External and Internal Imagination

Previously I wrote about the visible and obvious part of imagination, combined with engineering to create the shiny and the new. I also described how it is seen and known to the observant.

Understand that our consciousness is split into roles, where one is an Observer who watches everything with a detachment from emotions like fear and your Observer has no desire to judge your actions.

When you peel and eat a banana it is you who does the pealing as well as eating it. However, it is also you who watches the peeling and eating of the banana. We can understand the Observer is always watching what we do, including our imagination. However, this watchfulness sees only the fully formed or near fully formed. Our Observing self is blinded to that which is below completion, below the consciousness.

For now I will walk the path which is far less well known, with the possibility of disagreement. These disagreements lead to conflict, cruelty and suffering. I may fear your reaction but I will tread on.

Underlying our Observer or full consciousness, we have the sub-conscious and unconscious. So too underneath the imagination we visualise using the Observer part of our selves is the sub-imagination. Yet deeper within is the under-imagination.

Humans would like to believe we are orderly, but we utilise chaos quite extensively. When we are on the verge of sleep and the dreaming process begins, many of us experience fragments of information. Most seem to make no sense. Yet these fragments are a rare insight we have into working below consciousness. These are fragments of images, sounds, thoughts, emotions and ideas, incomplete and without context.

I put it out there to you, that the sub-imagination (another core part of the creative process and one of which we may or may not be clearly aware of), is absorbing and sorting fragments of information for relevancy within our daily reality. It is looking for context. Our imaginations are constructed from these building blocks, like Lego bricks, and are sourced from a chaotic stream. So we combine these image, sound, thought, emotion and idea fragments together with our context to create something.

This chaotic stream is where things begin to get interesting, for example: where does it come from? An even more important question to think about is: what is driving the stream need? We know this last part as desire. Desire to create.. something. Why? And this question will become more important later.

Deep down inside lies the under-imagination. The wellspring of our creative steam. Our source of life and wealth, like imagination. From here you get your stream to fulfil desires which lacks the order, because it is freely given in love. Free of context which you may apply, sort and create with. Here lies the heart of creation which is the Creator.

The stream comes to you in freedom and love but you are the processor you decide what to accept and reject. To create more completely you could open your mind to accept outside your comfort zone. For example, if you must be different then experience sameness. If you must protest then submit. If you must submit then protest. If you must be real then abstract. Break the bonds and be free.

So we co-create with the Creator who is all that will be as long as you desire it. So then one could say there is no freewill for we are will-bound upon by the Creator. But so too is the Creator a part of us as we are of the Creator. In this way we are the Creator’s will. As free as we have always feared we are not. Remember the key is Love.

Anything can be created, with others who are open, then amazing things can bloom that are beyond ourselves.

If art is your desire then whyfor do you wait for a fleeting moment, when all moments are momentary? Do you fear your art is not resonant enough, not glamorous, too mundane? Art is the creative process, not the object. It is dead once created, move therefore to the next art and many will know the beauty of creation in action.

And so here I complete one half of what I want to say, for there is the Mirror. The other half which instead of being an internal mechanism, is all about being external.

Introspection is my strength from youth but extrospection was my education. For the question asked is why do we want to create? The answer is often very simple. It may be to make a better living, to feed the family, to entertain, or to share. It may be for nothing more than a few dollars in the pocket. Yet creation doesn’t stop there. Once something is made and observed by others it is like a virus. It spreads. Like the ideas of a stirrup, bronze and iron spread right across the world. Like the spread of religions and art, like the internet has spread. Central authorities be damned, it will seep even into the dark corners of China.

Your creation becomes a creation shared by the world. Copyright be damned. Copyright may slow the process, but the ideas will spread, legally, illegally and most often sub-legally. Microsoft coping the Xerox copying. Doom clones anyone? Who copies who? They all do, and if they didn’t, many products we use today would be dreadful because the majority of features on them were created by someone else. Without the spread all these features would be absent.

How many things do we use which are not comprised of many other creations? Even back to such basic things as bronze? Engineering study lets one see this as a tiny glimpse into the splendour and power of millions of ideas, that all come to work in harmony. They make one item into another all driven by people with the same basic reasons you made your creation for. To feed the family and make a living etc. To make a single computer requires so many steps and complex associations starting with raw materials like oil, ore, sand, trees, seawater, freshwater and plants and animals of various types.

