Blog
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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…
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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…
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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…
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"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!"…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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!
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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…
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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…
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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…