True Vine

I’ve been letting God prune a lot of branches of mine lately, in part inspired by the book of John, chapter fifteen, crystallised into this timeless statement:

Leaders travel light

Part of that is pruning LinkedIn. So if you’ve noticed a change from 1st to 2nd (or so) in the little relationship graph thing, it’s likely because I have no recollection of meeting you in person, somewhere on this planet. Might have been a past employer, a conference, a tech or other meetup, rUNSWift, UNSW & CSE, Revue, high school or some other school-related thing, or even a chance church meeting – a divine encounter and a step into eternity. If I can’t remember meeting you, I don’t think I can in good faith say I know you. That I’ve met you before.1 Which is a critical piece I think of being human, and so perhaps one thing that still identifies us as children of God, made in God’s image, and not an AI shadow.

I know you… I’ve met you before

So if you actually do know me (and so it’s just my less than good, pleasing and perfect memory that’s the problem), I invite you to fix that – please reach out to me by any means you have, and let’s have a coffee or other reason to be somewhere, together on this planet.

  1. Or perhaps you’re one of a very small number of exceptions, for instance you now work for a company like DuckDuckGo, that I use more than daily, and this connection was made, many years ago, in that time known as pre-COVID ↩︎

Jesus – I Am The 🦁 Of Judah Hear Me Roar

Praise the Lord, I read this a couple of months ago:
https://elijahhouse.org/blogs/news/the-biblical-principle-of-roaring-by-mark-preissner

It helped crystallise a few of the thoughts in my head, that Jesus did roar on the cross, for my sin and for yours too.

My preferred order of listening to the idea develop, over a couple of hours is nine tracks with a BBS:

  1. Bethel Music – Raise a Hallelujah
  2. Chris Tomlin – Is He Worthy?
  3. Big Daddy Weave – The Lion and the Lamb
  4. Judith Baker – Roar
  5. Elevation Worship – LION
  6. Circuit Rider Music – Marvelous [Lion of Judah]
  7. Roger Price Basic Bible Studies (BBS) 005 – Atonement and Expiation
  8. Mercy Culture Worship – LION
  9. Mercy Culture Worship – SOUND MIND
  10. Citizen Way – Love is a Lion

One Bible verse is insufficient, so I’ll at least start with Chris Tomlin’s contribution to me is clearly Revelation 5:5.

Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.

I also note today is 2025-10-25 in ISO 8601 which xkcd has a great take on, so I’ve known for a while it’d be a good day to blog, ready or not in coming towards the close of this WIC Year of “Be strong and courageous.” (Deuteronomy 31:6, Joshua 1:9).

Careless People – Deleted Facebook

I recently read Sarah Wynn-Williams book, Careless People. Worth it, loved the whistleblowing, it’s confirmed my beliefs, thank you deeply Sarah for having the courage to publish a huge part of your life story, and Facebook’s profoundly negative impacts on the world.

My main Facebook account had been deactivated for over two years. So no longer a useful tool, if anything it’s a reminder of deep battle scars it’s time to forgive myself and others for, completely, as the Lord has forgiven us.

Plus Janelle’s Ellanyze via a DuckDuckGo search was the final nail in that metaphorical coffin. So I’m not even the courageous first follower on this one.

Here it is, deletions scheduled, and so all but done. Hopefully there are no data breaches that slow down the 10 November 2025, 30 day deletions.

And yes, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t open myself to the possibility of going back many years from now. But for now, it’s just not a tool I find useful, or even that others around me ask me to participate on.

If you find me, for reals, you’re likely to find, according to my Margerison-McCann TMS Upholder-Maintainer profile, someone who does his level best to embody quality and integrity, an introverted person, who nevertheless spends much time with and cares deeply about other people. I sometimes struggle to show it, for example please forgive what others tell me is brilliant but I think is frankly quite fallible, memory & recall. So I genuinely appreciate real encouragement from humans, especially face-to-face, not virtually, though in writing, like the-pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword, writing, is also a wonderful blessing.

