Remembering PRESTAGS

Problem solving for the home handyman

There were going to be photos with this post but I can't get them to load ...

Wednesday the dishwasher didn't drain completely. Cleaned the sieve trap and screen (which were not really grotty at all).
Did a clean on hot cycle yesterday - still some water remaining.
Fiddled around in the water, found the outlet hole, didn't seem to be blocked.
Did a shot hot wash empty. Still water remaining above the normal level.
Recourse to Dr Google for potential causes and to try to find a manual for the model online. Both searches moderately successful.
Easiest thing to test was the outlet hose.
This morning had a go at trying to check that - which meant pulling nearly everything out from under the sink to find the power point.
Then to get the bracket screws holding it to the cabinetry walls out (not sure how the installer got them in!)
Then feeding hoses back from under the sink to allow the dishwasher to move.

Slight diversion, when I go the dishwasher out far enough to see in the recess there was a mostly desiccated mouse ... (photo). If he could get in, not sure why he couldn't get out? Maybe success of rat bait stations - apparently the tend to go off somewhere out of the way to die.

 

Anyway, back to the hose, 'voila!' the hose had a fair kink in it behind the dishwasher. The kink probably there from when it was in stalled 8 or 9 years ago (never needed servicing). 
Managed to get some gunk and water out of the hose, indicating it probably was blocked.

OK, then 'how to address the kink in the hose?'.  Pressing around it pretty much returned it to norm shape but it would be liable to kink in the same place again. 
Thought about a replacement hose but further Dr Google and YouTubes indicated I would have to take various covers off the bottom of the dishwasher to access where it attaches to the pump. I wanted to avoid that if possible.

I thought 'maybe if I wrap something stiff around the kink site ...
Then, what if I can find something cylindrical about the same diameter as the hose? A 'sleeve' to support the kinked area.
I tried to type of drink bottle lid - standard soft drink bottle, and the blue outside bit of a juice popper.
Cut off the lids with a hacksaw, then split one side with the hacksaw.
The Popper lid was too wide and it was liable to crack.
With the help of some boiling water to soften the soft drink lid plastic I got it over the kink.

Next problem - how to hold it in place, and if possible make it a tighter fit?
Tried a plastic coated wire tie (like comes in toy packaging) first - wasn't strong enough.

Then thought - hose clamp. Found my stash of those in the shed (minor miracle?), and got one on and tightened over the sleeve.
Now to put it all back in place and see if the draining problem is resolved.
Quite happy with my simple fix.

 

Fix Worked And The Beast Roared

Brilliant, option A did the trick.

Macro adventures on a ladder

There was an arachnid visitor to the extended web of the black house spider at my front door today (top of the wall where the eave joins). A large huntsman (I suspect a huntswoman actually) - sheltering from the heavy rain? Seemingly uninterested in the house spider further down the wall. (I might call her a pet, as I leave her big messy web in place above the door knowing she won't bother anyone unless they bother her).

A challenge for shooting, as she was behind the web on the wall - autofocus was almost certainly going to focus on the web in front not the spider.

I tried a couple of strategies - first a monopod with the foot wedged against the wall, and camera pointing up. I tried manual focus with live view (zoomed in), and there was sort of success but not stunning. (my eyes just couldn't pick focus or not through the 'normal size' optical viewfinder, especially as I was 'perched' and an odd angle).

Got out a tripod but realised that wasn't going to be high enough either. Then I thought about an approach I had contemplated for jumping spiders - using my travel tripod as a horizontal brace against the wall. This allowed be to have the camera positioned opposite the target rather than underneath. I imagine it looked weird to anyone driving along the street ...

So the set up was small 2 step ladder, tripod with all 3 legs against the wall with me pressing inwards to keep it stable. flash, manual exposure to get shutter speed up a bit, and live view with zoom in then manual focus to get focus on the spider not the web. Moderately pleased with the results. Had a go for the house spider but the web around her is too think and she is in a corner making bracing tricky - in the 'as shot' pic below you can see where she is though.

monopod shot - web in focus

As shot (size wise, minor process tweeks)

cropped image

The house spider hidden in her web. I was trying to focus manually but it was hopeless. She seems to have abandoned the big web further out from the door (her mother's from 3 or so years ago) and stays in the corner.

More on Kikuo Ibe and the Invention of the G-Shock (and my old GD-350)

I shuffled around in my drawers looking for one of my older G-Shocks.

Unfortunately I didn't keep any of my 1980s Casio watches (although I still have my 1970s calculator) and not even my 1990s G-Shocks.

I did find the fully digital GD-350 which I think I was wearing about six years ago. The fact that I could use this watch without my glasses shows how much my eyesight has deteriorated. 