Who can follow it all? I cannot follow even a single computer. It would take me years to try to, and by then it would have changed, improved, become obsolete. In the end I am only looking at selective parts of the process. I might look at how the silicon is processed and purified to make a CPU, only to neglect the purifier and all the steps it took to create that. Who can follow it all? The Observer. The other one. The “Big Guy in the Sky”.

Each of us have our petty needs and desires prompting us to complete our small step in the creative process. Summed up across the world, we have the ultimate result of many needs and desires cared for, with the bonus of amazing creations, like the computer which serve us in many capacities. One of those capacities is to create yet further wonderful things.

And so we come to the end of creation’s cycle which is the same as the beginning.

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The Ending Year

2009 is ending and so I’m reflecting on the year as well as thinking about the year ahead.

2009 has been a quick year. Aren’t they all? Not too long ago I was standing there celebrating the beginning of this year. My New Year’s resolution was to “take a chance”. “Take a chance” was just my way of defeating fears that hold me back. It’s been fairly useful over the year and I will continue to use that. This year I want something new though.

What to do? The last year was about gains of the internal kind but I think this year will be more external. Externally it’s damn hot actually. 42°C today. But I mean activities related to money, friends, family, possibly business, whatever is outside of me actually.

[intermission]So I went to get out the mail and a huntsman spider comes in with it. That was a delightful surprise when it crawled out between the bills to go up my arm. Almost as nice as bills themselves. The good news is the temperature has dropped like a stone to just 25°C.[/intermission]

So where was I? A resolution for the New Year. I think I shall go with something simple. “Don’t just think, act.”

BTW Happy New Year to you all. But don’t read this, go out and have some fun.

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Imagineering

Let us step back and learn to appreciate Imagination and it’s central role in Creation. Look around at how many objects we are using, including this computer which was created using the imagination of others in the past. Think about life without it. That’s life without imagination.

However it took more than imagination to create these things. For in imagination any form can exist and have meaning. Because these thoughts had to be worked into the far less flexible reality, which you and I live in. This was done with the tools and abilities we have, utilising our knowledge of reality to ‘create’ a physical representation of that imaginative thought. I loosely call this engineering.

In 1952, Walt Disney founded WED enterprises to create the Disneyland theme park. Drawing from his recent experience overseas, he wanted something grander and family friendly rather then the sorry excuses he had found in the US.

To make his concepts (his imagination) come to life he gathered some of the best and most diverse people from Disney Studios who were dubbed ‘imagineers’. These imagineers were to be the glue between Disney’s desires and the Disneyland theme park. ‘Imagineers’ who do ‘imagineering’ is of course a melding of the words ‘imagination’ and ‘engineer’. These imagineers were to use both their imagination and also engineering abilities to bring Disneyland to life.

It’s interesting to note that imagineering embodies the creation process of knowing what to create combined with bringing that creation into physical reality. Yes imagineers must find a way to bring their wondrous creations of the mind into a creation of reality. Reality has hard rules that the mind does not have to follow. Reality is the ultimate testing ground, as engineers know only too well.

The kind of people employed were incredibly diverse. Many skills and job kinds were needed including those that were not so formally recognised. So there were artists of various kinds, engineers of many flavours, those with experience in media and stage and so on, all adding their unique abilities into the greater project.

So Imagination is the starting process, followed by bringing that image into reality with our best available moulding skills. This sums up the awareness side of the creative process.

There’s an common perception that we have ‘Imagination on tap’. This is true in one sense but totally false in another.

Once upon a time a storyteller told his imaginative stories around the campfire and whose skill could elicit hope, wonder and even terror from listeners young and old.

Soon technology made the stories even better for the alphabet and printing presses soon spread the stories far and wide as books.

It wasn’t too long before the radio joined in so ‘one’ could again hear the story being told, wider than the local campfire! Television soon added images to the mix and truly made a story immersive. DVDs came then the internet which allows one to play the character in such stories and influence the outcomes. So now the stories are interactive deepening the immersion level, and therefore our attachment to them.

Truly we have been awash in imagination. All those books, TV shows, Movies, Music, Broadcasts, Podcasts and MMORPGs! But these are not of our own personal imagination. These are merely tools to convey another person’s imagination. An illusion that many have fallen for.

And it’s getting stale. Each new release is mostly a rehash of previously told stories. The Ménage à Trois, the Romeo and Juliet, these kinds of stories have been told so often their fresh brilliance has eroded to the nature of chewed cud. It’s parasitic solely feeding off another’s imagination and is it doing us much good?

