A time to compare where we are, to where we should be, to where would like to be…

And as is usual for most of humanity, we will all most likely decide: Screw that, we’ll try again next year.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and a very Happy New Year.

This is a massive loss, since the man’s work is the very reason for my career.

So long, dmr, and maybe now would be a good time to join the demigodic party…

printf "`cal| sed \"s/^/ /;s/$/ /;\
  /^ Su.*/d;/.*\`date +%B\ %Y\`.*/d;/^$/d;\
  s/\`date +%e\` /\\\\\033[1;37m\`date +%e\`\\\\\033[0m /g;\"`"

I will admit to still using the previous version, though, since I prefer the font bolding in that one.

Rather subversive, I know, but we all have our weaknesses.

One go the packages I make a habit of installing, and updating, is JWZ‘s Mac build of Xscreensaver. The biggest down-side of doing that, though, is that, unlike in Linux, it doesn’t by default display quotes from the fortune files.

The ability do so is, of course, still very much there, but the Mac build does not have an easy way of enabling it.

Herewith, then, my workflow to get things back to “sanity” once I’ve upgraded.

Firstly, make sure that you have installed fortune from the ports (or any other way that takes your fancy):

eroux@smaug:~$ sudo port install fortune
--->  Fetching archive for fortune
--->  Fetching fortune
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for fortune
--->  Extracting fortune
--->  Applying patches to fortune
--->  Configuring fortune
--->  Building fortune
--->  Staging fortune into destroot
--->  Installing fortune @6.2.0-RELEASE_0+universal
--->  Activating fortune @6.2.0-RELEASE_0+universal
--->  Cleaning fortune
eroux@smaug:~$ 

Once you can run fortune and get a result, you are ready to continue:

eroux@smaug:~$ fortune
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
                                                -- David Bowie
eroux@smaug:~$ type fortune
fortune is hashed (/opt/local/bin/fortune)
eroux@smaug:~$

Now you need the following patch, which we’ll use to convince Xscreensaver that we know what we’re doing:

eroux@norbert:~$ cat < <EOF >~/xscreensaver-text.patch 
--- xscreensaver-text.pre   2011-03-01 18:06:46.000000000 +0200
+++ xscreensaver-text       2011-03-01 18:07:05.000000000 +0200
@@ -247,6 +247,7 @@
   elsif ($text_mode eq '1') { $text_mode = 'literal'; }
   elsif ($text_mode eq '2') { $text_mode = 'file';    }
   elsif ($text_mode eq '3') { $text_mode = 'url';     }
+  elsif ($text_mode eq '4') { $text_mode = 'program'; }

   $v = get_cocoa_pref_1 ($id, "textLiteral");
   $text_literal = $v if defined ($v);
EOF
eroux@norbert:~$ 

All we’re doing here is adding a program text mode to Xscreensaver, which we will then use via defaults to get fortune to run under its auspices.

Now we need to update all the files that actually could use some fortune:

for I in Apple2 FlipText FontGlide NoseGuy Phosphor StarWars XMatrix; do
    cd "/Library/Screen Savers/${I}.saver/Contents/Resources/" && \
        patch -p0 < ~/xscreensaver-text.patch && cd;
done

Now we get to test one of the screen savers. My favourite is one called Phosphor, so lets start with that:

defaults -currentHost write \
  org.jwz.xscreensaver.Phosphor \
  textProgram "/opt/local/bin/fortune";

This tells Phosphor which program to run, but not yet that it should actually use it. Let’s do that now, why don’t we?

defaults -currentHost write \
  org.jwz.xscreensaver.Phosphor \
  textMode 4;

Here you see us actually using the mode we defined in the patch, earlier. I had to change the scale of the fonts to get the display to fit on my screen, so if it’s too big or too small, you can change that from within the screensaver configuration window.

eroux@smaug:~$ defaults -currentHost read org.jwz.xscreensaver.Phosphor
{
    scale = 3;
    textMode = 4;
    textProgram = "/opt/local/bin/fortune";
}
eroux@smaug:~$

All done… Now you just need to sit back and wait for your screen to lock… Or just press Ctrl-Shift-Eject if you’re too impatient, of course.

