Gay Marriage

The gay marriage debate has been going on for a bit now and I've had the opportunity to carry a fairly extensive discussion with several people that are vehemently against both the concept of gay marriage and also the people involved.

It's all been pretty long winded and, of course, extremely emotive.  I'll state my position now, in that I support gay marriage whole heartedly.  My stand point on marriage itself is that it's entirely a personal thing.  What other people do, what other people think and/or say should have absolutely no bearing on your own marriage nor on your relationship with your spouse.

Getting into the debate was something of an exercise in patience and involved a great deal of research and being careful to not just broadly take a totally intolerant approach.  I figured that there had to be some logical and structured reasoning behind having such a solid and immovable opinion on what seemed to be such an important thing to those in the against team.

Now clearly there is one group that has the loudest voice when representing the against team and that is from Christianity.  I myself was bought up a Catholic and was to all intents a perfectly good Sunday Christian.  I suspect that this is greatly true for the majority of church goers.  It's the whole mentality of 'if I go to church on Sunday once a week than that is my heavenly requirement'.  It was this hypocrisy that pushed me away from faith and ultimately from believing in a God at all.  That and having a religious education teacher essentially self destruct when I asked about evolution in Catholic School... woops...

The basis for the argument is as follows (and I'm paraphrasing but I believe that it's the gist of the thing).  "Homosexuality and gay marriage is wrong because it says so in the Bible".  OK.  I get the overwhelming control/guidance that the Bible gives to Christian believers and in most things it's very clear.  Thou shalt not Kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not blaspheme etc...  All pretty obvious stuff and from a moral perspective, things that I can get on board with... without needing the Bible.  Much like Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists.  It's pretty much ingrained in all of us that killing is bad, stealing is bad, shagging your neighbours wife is bad... the blaspheming thing is pretty much a religious thing which I, and most other reasonable people can leave.

So in looking into this "because it says so in the Bible" we start to discover that it's not as clear cut as all of that.  It's not in the 10 commandments, it's not actually clearly stated anywhere in the original texts and even the more recent biblical publications do not state emphatically that homosexuality is against Gods law.  The truth of the matter is that it's an interpretation of some obscure references that people have decided to place on the same level as killing, cheating and stealing.  Thinking about it we know why you don't kill, because the person at the receiving end comes out in a pretty bad way.  We know why you don't steal, you're depriving someone of something that is theirs.  We know why you don't rape, cheat or commit adultery, we even know why the Bible says 'Don't take Gods name in vain'.  They're all pretty obvious and the moral aspect of it is ultimately very clear.  So here is my question.  Why is being gay bad?  Who does it hurt?  What moral code does it conflict with?  What human decency does it impinge upon?  The answer is simple - IT'S NOT AND IT DOESN'T!

Interestingly the very recent 'translations' of the Bible have been rewritten to 'clarify' the meaning of the 5 most quoted passages of text.  They have actually been re-written to include the word homosexual, a word that didn't exist when the texts were first penned.  I think the reasoning behind this is pretty simple.  It's basic prejudice.  It's people that clearly have an issue resolving with something different, with something that doesn't fit with their 'norm' so they have trolled through the Bible and found some extracts that could in the loosest of terms be interpreted as being 'possibly' anti gay.  The gay marriage thing is an extrapolation of a loose interpretation.

This is fine.  They can believe what they want.  It's their right to believe that, but when it gets forced upon other people in an oppressive and frankly degrading way, then I have an issue with it.  It's not that they don't like it, it's that they actively compare homosexuality with killers, thieves and rapists and then actively attempt to push this degrading opinion on others.  The narrow minded bigotry is stunningly blatant and the required ignorance is somewhat mind boggling.  When challenged on this front, that being of the Bibles seeming lack of clarity on the subject, I got back a very telling answer.  "I'm not God.  It's not for me to question or define sins because that would make me trying to be like God".  This blew me away because in one very simple statement they're effectively handing away any and all culpability for any of their decisions.  The implications of this fall to the very soul of religion.  Do as you're told, do not question, it's all a matter of faith.

That people are re-writing the Bible to 'clarify' content should be troubling as is it not doing exactly what a good Christian shouldn't?  Is not rewriting the texts tantamount to putting the interpreters words into the words of God?  It's not difficult logic but it's wilfully ignored.  The end result is that it's easier to ride your prejudices and persecute a minority because ultimately you don't need to question it.  It's a matter of faith and God said so... except he didn't, the Bible didn't and the persecution smacks of exactly the same thing that was happing to Black People so many years ago.  It seems that humans do not learn from history.