What we need, is to use our own imaginations too.

But how do we do that? Well this is the sense where we do have imagination on tap. All of us have it we merely need to get in touch with it. Let’s face it, most of us are not accustomed to using it. We might ‘day dream’ but just plod along life without ever using the imagination we have. We’re too busy, too tired, too poor, too old, too inexperienced to do anything like that. Or are we?

Our children need to learn about the rules which govern reality, but also to explore and risk expressing their imagination (or ideas) is OK. It isn’t just children, we all need to wake up from other people’s dreams and nightmares to follow our own paths.

Artists (including those who create the many books, TV shows etc) may be able to help. Artists of all kinds still use their own imagination and do at least partially bring it into reality through whatever media they favour. They may promote the idea that their art is so much better but many of them probably know better. Artists must have something to offer.

Companies are afraid of imagination, because of the expensive iterative steps of bringing the imagination into reality, and the risk of it being rejected. Most faced with a choice of uncertainly high profit or more certainly low profit will nearly always choose the safest road. Those that embrace imagination go a lot further. It’s hard to come up with an example besides Disney’s, however there would be many small medium enterprises (SME) which do just that. Even larger companies do it to a small degree. Microsoft imports it by corporate takeovers and deals with smaller more dynamic businesses and individuals. Google in-houses quite a lot of it on the cheap, from it’s customers and developing nations. The tiniest drop can go a long way. Look at Youtube.

These days some of the most necessarily creative, innovative and ultimately imaginative business’ are found in the entrepreneurial startups and venture projects. Many of whom resort to breaking all sorts of business norms, such as bootstrapping. These business people are trying their hardest to bring something imaginative into commercially viable reality, and thus also becoming imagineers in action. We could learn something from there as well.

I feel imagination and it’s role in creation is too centrally important for us to continue to neglect. We need to revitalise interest in it and that will help us all be imagineers.

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Afghanistan Surge and Withdrawal

Obama finally spake to the snoozy masses.

It is all sadly predictable. 30,000 US troops will be sent but the military will withdraw in 18 months in July 2011. Yes, before the next election.

So the combined forces, including Australia’s, have just 18 months to turn it around and settle the country into complete stability before heading off. I do not have faith it will be done. Not just because of the huge effort required, but also because now the terrorists know they only have to wait it out 18 months.

Obama disappoints me. He sent all those troops there as General McChrystal requested and for what kind of song and dance? How many of those good men and women will die with no purpose?

George Bush the younger went on and on about US resolve and how they’ll stick it through to the bitter end. Bush was wrong. Bush himself had resolve he stuck it through for what 7 years until he was replaced. And that’s the key. The US, like any democracy, is mutable and what one leader believes is not what another may believe. The US itself does not have resolve. It cannot be relied upon past the next election.

Australia has to re-examine our relationship with the US. Perhaps people who know better than I do will be convinced it can all be done in 18 months. Perhaps the real mission is to provide allied support in the case we’ll need it one day. But does the US have the resolve to help us?

For myself, I don’t see why our serving men and women are there. I see nothing but disgrace in sending the military off to fight hard spending our wealth and getting injured and dying, then to be sent home in 18 months in enforced failure. It would tear my heart if it were me, or my son or daughter. I think the whole lot of our people should come home today.

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The Future of Google Wave? A Manhunt?

When one uses Google Wave, like any communication form, there’s the competing elements of signal and noise.

Already the signal is quite strong.  Most technophiles already have access but we’re all trying to find out how best to use this medium.  It’s obviously strong in collaboration and seems to be a great balance of email and instant messaging at the social or community level.  It’s good for working up collaborative documents too for business and other development.

Public waves are out there, many of which are quite informative, from camping groups, the things to do in my local city and even how to use Google wave itself.  One public wave is even committed to a manhunt of the killer of the four police in Seattle.

But there is also noise.  Many gawking tourist-type comments, hihi-type comments, empty replies and so forth.  As Google Wave accepts more people into the fold we’ll have a more mainstream mix and with it will come the spam.  Already I’ve seen a few primitive spam efforts.  If Google doesn’t improve its strategy public waves will be inundated with spam chocking out their usefulness.

What do you use Google Wave for?

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Windows Overheads Getting too Heavy

There is a windows nuisance which seems to be getting nearer crisis point.

