Reboot

I’m back. And with a bit of luck and more than a little effort, I won’t disappoint my long suffering readers (all none of you). Interesting timing too; a few short posts ago (and a year and a half ago) I was pondering the election and it’s probable outcome. Now, I’m feeling the recession personally, […]

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I’m back. And with a bit of luck and more than a little effort, I won’t disappoint my long suffering readers (all none of you). Interesting timing too; a few short posts ago (and a year and a half ago) I was pondering the election and it’s probable outcome. Now, I’m feeling the recession personally, as money runs dry.

But it’s all good. It keeps us sharp. More to follow (And I hope you appreciate the slight redesign – there wasn’t much to change, since it already has all a blog should have, in my opinion).

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May Photos

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »
A small stack of photos from my late May visit to Timisoara in Romania…

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A small stack of photos from my late May visit to Timisoara in Romania; as you may or may not be aware (But you probably are, since you’re reading this, which implies that you probably know a bit about me) I go there roughly every four to six weeks and stay with my girlfriend, Oana, and work from her apartment. It’s good, because as well as us being able to spend time together, I like being in Timisoara – read and see some more on it here (‘h0t chixx0rs!’) and here (‘I’m back!’).

Incidentally, have all of you managed to get your heads around the ‘click on the image to view the larger, high-quality version of same image’ concept? I don’t actually know, but I’m presuming you have.

A view of Timisoara from Oana's apartment - I think that's looking South, over a residential area. Those somewhat dowdy-looking apartments are actually well-built and very comfortable. 13th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »A view of Timisoara from Oana’s apartment – I think that’s looking South, over a residential area. Those somewhat dowdy-looking apartments are actually well-built and very comfortable. 13th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
A view of Timisoara from Oana's apartment - I think that's looking North. At the bottom is the tram station and to the left is the local 'Etti' store, the Timisoara equivalent of 'Spar' in Ireland. 13th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »A view of Timisoara from Oana’s apartment – I think that’s looking North. At the bottom is the tram station and to the left is the local ‘Etti’ store, the Timisoara equivalent of ‘Spar’ in Ireland. 13th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Near the centre of Timisoara, a view of some of the more fancy-pancy apartments. 14th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Near the centre of Timisoara, a view of some of the more fancy-pancy apartments. 14th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana’s apartment has a very fast broadband Intarwebs connection, it’s on the nineth floor with stunning views, bright and sunny, and when she moves out I’m going to miss it almost as much as she will; even the screech of tyres burning rubber somewhere down below every half an hour as some tool tries to demonstrate his lack of ability at driving.

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick glass of drain cleaner at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana (in green) and the girls enjoying a quick glass of drain cleaner at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls warming up for some fancy-pancy disco at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls warming up for some fancy-pancy disco at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls enjoying a quick karaoke crooning session at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls enjoying a quick karaoke crooning session at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls enjoying a quick... Oh, never mind. They're pretty, and so foarte sexy. At Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls enjoying a quick… Oh, never mind. They’re pretty, and so foarte sexy. At Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
That's no girl! Mario tormenting Clea at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »That’s no girl! Mario tormenting Clea at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana’s mates are a great bunch, and I really enjoy hanging out with them. Mad, bad and dangerous to know… And they know how to party!

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Open Source, and winding up Tadhg

You’re going to put up some shelves. So, you need a hammer, and you go to the hardware store…

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Every now and again, it’s necessary for the good of the world to ‘flame-bait’ Tadhg on a matter close to his heart (Partly because it’s always a good warm-up exercise for writing my own material), and the matter I generally choose (Because it’s a subject of which I know just enough to get into a conversation about, have some mild opinions on it myself, and Tadhg has some very passionate feelings about it, all of which makes it the perfect combination for this exercise) is Open Source software.

