I last posted in September, as I usually say not much has happened since then. I don’t like to focus on the negative, but it is hard not to when I see the strain my mom is under every day. My mom and I have been devising ways to try and lessen her work load. She has shown a friend how to prepare my lunch, which has enabled her to go out and leave me on my own for longer periods.

Frustratingly, there are people, who out of ignorance or whatever you want to call it, think that we exaggerate how difficult it is to provide full-time care for a frail, physically disabled person. Somehow we need to find volunteers who are able and willing to assist with my late afternoon and evening routine. It is during this period of the day that my mom takes the most strain, sometimes having to work until 10 pm, which isn’t easy.

However, we have discovered that even when we have a full-time person assisting there’s no guarantee they’ll stay for more than a few months, the consequence of which is that we have to train up a new person, which is costly and very taxing on my mom. Our situation simply has to change, but as to exactly how we are going to plot the way forward is unclear. We don’t have sufficient funds for a full-time care giver and we still need to find the right person. If the situation doesn’t improve significantly, my mom will eventually crack under the constant strain of having to take care of my every need.

After reading this you should have a clear picture in you minds of what we have to endure on a daily basis and an idea of some people’s interpretations of our situation. We are very grateful to all of you who are helping financially and who visit regularly.

This will be my last post focusing on the negative in my situation (those that visit me will see the situation as it is and for those that can’t or don’t visit me, not much is likely to change). From now on I will try and focus on the positive and on news and events that interest me.

Below is list of a couple of things I have done in the last few months.

• I have (as always) tried to learn and discover new things in the field of web design.
• I have done some x264 video encoding.
• I have been restyling and formatting my notes from TAP (now called KMBC). I’ll post them online when I’m finished.
• While the weather has been warm and I have the energy, I have been playing computer games, in particular Mass Effect 3.

Lastly, I wish there was a way to properly interact with the computer, beyond typing and voice dictation. I can only type for a short while when I use dictation. After about an hour or so, my vocal cords get tired and accuracy consequently drops.

The only news I have for May is, is sad news, on 23 May we had to have our Yorkshire terrier, Bobby put to sleep. He was at least 12 years old (we don’t know how old he was when we got him), he was deaf and blind, he had a lot of pain in the joints in his back legs.

Not much happened in June, other than the start of winter, which as some of you will know, I have a lot less energy in winter.

But, on 26 June at around 3 PM, Johan my step-father had a stroke and seizure, he was taken to hospital by ambulance. He spent four days in ICU, he was then moved to a normal ward for another four days. He has recovered somewhat, but it appears he has atrial fibrillation, so he is having to take it easy now.

As in June, there isn’t much news for July. I continued to work on the website that I’ve been working on for most of the year, albeit at a slower pace due to the colder weather. The other thing I remember in July is two years since my terrible hospital experience.

In August we had some of the coldest days of the year, 10°C or less. Thankfully in the last two weeks it has warmed up, as a result I have probably done more work in these two weeks than in the last 2 1/2 months. Some of the work I did, was on a new template, logo and colour scheme for my blog(again something that I have been working on all year).

In September it was warmer again, but we did have some cold days. On the third it was my 35th birthday, I had a few friends around for tea. I continued to work on my new blog theme, as well a website I’m responsible for maintaining.

To end off, not much has changed with regard to my caregiving situation, my mom is still under enormous strain. Financially things have improved somewhat, but we are still around 50% short each month. Physically and emotionally, I can see the strain increasing virtually every week.

At first glance, my title might appear to be concerned with two separate issues, but hopefully by the time you finish reading this you will realise that the media industry and politicians in the U.S. and many other countries are trying to make this one issue. My thoughts on these issues aren’t new, but I feel it’s important to post about it, especially considering the dubious new legislation being proposed.

Wikileaks has forced politicians and the media industry, particularly in the U.S., to try and tighten their control on the use of the Internet (https://www.eff.org/coica), which is not surprising because only now (more than a decade late) are they realising that the Internet, more often than not, puts the power in the hands of the users. Wikileaks has also put the fear of God into government and big business because these institutions now realise all their corrupt and underhanded dealings could end up on the Internet for the whole world to see.

It’s high time the media industry and those they are paying bribes to, are exposed for who they really are. When I refer to the media industry, I mean the RIAA, MPAA, and all other organisations and third parties they use worldwide to supposedly enforce copyright infringement. The days of operating like a cartel and blatantly overcharging consumers are over and the practice of slicing up of the world into geographic regions where each local entity of the larger media company is free to overcharge and exploit the consumer, should also end.

If the industry weren’t so arrogant, they would realise how much money they are losing by preventing consumers from other geographical regions from being able to buy from Amazon, iTunes and other media streaming websites. One has to ask the question why the media industry doesn’t seem to understand economies of scale.  A recent article on the issue: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/report-piracy-a-global-pricing-problem-with-only-one-solution.ars makes for interesting reading.

