Jason Mark Roehrig My Web Home

Activists are organizing protests in all major cities for December the 13th, I encourage my readers to join their local rally. This is too important of a subject to take lightly. If we don't show up in numbers, the current administration will get away with setting up the Great Firewall of Australia, curtailing freedom as we know it. Even the Libs see the plan as misguided, and that says something.

And don't forget to sign the GetUp online petition.

Dear friend,

Imagine a government proposing an internet censorship system that went further than any other democracy - one that made the internet up to 87% slower, more expensive, accidentally blocked up to one in 12 legitimate sites, and missed the vast majority of inappropriate content.

This is not China, Saudi Arabia or Iran - this is the vision of Senator Stephen Conroy for Australia. Testing has already begun. The community must now move to stop this plan. Click here to save the net:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet

The system that Senator Conroy wants is a mandatory filter of all internet traffic, with the government of the day able to add any unwanted site to a secret blacklist. Already, the wrangling has begun for the inclusion of material relating to anorexia, euthanasia and gambling. It isn't difficult to see the scheme is open to abuse.

Even when it comes to preventing child p-rnography, the filter will not prevent peer-to-peer sharing and is very simple to sidestep. The protection of our children is vitally important - that's why we can't afford to waste funds on this deeply flawed system. We should be concentrating on solutions that are more effective and won't undermine our digital economy or our democratic freedoms.

This must rank as one of the most ill-thought decisions of the Rudd Government's first year in power. We need to act now to tell big brother the mandatory internet filter is incompatible with the principles of a modern democracy and modern economy:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet

Our government should be doing all in its power to take Australia into the 21st century economy, and to protect our children. This proposed internet censorship does neither. Take action to save the net today.

Thanks for being a part of the solution,

The GetUp team

PS - The proposed scheme will pass all internet traffic through a government filter - it's like asking Australia Post to filter every letter sent in Australia. Click here to save the net.

UK Brights Campaign

The UK has a bright campaign supported by the "mighty", or rather outspoken, Dawkins. The goal was to get secular advertisements published on public transport to combat the attempted brain washing of fundamentalists. Their initial goal has been met more than by just as satisfying margin.

H+ Cover of First Release

I'd like to share with my readers the announcement of the first edition of H+, an emag on transhumanism. Human Plus are really doing a service to humanity, by regularly wanting to publish the ideas and outcomes of our adventure into self-organizing our future development, or rather human-auto-evolution.

By their nature, humans developed according to the rules provided by evolution. Thanks to this development human kind has developed an intellect allowing for taking control over their evolution. No longer are we subject to chance, but rather intelligent design. No God is in charge, but the species affected.

This new emag covers a diversity of topics, just as a diversity of depths. Some subjects are covered in brief, highlighting current ideas. Other subjects are covered in a broader sense, allowing for an introduction to the subject by people who haven't closely been following the object of desire - a better human being. Where "better" is rather subjective. Or objective, as subjectivity deals with objectives.

The objectives of transhumanists is that of becoming independent of our nature, the outcome of natural evolution. We are all glad to by now not die of a common cold. At the same time we are very happy to live with the results of modern medicine, and other sciences. Maybe this development has been rather unconscious in nature, but undeniable is it a product of intelligent design. Processes, procedures, objects, and subjects, all become the subject of human manipulation.

The content is very promising and I hope they will be able to keep it up.

A380, Sunday 21/09/2008 15:56
A crappy photo, but the thought and intent counts. Spotted today around 15:56.

I dream of flying first class in this one.

Proton Beam Position

This is exiting news. And not because some idiots, cranks, or what ever you want to call 'em, are suggesting imminent doom, but rather for the new frontier experimental physicists are breaching. For a geek it's like Xmas: you can rattle the box, but can only guess what might be inside.

... more to follow soon!

OK, I've made a Lemon Cheese Cake and it's currently backing in my oven, so I'm not sure if it will turn out right. Never the less, here is my recipe (more or less in accordance with):

Ingredients

• 250g chocolate cookies
• 75g butter (melted)
• 500g cottage cheese
• 250g Philadelphia Creame Cheese
• 115g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• from 3 lemons the zest
• 60ml lemon juice

Preparation

1. crunch biscuits into pulp, and then mix with butter
2. press pulp evenly in 20cm cake form; chill at least for 20min
3. pre-heat oven to 160 deg C
4. mix sugar, cottage cheese, cream cheese
5. add one egg after the other and mix
6. add lemon zest and juice, mix
7. add mix into cake form, bake for ~50min

Today I harvested a good 6 kilos of lemons from the tree in my backyard. And there are still more to come. A few green ones are already hanging there, and there is still some flowering going on. I've already harvested a few last week, so there will most likely still be a couple of kilos I'll get my hands on.

Lemon Tree [1]

This was great compared to last year, which only offered a meager harvest, as the tree was hit with an illness.

Now I face the obvious question "what to do with all these lemons?" A question I never had to ask myself prior.

Preserved Lemons

For one I decided to preserve a couple. This is easily achieved. Just fill the bottom of a jar with ~2cm of salt, chop lemons (sufficient to fit into the jar) into quarters, spread salt on quarters, put them in jar, and finally fill the jar with olive oil. Done!

I also extracted some lemon juice from around half of the harvest, which I've frozen for later consumption.

Today I will make an attempt at backing a lemon cheesecake, where I'll be following roughly this recipe. "Roughly" as I always change something, I only use recipes as a guide, not an instruction.

Now, I have found a few interesting recipes, as listed below, but feel free to leave your suggestions as a comment.

I'm definitely going to try the lemon sorbet.

More Lemon Recipes

The following are a collection of links to recipes involving lemons.

• Lemon Butter
• Lemon Syllabus
• White Chocolate Lemon Napoleon
• Lemon Sorbet
• Lemon With A Twist

A week ago, me and my friendly neighbour had friends over for raclette. One of the friends was Robert, who as a hobby builds plastic ship models. I told him how I had been thinking of taking up again my childhood hobby, and putting a couple of plastic model planes together myself. In dedication to his passion, Robert was all empathetic to the idea of gluing together plastic pieces, and offered me a model kit he had of a Constellation as a gift, to get me going. The following Thursday I received the kit.

Airfix - Super Constallation - Box

Now, a week later, I got started. I still have to buy the paints required, but a couple of pieces can already be glued together, which is what I've done. At least as far as I could get.

The kit is produced by Airfix, and assembling pieces of my kit took me back to my childhood days. Reminding me, as to why I back then avoided Airfix kits. Their molds are crappy. For one, pieces don't always align as they should, the extrusions are at unsuited places, and there's just too much plastic overflow with most parts. The only good part about this, is the challenge.

Putting together a ready-made set is easy. I'd actually prefer to create models from scratch. But who has the time? Leaving me quite happy to put together a ready-made Super Constellation.

Thanks to Robert I've got a kit to get me back into a realm of a prime passion (aircraft), I've been ignoring for far to long. I'll keep you posted on my progress.