Posts from 2008
-
Lunch in Coffs
Geo: -30.289268,153.122356 We've just arrived in Coffs Harbour after an early start. We're heading up the coast to Uki for a New Year do. We being Don, Christine, Eric, Holly and I. Rachel, Mikey, Leo…
-
If programming languages were religions
Perl is indeed like slitting the throat of a live chicken and smearing its blood and entrails on an effigy of your enemy. If programming languages were religions... thanks to Raz
-
Five percent
So Rudd has announced that we're going to reduce our greenhouse emissions by a staggering five percent. How ambitious! Worse, every polluting industry and his lobbyist appear to be in line to get a ha…
-
Holy Fuck at the Annandale Hotel
Last night Holly, Todd, Pete and I went to see Canadian band Holy Fuck at The Annandale. Quite an incredible gig. For many many years, bands have been trying to do electronic music completely live, an…
-
Pea Pretz!
One of the good things about working in the CBD is the Asian food. At the bottom of World Square, where I work, is an Asian supermarket. I'm enjoying finding all the weird and wacky snacks. Today's di…
-
Copyright violations
It seems there's a lot of people who think that images in Wikipedia can be used however they like. In fact, unless they've been released into the public domain, they have licenses that require some fa…
-
Private school funding
If people want to send their kids to a school that is a social, single-gender and/or religious ghetto in an attempt for them to meet the "right" people, keep away from the "wrong" people, live out the…
-
Truth in company names
I remember seeing these signs all over Leicester, and just thought to look it up. Shonki Brothers real estate. How appropriate. For the non-Australians, the word shonky means shoddy, dubious quality.…
-
Gastro!
Wow Lindsay, that was bloody quick! Yesterday I asked about doing a geo mashup of the NSW government's name and shame list of dodgy food joints, and today Lindsay has done one. Impressive! Now I wanna…
-
Geo mashups
A site screaming out for a geo-mashup is the NSW Food Authority's Penalty Notices list, which shows the companies that have received penalty notices for poor hygiene and the like. Problem is, the data…
-
Fuji Xerox DocuPrint 203A on Ubuntu Linux
Just bought this super cheap (AUD$88) black and white laser and spent a while going around in circles. FInally worked out that it works just fine with the Xerox P8e driver. So to install, System > Adm…
-
Great food, I won't be back
Le Pain Quotidien, corner of Fitzroy and Bourke Streets, Surry Hills Holly, Rachel and I popped into this restaurant a week or so ago before heading up to the football stadium for a dismal Sydney FC m…
-
One thing, done well
I bought a digital photo frame yesterday. On the face of it, this should be a pretty straightforward product. You stick a memory card in it that has photos on it, and it randomly cycles through them.…
-
No more donations to Oxfam
Dear Oxfam I'm writing publicly because you've completely ignored the email I sent you about this matter. Nice one. I've been an Oxfam supporter for many years. You're one of the more respectable aid…
-
Should the bush have metro-equivalent broadband?
Yesterday's Crikey had a letter from Rachel Dixon that rather eloquently said what I've said before about the National Broadband Network projects aim of connecting 98% of the population to "metro-equi…
-
I love a snaky review
There's few things finer than a review that slams an album, and none could be more deserving than the long-unawaited album from Axl Rose's Guns N' Roses cover band. Ever since waiting forty minutes at…
-
But how does it work in theory?
Last night on Radio National's Australia Talks, Paul Barclay hosted Clive Hamilton and Mark Pesce to discuss the Internet censorship proposal from Labor. The host was pretty clearly pro-censorship, an…
-
How much for the soul, Pete?
I sure hope Peter Garrett got a good price for his soul because his principles sure haven't amounted to much. He seems to have a Short Memory with his politicans, party lines, don't cross that floor!…
-
Genoa police riot: cops get off
The police who raided and smashed the crap out of a building full of peaceful protestors in Genoa in 2001 will get off completely from all their crimes, despite being found guilty. A statute of limita…
-
Vive le FIP!
I discovered a really great French radio station recently, France Inter Paris (FIP). It's got a quite unique format, playing blocks of themed music grouped roughly into styles. You tend to hear a half…
-
Out come the broad beans
The broad beans came out today. We've had an enormous amount of beans from a very small space. They were lovely! However, they've been taking up a lot of space and providing a haven for snails and cab…
-
Dear Mr Albanese: thanks for your form letter
Last week I wrote a letter to my local member, Anthony Albanese, detailing my concerns about the proposed internet censorship regime. I received a response last night. I won't bother wasting electrons…
-
You know you work for a telco when...
The invite to the Xmas party has an asterisk leading to fine print at the bottom...
-
Voting machines: a solution searching for a problem?
It's US presidential election time again, and the big story as always in America is long queues at polling places. I don't get it. They have the simplest voting system going, where all you get to do i…
-
Comfort food: ramen
I've had an upset stomach the last few days, even had yesterday off work. Not very pleasant, and I missed the Melbourne Cup festivities. To help recover, I've been eating quite bland food, without spi…
-
That iPhone sure is intuitive
Quote of the moment from the boss of the boss, holding his shiny new iPhone: "I don't know how to make a call!"
-
JavaScript gah!