To get some background on Open Source/Free software, you’ll need to read a bit about it (a couple of good places are gnu.org and opensource.org) but in a nutshell it concerns the licensing of software. By and large, when you buy a piece of commercial software, you buy a limited licence to use the software, not the software itself. Sure, you have a cd or a dvd, a box, a serial number and perhaps some manuals of varying degrees of quality, but the software is ultimately not yours to do with as you please. It’s yours to do with as you’ve agreed with the company that publishes the software. You don’t actually own the software.

Now, there’s been a new way of doing this in the last few years, which is the Open Source/Free software movement. Even if you buy and perhaps pay a lot of money for a piece of software, the Open Source licence means that the code of the software is open and available for you to do with what you want, inspect, modify, and a number of other things. Now, there’s still a licence of course, but that is there to protect the author of the code. Again, if you want to know more about it, have a read at the links above and maybe it’ll explain a bit better and in a lot more detail. Personally I think this is a good thing and it’s good for the software industry.

The thing is that this has developed for some into a sort of religious movement, where there is a Right and a Wrong. You can probably see where that might lead. And also, a sort of alternative eco-system of developing Open Source/Free software alternatives for just about any software you can think of has developed. Not that I think that this is a bad thing, it isn’t, but the people doing this are often doing this in their spare time, and tackling big projects which require expertise which they don’t have available to them (And a lot of the time, that expertise is in non-software development areas, such as user interface design and project management). The upshot is that while some projects are incredibly good and innovative, there are others which are technically good but not great, and lack the polish, finish and depth of design of a commercial ‘closed-source’ product. I mean, that’s something you can expect, if you try to create your own alternative to a piece of software which has been designed and created by a team which has access to everything they need, including money, quite possibly working together in an office. It doesn’t guarantee success (There’s an awful lot of very, very bad commercial ‘closed-source’ software out there.) but it’s definitely a big advantage for a commercial ‘closed-source’ product development team.

So, with all that as a background, have a read here (‘FUD about open source Flash’) to get an idea of where Tadhg stands on this. Make sure to read the comments; and I was pleased to see I’m not the only person out there trying to get Tadhg worked up about Open Source/Free software issues.

It came up again recently and somewhat unexpectedly here (AutoHotkey Script for Last.fm). Now, It’s unlikely you’ll want to read the article; not because it’s a bad article, but it’s not really relevant to this story, it concerns some scripting for the (Quite beautiful, actually) Last.fm website. No, what pushed my button was a recent comment by Tadhg about his choice of music playing software and (The important bit) the influencing factor in making that choice. The ‘discussion’, naturally, started from there and I decided just for the hell of it that I’d reproduce my analogy here on choosing software based on the licence.

I’m aware, incidentally, that it has at this stage lost all context. And this post has become one of what Oana describes as ‘the boring ones about software or something’. Still, that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

You’re going to put up some shelves. So, you need a hammer, and you go to the hardware store. In the hardware store there is a good quality Stanley hammer, some other medium-quality hammers, and a cheap but somewhat shoddy G00znr hammer from some guys who make them part-time (during the day-job they make saws for… Stanley) which you’ll have to assemble yourself. Anyway, to make the ethical choice, you buy the G00znr hammer, take it home, spend a couple of hours assembling it and setting it up, and eventually get 2 of your 4 shelves up (one has been destroyed during the learning process, and you ran out of time and got too fucked off before putting up the last one). But you know what, if everybody used a G00znr hammer, we’d get used to putting less stuff on shelves, and the world might be a better place. The guys at Stanley would be out of jobs, and have more free time to improve the G00znr hammer. Maybe we might find we don’t need shelves, and we can start asking ourselves “Where do nails come from?”.

