chemonro

An Open Letter to Kevin Rudd: Internet and Video Game Censorship

2009-07-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Rudd,

Two related issues have been concerning me lately, the issues of Internet censorship and Video Game classification. Currently your government is proposing a mandatory ISP level Internet filter, and Video Games may only legally be sold in Australia up to a rating of MA 15+.

Censorship of the Internet: This is unfortunate and poorly planned. Let the people of Australia view what they want to view. If you must censor to "protect the children" and appease the conservative Christians make it an "opt in" filter that people who want it can sign up to. Nobody wants it Prime Minister. Nobody wants it. Please don't waste money on this.

Video Game Censorship: The average age of game players in Australia is 30. We need an R18+ classification for video games to prevent the current ridiculous situation were sites such as amazon.com and online games like Second Life may be blocked in Australia because their content cannot legally be classified for sale in Australia.

I'm 38. I play games. Mr Rudd, I don't need your government to protect me from seeing sexy content or playing sexy games on the Internet. Obviously I care about the children, but the children are not protected by you censoring my internet access. I have no children in my house, but if there were I would manage their Internet access.

While I understand that this is primarily a state issue, please show some leadership here!

Internet censorship might look like a good cheap populist policy and play well to the fundamentalist christian lobby but it is a completely ineffective waste of money that does nothing to deal with the problems of child protection and child pornography.

I think the real political danger is that up until now the majority of people have gone along using their Internet and playing their games how they pleased. It has not been a political issue at all except for a tiny number of conservative Christians. The danger is, however, that these new "social networking" sites are just the "killer ap" for organizing and activism. With blogs and twits and face book one person can reach thousands.

With this ill conceived censorship notion your government is in danger of waking up the sleeping masses of Internet users and getting them personally involved in politics. Wake the sleeping tiger at your peril, Mr Rudd. These people have all the tools at their fingertips for mass communication, organization and politics. Game players and Internet users are not in any sense of the world isolated. Don't isolate yourself, Mr Rudd, please show some leadership and do something sensible to solve this problem.

Thank you,

Frances

Photo 13 July 2009

2009-07-12T21:11:00.001-07:00

Sketches

2009-02-13T18:32:00.002-08:00

Sketches

2009-02-13T18:32:00.000-08:00

My Story (Part One)

2009-02-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

I was born in australia in 1971. Australia is a vast country with amazing landscapes and natural beeauty. It's an ancient, timeless land. The european culture and society of the country is very young and new and crass. The forests in australia are a strange drab grey green color, the hills are a beautiful blue!

Here, see this aussie girl and her doe eyes:

Or here:

I have always felt a very deep spiritual connection to the land. The land gives me peace. It is ancient and patient and endless. We have forests, ancient, beautiful forests, not at all like this one. By the rivers we have bluegum forests:

Water is infinitely precious here. There is never enough water Australia is a dry land, a land of droughts and scarcity, and the gum leaves are full of oil. When they catch fire they burn like they've been dipped in petrol! Imagine dipping a whole forest in petrol and setting it alight on a hot windy day!

They say that 180 people died in the fires on Saturday. That's staggering, we're a very small country.

Most of australia is not forest and ancient hills... The center of australia is semi arid and desert country. Flat. Endless... Desolate.

I've only been out into these places a few times But they get into your soul. The emptiness speaks to you. Thre is a vast stillness there.

Most people in Australia want to live by the sea.

In fact the sea is very beautiful, where the parched brown land meets the endless blue ocean, as beautiful as the greek islands, I think. But I do not want to live there.

My Friend Zoe Belle

2008-01-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

My friend Zoe Belle is dead and I've been mourning her for the past couple of days. I saw her on Saturday but I was busy and didn't say more than "Hi" and "Bye," and now it's shocking to think that I'll never see her again. She was a big part of the Trans community down here in Melbourne because she was involved in so many things - The Midsumma festical, Gasworks, VDAY, Out of the Silence Conference, TGV, TMGP.. and that's probably just the start. Her death leaves a great big gap.

I don't think that Zoe really knew how much so many people loved her. She was a deeply private person, shy and reserved. She suffered from social anxiety phobia, and probably poor self esteem, and I don't think she understood how much people valued her just for being herself. The world is a much poorer a place without her.

I'd only known Zoe for six months or so, but she was someone I felt very comfortable with and someone I thought I connected with really well. And more than that I liked her a hell of a lot and that's just not as common as it should be.

I guess there will be a funeral for Zoe soon. Funerals for trans people can be awkward because family and other people don't always know the person by the same identity we know. I don't know if there'll be an opportunity to speak about Zoe, but I know that I'd like to talk about my friend. It might be a good idea to think about some kind of a community gathering or "wake" to remember Zoe.

Ah well. I love you Zoe. I'm sure going to miss you.

Out of the Silence - Day 2

2007-12-17T01:31:00.000-08:00

Day 2 of the Out of the Silence Conference Weekend has been a very full and tiring day for me. A particular highlight for me was the Partners of Trans discussion which an open discussion of some of the difficulties of being friends and lovers of people who are going through gender transition. This became a really more general personal discussion of things like transphobia and gender stereotypes and pronouns and feelings.. and all kinds of stuff.