JavaScript bit me again, with its concatenation operator being the same as its addition operator. So instead of the total amount of an order, I ended up with a string of all the prices in the order. G…
-
Dear Anthony Albanese on Internet Censorship
Lots of people are writing to their MPs to explain why the proposed Internet censorship regime, as currently being pushed by Senator Conroy, won't work and is a draconian imposition on the rights of c…
-
Bibimbap!
My work moved into the city today, after a year or so in Forest Lodge. The really big advantage is that I can get bibimbap for lunch from my favourite little Korean joint which is just across the road…
-
Giant CRX City Pro: not happy!
Letter I just sent to Giant Bicycles, who make excellent bikes, apart from this one. Anyone wanna buy a bike that could easily be converted into an excellent single-speed or fixie? In April 2007 I bou…
-
The Grates at the Metro
Holly and I saw The Grates last night. What an amazing live band! Full of energy and brilliant renditions of their infectious pop tunes. The support band, The John Steel Singers were fun too. It's cle…
-
IE and multiple identical IDs
It seems Internet Explorer is quite strict about having multiple IDs in a document with the same selector. This, combined with the way I read the Prototype documentation, had me walking around in circ…
-
Booga booga booga
Jamie Wilson recently posted this LOLCeleb to a list I'm on. Brilliant! Update: Apparently some backwards people don't get the reference. See Wikipedia iz in ur brain, knowing your stuffs!!1!!.
-
Intelligent economy design?
So now that the free market absolutists have become interventionist socialists, are they moving from the economic equivalent of survival of the fittest to some kind of intelligent design theory? On th…
-
Fridge efficiency revisited
A while back I blogged about fridge efficiency and my idea for improving it by creating airflow over the condensors. Lance at the ATA didn't seem to think it would be effective without forced air, tho…
-
Contractor payroll services
I'm about to cut the agency out of the equation with my long-term contract (2 years so far) and reduce the amount they're taking from my wages. I don't want to avoid tax, don't particularly want (or r…
-
Dining with food bloggers
I really enjoy Grab Your Fork but gee, going out for dinner with her must be a bit annoying. Those gorgeous photos of the food don't take themselves! In this post she records a Yum Cha with a bunch of…
-
Tank Stream tour, despite their best attempts
I've wanted to see the Tank Stream, Sydney's first water source, for a long time. While it provided clean water to the original white settlers, it quickly became polluted and these days is little more…
-
Guerilla gardening comes to Marrickville
Apparently guerilla gardening has come to Marrickville, with people taking over the grass verges in their streets. There's no grass verge on our street but I've noticed a few people have planted ornam…
-
Brilliant music review
I love Metacritic's summaries of reviews. This one summarises reviews of an album by The Little Ones. As usual, NME is incoherently raving. For the NME, a band is either the greatest band ever, or an…
-
Note about Same origin policy
JavaScript's same origin policy security model means that a script can't (directly... there are sneaky ways aroun dit) request data from another site. It's quite strict. foo.site.com is different to s…
-
Those poor, poor banks
So the banks are crying poor, claiming there's not enough liquidity in the market. You'd think this would mean their savings interest rates would be hovering somewhere around the RBA Cash Rate so they…
-
We're all doomed! Doomed I tell you!
Stop me if you've heard this before. It's been around for ages. I keep getting asked to explain how this subprime crap works. Apart from explaining that Lurlene and Jethro, who've never had jobs in th…
-
Terror needs help with geography
An article on the Daily Telegraph site seems a little confused, geographically. A MILLIONAIRE banker was beaten to death by a mob after stepping in to save a couple being assaulted at a taxi rank in L…
-
Nonphilately
A great letter in this week's Guardian Weekly. If Bill Goodman (Letters, September 5) is indeed correct that atheism is in and of itself a religious belief, then surely not collecting stamps is a hobb…
-
ZigBee sensors
I've been watching the space of low-power wireless networking for some time, as it has some cool possibilities for sensor networks. ZigBee is one such standard that seems to be gaining support. It's a…
-
ZigBee
Already had a few responses about wireless sensors. Des suggests looking at SquidBee which is an open implementation. Quite interesting. Rich recommends a book, Making Things Talk: Practical Methods f…
-
How the hell do NSW local council elections work?
