Intimidation, Abuse, And Other Methods Of A Peaceful, Democratic Government

So, Glenn Greenwald's partner has been detained for nine hours at Heathrow for questioning about 'Terrorism'. Nine hours is the maximum permitted time under British 'anti-terror' laws that a suspect can be held (at a border point, such as an airport) without actually being arrested and charged. See this article for more details: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow

Now, on every level this is wrong, disturbing, and vile. Greenwald is a journalist, and in breaking the Edward Snowden stories, Greenwald is doing exactly what a journalist should. There is no possible justification for grabbing his family, friends or other personal contacts, and subjecting them to a nine-hour interrogation. This is Stalinist bullshit, and I am beyond appalled. Words fail me. I'm enraged.

I'm a writer. I have political opinions. If I publish them, can I expect my family to be targeted? No, I'm nowhere near any 'whistleblowers' -- but what makes you think they're going to stop with Greenwald? If they can get away with this kind of intimidation and abuse, how long before it becomes a standard weapon in the arsenal, for use against any dissenting voices?

There's worse, though.

Notice that they took away David Miranda's electronics. All of them. Phone. Computer. USB sticks. Game devices.

Notice also that David and Glenn are in a gay relationship.

Notice that David comes from Brazil.

Now, finally, let me point out that a very easy Wikipedia check shows that the age of consent in Brazil is 14.

How long will it be, do you think, before the British authorities crack any encipherment and "find" some gay porn on David's electronica? And how much would you like to bet that some of it depicts boys of 14-16 years of age?

What do you think it will do to Greenwald's reputation once they make public what they've "found" in his partner's possession?

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You think I'm excessively cynical? Well. I think we'll have an answer to that within two or three weeks. If Glenn Greenwald shuts up and backs away from Ed Snowden, then we'll know that the pressure was applied successfully. But if we keep hearing news from Greenwald that makes the Yanks and the Brits look bad, I'm betting that the "found" contents of David Miranda's electronica will mysteriously be leaked.

Ubuntu Linux

So, I finally got around to stripping all the useful files off Natalie's old Toshiba Satellite laptop. No point waiting for her to finish the job. I believe the machine has been sitting around for a year and a half waiting for that to happen.

It's a clunky old farquhar of a machine: heavy and thick. But it does come with a cd/dvd burning drive, and a decent display. It began life as a 'Vista' machine, and I quickly reloaded it with XP - but when Natalie found out she'd have to actually pay for a copy of XP, she made me revert it to Vista. I figured she got what she deserved therefrom, and I expect nobody will be surprised when I say that she replaced it with a Mac. And a MacBook Air. And an iPad. Oh, and she has an iPhone and an iPod too. Doesn't do things by halves. Nope.

(Except when it comes to cleaning the files up on her old computer.)

So, what to do with an old, clunky Toshiba? Hmm.

Well, the Mau-mau wanted a computer. And what the hell; both boys have one, more or less. So -- why not? I decided I'd bite the bullet, and set up the old Tosh Sat with Ubuntu Linux 12.whatever the fuck the latest long-term stable release is.

I expected fuss. I expected fuckage. I expected, in short, Linux.

What did I get?

Well, I downloaded the disc image without any issues. Burned it straight to a cd. Plonked it into the Tosh Sat drive, and kicked it off. There was a brief moment of irritation when I had to reset the boot-device order to make the thing boot off the cd... and that was exactly the last trouble I had.

Ladeez and gents, Ubuntu Linux is so fucking smooth it makes silk look like the dangerous end of a pineapple. The system installed itself neatly and cleanly in one go, without any grief whatsoever. All I had to do was supply a username, a name for the machine, and a password. The rest just... happened.

When it had finished, there was a quiet little note telling me to run the system updates... but that was it.

This version of Ubuntu puts all your programme icons on a 'launcher' down the left-hand side of the screen. You can unlock them and put 'em where you like, or you can just leave 'em on the launcher, and scroll through. Very easy, very intuitive.

It comes with a handy little set of applications. Libre Office handles the usual range of desktop publishing. There's Firefox for the Web. There's a music organiser/player (that talks to an Ubuntu music store) and a few other bits and pieces. There's also a 'software centre' prominently visible on that launch bar. Click it, and you are immediately tossed into the familiar equivalent of an 'app store'. There are lots and lots of bits of free software available right away.

