The NSA will never get me!

An interesting controversial subject that has grabbed my attention recently is internet privacy. I usually pride myself on being indifferent about such matters until I know enough information, but now I feel I know enough to warrant an opinion. I definitely don't align myself with the radical views of Julian Assange, but I do have a few views in common. In particular, I'm scared that the legal punishment for committing misdemeanors will remain fixed despite a growing transparency in private lives. Let me explain. Laws should ideally be made to prevent immoral activities. So consider, for example, hopping on a bus without a ticket and getting caught by the cops. A fine of $150 seems reasonable (from the states point of view) since it will do very well at preventing you (and others) from hopping on buses without a ticket. However, the number 150 is actually pretty arbitrary and i'd suspect a likely overestimate trying to compensate for all the times you've probably ridden the bus without a ticket but haven't been caught. This is a necessary thing to do since Sydney Transport doesn't have eyes all over the place which can tell them when people are abusing their system.

However, lets say that a sudden recent development in technology allows Sydney Transport to observe every passenger and instantly fine them for not having a ticket. What would this mean? Well, I'd suspect you'd get a lot of fines and a lot fewer people riding without tickets! All good right? NO! This is where the arbitrary origin of the $150 fine really comes into play. Imagine the subset of passengers that forgot to buy a ticket or had no money to pay for a ticket - these people are still victims of the unalterable $150 fine. I'm not trying to say that these people shouldn't be fined at all, I'm trying to say that the law needs to consider what fee is necessary to prevent illegal activity in different situations. Clearly the $150 fine isn't applicable in this hypothetical since a fine just a little bit higher than the price of the ticket itself would be enough of a deterrent. Basically, laws need to evolve with evolving technology.

Don't worry, this isn't a complete side track, this is actually all related to internet freedoms. In fact, I think this analogy is actually pretty accurate at representing the issues with the internet. Except, in this case, the bus fine is $2000 dollars and the cops can choose whether to target your or not.

My life is entirely transparent to anyone who has an internet connection. I check Facebook regularly, the videos I like on YouTube are put on display on my Google+ account, I write a blog, and I don't even delete my browser history. If the Australian government wanted to, they could sift through all the crap I've done and pick me up on a few misdemeanors - like downloading mp3 files off YouTube. Radicals like Julian Assange promote Government openness and individual privacy as a solution to this problem. I don't think we need to have complete anonymity, I think we need legal tolerance. Oh by the way, this doesn't just apply to just downloading movies and textbooks, this extends into all areas of online private life. I've been warned by countless members of my family not to mention any negative experiences about my work on my blog because it would make me look unattractive to other potential employers. In their eyes they see it as so little gain for so much potential loss. I kinda get that, but it's the principal that annoys me. A potential employer shouldn't resort to a highly exaggerated and (lets face it) somewhat fictional blog to find out the work ethic of an applicant. And more importantly, even if my blog was the source of relevant information about my work ethic, it really wouldn't give the employer the information necessary to compare me to other applicants since the other applicants could have cherry picked their online history and built a completely fake version of themselves.

Overall, it annoys me that a growing number of my friends are informing me that they find themselves culling pictures of themselves on Facebook to appear more attractive to a potential employer. Ultimately it probably doesn't bother them too much, but what they're doing is fueling an illogical thought process that's running rampant throughout society. Stahp it!

In other news, I didn't get drunk on Sunday! I know, i know! I got soooooooooo sober! A bloke called Andy who has been crashing on our couch for the last 2 weeks recently won $200 from a sporting bet and spent half of it on booze for the whole house on Saturday. It was fun. I passed out in a bathtub.

rags to riches

In the early years of world war 2, Joseph Stalin implemented his Scorched Earth policy whereby he destroyed his own territory to hinder the advance of the Nazi's. It's this type of ruthless military progress which I've learned to adopt to defeat the 'bed bugs' in my room. I recently purchased a 500ml bottle of rubbing alcohol and doused my infested mattress with it. If you listened closely, I think you could hear the tiny fuckers screaming. Or were they singing in drunken bliss? I don't know, but either way it took a lot of inner restraint for me to hold back on getting a match out and casually letting the room burn.

I also purchased an automatic poison dispenser which I've put in my room to kill any moths or remaining bed bugs wandering around. Hitler would be proud.

In other news, I met Josh in Penrith the other day after work. We talked about his new up and coming idea. I'm not sure how much he'd want me to say, but I can tell you that he's working on his own website for psychology. There's a long way to go and I'm skeptical about how successful it will be, but if there is anyone I know who has the drive to actually accomplish a 'get rich quick' scheme, it would be Josh. Matt Gates and I might be hijacking this train since I've got my Engineering videos on offer and Matt has a couple of philosophy videos he can offer too. I think this'll be an interesting project to work on this year.