The watch has the signs of lots of wear but battery still running and only lost a few minutes time after years at the bottom of the drawer.

Finding this 'older' watch has inspired me to post some more about Casio's legendary Kikuo Ibe and the invention of the G-Shock watch.

From Jack Forster at Hodinkee:

Mr. Kikuo Ibe never expected to be world famous, but famous he is: he's the man who invented the Casio G-Shock. At first, he hardly seems like the sort of person who could develop the world's toughest watch. He's slightly built, slim, soft-spoken, and bespectacled, which seems a little incongruous until you remember that G-Shock is as much an engineering achievement as a horological one, and Mr. Ibe is very much an engineer.  

The history of the G-Shock is full of interesting stories (as you'd expect of a family of watches designed to tolerate just about any sort of abuse imaginable) and in a recent conversation with Ibe, at Casio's offices in New York, I had a chance to dig back a bit into those stories and to find out what's apocryphal, what's legend, and what's true. Many of the highlights in the story of G-Shock are familiar to hardcore G-Shock fans (and yes, there is a worldwide community of G-Shock collectors as serious about their watches as any gaggle of vintage Patek or Rolex collectors), but hearing them from the man who started it all over 30 years ago is a reminder of how much persistence it took to bring G-Shock to life.

First of all, yes, it's absolutely true that Ibe got the idea for G-Shock after a beloved mechanical watch broke. The watch was a gift from his father, and one day, while walking down the street (he'd been with Casio for several years already when the accident happened) another pedestrian bumped into him hard enough to break the band of his watch and knock it to the pavement (Ibe says he tried to catch it, but missed). The watch broke in pretty much every way a watch can break: the hands were dislodged, the caseback came off, and the band broke. What Ibe won't tell, however, is what brand and model watch it was. He says he's been asked many times, but prefers not to say, beyond acknowledging that it was mechanical, a Japanese-made domestic model, and not a Casio.

The testing process didn't really get off the ground until Ibe, seeing a girl bouncing a ball in a playground, got the idea of putting the movement inside a resilient structure that would isolate it from shocks. It's also absolutely true that the prototypes were tested by being thrown out of an upper floor bathroom window at Casio's research and development center: specifically, the third floor men's room window. The distance to the pavement below was ten meters, and Ibe's goal was to make a watch capable of surviving a ten meter fall, with a ten year battery life, and ten bar (100 meter) water resistance. The very first G-Shock model, DW-5000, came out in 1983, with 200m water resistance and, needless to say, the ability to survive a ten meter fall. Ibe says he tested the production prototypes in every way he could think of, including running them over with a car.

Ibe began working on prototypes for a shock-proof watch in 1981. At the time, he says, the main goal in quartz watchmaking was to make very thin watches, so he started by trying to make housings for LCD quartz movements that would allow them to tolerate severe impacts. In 1982 he'd made enough progress for the development of G-Shock to become an official Casio project, with eight engineers assigned. The initial prototypes were proof-of-concept models and not especially wearable.

The original prototypes are now the rarest G-Shocks of all.

Back to the 2013 G-Shock GD-350.

I notice it was famous for its super precise countdown function and the vibration alarm. Not something I used liked many of the other functionalities. But just having it there makes you feel good!

Old and Fat but Happy

I wonder why?

I had a fantastic birthday.

Genius Python, Birthday Cakes and Unidentified Bugs

The genius Python Magus has rescued the Zen Book and brought it back to a new life. Linux lives on in my household!

Preloaded with EDEE, and poppies for Anzac Day, what more could I want.

By visiting my parents in Canberra, and returning before the end of the long weekend, I managed to score two birthday cakes for myself.

Both cakes convey my age in their own way.

For number 3 daughter, a highlight of Canberra was trying to identify a new bug we have never seen before. We don't know why one had such a long 'tail', and the other one didn't.

Prestags Quiz: identify this bug!

Twelve Tee Shirt Problem

Euler solved the seven bridges of Dresden problem, but I wonder if he could solve my twelve tee shirt problem. I have unpacked my summer wardrobe and have 31 tee shirts. This is excessive and is causing stacking problems in the wardrobe. I have decided to reduce to twelve, but which twelve? Perhaps a reader can help?

Keep

• Boys Weekend 2011. Must keep, even if just as a gardening teeshirt
• Oakvale Capital (green bottom left). They retrenched me. Never forget. Never forgive.
• The lonely mountain (middle cream) - from Paul - must keep
• Blue and Gold (bottom right) - I won a grand final wearing that shirt
• S&T  - Spartans Phalanx advancing
• Tintin et Milou
• PRESTAGS multicolour right bottom.