Did I mention how easy it was to go online? Ubuntu happily found all the relevant wifi stuff. A couple of clicks, a password, and hey: I'm in. Frankly, it was a lot harder with Windows.

I picked a typewriting game for the Mau-mau, a downhill racing game, and a platforming game. Loading and installing? Shit. Couldn't be easier. Click the icon of each application you want in the software centre. Authorise the installation. Walk away. Ubuntu handles the rest.

I opened up Firefox, because I wanted to show Jake the now-famous Weidman/Silva knockout. Immediately, I got a little notification telling me that Adobe Flash wasn't installed. I clicked it, and a window opened on Adobe's download centre. I picked a version that said it was right for Linux, and clicked it. That opened the Software Centre again: I had to authorise it to accept software from the Adobe repository. And once I'd done that?

Yep. You guessed it. Ubuntu quietly downloaded and installed Adobe Flash, and when it was done, I went back to the website and watched the clip of Weidman punching out Silva.

Damn.

Okay, Linux isn't big on running your favourite games. Okay, a lot of brand-name software you're used to may not be configured for Linux. On the other hand, I have never seen such a smooth, easy, intuitive interface. I've had more trouble figuring out Natalie's Mac than I did with installing this version of Ubuntu Linux. And I haven't bothered to try it yet, but I hear that WINE (a more-or-less emulator for Windows) runs just fine under Ubuntu Linux if you really must do Windowy things.

So, the verdict? Well, when I replace my computer, I'll be making Ubuntu my primary working desktop. I'll keep a partition for Windows so I can occasionally play interesting games, possibly -- and to run some of the oddball Windows ware I've gotten used to over the years. But for music, web browsing, writing and editing, Ubuntu rules.

And in the meantime, the Mau-mau just got herself a reliable, robust, easily configured and relatively secure computer for --- well, nothing much, really. Ubuntu Linux is free, and Nat's old machine had long since been written off and depreciated through tax.

So how's this relevant to you? Well -- got kids? Got elderly relatives you'd like to connect with who aren't computer-savvy and don't want to spend a lot of money? D'you know anybody who might benefit from the gift of a still-very-functional computer for learning or working or playing?

Ubuntu Linux is, near as I can tell, a fantastic way of recycling and repurposing old machines. I won't say the Tosh Sat is now a swift, agile beasty -- but it starts up from scratch in about thirty or forty seconds, shuts down even faster, and seems to run fairly complex software with ease.

Hats off to these people. You can still find all the operating system files. You can still open a terminal for command-line access. You've still got all that geeky, Linuxy goodness if you want to go after it. But if you're new, and you just want to be able to work with an inexpensive computer -- Ubuntu Linux is fucking brilliant.

Mandolines Suck

I bought one.

A mandoline, that is. With an 'e', you'll notice. Last thing I need is another bloody musical instrument around the house. Besides, I think we've got a mandolin. Maybe two. I know we loaned one out sort of permanently, but I suspect the other one is still lurking.

But I was in a kitchen shop, y'see. Helping Genghis pick out a present for the Mau-mau, whose eighth birthday approaches with freight-train rapidity. (Are freight trains fast? All of 'em I've ever seen are slow, clunkitty bastards, fit only for blockading level crossings at great length when you're trying to get past.) And while I was there, I thought: I keep hearing from people just how convenient these mandoline things are. And here's one on sale. I'll get it.

Stupid bloody idea. It's fiddly, and dangerous. I cut myself in three places tonight making shoestring fries for the kids. I will admit that it was marginally faster than Mister Cleaver, and it did produce more evenly sized fries... but really, the savings in time wasn't much, and the evenness of the fries isn't exactly a factor of interest. (Still. They were skinny. So they cooked fast. That was good.)

But as for anything else... well, sod it. I can't really see the point. Stupid, clunky, clumsy device with unnecessary bladey bits and all kinds of ergonomic handling issues. Pfeh. It will go up on top of the storage area, to be used only on the rare occasions when I feel like making shoestring fries... maybe twice a year.

And in other news, it looks as though we may be heading towards Renovation Hell once more. Natalie has finally noticed that there's not really enough space in our dining room for the piano and all the various computers and the electronic soldering table and the Lego and the puzzles and the bass and the cello and the violin and the trumpet and the dining table and chairs...

