Local fuel prices

The other day I filled up with fuel. It wasn't cheap. As I drove away I wondered if there were a site where I could look up local fuel prices. When I got home, I did a search. There wasn't much. Not one of those I found could give me fuel prices at local filling stations. As you know, a few hundred meters between filling stations can mean a few cents per liter difference in price.

So I did a bit of research and came up with a concept. Basically it boils down to this: a site where filling stations can sign up for free and enter fuel prices and promotions. Users can search by postcode or postcode and suburb. Then I put some icing on the cake.

To show results, the page doesn't reload. Ajax does its magic. That means fast, really fast. Drop down select boxes populate from the database using Ajax as well. Clicking on the address of a filling station returned with the results will bring up a Google map showing the location of the filling station.

I knew from the start that getting filling stations to sign up would be difficult. I emailed all the fuel companies, handed business cards I had printed to some filling stations - nothing. It takes a while for anything online to take off, if it does. So, I'm still hopeful.

Go and have a look at Petrol Price Site and enter any Australian residential postcode - there are more than 16,000 in the database. Try 2100, 2300, 2320 or something like that.

The question is, how do I get filling stations to sign up?

The booze baron is your friend

When you took your first drink, who was it who saw to it that you grew up in a society where alcohol was part of everyday life and readily available? Why, the booze barons of course. And of course their booze baron fathers and booze baron grand fathers and... It took a lot of work over many centuries to see to it that the booze was there when you took your first drink. And society, then, as now, regarded booze as a grown up thing. And the booze barons made sure everybody knew it was a grown up thing - something for kids to aspire to. As you know, all kids want to be grown up. Why, you ask yourself now. But that's another story. Be that as it may, the booze was there when you took your first drink. You didn't like it at all, but hey, that was what grown ups and the cool crowd did. Remember the booze ads?

Then, when you were a young buck who drank with his friends after work and over weekends, who saw to it that the liquor stores were open seven days a week, from early morning to late at night? That didn't happen by itself, you know. The business hours of many other business concerns were not as liberal, even though some of them would have liked it to be. Those people didn't campaign with such diligence and persistence for their customers as the booze barons did. And their pockets were not as deep. There are always politicians for sale if the price is right. And the booze barons didn't skimp in their efforts to remove all barriers between their customers and their product. Remember how much of a man you felt when you managed to out-drink your friends? Those booze ads depicting a heavy drinker as a real man had something to do with that. Alcohol was the stuff showing one was a man and the essence of having a good time. The world was your oyster and your tankard was always full.

Every time one of your friends was fined for driving under the influence his notch went up in your estimation and your circle of friends drank to that. When one of your friends went to jail for causing an accident which led to severe injuries while drunk, you drank to that. Booze was never in short supply and society had nothing bad to say about the inebriate. On the TV, in the newspapers and magazines, the booze barons told everyone booze was what made the world go round. And, like everyone else, you swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.

When an acquaintance, as drunk as a judge, took on a truck on his motorcycle and lost, it didn't phase you one bit. Your circle discussed it over many beers and decided it had most likely been the truckie's fault. There was more than enought booze to smooth over these few rough patches in life. You all drank a toast to the recently departed acquaintance and forgot about him. This type of thing was never mentioned by the booze barons in their ads, so it must have been a fluke. No need to give it too much thought.

Remember when you got your first tattoo? You went to the bar and proudly showed it off. Yvonne, who was always at the bar, was very impressed by it. She had several tattoos and body piercings. Everyone had many drinks to your tattoo. As if they needed a reason. There was booze aplenty and life was good. That night Yvonne gave you Herpes - like a booze baron, Herpes is a friend for life.

Then you were fired from a job for the first time because of booze. What a bummer. You went to the pub and had a drink to it with your friends. There were several among them who had the same experience. One can always get a new job, they assured you. And you drank and forgot about being fired from your job. Thank you booze barons for the nectar of the gods which can make a man feel good when bad things happen.

