To whom it may concern...

Wassup blog!

So I'm walking home the other day on beautiful sunny afternoon, when I spot an abandoned computer monitor on the side of the road. It's becoming an increasingly common sight these days, especially the old eye-destroying CRT monitors, but especially so in this particular street. Seems someone is always dumping stuff there.



I had almost walked past when I noticed a message pinned to the nearby tree. It reads:

To whom it may concern:

The number to call for general household rubbish pick-up is: 1300 655 006. This is a free service. Please show some consideration for fellow residents & do not just expect that someone else will clean up your pollution. Make the call if you leave the rubbish.

Thanks.

That's pretty cool. Sucks that the person had to go to all that effort though, must be a really easy life for the kind of person that can just leave shit on the ground without it troubling their conscience.

Oh, and also, buy some wine if you fancy ☺

RIP Sharkbait

We had a tragedy in the family yesterday - Tyler's pet goldfish died. It was his first pet, given to him for his 7th birthday not even a year ago. He was heartbroken, really upset about it, just cried & cried for hours the poor guy. It was really painful for us to see him so upset too.

So in memory of Sharkbait, Tyler drew this picture:



I asked him what the "POP" with a person in the "O" is. He said "That's me shrinking, it makes a POP noise". Then I noticed the little person in the fish bowl with Sharkbait. Then I suddenly had something very important I had to go and do in another room, something very grownup and manly that definitely wasn't wiping a tear from my eye too...

Bye Sharkbait, we'll miss you!

Cactus face

Cactus close-up, by r-z

"Hey Dad, what's that green plant with the spikes?"

"A Venus fly trap?"

"No, the other one"

"... you mean a cactus?"

"Yeah, your face is like a cactus!"


Apparently I have prickly whiskers, just like a cactus ☺

23" Cinema Display power adaptor failure

Thank you so much to the gentlemen working at the Maccentric service center in Chatswood!

This morning started out as though it was going to be "one of those" Mondays. A blackout over the weekend had taken out my beautiful 23" Cinema Display after having just received a notice from the power company that the rates were going up by more than 10%! Talk about adding insult to injury, but fortunately I'm here working in dual-monitor mode now and I've never appreciated it more.

Everything else in the house was fine when the power came back on, but the power/status LED on the Cinema Display was flashing in a peculiar way and not working. A bit of Googling lead to an Apple knowledge base page which revealed that the sequence of flashes indicated a problem with the power adaptor. So I made some calls to the local Apple stores asking after a replacement.

The closest store informed me that according to their technician it can be swapped out with a generic unit available from any electronics retailer. Made a mental note not to visit their "genius bar" and called the bigger store in the city where I was advised that a replacement part can in fact be ordered by making an appointment with the genius bar. I decided to skip that and went back to the Next Byte store I'd originally bought it from.

They referred me to the Maccentric service center which was just around the corner. Turns out they actually had a replacement unit in stock! I bought it, took it home, plugged it in and - got the same flashing status light. Shit, at this point I'm worried that my worst fears have been confirmed and the monitor itself has been damaged. I had to call them back anyway to give the serial no. of the monitor, and when I did the guy suggested that I bring it back in to try it with the PSU from a 30" Cinema Display because he had seen that fix the problem before.

Not an hour later I had dusted it off, packed it up, and driven it back into the store. Unbelievably, they also had a 30" PSU in stock as well, so we unpacked it, plugged it all into a Mac Pro on a test bench, and my beloved Cinema Display sprang back to life! I just had to pay the difference between the 2 PSU models and the problem was solved!

So I highly recommend Maccentric for any Mac repairs you might need, the staff were knowledgeable and professional, and by recommending a $140 power adaptor they saved me from having to replace a very expensive and beloved monitor.

Thank you again to the Maccentric service center, Spring St. Chatswood!
http://www.maccentric.com.au/home/contact/

(And a big F-U to Energy Australia for blowing it up in the first place!)

Clouds and planets

Hello blog, it's been a while! How's things? I've been busy over on Twitter: http://twitter.com/beet

Austin Mini Planet by Hi I'm Santi

Just wanted to quickly recall a conversation I had with my son the other day:

We were walking home from school on a grey, rainy day when he asked me where planets come from. Whenever he asks anything which is even vaguely philosophical I always avoid offering my own opinion and just reply with "what do you think?".

