John Keyes

Tom O’Neill (my neighbour) has authored a nice collection of tales here. While aimed at early teens, there was enough in this book to keep me interested.

I was going to review but I’ve decided to leave that to the target audience. Here’s hoping I get to post a guest authored review in the near future.

Disclosure: Tom gifted me an unconditional copy of the book as a friend. This post and the previous one would have been written even if I had purchased the book myself (which I intended to do).

Saving Childhood Ryan are:

eight organisations working on behalf of children and survivors of abuse. We have come together to mark the first anniversary of the Ryan Report.

I applaud the campaign, but I am horrified by the name. I believe it belittles the crimes which have been identified in the Ryan Report.

Whenever these (or similar) crimes come up in conversation, I refuse to refer to them as child abuse. We can abuse alcohol, power, drugs, the system, and such. What Catholic religious orders have done to children in this country is an abhorrence, and their systematic coverup equally so.

As a small token I have registered http://stopchildrape.com, which I believe is a more accurate name for this campaign for justice. I am redirecting all traffic to Saving Childhood Ryan.

I received an SMS from Thomann which informed me that my USB microphone had left their warehouse.

It felt good when I read that text. I wondered why this notification felt more personal than an email. It’s not because I received it on my phone, as I also use my phone to receive email.

I think it’s because I get different alerts for texts and emails.

An email alert does not warrant my attention in the short-term, as more often than not, the email is not important. The email is from a newsletter, or a developer mailing list, or something equally mundane.

On the hand I’m conditioned to expect texts to come from a person. So when I received the text alert, I assumed somebody I was close to, had sent me something. When I opened the text and saw it was from Thomann, I thought “That was nice of them to send that”, and it made the transaction seem personable.

I found my emotional response interesting, considering I knew it was an automated notification.

ReclaimPrivacy.org

Facebook privacy (or lack of it by default) has come under increasing scrutiny of late. If you want to check how much information you are exposing you should check out ReclaimPrivacy as it:

provides an independent and open tool for scanning your Facebook privacy settings. The source code and its development will always remain open and transparent.

Cannonball

I love the imagery, soundtracks and storytelling of the California is a place films.

Via GOOD; from California is a place.