I was surprised however to see that such a learned disciple of the Lord Jesus
Christ was advocating to prolong the agony, pain and suffering of the
vulnerable in our community.
My wife has a form of cancer for which there is no cure. Fiona suffers greatly
every day and yet is a tower of strength and inspiration to those who know her
and a beacon of hope to cancer sufferers around the
world.
Despite this, Fiona knows that at some point the pain is going to be too great,
even for her, after many years of suffering the pain will be overwhelming.
Your position on this legislation directly advocates prolonged suffering of
many, many beautiful people in our community is directly at odds with Jesus'
most valuable teachings - compassion.
We would like the opportunity to meet with you this week to both discuss this
issue and invite you to come and live with us for a month in our home.
This offer provides you with an opportunity to answer the question from 1
John 2:3-6 - how would Jesus walk in our shoes?
It's only a couple of blocks from the Cathedral, you could even walk daily with
our young children to TCC - they would appreciate such a wonderful learning
opportunity and they have many, many questions that need answering.
Our home is inviting and comfortable. We value compassion, music, learning,
community volunteering and sport. Our library is well stocked with
what I expect is the best personal library in Central Queensland.
Whilst staying with us you will not only gain an understanding of how people
with incurable cancer suffer but you can join us, walking in Jesus' footsteps
as we provide food, tea and coffee for the homeless on the waterfront.
Please let me know a time when the three of us can meet to discuss this.
Thank you in advance with love from Craige and Fiona.
There was some kerfuffle in
2020 over the use of the term master in git, the
origins of the term were resolutely
settled
so I set about renaming my primary branches to other words.
The one that most people seemed to be using was main, so I started using it
too. While main was conveniently brief, it still felt inadequate. Something
was wrong and it kept bubbling away in the background.
The word that kept percolating through was consensus.
I kept dismissing it for all the obvious reasons, such as it was too long, too
unwieldy, too obscure or just simply not used commonly enough to be familiar
or well understood.
The word was persistent though and consensus kept coming back.
One morning recently, I was staring at a git tree when the realisation
slapped me in the face that in a git workflow the primary / master / main
branches reflected a consensus point in that workflow.
Consensus:
Decisions are reached in a dialogue between equals
That realisation settled it pretty hard for me, consensus not only accurately
reflected the point in the workflow but was also the most correct English word
for what that branch represented.
I'm making an effort to try and keep my reading more contemporary this year and
this is the book I've started with - an insight into the Unschooling movement,
a movement I was wholly unaware of.
Akilah's first-person writing uses her family's journey through unschooling to
illustrate the traps, setbacks, success and triumphs her family has experienced
along the way.
Our family defines unschooling as a child-trusting, anti-oppression,
liberatory, love-centered approach to parenting and caregiving. As
unschoolers, the four of us operate with a core belief that children own
themselves and that parents and other adults work with children to nurture
their confident autonomy not their ability to obey adults’ directives.
-- Akilah S. Richards
There are plenty of parenting nuances I'd already picked up along the way but
many I had not thought about deliberately or had collected as a considered
approach which I found insightful. There was also a lot of completely new
perspectives on parenting which I found refreshing and intuitive.
If we can accept any form of oppression, we are susceptible to all forms of
oppression. That mindset is imperative in our efforts to raise free people,
because we are retraining ourselves to spot the ways we participate in
oppression
-- Akilah S. Richards
Both Akilah's journey, the lessons learned and the insights that she brings
ring strongly of the Socratic notion that to change the world, we must start
with ourselves. It's much easier to focus our energies externally at
politicians or corporations but if we do not start with ourselves and those we
raise, we are just perpetuating the problems, not removing them.
This is why raising free people work is revolutionary. It’s both pushback and
buildup; it is protest but also pivoting. It’s getting mad and frustrated and
deciding exactly what to do to feel better and to live better, to not just
fight against oppression and injustice but to facilitate freedom and
prioritize joy.
-- Akilah S. Richards
"Raising free people" has been and continues to be the over-arching ethos of
my approach to parenting, which is what initially attracted me to this book.
While I did certainly get a lot self-congratulatory moments where the author
made some key points I was already all over, there were also plenty of times I
felt rightly called out for having missed and where I need to do better.
This is not only a highly recommended book to read but also one I'll be keeping
handy to re-read and use as an occasional reference and touchstone.
This is not a new book, having been published in 2010 but it's a fairly recent
discovery for me.
I was never part of the straight edge scene here in Australia but was
certainly aware of some of the more prominent bands and music in the punk scene
in general. I've always had an ear for music with a political edge.
When it came to the straight edge scene I knew sweet FA. So that aspect of this
book was pure curiousity. What attracted me to this work was the subject of
radical sobriety and it's lived experience amongst politically active people.
In life, if you decide to forgo something that everybody else does, it gives
you a perspective on society that that you wouldn't have if you were just
engaging. It teaches you a lot about the world.
-- Ian MacKaye
This was one of the first parts of the book to really pop out at me. This rang
true for my lived experience in other parts of my life where I'd forgone things
that everyone else does. There were costs in not engaging but Ian is otherwise
correct.