Some alternatives to consider: Since the fortune you run is the same program you would find on any Linux machine, you could use “/opt/local/bin/fortune -s” to get only the short quotes, if you wish, or even “/opt/local/bin/fortune -o” for some… other quotes.

What makes GeekTool cool, is that it allows you to embed different items into your Mac desktop, so it is quite easy to use it to display a text file, for instance (like your system log) or to scrape a ticker-tape from the web and use that to keep track of your favourite Stock Price, but it is also possible to do much cooler stuff…

A quick example of what is possible was featured on LifeHacker, here, where they embed the venerable Unix “cal” command in the desktop, and using some “sed” slight-of-hand they even mark the current day on the calendar.

“Very Cool”, I thought, “except…”

Well, yes, except. I would have preferred not losing the day, but rather marking it in some way.

But before I get to that, I need to digress a bit first, though.

There are some thinks I would really like in this world. Peace. Children being able to play together for more than a few minutes without fighting. Winning a big one on the Euro Lottery. GeekTool being able to display HTML. But alas…

And since GeekTool would not allow me to embed HTML (or any other markup I could tell: I would have settled for Markdown or even RTF) I tried to work around the problem…

After a couple of iterations (and careful selection of the font GeekTool used to display my resultant calendar) I finally settled on the following:

cal| sed "s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/.*`date +'%B %Y'`.*//;/^$/d; \
s/ `date +%e` /(`date +%e`)/g;"

This got me a nice-looking calendar with the day-of-week marked by some parentheses:

 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  
                 1  2  
  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  
 10 11 12 13 14 15 16  
 17 18 19 20 21 22 23  
(24)25 26 27 28 29 30  
 31

In doing this, I also got rid of the Month and Year since I already have another Geeklet that displays that on my Desktop:

That displayed okay, I guess, but I was still (slightly) disappointed. Then it struck me: I was being an utter dunce. I had already been overlaying the other script Geeklets to get the Date/Time display I had wanted; there was nothing stopping me from generating two calendars, one on top of the other, one with the current day edited out, and the other only containing the current day, in the correct spot. That way the second could be displayed in another colour and give me the result I had sought.

So, without further ado, I cooked up the following. First, the easy one. Here is the script for displaying the calendar with the current day masked out:

cal| sed "s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/^ Su.*//;s/.*`date +'%B %Y'`.*//; \
/^$/d; s/`date +%e` /   /g;"

The second stumped me for a bit, till I realised I was doing my usual: over-thinking the problem. This is the script I used in the end:

cal| sed "s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/^ Su.*//;s/.*`date +'%B %Y'`.*//; \
/^$/d; s/ `date +%e` / ## /g; s/[0-9]/ /g; s/ ## / `date +%e` /"

In these I also deleted the Day strip at the top and added a Geeklet containing the days of the week in the more traditional three-letter format. By dropping the font of that to 18 points as opposed to the other two’s 24 points, I managed to for it all in perfectly:

Now all of them fit together rather nicely, and I’m a happy(er) person.

For anyone curious enough to know how I had all of these placed to get them to work together (both of you), here it is:

For everyone else… I apologise?

Oh, and if you’re wondering about my Desktop Wallpaper, it’s Vlad Gerasimov‘s Mac OS-X Lion wallpaper…

Apple is offering free repairs to those with Macs and iOS devices who had their equipment damaged in the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan back in March.

A guide[Link now Broken] on Apple’s Japanese website states the company is offering free repairs to Macs, Cinema Displays, iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches for people who live in the municipalities covered be the Disaster Relief Act of 2011.

For those affected, Apple will pick up and repair your equipment at no charge, then deliver it back to you once the repairs are complete. The company is also offering free access to the AppleCare Service & Support Line for those who can solve issues over the telephone. Apple has been keen to help those in Japan who have been affected by the recent disasters: It has opened up its stores as ‘communication centers’ and allowed people to access the Internet to contact their loved ones through email, FaceTime and Skype. It has also offered donations from app proceeds and allowed customers to donate to the Red Cross through iTunes.