Go

• Istanbul (blue top right). It should be Constantinople or Byzantium!
• Boys Weekend 2013 (maroon with cream vinyl of every PRESTAGS piece). Too tatty.

Uncertain

• Darth Vader - Star Wars without Anikin this December threatens to be boring
• 7 nerd tee shirts - I only need a couple.
• Cricket Australia (top right) and my prize for being Ashfield Cricket Club person of the year - but we lost the Ashes
• Raphael (right, blue, brown, white, black) - For a JS library, but I do not really like the colours
• CSIRO (left right top) - OMG, its full of stars

HELP!

Sitting Python Says

Man who paddle upstream can be friend. So can man who paddle downstream.

How to Heat Up Cold Dim Sims Without a Microwave

It is over a year since I threw away our microwave oven at the beginning of my crusade against EMF. The only time we really miss it is when there is left over food to be heated up. In most cases the Boss uses a steamer which not only heats up the food but keeps it nice and moist.

Last night I came home late after seeing an excellent production of The Merchant of Venice with Shakespeare mad daughters #1 and #2. I was hungry and confronted with cold dim sims and chips. Not to worry, I heated them up in five minutes using the jaffle and they were piping hot and great.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Where to in 2015?

A new year is always a good time for a high level review. I have been thinking about where to go in 2015 with regard to wargaming. High points in 2014 for me were:

1. Playing Space Empires on the Boys Weekend
2. Blogging four articles on how to play Space Empires
3. Blogging a game analysis of Reinforce the Right (the first months of WW1 on the Western Front)
4. EDEE Games Reports

The low points for me were:

1. Climate change blogging - lots of research spent and no progress made
2. Thygs in Space - the initial code is done, but I need ships (and drawing of ships), technologies and planetary names to go to the next stage. I fear the project is dead.
3. Waiting for EDEE turns - you know how it is when you are on a roll, and then have to wait four days and when the turn comes you can no longer remember why that transport is redeploying across the map.

So my goals for 2015 are:

1. BOYS WEEKEND
2. Set up every Prestags scenario and play a few turns. Take photos and blog about them.
3. Resume work on Moderni Agone, so I can do some games on line.
4. Write a few pieces on Napoleon and his tactics, starting with the Capitulation of Ulm.

Boys Weekend

Yes, it will happen.

Yes, I will organise it.

Yes, it should be in New Zealand.

Yes, it will go ahead in Canberra anyway.

Yes, Junior Prestags are welcome.

Yes, we will play Space Empires.

Play a bit of Prestags

The blog is dedicated to Prestags, and the games are simple to set up and play, so why not. As much as anything, it give me something to do when no turns are arriving.

I doubt I will be able to coax Paul away ffrom his computer, but a few solitaire scenarios should make this blog much more interesting and perhaps get us into some good debates. (Moves issue 2 has a fantastic debate on the range of ancient arrows. It reads like an email chain, but was done in old school posted letters. I am keen on posting that.)

I'll start with Chariot and see how we go. The lack of stacking in chariot should make it a very bloody game, where an E and a ½E have the same effect.

Feedback on good scenarios to set up are gratefully accepted

Resume work on Moderni Agone

Combining Prestags with the internet has to be an all around winner. However, the first thing I need to fix is the name: Paul hates it and Peter ignores it.

I really enjoyed coding this game up. Even now, I keep getting good ideas for it. (My latest is an odds randomiser - just before the odds are calculated, I roll two dice. On a 2, I add two to the attacker strength, 3-4 I add 1, 10-11 I subtract 1 and 12 I subtract two. This stops the unrealistic behaviour of getting your odds exactly perfect.)

I also think I am only a few weeks from having a really playable game and we might even get Peter involved.

Interstingly, my new job is coding a phone user interface in a browser, so is very similar to this, so I expect I will be much cleverer and faster in coding enhancements

Write a few pieces about Napoleon

I agree with Victor Hugo's analysis that Napoleon was a military genius who was also the worst kind of tyrant. However, it is good to learn, even from your enemy. I have loads of good Napoleonic games that will make great photo opportunities. I am impressed with the Moves #2 issue that does a great report on a historical play of their 1812 game (Napoleon's invasion of Russia), although without photos as that was too tricky ffor a low cost puplication in the 70s.

I thought I would start with the Capitulation of Ulm in 1805.

This is a true classic where Napoleon destroyed an Austrian army of 72,000 without fighting a major battle, just a few skirmishes. Similar to the German march through the Ardennes in 1914 and 1939, Napoleon used indirect approach in 1805 to maneover around the Austrians and cut them off from their line of communications. They were forced to surrender (60,000 taken prisoner) and Vienna fell shortly after.

