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I started work late last year for a company based in St Leonards. This means everyday I spend over an hour each direction in transit as I travel to and from home in Sutherland. This now affords me a very significant amount of time disconnected from the Internet and somewhat alone.

Now instead of frittering away such time studying the many details of the scenery passing by the carriage window, I have decided instead to spend it reading. Real books that is, not magazines nor MX. It is one of my resolutions this year to spend more money on books than DVDs and CDs, and more time reading than watching television.

Therefore my goal is to complete 48 books in 12 months (i.e. 4 a month). A book generally counts if it has more than 75 pages with a standard word density per page - so no children's books or comics. There is no limitation on genre which means all topics and styles are readable.

The primary reason for this undertaking, apart from occupying my train time, is to stimulate my mind. Reading a book requires a mental investment far beyond that demanded by TV and the internet. It forces you to participate in ways like grappling with the author's reasoning, or through the images evoked in the imagination, or also through the comprehension of new knowledge or a new paradigm. It's impossible to passively read a book and so I'm hoping to have mind broadened.

Another reason is that I am no longer content to leave culture defining literature unread. Many times I have been told of a book worth reading but only got so far as thinking I should read it. No more. If a book is worth reading I am determined to read it.

So that is the challenge. Right now I have completed 6 books and am about to complete the 7th. Only 41 to go.

I am sitting here writing this blog post as Rove McManus interviews Andrew Denton about his recent recent (2006) visit to the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Texas. The thought has just dawned on me that never in my adult lifetime has there been an easier time to speak openly about religion.

What makes it strange is that it isn't the usual religious content you find on a light comedy/variety show on a Sunday evening - the quick one liners poking fun at a recent religious faux pas. Instead it is a serious look at a big Christian centric event (well as serious as variety shows get) and it feels slightly misplaced because there aren't the usual array of jokes being fired off.

There has been an obvious change, and I think the catalyst for this has, in part, been due to the increasing concern about terrorism, its relationship to Islam and fundamentalism. I think its also related to a deep desire people have to feel a sense of meaning with their lives or to have some spiritual experience.

Whatever the case we can no longer claim that people are unwilling to talk about what they believe in. As a Christian there are more opportunities than ever for me to be sharing what I believe. If Rove can talk about it, then I have no excuse.

The digital age, with its intanets, computamigies and webs is now truly apart of our lives and we seem to be dealing alright with it. We do our homework on computers, we talk to friends on our mobile phones, and we cook our bread in computerised toasters.

But despite our hard work digital doesn't really fit with humans. I think this comes down to two facts:

1. the digital age is inherently discrete (mathematically) in its representation of things - it doesn't deal very well with fuzzy areas. e.g. when describing the weather at what temperature does it go from being 'warm' to being 'cold'?
2. it depends on software to be written thoroughly, with every possible exceptional circumstance taken into account, or failing nicely when something goes wrong - something rarely acheived. Every crash, or lost Word document is proof that this is the case

Because there is this disharmony between man and machine, there exist points where things can go wrong. As the digital machines are pushed to fit into a human world, all the exceptional circumstances that we happily tolerate need to be precisely defined and programmed into the machines. But there are many exceptions, and programmers really aren't that smart, so quite often these exceptions aren't handled correctly everywhere. These bugs usually sit dormant, waiting for an unsuspecting person to come along and enter the piece of information that causes the beast to fail.

These exceptions are fairly common. For example some years have more days than other years, some months have more days than others. Midnight in Greenwich, England is not the same time as Midnight in Sydney, Australia. Some postcodes have letters in them. Entering a zero into a form can often mean the same thing as entering nothing. They are everywhere.

For the mischievous amongst us this disharmony can be exploited. One simple thing to do is to only ever subscribe to a service on the 31st day of any month that has one. The good companies will process your bill sensibly, the bad companies might behave like the monthly recurring events in iCal where they don't appear at all in months with fewer than 31 days. You could also have fun at work and after having a meeting on the 31st of May say that you'll have another exactly a month from today.

The challenge is to find the everyday exceptions and start messing around with them. Test the boundary values. Try and break systems by feeding them seemingly normal data they cannot cope with. Stuff around a bit and break it. In the end the machines that deal with your mischief may cope as well as humans do, but every now and then you'll hit the jackpot and make someone a little red faced.