which Obama would be squarely based in the former and the Republicans would again be off the chart in the latter. I would be heavily in the former there obviously….

For the sake of convenience these two additional axes might be able to be combined, as they’re not exactly orthogonal to each other, so we could perhaps settle for just one which might be labelled something like rationalist <–> idealogue.

So I think the political compass needs to be replaced by a political orrery or something, where at minimum we be able to plot people within a three dimensional domain, and while it would still be only a rough guide it would add a dimension that is fast becoming one of the most relevant in the upcoming US presidential election.

* Note that I actually agree with the relative position between myself and Ron Paul, he represents the kind of free-market libertarian I am always bitching about. It’s an interesting linguistic irony that he occupies a spot that might be labelled economic-neo-liberalist but would identify as libertarian, whereas I show up in the social-libertarian quarter but am much more comfortable self-identifying as a liberal. Political terminology can be such a goddamn pain sometimes.

Archer – A few wobbly episodes this season but still a great show. Worth catching up on if you’ve not given it a go.

New Girl – Occasionally a bit stupid but often charming and at least the writers have finally realized that Schmidt is far more entertaining than Zooey Deschanel’s schtick. I think the show never really recovered from the clumsy black guy hot-swap (Damon Wayans Jr was great in the pilot, only to have to back out for other commitments).

Awake – This show has a simple but far-fetched premise which manages to hide its absurdity through engaging procedural detective show stuff and pretty decent acting (unlike Alcatraz). Although it too will probably be a bit anticlimactic once it has to reveal what the hell is actually going on, it offers a fascinating setup with parallel realities and handles it reasonably well. Jason Isaacs carries it by underplaying almost every scene.

Justified – Seriously brilliant. I can’t really compare this show to anything, it is just awesome and full of people trying to kill each other for all sorts of complicated reasons. I’ve never seen a tv show handle character arcs and shifting alliances better than this one does.

Revenge - this started well but seems to have morphed into a tedious soap opera/melodrama with people constantly talking to each other over the shoulder and casting evil menacing glances to the side. Especially annoying is the Tyler character who was obviously loathesome from the moment he arrived but we are supposed to believe he is some kind of smooth-talking hustler. Almost as bad is the dumbass little brother character from the bar, who has a massive chip on his shoulder even though he owns half a bar. I think he exists only to keep the idiot plots moving along.

Luck - This expensive looking production might be more interesting if I could understand a  single word of what anyone is saying.

Fringe - Why did I get stuck on this show– it gets stupider by the episode. John Noble’s Walter is the only thing worth watching here.

Alcatraz - Holy crap this is a dumb-ass premise, and feels like one of the later seasons of Lost for the sense that there is absolutely no plan for how this idiotic show will explain all of the unbelievably stupid shit that happens in it. Like if you were in a maximum security prison and suddenly got zapped 50 years into the future– do you think you would be so blindingly stupid as to rush straight out and start committing the same violent crimes you were incarcerated for? Yeah yeah I know it’s all going to be explained that there’s some kind of mind control thing happening…. but if you think for one second that there will be a satisfying motive driving whoever is behind it all, you WILL be sorely disappointed.

Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they’ll all go to your inbox, and only yours. In short:

• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = hom.er.j.sim.ps.on@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = HOMERJSIMPSON@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com