Maybe some lessons to be taken here by the rest of Tech…

--- Lions.old/lionc.tex	1994-05-19 04:40:49.000000000 +0200
+++ Lions.new/lionc.tex	2011-04-07 15:38:14.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,7 +1,16 @@
 %
 % The Lion's Commentary, file lionc.tex, version 1.3, 18 May 1994
+% Updated 07 April 2011 to generate PDF Bookmarks
+% and to fit LaTeX2e slightly better
 %
-\documentstyle[twoside,fancyheadings]{article}
+\documentclass[twoside,a4paper]{article}
+\usepackage{fancyhdr}
+\usepackage[plainpages=false]{hyperref}
+\hypersetup{%
+    pdfborder = {0 0 0},
+    pdftitle = {Commentary on 6ed UNIX OS},
+    pdfauthor = {John Lions}
+}
 \font\twlrm = cmr10 scaled \magstep1

 % Set the page dimensions
@@ -38,7 +47,7 @@

 % Set up the headings for the document

-\setlength{\headrulewidth}{0cm}
+\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
 \renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markboth{#1}{}}
 \renewcommand{\subsectionmark}[1]{\markright{#1}}
 \rhead[{\it UNIX 6th Edition Commentary}]{\it \leftmark}

If you have no idea what I’m talking about… Well, then, erm… Never mind… :-)

As someone who spent more than just a few years in the military and who had been involved in a few riots, and you have to have been in a riot in South Africa in the mid to late eighties to really understand the significance of that statement, I do know the fear and uncertainty involved in standing in a line; just a few soldiers against thousands of rioters. I can still remember the anxiety and can still actually remember “tasting”‡ the fear.

What I can also remember is standing there with rifle uncocked and pointing down. We were warned that there would be actual hell to pay, court-martial style, if we ever shot a civilian; no matter the reason. The rioters were of course not aware of it, or if they were, were not always believing it, but that was immaterial; our job was not to quell the riot but to marginally control it; it was to keep people not involved as safe as we could. The rioters would only very rarely attempt to break through the lines and make our job impossible. Even in those bad old days, the military was respected by the civilians; the police… not as much.

It was during those times that I had learnt to equate the tasks of the soldiers and the police to those in certain medieval city-states: the difference between the Watch and the Guard.

In those cities who might actually have had both, the guard’s primary task was to defend the gates and wall of the city, the watch was to police the city and the wards… Well as much policing as happened in those times. Point being, while these groups would support each other in crises, these groups had their own expertise and zones of authority: the guard would watch for external threat and the watch would police the city.

It is just wrong then, that a “weapon” (there is no other way of really describing the military machine) would be used by their own government on their own citizens. The very existence of military forces is to protect the people, not to oppress them.

A note to the soldiers involved in this: these actions will come back to haunt you, and when it does please remember your beating up the poor paramedics while you lie there bleeding after it has done so…

The wheel turns. It always does…

‡An erstwhile buddy of mine, the joker of the platoon, would always claim you can smell fear… It smells like sh… Ah. Never-mind…

Be that as it may, however, it’s been quite some time since I’ve been witness to one as sad as this.

Nokia has been struggling for some years now, trying to fend off the upstarts who initially snapped at its heels and eventually started to overtake it as a company, providing more capable and able handsets with more consolidated product lines and much more modern interfaces.

Part of Nokia’s problem was that they’ve been stuck in a backwards compatible API (mostly by choice) and took too long to recognise the problem and develop an upgrade strategy. They eventually bought “TrollTech” (the company behind KDE’s QT widget set) but, again, took way too long to mature their exit strategy.

Now, in the age-old mind-set of “when you’ve hit rock-bottom you start digging” Nokia has started digging…

On Friday 11 Feb 2011 they’ve announced that Microsoft will become the new provider of Operating Systems (in the form of Windows Phone 7) for all Nokia smartphone handsets. Thus fittingly ending a series of fairly stupid moves with an absolute humdinger and finishing the Finnish era. Or at least start to.

