We’ve had an awesome week this last 7 days at the NSW Kids Camp and following weekend. Seeing 7 people get baptised, seeing 5 people miraculously fill people with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, hearing the comments from people that we seem taller… the light that shone from Moses’ face after he spoke to Jehovah is shining out of us and people are seeing it just as we are seeing him “confirm his Word with signs following”.

Let’s get up on a hill and let that light shine!

You can read my final thoughts at Final Thoughts from Andrew. Truly a fantastic thing to have done.

This is a copy of the email I sent out to everyone about the Rickshaw Run.

Hi All,

As most of you know: in January myself and 5 friends will be driving an auto-rickshaw from Pokhara Nepal to Cochin India – a distance of roughly 3000km (equivilent of Sydney to Perth). If you don’t know, this is an auto-rickshaw (aka tuk tuk):

We have two ‘shaws between the 6 of us. We have dubbed them:
The Bull-dosa; and
Daal-Lemma

An auto-rickshaw has an average cruising speed of 35km/h so this is going to take some time. And they are, erm, somewhat totally unsuitable for the trip we are taking them on. However we have supreme confidence in their ability to deliver adventure!

On a serious note: The organisers of this event ask teams to fundraise for a few charity/humanitarian causes. This time the total was 1000 pounds (~AU$1800). The charities are Maiti Nepal and MercyCorps in India.

Maiti Nepal exists to offer help, support, protection and rehabilitation to Nepali girls and women who are victims, or have been victims in the past of crimes such as domestic violence, trafficking for flesh trade, child prostitution, child labour and various forms of exploitation and torture.

MercyCorps is a team of 3700 professionals helping turn crisis into opportunity for millions around the world. MercyCorps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.

If you feel like giving a bit please use the donation section of the website. Donations should be made by February 2010 so there is still plenty of time.

Now because everyone has better things to do than read email I’ll let you go.

Remember to checkout our website: http://andrewbevitt.com/rickshawrun/
And for information on the event: http://rickshawrun.theadventurists.com/

We’ll keep the site up-to-date with our progress.

Thank you for your comments of “you’re crazy”!

Andrew

If you don’t already know I am 1/6 of a team of adventurers setting off in the Rickshaw Run 2010 Winter Edition. It’s going to be a crazy (my style crazy) trip and I can’t wait to get on that Rickshaw. We’ve put together a little bit of a team website at http://andrewbevitt.com/rickshawrun so that all the world can follow along in our shenanigans.

As I said. It’s a shamless plug.

I’ve been a little lax in properly reading my RSS feeds of late. But this article on Australia being 11th in broadband penetration caught my eye before I used the magic mark all as read.

While I am entirely hesitant to truly believe what is said in this article: 1) because it seems deliberately vague; and 2) There are no references nor can I find another correlating story. If it is true then my initial response must be: being 11th doesn’t mean it’s good enough. But then one should look a little deeper at the top 10 results: South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are very different, demographically and geographically, from Australia you’re really comparing apples and oranges which, we all know, just doesn’t work.

Compare two metro areas: Sydney and Seoul. I know that Sydney will have worse services at higher prices. Which obliterates the “is good enough” argument. I feel that access should be equivelent – it’s not like the technology doesn’t exist. And then to bring it home: Sydney vs Cobar; no points for guessing the outcome there.

All this got me thinking though: I just managed to crack the 3 digit friends size on Facebook (shameless linking). If all we’re generally using our broadband for is socialising: do we need 100Mbps or FTTH? No I don’t think so. And believe me I like my internet(s) to be fast.

That’s apathy though.

To Senator Minchin: it’s not a competition, it’s about having good service for reasonable price, and those stats to be globally equivelent. Let’s pick the technology we should have in place nation wide and implement it.

Back in the good old days of being a full time student I was pretty geeky/nerdy (which ever you feel works). I had my fingers in all sorts of random projects + I had a room of computer hardware that I could use to build something fun, cool, useful or random. Once I started working it became hard to be as dedicated so most of that stuff went away …

Now I’m finding that work leads me to implement solutions that, can be bought off the shelf, but often are WAY beyond our budget (like 10 times beyond considerable). I’ve also found that I miss having my Huawei E960 to “hack” – just for fun and because it looks like someone might finally have a working toolchain, maybe.

