Blog
-
The Social Services respond
I recently a rant about not being able to buy an album for a band I'd stumbled upon.. Lucy from the band has evidently been vanity googling, as she found my post and dropped me a note. Just did a rand…
-
Not cold yet
Seen on Bridge Road just now on my way to work: a couple rugged up for the most arctic of winter days. Wooly hats, gloves, scarves, thick coats. It's 17 degrees out there. Hilarious!
-
Wowsers for hire
It used to be the best guarantee of bestseller status for a publisher was to be listed on the Catholic Church's Index Liborum Prohibitorum. These days, it seems you can engage an assortment of wowsers…
-
Music taxonomy
Back when I used to listen to music on pieces of etched plastic, I had a simple classification system. Music was slotted into one of "Chilled", "Techno", "Hip hop", "Rock/Pop", "Classical", "Jazz", "O…
-
Prohibiting the sale of ineffective drugs "an insult to parents"
The chemists' lobby group says banning the sale of cough medicine for children under two is "an insult to many parents". No, what's insulting is selling something that doesn't work, even in adults. Wo…
-
Postcodes in electoral divisions
This is just to notify geeks out there that this data exists. I'm sure this will be of real interest to someone out there, perhaps someone building a mySociety for Australia. The federal parliament's…
-
Fastway: such great couriers
I've ordered something online and been given a tracking number from the company supplying it. Here's what I just saw when I looked up the tracking number. I can tell you three things: One, I haven't t…
-
Weatherproofing
It's starting to get cold in Sydney, so we're starting to think about heating and improving the house a bit. The front door has enormous gaps all around, and there's space between much of the skirting…
-
Action for Transport 2010: archive
Back in 1998 the NSW government announced with great fanfare a rather modest plan for transport improvement in NSW. Nearly ten years on, there's little to show for it except the road projects, which p…
-
ABC peering
I seem to have been misunderstood here. My post was rather rambling, for which I apologise, though that's the nature of blogs really. The ABC does, indeed, peer with ISPs through PIPE, and no doubt pe…
-
ABC Playback and quotas
"Sam" comments on Stigherrian's blog about some of his ABC Playback feedback. In particular, he points out that the video is highly compressed because they're mindful of "download caps that the public…
-
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Dance music's sexiest forty-something has come out with a rather... different album this time around. It's kinda like Joni Mitchell or Tori Amos in parts, with the occasional Sergeant Peppers flick. W…
-
Recognition at last!
Finally, someone has noticed that I can never find hats or bike helmets to fit. The reason is obvious. I'm massively-brained, according to Stigherrian. Next step: forming the "massively-brained" suppo…
-
Mitre 10: You suck
Conversation had with a clerk at Mitre 10 (large DIY store chain in Australia) on Saturday morning: Me: I'm after some 50mm 6 gauge screws with pan heads, stainless steel. Clerk: (looks around the she…
-
The Social Services
Peter Moore got me into the blog Swedesplease which is all about Swedish indie pop music. I figured I could find some interesting music, after all The Shout Out Louds are Swedish. Much of the music ha…
-
Rotisserie chicken, by necessity
Last night we had a few mates around for dinner to celebrate the bathroom being done, and thank our hosts who put us up while our house was without a toilet. I planned to do a roast chicken with all t…
-
Bathroom done (almost)
Well we're finally done on the bathroom, but for two small jobs. I need to paint the door, which I'm doing today, and we have to put up the shower screen. The wall to which we're attaching the shower…
-
Chutzpah is...
Continuing my series on chutzpah. Chutzpah is demanding that your successor do what you spent eleven years refusing to do.
-
ABC Playback shouldn't be hard to hack
Despite ABC Playback being touted as Windows/Mac support only, it should be pretty easy to hack up. Looking at it on Windows this morning with the trusty Live HTTP Headers Firefox extension switched o…
-
Google Transit includes Perth
Google have launched Google Transit support for Perth's public transport system. Hopefully, and it would seem likely given they're based in Sydney, they'll start work on the appalling Sydney transport…