I find anyone telling another person that they are subhuman to be abhorrent.  I especially find someone avoiding personal responsibility for these persecutions by saying that it's what their God says to be foolish and weak minded.  For a religion whose core belief is supposed to be Love thy Neighbour and treat others as you would have them treat you.  Where goodness and compassion are supposed to be the guiding tenements there seems to be a huge amount of hate, bigotry and heartlessness going on.

Simply put - homosexuality is not bad, in fact it is the core of many loving and caring relationships of two consenting adults.  Marriage is a right that all should have as a standard of human equality and if you believe that it degrades your own marriage then you need to seriously consider how much weight you give to the conviction of your vows.

HTC Windows Phone 8X

Looks like a lovely phone. At the risk of sounding a little 'Android' fanboyish, I wouldn't mind this hardware with the Android operating system on it... you know seeing as I can't have the iPhone 5 with Android on it... (yep that's a poor attempt at humour).

Design wise it looks oddly familiar... oh yes, that's right. It's dead spitting for the new Nokia Lumia 920 phone! (http://www.cnet.com.au/nokia-lumia-920-339341626.htm) If I were them I'd be spitting all the way to courts for stealing their design. To make matters worse, Nokia are pretty much putting all their business behind the new Windows 8 Mobile OS whereas HTC has fingers in both Windows and Android pots. From the Looks of things Microsoft aren't beyond playing the hardware companies against each other which in my mind seems foolish. I would've thought the last thing you'd want are your flagship OS phones busy suing each other especially when you're trying to compete against the more organised likes of Blackberry, Apple and Google. I seriously doubt that any litigation will occur as Apple has proven that it only brings bad press and distaste from their customers.

Nokia have stated that HTC is "tactically rebranding" it's phones which kinda smacks of "tactical tact" in the face of a clear rip off. HTC has recently taken big hits from Samsung stomping all over the smart phone market with the GSIII and their recent releases, whilst not bad, just don't reach the lofty heights that their earlier devices brought to the company. Looking at the choice between the HTC phone and Nokias offering, I'd go straight to the Nokia.

The one unknown for me is Windows 8 Mobile. I don't know anyone that uses it day to day and it's not really gaining in a big way in terms of market share. In an enterprise (i.e. corporate) scenario Windows 8 Mobile might bring more rewards to Microsoft where their only real challenger is Blackberry. In my experience Apple has been making headway into the enterprise environments with the iPad, but not so much with the iPhone. With a vast share of the enterprise operating system market, Microsoft are in very good stead to challenge Blackberry at what they do best, enterprise e-mail integration. Who knows, we might be seeing more of these devices in the office... something I'd prefer to Apples offering which requires quite a bit of 'shoehorning' to get to work in a secure way.

It's great to see some really nice Windows 8 Mobile phones coming onto the market as innovation only drives more innovation.  Something that Apple seem hell bent on preventing.  On that note, I was amazed to still see people lining up outside Apple stores and puzzled as to the end user experience with getting a new toy.  There is something rather nice warm and fuzzy being able to get home and have a whole bunch of new things to play with when you get a new device.  I don't see where that experience is going to come from with the iPhone 5?  You get home with your nice new device and... it does all the same stuff as your last phone, just on a slightly larger scale...

iPhone 5

The first thing to knock off is going to have to be the iPhone 5.  Having just been released I'd have to join the general observation in that it's a resounding bundle of 'Blah'.  Slightly bigger screen, slightly higher resolution, another row of icons, thinner chassis and an aluminium back. Also a processor that is apparently twice as fast as the 4S.

No real redesign as far as looks goes, and a different dock socket (they will be releasing an adaptor for the old socket...). Looks like Apple have 

again failed on the innovation front. They simply can't keep rehashing the same thing over and over and expect to stay competitive in the mobile market. Although there will be a big number of these things getting shifted on release (September 21st) I can see a large number of Apple fans looking to move on to greener and more innovative pastures. With the likes of HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung putting out new and exciting devices and daring to be a bit different, Apple is looking more and more like a one trick pony. Albeit a one trick pony with excellent aesthetic designers and a great (and wealthy) legal department.

Simply put, Apple have not delivered anything in the iPhone 5 that resets the industry expectations, that raises the bar for what a mobile device should look like or how it should perform both in speed and functionality. You have a slightly larger 4Gs... and that's it.

Interestingly they also announced a new iPod touch with which they seem to be attempting to move on the OS based camera device (like the Samsung one I mentioned earlier) but still using the very small lens and mobile form factor. It's a nice to have device but you know I still prefer my Classic iPod with a click wheel... why? Because I can keep my entire music collection on it without having to pair it down to 64GB, it has better battery life and I can use it without needing iTunes.

Need a reason to not buy the iPhone 5?

