By Simon, 2 March, 2022

Movement for a People's Party started out with a solid premise. Originally called "Draft Bernie" in 2017, the idea was to recruit Bernie Sanders to create a new third party, and, by tapping into the political revolution happening at the time, ending the two party duopoly enjoyed by the Republican and Democrat parties.

I should know. I was there.

By Simon, 8 November, 2021
It's about time I put another article up here. Further down, I tell a repair story where Apple did right by its customers (and it only took a class action lawsuit to get there). But this is me, being highly peeved by Apple's current lack of vision and forward thinking. It's 2021, and we're supposed to have flying cars by now. Aside from the usual built-in obsolescence from non-upgradeable components such as hard drive and memory, Apple seem to be double downing on protecting legacy sales. Sure, there's now a shiny M1 chip inside that finally catches up with the VR world like it's 2017, but Apple have been removing features instead of expanding upon them. 
By Simon, 31 March, 2019

It's been a while since I posted here.

I've moved house, travelled around the world a couple of times (which I don't need to bore anyone with), was picked up by a tornado in Kansas (apparently it's a thing there, but, again I don't need to bore anyone with) and... finally... the album I've been co-producing with Bo Menart is finally out! Read on…

By Simon, 26 August, 2016

High prices for life saving medicine isn't cool. So how could it get worse? Try the blatant misuse of coupons (or "savings cards") to cover up and hide the extortionate pricing of medicine. You've probably heard about by now the EpiPen fiasco. It's an Epinephrine autoinjector sold by Mylan. Epinephrine is the only treatment for a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis, which affects up to 1 in 50 Americans. If left untreated can be fatal.

Mylan raised the price from $57 in 2007 to over $600 in 2016. The SEC filings for Mylan show that CEO Heather Bresch's compensation package jumped from $2,453,456 in 2007 to $18,931,068 in 2015 (a 671% increase). All this to deliver a dose of Epinephrine worth about a dollar. Now they've been publicly shamed, they're offering a promotional "savings card" to appease the sickly masses. Except it's a bit worse and much more insidious than this.

By Simon, 15 March, 2016

A couple of weeks ago my 2011 MacBook Pro died. Well, not quite died, but the video stopped working which amounts to the same thing. Both the screen and external monitors exhibited severe monochromatic lines and ghosting of said lines. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't even art. It was infuriating as it was outside of the AppleCare warranty, plus this had happened once before and had been repaired.

By Simon, 10 February, 2016

Some people are having a hard time understanding why women, especially young women, are passing over the female Democrat candidate for an elderly white haired guy. Gloria Steinem says "When you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’" while Madeleine Albright says "Just remember, there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other."

Simply put, young women supporting Sanders would say they prefer him to Clinton because they prefer his approach to politics. - Michelle Hackman

There are three articles you need to read, by modern feminists, to understand why Steinem and Albright are dead wrong...

By Simon, 21 January, 2016

I'm an idiot. No really. This web page has been down for last 3 weeks because SELinux apparently works. Visitors to this page were met with the following message after rebooting the server:

PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2003] Can't connect to MySQL server on 'my-database.amazonaws.com' (13) in lock_may_be_available() (line 167 of /var/www/html/includes/lock.inc).

Read on to find out how to fix it...