We put the kids to bed by 8:00 each evening and are generally struggling to get them up in the morning to get ready for school.

This Schoolday morning, Sisitoutai comes into our bedroom at around 5:45am, which is a horrid time to be getting everyone up, and boy can Sisitoutai yack yack yack. (I wonder who he takes after?)

We feverishly try to quiet him and put him back to bed before the household is all awake. By 6:00 am everyone’s awake, yarrnnnn, by 6:30 we’re all dressed with no where to go.

Too early for breakfast, and too late to let them get too involved with other things or they wont eat their breakfast. So, mum and dad who are not fully awake yet, are now up entertaining the children while setting their breakfast out.

Of course, as is the nature of children, just being up and ready bright and early doesn’t mean you actually get out the door any earlier than normal. Somewhere between the screaming and tattle-tales as they snatch toys, books, etc, away from each other, we finally get breakfast started and not finished.

Ma’ata Ngalo’afe’s being a little weird, she has a long list of food that she wants for breakfast and lunch and dinner. She of course, mainly doesn’t finish her food.

She’s growing up very quickly and loves both the academic, social, physical challenges at school. She does well at all, but really pushes the social envelope. With the recent Michael Jackson phenomena she’s been raving on about this and that Michael Jackson, and I didn’t even know she had listened to any of his music?

Is this a girl thang?

Sisitoutai is, of course, consistent with finishing his breakfast (the morning breakfast, lunch breakfast, and dinner breakfast) whilst the girls have some sort of requirement to leave 1/5th of the food behind (so if they want to eat more, they ask for more food instead of finishing what they are given.)

He’s doing well at school, recently getting his “Silver Badge” a merit award milestone for having received 20 merit awards. Ma’ata Ngalo’afe is ultra competitive and upset that she hasn’t received her’s yet.

Soana Sesilia’s off to school this morning (she’s doing 3 days of school a week) and mum’s going to let her stay longer today. She’s usually picked up at around 2:00pm but today’s the experimental 3:30pm pick-up. Sesilia loves going to school and prays for her school teacher most evenings, while we pray for her increased ‘patience.’

Sione Halasika got up earlier and mum gave him his breakfast so he nodded off again. Cried out in anger from all the noise, and after we quieted down he went back to sleep. The boy loves his sleep, but when he’s awake he wants his attention, all of everyone’s attention.

You use two tea bags ?

Man, I don’t drink tea anymore, do you see the stain it makes on cups? You can’t get that stuff off, worse than coffee.

Can you imagine what it’s doing to your stomach.

I cringe as I “hila” over at the size of his girth.

Kapau pe ne ke inu tii pe ko e ka e fakasi’isi’i hifo ho’o kai, na’e mei sai ange ia ...

/nuff said.

Annah Evington runs tours for visitors to the isles, and you can find her details at: http://www.bluepacificwhalewatching.com.au/ 

Karyn and Boris with the vessel “Lavinuella” are running a new service in Vava’u that anglers, divers and whale watchers might appreciate.

http://www.tahipacifika.com

Doing it with Snorkels

If you’ve dived in clear blue waters (remember the colour of the sea is a reflection of the sky? and sometimes a factor of the enormity of pollution in the area) then you’ll know what Vava’u and Tahi Pacifika have to offer.

If you’re planning the next dive, or fishing trip, head on over to Vava’u and have a great time.

a. Getting to town on the trains is a hell lot easier than by buses.

Everyday I walk pass queues of people waiting to get on buses, and hear horror stories of delays (or packed services) where you can be late up to an hour?

b. In the summer, catch old trains are bearable, in the Winter, new trains are unbearable.

mentioned elsewhere in the diatribes, it can get cold/hot when your squeezed in with a bunch of people from between 30 minutes to an hour.

During summer, the old(er) trains with nicely sealed windows can be unbearable, or just a great place for catch sweat gland fever. They’ve all these modern security measures like locked doors, controlled ventilation (not) that just makes that trip just more wonderful.

During winter, avoid the new trains like the plague (‘cause you just might get sick/colds from riding them.) Those metal traps are just freezing in winter. They’re also freezing in summer, but you can thawe out when you get to your destination.

c. If Public Transport should be required for Politicians in charge of the failing systems, they should be required transport for Marketing and Engineers of mobile devices.

There’s nothing like gawking at all the latest tech being used on the trains as everyone pulls something out to while away the aduous trips.

iPhones are popular, but they aren’t as useful as other mobile devices when it comes to gaming, messaging, media players et. al.

Seriously, if you hawk the things, ride the public transports and see how they’re actually used in real life. make a difference to these people’s hour long commute and you’ve won yourself loyalty and more dollars.

d. On Timetables.

Train timetables are pretty good, or more than good enough so far for my needs. There’s still a lot of noise from people complaining about it all the time though.

Unfortunately the online timetable service is a static system (lower cost resources to maintain it wins, i guess.) It would be nice to just punch in your from/to locations and get the days schedule. As it is, you have to wade through all the details/noise from all the stations on a route to get at what you want.

Just trialling our Documents page and have uploaded / tagged a few to show how it easy it is for the content developers, as well as for the end-users.

HarperCollins Review: One of the most renowned figures in science fiction, C.J. Cherryh has been enthralling audiences for nearly thirty years with rich and complex novels. Now at the peak of her career, this three-time Hugo Award winner launches her most ambitious work in decades, Hammerfall, part of a far-ranging series, The Gene Wars, set in an entirely new universe scarred by the most vicious of future weaponry, nanotechnology. In this brilliant novel -- possibly Cherryh's masterwork -- the fate of billions has come down to a confrontation between two profoundly alien cultures on a single desert planet.

