a moment of love

I have not written in a while. My mind is full of things I want to write and say but somehow they do not get put down on paper. I feel in love with this quote from the movie blood diamond which seems to sum up the truth of humanity, the conflict between the light and the dark and the fact that there are no rules that can define our actions only our own hearts and our own awareness of those actions. Here is the quote that I find so beautiful and so simple that speak of us all in the language of myths and dreams.

My heart always told me that people are inherently good.
My experience suggests otherwise.
But what about you, Mr. Archer?
ln your long career as a journalist......would you say that people are mostly good?

No.l'd say they're just people.

Exactly. lt is what they do that makes them good or bad.
A moment of love, even in a bad man......can give meaning to a life.

I have always been surprised by the fact that good and evil are still spoken off in the way that they are, often simply to use as a marketing, political speak to prove a point of the "evil doers" and how good and self righteous a person is as they declare war to destroy life for profit, but has no basis in reality.

Like the quote say we are all light and dark, good and bad, it is what we do that shapes our experience, and nothing is set in stone, "a moment of love, even in a bad man... can give meaning to a life". It is our own awareness of our actions that makes us true to ourselves and to life itself.

5 November 2021

remember remember

As today is November 5. I find myself reminded of a speech given in the movie V for Vendetta. I will not pretend to know the full history of the movie or the graphic novel. I personally found the movie to be handled like a bull in a china shop. However the mythology and the overriding philosophy is powerful. It was no surprise to me that many have chosen the mask that was worn in V for Vendetta to be a symbol of a movement. I find that today I am being reminded of the speech given to London in the movie. Here is an extract.

Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

No matter what your personal feelings are about the current global situation. I do feel very strongly that the coercion and human rights violations need to be seen for what they are. I find the wording "if you're looking for the guilty party you need only look into a mirror" to be hugely important.

It is true in many respects that we have not been as a collective very good in recent decades at standing up for what we believe to be right. There have been a lot of thing we have let slip unless there is a strong political agenda driving the argument. Instead we simple get on with life. We find work arounds to make the difficulties thrust upon us work.

The thing that I love most about humanity is its ability to be creative. To find a solution to a problem that has been forced upon us. If a person's income is not enough to be able to sustain their family as it was in the 40s then they will find a solution. Both parents will work. If an education system that was once reasonably priced is now extortionate human beings will find a way. The one thing we don't do is often question why this has occurred.

These are very simple examples. There are millions of others with varying degrees of pain and difficulty that have been thrust up us but we find a creative solution so that we can live and enjoy the very simple needs that are foundational to being human and that can bring happiness to the precious moment of our lives. In such a beautiful way we simply get on with it. We struggle with the challenges but we find a way.

We seem to very rarely question why things have changed so much. Why things that were once easy have become extraordinarily difficult. If we do question then we look to our authorities for a solution and more often than not we trust them. Without questioning their motivations because let face it people are fundamentally good.

But fear is a powerful motivator and it is used so aggressively.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

These are very strange times where everything that we knew to be an absolute truth deserved to be questioned. It is not easy to question these things. I know it has caused me tremendous amount of pain and discomfort. But to not means that we will continue to find creative solutions to our problems while our world and our choices become smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller still.

The one thing that I have learned is that eventually we all have to take a breath. When we do take a breath we get a chance to restore what is fundamental to being human. The things that are fundamentally important to us. Our family, our freedoms, our bliss. When we are able to take a breath I think we realise that the problems we are told we should care about are not actually problems we do care about. They instead are the problems of egos that have grown too large to sustain themselves and that those ego games (thrust upon us by those wishing to play god) are not worth playing and do not hold any intrinsic value to us. They instead must be calmly and gently stopped and prevent them from being allowed to take over our lives.

The one thing we must never forget and the one thing that is true is to trust our own instincts and intuition as they are the summation of our full intelligence. We seem to have lost our ability to trust ourselves and to trust our own true intelligence that comes not just from the rational mind but from our instincts and intuition combined. Without these greater intelligences that make up who we are as an individual all we have is a mass of information that is contradictory and simply leaves us confused, frightened and alone. Trust who you are and trust how you feel the rest will become clear.

So on this 5th of November I simply remember that this day hold a certain need to questions the world around us and to trust how we instinctively feel about it. Because only then can we choose what is important to us and what we want to do about it.

Here is the full transcript:

Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine – the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?

Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the 5th of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words – they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest you allow the 5th of November to pass unmarked.

But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a 5th of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

1 November 2021

creations in unusual places

Having done graphic design in many different capacities over the years. There's always a sense of joy in seeing that work in print or on a billboard or online. But there was something so unusual and so surprising when I received an image of a logo I designed on the back of a sports teams jersey.

I have to admit that this one really made me smile. So much fun to see it in a place I never expected it to be. For some unusual reason it really gave me a sense of pride to have designed it

29 October 2021

Alternative to Google Analytics

For many years I used Google analytics to be able to see what users were looking at and viewing on my sites. I started using Google analytics because it was free and because it seemed like the simplest choice. Since Google is the main search engine why not take advantage of all they have to offer?

From the very beginning I really struggled on a very personal level to interpret what felt like a very overindulgent amount of data about any individual and what they were doing. And purely from my perspective it was so hard to navigate the interface.

For years like many developers I have struggled with the balance between the usefulness of Google and the clear violation of the constant data collection of its users. So when it came time to find an alternative even if it meant paying for it I was very happy to do so. As part of the Laravel community I had heard about Fathom Analytics.

I have now been using them for a little under a year and so far it has been simple to install, easy to understand my data, respectful of users privacy and is in keeping with my sense of morality.

Although I have not yet been able to get rid of all of Google's ability to track my users (or other tracking pixels) without their consent or mine it is something that is important to me and that I will continue to work on. But for now a simple thank you to Fathom Analytics will do nicely.

28 October 2021

here's to the beginning

My name is Aaron Kenton. I have been building a simple and yet what I hope to be powerful article platform for use in some of my other development projects. I have created this article site really as a test to try it out before I start using it on my other projects. I also thought I would take the opportunity to share some thoughts about web development, running a business, natural health and many subjects that may be unrelated.

There is something unusual about running a company of one (and yes I have read the book) in that so much of my progress, my trials, my frustrations and my triumphs are largely experienced internally. I personally am somewhat of an introvert and so the idea of sharing my day to day progress is a little daunting but also a lot of fun.

I hope that you may find a few things of interest as this website grows. And if you don't then it is simply a place for me to try out new ideas while I continue to develop and create. here's to the beginning.