Simon Rumble’s blog

Someone recommended those shoe rack hanging things for keeping geek bits and bobs. I bought one last week and just spent some time putting all my shit in it. I can now see my desk! Brilliant idea.

Everything is clearly visible and accessible. You can organize things, like all soldering/electronics stuff in one shelf; regularly-used tools in one shelf, random shit in little drawers. Love it!

Now just to organerize the stack of crap sitting next to it on the left there. Anyone wanna buy a Newton 2000?

I've been listening to a great radio play called The Department from Radio 4. It's very sharp satire. This afternoon I listened to the episode where the team tackle terrorism, and it had this brilliant rant:

"Well our problem here is that right from day one the War on Terror has been based on the wasp's nest principle, which thinks that the best thing to do if you've been stung by a wasp is to follow that wasp back to its nest and hit the nest with a big stick, and then keep repeatedly hitting the nest with a big stick until the stripey little shit has learnt its lesson."

That is going straight to the signature file, the email equivalent of the pool room.

Last night I finished my woodworking course at Sydney Community College (old Leichardt High School). My project was to make a box that will keep my beer fermenter cool, as our house gets to very high temperatures on sunny days.

It's a big box on quite tall legs, which a sliding out removable front panel and lift-out top. The design allows me to bottle the beer without moving the fermenter, which keeps the yeast from getting in the bottle.

I'm planning to line the inside with expanding spray foam. Cooling will be provided by a Peltier effect thermo-electric cooler controlled by this kit. Since I'm already cooling, I figure I can experiment with proper lager fermenting temperatures over the winter too!

Photos shortly.

My blog is syndicated on quite a few Planets:

• GLLUG
• SLUG
• Linux Australia
• Linode

During my recent exchange with Erik de Castro Lopo about Fred Nile and racism, I got a few emails from people asking us to "take it off the Planets". Janet probably put it best, and her comments were typical:

Guys
Might be worth thinking about having the full on religious debates on a
different blog than the linux planet, its a pretty sad thread to read
through for a group building collaboration and community.
Janet

Now I'm all for civility, and despise the scumbags who've got Kathy Sierra fearing for her life. If you read through the exchange with Erik, I think you'll find it was completely civil. In this world, we're allowed to disagree. In fact, it's incredibly important to collaboration and community. So I really don't see any problem with our discussion. Spirited, but polite, discussion and disagreement is a sign of a healthy community.

The next issue is the content. We were talking politics, and specifically state politics. I suspect this might be of little interest to readers of Planet GLLUG, Planet Linode and much of Planet Linux Australia's readers. But the thing about Planets is they're not discriminating. They take the feed and shove it up online.

I think this is actually a strength. It would be entirely possible to limit the feed Planets take to specific topics, for example by taking the geek category from my blog. It would make the Planets more efficient, perhaps, and certainly more focussed, but I think would also take away a lot of their joy.

I really enjoy learning more about the people I deal with on technical issues, experiencing them as full human beings rather than just geeks. I love hearing their opinions on random subjects, learning of their hobbies, their family life. It's great to see pictures of their lovers, dogs, kids, weddings, parties, friends and travels. It's what makes Planets great.

So I will continue to talk about whatever the hell I like on my blog. It's my blog and I'll crap on about beer and politics if I want to. If you don't like that, you might want to skip the Planets and subscribe directly to peoples' individual blogs, or at least those that focus narrowly on geekery. I think you'll miss out on something wonderful if you do, though.

Malcolm Turnbull yesterday said something I find difficult to disagree with:
"I think religion is a very poor guide to public policy."

Can't argue with that! Doesn't mean I actually like the Vaucluse Battler. Maybe he can start working on religious bigots in his own party like Abbott?

The Herald has shown its tact with this teaser about "Big wave surfing" alongside the story "Tsunami: 'move to higher ground'".

When some warns you about the latest Windows virus and opening a particular type of email and you don't run that buggy heap of crap.

Apparently there's some new virus out for Windows/Outlook. If you run Windows, at the very least stop using Outlook. A good alternative is Thunderbird. An even better option is to use Gmail so you can read your email anywhere.

Last night I actually got a little chilly at the pub. We haven't had a Winter since we left the UK in April last year. Two Summers in a row was pretty luxurious, but we're actually looking forward to a bit of a cold spell. Cold weather cooking will be a lot of fun after all these barbecues and salads.

That said, my memory of Winters in Sydney is that you get much colder because there's no heating. Everyone lives in this airy, floorboarded houses that don't close up and don't have central heating. We'll be spending the four bitterest weeks huddled under doonas with a crappy electric heater costing us a fortune.

But I can look forward to casseroles, stews and soups. I made the first casserole recently on a chilly Sunday and it turned out brilliantly.

A job ad from realstate.com.au led me to their site, where you have to register to apply for a job. It helpfully tells you this:

I can guarantee you, my password isn't made up of asterisks.

Further hunting around I find this one which helpfully tells you:
The Web PM has a large accountability relating to project management and ensuring all stakeholders engage into the development and maintenance process correctly to ensure quality deliveries.

I think what they mean is that you must speak project manager bullshit and applications in plain English will not be considered. Damn!

Does having an annoying, very loud ring tone on a phone that rings every five minutes in an open-plan office qualify the owner for removal from the gene pool? Is that qualification increased when he's also on his desk phone while letting it ring for thirty seconds? Repeatedly?

I'll just get my baseball bat.