Which brings everything in full circle: what I wonder is whether I should re-take up some involvment in open source projects, building custom hardware products, etc… I am not overly good at business marketing; I just don’t have the salesman gene. So there is limited fiscal reward. Work needs some of it: but there is danger in having an entirely custom built with no community support product. I believe in open source so contributing back is a good thing in my opinion (i.e. that’s a positive).

Where do I start? Hmmm that question is one that drives me to get out of the technology field all together. Which leaves me thinking that perhaps I need to find project or product that I’m truly passionate about and start on it as opposed to asking an open ended question.

And then sometimes it would be nice to simply preach the gospel and see where life goes.

It has been a little over two months now since I wrote anything of substance. A “busy” time. Or when not busy: complicated. You get that. It’s all good. So what do I mean by the subject? Well that’s relatively simple.

Actually no it’s not. Hmmm. This was meant to be an easy post before bed.

Ok. So over ANZAC day (and there abouts) a few of us went to PNG. For two things:

1. The PNG National Rally
2. Walk the Kokoda Track

Both of those events were, and continue to be, inspiring – for vastly different reasons. Reasons that I will not try to write down. It just wont be right, accurate, meaningful, lasting, etc… they are living inspirations.

That sounds korny. Great! That was the then. So moving on to the now.

I literally flew home into a whirlwind of personal fluff: work dramas were rife and much more importantly there is the “Prue Chronicles” (a name I have just coined)… Have you ever been in a situation where you don’t have a choice about what to do? Did it bother you…? In the interests of keeping a little privacy, I’m being vague: This book of the chronicle will be ending soon. The main plot line is done. Just the last few pages to read… And I’m happy/content/consenting with the finish. No problems with that. BUT: It really bothers me there was no real choice! Or that’s what I had simplified things to be.

What I think is really on my mind is: there is always a choice. And that holds true with the above. Just sometimes there is only one option that you will consider picking. In the end I can be objective: I finally get what I’ve wanted since the start of the year and maybe a bit longer. You can’t complain about that .

And coming up next we have The Rickshaw Run in Winter 2010. Basically it’s a 3000km ride in an auto-rickshaw. And it’s going to be FANTASTIC. I’m in the market for fundraising ideas: for the charity donation section. (Or if you’re keen to sponsor for some other reason that’d be great too – note there are some restrictions). So if you’ve got some ideas please tell me.

Oh and I intend to learn a language from each continent – no double ups allowed. English, for example, can ONLY be used for one continent. And English is English there is no distinction between US and UK. Blah blah blah… there is only one, at a push, two people that will actually care I’ve made rules. But there you go.

And then I think we’re going to enter The Shoout Out.

And then…
And then…

Well you get the picture. Living life means it moves on (at a speedy laden Riskshaw pace of 25km/hr).

I guess I could just subscribe to the Day of Death calendar (TV ads at this time of night are … unusual????) and plan it all out – but where is the fun in that? If I could only take one thing out of the last 2 months of “life changing stuff” it would be: no more planning!

Done.

If you are using the WordPress plugin Contact-Form-7 on a Webserver that is not configured as a mail server you will get an error.

By default the error is: Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.

The only solution I have found is to install, on my Ubuntu Server(s), a sendmail provider (i.e. sendmail, exim, postfix, etc…). After which the error goes away.

After my little rant I decided to look deeper into the history and workings of the current political system. Which turned into more of a deeper look into different political systems, strengths, weaknesses, and how they fit in with my particular view points. But once I got passed that I started reading about the Philosophy of Democracy. You know what: Democracy is good!

I know. That’s not an overly astounding conclusion. But it is worth-while questioning if the system you have always known is actually correct.

I’ve spent three days reading about Australian Federation and the Australian Constitution. I can hardly summarise that. However I have come to understand I would need to change the Australian Constitution in order to fully enact my more radical ideas. Such an action is not unprecedented; and even allowed for in the Constitution. But requires an enormously intricate majority vote: Majorities in both Houses of Government plus a people’s majority vote plus a majority of state based majorities.

Of course the only real way to achieve that is to be in a position to introduce a bill for referendum into the sitting government… Where I go from here I don’t know just yet. But I feel strangely invigorated to “try and make a difference”… which could make the next few years very interesting.