He went on to say something along the lines of: "Well, clouds kind of stick together to make rain drops, so maybe planets were made the same kind of way. Maybe there was all this dust and stuff and it kind of stuck together and turned into planets."

I was taken aback and had to ask if he'd heard something like that somewhere before. He then went on to ask where plants and animals came from, and how people were made. Maybe the cloudy weather had him in a contemplative mood that day.

Fortunately we arrived home just in time to save me from having to either offer my own opinion or pretend I don't have one. I really want him to keep asking awesome questions like that and find his own answers as he grows up.

He never ceases to amaze me with how a child's mind which has been spared any kind of indoctrination can see things so clearly sometimes.

Green bins

An update to the ongoing saga with the gardens in our rented town house:

I've previously mentioned our real estate agent sending us a confrontational email about being in "breach of contract" because the gardens were not up to spec. Well recently we received a much more civil email asking us to attend to some creeper vines taking over the front garden. We've just renewed our lease for another 12 months, at a 4% rent increase, and were assured that the weed situation would be taken care of by a contractor because the weeds were present before we moved in. Two quotes from independent contractors later, nothing happens, and I get an email asking me to attend to it...

What we thought were some nice little bushes have since proved themselves to be be poplar trees by growing from only a few feet to over 1 story high. Meanwhile, the creeper vines do their part to try and overtake the garden by continually overgrowing and if left unchecked inevitably covering everything. This is the second time I've had to spend a day getting rid of them.

Rather than making a big deal of it, I reported that I have removed the vines, and asked if when a contractor does finally come to attend to the poplar trees they could dispose of them. The reply simply asked if I can just use our green bin. To explain, each of the 30 or so town houses in this strata have a tiny wheely bin for general rubbish which is collected daily, and those with gardens are supposed to have an additional green bin which can be used for garden waste, but only once a month or something. The closest thing to a green bin present at the property when we moved in looked like this:




The agent was aware of this, having received the very same photo via email and then coming to inspect the situation in person after we moved in over a year ago. Nothing has been done since, but rather than a pile of crap in one corner of the garden I'm fairly sure that we should have been provided with a functional green bin. Actually, there shouldn't have been any noxious weeds in the garden in the first place, and if there are it is certainly not the tenants responsibility to dispose of them...

Well fuck it, we're thinking about buying something soon, but we'd have to think twice before buying from this agent.

Conroy wants $43 BILLION dollars to build his own damn broadband network then...

In his relentless pursuit of Australian internet censorship, Senator Stephen Conroy has proposed that the federal government let him build his own fourty three billion dollar broadband network, undoubtably with filtering built in. Our 3 main ISPs, Telstra, Optus, and IInet have refused to participate, so he thinks he'll just roll out his own... the man is clearly insane.

Listen Conroy: we don't need faster internet connections, we need more bandwidth!!! We also don't want or need a mandatory internet filter.

Steven Conroy fielding questions about The Great Firewall Of Australia (internet filter) on ABC1 Thur 26 9:30pm AEDT

GetUp! are taking questions to be posted to Steven Conroy when he appears on ABC1 for a Q&A session about his proposed Australian internet filter at http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=580.The form only appears to allow you submit one question though, so here's a few more that I'd like to hear his answers for:

"Please explain how the internet filter is more effective at addressing issues in society than educating parents and children to raise public awareness about the internet and how to use it responsibly?"

"Please explain how limiting access to information about issues in society does anything to address the actual problems that cause them? "

"How will making it more difficult to access inappropriate content online in any way prevent people from engaging in inappropriate behaviour - will they not simply find other communication channels?"

"What specific research can you refer to that clearly shows a correlation between an increase in inappropriate behaviour and an increase in internet usage?"

"Quoting specific research sources, what are your predictions for the decrease in inappropriate behaviour that will result as a direct result of the internet filter?"

"Please give a specific example of a well case of inappropriate behaviour that could not have been perpetrated without access to information on the internet."

"As the vast majority of inappropriate behaviour is conducted offline, would it not be more effective to address the societal problems causing it directly and in so doing affect both offline and internet behaviour?"

"Please quote specific research which shows the percentage of inappropriate content found both online and offline and explain why it is more important to target the internet."