BTW Paul, may I have a "Napoleonic War" category, or something similar?

What are your plans?

What are your thoughts on this piece and what are your plans for 2015?

That is not a game of chess...

This is a game of chess!

Napoleon plays empire chess against Satoshi Nakamoto Cornwallis.

A Great Picture

Automatic artillery fire

served Python very well last turn. Not sure if my aircraft managed to blast them all out in retaliation.

 

Brilliant Fruits of the Cypher Punk Movement

I have just read a great book which I believe the Python would love. I should say, just listened to a great book because I have the audiobook version.

The book is "Bitcoin, the Future of Money" by Dominic Frisby. In the audio version, Frisby reads his own work and he has a most lively and engaging style.

Before this book I had a very erroneous view of Bitcoin, thinking it was just some insecure internet scam. But Bitcoin is so much more than this, and is a great adventure story for pseudo-anarchists (like me) and open source programmers (like Python).

Bitcoin was created by a mathematical genius, and grew out of the cypher punk movement. The creator "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a pseudonymn, and his/her identity is one of the great mysteries of computer programing. The creator has exhibited various brilliance in programming, history, economics and politics. Frisby's book has a fantastic section where he undertakes detailed detective work to identify the person behind "Satoshi Nakamoto". He mounts a convincing case, and I won't spoil the ending.

As somebody who has long been opposed to the creation of fiat currency by central banks, and the use of inflation and reckless money printing to erode the wealth of the average punter in favour of the super rich, Bitcoin has a lot to admire. It is completely decentralised and beyond the control of any particular government. It is anti-inflationary, and there is a finite amount of currency of 21 million bitcoins which will be reached in 2024. The currency is based on cryptography and supports privacy. This makes it attractive for criminal enterprises, but there will always be crime and the vast majority of law abiding citizens are entitled to privacy.

The decentralisation of Bitcoin and the ease and speed of use makes it accessable to anybody with a computer, and (I really love this bit) there is no need for banks. On this point alone I give it a big thumbs up. Bitcoin is P2P currency (Python knows what this is) and a community driven open source project.

New bitcoins are created using a complicated formula that involves computers "mining" coins by solving and publishing complicated mathematical problems, which processing power also supports the decentralised operation of Bitcoin around the world. The only way to acquire Bitcoin is to be given it, to buy the digital currency on the open market (there are many exchanges around the world) at market price (currently 1 Bitcoin = US $374.00) or to use a program to "mine" the coin. Apparently the computing power required now to solve the mathematical problems is so great that it is beyond the capacity of most home computers to meaningfully mine for Bitcoin. There are cloud mining platforms where you can invest in an amount of computer power and then receive little bits of Bitcoin each day.

The core of the Bitcoin software was coded in C++. There is a chapter in Frisby's book about why the ancient C++ code is superior to other codes such as Python, and how this code enabled complete control and a high level of security. I found this interesting, so the Python would presumably find it above awesome. Some of the greatest hackers in the world have had a go at Bitcoin, and failed. The core software is incredibly strong, even if there have been a number of scandals involving poorly managed exchanges and people losing bitcoins because their individual computers have been hacked and their passwords stolen.

For the paranoid it is possible to have "cold" storage of your bitcoins, off-line, so they cannot be hacked. There is a device called the Pi Wallet, which is a tiny computer running linux Pi, a secure offline Bitcoin wallet which uses a (removable) SDHC card as the hard drive. This reminds me of the little Beagle computer that I loved so much at the OSDC in Auckland.

The big question is what does the future hold for Bitcoin. There are now numerous digital currencies, although Bitcoin has the momentum and a market capitalisation that is currently over $5 billion. If the use of Bitcoin grows it will have a great future, and the price of Bitcoins will rise dramatically. If use decreases, it will end badly. So far, Bitcoin has survived an awful lot and I think the future looks ok.

I am thinking that the next open source conference that the Python and I attend, should be about Bitcoin. There is a Bitcoin conference in Singapore on 29-30 January, and plenty in the United States over the course of 2015 ...

 

Enter the Dragon: Zhuge Liang

Where has November gone? It was supposed to be the the month of Sleeping Dragon. I planned to write upon his battles, his ruses and his inventions, but the month has gone and I have little to show for it apart from a few nice cooked dishes.

About 15 years ago I decided my reading was too Western. I tried unsuccessfully to get into a few translations of foreign books in the library. On a business trip, I found "The Three Kingdom" in a book store and was immediately transfixed. It reads much like Homer's Iliad, with the politics and connivings of supernatural forces, kings and generals, and frequent battles with lists of the nobles on each side who died, but set in third century AD China.