And just for bonus points:
Q: How many Open Source advocates does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Maybe the real question is, ‘do we need light?’, because the lightbulb is a proprietary non-open system, we should explore alternatives to light which negate the need to use lightbulbs…

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Re-active

Right, the site is back again, all is well. I’m going to try this again. Just to deal with the inevitable question(s), someone asked me to take down some photos of them and I since I didn’t have the time, I took down the site instead. I’ve now taken down the photos. If you have a serious problem with a photo of you on the site, send me the exact URL and I will take it down. I won’t like it, it will piss me off, but I will do it. I will obliterate it from my site, and I will replace it and the references to you with whatever I see fit. If it annoys me sufficiently, all this carry-on, I’m going to take down the site entirely and do something else.
My new Opel Astra - it's no racehorse, but a 1.4 litre engine, allow wheels, electrics and extras and great condition make it a joy to drive. It's heavy and reasonably spacious. I'll have to do something about those 'L-plates' though. 7th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »

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Right, the site is back again, all is well. I’m going to try this again. Just to deal with the inevitable question(s), someone asked me to take down some photos of them and I since I didn’t have the time, I took down the site instead. I’ve now taken down the photos. If you have a serious problem with a photo of you on the site, send me the exact URL and I will take it down. I won’t like it, it will piss me off, but I will do it. I will obliterate it from my site, and I will replace it and the references to you with whatever I see fit. If it annoys me sufficiently, all this carry-on, I’m going to take down the site entirely and do something else.

So in the meantime, nothing much happened. The last thing I wrote was about the election in Ireland, here, here and here; well, it happened, I voted the way I said I would, and I very nearly (Nearly loves a drink down in the Could Have bar with Almost) got my preferred government of Fianna Fail and the Green Party. Well, that is, Fianna Fail got the numbers they needed, and got back in with the Green Party and the decimated Progressive Democrats (I was on the money there, and in a twist of fate their leader Michael McDowell was beaten by the Green Party’s John Gormley who is now Minister for the Environment – poetic justice, if you ask me) and a gaggle of ‘Independents’. They’re not so very independent, since most of them used to be in Fianna Fail, and a few are even rejoining them.

A poignant moment as Mags Murray's election poster, much like she and the majority of her fellow Progressive Democrat election candidates did, sinks never to be seen again. We wept. 21st May 2007 Click image to view larger version »A poignant moment as Mags Murray’s election poster, much like she and the majority of her fellow Progressive Democrat election candidates did, sinks never to be seen again. We wept. 21st May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Fine Gael did rather well, but not well enough to get a majority, and Labour had more or less the same performance as in the previous election. Labour was clearly prepared to do business with Fianna Fail but they promised everyone (and particularly Fine Gael) that they wouldn’t go into a coalition government with Fianna Fail, so… They didn’t. With more than a little bitterness the leader of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny, eventually conceded defeat (that really took some doing, he clearly wanted the the job of Glorious Leader very, very badly. He won’t get a second chance, and he knows it.).

More on the long term consequences of this later on; there has already been a lot going on, and although it’s early days yet I think this is going to shape up to be an exciting five years in Irish politics. I think there’s a chance of real improvement, and so far, everything seems to be off to a flying start…

Some other stuff that’s been holding my attention other than my usual introspective self-obsession has been driving; as you may have gathered, I bought a new car a couple of months ago and I’ve been enjoying driving it. It’s an Opel Astra XE Comfort 1.4 litre 5-door (hatchback), 2001, spotless condition with alloy wheels and lots of electrics, a great car in fantastic condition.

My new Opel Astra - it's no racehorse, but a 1.4 litre engine, allow wheels, electrics and extras and great condition make it a joy to drive. It's heavy and reasonably spacious. I'll have to do something about those 'L-plates' though. 7th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »My new Opel Astra – it’s no racehorse, but a 1.4 litre engine, allow wheels, electrics and extras and great condition make it a joy to drive. It’s heavy and reasonably spacious. I’ll have to do something about those ‘L-plates’ though. 7th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Again, more on that later – it’s been a big deal for me, and more than makes up for my general lack of interests, hobbies and social life by giving me something new to do with my spare time.

