An allrite Life

No rest for the wicked. As soon as I finish one big project at work, I have to jump into another one, this time with a much shorter deadline. I have been asked to create a "virtual press room" for the upcoming International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Sydney. It has to be up and running by the start of July.

Now the sensible thing would probably be to take an existing (open source - we have no money or time for anything else) Content Management System (CMS) and modify it to suit. However, these are usually written for Linux and MySQL, not our (old) Solaris and Oracle setup. Getting libraries and applications installed on the system is hell and I don't have root access either. So I'm going to roll my own CMS that does exactly what I need it to do.

The added benefit of creating my own CMS is that I can reuse the code for other projects. We long ago decided that the ATNF website was too complex for a CMS, but there are many elements where some sort of content management is appropriate and is, in fact, used. The components that I build for the virtual press room, such as image uploading and management, calendars and WYSIWYG editing can also be incorporated into the ATNF website. I've been itching to construct the components for a while, and this is my chance. I also expect to use them here on allrite.net.

Finally, I may be able to get this website running to my satisfaction.

2003-05-23 [Comments]

I have just started reading George Orwell's 1984 and it's not something you should do if you are already feeling a touch depressed. First published in 1949, It is the tale of a man trapped in totalitarian society ruled by "Big Brother". The party controls all aspects of life, watching its members through their "telescreens" (televisions equipped with cameras) and informers. History is constantly rewritten in books, newspapers and other media to conform with the Party's current versions of events. Those who do not work for the party, the "Proletariate" are kept passive through trashy entertainment, newspapers containing only "crime, sports and horoscopes". Sound familiar, Daily Telegraph? (I don't think Orwell knew about mind-numbing "infotainment" TV).

The constant manipulation of truth and language inventions also has a disturbing parallel in the way that information, corporate and public, is increasingly under the control of spin doctors. Even in scientific research organisations, it's not a matter of bluntly telling the truth, but of framing the information in a way designed not to offend sponsors and to attract funding. It is difficult to treat information, especially that released in the commercial world, as credible any longer (it is always good to retain your skepticism on anything). The Australian government, with the boat people overboard episode, demonstrated this is just as true for our elected officials.

In 1984, the Party plans to overcome the problem of skepticism and disbelief by adapting and simplifying the English language ("Newspeak") towards the elimination of a form where dissenting ideas could even be thought, let alone expressed. Today we have advertisers and "gurus" who mangle language and invent new words and phrases in such as way as to attempt to force our minds to conform to their concepts ("fat-free", "empower", etc...). New ideas stifled, old ideas repackaged to seem fresh. Is that how we want society to develop? Well, it's easier to control than a society where people think and decide for themselves.

2003-05-12 [Comments]

The Sydney Symphony Superdome Spectacular has now become an annual event. Three shows of popular orchestral music held in the true centre of Sydney - Homebush Bay's Superdome. This is supposedly one of the Symphony's few chances to "connect with ordinary people" rather than their usual art snobs.

Beatrice and I attended the same event last year and we both agreed that the inaugural concert was better. Yes, I enjoyed the Bolero, Kats-Chernin's Deep Sea Dreaming from the Olympic Opening Ceremony and Westlake's Cudmirrah Fanfare, which Beatrice said sounded like the introduction for a TV sports program. Orff's O Fortuna from Carmina Burana is always exciting, but too short, and the 1812 was actually played better this year. However, for me there was too much opera (in my opinion any opera was too much, but there was extra opera this time). I don't think that people that enjoy modern music and tone poems are necessarily the same as those who enjoy opera. Thankfully, my childhood experiences of opera played in the background on the radio helped me to ignore the horrid sound and think of other things.

My greatest reason for attending the concert, the chance to hear some John Williams music played live, also ended in disappointment with the choice of Harry's Wondrous World from Harry Potter. I could have chosen over a hundred of his other compositions that I would rather have heard, as I find the Harry Potter soundtrack rather bland in comparison to his other work, especially the main themes. Last year's Throne Room and Finale from Star Wars was far more energetic and received thunderous applause. It depresses me greatly that Williams is not taken more seriously, and I enjoyed both last year's Superdome Spectacular and the Melbourne Symphony's rendition of Jurassic Park and Williams' Tuba Concerto far more.

2003-05-13 [Comments]

Another busy day started with a request to put a page of images up on our website in support of a press release. I managed to put something reasonable in about half an hour, not long after the news was released. The CSIRO are slow to update their website with the latest media releases and I thought Gas clouds make a bigger "telescope" was pretty hot, so I copied the text of the release on to a local web page. The CSIRO version didn't make it online until late in the afternoon.

In the meantime I also submitted a link to our version to Slashdot. It was about time our web server got a work out. I watched as our logs registered more and more hits on the the media release. I hope CSIRO Online aren't jealous. Woohoo!

The use of the interstellar dust clouds' gravity to lense the radio signals of high energy jets is pretty interesting. Some excellent diagrams of the process were commissioned for the release, and I hope to use them on some educational pages in future.

2003-04-09 [Comments]

From last Friday...

The Domestic and International Terminal stations on the Airport underground railway line are dark and sterile, not the type of places to begin or end an adventure. Yes, the grey clad platforms are clean and modern, but they are devoid of human life, bar the transient travellers, and character. You would not know that they connected to the city's main gateways to elsewhere, but for their names.

Outside the sky is also grey with low clouds threatening to cast their load upon the ground at the merest provocation. Approaching dusk darkens them further still, yellowing only at the edges of the sky. This greyness would be depressing but for the fact that it is the end of the week's and time for rejoicing.

