Something small that will be something big

Well, if is official. There is a little Sym/Claire on the way. So this blog is going to turn into one of those diaries of a new family starting blogs for a while.

Due date is mid Dec.

Something oh so cool!!!

Check out the new MacBook...



This is fully cool. It would be good if it had dedicated graphics memory and a built in modem... but aside from that... it is pretty tempting.

It seems like it is about a $1k cheaper to being in the top line black model into NZ from the US.

At this stage however, I think I will plod along with my little 12inch 1.5Ghz G4 PowerBook...

BUT OH SO TEMPTING!!!

The Da Vinci Code

Claire and I went to see the Da Vinci Code. I have read much of the hype material, including the various Christian response literature to it.

We paid NZ$12 to see it and that was grossly in excess of the value it provided. I would rate it as almost as good as some of the TBN movies. If you have seen a TBN movie you will understand just how bad that is.

The story line was boring. There was no climax. Tom Hanks, normally a gaurentee for a movie to be of some class would probably be embarassed at being involved in this enterprise. His end little sermon was so lame.

And basically I don't understand why anyone even bothered to get upset about it. What is the point in putting all that effort into producing responses and little booklets and little bible studies and web sites debunking the movie when it is completely lame.

My considered advice... save your coin and go and watch something like Ice Age 2, which at least is funny.

Oh, and if you are worried about what your non-Christian friends will think about it... don't.. they will probably be amongst those people who walked out during the movie.

Official Sym Rating: Fully Sux!!!

New Zealand Police

There have been two recent incidence that have come to light that re-ignite my desire to see a significant change in the way complaints about Police behaviour in New Zealand are managed. They both involve what appear to be prima facae cases of the misuse of pepper spray on handcuffed persons.

It is important to firstly realise the scope of the powers Police in New Zealand have. These powers have increased significantly over the years and continue to do so. During that time we have seen little movement on protecting citizens against the misuse of these powers, with the notable exception of the Bill of Rights.

We currently have a Police Complaints Authority. If you feel the Police have wronged you, you are entitled to complain. The PCA then get a current or former Police officer to investigate and report. The chances of you being successful are small and I am left with the feeling that the tables are rigged.

I feel there is significant injustice happening here and it happens generally to people who can not do anything about it.

I would like to see some changes.

As much as I despise adding more government employees to the payroll, I would like to see the Police Complaints Authority become a completely independent organisation with its own investigators. There should be a requirement that the staff of the Authority must be seen to be independent (ie no ex-cops).

I would also like to see legislation changed so that every death caused by a Police officer or while a person is in the charge of a Police officer is prosecuted (no ifs, buts or maybes). If a Police officer shots a person charging at them with a shotgun then it is going to not even get passed the JP process, and rightly so. Arguments against this approach on the grounds of cost are rubbish and should be contrasted to the loss of a life.

I believe these two changes will redress the balance of power (or should I say misbalance of power) that Police now enjoy and seem to be abusing. They will cause a change in Police culture. Hopefully that change will be a realisation that if they do something bad, they will be investigated.

You might think I am being very critical of New Zealand's Police. I want to be clear that I am saying there appears to be systematic abuse of power. I want to suggest that this appears to be endemic. However I am not saying that all Police officers have gone over to the dark side. I do want to say that it seems like it has swung well past being just a few rotten apples.

We need to sort this out.

Computer geek MAC stuff

Recently my PowerBook's hard drive died. I had backed up about 3-4weeks before but lost heaps. Previously my backups had consistent as copying folders over to the big hard drive in my PC over a WiFi network. This is painfully slow and was prone to the WiFi AP freaking out and resetting.

So, since I lost so much stuff I was determined to find a way to prevent this. And I have.

Check out http://propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html

This is a product called Deja Vu. It is a system panel item which allows you to set up what gets copied across, does mirroring to speed up the backup and allows scheduling to allow this to happen during the night. It also seems to allow backups to occur while you have documents active which is very cool. It will also log onto a share before starting the backup and do it all without you being there. Very cool.

The other geeky thing is that I have got an iSIGHT camera. This combined with an AIM (www.aol.com) account and iCHAT means I can video conference. With a decent connection the quality is excellent. It should allow me to video conference to a PC user as well (still to try) using AOL.

Finally, we have upgraded our WiFi network to 10Mbit downstream and 2Mbit upstream with a 40Gb cap. This is about the best residential connection we can get. It means we should not run out of capacity for quite some time. It also means we can stream TV at almost full screen.

So, all in all, a very geeky week!!!

Richard's Bad Cold...

Yummy...