And the rain. Dear God, the rain. It hasn’t let up in months. I mean, really, there have been a couple of days here and there without rain since the middle of May but by and large every day has seen rain, often in a volume which defies belief. Now, it’s been often said and held to be true that Ireland is a country of rain and generally miserable weather and sometimes this is true but of course, not all of the time. But not this year. This year, the whole summer so far has been wet and it shows no sign of letting up before September, when surely the water must run out? I believe that this for Ireland will be the upshot of Global Warming; the additional heat will mean more humidity and so much more rain during the summer months, with the good sunny weather appearing on either side of it for a couple of months, and a very mild winter. I actually previously believed that Ireland might experience serious droughts for the first time, but I realise now that I was wrong, and not taking into account how the heat might express itself with the amount of water in and around this island.

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Political analogy

I mentioned an analogy which I use for describing the choices we have in this election (as I see it, of course), and it’s a relatively simple one. However, I laboured the point somewhat in the writing of it, and I realised there was a much simpler way of describing the dilemma I face in my voting strategy.

The problem is simple.

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I mentioned an analogy which I use for describing the choices we have in this election (as I see it, of course), and it’s a relatively simple one. However, I laboured the point somewhat in the writing of it, and I realised there was a much simpler way of describing the dilemma I face in my voting strategy.

The problem is simple. After this election, various parties will combine to form some sort of coalition government, and the choice will be Fianna Fail with someone, or Fine Gael and Labour with someone. Now, I came to a few conclusions about how these parties will operate in power, and it can be summed up as ‘Better the devil you know’ or ‘A fresh start with new faces’; these are the choices. And the way I see it, the machine, the system we have in operation at the moment, is not like some sort of child’s game where you can give it a shake and start again if you don’t like how it’s going. Once it’s started, you’re probably best to keep going and make improvements en route, rather than messing with it.

While Fianna Fail represents big business politics and property developer interests to many, and the epitome of corrupt government (A previous Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach/Prime Minister, Charles J. Haughey, set some impressive benchmarks for outright corruption in Western European government) to some, or indeed also to many, they are also the experienced steady hand. They know how the system works, the rules of the game. The outgoing Taoiseach/Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, while clearly being far from clean as a whistle, is also a good leader and experienced international statesman. His Minister of Finance, Brian Cowen, is doing a good, if unimaginative, job of keeping the show on the road.

A good measure of this, I feel, is the pre-election promises made by the larger parties. They’ve all promised tax breaks. Vast improvements in Ireland’s infrastructure, particularly on a social level. And more tax breaks. It’s the usual set of promises made to win elections, to promise the Sun, Moon and stars to the electorate, everything you want to hear will be fixed, and a cherry on top. I realised that what separates Fianna Fail from the Fine Gael/Labour team is this: Fianna Fail make promises knowing what they can, can’t, will, won’t and might deliver. They’re in government right now, they’ve seen the figures, the costings, the trends. They’re not making any wild promises because they know what can and can’t be done. They didn’t promise anything wild with tax breaks or health care, they’ve already made the big infrastructure commitments, and that was that. They’ll break promises, of course, but they set about delivering on their plan for Ireland already within the last few years, and call me naive but I actually think they got a taste for delivering the goods. It’s not imaginative stuff by any means, it just needs to be done to build an Ireland that’ll still have something to offer in the future. Bertie and one or two of his team understand this, and have gone into the election knowing exactly how the country works, and with the intention of finishing the job.

Fine Gael and Labour, on the other hand, have no idea how any of this works. They’ve picked out what they think are weaknesses in the current government strategy and set about campaigning with promises to fix everything, and of course thrown in outrageous tax breaks for good measure. For example, the most dangerous and reckless promise they’ve made is to promise to do away with something called Stamp Duty. This is a government tax on the purchase of property, it’s sizeable and naturally a sore point with house-buyers because it’s a massive extra cost on the already staggeringly high price of buying a property in Ireland. A good way to get the attention of the voting public is to promise to do away with it altogether, because then a buyer’s home purchase will be much cheaper. Or will it? It’s been generally agreed that house prices will jump massively to the point where they would have been with Stamp Duty; so for the buyer, it will ultimately make little odds. Property will still be too expensive. But there’s something else there too, which demonstrates a deeper lack of understanding about how the economy works, and is the reason why Fianna Fail only very reluctantly agreed to match that election promise, just to give them a chance of winning (and it’s clearly an election promise they won’t keep, at least in it’s current form). The current government has found a way to keep all of the money coming into the country in circulation, and preferably to keep it staying in the country, as well as employing a quarter of the male workforce. That much is obvious; it’s the property market. Naturally, the government needs to take it’s cut of the booming Irish economy, which it does through… Stamp Duty! So the economy is cooking, the property market keeps it going, and Stamp Duty pays for the government’s plans to build infrastructure for Ireland.

