Stilgherrian » 2007 » January

Australian Business Register fixed!

Stilgherrian — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:31:40 +0000

The Australian Business Register, who last week had problems getting my name right, emailed me yesterday:

Your legal name now shows correctly in the Australian Business Register.

And it does.

They didn’t say why it was possible so quickly when it was impossible only seven days earlier. Maybe their programmers burnt the candle at both ends across the long weekend.

Or maybe someone just RTFM.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Spamming Google Maps — or not?

Stilgherrian — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:09:09 +0000

On Australia Day, Google Maps did a flyover of Sydney to take low-level photos. A small ISP decided to create an advertisement in the photos. So is that spam? Or as one commenter pointed out, were they just acting on Google’s invitation to “get involved”?

Personally, I don’t think it’s spam. They haven’t directly messaged anyone who didn’t ask to be messaged, and Google did explicitly ask people to make signs.

But I do think it’s tacky. Just like skywriting, it’s splattering your commercial message across the landscape in an uncontrolled, tasteless way.

It tells me this business has so little respect for other people’s fun (well, Google’s marketing event) that the first thing they think of is plugging their own stuff. How cheap.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

I am resigned to the fact…

Stilgherrian — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 07:30:41 +0000

… that I will never be Australian of the Year.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Apple iPhone parodies

Stilgherrian — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:40:02 +0000

Thanks to the ever-observant people at Signal vs Noise, I can draw your attention to Worth1000.com’s competition for fake designs for non-existent Apple products.

I can’t be the only one with infantile humour, because there’s lots of toilet-themed entries — though for my money this is the best.

As David Pogue writes in the New York Times, “All of these are funny because Apple is so about design. It’s just ripe for parody, in a way that no other company is.” Yes, as he asks, what would a parody of an HP computer look like?

SvN put a nice business spin on this:

If someone was going to make fun of your company, how would they do it? (And if there’s no answer, is that a sign you’re lacking a defined point of view?)

I suppose I really should post my analysis of the whole iPhone thing — but I might leave it until all the Apple zealots have grabbed a tissue and wiped themselves down.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

One name: why so hard?

Stilgherrian — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:10:06 +0000

It’s more than 25 years since I’ve had one name, Stilgherrian. That’s plenty of time to get with the program. So from now on I’ll name the businesses and organisations who can’t get it right — starting with the Australian Business Register.

Now I grant you, a single given name with no surname is unusual in Australia. But it’s not unique. Various government agencies have told me there’s a dozen to 20 people with the same set-up — and it’ll probably be more common with further immigration.

And it’s not that hard to deal with either. Just realise that the law allows people to name themselves anything as long it’s not “obscene” or “frivolous” — whatever the hell that might mean! — and design your database appropriately. Don’t make “surname” a required field.

(And while you’re at it, skip “title” as a require field too. Not all of us are status-conscious Victorian-era middle class wankers who need to prefix our names with indicators of gender, marital status and property ownership.)

Full marks to DFAT for getting it right in my passport without even a question. Full marks to Medicare for 25 years of accuracy.

But somehow this cluefulness didn’t make it across to the Australian Business Register, who informed me today:

Unfortunately our systems must have a surname & not just a given name.

Sorry, not good enough.

Even if a person’s name is “unusual” or even “very rare”, it doesn’t matter. You’re the bloody government, and it’s your job to get it right. For every citizen.

If you can’t even get the basics right, like the business owner’s name, then how can we trust anything else in your database?

So, gentle public servant who shall remain nameless because it’s not your fault, what are we going to do about it?

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Govt can’t spell “Australia”

Stilgherrian — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:07:33 +0000

The most commonly mis-spelt word on Australian government websites is: Australia. (Reported by an attendee of the Accessibility talk at yesterday’s Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra.)

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

OTT architecture for Gazprom

Stilgherrian — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:15:33 +0000

Since I’m suffering a bad cold at the moment, I only have energy to passively wonder at the six astounding designs being put forward for a new Gazprom HQ in St Petersburg. The image below shows the proposed design by Daniel Libeskind, but they’re all rather over the top.

Thanks to Signal vs Noise for the tip.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Father Bob responds to Dawkins

Stilgherrian — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:15:43 +0000

Melbourne’s “real Christian” Father Bob Maguire reckons Richard Dawkins is peddling a furphy when he says religion causes, more than any other factor, wars and other horrors.

This culture of war and horror comes in a separate package from religion. It comes from the most primitive parts of the human mind and heart. Religion, at its best, is the ritual and practice of whatever brings us together for the common good.

Richard Dawkins, et al, have built a straw man out of the debris left when religion “pure and undiluted” expels the toxins contained in bad religion, itself an expression of bad culture.

Good religion is only able to be the vehicle of the eternal and infinite God, aka the infinite Relational Matrix.

Follow the comments on Father Bob’s blog.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Random thoughts on being an entrepreneur

Stilgherrian — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:20:39 +0000

Every Monday morning I struggle to make sense of running a small business. It’s not just that weekends are always too short to properly re-charge. It’s mapping out the week ahead and seeing how busy it’ll be. Again. How there’s things I’d like to change — but where’s the time? We’re already flat out working for clients the way we do now, and there’s no time left to implement the changes.

And why am I doing this anyway, when I could have more money and less stress in a “regular job”?

