Doodads and Whatnot

Here’s a first attempt at cutting wine bottles to make drinking glasses. These were done by hand so the scribe was not straight enough. A jig will have to be made!

My watchmaker’s bench is getting ever closer to completion.

Chickens arrive tomorrow so Nathan and I have been cooping like mad to get things ready. The coop is made of 90% on hand materials. The only new parts are some of the door frame components.

Perhaps doubling the recipe wasn’t a great idea.

The following is a letter I sent to the Minister for Housing. I also sent slightly modified versions to my local member and to the Prime Minister.

The Hon. Tanya Plibersek MP
Minister for Housing
Minister for the Status of Women
111-117 Devonshire Street
Surry Hills, N.S.W., 2010

Dear Minister,

I have read with interest the Prime Minister’s recent comments regarding the possibility of the boosted First Home Buyers Grant ending as scheduled. As a person saving for my first home I am very much in favour of ending the grant as it appears to me only to push up prices and encourage people to enter the property market before they are ready. I would urge you to consider ways in which the grant might be minimised, applied only to new construction or withdrawn in the future, if this is not already planned. I would also ask you to consider how negative gearing for existing dwellings may be removed in the future or made to apply only to rental profits.

The First Home Saver Account scheme is in my opinion a far better initiative than grants to people entering the property market. I believe it would be in the best interests of people entering the property market to increase the government contribution percentage, increase the cap on the government contributions, provide a grant only to those who have met the withdrawal criteria or have a proven savings history, or some combination of these options.

I look forward to seeing how the upcoming budget and future policy will address my interests in this matter.

Sincerely,

Name Removed.

As you can guess I’m not happy with the meddling that is happening in the property market.

The following is a letter I wrote to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy which I penned in response to the Australian Government’s unworkable internet filtering scheme.

Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne
Victoria, 3002

Dear Minister,

As an employee of an Australian company which provides secure internet based communications and transaction exchange software, and an internet user I am deeply troubled by plans to introduce mandatory internet filtering.

Such filtering has been shown in countries where it is used to be largely ineffective. The massive and ever growing amount of information available means that it will never be possible to eliminate inappropriate content from the internet. It would be better to focus on efforts such as law enforcement and education which would help reduce the instances of this content being created or sought in the first place.

The size of the problem will mean that only known and high profile items will make it to the list of inappropriate content in a timely fashion. The ability to effectively filter only these targets will make us a target of ridicule. It has become a not uncommon activity to show a ‘Chinese view’ of a website beside a ‘normal view’ of the same site. I doubt it will do Australia’s reputation good to be added as the third party in these comparisons.

The technical realities of the problem will adversely affect the cost and performance of internet services in Australia. As well as being a nuisance to Australian internet users it will also force internet based services operating out of Australia to relocate hosting and technical operations to foreign countries.

Furthermore, as an employee of an Australian company which provides internet based secure transaction exchange services, I have serious security concerns with the implementation of this plan. The sales of our communications products rely in large part on the level of privacy and security we can offer our clients. The use of ‘man in the middle’ attacks, required by the tested filtering software for Secure Sockets Layer connections, will remove our ability to assure customers that their security has not been compromised. The correct operation of the proposed filters will be indistinguishable from a hostile party performing ‘man in the middle’ attacks.

While Australian customers may in time come to accept this as unavoidable (since online banking and other operations will suffer the same problem) it will make our products unmarketable to foreign customers without moving our hosting and server infrastructure overseas. This will make a number of our Australian staff redundant.

I regret that the nature of the plans became clear to me too late for it to have been a factor in my voting choices for the recent election. I do not doubt that these plans are ultimately motivated by good intentions but I fear that the originators have bought snake oil and wish to continue applying it to gain the favour of a few ‘key’ politicians.

Please consider how the money for the filtering scheme may be better spent. I would suggest that increasing funding to education and law enforcement would better meet its objectives and the requirements of all Australians.

Sincerely,

Name Removed.

I received the same form letter reply as everyone else who wrote to the minister.