Update:

Can you say “ouch?”:

NYSE:NOK at Google Finance

Though, spare a thought for those poor buggers reading this via the RSS feed to Facebook, and not on this blog. They’ll be even more in the dark…

But, to return the… <dramatic pause> promise.

Here’s the link to the Widgets I use to display my “Currently Reading” (as well as my “Previously Read” section) as well as the badges I display on the blog:

• Currently Reading
• Badges

Do with them what you will…

I suppose there’s no point in having dynamic sidebars if you don’t do something, erm…, dynamic with it, is there?

I have managed to now stop using “Custom Fields” in posts to populate the “Currently Reading” section (it had the advantage of time-stamping the posts with the primary book I was busy with, but it was also a bit of a schlep to keep up to date) instead just updating the widget directly…

I’ll put them up for download on WordPress’ Website as soon as my Plugin Access had been granted.

And people like Zapiro seems to be at the forefront of that action. In this cartoon, he asks a very important question, and one I would love to have seen answered…

Wishful thinking, I know…

This intrigued me, but I could not get it to work at all. Until I actually read the Texinfo log message, of course.

Just in case I ever forget how I did it, here it is:

@c %**start Sans-Serif
@c Sans-Serif does not work too well yet. Drat. Needs some work...
@c @set SANSSERIF

@ifset SANSSERIF
@tex
@sf
@setfont@secrm@sfbshape{11}{@magstep1}@endcsname
@setfont@chaprm@sfbshape{11}{@magstep2}@endcsname
@setfont@titlerm@sfbshape{11}{@magstep3}@endcsname
@setfont@ssecrm@sfbshape{11}{@magstephalf}@endcsname
@end tex
@end ifset
@c %**end Sans-serif Fonts

This is currently commented out, since it breaks all kinds of headings, indexes and other miscellaneous mark-up rather badly, but it is a beginning…

And hopefully this saves someone else a bit of frustration as well…

Sun don’t shine ’round here no more,
since my baby walked on out that door.
She broke my heart, make no mistake.
All I did was give.
All she did was take.
But don’t you know,
where she goes,
the cold wind blows.

Well, my baby told so many lies.
I couldn’t see through my blinded eyes.
She choked me up with her bad, bad seed.
Took the flowers I gave her
and strangled them with weeds.
But don’t you know,
where she goes,
the cold wind blows.

I ain’t gonna cry no more.
I ain’t gonna cry no more.
I ain’t gonna cry no more,
cry no more.

Sun don’t shine ’round here no more,
since my baby walked on out that door.
She broke my heart, make no mistake.
All I did was give.
And all she did was take.
But don’t you know,
where she goes,
the cold wind blows.
The cold wind blows.

I ain’t gonna cry no more.
I ain’t gonna cry no more.
I ain’t gonna cry no more.
I ain’t gonna cry no more.
Ain’t gonna cry no more,
cry no more.
Gonna cry no more.
Ain’t gonna cry no more.

Yep… ‘Tis o’le Gary from Dark Days in Paradise again…

What makes this interesting enough to post, though, is not merely because the sentiment expressed is indubitably true, but because it seems to hold true for a much shorter period than one would have though during the “Dark Days”…

I can still vividly recall the sentiment from the last couple of months — still remember the raw emotion — but the memory is becoming ever more distant.

Without even realising that it had happened, one stops “crying” and one start realising that the sun had never really stopped shining — that the gloom had lifted sometime while one was not really paying attention — and that it is now fast becoming a truly beautiful day!

To be honest, I think I much prefer the green version…

I’ll post some more photos of the other poor victims when I get them, but some of me for the time being.

Of course, since I don’t have much that can be shaved off, I decided to go green…

I think green kinda suits me… Maybe I should stick with it? :-)

He could remember a time before the aquarium, swimming free. It hadn’t always been fun, not always comfortable, but he could remember the feeling of swimming wherever he had wanted to. But but that was another life; before he had been caught.

