Prarie Blake dot com

Imagine what would happen if, in Saanich - Gulf Islands, the Liberal Party of Canada and the NDP made a gesture to a better future where the popular vote matters and the environmental issues the major parties pay lip service to actually had profile in parliament.

How could this happen? Simple, the NDP and Liberal candidates would drop out of the race and endorse Elizabeth May while making a statement about how important it is that she get a seat in the house. It would show a commitment to democracy and generosity of spirit.

This election is no longer about votes. For everyone I know it's about change. Imagine a change where the Greens have a voice.

For the record, I am a Liberal supporter and I will vote Liberal in my own riding. But, I would vote for May if I could.

Finding relevant information on the net can be a little frustrating. I was trying to get my rsync script to work automatically. After figuring out how to use launchd to start the script I realized that there is something odd about OS X. There is no /root folder so where to store the keys that would allow root (through sudo) to connect to the remote server wasn't obvious. After some searching, about 20 minutes, I found a forum site with the secret. Twenty whole minutes. An age and a half in these times.

We watched Tron the other night which was the first time for me. What a terrible film. The computer graphics aren't the problem; it's the story. There are hilarious parts that really amuse the programmer in me; bits and decision gates and EOL and so on. But, it makes me wonder if people in the eighties actually knew more about computers then people do now or if it was a series of inside jokes. According to the records it was a popular movie, but I can't see how. It made no sense, which is annoying enough, but I can let that slide—for instance, humans as batteries inThe Matrix—but I have no patience for poor story telling.

So many technologies exist to pull us into the past at the same time as we are effectively time travelling into the future. Travel and communication delays are almost inconsequential in human terms in today's world. Add to that the vast storage networks that are collecting ever more granular information about each and everyone of us and you have the ability to time travel backwards in a way that's hard to fathom.

I was thinking about how we can record or download shows for later consumption and how the storage of this information is akin to travelling back in time. As the information capture becomes better there will be a view of the past that will go back to the beginning of our current age and before will be essentially "dark." Like times before any written texts in our pre-wired world but with unbelievably more rich dimensions available.

I often get asked what I do for work. The answer usually goes one of two ways. Either the conversation is ended quickly with an answer like "I am an IT consultant," or a long winded explanation is given which always makes me feel like I am boring the person to death. I do have an "elevator speech," but that's for people at least aware of my industry. Besides, I don't want to sell anything to the people asking the cocktail party kind of question. Everyone is so different in their interest and understanding that a prepared response wouldn't work anyway. So, let's do this. I will write a blog post about what I do. Next time I get asked I can say "read my blog." Then they'll think I'm a blogger and be impressed. Until they read it and realize that in reality I am just an IT consultant pretending to blog.