I’m not a Tiktok user. I think TikTok Sydney emailed and tried to recruit me last year, but it’s hard to know for sure, with so many scams floating around. From the mid-late 2000s, I have a handwritten card “King of Computers”, but frankly it was over a decade since I graduated with first class honours in Computer Science from UNSW, and I haven’t invested in the theory lately, prioritising when I was working in the industry, to just get computing plus human systems working well, systematically problem-solving and mentoring teammates to problem-solve until the result is high quality, rather than knowing how to derive technical things like merge sort is O(nlogn).

Instagram will probably go too, same basic boat – it’s a museum piece primarily used about a decade ago.

WhatsApp I’m less sure on, while I use and encourage Signal, perhaps the Meta FTC trial bears fruit and Insta and WhatsApp get divested and no longer under Mark Zuckerberg’s control and for his benefit? Though I’m probably living in a wishful fantasy land, it irks me, as WhatsApp is so heavily used by generally careful people who I care about, even though I’ve crippled its notifications to help limit my own engagement.

Nevertheless perhaps I’ll align better with my flexible personality and thus learn to let more of the small stuff go, if nothing else, it’s simply not my place to micromanage, so I get to see the forest instead of my historic perfectionist obsession with the deep details of metaphorical trees, as awesome as each tree is, I’ll give Steven Covey the final word on this post and some of the calls I’ve been making in my life recently:

The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ‘Wrong jungle!’

Vale, Stargate

“Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

– Exodus (NIV:1984)

Vale. Farewell.

Growing up, I was a huge Stargate fan. I watched it on Foxtel. I bought all ten seasons of SG-1 and the direct to DVD movies, all five seasons of Atlantis, and both seasons of Universe. At the time of writing, there’s still an active Reddit and Gateworld.

For me, it’s time to sunset this (and thus free up the space). Also, 17 seasons of TV is on the order of 15,000 minutes, more than 10 days straight with no sleeping (thus practically months and months if not years and years). It’s not insurmountable, though it’s also not the wisest of investments of one’s limited life time; for a very rough comparison, the anthology typically of 66 books better known as the protestant Bible typically takes 3.5 days (Pawson, Unlocking the Bible) to read cover to cover, with no sleeping, so Stargate’s reached the order of 3 Bibles in effective length.

MGM sold off the props, what is in 2025 already many years ago. More recently MGM was acquired by Amazon, though there are two series ending with cliffhangers and complicated rights issues clouding any potential for a reboot. The same reason I slowed then basically stopped watching Netflix, so much cancel (far worse when it’s cancelled and starved mid-story, as the end of a matter is better than its beginning), and paying for streaming after Final Space was cancelled; so it’s a bit like Killed by Google, inevitable for anything sprawlingly large, but it hurts, sometimes too much to invest significant time in the general direction of TV, for the time being. I made no time for the games. And there are other lesser known things like Command, Origins and Fandemonium, which I’ve skipped, exposing a practical limit to my fandom.

Total aside, I have no idea what the Trump Stargate program is, beyond what’s public such as this CNN article. So something data centers to power AI?

Basically I think Stargate for TV is dead and buried. It’s not beyond resurrection as Stargate Universe (SGU) hints at; SGU directly suggests the possibility of falling short and drifting for somewhere between three and a thousand years. So, like most of the early worlds that SG-1 visited, the instruction was to bury the gate for safety against the Goa’uld. I did like how Dr Rush in SGU stated clearly “the stargate’s ninth and final chevron”, i.e. what’s been made, while incomplete in the details, is complete and satisfying in its overall architecture.

Visiting a different world required dialing at least seven symbols, manually or on a Dial Home Device (DHD). Stargate for TV or DVD was structured most typically into 40-45 minute episodes that would fit, with commercials, into an hour long slot. Combined, these highlights likely would take several days to binge watch.