While entirely clear eyed about the problems of inebriation amongst
Australian activists and in wider society as a whole, the titular concept of
sober living for the revolution had not previously resonated with me.
But then I realised that if you do not speak that language, you recognise
that they are not talking to you... In short, if you don't speak the language
of violence, you are released from violence. This was a very profound
discovery for me.
-- Ian MacKaye
While my quotes are pretty heavily centered on one individual, there are about
20 contributors from Europe, the middle east and both North and South America
provding reasonably diverse perspective on the music but more importantly
the inspiration and positive impacts of radical sobriety on their communities.
As someone who was reading primarilly for the sober living insights, the book's
focus on the straight edge scene was quite heavy to wade through but the
insights gained were worth the musical history lessons.
The only strategy for sharing good ideas that succeeds unfailingly... is the
power of example — if you put “ecstatic sobriety” into action in your life,
and it works, those who sincerely want similar things will join in.
-- Crimethinc
Overall this book pulled together a number of threads I'd been pulling on
myself over my adult life and brought them into one comical phrase: lucid
bacchanalism.
I was also particularly embarassed to have not previously identified alcohol
consumption as not merely a recreation but yet another insidious form of
consumerism.
No doubt how to re-invigorate our economy is high on your mind, among other
priorities in this time of crisis.
As you're acutely aware, the pandemic we're experiencing has accelerated a
long-term high unemployment trajectory we were already on due to industry
retraction, automation, off-shoring jobs etc.
Now is the right time to enact changes that will bring long-term crisis
resilience, economic stability and prosperity to this nation.
Introduce a 1% tax on all financial / stock / commodity market transactions.
Use 100% of that to fund a Universal Basic Income for all adult Australian
citizens.
Funding a Universal Basic Income will bring:
Economic resilience in times of emergency (bushfire, drought, pandemic)
Removal of the need for government financial aid in those emergencies
Removal of all forms of pension and unemployment benefits
A more predictable, reduced and balanced government budget
Dignity and autonomy to those impacted by a economic events / crisis
Space and security for the innovative amongst us to take entrepreneurial risks
A growth in social, artistic and economic activity that could not happen otherwise
This is both simple to collect and simple to distribute to all tax payers. It
can be done both swiftly and sensibly, enabling you to remove the Job Keeper
band aid and it's related budgetary problems.
This is an opportunity to be seized, Mr Morrison.
There is also a second opportunity.
Post World War II, we had the Snowy River scheme. Today we have the housing
affordability crisis and many Australians will never own their own home but a
public building programme to provide 25% of housing will create a permanent
employment and building boom and resolve the housing affordability crisis, over
time.
If you cap repayments for those in public housing to 25% of their income, there
will also be more disposable income circulating through the economy, creating
prosperous times for all Australians.
Once the build completes, you're ready to launch Daedalus Flight:
$ ./result/bin/daedalus
To verify that you have in fact built Daedalus Flight, first head to the
Daedalus menu then About Daedalus. You should see a title such as
"DAEDALUS 1.0.0". The second check, is to press [Ctl]+d to access Daedalus
Diagnostocs and your Daedalus state directory should have mainnet_flight
at the end of the path.
If you've got these, give yourself a pat on the back and grab yourself a
refreshing bevvy while you wait for blocks to sync.
I also copy both to the SD card at this point as the SM-T710 is an awful device
to work with and in many random cases will not work with ADB. When this
happens, I fall back to the SD card.
4 - Boot into recovery mode
I power the device off, then power it back into recovery mode by holding down
[home]+[volume up]+[power].
5 - Wipe the existing installation
Press Wipe then Advanced Wipe.
Select:
Dalvik / Art Cache
System
Data
Cache
Swipe Swipe to Wipe at the bottom of the screen.
Press Back to return to the Advanced Wipe screen.
Press the triangular "back" button once to return to the Wipe screen.
6 - Format the device
Press Format Data.
Type yes and press blue check mark at the bottom-right corner to commence
the format process.
Press Back to return to the Advanced Wipe screen.
Press the triangular "back" button twice to return to the main screen.
7 - Install LineageOS ROM and other optional ROMs
Press Install, select the images you wish to install and swipe make it go.
Reboot when it's completed and you should be off and running wtth a brand new
LineageOS 16 on this tablet.
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
deployment.keys = {
# Database key for TT-RSS
tt-rss-dbpass = {
text = "vaetohH{u9Veegh3caechish"; # Password, generated using pwgen -yB 24
user = "tt_rss"; # User to own the key file
group = "wheel"; # Group to own the key file
permissions = "0640"; # Key file permissions
};
};
}
The file's path /run/keys/tt-rss-dbpass is determined by the elements. So
deployment.keys determines the initial path of /run/keys and the next
element tt-rss-dbpass is a descriptive name provided by the stanza's author to
describe the key's use and also provide the final file name.