"Why do you feel your role as Communications Minister includes deciding what comprises "inappropriate" content and what gives you the right to impose your moral compass over others?"

Cultured Code support broken?

Please, Cultured Code, maybe it's just me but I'm having major issues with Things Mac/Touch:

• Syncing between Mac/iPhone is sloooow.... Once it's finished sending data, Things Mac saturates the CPU for at least a minute while "Processing"...


• Moving items is also slow. Just dragging a single item out of the inbox into an area invokes the spinning beach ball of death for several seconds.


• Seems to affect anything related to moving/re-positioning items

Your support system seems to be broken, I submit bug reports, get an automated response, and that is the last I ever hear of it. So I tried using the forums, but after creating 2 accounts with different email addresses I am unable to log in and post questions. I can search and browse though and see that I'm not the only customer experiencing similar issues.

Please help! I love things, I written before about why I prefer Things' tags/areas to OmniFocus' more rigid GTD contexts/projects. I'm begging...

Only humans dream?

Web censorship plan in it's final death throes

From http://www.smh.com.au

Senator Nick Xenophon's stocks just went up in my book:

Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling "pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups"

So glad to know that I'm not alone in opposing the internet filter:

The policy has attracted opposition from online consumers, lobby groups, ISPs, network administrators, some children's welfare groups, the Opposition, the Greens, NSW Young Labor and even the conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who famously tried to censor the chef Gordon Ramsay's swearing on television.

Thank you to GetUp for their efforts, glad to have given my support. Their telephone poll found miniscule numbers of people backing the filter:

This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.

Looks like Netspace found most of their customers strongly opposed, 6% strongly for, and the rest presumably not giving a shit:

A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP's customers found 61 per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per cent strongly agreeing with the policy.

Federal Reserve Enegery System? Gawd no!!!

An article on Earth2tec titled Does the U.S. Need a Federal Reserve for Energy? reports that John Hofmeister, founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy proposed exactly that at an energy symposium. (wtf is a symposium?)

As though the damage the federal reserve banking is putting us all through right now isn't enough, now they want to control our energy the same way as well? No thank you...

Petition against Australian mandatory internet filter nearly meets target 100,000 names!

We're nearly there, the GetUp petition against the draconian internet filter has nearly reached it's target 100,000 names! Please show your support for an unfiltered internet by adding your name too:

Religiosity

Update: removed titles and commentary from bible quotes, added a tag cloud

Flying Spagettie Monster by Travis Morgan

At the last Newtown Festival the Sydney Atheists had a small booth inviting you to hit a gong if you don't believe in gods. My Japanese wife just told me that for her it was like saying "hit the gong if you think the sky is blue".

Japan is certainly a much more secular society than Australia, and arguably more peaceful and financially successful. The discussion was prompted by a blog post by a Japanese friend of ours who is a school teacher. He was bemused by the fact that apparently about half of US citizens can't place New York on the map, yet the same percentage of the population are convinced of the existence of Yahweh, a middle eastern god from the bronze age who doth sayeth:

"Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel." (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

"You should not let a sorceress live." (Exodus 22:17 NAB)

"If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)

"A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death." (Leviticus 20:27 NAB)

"Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:15 NAB)

"If one curses his father or mother, his lamp will go out at the coming of darkness." (Proverbs 20:20 NAB)

"All who curse their father or mother must be put to death. They are guilty of a capital offense." (Leviticus 20:9 NLT)

"If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10 NLT)

"A priest's daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death." (Leviticus 21:9 NAB)

"Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed." (Exodus 22:19 NAB)

"They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman." (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)

"If a man still prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall say to him, "You shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord." When he prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall thrust him through." (Zechariah 13:3 NAB)

"Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."" (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)

"But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst." (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB)

"If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst." (Deuteronomy 13:7-12 NAB)

"Suppose a man or woman among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, has done evil in the sight of the LORD your God and has violated the covenant by serving other gods or by worshiping the sun, the moon, or any of the forces of heaven, which I have strictly forbidden. When you hear about it, investigate the matter thoroughly. If it is true that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, then that man or woman must be taken to the gates of the town and stoned to death." (Deuteronomy 17:2-5 NLT)