These are overheads, or if you like computer maintenance, which comprises of several wasteful mechanisms which sap you computer productivity, speed, responsiveness and your personal time.

What I’m talking about is everything on your system that isn’t core to your service. There’s always been this in effect in various ways. For example, boot up, shutdown, time to launch an application etc.

But now we have a whole new layer. It all started with antivirus updates and Windows update which were at least loosely useful. They became automated, mostly because the majority of computer users would never update unless it was automated.

But then everything else jumped on the bandwagon. MS Office updates. Silverlight! I didn’t even install Silverlight yet there it is pooped on my Windows system. Windows media updates, what a joke! Windows media has stunk for perhaps a decade now. And windows updates is excruciatingly slow.

And it isn’t just Microsoft, no. Quicken and Google and Abode and you name it have updates galore too. Even games do it. It’s not just updates, it’s the advertising, the known and unknown info passed back via the net, the forms and permissions and terms of agreement and read the privacy document first. How about discovering the hard way the program only runs in admin mode. ‘Error 412, Would you like Microsoft to try and find a solution to the problem?’ We all know how hard they try. It is indeed very trying. How about the User Account Control (UAC)? It ensures installing something takes much longer and locks up your system more than the installation process itself. And that’s not even including the never ending permission prompts.

Then there’s the need for antivirus, anti rootkit, anti trojan, link blockers and spam canners. Defragmentation which takes hours, cleanups for files and sloppy registry entries.

All in all there so much superfluous rubbish in Windows it’s no wonder Linux is so much faster. It’s not just the software it’s the focus on getting things done rather than making money from the masses.

Linux does have some of these issues too but on the whole it’s not near crisis and each problem is better managed. So what I want done gets done. On Windows the capacity to do what I want is hampered by amazing levels of inefficiency.

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Afghanistan on a Knife Edge

AfghanistanflagA lot of time has passed since 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. 8 years it is now. For far too long Iraq got the lion’s share of effort and attention. Perhaps that was necessary but it meant Afghanistan was neglected. When push comes to shove it was less important and also much harder.

One of the problems in Afghanistan seems to be supply. Modern armies consume vast amounts of resources and those have to be delivered. In a land with few good access points contractors will resort to bribery to get the goods through. The problem with this is some of that money ends up in enemy hands where each dollar has far more value and impact in the war. In some parts delivery is only feasible by air. So in some ways the military forces are feeding their own resistance.

Another problem is the political system. Kurzai is corrupt and the election is an embarrassment to everyone but he is just a symptom of the wider and deeper corruption in a place where this is the way things are expected to be done.

While we’re on the theme of the ways things are done, I am also less convinced about the idea of not disturbing the opium farming which is a major part of the economy there, for fear of getting farmers to support the terrorists. It may have been better to pay hard cash to farmers to grow the next best crop. The opium trade provides far too much money to the terrorists and probably also provides them with far too many contacts.

It may have also been a good idea to push for changes in the socio-religious system. To put it bluntly to favour moderate forms of Islam to the extreme. Which means pushing for all the changes moderate Islam embraces such as better female access to education and employment and an emphasis on the Islamic discouragement of extreme behaviour. Easier said than done, especially in the rural areas, but it would put enormous pressure on the terrorists who would at last be out of phase with the way things are done in Afghanistan. A good moderate Islam ally which can at least nominally get involved in Afghanistan would possibly be a huge help here.

Another problem is the international coherency and dedication. The NATO entity is not a united one and is pushed and pulled by the various involved powers into poor functionality. Not one nation involved in Afghanistan looks 100% politically dedicated. Not my own. Not even the US. We also need wider regional involvement.

The board game Chess has the situation of win or lose but it also has a draw where neither party wins or loses. I can tell you, without fail, if you play to draw you will lose. I think too many nations are doing that in Afghanistan. The effort of the militaries present is strong but the backup politically is limp.

So I come rather reluctantly to a nasty conclusion. Afghanistan stands on a knife edge and is more likely to fail than succeed if the status quo is maintained. I think very soon it will be clear which way the cards will fall and if it’s ugly we’ll see the bulk of military forces leave. Which is precisely what the enemy is hoping for. Afghanistan needs more than it gets. Does anyone with sufficient power have what it takes? So far the EU, NATO, UN, Obama, China and Kurzai aren’t sources of much hope.