Work is going OK now. University has started and little kids are running everywhere. I took a 15 minute break and crashed a physics lecture by one of my favorite teachers of all time, Joe Wolfe. It was kinda nice to re-immerse myself in the lecture environment. It was strangely inspiring.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm out of beer. All my home brew is gone. I'm thinking of brewing wheat beer next, but 'country brewer' isn't a place you pass by on your way to work or Mc Donald's. I'll probably start brewing my next batch when it gets colder anyway. It'll make the beer taste better.

O - week

To celebrate two weeks of accidental sobriety I got pissed last Friday. I went to the Rege (pub near where I live) with my roommates and a few others. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something was definitely different about the pub. For starters I was almost refused entrance for looking "glassy eyed" but then managed to talk my way out of it (it turns out begging and pleading works as a good negotiator). Once inside I noticed every middle aged, depressed and single man sipping on a beer that was usually there had been replaced with about fifteen 18 year old kids. Since graduating I've developed a pretty strong arrogance which has made me instantly devalue the conversation of any undergraduate i talk to. This turned out to be a good thing though because it meant I had no distractions to my drinking. Ideally I would have liked to drink in the outside section of the rege but a new house rule has been enforced which states that no one can drink any liquid in the outside section past 10:00pm. No doubt my brother getting glassed over the head a couple of months back had something to do with that - I guess both my brother and I have been glass eyed in the Rege now.

After a 2 day hangover I finally managed to summon up the energy to clean my filthy infested room. The inspiration was short lived though because I came to the realization that the largest shelf in my room was my floor, so I figured any square inch of floor space not covered with clothes would simply be a waste of space.

In other news Gim is back working at the office. Gim is a PhD student from Malaysia who works near me. He graduated at the same time I did, with the same degree I did, with academic grades and accomplishments I couldn't even dream of. He is literally better than me in every single way. He's also Christian which makes this intellectual standoff particularly interesting. It's like he has God on his side or something.

Everest

A Spanish friend of mine from way back, Africa, messaged me on Facebook yesterday asking me bluntly if I wanted to go on an adventure to another part of the world with her and Pablo. It's tough to sound overly enthusiastic on Facebook, but believe me I was. After about 7 seconds of brainstorming, Nepal was the winner. How bad-ass would it be to climb base camp of Mt. Everest? Hellz yeh. Maybe I should take up smoking to prepare my lungs for some harsh conditions?

So far I've done no research into it, but I plan to start today after work. It'll be good to break the Monday - Friday, 9 -5 routine. Albeit the trip wouldn't be till October ish 2014 so there's no need to start packing now.

Well that's it folks. I've literally done nothing else interesting in my life.

computer bugs

Day 3455: It's been one month since the bug bombs were set off. An aura of happiness and high moral set in with my roommates and I. After sweeping away the ashes of dead cockraoch carcass's we all made a pact to strive toward a new cleaner way of life. But the utopia was not to last. Corruption and laziness has set in once again, I can sometimes feel myself being corrupted and manipulated by the thick fog of laziness that pollutes the house. It's beginning to turn us against each other; now it's only a matter of time until the cockroaches grow in number and begin a second assault. More pressing matters are at hand though because another new type of insect has invaded our most personal living areas - our bedrooms. They're bugs and they live in my bed - I call them bed bugs. They've evolved to to fight a war on two fronts: Animal House is weak. I've tried buying new sheets and washing pillow cases, but even these high tech tactics are powerless to stop them. They're just so bloody fucking small! I just wanna smush them with my bare hands but I can't find them uurrghh!! War. War never changes...

So yeah this is actually pretty bad for me because I can't sleep. At least when we had to deal with a cockraoch infestation we could all sleep soundly at night. I'm tossing and turning non stop because I get the feeling of ants crawling all over my body - I also wake up with itchy marks over my arms and legs which aren't as itchy and pronounced as mosquito bites, but just as annoying. It doesn't help that my room is so hot that I turn into a hyperventilating warm sack of blood at night. I read somewhere that you can put rubbing alcohol on parts of your body to stop the bugs from biting you. Obviously I would never waste precious Alcohol that way, so maybe if I drank more alcohol, then the bed bugs won't be tempted to suck my blood? This all happened after the Germans left. Coincidence? I think not.

In other news, I've completely adapted to the 1950's way of life. My new routine is so predictable you can set an alarm to it (which I do).
1) I wake up at 8:49, press 'snooze' exactly 3 times to give me a bit over 1/2 an hour to get out of bed, then head to work.
2) At work I duck into the coffee room quickly to drink a glass of water on my way to my office
3) Listen to music and hum along with it a bit too loudly until my boss walks by and we share startled hello's
4) Come home at around 5 to find Harry sitting on the couch watching shit TV. We then play exactly 2 games of Nazi Zombies before I decide to make some shitty meal for myself.
5) At exactly 6:00 i decide i'm strangely tired and end up crashing on my infested bed for about an hour.
6) I then catch a glimpse of my tummy on some shinny object and feel sad. Then I head to the gym for about 15 minutes.
7) Come home and see Jasper/Lachie/Both in my room playing DOTA. I join them until midnight and then fall asleep.

