welcome

Latest News! I'm no longer updating this site - it's old and tired, and well past its "due date"... Visit my new site and it's new gallery with lots (thousands) of new images!

Some stuff on this site isn't available on the new site yet (it all will be eventually), so pop back here if you can't find what you're looking for...

Hi everybody - welcome to my vanity website and cyberpulpit. This is where I put stuff that's not really related to my business endeavours and here and here - or troublemaking activities, especially if that stuff is likely to damage my professional credibility if it becomes especially public. If you're really feeling keen, here's my updated CV - [ short version  |  full version ].

Some of you might've got here when looking for my younger brother, Daniel... Because his name appears in various places among these pages, it's possible that a search engine query would plunk you down here. I recommend that you go to his pages, complete with details of his rather outrageous ornithological exploits (for example, he recently discovered a new species of bird in Peru).

word and song...

On occasion, I feel the need to express myself by scrawling stuff down on bits of paper or beating up the air around me...

If you're a glutton for punishment, trundle on over to my extra self-indulgence page - a clearing house for the various poems, stories, and essays I've liberated from the obscurity of their paper scraps and included on the site.

If you want to dive right in, you can read my:

• missive on the sad state of US foreign policy,
• essay on the perils of sending proprietary file formats (e.g. Microsoft Word Documents) as email attachments,
• "based-on-fact" report on my activities for the calendar year of 2002,
• expository piece on my religion of one: confusism,
• tragic tale of grit, gumboots, and spilt beer.
• quality assortment of thoughts, poems, and very short stories...
• updated 2004-04-12: more tortured prose for your amusement...

Some people might've come here on rumours that they'll find free music! If you're looking for music, you might have to look elsewhere. That said, I thought I had a few downloadable audio files kicking around here somewhere...

ah, the pictures...

For those of you who here got en route to my photo gallery, you're very close! Or try clicking on the screenshot.

a little controversy

If, by some ironic twist of fate, you represent that delightful criminal monopoly, Microsoft, and are looking to dig up some dirt on me, you're in luck! Nice sleuthin'. (For some education on your company, however, you might look at some of the well supported documentation on this site: Microsuck) Keep in mind that I have a fairly good idea of who has visited this site, when, and from where. And rest assured, I'm greatly enjoying my self-appointed role as your chief antipodean handbrake. Now don't get me wrong - as with any organisation that big, there're heaps of good, smart, ethical people working for Microsoft - I actually have friends there who fit that description. It's just that there's no evidence that any of them are in management...

By the way, if you want to see the way the digital blight from Redmond Washington will be stopped, have a look at what the good people at OpenOffice.org have to show. I have enough faith left (just) in the intelligence of the human race to believe that people will eventually stop paying through the nose for the dubious privilege of renting (you don't own it, read the license) ever more resource hungry software that locks them into the cycle of forced upgrades, obfuscated file formats, a blatant disregard for their security, and inflicts upon them the absurd misconception that "cute" animated kittens, wizards, and loose office supplies could in any way be even remotely helpful. I have high hopes that people will abandon Microsoft when they finally realise that they can get functionally equivalent software that employs open file formats, is free to use and doesn't come with any of that ludicous EULA rubbish.

Rant finished. Please continue going about your business or read on - my desire to promote open source software (and in the process loosen Microsoft's iron grip on the hapless average computing joe) though strong, is luckily not all consuming... I do dabble in other things as well.

a word of warning

I thought it would be prudent to warn you: at some unknown time in the future, when I have a few spare minutes, I'm going to be setting up a weblog into which I will be able to pour my possibly pompous pontification, and into which you, gentle website visitor, will be able to heap praise, bland indifference, or righteous wrath depending on your disposition. Sacre bleu.

in closing...

I would like to leave you with a few random thoughts:

• Confusion is not necessarily an undesireable state.
• Build things, create, spread joy and confusion with extreme prejudice.
• Complacency kills. All minds want to be bent. Mess with people.
• Play whatever you want... but whatever it is, it gots ta be funky.

And if you're gonna go down... make sure you go down swingin'.