Highlights of the first seven seasons of Stargate SG-1

I do like the key arc of the first seven (which became eight) seasons of SG-1 being the Milky Way galaxy’s fight against the Goa’uld, that these parasites would become:

“False god. Dead false god.” – Teal’c of the Jaffa

Additional highlights include:

  • S1E10: The Torment Of Tantalus
    • Something something universal language
  • S1E19: There But For The Grace Of God
    • Introduces a quantum mirror of alternate realities
  • S2E16: The Fifth Race
    • Jack O’Neill, (Richard Dean Anderson, well known for MacGyver) has his dead filled with Ancient knowledge and uses it to dial an eight symbol address, and visit the Asgard
  • S2E21: 1969
    • Time travel! General Hammond (Don S. Davis)!
    • Route 66!
    • Amarillo -> St Louis
  • S3E8: Demons
    • Inspired by medieval Christianity – Guess what role the Goa’uld chose to play?
  • S3E10: Forever in a Day
    • Sha’re, Daniel Jackson’s (Michael Shanks) missing wife is shown with what I think are the first images in Stargate portraying “ascension”, to a higher plane of existence; probably false and closer to Tibetan Monks, but that’s just my intuition
  • S3E12: Jolinar’s Memories (continued in S3E13 The Devil You Know)
    • The Goa’uld System Lord, Sokar demonstrates a version of Hell
  • S3E18: Shades of Grey
    • Could one steal, following orders, if it could save a friendship?
  • S3E22: Nemesis (continued in S4E1: Small Victories)
    • On replicators, Thor says: “Overconfidence in our technology has been our undoing”
  • S4E6: Window of Opportunity
    • Directly references 1969 and Groundhog Day. Daniel Jackson says “Anyway that’s just how I feel about it. What do you think?”
  • S4E16: 2010
    • The A-Shen sterilize over 90% of Earth’s population with an anti-aging vaccine, causing SG-1 to send a note back in time
  • S4E22: Exodus (continued in S5E1: Enemies)
    • A Stargate is used to dial the black hole planet (S2E15), siphon off mass from a star, cause it to go supernova and thus devastate the Goa’uld Apophis fleet, plus replicators
  • S5E3: Ascension
    • An ascended being, Orlin, retakes human form and amongst other things, makes a single-use Stargate
  • S5E10: 2001
    • “Tell them I’ve got iron root in my south field…”
  • S5E12: Wormhole X-Treme!
    • 100th episode!
  • S5E19: Menace
    • “It’s just a toy” – Reese, mother of the Replicators
  • S5E21: Meridian
    • Daniel Jackson ascends
  • S6E6: Abyss
    • Daniel Jackson comforts Jack while he is tortured by the Goa’uld Ba’al
  • S6E10: Cure
    • Teal’c (Christopher Judge): “A queen”
  • S6E11: Prometheus (continued in S6E12: Unnatural Selection)
    • Earth builds a ship, that can’t be called The Enterprise, codenamed X-303, that the Asgard all but require be used in the war on the replicators. Carter is told to deceive the human-form Replicator Fifth
  • S7E1: Fallen (continued in S7E2: Homecoming)
    • Daniel Jackson returns to a lower plane of existence
    • Carter: “This is the wackiest plan we’ve ever come up with”
  • S7E5: Revisions
    • Via “The Link”, a device on everyone’s head which can erase memories, a probably well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided computer program slaughters tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, erasing all memory of them
    • “… thank God for lawyers … they were still using good old-fashioned paper.” – Daniel Jackson
  • S7E13: Grace
    • “Your mother … she gave my life meaning and balance … I would do it all over again. That is love. … it must inevitably end in pain and loneliness. … You deserve to love someone, and be loved in return” – Jacob
  • S7E18: Heroes (concluding S7E17)
    • Farewell Dr Janet Fraiser, job superbly done!
  • S7E20-22: Inauguration, Lost City (Part 1 & 2)
    • Gloriously done, this was originally planned as the conclusion of the SG-1 story arc

Highlights of the final three seasons of Stargate SG-1

NB: Season 8 is a major junction, definitely closing a chapter and arguably an ending. Seasons 9 and 10 almost stand on their own.

