The Government of Sudan is clamping down on those who publicise the appalling level of abuse in Darfur (PDF document) by arresting two MSF staffers, one of whom is the head of MSF‘s mission in the Sudan.
Monthly Archives: May 2005
Feasting on Jerusalem Artichokes
Back in the spring (that’s September/October for you northern hemisphere lot) we bought some small Jerusalem Artichoke plants from a garden that was open as part of the Australian Open Garden Scheme and we proceded to plant them in our back garden.
Over the summer we had a number of large (6+ foot), sunflower like plants appear (not suprising as they’re not artichokes and are, in fact, part of the sunflower family) and eventually some nice yellow flowers appeared, looking like the following ones from this web site.
Now they’ve died back and Donna has dug up 4 of the plants and harvested a complete kitchen sink full of tubers for us to eat, so we’re going to eating these lovely veggies for some time to come I reckon. 🙂
We roasted a tray full of them tonight, with just a sprinkle of salt, along with some grilled lamb and steamed leeks and they were absolutely wonderful!
Holiday snaps from our UK trip now up
I’ve now put a small selection of photos up in the photo gallery from our trip to the UK this year! They’re not great quality, being done with my camera phone which had a bit of a smudged lense. 🙂
A quick example, this is Donna on the beach at Towyn..
Google Earth on its way..
Originally found via this story on Rich Boakes website. There’s more info at Search Engine Lowdown. Hopefully it’ll have broader coverage than Google Maps.
Google screenshot below:
Apple’s new iChat in Tiger supports Jabber!
Jabber Australia have put together a nice little guide to configuring iChat to use Jabber for the new version in Tiger
Jabber.org have linked to an article at Instant Messaging Planet about the fact that Tiger supports Jabber both on the client and server side of iChat.
America to Accidentaly Prohibit Buying Computers for Dept of Homeland Security ?
Quoted from CNet, found via the infamous /.
The legislation was authored by Rep. Don Manzullo, an Illinois Republican, and passed by the House on Wednesday. It would require more than 50 percent of the components in any end product procured by the department to be mined, produced or manufactured inside the United States.
“With this purchasing prohibition, I guess (the department) will have to learn to do without computers and cell phones,” ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement. “I cannot think of a single U.S. manufacturer that could meet this 50 percent threshold for these devices, and I doubt that those charged with protecting our safety here at home can either.”
The ITAA is the Information Technology Association of America.
Australian Autumn
Whilst Australia is not perfect it’s really, really nice to come back to autumn here from late spring in the UK and find that the weather is warmer and sunnier than any day you’ve had in the UK for the last 3 weeks.
21C, cloudless skies, not a lot of wind or people.. Fab! 🙂
Back in the sun!
After 3 weeks in the UK for CCGrid 2005 plus Donna’s talks, not to mention a slightly early celebration for my fathers 80th (we had to fly back the day before alas)! For his birthday we presented him with a Clarks Pie with lit candle on top as a tidy treat for him!
Unfortunately whilst we were away our ADSL modem got reset as part of a blackout here and came back up in the wrong configuration, which stopped our email working here at csamuel.org, plus the Nobody Nowhere and Auties.org websites. Despite sterling work by our house sitter via an hour long phone call to me in a car park on my mobile I couldn’t properly diagnose what was wrong and it was only when we got back last night that I was able to figure out what was wrong and revert it to the correct configuration.
Unfortunately as part of “fixing it” I streamlined some of the firewall rules by merging some together, forgetting that the rule I was merging them into only applied to a single class C subnet, so even though ADSL was up and running email came to a screeching halt. I spotted my thinko today and corrected it, leading to a new law: Never Change Firewall Rules When Jetlagged.
Now it seems like everything is tickety-boo again, so if you’ve emailed me or Donna and had it bounce then can you please retry it!
Still Alive
Just away at the moment, been at CCGrid 2005 in Cardiff.. More when I'm back in Australia!