An uncle on your mother's side died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis. You knew him well as a kid. He always used to be friendly with you. Well, a man had to die of something. That night you had a few to his memory. It was so good that there was always booze to give life a golden haze. With life as it was, one surely needed it. Running out of booze was not on the cards - the booze barons saw to that. Oh well, one thing less to worry about. Thank heavens for the booze barons.

Things at home slowly got worse and worse. Your wife couldn't understand why you kept losing jobs because of booze. In the end you went on an unemployment benefit and your wife left you, taking the kids with her. There was only one thing to look forward to - your next drink.

Years went by and there was just one thing you could depend on - there will always be booze to take the sting out of life. Thank you booze barons, you said, without you my life would have been lost.

It came on quite suddenly, your slide into near permanent sickness was fast. One week your liver still coped, with the occasional hiccup, then the whites of your eyes started turning yellow. Your GP felt your abdomen and said you had a four cm liver. He sent off some tests, which showed your liver was no longer coping. Your GP said you had alcoholic liver cirrhosis. Just like your uncle, you thought. But there were liver transplants, you thought. Not unless you had been completely off the booze for two years, they told you. Who could do that? You became sicker and sicker. You felt worse than a 1000 hangovers can make a man feel. Well, the booze was still there. And your unemployment payments which now increased because you were chronically ill saw to it that there was always more than enough booze in your house. Your family heard you were, what they called terminal, and your kids, now grown up, started to visit you. You had so much catching up to do. And then you were more in hospital than out of it.

Now, as you are drifting in and out of consciousness, you have the solace of knowing that the booze barons will be there, too, for your youngest son who dropped out of school and is showing all the signs of following in your footsteps. He is in good hands. You can close your eyes on a life well spent knowing your kids will be taken care of. Thank you, booze barons.

The drinking season

The drinking season is upon us again. Around the world, alcohol deaths will spike again. Unless the perception about drinkers, who are seen to be smart, manly, fun-loving, cool, adventurous, etc., changes, alcohol will keep on winning. Here are the facts:

Alcohol is a slow, slowly but strongly addictive poison which kills about 3000/year in Australia, a great many more world-wide. Its social costs run into billions of dollars annually. But that's not my point.

Those who benefit from the sale of alcohol know this, yet they keep on producing, transporting, advertising and selling it. The only possible conclusion is that they care more about the money they make from their dealings with alcohol than about the deaths and social cost incurred by imbibing. When confronted with these facts they have only the drug dealer's lament to offer,

"if I don't do it, someone else will do it."
That's not my point, either. There will always be rotters.

How should we label the act of buying a slow poison from people who couldn't care less if their customers lived or died and these customers themselves? Stupid, ignorant, moronic, idiotic, all these come to mind. Not one of the labels traditionally associated with drinkers fits.

So, moron, if you want to drink yourself to death, by all means, go ahead, enrich those who couldn't care less about you and drink yourself out of a job, a family and into your grave. Try not to kill anyone else while doing so. Oh, I see, you'll be drunk and can't guarantee that you won't take anyone with you.

Let's all thank the authorities involved for this state of affairs. Many of them are drinkers and many of them make a pretty buck from alcohol.

Change the perception of a drinker from a cool hero to a fool and see alcohol consumption declining. Nobody likes to be a fool.

Wikileaks

The politicians are confused: publishing things embarrassing to them does not put anyone's life or national security at risk. Moreover, invoking national security just to prevent the world from seeing their stupidity and arrogance is morally repugnant. Taxpayers pay for what these self important blockheads send to each other. One would think these taxpayers have a right to see what they pay for. Obviously not. The world over national security is most likely overwhelmingly used for documents that don't have any potential to harm the national security of the countries involved at all. Many of these documents will have the potential to embarrass politicians and bureaucrats, but that has nothing to do with national security.

It is strange, but fact, that wherever people are in power, they will be able to get an army of lick spittle toadies to do their morally repugnant bidding. In the Assange affair these empowered minions are not lacking in numbers. Shame on you! Yes, all of you. You are a stench in the nostrils of God and of mankind.