Now that we have described the TT-RSS service in
tt-rss_for_NixOps.nix
and the required credentials in
secrets.nix
we need to pull it all together for deployment. We achieve that in this case
by importing both these files into our existing host definition:
To deploy TT-RSS to your NixOps managed host, you merely run the deploy command
for your already configured host and deployment, which would look like this:
$ nixops deploy -d MyDeployment --include myhost
You should now have a running TT-RSS server and be able to login with the
default admin user (admin: password).
In my nixos-examples repo
I have a
servers
directory with some example files and a README with information and
instructions. You can use two of the files to generate a TT-RSS VM to take a
quick poke around. There is also an example of how you can deploy TT-RSS in
production using NixOps, as per this post.
If you wish to dig a little deeper, I have my production deployment over at
mio-ops.
I had a need to deploy vim and my particular preferred
configuration both system-wide and across multiple systems (via
NixOps).
I started by creating a file named vim.nix that would be imported into either
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix or an appropriate NixOps Nix file. This example
is a stub that shows a number of common configuration items:
with import <nixpkgs> {};
vim_configurable.customize {
name = "vim"; # Specifies the vim binary name.
# Below you can specify what usually goes into `~/.vimrc`
vimrcConfig.customRC = ''
" Preferred global default settings:
set number " Enable line numbers by default
set background=dark " Set the default background to dark or light
set smartindent " Automatically insert extra level of indentation
set tabstop=4 " Default tabstop
set shiftwidth=4 " Default indent spacing
set expandtab " Expand [TABS] to spaces
syntax enable " Enable syntax highlighting
colorscheme solarized " Set the default colour scheme
set t_Co=256 " use 265 colors in vim
set spell spelllang=en_au " Default spell checking language
hi clear SpellBad " Clear any unwanted default settings
hi SpellBad cterm=underline " Set the spell checking highlight style
hi SpellBad ctermbg=NONE " Set the spell checking highlight background
match ErrorMsg '\s\+$' "
let g:airline_powerline_fonts = 1 " Use powerline fonts
let g:airline_theme='solarized' " Set the airline theme
set laststatus=2 " Set up the status line so it's coloured and always on
" Add more settings below
'';
# store your plugins in Vim packages
vimrcConfig.packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
start = [ # Plugins loaded on launch
airline # Lean & mean status/tabline for vim that's light as air
solarized # Solarized colours for Vim
vim-airline-themes # Collection of themes for airlin
vim-nix # Support for writing Nix expressions in vim
];
# manually loadable by calling `:packadd $plugin-name`
# opt = [ phpCompletion elm-vim ];
# To automatically load a plugin when opening a filetype, add vimrc lines like:
# autocmd FileType php :packadd phpCompletion
};
}
I then needed to import this file into my system packages stanza:
environment = {
systemPackages = with pkgs; [
someOtherPackages # Normal package listing
(
import ./vim.nix
)
];
};
This will then install and configure Vim as you've defined it.
If you'd like to give this build a run in a non-production space, I've written vim_vm.nix with which you can build a VM, ssh into afterwards and test the Vim configuration:
$ nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A vm --arg configuration ./vim_vm.nix
...
$ export QEMU_OPTS="-m 4192"
$ export QEMU_NET_OPTS="hostfwd=tcp::18080-:80,hostfwd=tcp::10022-:22"
$ ./result/bin/run-vim-vm-vm
Then, from a another terminal:
$ ssh nixos@localhost -p 10022
And you should be in a freshly baked NixOS VM with your Vim config ready to be
used.
I've been using GitLab for years but recently opted to switch to
Gitea, primarily because of timing and I was looking for
something more lightweight, not because of any particular problems with GitLab.
To deploy Gitea via NixOps I chose to craft a Nix
file
(example)
that would be included in a host definition. The linked and below definition
provides a deployment of Gitea, using Postgres, Nginx, ACME
certificates and ReStructured
Text rendering with syntax highlighting.
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
deployment.keys = {
# An example set of keys to be used for the Gitea service's DB authentication
gitea-dbpass = {
text = "uNgiakei+x>i7shuiwaeth3z"; # Password, generated using pwgen -yB 24
user = "gitea"; # User to own the key file
group = "wheel"; # Group to own the key file
permissions = "0640"; # Key file permissions
};
};
}
The file's path /run/keys/gitea-dbpass is determined by the elements. So
deployment.keys determines the initial path of /run/keys and the next
element gitea-dbpass is a descriptive name provided by the stanza's author to
describe the key's use and also provide the final file name.
Now that we have described the Gitea service in
gitea_for_NixOps.nix
and the required credentials in
secrets.nix
we need to pull it all together for deployment. We achieve that in this case
by importing both these files into our existing host definition:
To deploy Gitea to your NixOps managed host, you merely run the deploy command
for your already configured host and deployment, which would look like this:
$ nixops deploy -d MyDeployment --include myhost
You should now have a running Gitea server and be able to create an initial
admin user.
In my nixos-examples repo
I have a
version-management
directory with some example files and a README with information and
instructions. You can use two of the files to generate a Gitea VM to take a
quick poke around. There is also an example of how you can deploy Gitea in
production using NixOps, as per this post.
If you wish to dig a little deeper, I have my production deployment over at
mio-ops.
