The end of Facebook – For Me.

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So I have finally done it, now lets just see how long it lasts.  Whilst I do think Facebook has a lot to offer, I have been finding that I tend to get too focused on what’s going on in there and tend to avoid real world interactions more because of it.  I need to get back to basics, and limit my trawling through other peoples lives to actually catching up and learning to do something that I have never really been comfortable with…  Socialising in the REAL world.

For those of you who actually read this, the best way to contact meis via my email address. For everyone else…It’ll be a fun experiment finding out how long it takes for people to notice.

A small idea for a Greener world.

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I have an idea, but no knowledge of how to persue it.

My idea is to build a gym that instead of costing people money, allows them to make money from their exercise efforts. It would be a gym that harnesses people power to generate electricity and sell it back to the power companies. I realise that the amount of money people would be getting wouldn’t really amount to much, but it would be a small step to a greener world.

Imaging a place that doesn’t cost you $7 a visit, but instead will pay you a fee for the energy you generate. Given the current energy issues in the world, this idea kills 2 birds with the one stone. It reduces the consumption of exercise equipment that requires power to work and gives energy back into the system. It would also give people that added incentive to exercise knowing that they are contributing to reducing a problem.

So, anyone want to help me develop this small idea into reality?

Looking at the bigger picture.

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There have been a number of incidents lately that have made me wonder if there really are people looking at the bigger picture.  Have we as a society compartmentalised things so much that there is no one left to look at everything at a larger scale and go “Well maybe we shouldn’t be heading in this direction”?

The latest of these issues is that of an ACTION Bus employee who was stood down because he put 15 school kids off a bus when they were misbehaving.  In my mind he did the right thing, however parents and ACTION themselves obviously think he was wrong.  The issue itself however is only a small issue that leads to a biggest issue, and then to a massive one…  The bus company and parents are blaming the bus driver for putting these kids in potential harms way by leaving them unsupervised, which brings us to the issue of the current nanny state we are making for ourselves.  We “Blame” people for taking a stand on their beliefs and make laws to limit how they will behave.  We compartmentalise these rules and the people who look after them and administer them really only deal with the local issues.  I really wonder whether they see the natural progression of this.

We make laws to protect our kids, kids who are newly developing and who learn and form their own idea’s much more easily than us adults who have been set in our way.  These kids see that everyone else is responsible for them and if people don’t do “the right thing” then there are repercussions.  These kids grow up with an idea that someone else is always responsible, they get jobs, they have opinions, they vote…  This leads to people with their values of someone else is responsible getting into power and forming policy, the rules that govern society tighten ever so slightly, that generation has kids, the kids grow up with similar if not even more tightly controlled society where they are not responsible…  You see where I’m going here?

I’m not saying rules are bad, and I’m not saying that in some cases there isn’t someone responsible, but what I am saying is that what we seem to be loosing is freedom to think for ourselves and to take responsibility for our own actions.  I am proud of the fact that I grew up in a society that had more freedom, that was less restricted by inane laws to try and limit our own stupidity.  This current society where we have so many laws dictating exactly what we can and can not do I believe is leading to a society that doesn’t think and is scared to take action because of the potential consequences.  Loosing your job over putting 15 kids on the street who obviously needed to learn a lesson would certainly make me think twice about taking a stand next time which means that the only lesson these kids learn is that they can do what they like and they only get slightly inconvenienced.  And teachers wonder why there are more and more unruly kids at school…

Hmmm, another rant from me, someone who just couldn’t be bothered any more.

Following up the 4th Peerage questions.
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So back in mid February I sent an email to the contacts on the website for the various contacts of the Peerage councils of Lochac asking 4 questions.  The email as written is below.

Greetings unto the Councils of Lochac’s Peerages,

With the current Known World discussions on a possible Fourth Peerage I though I would pose a few questions to our Kingdoms current peerage councils in order to further cement my opinion on the matter and possibly provide a clearer understanding of the situation for all of Lochac.

The following questions are posed to the respective Councils as a request for an official unified council response, not the individual opinions of various members.

  1. Does the council currently consider the efforts of Archers (both Combat and Target), Fencers, Siege Engineers, Equestrian and other such participants of various fringe activities to be worthy of their respective peerage (if earned, of course)?
  2. Does the council currently have anyone in their sights who they believe may be worthy of their peerage based on the above activities (Not asking for detail, just whether or not it’s possible)?
  3. Does the council ever receive nominations for their respective peerage based on the above activities?
  4. And finally… What is the councils official position on nominations for their respective peerage based on the above activities?

