Hello News Corp my old friend

 Humour, Life, Morality, Music, Phones, Politics, Writing  No Responses »
Jul 142011
 

A tribute to the News of the World and News Corp.

Sing along to the music from “The Sound of Silence” (or this instrumental version if it helps):

Hello News Corp, my old friend

I see you’ve hacked my phones again

Because a rumour had you thinking

That you’d delve while I was sleeping

And the wiretap that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

 

In restless dreams you heard my thoughts

Relayed them to all the world

‘Neath the title “He’s a tramp!”

I turn the page, my eyes go damp

When my eyes were stabbed by your words of shite

That caused a fight

And touched the sound of silence

 

And from the stolen words I saw

Ten thousand people maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing bile that voices never shared

No one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

 

“Fools,” said I “you do not know

Your works like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my truth I do beseech you”

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

 

And the people read and prayed

To the vitriol they had made

And the beast flashed out its warning

In the words found in the morning

And the head said “Celebs and royals in the nude, for all

you prudes”

And fame it falls

And whispered in the sound of silence

 Posted by PMdG at 9:53 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Time to shake things up a bit

 Life, Writing  3 Responses »
Oct 302010
 

When I was just a little over 18 years of age, I left home and packed my things to head off to University in Newcastle. At the time, compared to Parkes, Newcastle could have seemed like the “big smoke”, but I was already aware that it was small fry to Sydney.

Over time though first as I studied in Newcastle then started working there, I (and then my partner and I) actively discussed how big city life wasn’t an option – it would be too busy, too hectic, too unfriendly.

So when I started working in Sydney, the logical move for us was to relocate to the NSW Central Coast – a half way point between Sydney and Newcastle, and quite readily commutable from by public transport, at only an hour and a half each way. I commuted to Sydney for 6 years, sometimes loving it, sometimes hating it, before the company I worked for collapsed and I got the remarkable opportunity to work from home.

I also, having invested too much of myself in that previous company, got a big dose of depression which took a good two years to properly get over. But when I did get over it, it left a bit of a nagging feeling of “what am I doing here?”

(Not on the job front – I really love working for my current employer. They actually believe in a work/life balance and look after their employees.)

For various reasons though, most notably an inherited hermit-like tendency that grew out of a mix of my introversion and my parents own hermit like tendencies, I felt completely embedded where we were on the Central Coast. We had a mortgage, Darren’s job was just down the road, I was working from home, and we had a comfortable life. Sure, Darren would every now and then talk about changing things a bit, but I felt pretty damn comfortable.

And then at the start of the year I made the unpleasant realisation that sometimes, particularly when you’ve got hermit-like tendencies, “comfort zone” is a synonym for “rut”. We weren’t in a comfort zone any more, it had grown into a rut.

When we first moved to the central coast it was exciting because it was relatively new and I was commuting. But even before I stopped commuting the general drudgery of life it offered was becoming apparent. As a combination of seachange lifestyle and commuters, the Central Coast has suffered a lack of community spirit for ages. Gosford council in particular seems to have been constantly reluctant to actually allow investors into the region who want to shake things up (they too are exhibiting all the signs of being in a comfort zone that has turned into a rut), and so there’s never anything new and interesting appearing on the coast.

Or, to put it in a callously simple way – if the only place you can go at 9pm at night to get a coffee after a movie is a Macdonalds drive through, there’s something seriously fucked up with where you’re living. Sure, it’s more complex than that, but it’s indicative of a greater problem with the region. A lack of lifestyle culture, if you will. In some ways, the central coast is becoming a grey region – full of retirement villages, the median age of the coast is going up higher than the average region, I think; and that of course influences the tone of the region. It’s also got, lamentably, a significantly large group of evangelical churches. This seems directly related to the number of people making a seachange. Turns out if you don’t know why you’re moving when you move, you may end up needing a crutch.

In short, unless you’re prepared for a prayer session where it’s hands-down-for-coffee, or want to sit around talking about Matlock, you need to go somewhere outside the central coast to do anything pertaining to culture.

That’s if you’re heterosexual. If you’re gay, it becomes a bit more interesting again. But, if you’re a bear, it goes from “a bit more interesting” to “damn impossible”.

In short, the Central Coast is a picturesque region that has much to recommend it if you’re a commuter with kids, or a retiree. I’m neither, and the realisation was that Darren was (as I should have known!) completely right, and it was time to shake things up a bit.

The Ungay Guy wrote an article last year about deciding to move from Chicago to San Francisco called “Everything must go“. I actually give no small amount of credit to him for actually setting the seed that allowed me to make the realisation myself at the start of the year – after all, he said:

Even though the status quo seems good, my life still feels stagnated.

There’s that damn rut again!

So we evaluated where we’d like to live, and it came down to three choices: Hobart, which has the best weather in terms of what we’d like, Auckland, which is where my company’s head office was, and the third choice: Melbourne, the next biggest IT centre in Australia after Sydney.

