I'm not very young, but I'm not very old. I read too little and I write too infrequently. I speak too quietly and I listen far too much. A perfectionist defeated by his lack of perfection often sits and watches the passage of time. I'm not even a person who can be productive without distraction, only with company of friends. Routines help me thrive because of their regularity but only when they are simple. Hiking is one of my favourite activities not because of a sense of achievement, but I enjoy doing the same thing for ten hours or more. I think I could do the same menial task for the rest of my life because repetition doesn't bore me, but I'm supposed to aim for something higher. Something with more prestige. I'd like to find a deep sense of purpose one day, perhaps doing something great yet small.
Computers and music are the two things that interest me the most, but my half-hearted attitude tends to leave potential on the drawing board. I can read and understand many programming languages but I wouldn't consider myself a programmer because when left alone my intuition only takes me so far. I understand a lot about electronics but I couldn't manage to solder anything for myself. I can build computers, understand how the components work, connect them to networks and understand how they work, install software and understand how it works, but when thrown outside of the sandbox I don't consider myself to have much to offer. Still, if you'd like to learn anything about IT, ask me. I could talk about it for hours because I tend to be interested in any subject; I just can't make much for myself.
Music is much the same. I play drums, percussion and flute to moderate levels. I listen to more music than anyone I know, looking for complex time signatures, inventive use of rudiments and even looking out for interesting technical ability outside of what I know on a guitar or piano. Progressive rock is my thing but my collection branches out to many other genres and I usually add five or six albums every month. I do quite a bit of sound engineering at church and everything I learn makes me respect the process of making music more. Sadly I'm not a talented musician but if you are, tell me about it. Any artist who can talk about their instrument, their band or their inspiration has earned my respect.
“The purpose of life is not to do what we want but what needs to be done.”
- Christopher Paolini, Brisingr
I don't remember when I became a Christian, but it has always been part of my identity that I'm proud of. Most of it goes on inside my head but many years of learning about myself through Christ has helped me with an ability to form opinions utilising actual philosophical principles, not just picking sides on every discussion as fast as possible like most teenagers end up doing. There are some things I have not decided what my opinion is, and with a lifetime ahead of me, the natural behaviour of choosing something and sticking with it for life (on some issues) seems a bit too proud for my liking. I think I've been more eager to take up political opinions than spiritual advice but maybe one day the latter will be as influential as the former on me as a person.
Now, my political interests. I'm a Green Party member because, first and foremost, I believe in transparency and accountability for Governments. I want to see a fairer voting system such as AV to increase accountability, a stronger Freedom of Information Act to increase transparency and an end to bulk collection of data and mass surveillance because organisations involved can never justify their reasons. Warrants exist for a reason, so you can stand in front of the law and gain the right to proceed, and without that principled approach for dark, closed door intelligence services, I can't say my Government is working for me. We shouldn't be losing billions of pounds every year to tax loopholes by the greed of corporations. Fair taxation should be for all. Nuclear weapons cannot be held by civilised nations and should be decommissioned. There will never be a justification to kill tens of thousands in seconds for the cause of nationalism. One policy I express support for is a Universal Basic Income, but I haven't quite decided on that one yet.
Another policy I express strong support for is the reduction of copyright terms to 20-30 years after death of author or around 40 years for an entity. In the music and film industries we see monoliths who crush fair use of creative content, slow the mediums from continuing to improve over time and use customer freedom-infringing DRM to stop them enjoying music or film and sharing with others. A move to Creative Commons, DRM free industries would increase visibility for small artists and enabling many more talent individuals from more diverse backgrounds to rise to the top, whilst at the meantime almost certainly decreasing profits for Disney, Sony or Universal Music Group. Services such as Bandcamp, Vimeo or Soundcloud show that future as a possibility, profitable for all, whilst Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime and Netflix show Digital Rights Management being used to drag monoliths into the digital age: slowing down progress as a result.
I use Linux firstly because it is free, enabling me to set up lots of computers for myself or others quickly and easily. It can be incredibly lightweight for use on a Raspberry Pi or another small SBC which I can use as self built appliances, media players or games consoles. Windows cannot do that, partly because of terrible hardware support and automatic configuration, partly because of proprietary bricks of untouched, unoptimised, multiple decade old code. Linux can be spun up in seconds on virtual environments hosted in their thousands on real hardware. Windows cannot do that.
Free Software or Open Source Software is about making programming a science. Proprietary code will always die or be replaced, as its future is tied to the success of the business or how long the software is in use, whichever is shorter. When the source code is available, that code can be improved upon and become a part of millions upon millions of new projects. That is how the scientific community is meant to function, and that is how programming should function. To use proprietary software is to stand against that principle so I try to avoid nonfree software in as many ways as possible. It is rarely the more difficult option in many sectors because so many people took a stand, and other areas of computer usage and appliances will continue to be populated by open source alternatives if many people vote with their wallets.
I must admit, I can't maintain a blog. My self motivation is minimal and I can barely keep a private, daily diary going but I would like my domain to display a single static page about me. I'm not a javascript fan but don't even have the desire to build something beautiful in Pico CMS about me. I love good typography and I think this will serve just as well. This site (forked and modified) is:
I don't like dropdown menus. At some point I may end up with a nice footer with horizontal links, or even some in the top right but I don't want dropdown. I don't want image galleries. They increase page load time considerably, they require precise mouse control to use and they heavily mess up device compatibility. This site will always be single column and for the meantime entirely on one page. If I add extra pages they will not be nested. My focus will be on formatting text, not formulating content structures.