You know you have a great book when you have a great opening sentence:

The world under heaven, after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of union, tends to divide. This has been so since antiquity.

 

The action starts with the dissolution of the Han dynasty into warring generals. The hero, Liu Bei was a reasonable leader, but not much of a general, so his aides suggested he visit a certain village to recruit a skilled scholar. He arrives to find the scholar not present, but off doing something menial, and has to return several times before he can meet. The scholar, Zhuge Liang, takes much convincing to get involved in the civil war, hence the title "Sleeping Dragon" or "Wolong".

Zhuge Liang takes over the much diminshed armies of faction and immediately transforms them through training and new tactics. He also moves the faction's capital into a more economically and militarily sensible location. When the faction re-emerges, it wins spectacular successes under Liang.

At the end of the second book, there is a villian, Cao Cao, and hero Liu Bei, and a bunch of also rans, so I dove into the third book, only to find that shortly in, almost every character I knew died.

Before dying, Liu offers the throne to Zhuge Liang, but he refuses and instead supports the successor. Ultimately, Liang too dies from illness. His successor carries on for a while, but there is only one Zhuge Liang, and ultimately the faction is subsumed into the Jin Dynasty.

So by the end of the novel, the winners are characters you have no particular attachment too, the villians and heros are long gone and not mentioned much, and the book peters to a close.

I suppose the point is the immortality of greatness, nobility and mostly renown. To this day Zhuge Liang is a synonym for cunning and good strategy in Chinese culture, as is his goose feather fan.

Zhuge Liang is remembered for several miliary inventions: the land mine, a repeating crossbow and a messaging hot air balloon, as well as a steamed bun and a maze with supernatural powers.

In praise of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Radio

 

You can get to hear stuff like this:

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/13/248195238/does-the-subjunctive-have-a-dark-side

or this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids - I heard this one the other night.

(here's another version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXhddUqNNjo - 5 dangerous things you should let your children do. )

You would never get any of this from the private firms ...

or this - THE trusted source of info in an emergency:

 

 

 

The Genius of Python

Highlights of the Boys Weekend (1)

Some sadness now enters our hearts as the Boys Weekend has ended, however we are bouyed with the memory of many highlights.

A highlight for me was the wonderful roast lamb and vegetables knocked together by the Python and Thygocanberra. My easy contribution of a bottle of red made me feel quite inadequate.

Python's cooked breakfasts were also a treat, and I believe "in-house cooking" will now become mandatory for many meals at the Boys Weekend.

And, the best meat pie I have ever eaten in my life ... was not at the Boys Weekend.

Great Minds Think Alike?

Well son of a blitz, have the Python and I gone for the same new early game strategy? The Python has gone into immediate nuclear production:

However, have I beaten him to the chase:

 

WE HAVE BEEN GOING ONE YEAR!

A huge thank you to the Python and Thygo, and all the other contributors. May this mad blog prosper for another year.

The Stats:

468 Total posts

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12,531 Lifetime Page Views

 

Hoplite: A New Game for PythonMagus

GMT have just published Hoplite, and it can only be especially for the PythonMagus. I must say it looks impressive and covers 11 battles, including Marathon. It is a bargain at $75 and includes three maps, four countersheets and other goodies listed on the Hoplite page at GMT. There is even a ten sided dice. When I think of the value of money today versus the 1970s, I don't think it is that much more than Spartan would have cost us back then. Until May 9 GMT also has a 50% off sale (!)

It may be that GMT's Great Battles of History series are a bit of a modern day PRESTAGS. While Hoplite covers some of the territory of Spartan, GMT's Chariots of Fire covers some of the territory of Chariot. And Chariots of Fire is on special at the moment and a steal at $40.

These games are designed by Richard Berg and Mark Herman. Both are wargame legends and go right back to SPI and the glory days of the mid 1970s. Richard Berg also designed SPI's ancient game The Conquerors  (I still have a copy) and countless ancient and American Civil War games.

Many other battles in PRESTAGS are covered in various of the Great Battles of History series, although unfortunately most of these games are out of print.

So the question is, will PythonMagus or I be the first to grab the spear ...

PS. I hate the BCE. It is BC. Before CHRIST. Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!

Better than fish in a sink - undies in a sugar bowl

When Peter and Paul and Andy were still playing at postgraduate studies (or Thygo still was, c1990 ) and Thygo had a Mac he allowed Paul and Andy to access his room at B&G.

Thygo returned home that summer (having driven Paul and Anne from Sydney and dropped them off in Aranda) to find a present(s) in his sink.