  • S8E6: Avatar
    • Teal’c “plays” a hyper-realistic game
    • No obvious links to the James Cameron film, though people talk, so one can wonder?
  • S8E16: Reckoning (Part 2, concluding Part 1)
    • Repli-Carter and Replicators invade the Milky Way, attacking the Goa’uld and Tau’ri
    • “You blow up one Sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water” – Carter
    • Every Stargate in the Milky Way is dialed and the Ancient weapon on Dakara is fired, decoupling all replicator blocks from each other, a key point in the Jaffa battle to hold Dakara and begin final defeat of the Goa’uld
  • S8E17: Threads
    • Daniel meets a jovial half-ascended being in a diner
    • Jacob and Selmak pass on and Sam says no to Pete
  • S8E20: Moebius (Part 2, concluding Part 1)
    • In Part 1, O’Neill’s fishing boat is named Homer, most likely a Simpsons reference
    • Time travel, uprising, ZPM; brilliant!
  • S9E6: Beachhead
    • “Try super gate”
  • S9E10-11: The Fourth Horsemen (Part 1 & 2)
    • Orlin returns as a child and offers a truth suggesting Origin is a cult and a lie, that does not ascend its followers, but merely saps their power by some complicated process of Prostration
    • An Ori plague escapes containment on Earth, becomes an epidemic in Part 1 and is upgraded to pandemic in Part 2
    • The Jaffa, Tau’ri and Ancients via Orlin each play their part, not exactly working together but not exactly divergent, to temporarily withhold an Ori Prior’s power, and ultimately devise a working vaccine, limiting the death toll to around 3000 souls from Earth
  • S9E13: Ripple Effect
    • “We have the top minds from 18 different universes working on a way to get you home …” – General Landry (Beau Bridges)
  • S10E3: The Pegasus Project
    • Crossover episode!
  • S10E6: 200
    • The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
    • Scene 3 just ends because the foreign distributor went bankrupt (with the backdrop of the Global Financial Crisis beginning to unfold)
    • 1263 vs 1264 and 30185. “I’m being punked aren’t I?”
    • Team America: World Police
    • Seven Saturn Awards
  • S10E10-11: The Quest (Part I & II)
    • Five values, such as charity must be demonstrated to find Merlin’s weapon
  • S10E12: Line In The Sand
    • The Priors are unable to detect Sam and Mitchell when Merlin’s weapon let’s them take their building out of phase
  • S10E13: The Road Not Taken
    • “Our plan was to hide the entire planet” – Carter to Hammond
  • S10E14: The Shroud
    • Daniel becomes a Prior and plays double agent, pretending to Adria to destroy the Ancients while perhaps actually destroying the Ori?
    • “… but in the long run it may be our only chance to win the war.” – Mitchell
  • S10E20: Unending
    • Vale, Asgard
    • “Don’t give up”, “Godspeed” – Landry

Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum are in their own right, superbly brilliant direct to DVD highlights.