I propose to publish these questions and their answers publicly for the benefit of all of Lochac as I feel that having a public unified response from each of the councils will help everyone understand where things stand, not just the individual opinions of various members.

I look forward to your responses.

Initially I received a bounce email from the published email address for contact on the Chivalry website and was provided another email address by Sir Gui of Rowany as well as a suggestion to forward the questions to the Crown as well.  This I did and then patiently awaited response.  It’s been more than 2 weeks and I have yet to even get an acknowledgement of my email from all but the Laurels Council who kindly provided the reply below.

We have an official stance published on the Laurel website and we have a Fencer as a member of the Order.

We are quite happy to consider any of the activities you mention, however the aspects we currently look at are not whether they win at the activity, but whether they do it, research it and teach it in a period style.  We will consider any recommendations for candidates.

Your question of what numbers of the order feel the various activities should have a peerage and what that peerage should be, this would be best answered by sending off to the SCA Census team for a breakdown of numbers within Lochac and by peerage.

I am indeed impressed by certain members of the Laurel Councils quick response and the documentation that they have on the website explaining it. Though I am concerned by the avoidance of directly answering questions 2 and 3 (which I personally do not believe require anything other than a yes or no response without further qualification), I am willing to concede however that question 2 may give away too much of the councils “Secret” business, even with a one word answer.

I’m still waiting to hear from the Pelican and Chivalry councils, so I’ll post their official responses when I get them.

As it stands with the information I currently have, I’m still not convinced that we need a 4th peerage, though that may change if in another couple of weeks I haven’t yet heard from the last 2 councils and I may take the non-reply as an answer in itself. Just to clarify, I do not believe that the councils should or even need to answer these questions, as they are not subject to the whims of plebs like myself, however I do believe that we as the populace of Lochac have the right to ask and be politely responded to, even if that answer is mind your own business. ;) After all, is not the concept of these peerages to maintain a level of status that is worthy of respect, chivalry, honour and the quality of the skills each peerage upholds?

Autopilot.

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It really amazes me how many people are on autopilot when shopping. Spending a portion of my day working at registers at various retail outlets I am still surprised by the number of people who just turn up and start unloading all of their stuff expecting me to serve them.

Let me clarify… I’m usually wearing a different colour shirt, a visible ID tag that identifies me as not an employee of the store as well as a sticker from the store that clearly says visitor.

Maybe it’s because I have been doing this job for 18+ months that I actually look at the person and make sure they are actually serving people, but I like to think I have always paid attention to the person potentially serving me. Meh, it’s just weird how some people don’t actually look for the “corporate image” that these companies spend a fortune to develop and maintain. Just sayin’.

Canberra Flood Water Management.

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OK, So I know very little about this subject and am only applying my own layman’s logic here…  So please if you know more about the actual science then please let me know.  I’m surprised by the fact that Scrivener Dam only seems to be used to maintain the level of Lake Burley Griffen, and not help reduce the effects of flooding.  It seems to me and I might be wrong, that the dam and Lake Burley Griffen are the perfect tool for reducing the effects of flooding both upstream and down.  So lets work it out…

Photo by Matt Sutton

Here are some loose facts…  Lake Burley Giffen, and Scrivener Dam hold about 3,300 Megalitres of water.  It is a recognised fact that floodplains reduce the damaging effects of high flow floods, and an emptier lake would effectively be a flood plain.  We get warnings of flooding down the Mologolo river before the river starts rising.  The gates of Scrivener Dam can lower by around 2 meter (this is a guess as I can’t find a reference).   With 3 gates open just a touch over 0.5 Mega litres per second of water can flow through them, 0.85 Mega litres with all 5 gates open.   If with notice and only releasing 0.2 ML/s of water we can reduce the water in the lake by 720ML per hour or in general terms drop the water level by 2000ML in about 3 hours.  With 0.5 ML/s of water flowing in from upstream and maintaining the 0.2ML/s out flow this would only give the lake a buffering capacity of about a 2 hours before we would be back to full capacity and having to again allow the full flow back into the downstream river.