The sink was filled with orange jelly and in the nicely set jelly was a fish. There were other assorted pranks, some of which took some time to discover.

Well, today Carl showed his innate prankishness.

Where to hide a pair of underpants? Why in the sugar bowl of course!!

 

 

 

Spider Man !

Sounds From The Past: Gauntlet

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Thygocanberra and I spent way too much time (and coins) playing Gauntlet.

This arcade game was released by Atari in 1985 and was the first 4 player arcade game. The genius of the game was that the players engaged as a team against the computer enemies on screen. If a player's character was killed, and the other players were still going, it was possible to feed in more coins and come back to the game. What a brilliant recipe for long play sessions and 4 times heaps of coins for the machine.

The players, up to four at once in the arcade version, selected among four playable fantasy-based characters; Thor the Warrior, Merlin the Wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie, or Questor the Elf. Each character had his or her own unique strength and weaknesses. The Warrior was strongest in hand-to-hand combat, the Wizard had the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie had the best armour and the Elf was the fastest in movement.

I have managed to locate some of the original sounds from the game. These include the origin of the now famous "who shot the food?" and the still spooky sound as a player's lifeforce is running out.

Don't shoot the food!:

Dontshoot food

Valkyrie needs food:

Valkneedsfood

Someone shot the food:

Someoneshotfood

Finding treasure:

Treasure

Lifeforce is running out

Lifeforce

Death sound:

Deathsound

I'm sure these sounds are still embedded in Thygocanberra's mind!

He Strode as a Giant Among the Geeks: OSDC 2013

I always intended to report upon the OSDC in Auckland. Thygocanberra has requested that I report upon: “how did NZ trip go? victories? triumphs? feasts? spoils?”. There were indeed all of these things, and more.

AWESOMENESS

I have already posted as to the awesomeness of travelling to New Zealand on the Air NZ "Hobbit" plane. We saw some unusual aircraft on our journey, but nothing came close to the Hobbit plane which boldly proclaimed itself "The Airline of Middle Earth".

TRIUMPHS

The conference itself was well organized and a success. For a lawyer attending a hard core geeks convention I found it surprisingly enjoyable and genuinely interesting.

The triumph was PythonMagus, who strode through the conference as a giant among geeks. The Python's talk "Creating Masterpieces with Raphael" was the highlight of the whole conference, and I got a massive buzz seeing PRESTAGS Moderni Agone on the big screen. We met an intense young developer who told us after the talk that he has been working on a computer game for three and a half years. The Python completed MA in three months. Even in the small photograph on the below left one can recognise PRESTAGS Moderni Agone.

After his talk the Python was able to relax a bit, however he still maintained 'the stance'. That is the stance of triumph, which has not been seen since the cover picture for PRESTAGS Viking in 1975. The Python was also able to enter 'The Great Room', where only the great dare to venture.

FEASTS

Were there feasts? Yes, too many feasts! The formal dinner for the OSDC was held at Eden Park on the first evening of the conference. Eden Park is the most sacred place in New Zealand, and Aussies usually leave Eden Park on a stretcher, so it was a privilege to enter and survive this place. Dinner at Eden Park was great (it is hard to go wrong with a self-serve all-you-can-eat top restaurant quality smorgasbord) and the real treat was Yorkshire Pudding which I have not had in ages. I remember this pudding at the Python's wedding: is this correct?

The conference was held at the Langham Hotel in Auckland. I have stayed in quite a lot of 5 star hotels around the world and I can honestly say the Langham beat them all. I normally travel for business, and without family or friends, so perhaps I was particularly well disposed to the Langham because the circumstances were more fun. All of the food at the Langham was top notch. The morning and afternoon teas came with a huge variety of cakes and wraps. The lunches included numerous hot options, with no stinginess on the meat as is usually the case. The cheese platter was particularly memorable.

The view from my hotel window included an old red brick house among taller modern buildings. The house was now a posh French restaurant on top called "Number 5" and an earthy Italian restaurant below called "Da Vinci's". Python and I had an excellent two course Italian meal at Da Vinci's to celebrate his talk.

Feasts come in all shapes and sizes. I was well behaved on the first two mornings and had my own cereal breakfast, but on the last morning I went for the traditional hotel cooked breakfast of eggs and sausages.

The breakfast was first class. It was delivered precisely (to the second) at my nominated time of 7.15am and the poached eggs were still runny. A surprise was the toaster so that I could toast my own bread in order to achieve maximum freshness of toast. I have never encountered this before. The pot of strong freshly brewed coffee for one was enormous and I drank it all. I haven't slept since.