General Stanley McChrystal who runs the US efforts in Afghanistan requested 30 -40K troops and made a case for needing them to win. He made it clear it was lost without them. He might not be getting them. President Obama has procrastinated any real decision on the matter of those troops although it appears he’s about to make that decision.

I hope President Obama, you make a good decision and follow it up with sufficient effort and skill, especially in the diplomatic arena where you have some goodwill.

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Sarah Palin 2012

Sarah PalinSarah Palin will not win the 2012 election.

A great deal has been made of Sarah Palin as presidential candidate in 2012 even before the end of the 2008 election.  Many in the conservative world adore Sarah Palin and were naturally disappointed that she didn’t make it into government during that last US federal election. There is no question Sarah was the shot in the arm the McCain campaign needed at the time. Unfortunately for them it was only going to fire up those who were already supportive.

Now, despite her rather transparent claim not to be, she is beginning the very long haul in preparation for the 2012 election. Part of this means gaining visibility which she already has an enormous advantage in compared to other potential candidates. Only recently she had an interview with Oprah Winfrey. On the surface this was about her new book ‘Going Rogue’.

The other thing Palin needs is money. The sad truth is millions wins elections, anyone without the money has no chance at all. Palin will get money, no doubt has some of her own, but I am not certain there will be enough. If she can successfully squeeze her fanbase, perhaps the same way Obama did, I think it’s quite possible.

So really so far it looks like she’s in with a chance. But I don’t think so.

The first problem is credibility and reputation.

The book itself makes me wonder. 413 pages apparently and released so quickly. I find it difficult to believe she wrote it. There’s a rumour it was ghostwritten by Lynn Vincent. Any dirt in her book is likely to be ‘discovered’ at an awkward time for Palin. I think there will be an avalanche of it.

Sarah’s original gaffes still bite but I think she will be able to make it up as long as she really isn’t that out of touch. Time will tell that based on how many and what sort of extra gaffes come about.

One of the key mistakes was quitting her job in Alaska. It shows her as an opportunistic quitter and I believe many Americans don’t like that kind of attitude on both sides of politics. I think we’ll see that message from her opponents early and often.

Her family may bite her over time. In some ways her large and indeed very real family is an asset to her. It connects her to the many families out there. But in the end it will probably prove more a burden. The thing is women as seen far more as family central and Americans have rather perfectionist views on family. Palin cannot possibly deliver the Brady Bunch.  She has to deal with “porn” Levi who is of course reacting to the excessive exposure caused by Palin’s decision to run in 2008. There’s other possibilities but time will tell.

One other thing Palin at least knows she must do and is working on it. This is reach the moderate and liberal audience. At the moment the only people who hear her message properly are her fanbase. She has to get it further afield to get the numbers she needs. I don’t think she will succeed in this but she may say things very soon which will have the cheering Palin fanbase very uncomfortable.

I also think her heavy bagging of the 2008 election campaign people is rather stupid. Her preferred scapegoat I suppose but very transparent backstabbing and failure to take responsibility, which is not likely to endear her to campaigners or Americans.

The last issue is on the economy.  Americans by now, and I think right into 2012, have their job security and financial wellbeing in mind very much thanks to the collapse which probably sank Palin’s first election chances.  The voters are going to be more interested in economic issues and less on social ones.  Palin is strong on social issues at least from a conservative mindset but has no real economic credentials or vision and will be exposed to a conservative candidate who does.

I expect Palin to go for the 2012 election. Her ego demands it but her abilities aren’t up to the task at hand.  She will fail nomination and that will be that.

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Riding the Google Wave

I got an invite from a friend and I am indeed thrilled to get a look at it. If you are one of the extremely lucky people who have escaped the hype and know nothing about Google Wave, allow me to corrupt you.

Google Wave is a new communication tool;

Real time – what you see is updated as people type. Yes you can actually see the text inserted etc. Which makes for great visibility of your spelling errors but also helps the free flow of communication.

Collaborative – built from the ground up to let you work together with people to cocreate.

Embeddable – much like YouTube videos you can insert them anywhere. For example into a blog. I might even try that. It can also have stuff embedded into it like photos, videos and also;

Extensions – Like FireFox, Google Wave has extensions you can add in to make the experience as feature rich as you like. There’s aren’t many yet but I’m sure it will balloon. I’ve seen suduko, a simple poll, Google maps and conferencing

Another way to look at it is to compare with other communication tools. Despite what Google might claim it’s not really anothing new. What is new is that it has taken to best feature from many online communication tools such as email, twitter, instant messaging (MSN), facebook, etc

Now that I’ve actually seen it, I remain excited. It’s going to be a the huge improvement I had hoped it would be. It will replace many communication forms. Time will tell which ones but email at least.

