Rants in the Void

Author: Tiggs Panther

  • PRTG and Windows Server Evaluation Edition

    I use PRTG to monitor equipment on my home network. It’s what we use at the MSP I work at and, to learn more about it, I’ve now been using it at home for a couple of years.

    Paessler make it free for up to 100 sensors. Which is fine for a home environment.
    As it runs only on Windows, though, you need a license for that. Which is going to be costly, Right?

    Not necessarily.
    Windows Server is available in an Evaluation Edition which is free, but with the following main caveats:

    • Can only be licensed for 180 days at a time.
    • Can only be used for a maximum of 3 years.

    This really isn’t too much of an issue, mostly. Except there isn’t really an easy way of monitoring how much time is left before you have to re-arm the license. Which means you can wake up to your VM or server being down.

    Luckily, I was able to find who to find this via WMI. Which is one of the sensors types PRTG supports.

    Step 1 – Create the WMI Query

    Browse to C:\Program Files (x86)\PRTG Network Monitor\Custom Sensors\WMI WQL scripts
    Create a file something like WQL Script – Evaluation Time Remaining.wql
    Edit it to contain the following line:

    SELECT GracePeriodRemaining From SoftwareLicensingProduct

    Be aware, this returns a value in minutes. Don’t worry, this is addressed later.

    Step 2 – Create the Custom Sensor

    Firstly, entry for your Windows Server and select Add Sensor. Then select WMI Custom. This is for numeric values, such as time counters.

    For WQL File, select the file you just created from the drop-down list.

    The scanning interval does not need to be the default of 1 minute. I set mine to 30 minutes but hourly, or longer, will be fine. Ultimately, we’re after a countdown in days.

    Once this sensor is up and running, it’s time to do some maths.

    Step 3 – Create a Sensor Factory Sensor

    These type of sensors allow you do things like pull together things from multiple devices, or to do operations on existing results.

    There are 1440 minutes in a day, so we can use one of these sensors to do this calculation for us.

    Go to Add Sensor, search for Sensor Factory and create one.

    For the Channel Definition you will need the sensor ID for the WMI query, in my case this is 2728, and the channel index. Probably 0, like mine.

    I’ve labelled mine “Time Remaining”, references the WMI sensor and divided the result by 1440.
    I’ve also set it to recalculate hourly.

    Step 4 – Format the Channel and Alerting

    In the Channel Settings, I have also made the following changes:

    Alerting Thresholds

    I’ve set these to Warning at a week and Alert at 2 days.

    Numerical Formating

    If you leave decimal places at Automatic then you’ll get numerical values like “160.6 days” which isn’t really necessary.
    So I just set it to 0, which rounds it to the nearest whole number

    So now, rather than having to logon to the server desktop to check the remaining time, or waking up to a down VM, I’ll get PRTG alerts telling me it’s time to give the server a re-license.

  • Epic Game Store, Exclusivity and Developer Trust

    I’ve got plenty to say about the whole Epic Games Store Exclusivity thing but I’m not going to. I could assemble one of my usual Wall Of Text rants but I won’t.
    Because I’ve got one single point I really want to focus on here.

    This is setting a bad precedent because of one thing. Trust!

    Trust Issues

    Developers and publishers have opened up pre-orders or used the forums on Steam. They’ve listed, or at least strongly implied, Steam as a digital release platform. When potential customers have expressed concern about Epic exclusivity, some developers have even set minds to rest by stating that the plan is still to release on Steam.

    OK, “plan” means that things can change. That’s not the point, though.

    The point is that this year, several games have been announced to have timed exclusivity on the Epic Games Store despite every indication during the Hype-Up Phase that the initial release date would at least be on Steam, if not GoG and other distributions platforms as well.

    This has changed.

    If This Then Why Not That

    If one pre-release statement can change before the actual release date, surely other things could change as well. That’s something I think the developers and publishers jumping on the admittedly really good deal that Epic offers are overlooking
    Especially in the case where people have sought early assurances that a day-one Steam release would be forthcoming, or that a physical release would including game data and not just a prompt for a download.

    At this point, enough examples exist that it’s safe to say that anything stated prior to the actual release date can change at any time. At which point, how can anything stated by developers or publishers in the run up to a game release be relied upon?

    A simple fact is that when people are weighing up whether or not an in-development game is worth buying, official statements need to be trustworthy. If any single statement is a deal-breaker for someone, that person needs to be certain that every statement is upheld.