Highlights of Stargate Atlantis

  • S1E2: Rising (Part 2, concluding Part 1)
    • Dr Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) leads the Earth expedition to the underwater city of Atlantis, thus introducing to us as the audience, lots of new ideas to explore
  • S1E3: Hide and Seek
    • An Ancient mousetrap for ascended beings is opened by Jinto
    • Good thinking by Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) lets Dr Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) send one of five generators through the Stargate; the ascended being chooses to follow
  • S1E11: The Eye
    • Just barely, saved by Teyla and Major Sheppard’s (Joe Flanigan) masterful fighting and the closing visuals of Atlantis facing a giant wave
  • S1E13: Hot Zone
    • In response to a nanobot pandemic, Sheppard detonates a naquadah generator over Atlantis
  • S1E15: Before I Sleep
    • Dr Weir travels 10,000 years into the past
  • S1E20: The Siege (Part 2) & continued in S2E1: The Siege (Part 3)
    • Skip Part 1 unless you want more backstory (in which case do also pick up watching S1E18: The Gift) as the start of episode summary fills it in well
    • Beautiful sweeping pans around Atlantis as the super-fun action jumps from place to place
    • The Daedalus brings the ZPM found in Egypt by SG-1
    • (Lowlight: Columbia TriStar, already defunct, gets sin-binned for putting three ads before the purchased TV on DVD of S2E1)
  • S2E3: Runner
    • Ronon Dex!
  • S2E13: Critical Mass
    • Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) can sing gloriously!
    • Also a brilliant story and cross-over episode with SG-1
    • Boundaries were sadly crossed demonstrating nuance and shades of grey in the characters in so many of us
  • S2E14: Grace Under Pressure
    • More cross-over, here comes Amanda Tapping!
  • S2E15: The Tower
    • Sheppard’s team find a city that looks exactly like Atlantis
  • S2E19: Inferno
    • Geothermal energy from a super volcano. What could go wrong?
  • S3E1: No Man’s Land
    • “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it’s the courage to continue that counts.” … “Churchill?” – General Landry & Dr Elizabeth Weir
  • S3E5: Progeny
    • Mega eye-candy of what looks like a super-Atlantis, but of replicator Ancients
  • S3E7: Common Ground
    • “The gift of life”
  • S3E10: The Return Part 1 & 2
    • A series of stargates are placed such that Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy and Earth in the Milky Way can connect within 30 minutes, but it looks moot when some Ancients are found traveling at 0.999c and kick everyone off the Atlantis world
    • (Dr Weir has what looks like a Buddha statue in the background of her apartment on Earth)
    • “I’ve gotta say, I’ve never met a woman this into World of Warcraft” – Dr Lee
    • The replicator Ancients take control of the real Atlantis, kill all the Ancients except their commander, Jack and Woolsey, and fire drones at Sheppard & Co.
    • I’m thinking of The Prestige – the reveal is brilliant!
  • S3E14: Tao of Rodney
    • “… forgive me …”
  • S3E17: Sunday
    • Dr Carson Beckett healed another on his day off, only to be killed by an explosive tumor
    • Bagpipes!
  • S3E20: First Strike
    • The Daedalus flybys of the replicator planet reveal warships most likely destined for Earth, O’Neill and the IOA order a surgical first strike, to which the replicators respond by sending a satellite/stargate beam weapon to Atlantis
    • McKay suggests to Dr Weir to submerge the city, which took three hours and bought nine hours of shield time. An asteroid provided a cover against the beam weapon letting Sheppard use the chair to fire the city’s interstellar drive, which combined with turning off the shield gave just enough power to escape into hyperspace, but not without casualties
  • S4E1: Adrift
    • Carter! Also the city is adrift in space with just 28 hours until the shields fail
  • S4E6: Tabula Rasa
    • “THIS IS TEYLA FIND HER”
  • S4E10: This Mortal Coil
    • The Seer (S4E8) vision is fulfilled, an Atlantis is destroyed
  • S4E11: All My Sins Be Remember’d
    • Replicator Tori Higginson returns
    • “It can’t replicate.”
    • “FRAN. Friendly Replicator ANdroid.”
  • S4E17: Midway
    • Rodney learns Todd hacked his computer, otherwise…
    • What’s not to like?
  • S4E20: The Last Man & concluded in S5E1: Search and Rescue
    • 48,000 years into the future
    • Love almost all of it, though I hate the way it ended, it could’ve been dropped in a future episode
  • S5E5: Ghost In The Machine
    • The replicator impression of Dr Elizabeth Weir enters into a puddle jumper and beyond
  • S5E10: First Contact & continued in S5E11: The Lost Tribe
    • Michael Shanks visits!
    • “Just resting my eyes” – Sheppard or Homer Simpson in Sector 7-G, S2E4?
    • “… I have met … Loki …”
  • S5E16: Brain Storm
    • Bill Nye tries to steal Jennifer
    • Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • S5E19: Vegas
    • Yay alternate realities

Highlights of Stargate Universe

  • S1E3: Air (Part 3)
    • “He has His plan, for all of us”
  • S1E5: Light
    • This ship is powered by the stars themselves

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespassed against us.
And lead us not into temptation

If I’ve heard and written correctly, I’ll suggest this version of The Lord’s Prayer is mainly the King James Version of Matthew, with a few minor variations, though dropping “but deliver us from evil” onward has vibes of Luke. Fascinating!