"The mad shall be searched out and given to the Ila's messengers. No man shall conceal madness in his wife, or his son, or his daughter, or his father. Every one must be delivered up." -- The Book of the Ila's Au'it

Marak has suffered the madness his entire life. He is a prince and warrior, strong and shrewd and expert in the ways of the desert covering his planet. In the service of his father, he has dedicated his life to overthrowing the Ila, the mysterious eternal dictator of his world. For years he has successfully hidden the visions that plague him -- voices pulling him eastward, calling Marak, Marak, Marak, amid mind-twisting visions of a silver tower. But when his secret is discovered, Marak is betrayed by his own father and forced to march in an endless caravan with the rest of his world's madmen to the Ila's city of Oburan.

Instead of death, Marak finds in Oburan his destiny, and the promise of life -- if he can survive what is surely a suicidal mission. The Ila wants him to discover the source of the voices and visions that afflict the mad. Despite the danger sof the hostile desert, tensions within the caravan, and his own excruciating doubts, Marak miraculously reaches his goal -- only to be given another, even more impossible mission by the strange people in the towers.

According to these beings who look like him yet act differently than anyone he has ever known, Marak has a slim chance to save his world's people from the wrath of Ila's enemies. But to do so, he must convince them all -- warring tribes, villagers, priests, young and old, as well as the Ila herself -- to follow him on an epic trek across the burning desert before the hammer of the Ila's foes falls from the heavens above.

Written with deceptive simplicity and lyricism, this riveting, fast-paced epic of war, love, and survival in a brave new world marks a major achievement from the masterful C.J. Cherryh.

Ko e ki’i post fakaangaanga atu pe ‘eni, ngaue’aki ‘a e “Windows Live Writer” ke create ‘a e post (hange pe hano fa’u pe open he Word ‘o toki send ki he website.) I guess it works ? Pictures and all.

US needs 'digital warfare force'

The US has set up specialised detachments dealing with IT problems

The head of America's National Security Agency says that America needs to build a digital warfare force for the future, according to reports.

Lt Gen Keith Alexander, who also heads the Pentagon's new Cyber Command, outlined his views in a report for the House Armed Services subcommittee.

In it, he stated that the US needed to reorganise its offensive and defensive cyber operations.

So, the land of the brave and the dead buffaloes, that have openly broken all forms of international law through kidnapping individuals, revoking life, liberty and the pursuit of anything to various groups and individuals in pursuit of “the American Way” is going to expect you and me to believe that all those spy satellites and telecommunication eavesdropping services do not already put them well ahead of every body else on invading not only their own Citizen’s privacy but everyone elses?

Please, …

The worrying problem is the apathy for the real loss of your privacy.

People didn’t move to encrypting their email when they all knew that the US was eaves dropping, now we people’s whole lives on the Internet being assessed and reviewed by the US machine. They’ve been tapping Australian international phone traffic since Woomera, and who knows whether the Australian Government is turning a co-operative blind eye for spying on Australian citizens internal communications.

I wonder what will finally take us over the edge for end-to-end encrypted communications (e.g. email, phone, web browsing, et. al.)

Encrypting your email is so easy these days, but it’s really hard to communicate in an encrypted manner because people find it too ‘difficult’ to use the additional tools to provide this encryption.

And then the lifetime of said media plummets to days instead of the vaunted years.

I’m getting tired of trying out trialware that copies some dvds fine and just totally barfs on others. Linux wasn’t doing me any favours either but I’m going back there again with a few things to try:

Routed through: read # this # aloud

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Installs libdvdcss libraries from medibuntu.  Now to get back to trying out acidrip et. al.

dvdbackup –i /dev/dvd –M –o path-for-storage/

I won’t be burning to disk, since I want to watch them on the computer(s) but apparently the way to get the things back to disk is:

growisofs -speed 1 -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdrw -dvd-video path-for-storage/MOVIETITLE/

For the truelly insane, or click-click amongst us, Ubuntu’s ‘Medibuntu’ (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions in Ubuntu) might be an appropriate distraction. I suppose adding it to your Ubuntu source list is the simplest thing you can do.

What are the Israelites supposed to do to get God’s blessings from the serpent on the stick that Moses held up ?

The kids stared at the Minister’s symbolism, and came up with every answer except that which the Minister wanted. Sometimes the answer to God’s mysteries aren’t so mysterious.

In another place and another time,

Serpents

Kerry Stewart: Do you find that people from Oceania and indigenous people here in Australia, because they have stories that are positive towards snakes, might read Genesis differently, that would influence them?

Jione Havea: Yes, I do hope that people, indigenous people from Australia as well as from the Islands in the Pacific Ocean would have positive readings of the Genesis story. But it's also - I think there's another challenge there, people from outside of our societies need to learn our stories as well, and this is something that I need to confront as an educator; I'm here as a Polynesian teaching a Western story. I think people of the West also need to learn of our stories. But yes, my answer to this question is yes, I hope people from outside of the Western mainstream would bring their stories and allow those stories to help them see the biblical stories in a new light. And this is one of those stories.

ABC Radio had a few questions of their own on snakes and the church, listen to the audio or read the transcript.