On Saturday NSW local councils (or at least the ones that haven't been dissolved) had their elections. I was handing out material for The Greens in St Peters and one of the voters asked me how we were…
-
Cats and MythTV
Geek resourcefulness at its best. This just got posted to the MythTV users list: Subject: Cats and MythTV... Recently my cat has decided that the top of my MyhTV box is a great place to have a nap...…
-
Super cheap USB keys
I can't remember who it was, but someone on the Planet Linux Australia was talking about using cheap USB flash drives to teach RAID. I thought it was Russell Coker but can't find it now. Anyway, just…
-
Bugs on my garlic
Something is eating my garlic. Little black bugs. What's that all about then? From what I've been reading, garlic is something that repels garden pests, and that you can use to get rid of garden pests…
-
A Family First of their own
Today's Crikey carries a letter that reminds us that Family First, currently causing problems for the ALP in the Senate, are a creation of... the ALP. Andrew Burke writes: Every time Stephen Fielding…
-
Factional map of the ALP
For those wanting to follow Australian politics, it's critical to understand the factional structure of the Australian Labor Party and the influence this has on events. For example, the Left has tradi…
-
Coolest Chrome feature: search within page
So far this is my favourite little UI hack that I've found within Google Chrome. Kind of appropriate that a search engine company would get this right, I suppose. If you're familiar with Firefox's sea…
-
Google Chrome: first looks
I've been playing around with Google Chrome this morning on my work (Windows) machine. This is Google's browser software, and I have to say I'm impressed. I had expected something a fair bit less poli…
-
Google discovers solvent abuse
We all thought the folks at Google were on crack. Turns out they've been on something quite a bit cheaper. Sometime "tomorrow" (though mentioned as "Tuesday", but probably Mountain View-centric time),…
-
Senate recommends ignorance on unit pricing
One of the government's laudable policies was a plan to introduce unit pricing into supermarkets. As seems to be common with this government, even this straightforward aim has been put on the inquiry…
-
Scott's bucks night
Geo: -43.105311,147.72546 On the weekend I flew down to Hobart for Scott's bucks night. It was held in a beautiful spot down on the Tasman Peninsula. About 20 of us camped out, drank a lot of beer and…
-
Obama Yells at Hillary and Bitch Slaps Bill Clinton
Recently spammers have been taking the tabloid approach to get people to open their emails. There's been a lot of emails with subjects like Rare nude photos of Kate Moss, Paris Hilton Charges For Puss…
-
Two birds, one stone
Wow, looks like the NSW conservatives have achieved two excellent outcomes for the state in one. Power privatisation is off (until the Tories do it themselves, that is) and Michael Costa says he's gon…
-
NSW Department of Fair Trading shows how not to do publicity
Step 1: Issue a press release that is reported on but doesn't give enough detail for consumers to take any meaningful action. Step 2: Don't put the press release in the "Media releases" section of you…
-
The end
Geo: -36.982510,147.142761 All over unfortunately. A great last day. 18cm of snow overnight made for great runs. In the morning I rode the chutes in Heavenly Valley. The afternoon I did a bunch of slu…
-
Great morning
Geo: -36.976593,147.147796 Lovely morning today, though the weather looks set to deteriorate. Yesterday afternoon we discovered some lovely and quiet runs that tested our skills. Now happily working t…
-
Visibility: excellent
Geo: -36.984936,147.144996 This view from our apartment window is what the Hotham web site describes as excellent visibility. Fortunately it's a little better further down. The snow is getting a bit p…
-
White out
Geo: -36.978000,147.147763 This morning started out beautiful and sunny. When I got up to pee at dawn the view out the window was spectacular. I got some photos on my real camera. About 1000 clouds st…
-
On the piste
Geo: -36.988866,147.145640 Up early this morning to hit the slopes. It's a really interesting resort and we've covered a fair chunk of it. I'm quite happy with my boarding. First run and I nailed my t…
-
Eden
Geo: -37.054151,149.943536 View from Ben Boyd National Park near Eden. We had a fun night last night with an Elvis and Johnny Cash impersonator at the local pub. Driving up to Mt Hotham today and snow…
-
Orbost
Geo: -37.707143,148.454433 In retrospect an anti logging sticker in Orbost might not be a brilliant idea.
-
Don's chainsaw furniture
Geo: -35.650248,150.292883 In South Durras on our way to the snow. Don's been proving his manliness with the chainsaw. Beautiful weather! Off to Eden next.
-
Brogo dam
Geo: -36.489320,149.741006 We're back in my old stomping ground near Bega. This is the big dam that supplies the area. Seems smaller than back when I was a kid.
-
Key signing in Sydney on 12th September, 2008
Geo: -33.85967,151.207025 Key signing in Sydney on 12th September, 2008 Udo van den Heuvel is visiting and would like to do a key signing to improve the web of trust. I've suggested The Australian in…
-
The Obama Blend
I just bought some coffee beans at the phenomenally-busy Campos Coffee on Missenden Road. I had to write down the description to share with you. The Obama Blend Great deptch of character, strong and e…
-
Testing my geo mobblog
Geo: -33.902166,151.163230 Before our big trip around Europe I set up this system to blog with added geographic tagging. Turned out that on the road I couldn't use gprs so it never happened. I'm off s…
-
Fruit trees are in
I planted out all the fruit trees and vines today. There's two types of apple, Dwarf Dorsett Golden and Dwarf Tropical Sweet, two types of plum, Maiposa and Narabeen, and two types of passionfruit, th…
-
Russ Meyer: Auteur
News.com.au describes Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill as an "arthouse classic" in this article about a putative Tarantino remake. That's hilarious! Though if anyone was to remake Meyer films…
-
Channel 7 misses the digital point
Channel 7 holds the rights to broadcast the Olympics, but clearly doesn't get the possibilities that digital television brings. Last night was the first football match, with Australia's mens team play…
-
GroceryWatch
So the ACCC has launched the new "GroceryWatch" site, GroceryChoice, which gives comparisons of a basket of goods between supermarkets. I wonder how hard it would be to game this system, if you could…
-
Fastway do it again!
