So it’s Chinese New Year, we wandered over to the Arcadian in Birmingham City Centre and managed to catch the Dragon Dance, which I got a video and some photos of. They’ll be appearing soon.

I’m also putting up some photos from our trip to New York last year, they’re already on Flickr and more may appear. I’m also planning a rush of Duran Duran concert photos, as I’ve said before, watch this space!

I’ve looked into using Google Video to post a few clips I have, but I’m not too happy with them. First, there’s no user homepage like Flickr, second (according to the forums) it seems to take forever to get the videos posted.

So I’m looking at two other sites, YouTube and Vimeo.

There’s all sorts of good content on both and they allow user homepage’s like Flickr. Vimeo doesn’t do groups but YouTube does, also, Vimeo converts everything to Quicktime if it’s not already, but does make the original available.

On the whole, YouTube seems much better organised than Vimeo.

If you’ve seen the news today, you’ve probably noticed that BBC programme tonight about the survey of the public’s views on Evolution, ID, and Creationism. The BBC News article can be found here.

Now, statistics can be made to say almost anything you please if you know what you’re about, but as a Taoist I’ll take a simple view.

It’s interesting to note that all entries bar Evolution are listed in descending percentage order. Which says to me that Evolution was deliberately placed last in the lists, presumably to help the story’s angle.

Now, the simplest interpretation of the statistics is that the largest single group of the 2000 people surveyed accept Evolution. If we ignore the undecideds, then Evolution is ahead of both ID and Creationism combined by a 9% margin. But, for example, this survey could be used to grind the same axe against Intelligent Design.

Interestingly, the over 55’s are less likely to accept Evolution, which gives a hint that a closer study of the younger people surveyed could reveal more insights.

I think a far more useful result would be found by a series of surveys over a period of time. A single snapshot tells us very little, what matters more is the trend.

Well, I’ve got a Flickr photostream going now, You can find the link to it on the right hand side of the page, under My Other Stuff. Only a couple of photos of Sarehole Mill at the moment, but I plan to boost my Tolkien cred quite soon.

Is it me or is Google getting into everything?

It turns out you can have a Google account that means you can use their services not only for your E-Mail and Newsgroups, but for RSS aggregation, storing your bookmarks, news alerts, even Video hosting!

It’s the final one that interests me the most, as I have one or two videos that I’d like to put on the net, but nowhere to host them. It looks like you can upload from Linux, Windows and the Mac and the video plays in Flashplayer. As it’s part of Google, I wouldn’t put my home movies on there, but it looks useful. As they say, watch this space! (Or more exactly, the space under My Other Stuff on the right hand side)

Both Xenia and myself have had acupuncture, so for me, this programme is very interesting.

They’ve shown a guy having open heart surgery using acupuncture to help with the pain, the surgeons have used it many times. They also use it to reduce the side effects of western medicines.

According to the programme, there is now scientific evidence that Acupuncture works which, I feel, vindicates our own use of it.

I remember the first time I had it done, I felt very odd afterwards, and both Xenia’s and my own experiences with Traditional Chinese Medicine have left me in no doubt as to it’s power!

I was in Waterstones over the weekend taking a nose at the Mind & Spirit section. I saw a few Tao related books that caught my eye, but I didn’t feel particularly motivated to read them. I found the same with the Python books in the computing section. Now, I know that I can get plenty of Taoist and Python texts for free on the Internet, but this made me revisit a question I’d mentally skirted a week or so ago: Is it possible to read too much on a subject?

Now I think about it, how many books on a subject do you need? The core book of Taoism is the Tao Te Ching and it’s a good idea to read Chuang Tsu as well. I started with The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, then the TTC, then eventually Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. With programming all you really need is a couple of good books, I usually find that one won’t cover all the aspects of a language.

I think that too much reading on a subject even if you’re trying to apply the teachings can make it too intellectual and dry and suck the life out of it. Just as too many cooks spoil the broth, reading too many authors takes the joy of discovery out of the subject. I also suspect ego involvement, i.e. “I’ve read all these books, and you haven’t, so I’m better than you”.

Knowledge doesn’t equal understanding or wisdom, you can only read so much. You need to put it into practice, see it in the real world, take what you’ve learned and strut your stuff with it. Take a few knocks, maybe, that’s the best way to understand, by doing.

Hmm, I think I’ll stay with the books I’ve got for now.

Between Eleventh Hour and a thread I got very briefly involved in over at the Tea House, I’ve been sitting and thinking about Taoism, Science and Religion.

Taoist thought tends to tally very well with science and, in my opinion, science can help illuminate the Tao. The scientific method is a very useful tool for Taoists, in fact, I heard it said that many early Taoists were the scientists of their time.

Science is less friendly to traditional religions, they’ve suffered a withering hail of fire over the years, but this is to be expected as they’re inflexible and based on a personal diety. This diety was responsibile for everything folk didn’t understand, a “God of the Gaps”. Of course with science bringing it’s light into all sorts of places, there are less gaps now.

I know some people say that religion’s place is hand in hand with science, but I don’t see it so much. Carl Sagan mentioned in one of his books that the previous pope tried to influence scientists not to look back before the Big Bang, in light of that I get the distinct feeling the religions would quickly try to get into the driving seat.

On the other hand, I think the Watercourse Way would not be a bad thing for the scientific community. More on this later.

I made a point of watching the new Patrick Stewart series “Eleventh Hour” on ITV1 last night. It’s pretty good, after a constant stream of programs promoting a supernatural view of the universe (e.g. Most Haunted, etc) it’s nice to see the more scientific view of things presented.

Well, I finally got confirmation today that I’m booked on a Linux Administration FastTrack with OpenAdvantage at the end of February.

I’m pretty pleased with this as gives me a huge push towards my eventual goal of LPI certification!

So I’m sat here thinking about a new tool I’ve coded using the Python language. It scans the centralised internet logs at our group of companies for web traffic according to certain parameters and if used for real could really get someone in serious trouble.

I wrote it for these reasons:
1. When management come looking for this sort of information we need to be able to actually give them an answer. If we can’t, it raises questions about our ability to manage the network.
2. We shouldn’t have to spend ages poring over logs to get this info. Sorry, we’ve got better things to do and we have to get an answer to them reasonably quickly. If we can’t do that? Well I already said it above.
3. If you’re putting yourself in a position to be busted by this thing, you’re out of line and it’s so bad somebody’s come to us for evidence.

I have good reasons for creating it, I can justify it, so why do I still feel uncomfortable about it?