Against this background, it was good to see Hugh MacLeod’s “Random Thoughts on Being an Entrepreneur“. Some which particularly resonate:

1. Everything takes three times longer than it should. Especially the money part.

8. You can either be cheapest or the best. I know which one I prefer.

18. People remember the quality long after they’ve forgotten the price. Unless you try to rip them off.

25. Bill Gates may have a million times more money than me, but he isn’t going to live a million times longer than me, see a million times more sunsets than me, make love to a million times more women than me, drink a million times more fine wine than me, listen to a million times more Beethoven String Quartets than me, or sire a million times more children than me. Money can only buy you so much in this world. Of course, Mr Gates will know this as much as any man alive.

Interestingly, none of those directly match the thoughts I’m having about the business, which are:

The business is doing too many different things. If we want to be “the best”, we can only be the best at a small, focussed set of services.
The folks always saying “Oh, that’s too expensive” will say that no matter how cheap the price.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Dawkins on why there’s no God

Stilgherrian — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 09:48:10 +0000

I finally understood evolution when I read Richard Dawkins‘ books The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. But flak he’s faced for his latest book, The God Delusion — probably for telling people their cherished gods are just a delusion — intrigued me.

If you want to skip the book, try this magazine-length version from the man himself, “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God“. It begins:

America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be ‘raptured’ up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the ‘Armageddon’ that is to presage the Second Coming.

Dunno that I’d be bothered reading all 592 comments though.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Bottom (in three parts)

Stilgherrian — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:27:20 +0000

For some reason, people’s… um, private parts have popped up in my blog reading this week. Young’uns and folk of delicate dispositions should read no further. And especially don’t read the last item.

1. Today The Other Andrew tells me he’s proved that you’re never too sick to have a sly one off the wrist. Apparently. Get well soon, dear.

Send photographs, by all means.

2. Mind you, only on Friday Andrew reported that…

during the study [on sleep patterns], they wore rectal thermometers continuously to provide a minute-by-minute record of their body temperature.

… and goes on to say that “I don’t think I’d sleep like a normal person if I had something jammed up my ass.”

Apart from confusing a donkey with his own rectum, maybe I agree. At least today. But can you trust someone who suffers from zoo-anatomical confusion?

3. However the biscuit goes to… hmmm… wrong choice of words maybe? The Golden Buttplug Award goes to Zhasper who relates:

I don’t know what prompted me to stick my finger in my clean ass and lick it. Perhaps, I was checking for an injury or something else — I really can not say for certain as to the reason — but my mouth started burning in flames from jalapeños. Yes, I had jalapeño pepper juice up my ass! I can’t believe how I discovered this — you know what I mean? — and I can not believe that I confirmed what I thought. I have jalapeño pepper ass and need immediate help!

I admit to him the situation. We bust out laughing because we can’t believe the twist of events. He was still in disbelief making claims of washing hands but he is a gentleman. He asked what could he do to help me and I told him that he is going to have to eat the jalapeño pepper juice out of my ass — and in a hurry! So, my legs fly up in the air and he is down there licking away — his mouth in flames — trying to rescue me from my situation! Periodic stops to drink more beer were needed and about another 15 minutes of licking, I started to find relief.

I did warn you.

And now my work is done.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Stick Guns

Stilgherrian — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 21:36:25 +0000

Six minutes of (anti-?)war. Superb, despite the shite MySpace video compression. Thanks, Richard.

See it in its original context, and read about its creator, Dave Tucker.

[Update 8 January 2008: The copy of Stick Guns on YouTube is better quality.]

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

“Whitewash”: journalist-speak for “I’m lazy”

Stilgherrian — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:53:58 +0000

OK, own up. Who started calling Australia’s 5-0 cricket victory over England an Ashes “whitewash”? And why couldn’t anyone, anywhere, come up with another description?

Sure, my trusty _Macquarie Dictionary_ says “whitewash” can refer to “a defeat in which the loser fails to score”.

But even though there’s still _some_ editors employed in this country, virtually every news outlet parroted “whitewash”: SBS (where I first heard it, but I doubt they were first), ABC, Murdoch, NineMSN, _The Sydney Morning Herald_ and virtually every news outlet from Kenya to Korea.

Would you like me to buy you a thesaurus, you lazy bastards? Because if it were my _job_ to write the news, I’d be embarrassed to be so unimaginative!

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

My village really is home

Stilgherrian — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 08:37:20 +0000

When Clover Moore, Sydney’s time-share Lord Mayor and state MP, started talking about “a city of villages”, I thought she was giving it tug. (No anatomical pedantry, thanks.) But now it’s the city’s official slogan, and a few relaxed Sundays have persuaded me she’s got it right — at least for the inner and inner-west villages which have some historical reality.

This photo ain’t art. But last night’s view from the front bar of the Warren View Hotel really does say “This is my village”.

From the art nouveau shell of the old post office on the left — apparently used by the mission of Our Lady of the Snows to help the local homeless — and past the over-priced pharmacy to The Sly Fox Hotel, and then on the other side with its medical centre, pharmacy and greengrocer no-one goes to, this is our Victorian village.

Sure, the Golden Barley Hotel is technically in Enmore too, and it’s only just down the hill a bit. They’re nice people and all — but it just feels like it’s in the next village, Marrickville.

But just was is it that creates this sense of “my village”…?

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Your Place in the Company Heirarchy

Stilgherrian — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:21:13 +0000

If you’ve ever worked in a business bigger than 15 people, you’ll known that this diagram is absolutely correct.

Thank you, Gaping Void, for another brilliant observation. What a great way to start the working year!