Blog
I watched a talk on linkglobal and their work in North Korea and it is profoundly disturbing what seems to be happening in that nation - and has been for many years - yet most international criticism seems reserved to things that will affect other nations. It's as though a government can crushingly oppress millions of people that happen to be in its own territory for years, and others are only worried if it may affect them. (See Liberty in North Korea for more info).
After thinking about de-nuctifying the world I've started to investigate creating a Pidgin (formerly Gaim) plugin to control Skype. This means you're still using a closed network, but from an open program, which makes migrating easier (and allows people to try multiple networks from the same interface).
I found PyToddler recently and had James having lots of fun moving crayons round the screen and trying to make a mouse eat some cheese and say "Yum yum yum yum yum" - great watching him say "Go over there mouse!" and trying to encourage him to move the actual mouse (as in the computer-type one, not the rodent-type one). Just the kind of thing I wanted to write... the annoying thing in teaching James letters is that it's easier to learn lower-case letters but computer keyboards are all usually decorated with upper-case ones. Once we get to Japan we'll have plenty else to worry about :-)
I've had a strange experience over the past year, and it's getting more common. As a developer, I used to be the one recommending software/tech things to my friends. Now all my non-technical friends have started recommending things to me that they have discovered on the intar-web. The trouble is, they're almost all closed systems - apparently free, but under the control of one group.
We went away for the weekend with Ulrik and Andrea and stayed in Betty's Bay. Seems a bit crazy with only 11 days to go now before we leave and much to do - but it was actually brilliant to just have relaxed time with friends and I don't think we would have had that otherwise! James and Charis loved their little Staffy puppy called Mimi. We went for a walk to Disa Kloof and saw some baboons on the way back.
Phew we haven't written anything here for ages as seems to happen with blogs. Brief summary:
Went to a local nursery today with James where they have pigs, ducks, rabbits, you name it. Some of the ducks are really ugly! It was lots of fun wandering around ... Have uploaded some photos which you can see in the image galleries or by clicking on the 19th of August on the right...
Have been setting up Drupal for this new site (frasergo.org)
Works reasonably nicely, just such a shame it's written in PHP :-)