He could remember what it had been like when he had first been put into the aquarium; remember how she would come and coo at him, looking so joyous at having him there. He now wasn’t sure but it could have been the novelty of him being there, but, still, he was quite convinced that she’d really been happy to have him in her life, in her aquarium, there in the beginning.

But that had been before: before she’d sometimes forget to clean the tank, occasionally not feed him, not clean the filter. Of course he’d forgiven her that; she’d been so loving in the beginning; surely it was all just an accident…

But then it happened; he saw a brochure for a marine aquarium! But he couldn’t live in one of those! And there was certainly no chance of another aquarium fitting into the room! Maybe, he thought wistfully, she was just looking. Maybe she was just curious…

Then the day came; he heard her say that she was going to release him… At least she wasn’t just going to flush him down the toilet; she claimed to still care for him too much!

Well that was all in the past, he thought, it was all behind him. Right now he is in mid air; he wasn’t back in the water yet but he was out of her hands. He doesn’t know what is waiting for him beneath the calm-looking surface, but he had no choice but to go find out.

Maybe it would be an adventure, maybe happiness awaits, maybe death, he doesn’t know.

But he does know that the next one will have to work a hell of a lot harder to catch him…

It took long enough, very nearly two years in fact, but finally the guilty have been brought to book.

Now I am a cynic and frequently expect the very worst from humankind. A stance far too often reinforced by the actions huimanity as well. But some days, quite seldom unfortunately, a faint glimmer of hope appears for the species.

Don’t worry, it won’t last… Mankind will do something for me to lose faith in them before the day is over. But for now, for a brief moment…

Too many institutions use bullying tactics — manipulating people into paying various superfluous or even illegal fees — figuring (quite correctly it would seem) that most people would not be able to afford either the time or the money to take legal or other action and would rather just pay said fees to make it all “just go away”.

Two distinct groups with this tactic immediately comes to mind: the Mafia and SABC TV Licenses….

According to a report on IOL ANC councillor Thandi Tobias, the chairperson of the National Assembly’s defence committee, considers South Africans serving in foreign armies ‘unpatriotic’.

Not that they care that most South Africans serving in foreign armies do so because they are “white South Africans who cannot work in South Africa due to affirmative action and representativity in the civil service.”

From the report:

During the Assembly debate, DA MP Roy Jankielsohn described the bill as sloppy and constitutionally flawed.

He argued that white soldiers were forced out of the South African National Defence Force and stopped from joining the reserve force.

“In this regard the legislation is malicious and punitive in nature. White South Africans want to contribute to our country, but the ANC is obsessed with having the power to criminalise this contribution,” he said.

Jankielsohn was also referring to South Africans employed as “security guards” in areas of conflict like Iraq that is said to contribute at least R6-billion in spending power back home.

In other words: “We don’t want you to work in South Africa. In actual fact, we don’t want you to work outside South Africa either. What we want you to do is just go away.”

To which the reply probably has to be: “We South Africans don’t just ‘go away’. We didn’t when Brits did their damnedest to exterminate us. We didn’t during the urban terror campaign in the eighties. We’re not going to do so now. Terribly sorry, but no.”

If I have to be “unpatriotic” to make a living and take care of my family, then “patriotism” be damned.

Add to that the rapist’s apparent utter conviction that he has the right to rape the woman, since “This is not a Bruce Willis movie. You haven’t done anything wrong. But it’s your bad luck. This is the new South Africa.”

In what kind of country are criminals so brazenly arrogant that they — quite noisily — murder a woman and the proceed to ransack her neigbour’s house, pausing to rape her neighbour; quite assured that the police would never be able to touch them.

And then the South African government would like to have its citizens believe that crime’s on the decrease in their country? Not likely.

To my wife: Sorry Girl, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be going back to Gordon’s Bay again anytime soon…

He snapped.

Now, before I even start out, in the interest of short-circuiting any potential misunderstanding, I do not condone his actions nor his methods.