    For now, at least, that trust is broken.

  • To my mother, Valerie: Thankyou and Farewell

    About nine weeks ago, my mum died. About six weeks ago, it was the funeral. Although now may seem like an odd time to feel like I want to make a bigger deal of remembering her, the timing seemed quite appropriate.

    One of the last things my mum did together with my dad before the stroke that caused her death was to make Christmas Puddings. She (or she and dad, after the first stroke seven years previously) would always make an extra one to give to me, as I live alone. (And they keep for a while, so I have them bit by bit over January)
    Last night I had the last piece of it.

    It was nice. (I love Christmas Pudding!)
    And I just felt I needed to say something regarding it. Because, to me, it’s a bit of a big deal.

    Mum would always make the Christmas puddings and, because I enjoyed bit of cooking when I was a child, it’s one of the things mum would let me help out with. When I was a bit older, I would actually do the bulk of the mixing myself and mum would handle the pressure cooker side of things. But when I finally moved out, it was back to mum always making them.

    It was a part of her pre-Christmas tradition. OK, she’d make them in November but it was an important part of the lead-up to Christmas. After her first stroke in 2011, she wasn’t quite as able in the kitchen as she had been previously but she didn’t let that stop her. Dad, pretty good at cooking, anyway would help her out and the Christmas Puddings were no exception.

    As the years since the first stroke took their toll and her mobility and fine motor control deteriorated further, dad would take over more and more of the cooking. But Christmas Pudding was one of those things where she’ be in the kitchen with him, stirring the mixture and doing what bits she could. Because it was something that she’d always done, and it was still something that she could do.

    So, last night, I had my final piece of “Mum’s Christmas Pudding”.

    Thanks, mum. You started off my interest in cooking, and are a part of why I can survive living alone and am pretty capable in the kitchen. You started off my interest in typing, which grew into a part of why I lived using computers. You’re a major part of who I am today, and will continue to be so.

  • Brexit: Stalemate

    The Brexit negotiations seem to have reached something of an impasse. This one was kind of inevitable, though, as it is in regards to Northern Ireland. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that both sides are taking a logical standpoint. Both options seem like the only “right” answer to the side putting them forward, and each are unacceptable to the other side. Unlike other issues, though, this is not just simple stubbornness. It’s a case where one side has to compromise for anything to proceed but the compromise would at the heart of what each side is fighting for. And that’s not “compromise”, that’s “conceding defeat”. But with no third option, we’ve reached Stalemate.

    On the one hand, we have the UK. Our referendum result was in favour of leaving the European Union. Regardless of whether you agree with the result, or how close it was, the result was Brexit. Personally, I think it was the wrong decision but it’s the one we’re stuck with and that’s what our side has to bargain for. (more…)

  • Home Geekery: DNS and DHCP

    Currently being between jobs, I figured that I should use some of my available time to tweak my home network and brush up on some skills whilst waiting for companies to get back to me.

    A while back, I replaced the router provided by my ISP with one that is basically better. After getting it setup, I soon realized that it lacked one useful feature that my previous router did. It didn’t automatically register devices in a local DNS.
    This was a bit of a pain so I decided to use my Synology NAS as a DNS server, as it has a package for it. I did a very rough-and-ready job at the time, just to basically store a few local addresses and forward the rest via my router to my ISP. No reverse-lookup functionality on the internal network, though.

    This was all very well for a while. It did the basic job and was certainly “good enough” for a home network. However, with jobseeking taking longer than I would like and me starting to run out of things to fill the hours with, I figured that now was the time to do a proper job of it. Finish it off so it all works nicely, even if it’s a bit overkill for a home network, and to actually increase my knowledge of how DHCP and DNS work. After all, even when I am in work, I’ve never really had the opportunity to get into the network. And even if I had, playing around with a live network just to see how it works is very much a Bad Idea.
    Potentially breaking my single-user home network to improve it and learn how it works is a more acceptable risk.