Julian Assange complains that he has been abandoned by his country, more specifically its government. Julian Assange should know better than to complain about that. He only had his country's, and every other country's, government support when he was a faceless member of the voting cattle and they didn't know him by name or in any way at all. That support only consisted of his government not working actively against him, if he really needed them he would have been on his own. In the cartoon strip of The Little King, the little king once said to one of his minions that kings don't kill each other. They send their people to kill each other. Politicians in every country have a far greater affinity for politicians of other countries than for the people of their own country. Like hyenas, they are of the same species. It should come as no surprise to Julian Assange that the politicians in his own country are willing to throw him under the bus to help out politicians whom Assange embarrassed, even if these embarrassed politicians are from other countries. This is just the way it is.

Some may find it strange that Wikileaks, and its public face, Julian Assange, is treated hostilely by the media. This is not strange at all. Wikileaks succeeded in doing what the world's combined media could not do, and they don't like that. So, the media of the world joined the lick spittle toadies in doing the bidding of the politicians. How absolutely and horribly disgusting they are. They should be ashamed of themselves.

In all my many years this is the first time I've ever heard of Interpol getting involved in apprehending a possible rapist. Note that there is no talk of aggravated rape, physical assault, serial raping, murder or injuries. Did Julian Assange decide that raping goes well with leaking diplomatic communications - might as well, in for a penny, in for a pound? Does he have a history of violence and rape? Or is this something cooked up at the bidding of a politician somewhere?

So, what can one do when these bullies behave like Nazis and communist dictators to silence a small group of people who embarrassed them? If they get away with it, it is another nail in the coffin of freedom of information, all in the name of national security. I believe they believe the odds are so overwhelmingly stacked in their favour that there is no risk to them at all in persecuting wikileaks. The only risk to them is in continued leaks. Are they right? What a sad state of affairs this world is in.

The alcohol non sequitur

More than three thousand people die yearly in Australia due to alcohol. That's just more than eight a day. Add to this the immeasurable social consequences of alcohol and you'd think the purveyors and producers of this harmful substance would be the pariahs of society. Not so. The booze barons are respected, very rich members of society even though their product causes several times the mortality and morbidity of illegal drugs. Compared to the booze barons, Carl Williams and his mates were very much in the junior league. The statistics may be some years old, but does anyone contend that the figures have significantly changed? The number of deaths dropped from 3000+ to maybe 1000, or 500, or 35?

Everybody knows alcohol causes death and destruction, even the booze barons. What can we logically deduce from the facts that they know this but still continue to manufacture and sell it? Obviously, they couldn't care less. The same goes for instances helping them to sell their slow poison by accepting alcohol advertisements - they know alcohol kills, too. I suppose one can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, fill up the four car garage without some suckers dying. As long as it pays.

One would expect the drinking public to have seen through this - they are enriching people who couldn't care less about them dying of the product they buy off these people. Of course, they shouldn't die quickly. They should drink heavily for twenty or thirty years before finally croaking. One would expect these booze hounds to say, 'no more, this is stupid'. I mean, everybody knows. But they don't say that. Do they deserve to die? After all, everybody knows. But still they keep on drinking.

And the attitude to drinking. If someone says he likes his beer he says it in such a way as if expecting credit for it. Instead he should be ashamed of himself for enriching people who kill 3000 a year in Australia. The whole thing doesn't make sense.

Now the booze hounds and booze barons will most likely say, yes, but cars and tobacco kill people, too. Road deaths are about half of what alcohol kills in Australia. And about 30% of those deaths are caused by alcohol. And in modern life the car is an absolute necessity. Alcohol is not. Tobacco kills several times the number alcohol kills. But does that make alcohol killing people right?

And all this takes place with the blessing of whichever government is in power. Shouldn't they be ashamed of themselves for allowing this? They are supposed to look after the people, even those too stupid to know any better.

Money, stupidity, utter disregard for the consequences of what they produce, sell, advertise, drink and allow, and what have we? What we have is that this will continue, even though it makes no sense at all.

Till next time.