For those not in the know, Home Affairs is probably the one department with the most influence in South Africa. You need an ID book? Go to Home affairs. You need a Passport? Home Affairs for you! A birth? Same place to register the event. A death? Ditto. Marriage? Well, you get the drift…

It is the one government department *every* South African will have to deal with at some stage of his or her life. And probably more than once as well. Sorry, no exceptions.

Okay, so what has that to do with anything? We know that they have way too much influence and power… Let’s put things in perspective. What has happened to Kabelo is a bit excessive, but only a bit.

I had to renew my ID book a while ago. It *only* took them five month to do that. Time in actual work? Less than an hour in all probability, since they merely print the details into a pre-formatted booklet. Okay, let’s give them the benefit of doubt and say a week to do an hours work. Hell, this is Africa, that’s not too inconceivable.

Time invested from my side? Three hours in a slow moving queue on a very hot day to apply for my new ID. Five month for them to make it. Finally, and fortunately, I moved to Cape Town, so they **mailed** the ID book to me. No, not registered post, **mail**! And people wonder why ID fraud is rampant in this country?

And I was well off…

The [Girl](http://geeksgirl.org.za) applied for her passport at the same time. **Nine** months, moving town, an engagement and more trips to Home Affairs than I would willingly count later — to contend with some of the most abrupt, surly and just plain incompetent people in the world — she finally had her passport in her mitts.

Nine Damn Months Later!

Now how do you like *that* for customer service, folks?

It was so bad that she’s decided to leave her passport in her maiden name, since we *do not* need the aggravation of another trip to Home Affairs. Not yet. Not soon. Hell, if we had a choice (*as if!*) — never!

So, while I don’t condone his actions, I have to admit however — to be completely honest — that I do understand them. One hundred percent…

Vleisbraai is die enigste tipe kosmaak wat ‘n ware man sal doen. Wanneer ‘n man besluit om te braai, word die volgende ketting-reaksie aan die gang gesit:

1. Die vrou gaan koop die kos.
2. Die vrou maak die slaai, pap en sous.
3. Die vrou gooi speserye op die vleis, sit dit in ‘n bak saam met die nodige braai-gereedskap en souse en vat dit na die man wat langs die braaier rondsit met ‘n dop in sy hand.
4. Belangrik: **Die man plaas die vleis op die rooster…**
5. Die vrou gaan na binne om die borde en eetgerei reg te kry.
6. Die vrou kom uit om die man te vertel dat die vleis besig is om te verbrand. Hy bedank haar en vra of sy nog ‘n dop sal gooi terwyl hy die situasie onder beheer bring.
7. Weer belangrik: **Die man verwyder die vleis van die rooster en gee dit vir die vrou aan.**
8. Die vrou sit al die kos gereed op die tafel.
9. Na ete dek die vrou die tafel af en was al die skottelgoed.
10. Almal bedank die **man** vir die heerlike braai-poging.

Later vra die man of sy vrou darem haar “aandjie af” geniet het. Wanneer hy die reaksie op haar gesig sien, besluit hy daar is ook niks wat sommige vrouens tevrede sal stel nie!

—

Braaing meat is generally the only type of food preparation a real man would do. When a man decides to braai, the following chain reaction takes place:

1. The woman goes to buy the food.
2. The woman makes salads and “pap en sous”.
3. The woman prepares the meat, puts it into a container with the braai-tools and spices and takes it to the man who is sitting next to the braai fire with a drink in hand.
4. Important: **The man puts the meat on the grill…**
5. The woman goes back inside to prepare the crockery and cutlery.
6. The woman comes back outside to tell the man that the meat’s busy burning. He thanks her and asks her to pour him another drink while he brings the situation back under control.
7. Important again: **The man removes the meat from the grill and gives it to the woman.**
8. The woman puts the food out on the table.
9. After the meal the woman clears the table and does the dishes.
10. Everybody thanks the **man** for the wonderful braai.

Later the man asks the woman if she at least enjoyed her evening off. When he notices the expression on her face he decides that nothing could ever satisfy certain women!