"One day a man who had an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father got into a fight with one of the Israelite men. During the fight, this son of an Israelite woman blasphemed the LORD's name. So the man was brought to Moses for judgment. His mother's name was Shelomith. She was the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. They put the man in custody until the LORD's will in the matter should become clear. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and tell all those who heard him to lay their hands on his head. Then let the entire community stone him to death. Say to the people of Israel: Those who blaspheme God will suffer the consequences of their guilt and be punished. Anyone who blasphemes the LORD's name must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel. Any Israelite or foreigner among you who blasphemes the LORD's name will surely die." (Leviticus 24:10-16 NLT)

"Suppose there are prophets among you, or those who have dreams about the future, and they promise you signs or miracles, and the predicted signs or miracles take place. If the prophets then say, 'Come, let us worship the gods of foreign nations,' do not listen to them. The LORD your God is testing you to see if you love him with all your heart and soul. Serve only the LORD your God and fear him alone. Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him. The false prophets or dreamers who try to lead you astray must be put to death, for they encourage rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of slavery in the land of Egypt. Since they try to keep you from following the LORD your God, you must execute them to remove the evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 NLT)

"But any prophet who claims to give a message from another god or who falsely claims to speak for me must die.' You may wonder, 'How will we know whether the prophecy is from the LORD or not?' If the prophet predicts something in the LORD's name and it does not happen, the LORD did not give the message. That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared." (Deuteronomy 18:20-22 NLT)

"So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved. When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They are forever inventing new ways of sinning and are disobedient to their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving. They are fully aware of God's death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway. And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. " (Romans 1:24-32 NLT)

"For the LORD had said to Moses, 'Exempt the tribe of Levi from the census; do not include them when you count the rest of the Israelites. You must put the Levites in charge of the Tabernacle of the Covenant, along with its furnishings and equipment. They must carry the Tabernacle and its equipment as you travel, and they must care for it and camp around it. Whenever the Tabernacle is moved, the Levites will take it down and set it up again. Anyone else who goes too near the Tabernacle will be executed.' " (Numbers 1:48-51 NLT)

"The LORD then gave these further instructions to Moses: 'Tell the people of Israel to keep my Sabbath day, for the Sabbath is a sign of the covenant between me and you forever. It helps you to remember that I am the LORD, who makes you holy. Yes, keep the Sabbath day, for it is holy. Anyone who desecrates it must die; anyone who works on that day will be cut off from the community. Work six days only, but the seventh day must be a day of total rest. I repeat: Because the LORD considers it a holy day, anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death.'" (Exodus 31:12-15 NLT)


"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. While he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him. "Go up baldhead," they shouted, "go up baldhead!" The prophet turned and saw them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two shebears came out of the woods and tore forty two of the children to pieces." (2 Kings 2:23-24 NAB)

"And he smote of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of Jehovah, he smote of the people seventy men, `and' fifty thousand men; and the people mourned, because Jehovah had smitten the people with a great slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God? and to whom shall he go up from us?" (1Samuel 6:19-20 ASV)

"Meanwhile, the LORD instructed one of the group of prophets to say to another man, "Strike me!" But the man refused to strike the prophet. Then the prophet told him, "Because you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, a lion will kill you as soon as you leave me." And sure enough, when he had gone, a lion attacked and killed him." (1 Kings 20:35-36 NLT)

"The ark of God was placed on a new cart and taken away from the house of Abinadab on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab guided the cart, with Ahio walking before it, while David and all the Israelites made merry before the Lord with all their strength, with singing and with citharas, harps, tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals. When they came to the threshing floor of Nodan, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God to steady it, for the oxen were making it tip. But the Lord was angry with Uzzah; God struck him on that spot, and he died there before God." (2 Samuel 6:3-7 NAB)


"Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants." (Isaiah 14:21 NAB)

"The glory of Israel will fly away like a bird, for your children will die at birth or perish in the womb or never even be conceived. Even if your children do survive to grow up, I will take them from you. It will be a terrible day when I turn away and leave you alone. I have watched Israel become as beautiful and pleasant as Tyre. But now Israel will bring out her children to be slaughtered." O LORD, what should I request for your people? I will ask for wombs that don't give birth and breasts that give no milk. The LORD says, "All their wickedness began at Gilgal; there I began to hate them. I will drive them from my land because of their evil actions. I will love them no more because all their leaders are rebels. The people of Israel are stricken. Their roots are dried up; they will bear no more fruit. And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children."" (Hosea 9:11-16 NLT)