    What it Now Does

    • DHCP (dynamic assigning of IP addresses) is done on the Router.
      • I have set registered addresses for much of my home equipment.
      • In some ways this is overkill, but it can be useful.
      • It’s good practice.
      • It means that my at-home network has fixed IP addresses for various devices but I can bring them elsewhere and have them “just work”.
    • There are (currently) three items that have purely static addresses:
      • The router.
      • An old PC running Proxmox VE as a virtual host. (I’m wanting to brush up on my VM skills as well.)
      • A very entry-level managed switch.
    • My NAS is running a DNS server, which the Router is set to give out as the main DNS server for my home network.
    • The DNS server will query external hostnames via my ISP’s main DNS servers but for anything on the internal-only domain, these are stored on the NAS.
      • Entries for internal servers.
      • A few (not all) bits of home gear.
    • Reverse DNS lookup is now implemented.
      • Up until now, I could only query an internal hostname to get its IP address.
      • Now I can also query the IP address to get the resulting hostname.
      • Not really essential on a home network but if I’m going to implement DNS at home, I might as well do it properly.

    Next Stage

    This is a step forward from what I had but still not perfect. If I have to reboot/update the NAS, or it breaks, I lose DNS resolution. Including for external sites. Not really an idea situation.

    After this, I plan to implement a secondary DNS server elsewhere on the network. I am either going to use a small VM (Virtual Machine) running on the Proxmox host to run this or I shall use an old Raspberry Pi I have lying around. The latter is underpowered for any heavy lifting these days but as a backup DNS it would probably do fine.

    All in all, it’s a little bit more complex than a small home network needs to be. However, it does leave everything a little more robust than just leaving it to the router.
    Aside from that, the past couple of days’ geekery has given me a lot more insight into DHCP and DNS. I’d say it was definitely worth the effort.

  • Snap Election: Vote Wisely

    The UK’s current Prime Minister, Theresa May, has just announced plans to call a General Election on June 8th. Primarily claiming Brexit as the reason, this puts a bit of a slant on how to consider one’s voting.

    I know there are people who will say “Don’t Vote Tory” and leave it at that. Personally, I think that’s how we got saddled with a Conservative Government in 2015, even though there was a strong anti-Tory sentiment. The Conservative Party got just over a third of the votes, at 36.9%. The remaining two thirds, though, was incredibly fragmented. And this is what I think a lot of the media speculators and unsure voters forgot to take into account. It wasn’t enough for “Not Tory” to be the majority, not if they still got the lion’s share of the votes. And people holding off on voting before they weren’t sure if their vote really mattered… well it could have.

    Ono top of that, I think there are those who were put off from voting Labour because Ed Milliband seemed to lack charisma. Or who were out off voting Liberal Democrat because they got sort of scapegoated for decisions they made as the minority group of a Coalition Government when doing otherwise may have risked making things fall apart.

    I think this time around, there are a few important things that people have to keep in mind when casting their vote.
    The stakes are higher than in a usual General Election so the usual criteria have a few extras added into the mix.

    Does Your Party Share Your Brexit Viewpoint?

    Whoever is in charge is likely to be the main steering force during the next couple of years. It doesn’t matter when you want Hard Brexit, Soft Brexit, No Brexit or Liquid Brexit, you probably want to vote for a party that shares your viewpoint. The next couple of years are what’s going to shape the UK’s longer term future. Whether or not “your team wins” for the next four years is secondary to how your country fares for the next several decades.

    What About Your Local Candidates?

    I’ve maintained for a long time that what causes your local candidates stand for should be taken into account as much, if not more, that Party Loyalty. This is true now more than ever. If anything Brexit-related is put to Parliamentary vote, your MP is going to be voting on your behalf.
    So like choosing a party above, choosing a candidate should at least have some thought put towards which local option is closest to your viewpoint on Brexit. Otherwise you really are just voting against you own best interests.

    If You Can, Vote!

    Make your voice heard. Even if you think the best option is merely “lesser of the evils”, do you really want to sit by and risk the greater evil winning?

    Remember, a vote that isn’t cast for anybody also isn’t cast against anybody.

    And if you’re young and a first-time voter (and reading the online wittering of a middle-aged bloke for some reason), don’t be put off voting. Your generation may well be much more affected by things done by the next Government than my generation or that of my parents.

    Forget Personality Politics

    So, the candidate your considering voting for has either the party or personal alignment that most interests you but you really don’t like the current leader. Do you vote for someone else or choose to abstain?
    This time, I’d caution against it. Again, this is bigger than just who’s the Government or Prime Minister for the next few years. This is down to whether you trust your MP or the Government to handle Brexit the way you want. If you vote against your preference just because you don’t like a certain politician, this will be counter-productive.

    TL;DR

    We’re on the Good Ship Brexit and we’re about to vote in our Captain and Crew. Regardless of where else they take us, you probably want to make sure that this particular trip is to your taste.

