Archives for themself - Page 6
The Handmaid’s Tale & Failure Modes of Democracy
I've finally caught up with The Handmaid's Tale that Channel Four recently showed. I haven't read the book by Margaret Atwood but I have read some of her interviews about it. I've added the book to my wish list. The Handmaid's Tale The Handmaid's Tale is essentially a piece of speculative fiction about the failure of Democracy in the US. It's scarily plausible, which is sort of the definition of speculative fiction. Elisabeth Moss as Offred in The Handmaid's Tale (photo: Hulu) In the TV series of The Handmaid's Tale we follow Offred (formerly known as June) as she survives in the post-coup Republic of Gilead. That being the survivors of the former US. Elisabeth Moss does a great job playing the main character through both the flashbacks that explain how she got there and the 'present day' parts of…
Castles in the Cloud [Poetry]
I referred to the Castles in the Cloud poetry in my post about cyber warfare the other week, and only after I'd published it I realised that the poetry wasn't generally available, unless you'd bought my book Themself. So here are those poems, if you like them you might also like the book. Castles in the Cloud Laying Siege Unsuspecting users are unaware of spam silently suborning their systems. Malware lurks waiting for the one in a million. Click conscripted computers, zombies in the 'bot-net horde, pillaging user credentials and sending more spam. Each zombie sends tens of millions of emails before they too are cleansed. One day the hordes will swell, the tide sweeping away all defences. Then the zombie apocalypse will infect us all. Castles in the Sky Fortresses nestle in their own cloud, keeping out trojans. Patterned…
Cyber warfare – Just a buzzword or scary reality?
Cyber warfare has been on my mind for a few weeks, even before the WannaCryptor incident. It's been there because I've been looking at the innovation context for a digital service I've been designing as part of my T317 end of module project. That service is for government, and one of the risks is that someone will try to attack or subvert it. The other thing that has brought cyber warfare to my head is the forthcoming general election in the UK. There are signs that both the UK referendum on the EU and the US election night have been affected by cyber warfare. What is Cyber Warfare? A linux laptop running wireshark to illustrate cyber defence in action (photo credit: James Kemp) The popular view is hackers in a basement tracking people, bringing down other computer networks and stealing…
Five Steps to Join the Desktop Horticulture Revolution
I've joined the desktop horticulture revolution in the office. I took a bag mixed with potting compost and sand into the office along with a few seeds about a week ago. So far it hasn't sprouted, but I've been taking a picture every day that I've been working in the office and I hope that by the end of the summer I should have a lovely little animation. The Desktop Horticulture Revolution Desktop horticulture 14 Mar 2017 What am I growing? You know, that's a really good question. I ought to be able to give you a really detailed technical answer, but right now I don't have the packet of seeds to hand. What I do know is that there are three seeds in the bag. They're all different varieties of peppers. One of them is a cherry pepper, another…
2016 Stats for Themself – a review of the blog
The Garden Bookshelf in my potting shed, which is the real life equivalent of Themself During 2016 my blogging was patchy, I had some spells of not blogging frequently (notably in November & December). However I managed to write 81 blog posts, of which 77 have been published. That's over 47,000 words of new blog posts, not to mention the pictures. Not all of my blog writing was for Themself, some of it went on Cold Steel and a little went on a new fork of my leadership and work-related material called Red Leader. I've not really had time to do much with Red Leader, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually. The two forks took some of the traffic away from Themself, but that gives this blog a little more focus, and it still has by far and away the most material of all…