With the new dock connector Apple have done away with both the video out, analogue audio out and iPod out which means that even with the adapter they won't work with your current i-implementations or devices. So with the adapter your nice Bose speakers won't work, your car connector won't work and your radio connector won't work. Pretty much the only t

hing that will work is the charging.

To add insult to injury, not only will you have to buy all new accessories, but you don't get USB3 with it so you're still stuck with slow transfer speeds. From an environmental perspective Apple have done a great disservice also in that they're wilfully adding to landfill by making you throw away all your old chargers and dock speakers. They are effectively forcing their customers into purchasing an entirely new set of devices because the adaptor is functionally useless for anything other than charging - functionally useless at $39 - thank you Apple.

Why they couldn't just make it micro USB like all other mobile phone makers is clear - Apple consumers are seen as wallets with legs and are treated as such. Personally I wouldn't buy the iPhone 5 on principal alone. Not only are Apple anticompetitive and anti consumer but they are also ecologically irresponsible.

EDIT: 

 Interesting, it looks like Apple have been quick to respond to the adaptor issue and will be distributing the iP5 with a free adaptor. The adaptor will also apparently contain a chip that will convert digital audio to analog for the old 30 pin devices to work with. I guess I will have to retract my mini rant... partially... video is still out of the equation and any extended functionality means extra adaptors. I guess in a round about way they deserve a little kudos...

Second EDIT:Uh no... I was too quick to praise Apple. They've now said that it was a mistake on their shop site... free stuff from Apple. Don't be silly!

EEK!  Time for a Blog resurrection!

It's been almost 2 years since my last post... I wonder how many Hail Marys that is?

Clearly consistency is not my strong point but I have little else to do these days so I figured that I would return to delivering brain farts to a place where no-one is likely to view them...

There are a whole bunch of things that have me interested, riled up and otherwise engaged so back to it!

Windows 7 Phone? Succeed or Fail?

The Windows 7 Phone is on it's way to the wild and it's raising a really interesting question - will Microsoft succeed or fail with it? There are two perspectives on it - one from the tech geek and one from the every day Joe Bloggs user.

Honestly I think that MS have gone down the correct path with this device. It has an extremely smooth and simplified UI. Now this doesn't seem like the ideal solution for us. We can't hack it, mod it, change it to be individual. But this was the beauty of the Apple OS. It was clean, basic and ultimately utilitarian. The every day user just wants their phone to work, no faffing, limited set up and instant gratification.

Microsoft have something of a 'Tech stigma' bought about by years of dealing with mediocre products and half assed approaches to support and updates. Even among the techy, MS have somewhat redeemed their image with Windows 7 - which I personally believe is the superior desktop OS out there - even more so (dare I say it) than OSX. MS have the advantage now of seeing who the market leaders are, what their devices are capable of and ultimately what the end user wants. Undeniably the iPhone has been the final word with smart phones in the past 3-4 years especially when it comes to UI and hardware design. It is stunningly simple and, up until the OS 4.0 roll out which broke anything below the 3Gs) slick as you like!

Android has been the result of a backlash against Apples aggressive and money-centric marketing strategy. 'Everyone wants Apple product so we'll screw them for every bit of cash we can and whilst we're at it we'll take the service providers as well'. Basically if you treat someone like crap for long enough then eventually they'll wake up to it and look somewhere else. Google with the Android OS has provided this outlet. Lets be honest about the Android operating system. It works, on the right hardware it's actually pretty slick. In it's basic form it's not terribly pretty and again, if we're being honest, this is where Google excels - they take and idea and get it out there as quickly as possible in a working and usable form. Design gurus they are not. It has been left with the likes of HTC to work on the GUI and make it attractive and far more functional. There have been other iterations out there not the least being Sony Ericssons X10 - but as we all well know the more these things are modified the slower they are to be updated.

So I believe that Microsoft could actually be onto something with the Windows 7 Phone. It is designed to appeal to the average joe user that 'just wants it to work'.

This brings me to where I think it could fail. Microsoft's strong points have never been making something funky or design-centric unless you take the XBOX into account (however I think that XBOX is a brand solely aimed at a youth market). For them it has always been the enterprise potential of their products and this is reflected in their earnings. The vast percentage of Microsofts profits come from it's desktop and server side operating systems and tools. Their one major entertainment success has been in XBOX and that largely has been down to having the right 3rd party developers on-board and some cunning price points on the console.