  • S2E9: Visitation (Follow-up to Eden)
    • Rush: Do you remember, I mean your burning bush talked to Moses. Gabriel was it, spoke to Abraham? Yet you returned here with no proof of your Saviour, one way or the other. … Either he’s lost his touch, or God’s got nothing to do with this.
  • S2E20: Gauntlet
    • Eli: What’s the point of having potential if you’re not going to step up when you’re really needed?

Concluding thoughts

Ultimately, it is science fiction. Many parts are grounded in believable best guesses as to truth, though ultimately the product of the screenwriter’s influences and imaginations, fed into the cast and crew, edited, and all overseen by the respective producers.

bon.elk first impressions

I just bought some bon.elk adapters, they feel solid and like they are built to last.

However, there was one piece of information that I was looking for that I could not find on the internet.

For some context, I’ve had some trouble with Realtek Ethernet adapters, found in Belkin USB-C LAN F2CU040 (Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter according to the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS lsusb program) or moshi (also Realtek 8153). Thankfully the Apple Ethernet A1277 from 2010 still worked on my late 2017 Intel Macbook Pro. This system is currently running Linux kernel 6.8.0-57-generic according to uname -r. Sometimes, I could work around the adapter not appearing in Ubuntu network settings or in lsusb by leaving it plugged in and doing a full system reboot. Other times, plugging in would just work as expected, letting me focus on other things.

So what I was looking for which may have changed my purchase decisions; what adapter chip is actually used in these bon.elk adapters?

bon.elk Long-Life 15cm USB-C to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter – Space Grey

Model # ELK-80027-R. The Ethernet adapter has in macOS 15.4.1 System Report: 

Bus: USB
Vendor Name: ASIX
Product Name: AX88179A
Vendor ID: 0x0b95
Product ID: 0x1790

Plus Ubuntu:

pzrq@mozzie:~$ lsusb
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 0b95:1790 ASIX Electronics Corp. AX88179 Gigabit Ethernet
…

I like this, once there’s a model number there’s an excellent chance of finding an AX88179A Overview, Datasheet and so on.

bon.elk Long-Life USB-C to 11-In-1 Multi-port Hub – Space Grey

Model # ELK-80055-R. The Ethernet adapter has in macOS 15.4.1 System Report:

Bus: USB
Vendor Name: Realtek
Product Name: USB 10/100/1000 LAN
Vendor ID: 0x0bda
Product ID: 0x8153

I hope if someone else has had a similar experience, this helps with a purchase decision. Though of course today, much of the world is now wireless, for better or worse.

Stories matter

“He created them male and female. God blessed them”

– Genesis, MSG:2018

STOP. I’ve been a closet Cloud9 fan for a long time, including their 2015 Cinderella story. I’ve spent a long time watching League of Legends, though I’ve never played. But it’s finally hit me hard, this is an all-male contest. So I’m going to stop watching it.

START. That stated, their music is much more diverse, for example considering Worlds Collide (feat. Nicki Taylor), Take Over (feat. Jeremy McKinnon, MAX & Henry), Legends Never Die (feat. Chrissy Costanza), STAR WALKIN’ (League of Legends Worlds Anthem, Lil Nas X), Bring Home the Glory (feat. Sara Skinner), I do get a more balanced picture.

(That stated, this is a bit of a cop out to dovetail two big ideas together, if anything my biggest problem right now is I’ve started too many things, and I need to start following more of them through to the end, as a meta-analysis of the links in this post would surely attest to)

QUESTION? While the absence of diversity in technology starts in the home, I think it often gets reinforced in Western educational settings, rather than rebalanced, with a broader view. That makes me sad. Perhaps others feel this pain too? Perhaps they are willing to take a little more time to share and celebrate Amazing Stories, Hidden Figures and so much more, including that which I have yet to discover or rebalance?

What do I need to “Stop. Start. Question?” is something I’ve started doing to reorient myself towards my values. It was shared to me by Stu Cameron, presently Superintendent and CEO, Wesley Mission.

Roger Price & Archiving through a CDN

A few days ago, I linked to the primary source today (there’s an archive too).