Yet again, Fastway couriers fraudulently forge a signature to "prove" delivery. At least this time they didn't forge my own name. In this case, the courier didn't bother to knock. We were in bed at th…
-
Weekend of garden bed making
Earlier in the week I thought I'd missed fruit trees, but suddenly one of the suppliers has got some more stock. So I've quickly ordered some trees today. I'm changing tack slightly, as according to B…
-
Blue plaques with a twist
Nosey In Newtown notes a fun take on the blue plaque, spotted in the People's Republic of Newtown. Quite funny!
-
Do not call!
I just had a call from a telemarketer at my private health insurer (don't get me started on being forced to have one) trying to get me to sign up for their "Extras" cover. In case you don't know how t…
-
Missed out on fruit trees this year
One of the things I wanted to get in early in our house was some fruit trees. But because we live in the inner city, we have some constraints over what we can plant. We don't want something blocking o…
-
Firefox search in the URL bar
It seemed people appreciated my last Firefox tip about deleting autocomplete entries. Here's another one. If, like me, Wikipedia is your first point of call for just about any enquiry, here's a quick…
-
Conspiracy or fuckup?
Conspiracy nutters are everywhere these days. George Bush and Dick Cheney ordered the "controlled demolition" of the Twin Towers. The Duke of Edinburgh, a 12th-level Mason, ordered MI6 to kill Di and…
-
Kidneys in sherry and cream
I've got some mates coming around tonight for offal, beer, wine, whisky and poker. A boys' night, with SWMBO banished for the evening. I've just bought some lamb kidneys, sherry and cream, and plan to…
-
XRay for CSS
Very very cool little bookmarklet that shows loads of cool info about the styles of an element you click on a page. Wow!
-
All CMSes suck
I have a slide I use when presenting about content management systems to manglement types. Content management systems suck. They're designed that way. The main idea behind them, in a corporate context…
-
Oscillate Wildly review
As mentioned yesterday, Holly and I managed to get a booking at Oscillate Wildly for last night, our ten year anniversary. I'd attempted to book back in May, but they were already booked out. Fortunat…
-
Ten years!
Ten years ago I snogged a lovely young woman at The Globe nightclub in Newtown (now a backpackers hostel and pizza joint). Ten years on and we've travelled the world, cycled thousands of kilometres to…
-
Oscillate Wildly for dinner
Just got a call to offer me a table at Oscillate Wildly tonight. I'd attempted to book months ago for tonight and it was already booked out. Yay! I've wanted to eat at this place for ages. Review some…
-
Police riot in Genoa goes unpunished
Nick Davies gives an update on the police attack on 93 unarmed demonstrators at the Diaz Pertini school building at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy. It seems despite clear evidence that the police…
-
New fence
We've had a shiny new fence installed all around. It's been a few months in the making, getting quotes and agreement from three different sets of neighbours. Finally it's done. We now have a gate on o…
-
World (Catholic) Youth Weirdos
Spotted this morning walking through Sydney Uni, some Catholic pilgrims (the lanyard and pass is a giveaway) taking a photo of... the wall of HK Ward gymnasium. Weird. Maybe they saw Mary? I'm trying…
-
Gotye: What a nice bloke
Last week I had a whinge about trying to buy one of Gotye's albums online and failing. A day later I got an email from the man himself! I was very disappointed to hear about your shoddy experience wit…
-
iReasonablePlan
I've been thinking over the weekend about my post about the iPhone and the crap plans being offered. The problem is the lack of data covered by these plans. I reckon the stories in about a week's time…
-
How to be popular
Break SHMBO's hair dryer while shrinking tubing for your new LED bike light system. Fortunately she has another, travel, one. Not as good, but it shrunk the tubing eventually.
-
Petrol prices are going up: Yay!
I watched SBS's Insight on Tuesday this week. It's a discussion programme and this week's episode was about petrol prices. You couldn't find a more shameless group of rent seekers than the majority of…
-
iCrapPlan
Mark Pesce and Stilgherrian are talking about starting their own telco. More power to 'em, I say, but I suspect they're in for a rude shock. Running a telco isn't as easy as it looks. The big telcos m…
-
Whinging?
Michael Davies reckons I was whinging when I gave a method for people to filter out Twitter and other annoying crap from their feed from Planet Linux Australia. WTF? I gave a method for people to not…
-
Feed minus Twitter crap
There's been some complaints on Planet Linux Australia about various Microblogging annoyance. I've been toying with Yahoo Pipes recently, and one of its features is regex filtering of feeds. That's ve…
-
Why steal music?