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." So they began by killing the seventy leaders. "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded. "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!" So they went throughout the city and did as they were told."" (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

"And at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn son of the captive in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed. Pharaoh and his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died." (Exodus 12:29-30 NLT)

""You are my battle-ax and sword," says the LORD. "With you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms. With you I will shatter armies, destroying the horse and rider, the chariot and charioteer. With you I will shatter men and women, old people and children, young men and maidens. With you I will shatter shepherds and flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers. "As you watch, I will repay Babylon and the people of Babylonia for all the wrong they have done to my people in Jerusalem," says the LORD. "Look, O mighty mountain, destroyer of the earth! I am your enemy," says the LORD. "I will raise my fist against you, to roll you down from the heights. When I am finished, you will be nothing but a heap of rubble. You will be desolate forever. Even your stones will never again be used for building. You will be completely wiped out," says the LORD." (Jeremiah 51:20-26)

"If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins. I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted." (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)

"Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children." (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)

"When he reached Lehi, and the Philistines came shouting to meet him, the spirit of the Lord came upon him: the ropes around his arms become as flax that is consumed by fire and the bonds melted away from his hands. Near him was the fresh jawbone of an ass; he reached out, grasped it, and with it killed a thousand men." (Judges 15:14-15 NAB)

"There was also a man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, but he claimed it was the full amount. His wife had agreed to this deception. Then Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren't lying to us but to God." As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. Everyone who heard about it was terrified. Then some young men wrapped him in a sheet and took him out and buried him. About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, "Was this the price you and your husband received for your land?" "Yes," she replied, "that was the price." And Peter said, "How could the two of you even think of doing a thing like this – conspiring together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Just outside that door are the young men who buried your husband, and they will carry you out, too." Instantly, she fell to the floor and died. When the young men came in and saw that she was dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear gripped the entire church and all others who heard what had happened." (Acts 5:1-11 NLT)

"This is what the Lord of hosts has to say: 'I will punish what Amalek did to Israel when he barred his way as he was coming up from Egypt. Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban. Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.'" (1 Samuel 15:2-3 NAB)

"Cursed be he who does the Lords work remissly, cursed he who holds back his sword from blood." (Jeremiah 48:10 NAB)

"But the territory of the Danites was too small for them; so the Danites marched up and attacked Leshem, which they captured and put to the sword. Once they had taken possession of Lesham, they renamed the settlement after their ancestor Dan." (Joshua 19:47 NAB)

"Then the LORD said to me, "Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for these people, I wouldn't help them. Away with them! Get them out of my sight! And if they say to you, 'But where can we go?' tell them, 'This is what the LORD says: Those who are destined for death, to death; those who are destined for war, to war; those who are destined for famine, to famine; those who are destined for captivity, to captivity.' "I will send four kinds of destroyers against them," says the LORD. "I will send the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, the vultures to devour, and the wild animals to finish up what is left. Because of the wicked things Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem, I will make my people an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth."" (Jeremiah 15:1-4 NLT)

"I will make Mount Seir utterly desolate, killing off all who try to escape and any who return. I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword. I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am the LORD." (Ezekiel 35:7-9 NLT)

"My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out." (Exodus 23:23 NAB)

"Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid or discouraged. Take the entire army and attack Ai, for I have given to you the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. You will destroy them as you destroyed Jericho and its king. But this time you may keep the captured goods and the cattle for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city." So Joshua and the army of Israel set out to attack Ai. Joshua chose thirty thousand fighting men and sent them out at night with these orders: "Hide in ambush close behind the city and be ready for action. When our main army attacks, the men of Ai will come out to fight as they did before, and we will run away from them. We will let them chase us until they have all left the city. For they will say, 'The Israelites are running away from us as they did before.' Then you will jump up from your ambush and take possession of the city, for the LORD your God will give it to you. Set the city on fire, as the LORD has commanded. You have your orders." So they left that night and lay in ambush between Bethel and the west side of Ai. But Joshua remained among the people in the camp that night.

