I was making my cup-of-tea at work the other day when a co-worker asks me if he’s seeing correctly.

You use two tea bags ?

Man, I don’t drink tea anymore, do you see the stain it makes on cups? You can’t get that stuff off, worse than coffee.

Can you imagine what it’s doing to your stomach.

I cringe as I “hila” over at the size of his girth.

Kapau pe ne ke inu tii pe ko e ka e fakasi’isi’i hifo ho’o kai, na’e mei sai ange ia ...

/nuff said.

Just finished reading CJ Cherry’s fantasy/science fiction novel “Hammerfall” and found the book very enjoyable with great imagery as the author weaves a story mixing future generation space travel, genetics overarching a tribal/medieval desert terrain society seeking right and wrong, extremism and survival.

Just trialling our Documents page and have uploaded / tagged a few to show how it easy it is for the content developers, as well as for the end-users.

HarperCollins Review: One of the most renowned figures in science fiction, C.J. Cherryh has been enthralling audiences for nearly thirty years with rich and complex novels. Now at the peak of her career, this three-time Hugo Award winner launches her most ambitious work in decades, Hammerfall, part of a far-ranging series, The Gene Wars, set in an entirely new universe scarred by the most vicious of future weaponry, nanotechnology. In this brilliant novel -- possibly Cherryh's masterwork -- the fate of billions has come down to a confrontation between two profoundly alien cultures on a single desert planet.

"The mad shall be searched out and given to the Ila's messengers. No man shall conceal madness in his wife, or his son, or his daughter, or his father. Every one must be delivered up." -- The Book of the Ila's Au'it

Marak has suffered the madness his entire life. He is a prince and warrior, strong and shrewd and expert in the ways of the desert covering his planet. In the service of his father, he has dedicated his life to overthrowing the Ila, the mysterious eternal dictator of his world. For years he has successfully hidden the visions that plague him -- voices pulling him eastward, calling Marak, Marak, Marak, amid mind-twisting visions of a silver tower. But when his secret is discovered, Marak is betrayed by his own father and forced to march in an endless caravan with the rest of his world's madmen to the Ila's city of Oburan.

Instead of death, Marak finds in Oburan his destiny, and the promise of life -- if he can survive what is surely a suicidal mission. The Ila wants him to discover the source of the voices and visions that afflict the mad. Despite the danger sof the hostile desert, tensions within the caravan, and his own excruciating doubts, Marak miraculously reaches his goal -- only to be given another, even more impossible mission by the strange people in the towers.

According to these beings who look like him yet act differently than anyone he has ever known, Marak has a slim chance to save his world's people from the wrath of Ila's enemies. But to do so, he must convince them all -- warring tribes, villagers, priests, young and old, as well as the Ila herself -- to follow him on an epic trek across the burning desert before the hammer of the Ila's foes falls from the heavens above.

Written with deceptive simplicity and lyricism, this riveting, fast-paced epic of war, love, and survival in a brave new world marks a major achievement from the masterful C.J. Cherryh.

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Ko e ki’i post fakaangaanga atu pe ‘eni, ngaue’aki ‘a e “Windows Live Writer” ke create ‘a e post (hange pe hano fa’u pe open he Word ‘o toki send ki he website.) I guess it works ? Pictures and all.

Whale watching is one of those things you find has become a huge tourist attraction for getting visitors into Tonga. Apparently the waters around Vava'u (and to a lesser extent, Ha'apai) are just a magnet for the behemoths to be spending a fair amount of time.

Annah Evington runs tours for visitors to the isles, and you can find her details at: http://www.bluepacificwhalewatching.com.au/ 

Can’t leave things alone, and have to piece together a little disinformation of my own.

US needs 'digital warfare force'

The US has set up specialised detachments dealing with IT problems

The head of America's National Security Agency says that America needs to build a digital warfare force for the future, according to reports.

Lt Gen Keith Alexander, who also heads the Pentagon's new Cyber Command, outlined his views in a report for the House Armed Services subcommittee.

In it, he stated that the US needed to reorganise its offensive and defensive cyber operations.

So, the land of the brave and the dead buffaloes, that have openly broken all forms of international law through kidnapping individuals, revoking life, liberty and the pursuit of anything to various groups and individuals in pursuit of “the American Way” is going to expect you and me to believe that all those spy satellites and telecommunication eavesdropping services do not already put them well ahead of every body else on invading not only their own Citizen’s privacy but everyone elses?

Please, …

The worrying problem is the apathy for the real loss of your privacy.

People didn’t move to encrypting their email when they all knew that the US was eaves dropping, now we people’s whole lives on the Internet being assessed and reviewed by the US machine. They’ve been tapping Australian international phone traffic since Woomera, and who knows whether the Australian Government is turning a co-operative blind eye for spying on Australian citizens internal communications.

I wonder what will finally take us over the edge for end-to-end encrypted communications (e.g. email, phone, web browsing, et. al.)

Encrypting your email is so easy these days, but it’s really hard to communicate in an encrypted manner because people find it too ‘difficult’ to use the additional tools to provide this encryption.

Like most people, that wonderful collection of DVDs gathereth dust smudgy fingers, until you get kids.

And then the lifetime of said media plummets to days instead of the vaunted years.

I’m getting tired of trying out trialware that copies some dvds fine and just totally barfs on others. Linux wasn’t doing me any favours either but I’m going back there again with a few things to try:

Routed through: read # this # aloud

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Installs libdvdcss libraries from medibuntu.  Now to get back to trying out acidrip et. al.

dvdbackup –i /dev/dvd –M –o path-for-storage/

I won’t be burning to disk, since I want to watch them on the computer(s) but apparently the way to get the things back to disk is:

growisofs -speed 1 -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdrw -dvd-video path-for-storage/MOVIETITLE/

For the truelly insane, or click-click amongst us, Ubuntu’s ‘Medibuntu’ (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions in Ubuntu) might be an appropriate distraction. I suppose adding it to your Ubuntu source list is the simplest thing you can do.