Incidentally, I had heard an interesting theory a couple of years back (I pin that one on a younger, more cynical Kenny Leigh) which is that a desirable side-effect of the (over)heated property market is also to lock younger Irish people into Ireland. If things get shaky later on then they won’t emigrate en-mass like they did in times gone by, while locked into a thirty-year mortgage.

So Fianna Fail, while undoubtedly by and large in the pocket of the property developers and other big business, have actually figured out a way to make it all work for the State, and to keep the economy reasonably healthy. I don’t like it, I think they’ve done a lot wrong and not nearly enough of the right things that Ireland does need, but right now this is how it works. Fine Gael and Labour on the other hand have demonstrated a clear lack of knowledge on how the current economic model works, and how they’ll pay for any of their proposals. It’s real amateur stuff, promising everything while not having any convincing explanation of how they’ll keep the economy going, or how they’ll cover for the taxes they’re planning to axe.

I haven’t really touched on the Greens, the Progressive Democrats or Sinn Fein in all of this. In a nutshell, I think the Greens have a somewhat socialist approach. I think they’ll have a lot of trouble with the tough, messy reality of running the State, but on the other hand Ireland needs their ideas on Public Transport and environmental issues. The Progressive Democrats might come close to sinking without trace, and they’ll have Michael McDowell to thank for it. I have real trouble with their stance on health issues, and dismissing Global Warming… What can I say. ‘Bone-headed’ springs to mind. On the other hand, they certainly know how to single-mindedly deliver on their ideas. Sinn Fein are now in a peculiar place where they’re campaigning on issues other than Northern Ireland, and they seem to be in real trouble, Some very interesting pseudo-Communist talk, but it sounds like empty, very loosely thought out stuff, and I think they would have real trouble delivering on their ideas.

You can see where I’m going with this. I’m going to vote Green of course (even though my local candidate for the Green Party is inexperienced and won’t make the cut), I’ll vote for Socialist Worker’s Party candidate Joe Higgins, because he’s magic, and I guess I’ll vote for Joan Burton (Labour) because she does her best to organise transport meetings. I think that’s it. I can’t vote for Brian Lenihan (Fianna Fail) because I won’t be able to sleep at night if I do, and I can’t vote for Leo Varadkar (Fine Gael) for the same reason. Likewise for some of the other Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and Progressive Democrat candidates.

Fine Gael candidate Leo Varadkar faces electoral meltdown. Or perhaps a lighter. 8th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »Fine Gael candidate Leo Varadkar faces electoral meltdown. Or perhaps a lighter. 8th May 2007.. Click image to view larger version »

Voting for Joan Burton runs against the grain after all I’ve said, but I think she does do some good and works hard. I just fear her party getting into power (the Labour Party is all about protecting Civil Service and other unionised workers, which inevitably means pay rises for State workers ahead of the private sector), especially with Fianna Gael. I’ll never vote Fianna Fail unless the candidate gives me good reason, but they’ll do ok anyway by the look of the latest poll ratings. And if it comes down to the wire and Fianna Fail have to negotiate with, for example, the Greens (a very likely prospect, since it’s looking like they’ll be the decider for the next coalition) then I think that’s a very good thing.

I really do hope for Fianna Fail and the Green Party as the next Government of Ireland, and as I’ve said before I think it’s more than a bit likely.

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