Early the next morning Joshua roused his men and started toward Ai, accompanied by the leaders of Israel. They camped on the north side of Ai, with a valley between them and the city. That night Joshua sent five thousand men to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city. So they stationed the main army north of the city and the ambush west of the city. Joshua himself spent that night in the valley. When the king of Ai saw the Israelites across the valley, he and all his army hurriedly went out early the next morning and attacked the Israelites at a place overlooking the Jordan Valley. But he didn't realize there was an ambush behind the city. Joshua and the Israelite army fled toward the wilderness as though they were badly beaten, and all the men in the city were called out to chase after them. In this way, they were lured away from the city. There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel who did not chase after the Israelites, and the city was left wide open.

Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Point your spear toward Ai, for I will give you the city." Joshua did as he was commanded. As soon as Joshua gave the signal, the men in ambush jumped up and poured into the city. They quickly captured it and set it on fire. When the men of Ai looked behind them, smoke from the city was filling the sky, and they had nowhere to go. For the Israelites who had fled in the direction of the wilderness now turned on their pursuers. When Joshua and the other Israelites saw that the ambush had succeeded and that smoke was rising from the city, they turned and attacked the men of Ai. Then the Israelites who were inside the city came out and started killing the enemy from the rear. So the men of Ai were caught in a trap, and all of them died. Not a single person survived or escaped. Only the king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.

When the Israelite army finished killing all the men outside the city, they went back and finished off everyone inside. So the entire population of Ai was wiped out that day – twelve thousand in all. For Joshua kept holding out his spear until everyone who had lived in Ai was completely destroyed. Only the cattle and the treasures of the city were not destroyed, for the Israelites kept these for themselves, as the LORD had commanded Joshua. So Ai became a permanent mound of ruins, desolate to this very day. Joshua hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening. At sunset the Israelites took down the body and threw it in front of the city gate. They piled a great heap of stones over him that can still be seen today." (Joshua 8:1-29 NLT)

"When the people heard the sound of the horns, they shouted as loud as they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites charged straight into the city from every side and captured it. They completely destroyed everything in it – men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, donkeys – everything." (Joshua 6:20-21 NLT)

""You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made other gods and have made me furious with your gold calves. And since you have turned your back on me, I will bring disaster on your dynasty and kill all your sons, slave or free alike. I will burn up your royal dynasty as one burns up trash until it is all gone. I, the LORD, vow that the members of your family who die in the city will be eaten by dogs, and those who die in the field will be eaten by vultures.'" Then Ahijah said to Jeroboam's wife, "Go on home, and when you enter the city, the child will die. All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only member of your family who will have a proper burial, for this child is the only good thing that the LORD, the God of Israel, sees in the entire family of Jeroboam. And the LORD will raise up a king over Israel who will destroy the family of Jeroboam. This will happen today, even now! Then the LORD will shake Israel like a reed whipped about in a stream. He will uproot the people of Israel from this good land that he gave their ancestors and will scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, for they have angered the LORD by worshiping Asherah poles. He will abandon Israel because Jeroboam sinned and made all of Israel sin along with him."" (1 Kings 14:9-16 NLT)

"The men of Israel withdrew through the territory of the Benjaminites, putting to the sword the inhabitants of the city, the livestock, and all they chanced upon. Moreover they destroyed by fire all the cities they came upon." (Judges 20:48 NAB)

"That night the angel of the Lord went forth and struck down one hundred and eighty five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. Early the next morning, there they were, all the corpuses of the dead." (2 Kings 19:35 NAB)

"(Moses) stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, "All of you who are on the LORD's side, come over here and join me." And all the Levites came. He told them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Strap on your swords! Go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other, killing even your brothers, friends, and neighbors." The Levites obeyed Moses, and about three thousand people died that day. Then Moses told the Levites, "Today you have been ordained for the service of the LORD, for you obeyed him even though it meant killing your own sons and brothers. Because of this, he will now give you a great blessing."" (Exodus 32:26-29 NLT)

"And Joshua said to Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession to him; and tell me now what thou hast done, hide it not from me. And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them, and behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it." [Note that the sin is not looting, but failing to give the loot to the treasury of the Lord.] "So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it. And they took them from the midst of the tent, and brought them to Joshua, and to all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the LORD. And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, why hast thou troubled us? the LORD shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones to this day. So the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger: wherefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor to this day." (Joshua 7:19-26 Webster's Bible)

