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That is so awesome, long live the Empire!
JudoGeek Blog
I received this email in today from my native New Zealand, it seems that New Zealand will now no longer be the first "civilised" nation to drop the "Innocent until proven guilty" approach to law! Thank goodness!
Of course, politicians have a knack of scrapping unpopular things to reintroduce them later when they think nobody is looking so the CFF shall need to keep an eagle eye on the Beehive.
Of course we don't know how much of this turn around is due to the #blackout campaign that got so much great publicity, but lets chalk one up to it anyway. :-)
Thanks NZ for staying just a little bit sane for a little bit longer!
Lance
Hi Lance Wicks, we thought you'd like to know that the S92A has been scrapped.
The Creative Freedom Foundation are celebrating tonight after National's announcement this afternoon that Section 92A will be scrapped, and that they will work towards finding an alternative.
Chris Keall at the NBR reports: "Prime Minister John Key has announced that the government will throw out the controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act and start again. Section 92A has been scrapped.". This is fantastic news, and it's great that Prime Minister John Key has taken a stand on this important issue. This draconian and naive law was originally championed by former-MP Labour's Judith Tizard. Now we need to help make some sensible copyright law that will protects artists and well as New Zealanders. The CFF are preparing to take part in this process.
Today is a victory for New Zealanders - artists and non-artists alike. The CFF thanks everyone of you who supported this movement: we couldn't have done it without you!
Further details at
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/story.html?id=231
Of course, politicians have a knack of scrapping unpopular things to reintroduce them later when they think nobody is looking so the CFF shall need to keep an eagle eye on the Beehive.
Of course we don't know how much of this turn around is due to the #blackout campaign that got so much great publicity, but lets chalk one up to it anyway. :-)
Thanks NZ for staying just a little bit sane for a little bit longer!
Lance
The NoseRub team have been hard at work and tonight the 0.8.2 release has been made available via SVN. Much has been done which prepares for the 0.9.x release, but this release brings with it a new admin interface and added services include NoseRub fotolog, seesmic, twitpic, skitch, github, google code and scratch.
Dirk will no doubt blog soon on the official Noserub Blog, but I was too excited not to post something quickly. :-)
So, everytime I have been plugging my iPhone in it has bleated about a software update, which I have been ignoring as I have Jailbroken the phone.
Last night I lost patience with it and decided to upgrade my phone to the latest code. I am not planning on leaving O2 (sadly) so I could just do the upgrade via iTunes, so I did.
Okay, you know what's happening don't you? Yep, complete wipe of my iPhone, everything gone. No problem restore... that worked for AppStore stuff. The next step was to Jailbreak it again with quickpwn, and this is when I got upset...
Yep, all the apps I had from Cydia were gone! I wish I had thought about this first. Ah well, manual re-install in probably not the end of the world as it'll end up with a cleaner device right?
To save my butt in future I decided to try APTBackup, which backs up a list of the Cydia apps and automates re-installation of apps, no data though ok.
Gave it a test try and you know what it didn't work. :-( Infinite reboot loop, which I notice a few other people have struck. I am going to try again, well the next time I need to.
Anyway... a reliable backup app for iPhone is needed I think, something that takes your data and apps would be cool.
Anyway... having done all that I learn that v3.0 of the Apple iPhone firmware is apparently due next week; typical eh?!
Last night I lost patience with it and decided to upgrade my phone to the latest code. I am not planning on leaving O2 (sadly) so I could just do the upgrade via iTunes, so I did.
Okay, you know what's happening don't you? Yep, complete wipe of my iPhone, everything gone. No problem restore... that worked for AppStore stuff. The next step was to Jailbreak it again with quickpwn, and this is when I got upset...
Yep, all the apps I had from Cydia were gone! I wish I had thought about this first. Ah well, manual re-install in probably not the end of the world as it'll end up with a cleaner device right?
To save my butt in future I decided to try APTBackup, which backs up a list of the Cydia apps and automates re-installation of apps, no data though ok.
Gave it a test try and you know what it didn't work. :-( Infinite reboot loop, which I notice a few other people have struck. I am going to try again, well the next time I need to.
Anyway... a reliable backup app for iPhone is needed I think, something that takes your data and apps would be cool.
Anyway... having done all that I learn that v3.0 of the Apple iPhone firmware is apparently due next week; typical eh?!
A little while back I wrote about Scratch ( Blog Entry here ) which is a fantastic visual programming environment designed for young people.
Since that post I have worked with my children and created a few more games, which you can find at http://scratch.mit.edu/users/lancew
You will notice that I have created a bunch of spelling games. These were built with and for my son, who although being one bright little guy has not been hitting 100% his spelling tests at school. He loves computer games, so I have been creating games for/with him using the words he is given to learn from School.
The result? He has got every word correct since we started creating games!
To me, this is perfect example of how finding the right way to teach the student is essential. My boy loves games, he knows we are being sneaky and making his spelling the game. He does not mind, he knows he has to learn them, so he does not mind, because the way we are doing it suits him. As a sports coach, this make sense to me, sometimes that is what you need to do, find a way to help someone do something they are finding difficult/dull.
The other positive is that my kids are being exposed to programming at a early age. They are becoming literate about software. They are gaining an understanding of what happens to create the Wii games they love and also the cartoons they love.
They are also picking up programming fundamental concepts. Scratch is teaching them about loops, conditionals, objects, etc.
I am a fan, a big fan of Scratch. And I'd like to help promote it's use with other kids/parents/teachers. Luckily, just such an opportunity is coming up... SCRATCH DAY!
Scratch Day is May 16th 2009, and I hope to organise an event here in the UK, I'd love to have some help, so if yu are interested, drop me an email!
Since that post I have worked with my children and created a few more games, which you can find at http://scratch.mit.edu/users/lancewYou will notice that I have created a bunch of spelling games. These were built with and for my son, who although being one bright little guy has not been hitting 100% his spelling tests at school. He loves computer games, so I have been creating games for/with him using the words he is given to learn from School.
The result? He has got every word correct since we started creating games!
To me, this is perfect example of how finding the right way to teach the student is essential. My boy loves games, he knows we are being sneaky and making his spelling the game. He does not mind, he knows he has to learn them, so he does not mind, because the way we are doing it suits him. As a sports coach, this make sense to me, sometimes that is what you need to do, find a way to help someone do something they are finding difficult/dull.
The other positive is that my kids are being exposed to programming at a early age. They are becoming literate about software. They are gaining an understanding of what happens to create the Wii games they love and also the cartoons they love.
They are also picking up programming fundamental concepts. Scratch is teaching them about loops, conditionals, objects, etc.
I am a fan, a big fan of Scratch. And I'd like to help promote it's use with other kids/parents/teachers. Luckily, just such an opportunity is coming up... SCRATCH DAY!
Scratch Day is May 16th 2009, and I hope to organise an event here in the UK, I'd love to have some help, so if yu are interested, drop me an email!