Windows is like the new Lego sets. You get specialised pre-molded parts suitable for one specific task, plus two or three additional add-on pieces that give the illusion of being fully configurable for any task. You can build anything you want with the new Legos, as long as you only want to build what is on the cover of the package.

Thanks to [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156246&cid=13099465) and [Tsiangkun](http://slashdot.org/~Tsiangkun) for this…

I’ve been updating my previous blog entry as news unfolded, but this warrants an entry of its own, in my opinion.

According to IOL, police have arrested the “mastermind” behind the killing of baby Jordan. What is particularly shocking and devastating, is the fact that “he” is a she. Not that that changes my opinion of somebody I called a “sick, twisted, mean-spirited sub-human scum”. That might originally have been levelled at one of the other murderous swine, but it most certainly applies in even greater measure to her.

What I would like to know — dearly — is, which kind of person even contemplates an action like this; much less cold-heartedly plan and then execute it?

Am I an anachronism, still believing in protective men and nurturing women? What the hell is happening to our world?

**Updates**

* Baby Jordan murder: suspect due in court – This story is just getting more sick and twisted as it unfolds.
* Woman hired baby killers, court told

Since I seldom cry, these times tend to really frighten my wife as well, which, to me at least, is a good enough reason to curb any such impulses. A bit of a negative feedback loop, maybe, but it seems to work for us, so I will not be changing it.

Yet, as I said, there are times I cry.

The most notable time was the Chechen rebel’s school siege in Russia. The amount of impotent rage I felt that day is something I really wish upon no-one.

I was taught from a fairy early age — not that it has ever been formalised in this way — that a man’s duty and responsibility to the world and his family included strength, honour, protection and love.

Strength in word, thought and deed: a man must hold to his convictions, ensure clarity of his thoughts and make sure that he may be the bastion of strength for his folk in a very uncertain world.

Honour: a man should always maintain honourable relations to his family and, as a secondary but still important consideration, his society. This also, of course, includes the adherence of justice, fairness and truth.

Protection: A man will protect his people at all costs. To hell with the proverbial king and country… Please note the “people”. That definition will change during a man’s life, but with the strength to maintain clarity of thought and the honesty to self already espoused, a man will know who his people are.

And love; and not the sickly sweet and weak emotion from fawning Valentine’s Cards. Love is the bright light an a dark world. It is what keeps us focused on what is important; it is also what warns us of danger and the false.

These are very high ideals but we have a word for male humans who attempt to adhere to them: men. The rest are relegated to being mere males.

I honestly think it is time I wrote up a “Man’s Manifesto” and posted it.

Now, what brought this on? What had me crying like Croats invading a school and killing the children?

This morning, IOL published a news story that had me crying tears of rage…

What kind of sick, twisted, mean-spirited sub-human scum male would even think of stabbing a six month old baby?

What kind of “humans” live in this damned country?

Also on

Jo’blog

Updates

* It was a mother’s worst nightmare come true
* Woman held after baby’s murder
* Police hot on the trail of baby’s killers – Good!

While I’m potificating, I think I have found my worst part of Gnome Blog (better known as “My current pet peeve”). Besides the lack of a spell checker, I mean. No categories. Which was initially quite disappointing.

That was until I found that Bryan Clark is busy tinkering on something called Monkey Journal. It looks promising, supporting most of the Blog posting APIs and using the gtkhtml widget. It also supports categories.

I try it out… Time will tell.

FC4 test 2, which I updated to, has managed to impress me quite a bit so far. ‘cepting that I had to compile Galeon, my preferred browser, a couple of times — FC4 is still a moving target, so that’s to be expected — most of my apps are either in extras or installed easily from FC3.

I’ve also installed the Blog GNOME applet, so hopefully that will encourage/ drive/ allow me to update the blog more frequently. It’s supposed to be my journal dammit. Journals mean absolutely squat if you don’t use them…

And while I’m on the topic (“Which one?” I hear you snigger…) Fedora Extras rock! Of course, I’d think they rock even more if they had Galeon in the repository, but I’m supposed to be a geek, so I surmise they thought I had to do something on my own.