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.

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.

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

Currently I'm in the process of switching my telecom service provider, and once completed, I will be back online. Suppposedly this can take up to six weeks, but hopefully I'll be back in two.

So, if you have sent me an email or have used my contact form, please excuse any delays in my response, as I can only access those accounts via a friends computer. The library blocks me from accessing my server due to security reasons. And then there is the security issue on my side, leaving me not too happy having to use a publicly accessable computer for entering sensitive and private data.

iinet Sucks

Five out of six people I know are appalled by the services delivered by iinet. So much for the annecdotal evidence. I'm just glad there's an ombudsman, and they also provide an easy to fill out online complaint form.

My main issues with iinet are:

• refusal of correcting my bill
• billing of services never ordered
• broadband speeds well under what has been advertised

Not to mention the multiple times iinet staff have outright lied to me, something that doesn't sit well with me.

Official Yabun 2007 poster.

Yabun - Celebrating Indigenous Culture

When?

Survival And Invasion Day

10am-6pm

Where?

Victoria Park, Broadway

Why?

Celebrating the survival of indigenous people. Celebrating the beauty of aboriginal culture.

What does Yabun mean?

"Song with a Beat” in the Eora language.

Sydney is lucky to have a LadyMayoress lacking the insidious mind that the Australian Prime Minister harbours.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP urged Sydneysiders to
celebrate the survival of Indigenous people and
culture at the Yabun Festival in Victoria Park on 26
January.

“The City’s proud to again sponsor this fantastic
festival which brings together some of the very best
indigenous artists, performers and writers,” Ms Moore
said.
Lifted from the Yabun posting on Active Sydney.

If you're in Sydney come and join the happy people in Victoria Park. There will be music, food, art, craft, and games for the little ones. All located in the heart of Sydney, next to the University of Sydney.

Some Background

January the 26'th is marked officially as Australia Day, an insult to the original inhabitants of the lands forcefully deposed of and appropriated by the British Empire - relabelled to Day of Morning by indigenous activists back in 1938.

A more positive brand Survival Day has emerged in the past couple of years, to mark the strength of the original inhabitants of the island turned nation. Invasion Day is another term chosen to signify the true historic background, which led to the establishment of another Crown colony.

While there has been some improvement for indigenous Australians, they are still being attacked by official institutions and their representatives. The struggle for land rights, and the need to fight back any further attacks by the current government can not be ignored by us happy to live in complacence. Hence the importance of all Australians remembering Invasion Day.

I probably should wait and do some more work on this site first, but it seems that as long as this site is "under maintenance", the longer it will take me to get things going. So time to open up, start writing again, and put a little public pressure on myself.

Some Notes

• This site is under development, never the less, feel free to bitch about any aspect of it. I appreciate any kind of constructive criticism.
• Some links may not work yet.
• There is a severe lack of content, which will only gradually change, as this is not my only project.
• I've got a life, so I probably won't be posting every day to this site.
• This is my private site, in other words, I'm the lord and master
• This site is in a "googled-state" - by this I mean seemingly constant beta
• User rights are still heavily restricted, but this should change in the near future.

Beta Status

The reason this site will be [seemingly] in a constant beta version is twofold.
For one, I will be constantly working on this site to improve the tools provided to visitors.
Further this site is based on Drupal 5.0 Release Candidate 1, for which most modules still need porting and testing. In other words, there are still a bunch of bugs that need to be resolved to reach a pleasant and undisturbed user experience.
For example, some of the default styles aren't working, and get in the way of functionality. Then there is the mysterious disappearance of the colour picker, which I still haven't nailed down (wont post a bug report until I know why and how this occurred).

Nevertheless, I hope you will still be able to enjoy your visit.