A True Atheist Won't Condemn Religion

Very often we come across hate-driven, spiteful things said about religion, like the utterances of Richard Dawkins.

Now the true atheist, the one who really believes we come from who knows where for no reason at all with only one certainty - we all face total oblivion, won't say anything about religion, or much anything about anything at all. Why? Because he would realise that if things really are as he believes, nothing much matters. Why spend his time and energy attacking something he believes doesn't exist? Why doesn't Richard Dawkins write a few books about Santa Claus? The Santa Claus Delusion.

Now all atheists, and the rest of us, too, know that some people derive comfort from religion. Why deny them this comfort? Especially if things are as bleak as atheists make them out to be. Are atheists such hate filled people and so downright nasty? I mean, if there is no God and these people are comforted by believing in a non existent God, what does it matter? Why hate something which doesn't exist? It doesn't make sense. Richard Dawkins, are you such a nasty piece of work you want to deny these people this comfort? I mean, in the end, according to atheists, nothing matters. And you are an atheist, right?

So, you see, spitting hate, venom and spite at religion makes no sense for the true atheist. If they are really atheists they would just shrug their shoulders when confronted by religion and go on doing whatever atheists do. Whatever they, or any of us do does't matter much, according to them. Because in the end...

Till next time.

Linux vs Windows

This subject comes up every now and again. Nearly all the Linux detractors have no experience with Linux. On the other hand, nearly all Linux users, people who prefer Linux, once used Windows. That says something, doesn't it?

So, which is the best operating system? When the chips are down and the demands are high, undoubtedly Linux. How can I say that, you ask. There is a category of computers called super computers. They can often just be a great many computers working in parallel. Be that as it may, these computers can really compute, and fast, too. You can find the Top 500 of these computers on a site called, Top 500. The ten present top ones are on the front page. They've got names like Kraken, Jaguar and Roadrunner and are often used for research. Wikipedia also has a Top 500 entry. Now guess which operating system the top ten ones run? All Linux. In fact,supercomputers use Linux nearly exclusively. See the wikipedia supercomputer entry. Windows is like a flea on an elephant on the graph. Surely, this must mean something.

And, oh yes, most of the servers on the Internet run Linux. Netcraft just told me Google's servers run Linux. I know Yahoo runs FreeBSD - the cousin of Linux, just like the Mac OS. Why, I wonder?

I can see the Windows monkeys foaming around the mouth. They go on about software applications and hardware support and ease of use. Clearly, they are talking through their necks. I find both KDE and Gnome better desktop environments and easier to use than the Windows at work. Yes, you can choose one or more of several desktop environments for Linux. In Windows you are stuck with the default one. Updates on my Debian Lenny system are far preferable to what happens on this Windows machine. The Synaptic package manager is a dream. The ease of use thing is about ten years out of date. How Windows presents their file system hierarchy in Windows Explorer is just dreadful. It's so simple and elegant in the Linux file managers - again, you have a wide choice.

I'm sure there are a few applications one can't find for Linux, but they will be specialized, expensive packages. Most likely more than 80% of people now using Windows will be able to get along very well with what Linux has. I can download about 23,000 free packages from Synaptic. If Debian doesn't have it, I can compile it from free source code, like I did the other day for DropBox. DropBox is now on this Windows computer and my Linux machine at home, sharing files between the two as if the files were on the same machine.

I found installing Debian faster and easier than installing Windows. It picked up all my hardware and loaded the drivers into the kernel. Debian is not the first Linux distribution I've used. I've been on Linux for many years.

And then the killer: Linux is free. Windows costs big bucks. Add Office and an anti virus and a few other applications and the bucks stack up. Open Office for Linux is also free. And it reads Windows Office format files.

However, most people are still with Windows. That won't change until people in general become smarter. Don't hold your breath.

For anyone curious about Linux, give Mepis a go. You can download the image (.iso file), burn it to a CD as an image (not a picture image) and run it from the disk without upsetting anything on your computer. It will run slowly from the disk as your DVD/CD is much slower than your hard drive. If you have broadband it will immediately pick that up and you'll be on the Net.

Till next time.