Tim's Bits and Pieces

Marko Kloos is so very good at expressing why gun control sucks, so rather than explain it myself I'll just link to him.

Eeek, it's been over a month since my last post and a month and a half since my last real post. :-( I've been working way too much overtime, and the procrastination hasn't helped either.

You might have noticed that I haven't posted for a while. I blame Progress Quest, a truly exceptional MMORPG. It's got an engrossing plot, phenomenal graphics, truly zen sound, and is generally all round great. I've spent over 10 hours playing it Today alone.

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As with most things there's a right way and a wrong way to ford a river. This is the wrong way:

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I don't know whether to thank Tamara of View From The Porch or send her hate-mail. On the plus side she's got me back into reading books, on the negative side, do you have any idea how much books cost? In rough terms, "A lot".

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Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller is a great book. Rather than discussing specific techniques, Miller discusses the intellectual and emotional components of violent encounters. He has spent over a decade working in prisons, so he certainly has extensive experience in the area of violence having been in hundreds of violent encounters with some of the worst criminals on the planet.

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How to turn a fine into a long prison sentence.

My first knife was one of those cheap, nasty Swiss Army Knife clones. I loved it when I first got it, but I grew out of it and it was such low quality that it put me of the whole idea of "Swiss Army Knives". I'm pleased to say I'm now cured of this dislike; I recently saw a cheap ($22.45) Victorinox Tinker on eBay. I'm glad I did; it's currently my very favourite knife, though so far I've avoided the temptation to name it "Vera". :-)

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Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), the bane of the Linux "evangelist", is not restricted to anti-Linux materials: Iran Uses Novell and Microsoft Software to Make Bombs. Oh, noes! Microsoft and Novell must be evil!

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Their saying it as she got of murder, but really she's going to jail in China for defending herself against an attempted rape. Now I know almost nothing about the Chinese justice system except that it seems to be pretty harsh (execution for tax evasion for instance), but I suspect Ms. Deng will never leave jail alive. Also the Chinese have no qualms about using prisoners as slave labour, so you can thank Ms. Deng for the donation of her labour to the worthy cause of keeping the price down on your next pair of Nike shoes.

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