... so we may, assuming the costings are reasonable and Council doesn't freak out, wind up adding an actual dining room. That would be truly marvellous, despite the inevitable horrors associated with renovation.

Other than that? Early cherry trees are blossoming in Launceston. Daffodils and jonquils are shooting up all over the place. The hills are showing the first hints of wattle gold. Soon I shall be sneezing like a motherfucker. In other words: don't panic, people who are tired of the cold -- Spring isn't far away.

Time to buy some anti-snotergenic drugs.

Whoa. Sorry About Vanishing Like That

Not dead. Just writing epic poetry and other stuff.

I'm now finished the first draft of the poem for the MA. Fourteen thousand words in length. My prof is kind of boggled. He tends to giggle when he looks at it, like he can't really believe anybody has handed him fourteen thousand words of Ottava rima that actually rhymes and scans. I can't blame him. Having done it, I find it hard to believe too.

Bad news is, I'm not supposed to post a final version herein. The piece will be subject to the usual examination by various prof types around the traps, and I'm supposed to more or less keep it under wraps until they've had a good long look, kicked the tyres, and all that shit. Sorry about that.

There's a lot of editing left to do. I noticed a couple of seven-line stanzas, for example, and I lost track of my cantos in the run-up to the finish. But on the whole, it does the job, and I'm kind of staggered that I did it. I am also seriously in awe of a man who could produce something nearly ten times the size using quill pen and paper, without rhyming dictionaries and thesaurus, etc. I don't know of 'genius' is the right word to apply to Byron, but he certainly was an unusual chap. His ability to concentrate must have been outright fucking staggering.

Anyway, once I finished the first draft I got a week off the academic stuff, so I promptly dove in and went over the edits on the novel. It has a title, by the way: Path of Night. It's the first in a series set in Australia in modern times, and it falls somewhere between thriller, sf, and horror, with a streak of good old Australian ironic humour. The cover is coming together (get your act in gear, Adam!) and as soon as the editor and I figure out how to ship files back and forth between our disparate software (her .rtf would only open in my WordPad. When I opened it in anything else, everything after page 14 was missing. So of course, I did my editing in WordPad, and sent it back... whereupon she opened it with something Macintoshy, and sure enough, everything after page 14 was missing. Since then, I've saved it into odt with Open Office, but that crippled my editors ability to do much of use, so now I've tried both .doc and .docx format. It will be interesting to see what happens.)

I'm also diving into a filmscript -- purely because I can. I've had a really brilliant idea, and I've never done a full-length filmscript, so I'm just going to write the farkin' thing. Hell, if I can write an epic poem in Byronic Ottava rima, just how fucking difficult can a filmscript be?

Oh -- and young Jake has decided he needed a blog. It's over here. Drop by and make the little bastard think. It's good for him.

Now, I'd better go and get cooking. The fambly will be back from orchestra soon, if they don't wipe out on the rain-drenched highway on the way home...

The Irony of Cable Suspension Systems

So, I wanna rehang the digital projector in the cinema zone. When I first set it up, I hung some chain from the ceiling, and used simple hooks on the sides of a wooden base for the projector to suspend it. But since we've finished insulating and drywalling up there -- well, it looks a bit unprofessional. And more: because I can only adjust the position of the projector by a chainlink-length at a time, it's impossible to centre and level it with precision.

I figured I go and buy one of those nice cable-based systems they suspend track-lights with, you know? You see that shit everywhere. Adjustments along a cable are analog, as opposed to the (metaphorically) quantum nature of adjustments imposed by chain, and the whole thing looks nicer. I thought I'd just mosey on down to the local hardware, get myself some cable, some cable-grip fittings, and some ceiling mounts, and everything would be all tickety-boo, right?

Ha.

I went through three hardware stores, two specialty lighting places and Officeworks. In each place, I described what I needed, and got blank looks from the people working there. And in each place, once the blank looks were firmly in place, I eventually pointed to the lighting or shelving systems inside their own damned stores that relied on this ubiquitous system of cable suspension.

Blank looks were invariably followed by expressions of absolute surprise -- gosh, we use that stuff, don't we? -- followed by protestations of utter ignorance. Long story short: every fuckin' place USES this stuff, but nobody fuckin' SELLS it.

