End of year catch-up
US Election 2008
Now apparently something rather important happened in the US at the beginning of November. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but I gather it was something to do with getting a new president. Let’s face it, with the current bonzo they’ve got, they really do need a new one!
Now while I had been intending to comment on this at the time, my plan was to be “fashionably late” in doing so. I really didn’t want to join in with the mass blogging on the subject along with every other blogger on the planet. As it turned out though, I kind of got distracted with web work and stuff, and really, at the end of the day couldn’t actually say that much about it in any detail as my knowledge of American politics is somewhat limited.
What I shall say is that personally the new guy seems like a cool guy, and I think he’s definitely right in saying that change is needed – you only have to look at the complete cock-up “President Shrub” has made of running the show to see that. I know a lot of people go on about Obama’s supposed lack of experience (like that Palin woman has any more that’d qualify her as a vice-president!), but experience isn’t always necessarily everything, and personally I can’t think of anything worse than that irritating old pensioner McCain. His whole platform seems to be based on his military history and the fact he’s old enough to qualify for a bus pass, and little else. More of the same kind of policies that President Shrub’s been churning out for the past 5 years that have got the US into the mess it’s in and with 5 more years of the same, the US, and the rest of the world, really would have been staring disaster in the face.
Turning my attention to the guy that won, I have to say that if I were voting in the US elections, he’s the guy I’d have voted for (though I’m not sure of the wisdom of letting the dreadful Clinton woman in on the act). As I said though, my knowledge of American politics is somewhat limited, and it wasn’t until an American friend kindly summarised for me the main policies and differences between the two parties that I gained a kind of understanding of what it’s all about.
As near as I can make out, the Republicans are kind of the equivalent of the Conservative party (only with a pensioner at the helm rather than a wet lettuce), all for big business and the corporate world, the value of free economy and such other stuff, only being Americans the idea of the right to bear arms and such like are all tied in with that. The Democrats are kind of the equivalent of a more socialist party – probably not quite so socialist and left wing as the Labour party; I’d guess probably more the Liberal Democrat kind of level, but again, without a wet lettuce at the helm, or a guy who looks permanently as though he’s sucking a particularly unpleasant cough sweet. My actual usual description of “the look” is somewhat more rude than that version, but Bliss kicked me when I typed version one, so I had to edit it. 
From what I can understand, they’re more for state intervention than the Republicans, with a stronger emphasis on welfare benefits and helping out the “little guy”, and have a much more pro-equality stance than the Republicans, though only to a point. Please note, this is my interpretation of it anyway, which may be (and most probably is) way off base, so don’t quote me on it.
A number of people have said to me both before and after the elections that they can’t understand what all the fuss is about and why it should be such a big deal that Americans have gone and elected themselves a black president (then of course you always have the few that feel compelled to point out that actually, technically, he’s mixed race rather than back, having mixed parentage, as if it’s such a big deal!). My take on the whole thing is thus. The first “anything” is always going to be a big deal, just as when Margaret Thatcher became the British PM, whether you agreed with her politics or not, it was a big deal, because she was the first woman PM. Given the fact that until relatively recently in American history there was state condoned racism, and that large sections of the US geography still have overwhelmingly “white” populations and areas of racist strongholds, it’s actually a very significant thing that the US has their first black president. I seriously doubt though that millions of Americans went out and voted for him though because he’s black, rather that they thought he was the best man for the job, or at least a better prospect than the alternative.
One of the UK daily tabloids (slightly more upmarket than those dreadful ones with pictures on page three, but only just) did comment about the whole issue of it being such a great thing the US have their first black president (elect) that it really wasn’t a big thing, and that it wouldn’t be long before Britain would have black/Muslim/gay PMs etc. Personally though I can’t see that’s going to happen any time soon and is just about as likely as Hell freezing over. Why? Because the levels of racism (usually couched as concerns over UK immigration policies), intolerance towards minority ethnic groups and other religions, fuelled by the obsession with linking Islam with terrorism, nevermind that the majority of British muslims don’t share terrorists’ warped views of the world, and homophobia, aren’t decreasing at all by and large. If anything, fuelled by certain sections of the media who seem intent on instilling the kind of intolerant views acceptable four decades ago in their readership, British society’s becoming more divisive.
That’s a whole other debate though.
Paint.NET
I’ll probably ramble on at great length at a later date about my latest new found toy to play with, but I have to say that despite hating Microsoft and anything to do with them, Paint.NET, which first came out of a project funded by Microsoft (the idea was to come up with something a bit more sophisticated than the ‘Paint’ application built into Windows), is rather damned cool. Completely free, and with features to rival the likes of Paint Shop Pro, which I previously used, it has a dedicated support community and numerous other fan forums devoted to it, and some excellent tutorials on how to create some stunning pics and effects to rival anything that Photoshop can produce.
I’ve recently been redesigning my forum banner using it, and even though I do say so myself, and though it isn’t finished yet, it’s looking damned impressive! That said though, it doesn’t take much to improve on the current one, which is badly pixellated and very badly anti-aliased in some places.
More to come on Paint.NET (PDN) and more of my creations to follow soon though. The plaster on page one is one of my PDN creations, as is the globe thingy to the right. The PDN logo is curtesy of ‘Skizatch’, and can be found on DeviantArt.
Open University
Yay! I passed my last OU course! The results for T175: Networked Living came through just before Christmas officially by post, though they’d already been added to my course record online earlier in the month. I got an Overall examinable score (OES) of 91% (seems like that all-night rush session to get the final assignment finished and in on time paid off! 
) and an overall continuous assessment score (OCAS) of 78%. Yay!
I’ve still not decided what to do next, except that I’m probably not going to carry on with the ICT courses. Most of the level 2 and upwards courses include a fair amount of programming, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a natural programmer. I can do it – with the books open infront of me, and providing it’s nothing too complicated, but I think anything at level 2 or higher would be too much like hard work, and I really don’t want to battle away with something I’m not enjoying.
Quite what I’m going to instead, I’m not sure at the moment. I was fancying possibly doing some of the literature courses, and they do a couple of creative writing ones, but there’s also a couple of social policy ones that look interesting too. Then there’s some science ones that look interesting as well….hmmm…I’ll have to see.
So, that’s about it for the catch-up. All that remains is to wish you a very “Happy New Year!” and I’ll see you next year! (when hopefully I’ll get my act together and remember to actually post something around here on a regular basis )
Pages: 1 2