From a weather perspective, Hobart won hands down. But from a work perspective, it was without a doubt the most limited. Realistically as well, it also has a limited social life as it’s a much smaller city, even if it is a state capital city. Auckland – we gave that serious consideration, but the biggest fear of Auckland was (not earthquakes or power losses) that it would be a one way move. It’s very unlikely the NZ dollar will reach parity to the Australian dollar without an amalgamation between the two countries, and so any move over there would result in a substantial reduction in Australian-calculated income, and the cost of living seems undoubtedly higher in New Zealand than Australia. It would have a good culture, and plenty of work colleagues, several of whom I consider to be close friends, but it would be a one-way trip.

Or in other words – I love New Zealand, but I’m fairly certain I want to stay an Australian.

So Melbourne – and then the idea sparked for us: it’s not third choice. It has the highest employment prospects, it has culture, it has a strong bear community too if we wanted to dip our toes into it, and it has weather that’s more compatible with us. It also has the best food culture in Australia, and having watched with envy for years the sorts of shows and exhibits that Melbourne gets either in preference to, or before Sydney, it seems to have the most compatible culture for us, too. Suddenly Melbourne was elevated to first choice from third, and we felt rather sheepish for not thinking of it sooner.

It wasn’t that we didn’t want a big city life – we just didn’t want that big city life to be in Sydney.

But, moving to a place when you don’t know anyone can be a challenging thing to do, and the internet lets you get around those problems if you want to work at it. Not only that, there was the growing thought that if there was a gay community we were interested in having some exposure to, it was the bear community, and so early on in 2010 we started actively talking on the net with bears in Melbourne to see if we were making the right decision.

Through that, we’ve been lucky enough to make some really fantastic friends. We actually kept our cards close to our chest for some time for a very simple reason: making friends when you are or are going to be local is easy. Making friends when you’re someone remote is more of a challenge, and if it works you know that it’s a real friendship indeed. And real friendships were definitely formed, which took us from thinking “maybe we could move to Melbourne” to “when shall we move to Melbourne?” (And also, from the perspective of other people, –condensed form–, “Hi, I’m moving to Melbourne. Want to be my friend?” is decidedly creepy!)

As an aside, you also know that you’ve been making plenty of bear friends when you click on “People you may know” on Facebook, and every face suggested has a beard or a goatee.

At first the plans were set for 2012, then maybe by the end of 2011, and now suddenly we’re both thinking that mid-2011 is a bit of a challenging deadline but it gives us some hard work to do with a great reward. Suddenly the Central Coast isn’t home any more, just a holding pattern, and home will be when we move to Melbourne.

Sure, it’s going to a big bumpy and interesting – yet rewarding – ride ahead of us. Yet what is normally the biggest uncertainty of moving is not an uncertainty for me at all. Normally people either have a find a job to move to, or move then find a job. Instead, my job comes with me – in fact, it’ll be a great challenge, getting to drive new business in a new city and grow the presence of my company across two states of Australia.

Having made the decision, the next focus is on enabling it, and the first thing we think now when we look around our house is “how many of these possessions can we ditch?” We’re probably not going as far as the Ungay Guy who said he was going to keep only a quarter of his possessions, but we’re definitely halving. That’s probably the first major decision we’ve made – there are many more to come. Do we sell, or do we rent our current house? Where do we move to in Melbourne? How will we keep recording Coronation Street for Darren’s mother? These are all big questions that’ll need to be answered over the coming months.

But if I’m slightly distracted from blogging in the next 7-8 months, you’ll know why :-)

 Posted by PMdG at 7:12 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

The vast chasm

 Writing  No Responses »
May 222010
 

There is a vast punctuation chasm that a lot of people fail to jump, and personally it drives me nuts. I know I’ll be accused of being a punctuation freak with what I’m about to say, but you can’t defend the indefensible, and for people who know and love language, you can’t just say “ignore it”. Ignoring it means putting up with imperfection, putting up with the punctuation equivalent of someone saying “beresk” instead of “berserk”.

It’s the difference between a colon and a semi-colon. These two punctuation symbols are not interchangeable. Or, in the words of Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride:

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Let’s look at the definition of the two symbols. Starting first with a semi-colon and referring to the Wikipedia entry for it:

Semicolons are followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter is the first letter of a proper noun. They have no spaces before them, but one space after (possibly two in a monospace type). Applications of the semicolon in English include:

  • Between closely-related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction:
    • “I went to the swimming pool; I was told it was closed for routine maintenance.”
    • “I told Ben he’s running for the hills; I wonder if he knew I was joking.”
    • “A man chooses; a slave obeys.”
  • Between independent clauses linked with a transitional phrase or a conjunctive adverb:
    • “I like to eat fish; however, I don’t like to be eaten by them.”
    • “I like being odd; yet, I hate being different.”
  • Between items in a series or listing containing internal punctuation, especially parenthetic commas, where the semicolons function as serial commas:
    • “She saw three men: Jamie, who came from New Zealand; John, the milkman’s son; and George, a gaunt kind of man.”
    • “Several fast food restaurants can be found in each of London, England; Paris, France; Dublin, Ireland; and Madrid, Spain.”
    • “Examples of familiar sequences are: one, two and three; a, b, and c; and first, second, and third.”