It’s layout is similar to email. There’s contacts you can drag to add to waves (think of them as enhanced email message threads). The waves are sorted by search, folder or inbox, for example. For now Google Wave is preview and terribly unstable with large waves which have many people involved and ‘blips’ which are pieces added to the wave. It seems to run better on Chrome as one would expect.

I see it becoming a common collaborative tool and intend to use it as such myself.

Google Wave is grossly overhyped but only in the marketing mememe sense.. The sheer number of people who want it without having much clue what it actually does is staggering. The content is solid and not overhyped. The waves are coming.

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Fort Hood

By now everyone knows about the Foot Hood army base disaster in Texas, USA. 12 soldiers and one civilian lost their life when Major Hasan committed mass murder with a firearm. 42 more were wounded.

I’ve refrained from saying too much because at first there was little to say that wasn’t loaded with speculation. I think it’s time to talk about it though. For today, ironically a day we observe to remember the fallen of WW1, is when the memorial service was held for these fallen and their families who suffer the consequences of these murders.

The President was in attendance, which is good, and said something of course but you know words don’t wash out grief, nothing can wash out grief really. One just learns to go on living carrying it along.

A silver lining to this mess is the heroic actions of police officer Kim Munley who took the killer out of action before he did any more. She was also injured.

He isn’t dead apparently, even conscious now. His fate is no doubt tied in courts. Perhaps they will execute him who knows. It hasn’t been done in years but then this kind of event isn’t too common either. I hope they get information out of him but he’s less significant now. What’s important now are the people dealing with the impact and the wider consequences of the massacre.

For one thing, we have to help the grieving and the wounded recover. The Army naturally has to adjust to the loss of good people, including the the disruption from the wounded who are out of action for a while. I’ve every confidence both are well covered already.

One thing that struck me is that Hasan shot so many trained soldiers before being downed. It would appear no-one else had a suitable weapon or opportunity until the female police officer did her deed. It’s not like the Army was that slow, it appears the medical and isolation reaction was quite swift. One wonders if that situation will change. I guess the core issue I see is that soldiers not feeling safe in their own base and among their own people is not tenable. Trust is far too much a key to good military performance that I believe the US Army will take some kind of strong action on security. Even though hopefully one-of, if it were to happen again the reaction would probably be severe.

And there has been reaction anyway. All sorts of reaction. Even the relatively placid Castle has spat a bit of fire and brimstone as the question of blame on Islam is tossed around.

For Hasan, by all appearances, was a Muslim who self radicalised and then did this massacre. I am no cheerleader of Islam. It’s a religion that calls for murder of gays and other innocents in certain situations, a religion with provision for slavery and rape and other actions I do not support whatsoever. It has terrible internal corruption prevention too. I have indeed studied it, even before the 9/11 event.

But then I’m not a friend of many religions in their current state. However, they all have their good points, including Islam, if you care to look. All have their branches and degrees of faith and practices, ie Islam is not as uniform as it appears. In fact it’s much like Christianity that way. Hassan was radical, not mainstream.

The mistake is to make Hasan=Islam and Islam=Hasan. Of the thousands of Muslims in the army only one guy actually did this. Sure Islam may have influenced him but Hasan is a man who is responsible for his own actions. The bulk of serving Muslims are doing so honourably and some have even earned medals for their heroic actions in the service of their country. Hasan did a terrible thing but he was a singular man, anecdotal evidence of Islam by inference only. And anecdotal is the very worst kind of evidence. And we have the counter evidence of the medal holders.

I will not call for harm or restriction to Muslims. I will not push to war against Islam. I would be loathe to give so much power to one man of the name Hasan. Trying to make the conflict a ‘holy’ war is the marketing strategy of of terrorists as it is.

What I do want and probably won’t get is more vigilance from the Islamic community to detect, denounce, prevent and destroy this kind of radicalising activity. Complicity leads to culpability.