What’s less obvious is that the primary content backend is Podbean (plus several other places, yay!).

Roger Price was a well-loved Bible teacher who sadly passed away in 1987. In his short career he wrote 4 books and recorded around 300 Bible studies. He ministered throughout the British Isles and widely in Europe, particularly in Sweden, Germany and Holland. He was renowned for his ability to explain complex theology in an easily understandable way. His talks are presented now online and via podcast platforms so as to reach as many people as possible, for free, as per Roger’s wishes.

In any case, now all the direct Podbean mp3 links I could find at this time are in the internet archive.

Podbean appears to have a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which is evidently optimised for massively parallel delivery (think thousands or even millions of simultaneous downloads). But that makes it harder to send this kind of message through time (as far as it can go), to the highly probable very long term future, where Podbean goes offline indefinitely. I usually archived each intermediate step in the URL chain to get it to work.

That stated, they key is to keep following the internet archive links and redirects, like solving a puzzle (hint1, hint2, hint3), though some initially got archived as traps like infinite redirect loops, they could be re-archived such that they did resolve to an mp3 download for me from the index, except for one.

P.S. Sorry for this one, perhaps I did something wrong here? But just in case it helps another soul, on page 4 the BBS 059 episode link hits a:

This page is unavailable for archiving. The server returned code:

because access is forbidden

Here’s a link to another copy of that same file, 57,404,497 bytes in size, in the internet archive. Each of the talks / mp3s / podcasts is about an hour long.

Perhaps someone else will archive/follow it all again when the archive is a little less unstable.

Or perhaps there’s one already of one of the other podcast delivery platforms?

P.S. Thank God for my mother, not just for bringing me into this world and raising me with my Dad, but also for recommending Roger Price. I’ll stop here because I’m rambling on and it’s late in Sydney, but I’d rather just get this out now. God bless!

καιρός – a new thing – Isaiah

Baptisms, Weddings & significant events hexagons

Hexagon 05 – something brand-new – Isaiah

From time to time, I feel compelled to create designs and implement them with pyrography – literally burning into wood – for events of καιρός significance I am invited to witness, such as my baptism.

Hexagon 02 – How wide & long & high & deep is the love of Christ – Ephesians

I hope the work speaks for itself. Creativity cannot be rushed – it represents weeks of craftful thought in wood choice, often design planning, cutting, sometimes sanding, biscuiting, pyrography and finishing touches.

An early design of Hexagon 02.

There are of course more, though at the moment I have not asked for, nor received the relevant permission from the couples or individuals, so they are for me to know and you to ponder.

P.S. This sat in my drafts for about three years. I’ll guess waiting for God’s perfect timing. Bless God!

Act Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (NIV:1984)

This post’s title is written in Micah, and the Biblical basis of a wonderful Pat Barrett song.

But I’ve buried the lead to give you, my reader, a chance at understanding the nuance and the context of what could be a very contentious account.

The official account is in the Team Description Paper 2024, the SPL Website, and probably other places, that rUNSWift came 3rd.

End of story ?!?

“Good leaders abhor wrongdoing of all kinds; sound leadership has a moral foundation.” – Proverbs (MSG:2018)

Here’s what I hope is a typical legal disclaimer, this is my own (albeit I pray well-informed) opinion, and in no way is intended to directly reflect that of rUNSWift, UNSW, RoboCup, or any other organisation.

I’m not a judge, I’ve no legal experience beyond being on a team that lost three mock trials in Year 11. Though I am a fan of Judge Judy.

That stated, it is also written that, ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

Here follows, my alternate account of the most significant events of rUNSWift Bordeaux 2023.

Firstly, I wasn’t present in Bordeaux, so this is largely hearsay.

I think that means it falls at the first hurdle, if this were a real court.

Secondly, you’re more than welcome to attack me as a witness on any level. For example, I withdrew from directly supporting rUNSWift in 2019, for mental health reasons; I still sympathise with Simone Biles. As CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, Book 3, The Great Sin, I’m “… some small, dirty object”.