    Vote wisely!

  • UK Labour Party: Crisis or Identity Crisis

    There is a lot of talk at the moment about whether or not the Labour Party is in crisis.
    and, if so, whether it is being caused by their current leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

    I think that the (Parliamentary) Labour Party is looking at it the wrong way. There is a crisis or, at least, and identity crisis. I don’t think that Mr Corbyn is the trigger for it, though. If anything, his rise to leadership and the tensions it has brought are just symptoms of an issue that was already there.

    The PLP appears to worry about being seen as too “left wing” and have concerns about being electable. As I mentioned in a previous blog, this isn’t all there is to being the major non-government party. They are the official Opposition Party. This has responsibilities that cover the current period following the previous election. Looking solely towards what kind of a government they would be in an election that isn’t even scheduled until 2020 is very little use in 2016.
    If another General Election was called then this would be a different matter. But until such a time, they have to at least put some priority into being the Current Opposition rather than a Future Potential Government.

    This is where, I think, the focus on being seen as moderate as opposed to left-wing starts to go a little off target.

    Basically, it’s a lot harder to balance from the middle. And if you’re trying to seek a compromise, giving ground from the start isn’t useful. It feels too much like what Labour wants to be is the party that stands from the compromise position. But when you give ground form that position, you don’t get compromise. You become compromised.

    Where the New/Blairite/Moderate Labour wants to be isn’t necessarily a bad place. It’s just that it’s more like the end position after a reasonable discussion and compromise. It’s not a good position to counter from.

    The term “Red Tories” gets thrown about towards the main Labour Party. Although I think that’s going a bit far, I see where it comes from. The current political parties feel like “Variations on a Theme”.
    Take McDonalds and Burger King. Both have their own style but both are fast-food burger joints. Then you get higher-end places like the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Even then, though, it’s still just three different takes on “Burger, Fries and a Milkshake”. When sometimes, as a customer, what you really want is pizza and a coke. Or roast dinner and a beer.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s take on Labour leadership is something different. It’s not the same old same old. He appeals to people otherwise disenfranchised with Politics. This is a problem with politics/politicians in general, not with Mr Corbyn. If a split is occurring, it started ahead of this. Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to power, despite the direction of the PLP, is a symptom of the cracks, not their cause. I don’t even believe in everything he stands for but I find him a very refreshing change to politics. And where I disagree with him, I still think he helps give a more rounded overall view to a discussion.

    Parliamentary Labour want to chase people already catered for by politicians. Jeremy Corbyn represent a segment of the public who are used to (and sick of) being overlooked by Big Politics.

    And this is where I think the PLP is risking a misstep. There’s a large section of their newer membership who, otherwise, probably wouldn’t give a damn about politics. Because, all too often, they feel like politics doesn’t give a damn about them. Finally it seems like someone actually wants to stand for them… and the Party just wants to ignore them as if their voice and opinions don’t matter.
    And this is a Party that, still, claims to be “For the People”.

    The “right kind of people” only, it seems.

  • Samurai Flamenco: UK Release and Related Issues

    The Story So Far

    So, about a month ago, Anime Limited’s CEO Andrew Partridge mentioned on an anime forum that the second part of Samurai Flamenco was slightly delayed owing to poor sales of part one. They still intend to complete the series but, to date, it still hadn’t recouped all of the costs of part one and they’d have the same costs for part two.

    A major problem, as usual in the UK, is the BBFC certification fees. Home video must be rated to be legally released. This is mandatory and, unfortunately, this is done at a per-minute rate payable by the publisher or distributor. Apparently fees for part two would be around £2,100 and part one still hasn’t fully recouped its BBFC costs.

    Unfortunately, I think the title has a few things going against it. Some of which are out of Anime Limited’s hands.

    The BBFC charges being one of them.

    Not on Crunchyroll in the UK

    I think this got things off to a bad start. When Anime limited first started picking up brand new shows, they worked through partnership with Wakanim. A service which has since left the UK, although is still going strong in its home country of France. Although the show was available on Crunchyroll in America and elsewhere, it (along with Kill la Kill) were Wakanim exclusives here in the UK.

    Both shows have since ended up on UK Netflix but not getting onto the most well-known legal anime streaming service can’t have helped.

    Subtitle-only Release

    Where Kill la Kill became pretty massive, Samurai Flamenco didn’t fare quite as well. Kill la kill got an English language dub. Samurai Flamenco did not. I think this worked against the latter’s interests. Unfortunately, the existence of a dub pretty much always relies on one being produced by an American company.