Wow, can't imagine why people might download music illegally when the legal avenues are just so easy. I just tried to buy Gotye's first album Boardface from Creative Vibes. First, their system charged…
-
Planning Alerts
The amazing people in and around the mySociety have a new project in test. PlanningAlerts.com allows you to enter an email address, a UK postcode and a region that you want to watch. Any planning appl…
-
Marching Catholics
Is it just me or does marching thousands of rabid Catholics through the heart of gay Sydney seem somewhat similar to Nationalist Protestants marching through Catholic areas of Belfast? I suppose the p…
-
Blank Reg
I love the fact that the Secretary of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties is named Stephen Blanks. It just goes to show that Max Headroom really was a documentary showing the world twenty…
-
Good beer, bad chicken
A few weeks ago I got an email from the Malt Shovel Brewery about a beer and food tasting at their brew pub on King Street Wharf. Best thing, of course, was the price: free. I signed myself and Holly…
-
Dear King Pig
My mate Don sent a letter to the King Pig and the Special Minister for World (Catholic) Youth Day in NSW in regards to his freedom to annoy Catholics. Dear Minister It was my intention to be involved…
-
Wow, there's still web agencies who think Flash is cool
Wow, I can't believe there's still web agencies who do everything in Flash. This technique is so effective, the above is what Google can see of their site. That's right, the title. Supposedly Adobe is…
-
Why direct action is important
The Guardian has a great piece about direct action group Plane Stupid, who are all about preventing the expansion of the aviation industry in the face of climate change. It presents a passionate and w…
-
Carbon pricing and petrol
Australia is in the midst of deciding how its eventual carbon taxation and trading environment will work, and the conservatives have switched back to their default climate change denial position, as t…
-
Best mailbox ever
This is way cool. Apparently it's over in Fowler Street. Steve pointed out that it's probably cheaper to buy a VCR than a mailbox.
-
Sniff browser history
Niall Kennedy has a really clever JavaScript hack to sniff a user's browser history. It's a pretty cool hack, but also a little scary since any web page you load can find out what pages you've been to…
-
Liam Colm Askins
On Friday afternoon, Liam Colm Askins came into the world a bit early. The birth was straightforward and both mother and baby are doing well. Being a bit early, Liam will have to spend a few weeks in…
-
Big brother IS watching
I've been toying with an amazing new web analytics tool called ClickTale. It tracks everything a user does as they interact with your site, so as well as the usual heat maps and the like, you can actu…
-
GetUp does Fuelwatch
GetUp are collecting money to run a very funny ad about the Fuelwatch junk politics going on. Well worth watching.
-
Google Developer Day
I went to Google Developer Day today and learnt a lot. There's some very clever people doing some very clever stuff. The sessions I went to in the morning were iGoogle gadgets, which is some very inte…
-
Where's Bin Laden?
Things are getting desperate in the hunt for Bin Laden, with Britain's Special Boat Service being called into the hunt in Northern Pakistan. Last time I looked, there wasn't a lot of water up on the P…
-
Heat, and keeping it in
We finally got our gas point installed last Thursday so we've now got our excellent gas heater. It's the Paloma PG-711FRN which is the one that scored best in the Choice comparison of unflued gas heat…
-
Firebug site down?
The other day I moaned about Firebug crashing my browser. Seems that the reason, though this is weird but probably due to boneheaded network configuration, is that the firebug domain servers are down.…
-
Mmmmm KFC
Helen Yee reviews Dashi Korean Cafe and Restaurant and its Korean Fried Chicken. Yummy! Definitely have to check this one out. Our favourite Korean in London, Bi Won on Coptic Street just off New Oxfo…
-
Goodbye St George
I've been a customer of St George Bank, and before that one of the previous incarnations, Advance Bank, for many many years. Since I was a teenager. They had one of the first online banking systems, a…
-
Weird Firefox crash
This is just bizarre. I've received a new laptop at work and so I'm installing all my stuff. Firebug and YSlow have become absolutely critical to my day-to-day work, so that was on the list of extensi…
-
Loads of photos
The trouble with the cheap, mega capacity memory cards you get these days is that I have less incentive to process them all. I've got a gig in my little pocket camera, and 2 gigs in the big one. This…
-
Filterset.G out of favour
In my recent post about online advertising, I mentioned that I use Adblock Plus and Filterset.G. Ares writes in to say that Filterset.G is is deprecated and probably unmaintained, with the last update…
-
Come on BBC, that's just lame!
I got this message in my feed reader this morning. It seems the BBC have moved the RSS feed for the "Documentary Archive" podcasts. The lame thing is, with a single line in their web server config, th…
-
Wow, doesn't online advertising suck?
I haven't seen online ads since about 1995, when HotWired first pioneered annoying, animated banners that detracted from the content. Initially I was using hacks like hosts files and the like, then I…
-
Disable Same Origin Policy: JavaScript
The Same origin policy ensures that your browser won't load files from sources other than the original source of the loading file. It's vital to help prevent cross-site scripting attacks, but a bit an…
-
Goodbye eBay
I've used eBay for a very long time. Since it was first launched in Australia, I think. They had got the balance between buyers and sellers right. Recent changes of policy have forced me to think abou…
-
Ban this filth!
It seems according to Hetty Johnson's version of "community standards" that any photograph of a person under the age of 18 in anything more revealing than a full burka is pornography. Anne Geddes, wat…
-
Tools to stich photos
A very helpful man from the Critical Mass list took a bunch of photos of a map I've been hunting for. The map is Map of the County of Cumberland showing Interim Plan No.2, 1947 from the NSW State Reco…
-
Bing Lee pricing is very strange
So I want to buy a heater and search for its model number to find who sells it. Last week Bing Lee were showing it for $850 before it mysteriously changed to $1,095 early this week. I just called the…
-
Competition policy isn't that hard
Politicans seem to have been constantly making a hash of competition policy in Australia. The idea behind such policy is to smooth the way of competition, and allow markets to improve the lot of consu…
-
Dead pixel
My LCD monitor has a dead pixel. I've tried running some stuck pixel tools for a few hours at a time in an effort to fix it, without success. Next step is to try the more drastic methods. Unfortunatel…
-
A war of attrition with whitefly
We've had an infestation of whitefly on our herbs and lettuces. Absolutely smothering them. They've killed off the purslane, and they're retarding growth on all the rest. Little buggers. I tried the b…
-
IceTV judgement's impact on other data?