“Consider carefully what you do, because you are not judging for man but for the LORD, who is with you whenever you give a verdict. Now let the fear of the LORD be upon you. Judge carefully, for with the LORD our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.” – 2 Chronicles (NIV:1984)

You’re still reading. Thank you so much, I guess I get to lay some things out, to get them less heavily upon my chest. Perhaps you’re willing to keep reading, to carry some of my burden, and perhaps even let me know one of your burdens in the comments? In this way, we will fulfill the law of Christ.

Reputation is paramount. When I hear of examples including Sandpapergate or Sam Kerr’s not guilty (but words hurt) – that it’s what comes out of a person that defiles them, it breaks my heart.

Ok, I’m up to somewhere around third, so thirdly, all RoboCup Standard Platform League (SPL) teams are expected to work hard, collectively it could be hundreds or even thousands of person hours of work. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars combined of travel, registration fees, accommodation, robotic equipment, one hopefully gets the idea.

So to have a rule that gives as little as 45 minutes to fix something inadvertently missed, or be disqualified. Wow. How mean that seems.

The SPL 2023 Rule in question is:

“Wireless communication. Each robot is only allowed to send a limited number of UDP messages that have to comply with a predefined format (see Section 2.4.2). If a robot uses a different protocol or sends too much data in a game, penalties will apply. If a team violates this rule in multiple games, disqualification from the tournament (including all technical challenges and side competitions) as well as an entry in the penalty list will be the consequence.” (and so on)

That year, both the rule and the GameController (GC) / TeamCommunicationMonitor (TCM) suite testing the rule, changed. Which I think is poor software engineering, Dave Farley’s YOW! Keynote 2022 tells the story of the importance of controlling the variables, practically through the aviation industry, that as a collective in SPL, we shouldn’t have tried a new airframe with a new powerplant. So I assert changing both the rules, the specification as I see it, and the implementation in the GC/TCM programs, simultaneously, is poor practice.

In Discord, the communications platform used by SPL, I’m sure I’ve seen a post from the referees of the first game noting with purple text colour, but no accessible explanatory text, illegal packets were being sent. In previous iterations the text colour was at least red, a much more common indicator of something being wrong. Especially something worthy of disqualifying an entire team.

In any case, the packets sent were too large, still using 512 bytes rather than 128 bytes.

The offending code was fixed within 45 minutes, with me assisting remotely from Sydney, and the fix rolled out to the initial fleet of Nao robots. I think this supports rUNSWift on some moral level.

But nothing can absolve that I have access to another Discord post from someone present, that at least one robot was later put on the field in that second game, without the updated code, triggering the purple text. Thus the rule was broken. rUNSWift disqualified.

I can only presume as per A.10 Disqualifiation During Competition, that the RoboCup Soccer SPL executive was obligated to petition the Board of Trustees of the RoboCup Federation. Whether that occurred or did not, I don’t know. I actually just found it today as I reread this to try to get it straighter in my mind. To be healed. I hope they did.

In any case, the tournament was played out.

One wonders, what if?

  • What if the team had sent robots to participate in the German Open Replacement Event? Would we have found out that way?
  • What if I’d gone to Bordeaux with the team?
  • What if the communications were clearer? Was there actually another team also sending purple packets, does that ultimately change anything, or just mean some other team should have had a bye in the quarter final of the knock out stage?
  • What if COVID-19 hadn’t happened? It is so easy to forget this was the second year back in person, but teams take time to rebuild and be renewed and restored.
  • What if more teams had survived COVID? There used to be closer to 30 teams in SPL. It’s around half that now.

But I’ll never be able to shake that the outcome feels like God’s mercy. That the 3rd place was undeserved.

And if I take that view, actually the momentum swings in rUNSWift’s favour as the team continues preparations for Salvador 2025. From all but disqualified in 2023, to quarter-finalists in 2024 off of so many broken robots that only a single training game was played in the three months prior to competition, to navigating a very challenging ROS2 Humble transition in 2025. rUNSWift, no matter what happens, whether I go with you, or I am called to some other mission, I believe you are already champions, and I for one hope and pray God is with you.

P.S. Why write something like this?

It’s written down in and echoes through eternity.