Election time, lets not go back to the past lets go back to the future

Back to the Future; where we are going we don't need pants.

In ref to; http://andiamnotlying.com/2008/pants-where-were-going-we-dont-need-pants/

Tenuous at best.

My good mate GAK posted a tweet showing a snap of an awesome Delorean and that got me to thinking. We know the 80's is back in many ways most in pop culture (monocles like me think those people missed out by skipping right to PMoD). What about the things that really made the 80's awesome. I'm talking cold-war and nuclear Armageddon, is that why my generation spends so much time playing games in imaginary worlds and striving for imaginary things or is that simply because we internalized the awesomeness of the 80's and want to acquire virtual awesome things. Back to the Future had this awesome car, the Delorean a car which now represents what all manufactured goods should be, sort of work, last forever and epic vision. In Back to the Future, they have to fix the fuck-ups in the timeline; maybe there are points when things could go one way or the other. I thought Keven 07 was one such point; how disappointed I am in his colleagues.

History repeats, much like onions and history is multi layered too much like onions. Nothing happens without cause, even in our tiny backwater nation of Australia we get to make history.

This is the first election, where I as a voter feel there is no choice or option. So what happens out of this election, should either be the beginning of a new order or the final testing of the 2 party system.

A bold statement indeed, so what does that mean?

1: Monocle wearing Tony you know what you are getting. I would vote for libs if the leader were Malcolm Turnbul. I still may do, I'm finding it hard to engage though not for lack of information; however the consequences will never be the same. I don't know if it will be bad or not.

2: Labour party is as bad as a Labour party can get, and really showed that a lepard cannot change its spots regardless of how much RNA recombination it goes through. This assassination is the very core of their party. They did it before, and will do it again. With fear of your position how can you get anything done.

3: Greens have a good leader, however the groundswell doesn't appear to be there or is it? People who I never thought would vote green are. I think that this could be the year for them, they have some good people not just Bob Brown.

I think that the Nationals, should do a deal with the Greens somehow; hell bring the libs along for the ride if they could.

It could work, I would love to see the weird wrannger child of Barnaby and Brown and Joe. National policies that involve the national interest. One reason I don't like politicians is because they have huge egos and don't really understand anything other than politics. I understand that governance and transparency are important, but that gets you nowhere if you have no big idea.

What is the big idea of this election, please tell me because I don't want to go backwards.

USD

Its been awhile since I have posted anything, but this is an interesting article. In summary a UN report states that US dollar is an increasingly unstable currency and should be replaced by something else. The article has some scary stats for 2050.

Take a read

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/un.report.dollar/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn&fbid=s4G0x9U7lWy

Awesome Chlorophyl Slug

From Peetronicus

Really awesome article about a Slug that steals cell organelles and uses them in its own biochemistry to photosynthesise. This is the first Gene stealer!

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/green-sea-slug/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Epoc the Last ticket

Overseer sat in his leather and gold console, the smell of oil and metal heavy in his nostrils. His tall and lanky frame was old now, even for one of the immortal. His gold colored lenses defocused as he gazed inside his own head to read the days correspondence from the all thing.

Worker unit Curmudgeon alpha reported that his last commit was balls and dreamy hopper unit oopsed up the arse with a wandangle do dad. Overseer began the sacred procedure and reassigned the sanctified work log, the venerated documents and the holy source to Gunghoe alpha with the message of please complete this holy ticket by lunch time.

Gunghoe alpha was just rising after a night fighting the data whores below for scraps of source. Looking in his mirror he cleaned his black metal carapace, checked all eight of his legs and four manipulator arms and raised his elongated head to clean under his neck. Gunghoe squirted the holy oils, the cool greasy high quality liquid easing his aching joints. "Arr thats better" he shouted in a cavernous volume he used as a repository. The inner monolog of his conversation with his second and third brain had taken him about five minutes. By the time he finished the floor was awash with sacred oils that trickled down to the depths below. The data whores below would be lapping it up with their long and sinuous tongues. "Bitches, drink up good"

A chime sounded clear and beautiful like the start of a symphony it filled Gunghoe with joy. Gunghoe gazed at the wall, the thousand boxes were marked and each box contained a grid of 365 smaller boxes. Gunghoe hopped on his impossibly massive black legs and scrawled the last box of his wall solid. Speaking to himself "I shall now begin the sacred ritual of the update to sanctified branch source and its an especially a beautiful day because today, I will be transfer the sanctified source from our latest branch back to master thus renewing our master branch and deploying our next version so all may enjoy the fruits of our labours."