In the end, I bought brake cables from a bicycle store. And from a store that specialises in fitting out other stores with shelving, lighting, and display crap, I managed to get ceiling mounts that will hold my brake cables, and adjustable grips which will let me connect the system to my projector base.

It'll be a project for next week. I need to shift the projector a little farther back from the screen to widen the picture, and I need to level it out. Right now, everything is slightly tilted. But the fun I've had already... there's something gratifying in watching professional retail people tell you they've never heard of the thing you want, and then pointing out to them that their own store is fitted with precisely the thing you're after.

Eejits.

Packrat Brain Is Weird.

Roughly 25 years ago, a friend of mine -- pretty sure it was Steve Stanley -- had a flirtation with Ninjutsu, back in Brisneyland. I recall one particular day when the chap in question wandered into the university eatery where I and my cohort of villainous comrades were prone to avoiding lectures, and showed off a couple oddball moves he'd learned.

They were interesting, in what seemed a crackbrained kind of way, but not really very practical. One in particular I remember: the proto-ninja walks up to the victim, jumps up, wraps his legs around the victim's waist, and delivers a couple of quick hits to the victim's head. While the victim recoils, the proto-ninja keeps his legs locked around that waist, but drops his upper body backwards so his shoulders hit the ground. Proto-ninja then unlocks one leg and slides it down behind the victim. The other leg smashes the victim in the sternum, causing them to fall backwards over the leg which is still behind them. As the victim hits the ground, the proto-ninja can then deliver a heel strike to the groin, or simply grab a leg and apply a lock, or a break.

Sound complicated? Yes. It is. At the time, I figured that if I wanted to put someone on the ground I could do it with a lot less fuss, and without having to go to the ground myself. Oddly enough, though, I never managed to forget the incident.

So. Twenty-five years later, and I'm on the mats here in Tas. I've been doing a ground-fighting session with the senior students, and since we've got a couple of noobs, I've run them through the Brazilian Guard. If you don't know what that is... go and look it up. Essentially, it's a way of controlling a fight on the ground from a position on the bottom. You're on your back, and you lock your legs around the waist of the opponent. You bring their head down close to you to prevent them punching at you, and control their neck and shoulder. It's a defensive move that provides a fair degree of safety, and allows a bit of breathing space. Ideally, it's also a platform from which to go on with something much nastier.

Anyhow. One of the noobs is a Very Strong Young Man. I mean seriously powerful through the arms. Lot of time as a shearer. And I mentioned to him that some of the more powerful MMA fighters try to overcome the Guard by simply getting their feet under themselves, and standing up with their opponent's legs still locked around their waist -- and then body-slamming the opponent into the mat repeatedly.

It was right about then that I made the connection. Hello! That situation -- picked up into the air with legs locked around somebody's waist... shit! It was just made for that crackbrained ninja takedown!

I described it to Amy Baggins, on the grounds that I was pretty sure I could actually pick her up from the mat... and that she would also take me at my word, and do her damnedest to carry out the throw. Sure enough: she put me into the Guard. I shifted my feet under me, and stood up, preparatory to body-slamming her. She dropped back onto her shoulders, let one calf slide behind me, and heel-kicked me through the sternum with the other foot.

I went down like a sack of shit, giggling like a loon the whole way.

See, the thing is that there's nothing new in martial arts. The Brazilian Guard is kind of a Gracie ju-jitsu trademark... but they won't be the first to have used it. It's too efficient. It's a dead certainty that it's been used many, many times before, and by others.

So I'm guessing that sometime around five hundred years or so ago, somebody else used the Brazilian guard, and their very strong opponent picked them up, ready to body-slam them. And perhaps in that moment, or maybe later, in recovery, our pre-Brazilian chap sat up and thought: Hello! What I need to do is toss this fucker over backwards... But of course, down the centuries the throw got taught in different ways, and eventually it morphed into that leap-up-and-smack piece of silliness, and the original use was forgotten.

That's not too odd. Not really. There are little hidden, semi-lost bits of technique all over the place in martial arts. What struck me as odd -- or actually, hilarious -- was that I'd had that stupid piece of work in my head for twenty-five goddam years before I finally found something like a way to make it work.