The Inside Outside workshop was a strangely titled look at feelings of isolation and marginalization of people in a community - particularly the radical community and it's affinity groups and actions. I thought the feelings and ideas expressed were very powerful and thought provoking.

Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault was a really positive workshop about a really difficult and painful issue. It's so painful to see how many people are touched by this kind of violence, and yet there's so much hope in trying to find ways to deal with it.

The Sex Work discussion was also amazing.

The day was rounded off by a debriefing session and then a party at an artist's commune up in Thornbury. By that time I was happy just to lie on a bale of hay in the back yard and watch the stars come out. Really great vegetarian food was provided throughout the weekend by the Radical Men's group. Music at the party was by Hey Pilot! ( http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=229713173 )

Out of the Silence - Day 1

2007-12-17T01:27:00.000-08:00

Just a brief note on Out of the Silence, Day 1. Last night there was the amazing performance night on Friday night - if you missed it you really missed something special. Things didn't kick off today (Saturday) until about 1130 with the Welcome to Country from Auntie Joy - a woman elder of the Wurundjeri people. Highlights of the day were the discussion about Trans-people and Feminism and the Mental Illness workshop. There was a really great positive energy and caring attitude throughout the whole day's events. Free vegetarian meals were provided by the Radical Men's group. Even though one of the locations is a bar the conference workshops are dry and drug free space.

Tomorrow will be a full day of workshops at two venues in north Fitzroy followed by a party in the evening. Highlights of tomorrow's program are:

* Radical Parenting

* Sex Worker Activism

* Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault

* Abortion

* Partners of Transfolk

The full timetable for tomorrow's events can be found here:

http://www.outofthesilenceconference.org/

Out of the Silence is a conference focussed on trans, women, gender-queers and their partners. Out of the Silence is a safer space where everyone can speak and we respect one another and respect the needs of survivors. The theme of Out of the Silence is to talk about the things we are usually silent about.

Friends of the McKay Gardens

2007-11-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

The H.V. McKay Memorial Gardens are an important historical feature of the Sunshine area of Melbourne, Australia. Begun in 1909 by H.V.McKay, the gardens are listed with the National Trust and the National Heritage Register as a site of national historical significance. The Friends of the McKay Gardens are dedicated to the preservation and maintenance of the gardens.

This Blog has been created to record the events and activities of the Friends group - their meetings, social events and work in the Gardens. It is also intended to document the history, condition and development of the Gardens over time.

The Friends website can be found here:

http://www.mckaygardens.org/index.html

You can join the McKay Gardens mailing list here in order to keep in touch with regular updates:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mckaygardens/

You can find details of the next meeting and forthcoming events here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mckaygardens/cal

Transgender Day of Remembrance - November 20th

2007-11-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

Tuesday November 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance - A day for remembering people who were murdered because they dared to express a gender identity different to that which the world expected from them.

All Is Well Webcomic is participating in a project to publish comics exploring this theme as part of the Day of Remembrance. Our comic is now up on the server:

http://alliswellcomic.com

(Follow the "Current Comic" link)

Remembering Our Dead is more general site explaining the origin and meaning of the Day of remembrance:

http://www.rememberingourdead.org/index.html

If you are religious please say a prayer please say a prayer for those who were murdered for their gender identity. If you're athiest or agnostic then please spare a thought for them on November 20th.

Thanks,

Che

Signature

Diabetes

2007-11-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

I've just been to the doctor and got the results of some blood tests from last week. Turns out I have mild diabetes, so I have to go and see a dietitian. I figure I'm completely stuffed up taking Lithium and hormones and stuff so I don't want to add another drug to the mix. Therefore I'm electing to try and change my diet to keep things under control.

This is not the news I was wanting or expecting to hear. I'm not very happy about it, but, I guess a change of diet and lifestyle can only help things. I'm still trying to work out how this will affect looking for work and other aspects of my life.

2007-11-10T13:32:00.003-08:00

2007-11-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been thinking that a lot of people don't realize just what a powerful tool forums can be for multimedia/web development and collaborative projects between multiple authors. We use forums normally as "chat boards" - and that's fine - but they are capable of much more impressive things. BBS software like this is in fact a kind of multimedia and multi author development tool rather like wikipedia (Wiki Software).

I've been using free online forums to develop my last couple of multimedia projects, and I've found the following advantages:

1. It's online so you can access it 24/7 from anywhere. You can do development work while you're on holiday if you want to.

2. It's multi author, so depending on your setup, authors can post, comment, edit, or copy-modify-and-repost ongoing work.

3. It's multimedia - particularly easy to include pictures and text formatting - font, size and color. Plus it includes hypertext linking.

4. It's portable. You can normally just cut and paste multimedia content and hypertext links to and from other editors or Word documents, blog editors etc.

5. It's organized in threads and searchable. I like to organize my material in threads for individual comic strips, which will include text, images, drawings, all stored in one thread so I know where to find them. And it's linkable: I can do a thread to store website material and link to another thread for website banners. This is essential for a big project otherwise you're continually looking for stuff.