Instead of adjusting their business models to allow for worldwide legal digital downloads, the media industry have resorted to suing their buying audience and lobbying politicians for legislation that protects there archaic business model and greed.  Furthermore, I recently heard someone from the industry blaming all their problems on piracy and lying about the true cause for their woes before Congress (so much for the oath). Refer to http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-has-all-but-dismantled-our-recorded-music-industry-110217/ to view their tirade.

When RIAA members hold press conferences, they always bring out their flagship artists who represent a small minority of their clientele. These press conferences do not paint a true picture of the manner in which the media industry treats its clients. Any other industry in the world would be investigated and heavily fined if they treated their clients in the manner in which they do. However, it is not surprising since the RIAA has paid off all the necessary people to ignore their dubious practices.

The MPAA has recently instigated a lawsuit against hotfile (hotfile.com), part of which alleges the website encourages and rewards users for uploading illegal content. The irony of this is that if MPAA members adjusted their business model and devised their own system allowing for legal worldwide digital downloading, the need for file sharing hosts would be almost non-existent. Just imagine all the dollar amounts paid to hotfile and many other file-sharing hosts going to MPAA members for an annual subscription for legal digital downloads. However, it is highly unlikely that this will ever happen given the MPAA’s greed and ignorance of digital technology.

Next on the agenda are the recent actions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with regard to the seizure of domain names. One occurrence could well be a coincidence, but three times, most certainly not! Yes, they have seized innocent domains together with supposedly guilty ones on three occasions and now they have gone even further, seizing the domain of a person who was linking to streaming sites. Refer to: (http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/dhscomplaint/?akid=344.320406.sJSEV7&rd=1&t=2). Despite what they claim, questions need to be asked regarding the competence and motivation of the agents as is evident in the affidavit in the above-mentioned case and various TV interviews.

Who would have thought in 2011 we would be discussing U.S. government institutions violating the right to due process, accepting false and misleading information from the MPAA and others as sufficient grounds for the issuing of warrants. We usually witness this type of behaviour from so-called “rogue regimes” but it does not surprise me since most politicians have been in cahoots with big business and special interest groups since at least the 1960’s.

When the Obama administration took up office, we heard about former RIAA lawyers joining the Justice Department. We all know how it’s supposed to work with regard to what they can and can’t work on, but one can’t help but wonder, especially in light of all the recent domain seizures and the COICA legislation and other activities, what they are actually working on. Here’s an example: Joe Biden was a close Senate ally of copyright holders, and President Obama picked top copyright industry lawyers for Justice Department posts. Last year, Biden stated, “piracy is theft.” Refer to http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html

Therefore, to conclude, I’d like to share some advice as to what you can do about all this. If you live in the U.S., ask all your elected officials if they are receiving any money from the RIAA, MPAA or any of their members and similar organisations. If yes, then tell them you will no longer vote for them. You can also remind them that piracy is only part of the issue and that the media industry must be forced to adjust their business model to allow for legal, worldwide digital downloads of movies, music and TV episodes.

It is also critically important to tell them to support organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others working to defend the rights of the public in the digital world, exposing suspicious legislation, fighting for transparent debate on proposed legislation and ensuring that outdated laws are updated as soon as possible. Lastly, tell them that piracy and Wikileaks are unacceptable excuses for blatant Internet censorship. Refer them to the terrorism buzzword and the Patriot Act for a good example.

As I dictate this post, my mom is away again on a well deserved holiday, at the same place again (Southport beach).

I am using a new headset to dictate this (it is a Sennheiser VMX office headset). At this point I must say thank you to the person who made a large contribution towards the headset. It is a wireless headset it only weighs 15 grams, which obviously mean that I can wear it for very long periods and also I am able to put it on my ear myself.

I now hope to write about many other topics as I have been encouraged to do by a few people.

I haven’t got as far as I would have liked on my new colour scheme and layout for my site. I had to delay work on it, to work on a few other sites.

The weather has been very hot and humid this week, which as some of you will know is good for me (the heat part anyway) energy wise, I have got quite a lot of work done.

It’s been awhile since I posted something. It wasn’t easy to write about my situation. Thank you to those who commented on my blog post.

The short term situation has improved somewhat. Someone anonymously paid for my mother to go away from 6-10 December to a cottage at Southport Beach. A friend also made a contribution which was used to pay for a caregiver while my mother was away.

I could see that short break had a big impact on my mother. It will need to happen a few times a year to really make an impact. Thank you to the person(s) who is responsible to for paying for the cottage at Southport Beach. My mother has been given another week in February at the same place. Now we need to find the money to pay for a caregiver for the week in February.

Thank you also to those who have started to contribute monthly.

I tried to publicise my situation a bit more by posting on the local forum MyBroadband, sadly but not unexpectedly apart from a few good responses encountered the usual South African apathy and stereotype of the physically disabled.

I’ve spent most of my time in the last month or two working on a new theme for my blog(for those that don’t know about themes, a new colour scheme for this site).