Albiet somewhere in there, I do a very small amount of work trying to learn how to code JavaScript and make Engineering YouTube videos. This is actually more productive than you think because I have a small desire to start up my own Engineering website sometime soon.

Oh I should also mention that I've totally corrupted our newest roommate, Tom, by introducing him to the computer game DOTA. This means 4/6 of us play DOTA. We now have a voting majority. Goodbye House Parties, hello LAN parties!

Oh yeah, facebook did this thing recently where they showed you a video which summarized your entire life in 1 minute by giving you a montage of photos you've uploaded or been tagged in. Almost every photo featured someone else smiling in the foreground with me devouring snacks in the background. One of the photos which came up though was a screenshot I had made about 2 years ago. It was a montage of famous people in history with personalized quotes attached to each of them. This was a small artwork I'd made for fun, and I could tell I had a lot of creativity back then because I made every quotation read something stupid like "fuck bitches,get money!". Needless to say I dug up the virtual picture from my gmail and went to the printing department at UNSW to get a copy laminated asap. I now have a a poster of Winston Churchill quoting the line "Bitch, Please". I couldn't be happier.

Lastly, I met a bunch of Texans on the bus back to 17 middle from the City. They were really friendly and asked me where they should go before the start their exchange in 2 weeks. I told them to head to the blue mountains. They were really grateful. It was good reminiscing.

gg

Back in Aus

I went to the beach a couple of days ago with my German roommates. I went because I wanted to get some fresh air and enjoy the rays. The Germans went because they needed a break from watching episode after episode of a world war two series called Generation War (spoiler: the Germans loose). The beach was crowded, but it was still nice to get a good break. I found out five hours later that I had missed putting sunscreen on random patches of my body. One of the red marks down my back looks just like the front cover of signs - I'm contemplating leaving it in the sun more so that'll look like a coloured tattoo.

Oh, random fun fact: Mango in salad tastes amazing! Not even kidding.

In other news, Jasper is back from South Africa. He payed 8 grand for a 1 month holiday in which he spend 2 of those weeks doing charity stuff. It's good to have someone organize the house again - the garbage was starting to pile up quite a lot.

Now I've been advised by my Uncle and Father that it's particularly unwise to talk about my feelings about my Job on my blog. Buuuuut I figured if any boss of mine has the time to read all the crap I write just to get to some commentary about my job, then the business is probably verging on bankruptcy so I'd probably lose the job regardless.

I've been given a cubical in the midst of an empty office on the highest floor in the Engineering department. My Employee number is 3290498 but my boss says I can move up to 3290497 if I play my cards right. The job itself is a cocktail of interesting, frustrating and boring. I often find that my short attention span gets hold of me and I subconsciously hover my curser over the facebook tab. I also spend roughly 20% of the time doing Engineer related stuff - this is the stuff I really like, it allows me to do research and talk to academics, but the other 20% of the time (60% is spent on facebook) I end up reviewing code. This is the stuff which isn't so fun because reading a whole bunch of 1's and 0's has the same value as reading twilight. Even though I haven't started mentally adjusting to the job yet, physically I'm almost there. I've already developed an ideal cubical slouch with a permanently relaxed jaw and a small breathing problem to match. It's come to the point where I no longer dream about independence and freedom of speech anymore; I dream about having a son who can fulfil the James legacy of working in a factory as part of the ford assembly line - ideally my son would have a slight genetic disability making him shorter and hunched over, I'll call him Günter.

Oh yeah, my computer is broken too so that means I'm forced to be productive. I got so much shit done today, it's awful

Japan day 6

This was my last day and I was all skiied (I still don't know how to spell that word!) out. Just like your ordinary cocaine addict, I've had my fix of the white stuff and now I'm ready to be a productive member of society again. We were lucky with our timing because the visibility on the last day was just awful - easily the worst yet. I decided it would be a waste of time to take a photo of it when I could just as easily screenshot an empty Microsoft word document and show you that instead.

We spent the majority of the day hitting different bars around Hirafu drinking different cocktails and good Japanese beer. I've decided I'm a huge fan of dark rum and coke (Myers Rum & Coke) and Sapporo beer - which is surprising because I hate the smell of dark rum and usually hate the watered down taste most Asian beer has.

We then had our last dinner in a fancy Japanese restaurant which served amazing Japanese food. Sadly I don't know the names of any of the types of dishes they served us except for "Plain Rice" which was awesome.

Well that was the end of my Japan trip. I made a very lengthy and emotional farewell to my automatic toilet and started packing up my bags for an early departure tomorrow morning.