6. It uses BBcode. Most of us have learned to use basic bbcode for things like including images or doing simple text formatting, or making links to urls.

7. It's actually written in native HTML code - and it can be edited in HTML. This board's software in particular translates all the bbcode into html before saving. If you know html you can write nice and precise code here.

I've found that these features make forums an ideal (and free!) tool for developing large multimedia projects. In particular they are extremely powerful when it comes to multi author web based development. When you've got a native html editor like this one here you can use them to prototype and build entire web sites right in the forum.

Take a look at this html code I developed elsewhere:

(The links don't actually work at the moment because the site is down, but when the site is up they can actually be used to navigate the http://alliswellcomic.com website).

This is a web prototype for a menu system for a multiple page website, and you could if you wished edit it, make changes and suggestions and then repost it right in the forum. And then test that it still works in the post.

Once you've finished testing the page, site, or code fragment in the development forum you can copy and paste it into another editor and publish it, or go to the html editor and copy and paste the code into a html file in a text editor, and publish it manually.

My point is that you can use forum software to build websites and multimedia projects as quickly and easily as you write bbs posts! And you can use them to set up online multi-author collaborative projects and organize massive amounts of multimedia material.

I'm still trying to come to terms with what this all means, and still learning to use forums to their greatet advantage. But it seems plain to me that a revolution has occured in multimedia development and nobody seems to have noticed.

Che

Who is Mistress Bamika?

2007-11-04T23:57:00.000-08:00

Bamika is a character I played on Tales of Ta'veran, a roleplaying game set in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time universe. In her homeland, Andor, Mistress is a polite title for a married woman. Bamika is not a BDSM Domme. Neither am I. Bamika was just a fun, amusing character - she was a serving girl who spoke with a thick accent and had a talent for knocking things over. When I needed a new email address "bamika" was taken, but "mistress_bamika" was available. The rest, as they say, is history.

I never use this thing...

2007-11-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a proper personal homepage.

http://www.geocities.com/mistress_bamika

I never use this blog, but I suppose it is my most relevant personal blog out of all the blogs I do use for other purposes. So for now at least it's getting linked as MY blog.

All Is Well Comib Publishes First Strip

2007-10-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

I've been working pretty hard over the last three months on a new Webcomic project called All is Well. It aims to tell the stories of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender people in the Mormon church. This is a collaboration with a woman called Lara Tacita.

You can view the first strip here:

http://evilporpoise.us/alliswellcomic/todayscomic

I'm also getting more involved with transgender politics again. I've been participating in a working group for the establishment of a Gender Centre in Melbourne, and I'm involved in the planning for a Trans, Wimmens, Gender Queer Weekend called "Out of the Silence."

Taking Over The World!

2007-07-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

Well I have now finished my project of making a new homepage which ties together all of my separate projects on the Internet. You can now find my central web identity at:

http://bluedot.us/users/chemonro

Now I have moved on to my next project: Taking Over The World!!

I've started a discussion forum for Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Isn't it funny, Melbourne is a very cultured town with lots of writing, art and blogging going on (especially about food and cooking) yet there is no general site that you can check out to find "meta content": Discussion and links to blogs and content about Melbourne. Interaction and discussion about what is going on in the Melbourne scene. And there's no place that links together bloggers and contributors from the different genres: Art, Cooking, Music, Lit... They are all ghettoized.

As well as this there is a real need for a place to promote community groups and events. I'm a member of a community group and a friend complained that she has to jump through hoops and continually reapply in different formats in order to get notices into the local papers. There must be a better way.

Enter the Melbourne forum: A free web forum to discuss anything and everything about Melbourne (except advertising). It's a project with really exciting potential but it all depends on participation. If a lot of people join then it will succeed. If people don't join then it will fail. That's why I've been emailing everyone in Melbourne... well, maybe not, but it feels like it.

http://melbourne.freeforums.org/

I hope that you can participate. It will be great!

Fran

I'm Baaaaack!

2007-06-23T02:59:00.000-07:00

I reactivated this old blogger account tonight in as part of my quest to define a new social presence site to tie together all of my diverse web based activities.

My Elfwood Stories: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/libr/c/h/chemonro/
My Webcomic: http://www.drunkduck.com/Wright_as_Rayne/index.php
My Personal Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/closedcircle/
My Myspace Group: http://www.myspace.com/chemonro

The fictions of a gorgeous nerd.: Bang bang, you're dead.

2006-09-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

The fictions of a gorgeous nerd.: Bang bang, you're dead.

The fictions of a gorgeous nerd.

2006-09-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

The fictions of a gorgeous nerd.

Confused? Just wanted to comment on the killing characters post. The whole fascination with death in fiction interests me. Look at murder mysteries where you have ordinary people wandering around killing 10 victims in a week... and then in the next novel they're back doing it again! Vampires, serial killers, disaster novels. Death sells better than sex.

There's something utterly primal in the quest to find and overcome the killer - Death.

Che

Premiere Post

2006-03-17T01:29:00.000-08:00

I just created this blog so that I could add a stupid comment on the consultations blog: http://consultations.blogspot.com