I must start this post with two things: 1) an apology – I truly am sorry I have to write this; and 2) a warning – This is filled with political ranting. Run away now if you value your sanity. But there is also some Einstein.

Now that I’ve managed to warn all would be readers. Behold with me the absurdity that appears to be Australian politics and political debate. It’s off the rails. Totally. What would you say if I said: “The leaders of our political parties are Kevin and Malcolm”! (alphabetical order used). Seriously? How serious can we be if their names are Kevin and Malcolm. But that was not my question – the question is what would you say? I expect from the last months worth of politics that people would go “hey, yeah, they’re … names”.

COME ON! WHO CARES?

The answer should be: “what’s your point”. This should be a non-issue. And while, in truth, there are no name slinging matches – the popularist perception that “name slinging” is valid political debate is all the rage.

Kevin is a Toxic Bore!

Oh please! Don’t get me started. He is the PM of the country – not the MC of the Melbourne International Comedy Gala. (Sorry to all Accountants). I bet your Accountant is also a Toxic Bore. By the same logic you should start complaining about them doing your taxes.

So what does that all mean? We the public are not informed by political debate. I was watching Q&A (on ABC) this evening. And honestly, the idea is great, but every time I watch the panel contains a member for parliament from Liberal and Labor. And every time they end up having policy debates or debating the latest irrelevant slinging match between each other. AND NOT ANSWERING THE ACTUAL QUESTION!

Thus I am losing my sanity. Would it be so hard for our elected representatives to take the issue(s) presented to them by we the public and solve them without getting caught up in poisonous waffle? Kevin is not the Toxic Bore. Political rhetoric is. In my opinion this is all quickly engaging the popularist mass and dis-heartening the passionate.

The buck doesn’t stop there either.

Kevin went and wrote this wonderful literary piece “The Global Financial Crisis“. It is a well written essay. Worthy of reading. Not to steal the punch line, but the solution, is to re-institute, with some paint, the financial mechanisms that were outed by the mechanisms that have now failed.

To quote Einstein – and to turn this rant into something more pointed:

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

My rant legitimisation will come later.

Solving the GFC (is very important); but solving it by perpetuating another cycle of boom-then-bust is not genius and it most assuredly is not a solution. Do I have a solution – mmm tricky and hence comes part 2 to this post.

I got so sick of my sanity being abused that earlier this week I researched the process of forming a political party. A party made of young members passionate about full non-rhetoric disclosure (which I would imagine some reckon they already try and do). I even went so far as to work out a list of policy areas and assess the likely-hood of having a successful tri-partisan parliament after the next election. Then came the inevitable lack of motivation-time (i.e. time to motivate myself during). And finally came a comment by John Symond this evening, on Q&A, when discussing the Rudd-Whitlamite similarities and differences.

Paraphrasing: … the major issue with the Whitlam government was the members of the front bench; they lacked real management experience; and Australia paid the price for it …

I have long held the view: The young should run, and the old should advise. (Run: as in operate, manage, direct, etc…). While Symond’s statement does not preclude that ideology; it certainly highlights the fault when used for “back seat driving”. I have no advisors. All I have is inexperienced honest intentions. If I wanted to pursue a true 3rd political party I should have advice from people who have experience; otherwise Australia will pay the price. And someone will be ranting about this fictional 3rd party.

More Einsteinisms:

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

Ideological passion is great; many things have been achieved for all through people pursuing ideology. As as such I would call out Einstein as being wrong. However, undoubtedly, Einstein was talking about science. Not ideology. Where it is most imperative that a fact is seen as fact not as desired truth.

Action is analogous to fact. Actions are a response to what is. As an aside it is important to note: They maybe conceived to bring about what should be.

To respond to something one also needs to understand that thing. Herein lies my sanity. The action I must take is to first understand that which I wish to mould. Get out and learn what aged care patients need; empathise with people under debt; experience the roadblocks in teaching; take action on climate change; learn about finance… and so on.

Will I still run off and form a political party: not likely.

Will I do all the above “understand” exercises: yes (or at least some of them).

What then? Well then I will be in a better position to judge what is and hence in a better position to take action.