Well I'm sitting here on a Sourcefire course and I have to say its been great. Not, unfortunately because of the course, which while adequate hasn't been enthralling due largely to the fact that I've spent a lot more time then the instructor using their product on their high end kit, but because its given me time to catch up on a lot of things. Before I wander off onto other subjects it's worth noting that I'm not exactly convinced that giving full Internet access on a training course is actually productive. It's definitely a good thing for me, in that I'm not really learning much and the 'net functions as a conduit for me to do other more productive things (including some work) but for a lot of other people in the room who don't know a thing about Sourcefire they are still sitting here browsing the net and ignoring the instructor. I guess if it wasn't the 'net they'd have found some other way to ignore him.
I've had an interesting couple of weeks. Something that I have discovered is a renewed interest in plays. I was never very interested in plays, I think because I had seen some fairly ordinary ones and as a result hadn't been impressed with the genre. When I first arrived in London I went and saw some plays with some friends, really enjoyed it and determined to do it regularly, that was until I saw another few bad plays and once again got over it. Now I'm back at square one having just seen Blackbird which was an absolutely staggering display of emotion on stage. In a nutshell it is about a paedophillic incident that happened 15 years ago and the confrontation between the two protagonists. What is interesting is that the play manages to take you through BOTH perspectives of the incident, that is not only the revulsion and disgust towards the paedophile, but also through seeing it from his eyes, of a true love and a natural thing. It's great to see such controversial material and it certainly illicited some discussion from the 3 of us that saw the play together.
After seeing Blackbird I was in the mood to see another play and when my mother came and stayed with me for the last few weeks it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so. My mother picked Embers which was a really enjoyable play to watch, Jeremy Irons plays a very good role, though that is what you'd expect. As is usually the way though, the book is far better then the play, and it is without a doubt the script that makes the play so good. I read embers a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, I think perhaps because it struck a number of notes with me, not the least of them being friendship. Friends are very important to me, and I have a reasonably complex set of thoughts and philosophies around them, embers explores friendship and its definition quite a bit, and in many cases a lot of the ideas express ring very true with me. I'd recommend that if you can go and see the play, but more importantly go read the book.
I'm slowly catching up on my personal emails, so those of you that have written to me recently, I havn't forgotten but I've been working through a backlog, I prefer to write meaningful (or at least semi meaningful) emails as replies then just glib responses so I can't really churn them out that fast, though I noticed I managed to average ~10 or so emails a day for the last week of a personal nature. Part of that frenzy of emailling was related to 9/11.
It came to my attention via Benjamin Waters that the left had a new show piece, Loose Change which is a movie that promotes various conspiracies about 9/11 (note that the movie is about an hour long so be prepared to watch it if you click on that link). Benjamin Waters also wrote some commentary on the movie in an email and sent it out to various friends, a slightly edited version can be found here. In summary there was quite an interesting little discussion about 9/11, politics and the left in general, especially interesting was that the people I referred to the film all found it quite believable and persuasive.
I have a few things more to write about, but as I'm looking to get out of this course early I'd better go and pay some attention :)