So clearly MS has the Enterprise side of things down pat, but every recent foray into the mobile entertainment market has been met with at best indifference and at worst scorn. Zune - failed, Windows Mobile (outside of enterprise) - failed with a current 5% market share, Kin smart phones - failed, tablet PCs - failed, Web-TV - failed, MSN Music - Failed. The problem with the majority of these things is that there was a better and more functional offering out there. Whether it was Tivo, iPod, iPhone and more recently the iPad, there has always been something more desirable and ultimately more functional for the every day user. Where this could fail is not in that it's a Microsoft product, not that the operating system is lacking, and not in the pricing but in it's desirability. When presented with a selection of phone and mobile operating systems, will the average joe go for a stock looking touch phone with a slightly flashy OS? That's the hard question with an even harder answer in my opinion. The possible saving grace? Android has proven that people are ready for something different and the risk to Android? Windows 7 Phone may just be that bit more polished, that little more pretty and have the right element of 'it just works'.

Sky in the Baubles - OcUK Photo Comp - September

Septembers theme was Curves. I found this one to be extremely difficult as curves are such an arbitrary thing and again prone to cliches. The ones that stood out the most to me were roads, cars light trails and women. I was tempted to head down the women path but having never done portraiture in anger nor having a large pool of knowledge when it comes to the lighting of such subjects I was somewhat stumped.


I had an idea of attempting to emulate and photograph the results of a couple of paper folding/cutting artists that have a presence on Flickr. Those of Richard Sweeney and Jen Stark.


Richard Sweeney - Icosahedron

Jen Stark - Over And OutLuckily, both for my sanity and that of my ever tolerant Fiance, another opportunity came up.

Kim, whilst walking down Piccadilly, spotted something that she knew would take my interest and it did that in spades! In the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Art on Piccadilly, London there is a central point where there is often a piece of installation art in place. For the time being it is a piece by a modern artist called Anish Kapoor. He is most famous for the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, Chicago and I guess not having the massive space needed to emulate that in London he's taken a different path.

Tall Tree And The Eye:"Outside the Royal Academy of Arts in the Annenberg Courtyard, 74 stainless-steel spheres will appear to hover miraculously overhead. Look up, and the sky will be framed by thousands of shining bubbles as each element mirrors its neighbours ad infinitum."

This is a shot of the full sculpture:

This is my final entry for the comp that I titled - Sky in the Baubles:
This months subject is 'Energy'... I'm not sure what direction to take on this one - I think there is a bit of thinking involved!

Cosmic Girl - OcUK Photo Comp August

The August theme was Cosmic and this immediately brings to mind things like stars and light trails and anything to do with the heavens. Unfortunately I don't much like to adhere to the stereotypes so much like many of my other entries I thought out of the box.

The idea I came up with was based around the classic super hero look of a female super hero encompassed in energy floating upward whilst objects in her immediate vicinity floated also.

Much like this:

Kim and I headed out to our local park first thing in the morning once the sun was at a decent height. I didn't want to do it too late because the length of the shadows were quite important for me.

I initially took a series of photos from a way back using the Sigma 10-20mm lens but this caused a couple of issues. The first and most obvious is that with the lens being at 10mm there were some issues with it being too far away and there not being reasonable detail in the shot. The second was that being so far back the height that I could get Kim to jump at did not lend itself to the illusion of height.

So I moved the camera closer and also had a re-think on the eventual composition. My initial idea was to get as many random objects as possible floating around the circular area including perhaps my neighbors baby and perhaps a small dog. Not having any small dogs nor the baby at hand I changed my mind and went for things that were every day stuff but also as contextual as possible.

We start with a mostly empty photo:

The next trick was the actual photo taking. My first take on the process involved Kim standing on the step ladder and posing with the follow up a result of getting her to jump off the ladder and catching her mid air. After the first couple of attempts with the jumping off the step ladder I figured that I had to change the approach.

I had the top half of her sorted from the above shot so the next trick was to get her bottom half looking like she was floating. Obviously the jumping was the right direction on this - short of getting a harness and a crane which are slightly out of my means. The main issue here is that there is only so high a person can jump so I resolved to address the issue in the post work. Kim being the absolute soul of tolerance jumped up and down quite a few times each time with a variation on her foot positioning until I got what I was looking for.

You'll notice that the shadow and the feet are significantly lower than in the final image - it was purely in the post work that I shifted both Kim and her shadow upward to add to the illusion of height.

The next trick was floating stuff. This bit was pretty easy - I just got Kim to run around with various objects and either hold them or throw them ensuring that the objects shadows were easily resolved and her fingers were not overlapping the camera facing edges. I also got her to chase a couple of pigeons to give the shot a bit of movement.

The end result is a very basic composite of all the shots - if you have a clean background to work with then painting out any of the other layered shots is a very simple process. For balance sakes I moved some of the objects and their shadows around, straightened the image (my tripod is rubbish) and worked with the levels a bit. I cleaned up Kims arms because I had over exposed them a bit by using a brush created from her own skin where it was exposed properly and finally chucked a boarder around it.

End result:
Cosmic Girl