The most wonderful news is that Prue is finished with the Muse’s Success logo and I plan to debut it during the beta of the coming updates (late July/early August) and push it with the rest of the updates once tested. Big thanks to Prue!

My WordPress plug-ins won’t be updated until Muse’s Success’ updates are successfully beta tested and found to be bug free. If you checkout the GitHub version of the eBook export plug-in, it does continue to create a lovely ePub ebook suitable for iTunes and other ePub book stores.

I seem to have left Facebook without many (2 people noticed) people noticing but I have had to go back a few times due to no one being available via anything else. Does anyone remember email? I don’t really want to delete my account fully – i have such a nice vanity URL but at the same time I want to fully delete it. I saw the trailer for the movie, looks interesting but not enough to see it – especially since the trailer spoils it.

I should be getting a new TV and my glasses two weeks from now, so I am very excited about those too. It’s been ages since I have worn glasses, but I technically need them. I won’t be straining my eyes as much to see, my right eye deserves the reduced workload since my left doesn’t do any of the work.

My big excited Japanese post a few months ago didn’t turn out so well – as soon as I finished the exercise book I was using to practice kanji, I stopped and have not done any since. I had reached around the 280 mark. I finally the other day bought several new blank exercise books, so I am getting back to it after the current assignments are in.

The new anime season started a few weeks ago. The shows that immediately have sparked my interest are Shukufuku no Campanella, Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi, Amagami SS and Nurarihyon no Mago. You should check them out.

Edit: Added Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi to interesting anime.

I have made the decision to leave Facebook. This is because of their recent changes in the way privacy is handled and the outrageous defaulting of every user who had not changed their Facebook settings from the defaults before the change to having everything publicly accessible. I’m also beginning to dislike the tone Facebook and it’s representatives are using both in the user interface, interviews and official communications. I have posted two of these below.

Interview with Elliot Schrage, Vice-president of Privacy at Facebook:

“Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice. We want people to continue to choose Facebook every day. Adding information — uploading photos or posting status updates or “like” a Page — are also all opt-in. Please don’t share if you’re not comfortable. That said, we certainly will continue to work to improve the ease and access of controls to make more people more comfortable. Your assumption about our assumption is simply incorrect. We don’t believe that. We’re happy to make the record on that clear.”

The deactivate account page at Facebook:

Are you sure you want to deactivate your account?
Your 81 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.

What This Means for My Facebook Friends:

• I will no longer be seen around Facebook, primarily on your wall but also anywhere else that I would otherwise interact with you.
• You can no longer post on my wall.
• I will no longer respond to your pokes or other requests.
• You can continue to use the events function to invite me to events however I am unlikely to respond in the comments area to anything regarding the event. I will make an effort to get in contact via email however.
• You can also continue to send messages to me via Facebook. Again, however I will respond via email. If I don’t have your email, the contents of my message that I respond with will be a request for your email address. I would prefer you use the contact form on this blog instead.
• Web Fiction Authors: I have de-fanned your pages. I continue to be a fan of your work, but it was necessary for me to truly leave Facebook to the extent which I can.

The current governing political party of Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is seeking to introduce mandatory ISP level filtering, dubbed “Clean Feed” or the “Great Firewall of Australia” with the stated intent of blocking access to content that has been refused classification, specifically singling out child pornography and abuse material as its target although refused classification content covers far more than this. There would be no opt-out although it had been mentioned early on that there would be.

This filter has a of number issues that make such an attempt to filter en masse the internet use of Australian’s unpractical. These include that it could be easily bypassed using proxies and VPN, and a possible performance penalty that varies with the implementation. The filter would only target web-related content doing nothing to target content that goes over other protocols such as newsgroups and BitTorrent. The blacklist is tiny in comparison to the number of sites that would need to blocked in order to meet the Governments stated target. Perhaps worse, it could possibly create a false sense of security for parents who believe that the filter will protect their children from what has been deemed harmful but due to issues with internet filtering systems, manages to let undesired content through and into the eyes of their children.

With a mandatory filtering scheme, Australia would be following in the footsteps of other countries such as the People’s Republic of China, and Iran. The United Kingdom and select other European countries have also introduced filtering however these are different in the fact that the stated intention is only to block child pornography. This mandatory ISP level filtering would be the first of its kind in a western country. There is fear that this could set a dangerous precedent that could be used to promote internet censorship in other western countries.

The Electronic Frontiers Australia organisation has started the nocleanfeed.com campaign website that seeks to educate Australians and spread the word of the proposed mandatory filtering scheme. Activist organisation GetUP Australia has provided a way for Australians to contact the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.  Additionally, there is a planned day of protest happening in March that will hopefully send the message that Australian’s don’t want nor need their internet access to be filtered.