VICTORIES

There was a victory, and it was mine. Throughout the conference the Python and I continued our two player game of EDEE. How cool was this and how different to all the boring legal conferences I have been to over the years. Every couple of hours we would exchange turns, and even the uber geek talks with topics like "Clustering Web Apps with MariaDB & Galera" and "MySQL Roadmap, more flexibility with NoSQL API" could not hold the Python as he rushed to a quiet corner to do his move.

It was a particularly close and exciting game, and I had been rewarded with a radical opening strategy which the Python still refuses to concede is better than his opening strategy. In any event, after a particularly crushing counter move by me, the Python officially resigned in a game that he has dominated for years. It was a very satisfying victory indeed.

No PRESTAGS was played, although MI 22 and his friends did travel to New Zealand and they were remarkably well behaved.

SPOILS

The true spoils of the conference are knowledge. I learnt a lot, especially about cyber security and privacy which have always interested me. I really enjoyed a panel discussion on the second morning "Government surveillance of online communications" and the keynote address on the third day by Vikram Kumar, the CEO of Mega, which is a NZ based private cloud platform. There are so many threats to our privacy and even the geeks are struggling to hold back the ever increasing online Orwellian nightmare.

I learnt about Tor, which has a suite of applications to assist online privacy. I learnt about BeagleBone which is a credit card sized linux computer: absolutely brilliant and I want one. I don't need one but I just want one. I learnt that I cannot challenge the geeks when it comes to 'most nerdy' t-shirts or 'most nerdy' laptop stickers. I collected a lot of stickers at OSDC. But I still think my own sticker design of the linux penguin with the V for Vendetta mask was the most original at the conference.

HOME

No matter where you go or whatever you do it is always marvellous to get home. As the return flight descended over Sydney I was able to take a photograph through the window with a rather crappy camera. I am quite proud of this photograph. It captures the CBD and harbour bridge, and the bushfire haze that was still sitting over the city. Welcome back to Sydney.

Bigger, better, faster

It is hard to resist the newest toy in the shop. What if that toy was free and you just had to ask for it - and you new PC just runs it with no hardware changes required or recommended! Welcome the the magical world of Ubuntu. Sure we are standing on the shoulders of giants such as Torvalds, Stallman and Shuttleworth (to idly pick 3 superheros out of a valhalla of hundreds), but still, new is cool and scary. Bring it on!

Australia's National Dish: Roast Lamb

Officially, Australia does not have a national dish.

There are obviously some favourite foods when it comes to Australia. Meat pies, barbequed steak and sausages, and lamingtons immediately come to mind.

I would like to pitch for my personal favourite: roast lamb. This should be Australia's national dish. And no one does roast lamb as well as my wife and my mother.

My wife's version, which combines a number of individual favourites:

Wow, check this out:

A = Roast Lamb. Medium to well done, the way I like it. Marinated in olive oil, mixed herbs, paprika and pepper. Studded with garlic slices inserted in pockets in the lamb.

B = The start of 'Potatoes three ways'. My favourite vegetable dish, roast Tuscan potatoes, basted with olive oil, garlic and rosemary.

C = Roast sweet potatoes. basted with olive oil, garlic and rosemary.

D = Mashed potatoes. An historical left over from the days of fussy young children. But we love tradition, and it still tastes great.

E = My favourite salad, coleslaw. Cabbage, carrots, celery and onion in whole egg mayonnaise.

F = Gravy, made from the lamb's roasting juices. Used liberally.

G = 2 x Deep Sea Krill Oil capsules. The inclusion of this unique element transforms the entire dish into a fully certified 200% healthy meal, with exemption from all diets.

My mother's version, 'Nanie's roast lamb':

Wow, more yuminess:

A = Roast lamb, again medium to well done.

B = Tomato pie.

C = Beans Dunstan. Beans with leek. So tasty even children eat it even though it's green. So tasty I eat it even though it's green.

D = Potatoes dauphinoise.

E = Gravy. Used liberally.

Is there less meat in Nanie's version? Not really because I always have seconds. And thirds.

It goes without saying that both versions of roast lamb are washed down with generous quantities of an Australian red. I usually go for a Shiraz or a Cabernet Sauvignon. What a great national dish!

The United States of America: A Love-Hate Relationship

Time for an over 50 rant. And to increase this website's ranking with the NSA.

I have a love-hate relationship with America.

I think this is about promise. The greatness and inspiration of what America and its history promised. And the fact that this promise has been so often broken.

I love the American constitution, which was a part inspiration for our own constitution. I hate the way America has trashed its constitution since 911 for no genuine reason. I really hate that most Americans don't know their own consitution. How can they value and defend what they don't know.