So, I guess I have my answer. ;)   Though I do still see a benefit of reducing the lake level to allow more water to flow through the Mologolo and potentially reduce the flooding levels in Queanbeyan, however I’m guessing engineers have also looked into this option and already decided on its merits.  Either way…  that is a hell of a lot of water. ;)

Standards not Laws

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The world is a dangerous place, but the only way we are going to learn that is by experiencing it and making those mistakes ourselves, by taking responsibility for our own actions and by accepting the consequences of our mistakes.  In the world in which we currently live we seem to be sweeping that under the rug and trying to hide others from the harsh realities of the world.  This is not a world I enjoy living in.

In our current nanny state there are so many laws that need to be complied with just to set-up a business and start trading.  Then there are all the laws that dictate how and when you can trade.  It’s now at the point that in order to set up a legitimate business requires a lawyer and an accounted on speed dial as well as a great deal of capital to get started.

I can understand how we got to this point, in a past, where knowledge was limited to books and getting access to books was a time consuming process it was necessary for those in power to disseminate information by making laws and enforcing them, however we are now in the age of the Internet, where information is freely available to a huge portion of the civilised world.  I would like to see a simplification of the laws we currently have, and an introduction to a Standards system where instead of laws for consumer products and services, there are Official Standards that manufacturers have the option to adhere to.  These would be backed up by larger penalties for failures, and even larger ones for failures from products that do not opt to comply to a standard.  But then I don’t necessarily think the death penalty is a bad thing either.

Death is a part of life.  Maybe CEO’s would take things more seriously if the death penalty was an option if their product/service caused death. ;)   Cause all the ridiculous fines that are currently imposed do is provide the accounts with a means of calculating of where the line is.  Yes, it’s rather extreme, but currently it seems so is our lack of freedom.

Too many laws, not enough freedom.

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This whole nanny state thing is really starting to bother me. The fact that we have so many laws these days that we virtually need to do a law degree just to head out into public is getting a bit much, specially when there are expensive penalties for disobeying and police who are getting to the point of not actually thinking about the context, they will just write you a ticket no matter what.

There used to be a time when the police would ask if there was a reason, or what happened, now they just seem to be revenue collectors out to get the easy ticket offences and when you need them for real crimes they are too busy chasing down people for minor speeding or traffic offences.

I get that prevention is is better than having to deal with the results of an accident…  I get that too many innocent people get killed or injured because of a few peoples indiscretions.  What I don’t get is that the measures we are taking to to try and minimise these things from happening is having more of an effect on our normal day to day lives.  The effect that I see this having is to limit the accidental death rate and effectively put a speed bump on Darwinism.  It’s also sheltering us from the possibilities of what can happen when we are stupid.  Personally I would prefer more freedom and higher penalties for stupidity than having my freedom and right to live my life restricted.

Some questions to the Laurels, Pelicans and Chivalry councils.

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Greetings fellow Lochacians

With the current Known World discussions on a possible Fourth Peerage I though I would pose a few questions to our Kingdoms current peerage councils in order to further cement my opinion on the matter and possibly provide a clearer understanding of the situation for all of Lochac.

The following questions are posed to the respective Councils as a request for an official unified council response, not the individual opinions of various members.

  1. Does the council currently consider the efforts of Archers (both Combat and Target), Fencers, Siege Engineers, Equestrian and other such participants of various fringe activities to be worthy of their respective peerage?
  2. Does the council currently have anyone in their sights who they believe may be worthy of their peerage based on the above activities (Not asking for detail, just whether or not it’s possible)?
  3. Does the council ever receive nominations for their respective peerage based on the above activities?
  4. And finally… What is the councils official position on nominations for their respective peerage based on the above activities?

I pose these questions publicly for the benefit of all of Lochac and I hope to see the answers “published” just as publicly for all to see.

 

Waxes for basic lost wax lessons.

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I have finally be able to finish the mould for my wax buckles and links, this will allow me to make large numbers of waxes for next time Sui and Owen fire up their portable period furnace. The buckles are a bit rough but they provide a ready made base for further modelling and finishing up using a period lost wax mould prep techniques in order to allow more people to experience and learn about period casting. The idea will be to provide these waxes to people who can then spend some time cleaning them up and putting their own detail into them fairly quickly. Then they can learn the period mould making technique as well as follow the process through to it’s conclusion. They should be able to walk away after a day with a bronze customised belt buckle.