Note how we get a starting rule almost immediately, “Semicolons are followed by a lower case letter, unless the letter is the first letter of a proper noun”.

Now moving onto the colon, and the Wikipedia entry for it:

As with many other punctuation marks, the usage of colon varies among languages and, for a given language, among historical periods. As a rule, however, a colon informs the reader that what follows proves and explains, or simply provides elements of, what is referred to before.

As you can see, these two definitions are wildly different. There’s nothing in the semi-colon definition that suggests it can be used as a substitute for a colon, and nor is there anything in the colon definition that suggests it can be substituted for a semi-colon. Indeed, if we go back to one of the examples for a semi-colon, you’ll even see a combined use of the two symbols:

“She saw three men: Jamie, who came from New Zealand; John, the milkman’s son; and George, a gaunt kind of man.”

So the use of the colon in that identifies that there will be a list, or a series of elements to follow from the previous statement. “She saw three men”, “colon”, indicates that following the colon will be something to do with those three men. We then have three partial sentences, separated by semi-colons: “Jamie, who came from New Zealand; John, the milkman’s son; and George, a gaunt kind of man.”

Writing the above without colons and semi-colons, we’d get text resembling the following:

She saw three men. Jamie was from New Zealand. John was the milkman’s son, and George was a gaunt kind of man.

Here’s an example of the most common incorrect use of a semi-colon you’ll see. It is the only time I will willingly mis-use the semi-colon:

There are three things you need to consider;

  • PCs are riddled with viruses
  • PCs need frequent rebuilding
  • Macs have neither of the above problems.

To someone who actually understands punctuation, the entire meaning of the above is lost through the incorrect use of the semi-colon. Or to put it another way, it’s like writing “(Hello :-) ” to a LISP programmer who understands emoticons. In short, it’s a troubling error that drives people with a passion for language nuts – and it’s plain wrong.

So please, if you need to use a colon or a semi-colon, and you’re not sure which is which, check!

 Posted by PMdG at 5:38 am  Tagged with: , ,

10 classic misspellings and their corrections

 Entertainment, Writing  No Responses »
Jan 152010
 

While I don’t claim to be infallible, I’m a stickler for spelling and punctuation. Common mistakes, such as they’re/their/there drive me nuts.

This site has one of the best explanations, even using pretty pictures as examples, of the most common spelling mistakes.

I heartily recommend everyone use check it out – the oatmeal.

 Posted by PMdG at 11:06 am  Tagged with: ,

Rest your brain, work every day

 Writing  No Responses »
Jan 092010
 

Matt, over at Standalone Sysadmin this morning tweeted a link to a fantastic article that probably helps to explain why I feel driven to write something every day. Across my NetWorker and Cloud blogs, perhaps now this as well, and my other writing, I try to write something every day, without fail. It may be just jumping in and adding more to a draft (of which I’ll usually have a half dozen to dozen running at any time), or it may be adding a chapter to a book, and sometimes it’ll just be one or two lines here or there, but on an average day if I haven’t written something other than a basic tweet or Facebook update, I feel like I’ve underachieved.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I wrote a book when I was 12. (It was crap, but over the years I keep returning to it because the ideas were fun and they’ve matured nicely. Maybe one day – still a few years before 40, who knows.) In eschewed the traditional computer science path both at high school and University, having neither an aptitude for nor an interest in maths, physics or chemistry. Instead, at high school most of my subjects were around English and History, then on at University I did the mandatory math subjects, and enjoyed all the computer science subjects I took (bar one, but that was a boring-as-hell lecturer who had all the enthusiasm of a sloth on valium), but I loved my philosophy courses, because they were about thinking and writing.

I write documentation all the time, whether I’m paid to or not. I wrote a technical book and blogging grabs some of my time every day. Of late I’ve hit onto an idea for a science fiction book that I’m working on when the muse strikes, and what I’ve done so far, and the (hopefully reasonably unique) approach I’m taking is something that really excites me.

Writing isn’t, in any sense of the word for me, a hobby. A hobby is something you do in your spare time. This is something I make the time for. I love technology, I love my job, and I go nuts without access to a computer or an internet connection, but they’re all just enablers for my long-as-I-can-remember desire to write. Maybe even as a hangover from having a serious speech impediment as a kid, and having to learn to read while I was learning to speak, I still, to this day, find writing a far more accurate and efficient medium than speaking.

So if you’re ever wondering why I’m verbose, or a stickler for dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, that’s a quick summary – it drives me, and it keeps my brain engaged, and it keeps me writing.

 Posted by PMdG at 5:43 am  Tagged with: , ,
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