In case you hadn't heard, IceTV lost their case in the Federal Court. IceTV provide(d) an electronic programme guide (EPG) service commonly used by people with personal video recorders (PVR) that work…
-
Well there's $5,000 saved
We've just saved $5,000 by deciding not to buy ducted heating for our house. Why were we thinking ducted heating? Well it's funny how the mind works, you end up on a path a long way from where you sta…
-
Okay, now I miss London
Dave Cross just posted a link to the Programme for Opentech 2008 in July in London. While I've long missed all the awesome bands I've been missing in London, this is one of those events I really would…
-
Giant CRX City Pro: a year on
About a year ago, I blogged about my shiny new bike, a Giant CRX City Pro. I was very excited about the hub gears on it. A Mark Jones found my post and asked me about it, so I figure I should share my…
-
Sun Lizard: any good?
We've been getting quotes for heating in our house, as it's starting to get cold. Initially we thought we'd go for a flued, fan-forced gas heater in the fireplace in the lounge room. A friend has the…
-
Malcolm Middleton: fantastic gig
Holly and I went to see Malcolm Middleton, formerly of Arab Strap at the Hopetoun last night. Brilliant gig! As well as the miserable Scot, the two support bands were excellent, which is refreshing as…
-
They do things differently in Tassie
The government of Tasmania (that'd be the Lennon government, not Gunns in case you're confused) do things differently in Tasmania. They paid for a big DC power link from the island to the mainland, wh…
-
I have pubic lice in my mailbox
While it would be a nice euphemism, Bug Girl attempted to order pubic lice over the Internet. Unsuccessfully, I might add. From the comments: However heinous it is to make a living selling pubic vermi…
-
"Imagine you've taken half a tab of LSD and are at a very bad performance art installation"
No, not Club Kooky but Marcus Westbury at the Logies. Hilarious description of a surreal event. Red carpet arrival. A spotter peers in limo window to see who of any interest is in the limo. "No one!"…
-
Firefox 3 looking good
I thought I'd try out Firefox 3 for a bit. Part of my job is to stay up to date with the latest and greatest, and I was hoping the much-touted memory management enhancements would be a nice plus. So f…
-
Inbox zero: the radical approach
There's been a bit of discussion recently about Inbox Zero, getting your email inbox empty. Well I just discovered a rather radical approach to getting there. I accidentally deleted everything in the…
-
Where can I get Hogarth prints?
I've always loved Hogarth's Gin Lane and Beer Street engravings. The post-industrialized world's first moral panic was due to the flood of cheap spirits, coupled with a bored and concentrated populati…
-
Weekend in Hobart
We spent the weekend staying with Scott and Katie down in Hobart. Had a really fantastic time hanging out with them, seeing the sights, drinking, eating, meeting some of their friends and catching up…
-
How much should we prop up the remote regions?
Australia has a long history of propping up the economies of the remote regions. You get tax breaks for living in remote areas, telecommunications providers are forced to provide phone services and we…
-
Improving fridge efficiency
At some point over the next year we're planning to renovate our kitchen. We did a very minor renovation soon after we moved in, replacing the lino floor and swapping in an Ikea bench/drawer unit, but…
-
When abstractions attack!
Had an interesting little bug report today. Apparently someone has created an email address with an ampersand in the local-part. While this is perfectly, valid, it means we enter a world of pain when…
-
Virgin Blue confirmation doesn't print
Maybe I'm expecting too much, but if I were the web developer at Virgin Blue, I'd test that the itinerary lookup page printed alright. It's the kinda page your customers might think would be worth pri…
-
What are Planets for?
Russell is discussing the purpose of Planets, the feed aggregators many of us enjoy. I don't think it's ever really been enumerated, and it probably should. But I bet it's different things to differen…
-
Flint claims bias because panel not rigged in favour of monarchy
Pimms-and-lemonade enthusiast David Flint claims the governance panel at the 2020 Summit was stacked to get a pro-republican outcome. That, of course, would be totally different from that other summit…
-
Note to self: use prototype
Gah. I spent far too much time today trying to work around a weird JavaScript bug in Firefox. I had a form that needed to have different hidden parameters depending on the search type in a select list…
-
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…
-
Online ordering systems
Quick as a flash after my last post about online ordering systems, Hadley Rich suggested shopify, which while a hosted system, seems to be written by people with a clue. Railsy kinda clues, which mean…
-
Online ordering should be easy
Mary, I'm totally with you about online ordering. So many companies just don't get it. Worse yet, utility companies in Australia are just appalling. Origin Energy, I'm looking at you, dickheads! Their…
-
Learnings?!?!