Gunghoe flew into a rage at the message he receive he screamed and ranted and raved. Collapsing on the ground like a dying spider softly whispering. "Commit was balls and dreamy hopper unit oopsed up the arse with a wandangle do dad ... dam you dreamy hopper you broke the branch again, now I can't merge!"

After relieving the source of some cruft from the commit, Gunghoe had gotten to the root of the problem. A nasty one indeed as the wandagle do dad was indeed up the arse, causing him to pull the wandagle from master and put it back into the branch. But the problem with that was the do dad would have to be re-writent to fit with the proper wandangle. "Dam you Dreamy hopper why didn't you follow the sacred procedure of the daily ritual." Dreamy hopper could hear the rantings and ravings of Gunghoe, his green eyes and coppery skin reflective in the dark of his source chamber. He croaked his soft voice and shouted up the chamber "If you get the wandagle from my branch you don't have to re-write the do dad"

Curmudgeon alpha was a dusty old plastic model, built before the source was last branched, he had seen the turning of the heavens and the ritual of the merge before but had refused to be recycled instead staying in his ancient dented white and silver chassis. He only had two arms, two eyes and two legs modelled off the mythical makers who strode the earth millennia ago. "All sleeping, all sleeping those masters of old, leaving us behind to make the great machine" Curmudgeon climbed out across the impossible gulf between Dreamy Hopper and himself to converse with the youngest of their kind. His ancient carapace creaked and groaned, sacred oils would do no good to ease the bourdon on his servos. "Arrrrrrrr" said Curmudgeon to Dreamy hopper who looked inquisitively Curmudgeon. "Noooooooo Drrrrreeeemmmy" said Curmudgeon "What" said Dreamy, "Are you trying to tell me not to merge" it seemed to Dreamy that it took an eternity for Curmudgeon to nod his dented plastic head.

Both of them were shocked to hear the loud boisterous bellow from Gunghoe "Hey guys, we have four hours to re-write the do dad so I can do a merge"

"No don't re-write the do dad re-write the wandangle" exclaimed dreamy with a massive waving of many arms and many legs.

"Aaaaaaaaar no fuck it just write an interface layer and sort it out in the next branch" rasped Curmudgeon.

"Oh umm fuck it lets do that it sounds fast then I can get back to my data whores and get oiled up good. Dreamy update the ticket on what we are doing" He does a little fake dance which puts both of them off going anywhere with him later on.

"I don't do tickets, tickets are like totally lame" Dreamy is waving his arms about and starting to hop on his one leg.

"Fuccccck, just update the ticket so overseer sees we are doing something, if you ruin my ritual and I can't get down with those data whores tonight your fucking dead Dreamy ill unplug you myself" The black beetle moves towards the flapping arms, leering with his insect like head.

"Whooo, dude thats harsh, ok ill update the ticket" Dreamy stops hopping and moves to the console.

Back on his leather and gold throne oversea reads the input from the all thing. "Adding some interface shit to fix the do dad wandangle arsed issue"

"We are done!" Dreamy quickly skitters away and begins drinking the sacred oil.

"Immmmm offf" Curmudgeon climbs back to his source hole in the wall and plugs in, reviewing Dreamys latest work.

Gunghoe begins his sacred ritual, and has to restart it three times as various forgotten commits arrive and are arranged. His hands move in an arcane set of ritual stop start motions. Eventually he has merged the master back to the branch, he runs the holy integration tests, the sacred unit tests and skips the user interface tests as was prescribed millennia ago by the makers of old. Gunghoe stages the code, replacing some thousand workers with their new source and instructing them to run all tests. After agonising hours, the data comes back good most of the tests passed across the board and the source is ready for update. The ritual of merge commences, it happens very quickly as many units take themselves offline and reboot for the new version of source. They read the release notes and criticise their lack of documentation and elegance. "Whats this commit message about, I mean you think they could write some documentation for once right" One unit doesn't reboot, he sits alone in the dark his dented plastic casing dull and cold to the touch his crystal eyes go dim.

Overseer reviews the statistics and announces a great celebration, branch one thousand is closed we are now version one thousand of source. Overseer raises his frame from his leather seat and cracks a bottle of sacred oil. His console flashes, he closes the ticket but opens another as it is his sacred duty, he makes a new ticked for a new branch. "Fix arsed code that caused old models to crash" Overseer looks down to the world below him, the thousands of units hard at work with their next project. Its taken a long time to get here he whispers and it will take a long time to finish.