The religious don’t get it; a life free of religion is a life full of joy

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May 022012
 

It seems Father Robert Barron thinks that “true” atheists have a joyless, hopeless mentality.

Well, Father Robert Barron must be a buffoon; as an atheist I know how precious life is, that we have this one moment in time to enjoy, to love and be loved, to help others, to wonder in amazement at what this world brings, to create monuments, to fight against injustice.

I love helping others, I enjoy the rewards and recognition of hard work, I love travelling and meeting people around the world, I love taking photos which I hope others will also enjoy. All this without the falsehoods and injustices that religions bring. A life free from religious tyranny and enslavement.

There is no evidence for a god. And religions have empty words built on delusion and lies. So, yes, live a full of joy. Father Robert Barron doesn’t get it.

UPDATE 2nd May 2012: Eric MacDonald provides a more detailed response on Father Robert Barron’s “ideas”.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012

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My online music services

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Apr 262009
 

After the demise of Pandora‘s services here in the UK, it took me a long time to cotton-on that there was a home-grown alternative…Last.fm which, like Pandora, helps you to discover new music. The mechanisms that Pandora and Last.fm utilise for pattern-matching and discovering new music may differ but both are very useful services and I don’t doubt that there may be other services out there working on similar principles.headphones

As soon as I discovered what Last.fm is and that they offered free services to the UK I was very interested indeed. And then I was very excited when I found out that Last.fm music streaming was available on Squeezebox and that audioscrobbling was available. So I immediately set up my Squeeze Center and SqueezeBox to make use of the Last.fm services.

In discussion with one of my friends who uses an Xbox running xbmc media centre software, we found that Last.fm was available within xbmc. And it worked fine too. I also use xbmc but running on a Windows Vista machine which I use as a media centre (I don’t actually use the built-in Vista Media Centre). I soon had my media centre PC running Last.fm as the HD TV display and user-interface are a bit more user-friendly than the displays on the SqueezeBox. Of course using the HD TV and the xbmc do consume a bit more electricity but it is useful to be able to switch between SqueezeBox and xbmc.

Whilst I was setting up Last.fm for the xbmc, I had a look at Spotify which is basically an online music-on-demand service with a huge catalogue. And in the UK, Spotify offer a free service supported by minimum advertising. You have to download the Spotify client (currently Windows and Mac) but there is discussion that it may become available on the SqueezeBox. The Spotify client can audioscrobble to Last.fm so that was pretty neat too. I actually run the Spotify client on the Vista-based media centre PC (which also has xbmc and SqueezeCenter) but I control it remotely using UltraVNC…I probably need to get a good wireless media centre keyboard to control the media centre. I previously had no need for a keyboard as my Logitech Harmony 885 universal remote control did it all…but now I need a keyboard and mouse to control the Spotify client. Looking forward to Spotify becoming available on the SqueezeBox platform and I also dream of xbmc integration too.

I’m now really enjoying my music again through Last.fm and Spotify. Highly recommended.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2009

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KeePass Password Safe – Windows and BlackBerry

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Jul 232008
 

For a while now I’ve been using a work-supplied Windows Mobile 6 PDA (an O2 xda Orbit). Nice device.

Well, recently our company migrated to BlackBerry devices, and although I’ve managed to get most of the functionality that my xda Orbit had (in terms of software applications), I’ve missed having something equivalent to Illium’s eWallet digital wallet with desktop and PDA synchronisation. I did have an option of buying something like FlexWallet but I wanted to wait until “eWallet for BlackBerry” was released (which is actually a conversion of FlexWallet!).

“eWallet for BlackBerry” was announced months ago and the release date was originally April 2008 and now it’s end of July 2008. I’ve waited and waited but I couldn’t wait anymore as I’m about to go abroad and needed to take my encrypted data with me on my BlackBerry. But I found the perfect solution yesterday and am now all up and running. What was the solution? Simple, really…“KeePass Password Safe” and “KeePass for BlackBerry”.

With the Windows version of “KeePass Password Safe” and using an import plugin, I was able to import eWallet into “KeePass Password Safe”. And for the BlackBerry, I downloaded “KeePass for BlackBerry”.

I’ve now got my Windows-based “KeePass Password Safe” and “KeePass for BlackBerry” synchronised with each other. The encryptions offered are AES (Rijndael) and TwoFish for the database and an SHA-256 password hash. There are a bunch of other features built-in and a number of plugins available that really make KeePass stand out from the crowd.

The best thing about this solution? It’s FREE!

Highly recommended.

(Running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1, and BlackBerry OS v4.2.2.181)

Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu – All Rights Reserved

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