When did learnings become an accepted part of business vocabulary for anyone other than faux-Eastern Europeans?
-
Why I read the Guardian
Buried on page 15 of this week's Guardian Weekly is how they treated this important story: Heather Mills has been given £42m in a divorce settlement with Paul McCartney. That's why I read this newspap…
-
Roland Juno 106 Lego Mindstorms: on eBay
I've just put a bunch of stuff on eBay, and I'm sure some of you might be interested. A Roland Juno 106, one of the first ever MIDI analogue synthesizers. This sucker has a wonderful sound, but since…
-
Transport Plan 2010
I got a letter in today's Herald about my lack of faith in the delivery of this North-West metro the NSW government is promising. The bit they chopped off was: You'd be hard pressed to find Action for…
-
Not a charity
I've just had a very bizarre exchange with Rodney Gedda from IDG, a big magazine and book publisher. I used to write for some IDG publications and was, briefly, editor of a micro-magazine they had, On…
-
Web developers are from Mars
I imagine most of you reading this blog already read Joel on Software, but today's post is destined to be a classic. Joel worked at Microsoft on the Excel team from 1991 to 1995, where he clearly lear…
-
Marketing experiments, and other oxymorons
Oh how the mighty fall! Who would have thought I'd find myself subscribing to something called Marketing Experiments Journal. I bet the use of the word "Journal" makes the marketers quiver with scient…
-
The dreaded lead paint
Like most houses built before the 1970s, our house almost certainly has lead paint. Given the number of layers on the paint around the windows and door frames, I'd guarantee there's lead paint there.…
-
Bathroom nearly done
We're making progress with the bathroom. Phil's finished up yesterday, with all the fixtures in. Follow the link to see some photos. Today we sanded and painted the undercoat layer. During the week we…
-
M83 a no show
Holly, Mikey and I were quite excited to be seeing M83 last night, ostensibly supporting Midnight Juggernauts at the Enmore. Unfortunately, his band's gear was all somewhere between Paris and Sydney,…
-
Bathroom renovation
We're into the second week of being without a bathroom as it gets gutted and re-done. Everything has come out and we're getting there. Gyprock went on yesterday, so tiling and plumbing in the applianc…
-
Google Calendar sync with Outlook
I, like many others amongst you, have to run the bloated abomination that is Microsoft Outlook at work. It's been quite annoying, as I've really got used to my personal Google Calendar being synced to…
-
Postbox next to Central is good
Wow, the postbox outside Central Station gets fast delivery. I popped the DVD we watched on Saturday night into its Quickflix envelope and dropped it into the postbox yesterday. Quickflix have just em…
-
IE8 will break the web, and about bloody time
So the latest Internet Explorer is out and, like any good web developer, I've downloaded it and thrown the sites I manage at it. The results aren't good, and I'm very pleased by that. IE8 was original…
-
Ted Fest
Those of you who know my views on religion, and organized religion in particular, might be surprised to learn one of my idols is a Catholic priest. Father Jack Hackett has always been a role model for…
-
St George bringing in two factor authentication
I've banked with St George for many many years, and they've long been pretty ahead of the pack with technology in Australia. I got a letter the other day indicating that they were bringing in some new…
-
Busy weekend of bathroom shopping and free stuff
We've had a very busy weekend getting all the bits we need for our bathroom renovation. The whole bathroom is getting gutted today, so we had to get a bath, toilet, vanity, cupboard and all the bits.…
-
Firefox tip: delete an autocomplete entry
This is one of those things that's obvious once you know it, but solves a real problem beforehand. You're using firefox with autocomplete switched on. You make a mistake filling out a form once, and f…
-
Spectacularly bad UI
Wow Ricoh really take the cake here. My work has some Ricoh photocopiers with an excellent feature, you can use them as scanners. Great feature. Lousy user interface. Once you're scanned your page, yo…
-
1 terabyte is now under 300 bucks!
An important threshold has been passed. 1 terabyte of external storage is under $300 at a mainstream vendor. Wow! I could get all old fogie and reminisce about the old days, our first 10 megabyte hard…
-
Great cabling
My uncle is putting built-in cupboards in our bedroom. There's a phone jack in the bedroom, right in the way of where he's building cupboards. He asked me if I wanted the phone jack, and I said no, so…
-
Children of Men
I signed up to Quickflix recently on their free trial. The service is good, but I don't think we get through enough movies to make keeping it worthwhile. However, one of the movies we got was Children…
-
Background Briefing: Greenwashing
I've been a long time listener of the ABC's Background Briefing, ever since I was interviewed for one of the programmes back in 1998. It's always well-researched and very interesting. What's more, the…
-
Eco Choices for Home Renovators
I did a class run by The Watershed on Monday night, Eco Choices for Home Renovators. This is my second class from this organization, the first being a worm farming workshop. They're funded by the City…
-
Swan is indeed inexperienced
That's right opposition fucktards, Wayne Swan is inexperienced as Treasurer. He's never been Treasurer of Australia before. Then again, neither has Tony Smith. In fact, Tony Smith has never been a gov…
-
Web mockups
The marketing gurus at my work want to redesign our online ordering system. What we ended up with is certainly problematic, but at the time was about as much as we could get into the scope of this hug…
-
HD MythTV via PS3
Jeremy, shamelessly pimping for his work has suggested using a PS3 as my MythTV front-end as an alternative to building my own front-end. Advantages being it could be slightly cheaper (depends on hard…
-
Socceroos calendar
Since the FFA seems too clueless to provide this, I've created a Google Calendar with all upcoming Socceroos matches. I watch the football news about our team pretty closely, so I should be able to ke…
-
HD MythTV responses
I've had quite a bit of response to yesterday's post about HD MythTV. Thanks for the input folks, you've pretty much answered all my doubts! Cafuego told me he's having no trouble recording two HD str…
-
HD MythTV
Our ancient CRT telly has recently started getting a green tint in the lower corner, and Holly just got a substantial pay rise by moving jobs, so we're going to treat ourselves to a new telly. Judging…
-
The first step is taken at last
We are at last on the path to reconcilliation with Prime Minister Rudd saying sorry to the Stolen Generations, nearly 11 years after Bringing Them Home. It's a momentous step and Rudd's speach was mag…
-
When the revolution comes...
