This is the home page of Sean Vickery /ʃɔːn ˈvɪkɘri/. It is a concoction of info and original articles about some of my interests. It was most recently updated on 25 November 2007.

Election update: woo hoo!

Table of contents

Read and enjoy!

The ongoing peace campaign

Real peace is not just the absence of war

This statement, one of the themes of 2003’s Palm Sunday march, seems particularly pertinent considering the developments in Iraq at that time. The US has consistently acted in the best interests of its large, powerful corporations at the expense of the interests of its people. US oil corporations were unhappy that they were excluded from the future exploitation of Iraq’s large oil reserves—French corporations had the negotiating rights and the Iraqi state was intent to trade its oil for euros instead of US dollars—so the corporations demanded a war. The US oil corporations are not the only ones to benefit: many US companies are expecting lucrative contracts to rebuild what the US/UK forces destroyed.

But what of the people of Iraq? It has taken only a short time for the people to realise that they had been occupied by an imperialist power, and they have been demonstrating on the streets in the tens of thousands. The bodies that seem organised and powerful enough to take charge of the country, from the reports I’ve seen, are the Islamic religous churches. Perhaps this seems like the least worst option to the people, a people who have no recent experience of democracy. So what may happen is that Iraq may regress from being a secular state to a fundamentalist religious state. Hardly liberation, but liberation never arises out of invasion.

What can one do about all this? Australians can influence the Australian government to drop its misguided, criminal and inhumane policies and instead using its resources to further the cause of liberation in Iraq (and around the world). The Australian government could stop sending refugees back to brutal regimes, providing military aid to US slaughters. The money spent detaining refugees here and firing missiles on Iraq could be spent on improving our own health and education services and on foreign aid.

There is more about anti-war, social justice and peace e-lists below. Please feel free to contact me if you'd like to know more.

I am secretary of the hibernating Queensland Peace Network.

How to find out about anti-war, social-justice & peace events happening in Brisbane

Moderated flame- and spam-free discussions

The peace-bris email list is focussed tightly on international news about the various threats and actualities of war, and announcements about upcoming events in the peace campaign in Brisbane.


Using the form below you can subscribe to the m1bris email list. Various announcements about upcoming progressive and/or activist events are posted there.


I support web standards

Browsers that do not support web standards, such as Netscape 4.x, make writing web pages very difficult. I try diligently to make web sites that are useful to people no matter what browser they use, no matter how poor their vision, etc, but some browsers are just darn incompatible and Netscape 4.x is one of those. If you’re viewing this page with one of those browsers you might notice the funny word — cropping up where there should be a dash. Or you might have noticed that the email list subscription forms aren’t grey: these problems are due to browser bugs.

Firefox 2

I advise everyone to upgrade to a browser that supports the web standards HTML 4.01 and CSS 2: as of 27 March 2005, your best browser that meets these criteria is Firefox, free (not shareware, adware, spyware or trialware: free!) software which you can download from www.mozilla.com/firefox.

I used to recommend Internet Explorer 6 SP1 (mentioning you should also intall all the security patches for it). I don’t recommend Internet Explorer any more. I only use it to play one Java game that uses some of the proprietary features of Microsoft’s Java engine. I cannot keep up with all the security patches for Internet Explorer, and I recommend you don’t try to.

The Web Standards Project is a way of encouraging all web users to upgrade to feature-rich, standards-compliant web browsers. If we all used good browsers, all web authors would make better web sites and the surfing experience would be much better for everyone.

Other stuff

Popscene rocks rocked on

18 Jan 2007: On 25 January 2006 there was a special Depot v Pop Scene night. Venue was the Depot, a club in the Fortitude Valley mall which soon closed down/changed hands. Anyway, this was a really good night.

27 Dec 2005: There was a one off ‘Popscene-like event’ at the Alliance on Saturday, 26 December to celebrate Michell & Clem’s engagement. A good time was had by all.

Popscene is a UK/Indie dance club which celebrated its tenth anniversary on 16 April 2004 at the Alliance Tavern. Popscene used to be held on the second Friday of each month, with the doors opening around 9 pm. Admission was $6/5, a price that didn’t increase, to my knowledge, in the club’s ten-year history. The Popscene web site is well out of date but has some old photos which may be of slight interest if, for example, you want to see the fashions at the height of the Britpop craze in Brisbane (around 1995).

Popscene’s future is, in my opinion, assured by its previous success. Its instigator, Clem, told me in 2004 he thought he’ll do something with it again in the future. So I guess it will return in some form eventually.

(This section originally written in May 2004 and most recently updated in January 2007.)

Ancient Anguish

Do you know what a MUD is? A MUD is like a game and a multiuser chat system rolled into one. Ancient Anguish is one of the best—quite possibly the best. It’s a vast continent in a medieval world. It has varied geography, from tundra and wide open regions in the north, to the rocky Claw Mountains, to the fertile grasslands and forest around the city of Tantallon, rich jungle and bogland, and, in the far south, a perishing desert and the ancient city of Drakhira. Towns, hamlets, strange towers, caves and dungeons, cottages with interesting folks living in them, all dot the terrain, and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of things to do. It’s all done with text, it’s free, and it’s lots of fun to play. Typically, sixty or more people are playing at any moment in time. There’s more information about Ancient Anguish at www.anguish.org. If you happen to see Shanks on, say hi to him. :)

zMUD

To best enjoy your MUD experience, you’ll need client software, and the software of choice seems to be zMUD. You can download from Zuggsoft and use it for 30 days for free, and then it requires a small licence fee for permanent use.

Recent articles, reviews, etc.

How to contact me

Use my contact form.

Valid XHTML 1.0!