    Personally, find most dubs unenjoyable. But that’s my personal preference. In wider sales figures, the lack of a dub will attract less general interest in the product. It’s as simple as that. But the difference in sales probably wouldn’t be enough for a UK-based company to fund a show’s dub themselves.

    No Standard Edition (Yet?)

    Anime Limited’s usual method of release is to have some sort of collector-oriented release first with a standard release to follow. As a general rule, especially if mandated by the Japanese license holder, the standard edition won’t be released until the collector version’s print run has been sold.

    Granted, this means that the initial release always has a somewhat high price tag. The SRP is £49 with many retailers currently selling it for around £35. This is just for the first 11 episodes, though, a bit of a hard sell for some. Especially when, by this point, there’s only part One with no Part Two in sight. This is a bit of a high barrier to entry for anyone who doesn’t already have it, with no guarantee of being able to complete the series any time soon. And no use to anyone who liked to marathon a series and would ideally wait until both parts are out to buy it.

    Put it all Together

    As of now, Samurai Flamenco is a sub-only, collector-only release that you’d be expecting a lot of people to buy into Sight Unseen. That’s asking a lot. Future purchases will be slow. And even if part one does recoup its costs, will enough people still care about part 2 if and when it eventually comes out?

    That’s a tricky one.

    What to do

    Crunchyroll

    Anime Limited are beginning to work a bit closer with Crunchyroll at the moment. Some of their current and recent simulcasts have been on the service. Also, they did announce in May that more of their shows will be turning up on the service. Many of us are hoping tat this will include things from their back catalogue that Crunchyroll didn’t get UK licenses for the first time around.

    Getting Samurai Flamenco to UK Crunchyroll viewers will help, at least a little. It will lower the barrier of entry quite a bit and I can only assume it would bring in at least some amount of additional revenue.

    Plus, Crunchyroll already streams the show and with English subtitles in other regions, so they already have the assets. It ought to just be a case of authorising them to enable UK access.

    Standard Edition

    Bringing out a standard edition of part one would have the advantage of lowering the initial buy-in price. People just won’t bite otherwise. There would still be a level of financial risk involved in this method but some of the heavy costs are already covered by the initial run. BBFC costs, authoring costs, these are already paid. A second print run would be somewhat cheaper than the initial one. Plus the packaging would be bog-standard.

    I do get the feeling that anyone seriously interested in the collector edition will have already bought it. Any potential future sales are likely to be to people waiting for a standard edition release. Those of us who don’t need artbox or additional packaging but who do like a lower pricetag for 11 episodes.

    Part Two

    Eventually they will need to take a chance on it oner rather than alter. Even if part 1 recoups, leaving it too long risks leaving the show unfinished as there just won’t be enough momentum left for many people to want to finish the series even if it does get completed.

    Complete Series Set

    This one could be a tough sell to the Japanese licensor, I know, but an all-in-one-go buy-in will work better for some people. One option would possibly be having this as the standard edition release. Release the part two collector edition but follow it up before too long with a standard edition complete series.

    At the very least, this would have a slight advantage of only needing one set of packaging for the standard edition. And with the authoring and BBFC certification already being done, it should help keep the set’s overall production costs down.

    The other thing is that I very much suspect that if and when any standard edition comes out, people will be wanting to just buy and watch the whole lot in a short a period as possible. Riding on the PR from a part two release should also help keep it in the fandom’s eye for a while, too.

  • Why I Voted to #REMAIN

    So, I’ve just cast my vote in the EU Referendum. I’ve voted to Remain. In some ways, to me, it’s an obvious choice. Some of my reasons are political, some personal. They’re all long-term, though.

    In or Out, the UK has problems. In or Out, the EU has problems. Remain or Leave, those problems won’t vanish overnight.

    In my mind, a vote to Remain isn’t automatically agreeing with everything the EU stands for right now. It’s also not assuming that the EU can or will always act in the UK’s best interests.

    Similarly, I don’t buy that a vote to Leave is a racist or jingoistic response.

    There are short-sighted, short-term and selfish reasons to vote in either direction. There are plenty of spokespeople on each side of the debate whose arguments are based on those very reasons. Yes, it’s easy to point out pro-Leave supporters who have one or more or those traits but there are too many pro-Remain supporters with them as well.

