Written in stolen moments...

Quickly, to keep up with events...

(It seems that when I write a monster post, that it is utterly out of date by the time I find time to post it, so, quickly it must be.)


Bill Henson's photographs. It turns out that they were never pornography in the first place. (Those whose job it is to know the difference have given their imprimatur.) And he won't be charged. And the exhibition is going back up.

Rudd has already stood up and said that he doesn't care what anyone who knows what they're taking about says, his 5 second glimpse of one picture out of context has convinced him. But at least he has the grace to add that it doesn't matter a damn what he thinks.

Further, there has been some news recently about what, precisely, the difference is between an artist, and an actual paedophile.

Some of those — who would deserve more sympathy, if their actions had not shown them to be shrieking monomaniacs — would benefit from a careful comparison of these two situations; they may learn something. Methinks they have stared into the abyss so long, it has covered their eyes that they can no longer see anything else. Which is sad, when you think about it. I personally would much prefer to see my daughters as happy children, even when they're gleefully running around the house naked in preparation for their bath, than eternally incipient victims. Especially (but not solely) since I am the putative predator.


Meanwhile, when Rudd's government suggests overturning a certain restriction on giving overseas aid, Nelson and various conservatives jump up and down and oppose it vigorously. Why? Because they are douches.

For crissake, the ban is on any aid project which mentions abortion as an option. Removing the ban would make it possible to say the word 'abortion' on an Australian paycheck. It wouldn't make it compulsory. And don't forget, this restriction was only brought in in the first place to get something out of an obstreperous Catholic who was happily willing to make his own personal beliefs universal and compulsory.

But no, an act of political expediency, twelve years old, to a man who is no longer even in parliament, let alone in sole possession of the balance of power, must stay as Holy Writ, preventing Australian funded aid from even mentioning the possibility of abortion, no matter how dire the need.

Don't mind me, I'm just choking on some bile.



Um... Indiana Jones IV, good. Stupid, but fun.
Iron Man. RoXX0r.
Hancock. Saw a preview. Had never heard of it before. Looking forward to it.

And on the subject, why did no-one tell me about The Fall? I mean, go look at the trailer! WANT!!

Thunderbird (2.0) and Lightning

I almost forgot: I found a fix for something which was bugging me.


If you have installed Ubuntu Hardy, then you'll notice that you have Thunderbird 2.0 installed. Also available is this package called "lightning-extension". Lightning is a plug-in to Thunderbird. Well, when I say 'plugin', it is a enhancement par excellence. It give Thunderbird a calendar function. Now, when you get a meeting invite, you can respond right there from Thunderbird, rather than firing up Evolution or hoping that the OWA web interface will behave this time.

But. When I fired it up for the first time, I discovered a calender in there called Korganizer, which even had event in it. Yay! It's that smart, it found my Korganizer calender and included it automatically! Double Yay! Wait: why are none of the meetings I accept visible from Korganizer? Why do additions I make through my Palm and sync with Korganizer not visible in Lightning?

Now I know the answer. Lightning has two types of calender: local and remote. When you create a calender, it really wants you to make it local. It turns out that the local calender is not an ICAL file: it's a SQLlite database of your appointments. Which makes sense, I guess, but that's not what I want: I want it to talk to Korganizer, dammit! It doesn't even give the option to link this calender to std.ics! Wah! So much potential ruined!

Wait... 'Remote' calender. It turns out that this does not mean 'any calender on another server', as you might naïvely think: it means any calender which is not a carefully tended SQL database. Like, for instance, an ICAL file. So, setting up a 'remote' calender and setting the URL to '~/.kde/share/apps/korganizer/std.ics', and now there is actual communication. I can accept a meeting and sync it painlessly to my Palm.

It turns out that when Lightning first started it looked for the Korganizer calender, and imported it into it's own database, where it would be protected forever, incommunicado and utterly useless. Well, no longer.

Now all I have to do is get korganizer to talk with Exchange, and Bjorn Stroninthearm's my uncle.