Blog – Page 2 – JoeRess.com

Christmas is for children and those with children. Those of us who are too selfish, irresponsible, selfless or responsible to have children just get a bit of time off and an excuse to eat and drink a bit more than usual. Everyone is a winner and Christmas is great.

As an atheist it’s a bit uncomfortable to see all the Jesus stuff get thrown around but thankfully there is enough crass commercialism and obvious pagan symbolism to balance all of that. There is one elephant in the room that really gets to me though. Santa.

This is the point where I will lose most parents. “It’s just a bit of fun” or “lighten up, it’s part of the innocence of childhood” they’ll say to me. Innocence, indeed. And that’s the problem.

Children are essentially hard-wired to believe every word that their parents tell them. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective and indeed explains why something as illogical as religion persists into 2017. Children have absolute trust in their parents. This is the crux of the Santa problem.

If a child grows up believing that their parents will never lie to them and then one day they find out that Santa isn’t real, this has a deep effect on them. The faith that they had in their parents as Oracles of absolute truth is shattered. Suddenly they learn that it’s not just bad people who are dishonest; the people they love and respect the most in the world are capable of bare-faced lies. What does that mean for the adults who develop from these children?

Perhaps it’s overly dramatic to blame the impending collapse of western civilisation on a seemingly harmless white lie but I’m going to give it a go. If a child learns that it’s normal to lie, even to the people you love the most, the adult will deceive their way through life and everyone will suffer as a result.

There seems to be an axiom that some lies are necessary. Being polite when people ask awkward questions about whether they look fat etc. but to me truth is incredibly important. It’s the only hope we have as a species. Without truth we only have lies or post-truth which is a stupid way of saying lies.

So please stop lying to your children about Santa. The other parents will probably hate you but it’s a small price to pay to save humanity.

London UK Linux/podcaster meet up – Thursday Feb 26th at the Mulberry Bush pub (near Waterloo station)

London UK Linux/podcaster meet up – Thursday Feb 26th at the Mulberry Bush pub near Waterloo station from 6pm

In celebration of Scott’s visit to the UK, we have decided to organise a meet up. Confirmed attendees so far are Scott Newlon (mintCast), me (mintCast/Linux Luddites), jesse (Linux Luddites), Matthew Copperwaite (The Dick Turpin Road Show) ~~and Alan Pope (Ubuntu Podcast)~~

The plan is to have a relaxed and informal evening of drinks and conversation. We’ve reserved a booth with a table that should be perfect in a really nice pub on the South Bank, a few minutes from Waterloo Station. Everyone is welcome so please spread the word!

Directions to the Mulberry Bush

Leave Waterloo via the original main entrance in order to head towards the South Bank. The main entrance is found by turning left after coming through any of the ticket barriers, and is at the far end of the concourse beyond platform 18, on the right next to the lost luggage. Head through the glass doors and down the stone steps, if you find yourself on a bridge you’ve gone the wrong way, come back and look on your left for the glass doors.

Once down the steps head to your left, cross some zebra crossings and generally follow what is likely to be the main crowd towards the traffic lights to cross York Road. The aim is to stroll along Sutton Walk, the pedestrian walkway under the blue lattice bridge, towards the South Bank. Once under the bridge continue straight towards the Royal Festival Hall and you will shortly reach a T-junction with Belvedere road before you actually get to the hall.

Turn right and walk along that road – this is the home straight, except it’s the longest section of the trip! I’m afraid this part isn’t much to look at, you’ll pass the National Theatre, IBM and ITV and just when you think you’ve gone wrong, the Mulberry Bush will appear on your right hand side.

The route looks like this

The pub looks like this

To find the booth that we have reserved, walk to the end of the bar and look to your left.

Hopefully see you there!

A whole new year.

So here we are and it’s already 2015. People are making Back to the Future 2 jokes but not much else feels that different. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things over the last few nights while I’ve been lying there trying to sleep. This is the time of year when you have loads of great ideas and feel filled with motivation to actually see them through to fruition. Deep down you know it’s probably not going to happen but maybe having some spare time over the festive period, combined with the impending sense of dread that it’s almost time to go back to work blinds you to the harsh realities of life.

Anyway what am I planning then? Well the short answer is that by this time next year I plan to be in a position where I get paid for doing nothing. The slightly longer answer is that I plan to spend more time creating things and less time working hard in the freezing cold (or baking hot) to make other people rich. Some things are more important than money.

First up then I intend to start writing short updates about what I’ve been up to. This seems like as good a place as any to do that. I anticipate some very short posts that are barely longer than a tweet. I’m not aiming to have loads of people following my posts but it will be nice to be able to look back in the future and remember what I was thinking and doing.

I don’t believe in god and I don’t celebrate Christmas but I really love this time of year. It usually amounts to two and a bit weeks of late nights, heavy drinking and very few responsibilities. The way Christmas and new year fell this year meant that I took 16 days off work so it was no exception. For once I was actually able to be productive with the time and that has made me think back to previous new years. I honestly don’t remember very many of them and that’s why I thought it would be a good idea to start documenting my life. No one else will probably care or read this but I think I will really appreciate my own efforts one day when I look back and have some documentary evidence to fill the memory void left by all the drink and drugs that I have done over the years. I mention drugs but only in a historical sense. It must be nearly a decade since I did any illegal drugs, coincidentally around the same period of time since I became extremely fond of the second most socially acceptable drink based drug. I occasionally reap the benefits of caffeine but of course I am talking about alcohol. It’s really nice to be able to walk into a shop and buy my drugs legally, safe in the knowledge that they are regulated, strictly controlled and contain exactly what is printed on the bottle or can.

This new year’s eve was the quietest that I can remember. My soon to be wife had a cold and wasn’t in the mood for a party so we watched some strongman and 2014 Wipe before she got ready and got in bed shortly before the stroke of midnight. After wishing each other a happy new year she dropped off to sleep at about 12.30. Being in no mood to go to sleep myself I went for a short walk to experience the unbelievable number of fireworks that were still echoing around the sky half an hour into the new year before returning to take part in the HPR new year podcast marathon. I only lasted about an hour before I started flagging and called it a night. Good fun nonetheless and it was really cool that some people knew who I was. Just over a year of hard work doing Linux Luddites is starting to pay off.

I managed to take part in 5 podcasts during this festive break. First I recorded and produced Linux Luddites 31, starting the night I finished work for the year. Next was mintCast 215 followed by a surprise return of the Mind Tech Podcast – a show I used to do every week with an Apple fanboy until the 8 hour time difference and work got in the way. I’ve mentioned the HPR new year podcast marathon and I have just finished the initial edit of Linux Luddites 32. I’ve still got a bit of work left to do to it but it will be up by the time I go back to work. It’s nice that my holiday was bookended by two episodes of Linux Luddites because it’s the show I work the hardest to produce. It takes a lot of effort to produce it but it seems to be popular enough to justify that effort. For now.

I also managed to do most of the hard work of mixing The Knievel Dead‘s new album. There’s a fair bit still to do but I’ll write more about it when I can.

Hopefully my next update will come soon and hopefully it will be a lot shorter.