"While the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men defiled themselves by sleeping with the local Moabite women. These women invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, and soon the Israelites were feasting with them and worshiping the gods of Moab. Before long Israel was joining in the worship of Baal of Peor, causing the LORD's anger to blaze against his people. The LORD issued the following command to Moses: "Seize all the ringleaders and execute them before the LORD in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn away from the people of Israel." So Moses ordered Israel's judges to execute everyone who had joined in worshiping Baal of Peor. Just then one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into the camp, right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as they were weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. When Phinehas son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and left the assembly. Then he took a spear and rushed after the man into his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear all the way through the man's body and into the woman's stomach. So the plague against the Israelites was stopped, but not before 24,000 people had died." (Numbers 25:1-9 NLT)

"At the customary time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. O LORD, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself." Immediately the fire of the LORD flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the ditch! And when the people saw it, they fell on their faces and cried out, "The LORD is God! The LORD is God!" Then Elijah commanded, "Seize all the prophets of Baal. Don't let a single one escape!" So the people seized them all, and Elijah took them down to the Kishon Valley and killed them there." (1 Kings 18:36-40 NLT)

""Go up, my warriors, against the land of Merathaim and against the people of Pekod. Yes, march against Babylon, the land of rebels, a land that I will judge! Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you," says the LORD. "Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction"." (Jeremiah 50:21-22 NLT)

"Then, with Micah's idols and his priest, the men of Dan came to the town of Laish, whose people were peaceful and secure. They attacked and killed all the people and burned the town to the ground. There was no one to rescue the residents of the town, for they lived a great distance from Sidon and had no allies nearby. This happened in the valley near Beth-rehob.Then the people of the tribe of Dan rebuilt the town and lived there. They renamed the town Dan after their ancestor, Israel's son, but it had originally been called Laish." (Judges 18:27-29 NLT)

Well, according to the infallible word of god, Yahweh seems like a really nice guy. Looking forward to not meeting him in the afterlife, you know, in case I upset him in some way.

Here's a tag cloud of the bible text quoted above:

ai ambush anyone army attacked away brought camp children city commanded death destroy die died done everyone evil father give god heard israel israelites joshua kill king land lord man moses mother name night obey people prophet son stones sword things thousand took town turned valley woman women worshiping young

created at TagCrowd.com

Paper vs Digital

Google labs just released a mobile optimised task manager. They wanted something to compete with some of the key features of paper-based tasks management:

• simple


• offline


• portable


• fast

The mobile version of Tasks is all of those, except the offline bit of course, but it's intended to be used on mobile devices with internet connections. Seems to load up quickly and be very fast to use.

I'm already using Things on my Mac and iPhone, which being a native app is faster still, and also syncs between devices. But for on the road capturing of data and ideas I'm still a proponent of paper and pencil:



I think it's a question of left brain vs right brain. Today my notepad & pencil were perfect to help troubleshoot a local area network - a quick sketch of the connections, jot down login credentials, add a few next actions. When I'm out and about and an idea comes to mind I capture it with things. I think I'll always use both depending on the situation.

Congrats to the labs team, Tasks mobile looks great.

The Ultimate Bloke's Wardrobe

Behold, I present to you The Ultimate Bloke's Wardrobe:

1. Washed clothes are folded and separated into piles


2. Piles of folded clothes are dropped into the top of the appropriate chute


3. As clean clothes are needed, they are pulled from the dispensing slot at the bottom of the chute


4. In the rare case that a combination of shirt + pants + socks + undies cannot be worn, simply drop the offending item(s) back into the chute and repeat from step 3

Resting Piles

The system will only work if clothes in their "resting" state are placed back into their appropriate chute instead of left in their usual location - strewn around the room on the floor.

What are "resting" clothes? Usually pants which aren't due for their annual wash, or occasionally shirts which haven't served a full day's wear or were perhaps only worn on a day which was particularly cold and didn't involve any physical activity.

Freedom from nagging partners!

Wives of the world rejoice, you can finally be freed from the traditional bloke's wardrobe system:



Taking orders now!

Put in your order for The Ultimate Bloke's Wardrobe now! Materials and manufacturers are being sourced, and production should begin soon.