The product manager for Internet Explorer and his entire team will be the first up against the wall.
-
Doctor reviews?
My GP has moved practices and is now based in Drummoyne, which is too difficult travel-wise for my tastes. So after being very happy with her, I'll have to change doctors. I'm sure the only industry w…
-
WebTrends are at least responsive!
In response to yesterday's rant about WebTrends, I got an email this morning from Scott Driscoll, Product Manager at WebTrends. He says they're working on improving usability and want a chat about wha…
-
WebTrends, oh how you shit me
My work uses WebTrends to track people using our sites. It's not cheap, and the user interface is mind bogglingly stupid. It's, of course, one of these JavaScript-heavy, wait-for-everything-to-load-be…
-
Dangerous dog bites woman, but cops blame the woman
I just love the attitude of these cops. A police dog bites a woman who's doing nothing wrong, in a public place. The police blame her for doing something very normal. And of course, "The spokesman sai…
-
Enjoy the conference
Similar to last year, I can't make linux.conf.au 2008 again. Yet again, it sounds like a great programme and I'm sure the organisers will, as usual, deliver a conference so good that people rave about…
-
Rainbow lorikeets in the garden
This afternoon we got visited by a flock of rainbow lorikeets, munching on the seeds from the tree in our neighbour's yard. They're such beautiful, colourful birds. Our garden really is a hive of wild…
-
Barons Lemon Myrtle Witbier
Pretty much every time I see a new wheat beer I haven't tried, I buy it and give it a go. Barons is a pretty new little brewery in Sydney but I've been very impressed with their pale ale and ESB, both…
-
Pay the tax cut into super
Birmo is always entertaining, but today's little rant contains an incredibly smart idea at the end. Rudd has painted his way into tax cut corner and desperately needs to find a way out. Birmo suggest…
-
Multivariate testing
Much of my job involves supporting a marketing department in web stuff. A lot of the time this means finding and explaining new ways to help them market. I've recently been looking at multivariate tes…
-
Don't waste money on internet filters
Stilgherrian has an excellent synopsis of why geeks get angry when politicans suggest filtering the Internet. The bit about the shiny suited salesman is brilliant.
-
Bow before me, I am solder guru
Before I left London, I bought an iAudio X5 audio player. The main selling point was that it plays mp3, ogg and flac, along with the fact it just shows up as a USB mass storage device, unlike other pl…
-
Pace Active 3875 ADSL Receiver
There's one of these boxes sitting in a pile of junk outside a house around the corner from home. Anyone have any idea WTF it is? I'm intrigued because it has ethernet, SCART, printer, serial and comp…
-
JavaScript email address validation part 3
Continuing on my my odyssey to find a decent JavaScript regular expression for email address validation, I've come up with something I'm happy with. I started with Rob Eberhardt's crack at it here, bu…
-
JavaScript email address validation part 2
A few people have responded to yesterday's post about validating email addresses in JavaScript pointing out that it's very very wrong. For starters, Skud points out that.info addresses won't work. How…
-
Birmo on censorship
John Birmingham, one of my favourite writers, writes about the proposed Internet censorship laws. Chips, why don't you go back to your big new office, stop messing around with my inalienable right to…
-
JavaScript regex for email address validation
I found this helpful page with a nice recipe for email address validation in JavaScript. Unfortunately the regular expression doesn't allow for email addresses with a plus sign in the front part, for…
-
Be Alarmed, Not Alert
Finally, Internet filtering that works, able to block anything that could possibly offend Fundies First. But block it for everyone, not just Fundies.
-
Simon and Holly: greengrocers to the stars
We're in this little fruit and veg co-op with a bunch of mates. Our turn to head out early in the morning to Flemington came up, and here's all the veg divided up. It's a great time for produce, with…
-
A DVD player that doesn't suck?
DVD players seem to be disposable devices these days. You really only get a year out of one before it starts randomly skipping on brand new discs. So I'm in the market for a new one. This time around,…
-
NYE 2008 and housewarming
The party at our new place last night was loads of fun. Stretching across twelve hours, a bunch of people tramped through the house, got drunk, danced and shouted at each other. Great fun! I took some…