Now, the train rides towards the setting sun, towards the orange glow suffusing the air itself. Tendrils of grey mist reach downwards and droplets flick at the windows, the sky relinquishing control of its substance. The air is scented of rains and the vapours of the land it touches. The western sky burns, but it is almost extinguished as night and grey overwhelm.

Soon it will be journey's end, time to be cocooned in the warmth of home, to feed and watch, love and share away from the greyness outside.

2003-04-09 [Comments]

Since I started taking notice of this blogging phenomenon one thing has really stood out: there seem to be an awful lots of American right-wing bloggers who seem to completely support their president. This seems strange to me. I'm sure we have a very small group of people in Australia who worship out Prime Minister, but I believe that the vast majority, even those who agree with many of his policies, would not publically state that they fanatically support him. In Howard's own parlance, it is "UnAustralian" to trust politicians.

My mind then did some random connecting and concluded that Australians are far more likely to fanatically support a sports team captain (witness the national debate over Steve Waugh's captaincy of the cricket team) than a politician.

A hypothesis forming...

Australia is a very strong participant in a number of international team sports (eg cricket, rugby, hockey and someday, maybe, soccer) and Australians strongly identify with their national teams.

The US generally seems to prefer homegrown or very regional sports that have less widespread geographical appeal (eg gridiron, baseball, ice hockey (Canada & Russia) and basketball). Okay, basketball is a very international sport, but the big starts would rather slug it out in the local competition than compete internationally. With the exception of womens soccer, when the US does compete strongly in international sports it is in individual sports such as tennis and gold.

When Australians want to strut dominantly in the world, we do it on the sports field. Many nations (especially New Zealand and England) hate us for this. Fair enough. Maybe the US does it politically and militarily.

I don't know. Just a over-generalised hypothesis that I am not in the mood to explore further. Back to work!

2003-04-02 [Comments]

I'm sitting here more than half asleep, listing to the soundtrack to 1492 in a strange semi-concious state. Didn't sleep last night because I was working on my project. I am so sick of it. There are so many little things still left to do that I wonder if I will ever finish it. Needed to have the system looking good for a meeting with my supervisor today, though I thought we would have to call it off when the electricity went off around lunchtime. Lucky I press Ctrl-S very often.

Today it was the electricity. Yesterday it was my video card playing up in the PC. Fortunately, I had hung on to an older card and was able to swap that one in. Nvidia's unified driver architecture meant that I didn't need to touch any settings on XFree86 when I downgraded from the Geforce2 MX to the TNT2. Feel like getting a new computer soon as I am starting to feel the current machine's age.

That was another waste of time. As was my adsl connection dropping out on Saturday. Arrgggh!

It was all bad news. B and I watched the musical Mamma Mia at the Lyric Theatre. Despite the fact that I have no great love for Abba music, it was loads of fun. The sets were fantastic and the cast appeared to be having a great time. I certainly enjoyed it.

Back to work now. No more time wasting.

2003-03-31 [Comments]

I can't feel entirely bitter over the start of the war today. The Cricket World Cup is almost over, but judging from my form at lunchtime cricket today, I still might have a chance of selection for the West Indian tour. Despite my lingering illness it felt so good out there and I felt my batting was the best it's been for years. Lots of powerful backfoot shots, plus a couple of front footers. I was seeing the ball so well and was abl to play shots visualised before the ball was bowled.

So I'm boasting. But I had fun, and that's never a bad thing.

2003-03-20 [Comments]

It was as if the dust storms of the Persian Gulf had crossed the seas and struck Sydney. The still brown air was strangely appropriate for the day the first shots were fired in the latest war of the desert.

I'm not opposed to getting rid of Saddam Hussein and any chemical or biological weapons he possesses. I just feel that they way it is being done, US and its white sherrifs vs the World, is wrong and sets a dangerous precedent. How now to stop China, Russia or anyone else for that matter taking issues into their own hands whenever they feel the need? I wish I could be confident that post-war Iraq would be a better place. I hope it will be.

John Howard was on TV tonight justifying our direct participation in the war by saying that we need to stick by the US. Everybody else but Australia and the Poms are only giving them logistical support. Let's not forget, that's all the US gave us when our soldiers were in East Timor. I bet we don't get any really wonderful trade concesions either after this. The US farm/steel/etc lobby is still more important to the US government than we are. But in this world, you're either 100% behind Bush or a member of the Axis of Evil. As long as they pin a Deputy Sherrif's star on John Howard's breast he'll be happy. Anything, but make him have to work with all the "coloured people" in Asia and the Pacific.

2003-03-20 [Comments]

Switched on the shiny new widescreen TV at midday to find George W Bush live* on all five stations. If Saddam and Co. aren't gone in 48 hours then it's war. Even better is that W and friends want to bring democracy to the entire Middle East. A noble ambition for sure, but my feeling is that democracy to them means that America gets to vote on their policies. I wonder if they would consider France and Germany to be democracies.

While I would agree that Saddam is an evil person and that I would be much happier if Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, the way that events are being played out feels deeply wrong. I also despise the way that our racist Prime Minister blindly follows the United States' lead, as if the opinion of Australia's citizens is irrelevant. Sure he's popluarist when it comes to issues that are close to his heart like anti-immigration policies, but he'd rather follow his spiritual leaders the US conservatives when it comes to overseas policies.

I have a strong feeling that the world will become a more destabilised place with he war on Iraq and that the US' policies will only encourage a build-up of militarism and weaponary across the world. Countries like China may feel that one day the US may need to be taught a lesson lest they get too big for their boots.

So no, I don't support this war. Not at this time and not in this way. And I don't support Howard the Coward. Despite this, I do support the Australian troops who must carry out the morons' orders and hope that they will return safe and well.

* Interestingly enough, there was a delay of a second or two between some stations, so they can't all have been "live!"

2003-03-18 [Comments]

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