 I have to say: putting the puzzle together after a quarter century actually felt pretty damned good.

Another Damn' Gifted Kid...

And in news from the All-Duhhh Channel today, a psychologist confirmed after three sessions of testing and interviewing that young Genghis is, like his brother, up in the Exceptionally Clever range, and should probably have his education adjusted accordingly.

On the one hand, it feels stupid being the parent who hounds the school, saying "My kid is special." On the other hand, it feels even worse watching your kid absolutely hate and loathe his mandatory schooling. So what do you do?

I've had the 'gifted' label described as a bit of a poisoned chalice, and yes, it certainly can be. It's well established now that telling a kid he (I'm gonna stick to the male pronoun, 'cos I'm dealing with Genghis, by and large, in this post) is smart is potentially detrimental to his learning. Instead, you're supposed to praise the  work and effort the kid puts in.

I get that. I really do. I was one of those kids who skated through everything, pretty much ignoring the teachers and the curriculum, and passing exams because that's what they wanted me to do and it was easier than making a fuss. And then I got to high level calculus, and suddenly discovered I couldn't do it. That was a real shock. And all without knowing what I was doing, I actually had to develop study and learning strategies to get through university. (Mostly they didn't amount to much. I admit it. I passed my science subjects by studying the night before the exams. And the English subjects... yeah, I was drunk some of the time... and other stuff.) I credit the martial arts training with a lot, to be honest: that was where I learned that breaking something down into component parts, practising them individually, and practicing repetitively was a good way to master complex techniques.

But you can't ignore the fact that the kid is bright. Especially when it's precisely that factor which frequently makes schooling a misery. Example: they have this 'lexile test' thing, where they check out the students' vocabulary, and try to advance their reading. Genghis pretty much maxed it out. And why not? He really enjoyed Dune. He's still working on The Master and Margharita, but H P Lovecraft isn't slowing him down.

Now, the school librarian knew he'd maxed it. But she kept handing him books that were part of their 'lexile program', and told him kindly, and gently (but altogether patronisingly and erroneously) that while he could read adult books, she needed to know that he was comprehending what he read. That pissed Genghis off a whole lot, and drove him away from the school library. And I understand that. I get it. It makes sense. Frankly, that kind of shit pissed me off too when I was his age.

My answer was just to keep reading books I brought from home. But then, I wasn't the victim of some kind of lexile crime. It was - literally! - Old School teaching, and they figured if I was reading at all, it was good. Poor Genghis has been the victim of Advances in Educational Science.

But you see what I mean. There's no point in trying to pretend the kid isn't smart enough to handle high-level books. And there's no way to hide from him that his friends and the other students his age (and older; the lexile/reading age thing maxes at 19. It doesn't actually go higher than that, I understand.) aren't reading those books, and can't yet read them fluently, with comprehension.

So for all that the 'gifted' label represents a new raft of dangers, at least it puts his abilities into black and white, and nails them to the mast of his record. The school can't ignore them now. The psychologist says she's already had a word with the library folks, and that's good -- because if I hear any more shit about Genghis being restricted to their 'lexile programme', I'm going to press the Ugly Parent button.

At least with the primary school, there's hope. I know the kid's already involved with the math group a year above him. And the teachers do seem genuinely engaged with his learning. His main teacher is excellent, and his math/sport teacher seems quite good too. Now, hopefully, with this assessment report behind him, we'll be able to get a bit more of a challenge in front of him on things like German, for example. And the psychologist has already encouraged us to get him to touch-type, and agreed that he should be allowed to work via a keyboard, rather than by oh-so-slow-and-ugly handwriting.

In the end? Well, I guess it was no real surprise. I've been having conversations about quantum physics, immunology, chemistry, and a host of similarly unlikely topics with this boy for a long time. He asked his mother a question about valence electrons a couple weeks back; she gave me a look like a desperate rabbit in the headlights of a semi-trailer. Lucky he didn't ask me -- I couldn't remember the answer to that one!

But it is a pain in the arse. Because, yes, you can't just chuck it all in the school's lap. They haven't got the capacity for it anyhow. More importantly, the kid learns more from parental attitudes and actions than he ever does from the school process. Of course, we were already trying to challenge and extend him, so really, there's not that much more work involved... not really.

It just feels that way.