There’s been talk about if this is a crime. Well of course it is. Is it something more though? Some say this is treachery. Given the role of Hasan, the state trust vested in him and promises he made, and his probable reasons for taking action. Yes I think it’s treason. Terrorism is more difficult. It probably is. Not in the usual organised (even if just cell-like) sense but a one man terrorising activity of which there have really been quite a few over the years.

There’s been some hoopla doo about the role of psychology and Hasan’s job was as a psychologist and he did indeed work on affected soldiers. I so hope he didn’t do any damage we aren’t aware of.  Some conservatives say he can’t possibly have PTSD he never served on the front lines. It’s not true. PTSD is not just for the military who see the awful reality of conflict. It happens in many other cases. I don’t really hold much water in the psych argument because it’s been put forward too much as an blanket excuse rather than reason with evidence. Even if true it doesn’t necessarily make one a mass murderer. It may be true it played a role but still self responsibility is key.

The other thing people are seeing in the news now are the red flags. The indicators Hasan was a risk. As I’ve argued before red flags are not a sign on the head. We often miss them, which is a good thing if not too many because otherwise it leads to paranoia and overreaction. The cost of ignoring red flags is cases like this where we may miss the boat. Ultimately it’s up to the Army, government and people involved to decide if they ignored a few too many. It can be a hard judgment to make honestly.

Rest in Peace Good Soldiers.

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Remembrance Day 2009

In approximately 2 hours it will be time for a minute of silence.

Today we remember the fallen of World War I. It’s Remembrance Day here and in other Commonwealth Nations. We observe silence for 1 minute at 11AM on this 11th day of the 11th month, and ‘The Last Post’ is played.

Remembrance Day also has services around the country usually at war memorials and serves as a reminder of the sacrifice the soldiers during WW1 which ended in 1918 on this date. It’s not a holiday but it is widely observed. It’s less about the right or wrong of WW1 or war in general and more about the sacrifices made by diggers and others during that awful war.

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Password Overload

I’m sure I’m not the only one struggling with the maintenance of an enormous internal database of passwords. Well… enormous by human standards.

I don’t know about you but I have passwords for a gaggle of online games, passwords for even more social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Some for Linux and Windows Admin. There’s forums, emails, the ISP, my host, MSN, Google Everything, the banks, wikis, everywhere you turn they want your details and a login.

As they say; “Please sir, may I be excused? My brain is full.”

Of course, the main reason for passwords is to provide a barrier to the hoi polloi which they have oh so graciously allowed you to get past. More and more often, especially nowadays, it is an excuse to grab your details for marketing.

Have you come across this scene before? Upon revisiting a website you joined oh a few months ago.. or something.. to check up, you have to enter your username and password… and you stare. Now whatwasitagain? Something with a ‘t’? Did it begin with an ’s’? Oh I can’t even remember the username…..

It is here you go for the backup plan. Maybe, god forbid, you shared the password with actual humans and ask them whatiswasagain. Perhaps you trawl through an army of emails, a little black book of supa sekrit passwords. Failing that there’s always the dreaded ‘forgot your password’ link.

I’m sure most readers here know the importance of relatively long complex passwords. Which means upper and lower case, numbers, as well as avoiding common words, girlfriend’s names and your date of birth.

There are solutions to this dilemma of course. All of them half baked.

1. You can use one of the plethora of software password (and often form) automaters. Kubuntu has one builtin called kWallet. Meh. Many internet toolbars also have one.

Of course the problem with this is you often need a master password, though one is better than many, need to very much trust the software, and toolbars are often not high on the trustworthy scale. There’s also the possibility that you might loose access to it for some reason and there goes all your access to everything else.

2. Most browsers have a password storage system similar to the above which is probably not terribly secure from any perspective but I suspect used heavily, especially for passwords which aren’t too important.

3. Some people use a ditty. It can be as silly as you like as long as it results in a complex password. Let’s see if I can make one up on the fly.

‘we All 8 more icecream when 3.’ which would go as wA8micw3. Which is probably ok. Don’t use this example. Really.

The extended problem is that instead of passwords cramming up our internal database we’d have a plethora of ditties instead. It’d be enough to turn you into Patsy Biscoe.

4. A fairly new and very hopeful idea of OpenID. Basically this involves registering yourself under OpenID standards. Much like a software password automater, you then have a master password to access it. You then get your OpenID which is effectively a website address. To use it you simply pop the OpenID into the login for your desired website and it then talks to the OpenID where you give it access to the details you want

There are quite a few benefits. You’re less likely to loose access to your OpenID, you don’t have to enter a username and password, just the OpenID. OpenID can give your details with your permission to an enabled website during a registration which makes for fast and easy signups.