    I’m 39 years old. Not that old, not that young. I’ve seen quite a lot of change in my lifetime. This is not the world of my childhood. The fact that I’m writing something that could easily be read by someone almost anywhere in the world within minutes of me posting it and agreeing/disagreeing/arguing with me almost immediately it proof of that.

    In some ways, the world has shrunk and borders have become less relevant. They still matter, but in a different way than they once did. I see them more like the lines in artwork. They don’t have to keep regions totally separate. You can draw something and colour totally within the lines and it work to enhance the big picture.
    They can give shape, not separation.

    Instead, too many people see borders as push-up bras. Lift into view and separate out. “We’re better than you!”

    I know there are some who are voting Leave because they think the UK is better off fending for itself. There are some who are voting Remain mainly because of what the UK can get out of the EU, as opposed to what we can help put into it.

    To me, though, the EU is about being a part of something bigger. Having our own identity yet feeding into and feeding from a greater overall entity. Working together with other countries and cultures. Learning how we can be better. Helping those who need it. And everyone banding together when it all goes pear-shaped.

    Since I first really heard about the EU as a kid in the late 1980s, it always seemed so full of potential to me. I don’t think it has currently reached anywhere near its potential but that potential is still there. And it’s a potential the whole world needs. Cooperation instead of Conflict.

    And that’s why I voted Remain.

    I believe in working towards a world where maybe we can work through our differences. Remaining in the EU might help achieve that. Leaving the EU would be a step away from that dream. To be fair, I don’t think it would be a permanent one. But it would be more of a significant step during my lifetime. And if people are going to vote in either direction for selfish reasons, my Selfish Reason is that I want to see the world become slightly less crappy before I die. I want to see it in my lifetime, dammit!

    The EU’s like a family. Families don’t always get along well. And even the ones that do, some achieve that with distance. I don’t have any family members “just down the road”. Even my immediate family, my parents and my brother’s family, are an hour’s drive away each. I’ve not live with my parents for a decade, and not lived with my brother for two.
    I couldn’t live with them again easily. But they’re still my family. They’ve been there for me when i needed it. i try to be there for them when they need it. It’s what family do.

    Family also squabble. The stereotypical Family Christmas is everyone getting a bit tipsy and having an argument over the dinner table. Well, that’s what the EU is for. It’s the dinner table we all argue around.

    And those arguments are why we’ve not had a major punchup in the metaphorical pub car park since World War II.

    The EU is far from perfect. But thats no reason to leave. All we’d be doing would be putting up higher walls and sending a signal out to the rest of the world that looking after your own interests first-and-foremore is all that matters.

    The dinner table would break up. Arguments would escalate. And the next punchup would be waiting in the car park.

    And that isn’t something I want to see in my lifetime. (Or anyone else’s to be fair.)

  • I Have a Mental Health Condition

    The last week has been a pretty crappy one, with regards to violence and the news. Amongst other things, we’ve had the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Florida, USA, and the killing of MP Jo Cox in West Yorkshire, England.

    In the former case, the shooter was a Muslim and, as usual, the term “Islamic Terrorist” have been thrown around. In the latter case, it was a white guy with far-right sympathies and the media seems torn as to whether to call him a terrorist or not.

    There are some that say that if he were dark skinned and had uttered something along the lines of religious rather than nationalistic rhetoric then he’d also have been called a terrorist.

    Personally, I think this argument misses the real point.

    In both cases, the suspect’s mental health issues are one of the first things that get revealed in the media. As if this explains it all. As if mental illness makes someone a killer.

    That’s about as likely as someone’s religious beliefs making them a killer. Or their political beliefs. Or what sports team they support.

    Sure, sometimes these can be a contributing factor but I don’t think they’re ever The Main/Only Reason.

    But the media loves a scapegoat. The Muslims. The Immigrants. The Mentally Ill. Basically, it’s always blamed on The Other. And all this really does is inspire hatred and fear of The Other. Which is often what will cause the next tragedy.

    I can at least say one thing as someone with mental health issues, though. Which brings me to the title of this post. I have a mental health condition.

    Having a mental health condition does not automatically make someone a danger to others. Hell, I’d say that my depression and anxiety means that I’m more likely to kill or harm myself than anyone else. And even that isn’t very likely.

    And if this is true for one type of “Other”, it can be true of other “Others”, too.

    Try to understand those who are different from yourself. It’s not always easy and I know I don’t always get it right. But don’t succumb to hate. Because all that ever does is extend the cycle of tragedy,