hard-core
« Previous EntriesGeek Heaven
Saturday, November 14th, 2009The challenge: How to make sure that everything’s ticking along more or less as it should when I’m a continent away, in a locale whose Internet decrepitude is surpassed only by the locale I need to monitor? If I wait until something’s gone so wrong that someone has to contact me, I’ve lost the game already.
The solution: I’ve just hacked up a little OSD display in perl that uses SSH::RPC to poll server stats on all my production machines. It sits in the bottom left corner of my screen. As long as everything stays mostly green, I’m okay.
Smells Like Team Spirit
Sunday, October 18th, 2009The 2008 Pacific Economic Survey provided timely and useful assessments of telecoms and transport sector liberalisation. It was an enlightening document that validated some of Vanuatu’s key policies as well as providing analysis concerning future trends. I found it useful enough that I wrote about it or referenced it 7 times over the course of the year.
This year, I expect to write about the survey just this once. The 2009 report seems to be animated primarily by the Australian government’s desire to see a regional free trade agreement. The Survey sacrifices common sense and ignores its own data in its quest to glorify liberal trade policies that simply do not fit with the economic realities in Vanuatu today.
The Black Widow
Monday, September 28th, 2009The man gets off scot free in virtually every domestic crisis. If he runs off on his wife and kids, people will ask, ‘What did she do to drive him away?’ If he fools around with someone else, it’s usually the wife who’s forced to find the other woman and beat her into submission. It’s the only way she can publicly demonstrate that she’s not at fault. If a man beats his wife inside his own home, nobody will do anything. Ever. Here in Vanuatu, a man’s home really is his castle. Even if it’s his wife’s money that pays for it, her labour that maintains it, and her life that suffers just so that he can feel in control.
Why should we be surprised then, if one or two desperate women feel driven to poison hubby’s evening meal? When he pauses for grace before supper, more than one husband in Vanuatu would do well to
Digicel Mobile Internet - GPRS Modem First Impressions
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009I did a quick and dirty write-up of my first impressions of using Digicel’s Mobile Internet Service via a USB GPRS modem for VITUS. You can read about it here.
Begging the Question
Saturday, August 8th, 2009At the recently completed Pacific Islands Forum in Cairns, leaders stood solemnly together and released a communiqué touting their commitment “to eradicating [sexual and gender based violence] and to ensure that all individuals have equal protection and access to justice.”
There’s an entire section in the communiqué devoted to what they coyly call SGBV. It dwells on the importance of international coordination, on continuing to maintain regional efforts to raise awareness… and of course remaining sensitive at all times to local culture and ‘differing contexts’ within the various nations.
Here’s a context I wish would differ: I wish that the young woman who greeted me at one of Vila’s marquee stores didn’t have a bruise on her jaw that had ‘left hook’ written all over it. She was at least seven months pregnant. I wish that another young acquaintance who had just given birth only days before didn’t continue to suffer through daily beatings. I wish the waitress who serves my coffee didn’t keep showing up with a black eye every month or so.
I wish the scars, the bruises, the broken teeth and bones weren’t so much part of our ‘differing context’ that we just tut-tut solemnly when we see them and carry on with our day.
Selling Democracy - ctd.
Sunday, June 28th, 2009Farhad Manjoo says the Revolution will not be digitised. His recent Slate column, subtitled “How the Internet helps Iran silence activists” makes the obvious point that technology makes all aspects of communications easier - even the unpleasant ones. But his lazy analysis misses the import of his own observation.
The key to all this is his failure to distinguish between the network and the protocol. Manjoo says that the Internet helps Iran’s repressive efforts. That’s not true, at least not nearly to the extent he thinks. The network - the physical infrastructure of cables, switching and routing equipment, is what’s trapping people right now. If it weren’t for the end-to-end nature of the software protocols that make up what we conveniently call the Internet, little if any news at all would have emerged from Iran.
The Devil at our Shoulder
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Anybody who’s opened a newspaper in the last few years will recognise the characters and events portrayed in 40 Dei, Wan Smolbag Theatre’s latest stage production. Smolbag’s greatest gift to us is its ability to show us our own world. The play is populated by the same reprobates, righteous hypocrites, prostitutes, politicians and just plain folks as we find in any neighbourhood in Port Vila.
We all walk with the Devil at our shoulder. Without surrendering to dogmatic, moralistic finger-wagging, 40 Dei confronts us with the knowledge that the most insidious enemy to Vanuatu society lies within it, not without. Until we recognise that there are no easy answers to the complex afflictions of a society in transition, until we accept that prostitutes, prisoners and penitents alike are all our family, until we recognise our own weakness in the face of venality and ambition, we will never completely be whole.
In the words of the immortal Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
No News is Bad News
Friday, April 17th, 2009With headlines like ‘Man Gets On Bus’, and ‘Breakfast As Usual’, Fiji’s beleaguered fourth estate is reporting all the news it feels is still fit – or safe – to print. Such stories are a reaction to Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s extensive power grab this week, which included the abrogation of the national Constitution, removal of judges and senior financial figures, expulsion of Australian and New Zealand-born journalists and censorship of domestic media.
In solidarity with my Fijian colleagues, I’ve decided to write about nothing as well. Happily, this is easily done. Even though Port Vila is home to the Melanesian Spearhead Group and PM Edward Nipake Natapei holds the chair this year, I am glad to say that I have nothing to report.
Digicel Rolls out Mobile Internet Service
Saturday, April 11th, 2009[This week's Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]
Update for online readers: Digicel Vanuatu’s Manager for Commercial Operations did finally contact me, too late, alas, for the publication deadline, which had been pushed forward this week to accommodate the Good Friday holiday. We had a thorough discussion, and he cleared up a few things that were [...]
A Nation of Laws - Ctd.
Saturday, April 4th, 2009Time and column inches conspired against me with this week’s Opinion. Writing these pieces is a labour of love for me, a needful service that - I hope - contributes to the public dialogue here in Vanuatu.
This week, I feel I didn’t have nearly enough time to do a completely satisfactory job of mapping a morally, legally and ethically complicated landscape. While I feel I covered most of the main themes in the thousand or so words allowed me, much more needs to be said.
What follows is a somewhat lengthy consideration of what I chose to say - and chose not to say - in this column, and why I did so….
« Previous Entries