The other interesting thing is that you may already have an OpenID if you use one of the many social networking sites such as Myspace, Google, Blogger or Flickr. For OpenID is a standard usable by anyone and you can even host your own OpenID if you know a bit about webhosting.

The main problem is that not all websites with passwords are OpenID enabled.

So there’s no easy way out but there are things that can help. There’s also a silver lining to all this technochange, we’ve had a significant reprieve from the telephone number database required in the past thanks to phone memory. Of course, then loosing the phone can mean social disaster.

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Map your Thoughts

When you want to explore ideas it’s often useful to use a graphical form. Because though text has flexibility and is often easier to create our minds seem to absorb graphics elements more easily. An obvious example is the conversion of reams of data into pretty graphs. It is in this graphical format that trends are primarily conveyed to the wider world.

Though I’ve known about MindMaps for quite some time I’ve not paid them much attention and haven’t played aroudn with them till recently. MindMaps are an interesting way to explode central ideas into its many fragments in a way that combines text and graphical elements. This is immensely useful. One of the core elements of Engineering is problem solving and one of the core elements of that is breaking things down into manageable pieces. So MindMaps are really good at working through ideas.

A problem with MindMaps is that it lacks sufficient flexibility to link one node to any other node the way you like. Naturally there are some solutions.

Concept maps is one of them. Cmaps, as they are known, lets me make make nodes and link them however I like. The only issue with Cmaps so far is you have to move elements manually which could be a real pain with large Cmaps. I am playing with these things and will let you all know how it works out once a have a bit more experience with them.

In the meantime here’s a nice mindmap about mindmapping software.

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Googphilia

Lately been trying out several Google tools.

Google has an experimental facility called Social Search that allows you to search your ’social circle’ and hence get relevant search results out of your social networks by using public information in your social networking sites like facebook, twitter and blogs. It does require some configuration to set up since you need to show the tool where your social content is.

So far I’m not terribly impressed by it. For one thing it’s supposed to show me these results at the bottom of searches and have an option to only show these results but so far I see nothing. Either it takes a long time to set up, is not working properly, or I have the wrong impression on how it works. The other thing is that this is pretty much what Lijit does which has been around for some time. I had Lijit on this blog for some time but I didn’t actually use it much. The results simply didn’t justify the tool. I hope Google’s proves more useful.

There’s Google Sidewiki as well which appears much more useful. Sidewiki is basically a tool which allows you to annotate websites. You simply click and add text and/or links about the site which may be voted up or down for relevance. I’ve used Diigo and TrailFire which do similar things but I think Google’s sidewiki will prove the most useful mainly due to it’s clean layout and popularity. It bypasses any website’s attempt to control commentary, which can be very empowering.

There’s Google Wave too and promises to be a rich way to work which includes collaboration, though collaboration is not as easy as it sounds of course. Experimented with CoEditing recently with a friend using a combination of Skype, YuuGuu and wikis. It’s an interesting view of how collaboration may soon work. Google Wave is very much a tool I would love to try out. The YuuGuu combination was very rich because you can see everything on one screen and use the mouse as well as text.

Of course we are seeing Google Everything pop out of the woodwork. I have only mentioned a few tools I personally see potential in. There’s loads more, some of them seem promising to certain people or behaviors and others… well they need far more work.

The key issue with all this is of course competition with Microsoft. Google are soon even to release their own OS which I rather suspect will be a Chrome-like cloud computing enabler. All of this is very positive of course because that’s how competition works. A degree of innovation and excitement is back in the software marketplace and Microsoft will be stirred into higher levels of dynamism through all this. One could be concerned Google might go the way of Microsoft with monopolising stasis the result, should Google truly topple Microsoft from their perch. I do believe they will be sorely tempted but the company operates under a very different structure to most companies so there’s hope yet.

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Kubuntu 9.10

I upgraded to this new version of Linux and I’m posting from it right now but this was not a smooth process. I used the GUI updater (from 9.04) and it failed at 99% downloads. Restarted it after a reboot and it worked this time. I have no idea what happened.

To add insult to injury the default Australian update server is wonky and I don’t really like the new repository manager.

On the positive side it seems stable and is even cleaner looking than 9.04 was. Haven’t played with it that much we’ll see what I think of it in the long run.

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