I love American people. I've always found Americans to be friendly, intelligent, humorous and above all generous. I even like their accents. I hate American politicians. They are so dishonest and so dishonourable and so dis-everything. They are even worse than our own politicians (which I didn't think was possible). I am perturbed by the street people who constantly ask for money, even in America's richest cities.

I love JFK's speeches and I love the way he delivered them. I don't like his personal life. I hate that he was assasinated. And I hate that this has never been properly investigated or explained.

I love American junk food (I prefer to call it comfort food). I love American serving sizes. Enough said.

I love American Civil War history, which is strange because I didn't like this period of history five years ago. I hate the bloodshed and the total futility of the Civil War and American Irish brigades fighting American Irish brigades. But I admire the courage of the Confederates and the sheer genius of the greatest Confederate generals. The victors always write the history afterwards.

I am not a fan of Abraham Lincoln, even though he is being particularly hagiographised (did I just invent a new word) at this time. I hate and despise slavery, but in the Civil War this was never the only issue and President Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation which declared slaves in Confederate states to be free but not in Union states like Maryland did not show much courage or genuineness.

I hate the total hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of American foreign policy. I hate that America has supported more dictators than any other nation since World War II. What part of defeating fascism did they not understand. I hate the pathetic American economic justifications for supporting vicious dictators and feudal regimes even today. I absolutely hate that dictators suddenly become an 'enemy of freedom and democracy' when their usefulness to America's corporate cartels has ended. Above all, when these dictators reach their 'use by' date I hate that America supports 'freedom fighters' and 'democratic rebels' (as if it's an episode of Star Wars) these very same 'rebels' use terrorism which America condemns elsewhere.  

I hate the militarisation of the American police. I hate the increasing use of the American military inside the United States. Great nations use their armed forces outside their borders and in defence. The Department of Homeland Security reminds me of nazi Gemany and it scares me. I love American military courage. I love the loyalty, initiative and determination of the average American officer and soldier. And I have not forgotten the American assistance in defending my nation against the Japanese. I deeply respect the American soldiers who died for my own country.

I love that America is full of overtly religious things. I love that Americans will sincerely and happily say that they are a Christian (even to a complete stranger) as a matter of course in ordinary conversion. I hate the immoral filth that is most of American television. They say that television is a window into hell. It may not be here, but it is in America.

I love American movies. I hate American movies.

I love that older American Catholic churches and their altars and statues were not destroyed after Vatican II. I love that Americans are sophisticated enough and  love beautiful things enough not to have ruined all their Churches after Vatican II. I love that America is a heartland of traditionalism. I love that many American religious are happy and proud to wear their religious habits in public. I hate that America is also a heartland of modernism. I hate that America is the spiritual home for feral nuns.

I love the American genius for science and technology. I love computers and jet aircraft and satellites and iPads and kindles and the internet and computer games and just about everything technological. But I hate microsoft. And I hate the total surveillance state that America appears to be 'one minute from midnight' from becoming. I hate that every email, website, phone call, text message and even what you type on your own computer is captured and stored somewhere. I hate that computer software always has a back door for a big brother I don't want.

I hate the mainstream American media. I hate that a handful of corporations own and control the vast majority of media outlets. I hate the shallow and manipulative propaganda that it pumps out. I love the American alternative media. I love that I am not alone in seeing the problems with America and that there are thousands of Americans waking up and speaking out, now more than ever.

I love the natural beauty of America's forests and parks. I adore giant redwood trees. I love that America has deserts and canyons and massive mountain ranges and snow that we don't have here. I hate the grime and soul destroying monotony of apartment ghettos in many of America's largest cities.

On this Queen's Birthday holiday in my own fair country I must say that I like the American republic. I love the absence of degenerate royals, inbred aristocracy and a fawning public. I love the idea of American egalitarianism and that any person can achieve success whatever their background. I hate the cult of personality, especially the preoccupation with useless and vacuous celebrities. I hate reality television.

And last (at least for now) I like ancient alients and modern aliens and UFOs. I like Roswell. Only in America.

I have been privileged to vist America twice in the last couple of years. I submit a very small selection of photographs taken on my visits:

 
These photographs say something about America. And about me.

May God bless America.

PS Of course I love America most of all because they invented PRESTAGS.

What on Earth is PRESTAGS? (2) Credit Where Credit is Due

Before any further posts are published, we should give credit where credit is due. 

The five PRESTAGS games were designed by John Young, and published by SPI (Simulations Publications, Inc) in 1975.

Extremely well done John and all the very best wherever you may be (or, as we say in Australia, you little ripper!)