April 2009

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Episode 45! Cnuts! Prize! Exclamation marks!

30 April 2009 in Stilgherrian Live by Stilgherrian | 16 comments

It’s Thursday. There will be a Stilgherrian Live tonight. Nominations are now open for “Cnut of the Week”. And there’s a prize!

Please remember the rules. For “Cnut of the Week”, we’re looking for people, organisations or other entities who are futilely trying to hold back the tide of change. It has to be something in the news in the last week, and you have to explain yourself.

Nominees have to be not merely doing bad things, but failing to notice or adapt to the change around them.

And did I mention the prize? Everyone who nominates and leaves a valid email address goes into the draw for a free t-shirt of their choice from our new friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing.

(Of course, neither they nor us are as lame and unethical as to share your email address with anyone else. I for one have site policies about this sort of thing, and so do they.)

Cnut of the Week graphic

Nominations for “Cnut of the Week” are open until 8.30pm Sydney time, and you must nominate at the website to be eligible.

Then at 8.30pm you should be watching Nick Hodge‘s program @NickHodge before Stilgherrian Live starts at 9.30pm.

Who do you nominate, and why?

Links for 29 April 2009

30 April 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Here are the web links I’ve found for 29 April 2009, posted with postalness.

Australia 2020: Government Response: A year after the event which seemed so important at the time, we finally have the government’s response.
Developments in internet filtering technologies and other measures for promoting online safety | ACMA: The second of ACMA’s three annual reports on “developments in internet filtering technologies and other safety initiatives to protect consumers, including minors, who access content on the internet”.
The Full Story: “The Full Story is a media and information release portal where individuals and organisations can post breaking news, publicity, information or their side of the story on issues of local or national importance — free, as it happens, unedited and in full.”
Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview | McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: “Course Description: As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers.”
NBN Luddites will be proven wrong | BuddeBlog: Analyst Paul Budde with another thoughtful piece.
RedR Australia: This organisation provides training for people working in overseas aid and disaster relief, covering everything from logistics to personal protection. Yes, there is a reason this is being bookmarked, but it’s secret.
Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform | Net Effect: Once more, the usual human trait of passing on information which may or may not be true is blamed on Twitter, not on the humans. Fail.

Over a year after it was first published, my piece Super Hornets are Go has garnered an interesting new comment. I’m not sure I agree, but my response is there anyway. If you’d like to add to the discussion, do pop over and do so!

30 April 2009 by Stilgherrian | Permalink

Homebush Bay Scum

29 April 2009 in Photography, Sydney by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

Abstract photo of pond scum at Homebush Bay, Sydney

For some reason, the colours of the pond scum in the Homebush Bay wetlands in Sydney appealed to me. This photograph was taken some time in 2004.

No, we are not the same, Snarky Platypus!

27 April 2009 in Personal, Photography by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Photographs of fictional Ja'mie King and Stilgherrian

On the right is perhaps one of the best photos of me ever, taken by @funkycoda on Saturday and posted by Miss Wired. Snarky Platypus reckons I look like Ja’mie King, that’s “her” on the left. Ahem.

Now I’m not that sure that I like this comparison. However Courtney Gibson says, “Ja’mie is a beautiful and sweet-natured Australian girl in the first flush of womanhood — at least u can feel flattered.”

Should I be flattered? Really?

[Update 28 April 2009: Edited to correctly credit the photo.]

This is just to say…

27 April 2009 in Language, Media by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

I am, of course, the third-last person on the entire planet to listen to This American Life, the US public radio program presented by Ira Glass. But now I have. And in doing so, I stumbled across some amusing poetry.

The poems are based on an original by William Carlos Williams, called This Is Just To Say. In an episode of This American Life entitled Mistakes Were Made, program contributors created their own versions.

My favourite is the trio by Shalom Auslander:

1
I’m sorry you’re overweight
And drinking
And feeling like everything
In your life
Is doomed to failure
But this is probably why
Mom said
I was her favorite

2
It sucks, little doe
That I hit you
with my car

But at least
You weren’t alive
To watch the hunters
Shoot your children

3
He was a troublemaker, okay
And didn’t know when
To shut up

Still
We never would have killed him
If we’d known he was the Lord

There’s not much poetry here. Should there be more?

Links for 25 April 2009 through 27 April 2009

27 April 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Here are the web links I’ve found for 25 April 2009 through 27 April 2009, posted with postingness.

Noteboek | Vimeo: Evelien Lohbeck’s short film creates a notebook computer out of a paper notebook.
Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit (8-Bit Remix)” | DoseNation: Somehow, this hugely-successful rock song still sounds good played on cheesey 8-bit synthesisers.
Towards a Taxonomy of blogs | Creative Economy Online: Meta-journalist Margaret Simons reckons that before we descend into the loggers versus journalists debate then we should define our terms. She proposes a classification of blog types.
Rooftop STUB | Flickr: Will Hughes’ stills photography of Saturday’s party.
What is wrong with Strawberry Amyl Nitrate? | Vimeo: Will Hughes took this video at Saturday’s rooftop party in Surry Hills. It contains rather too much of me, and certainly too much of my tongue.
slow down london: Running from 24 April through to 4 May, this festival about “living life in real time” is striking a chord.
Is Social Media Too Fast? | Convince & Convert: Jason Baer kicks off a discussion about the incredible pace of social media. “This of course requires me to jump from task to message to task to message like a Russian dancing bear on crack,” he says. Perhaps it’s time to choose to slow down? I’ll definitely have more to say about this anon.
“One Of My Biggest Pet Peeves Is A Girl Who Is Not Probably Groomed On All Parts Of Her Body” – Arthur Kade | Jezebel: There is just so much wrong with this man’s worldview that I don’t know where to begin.
a warning from the newspaper biz | overland literary journal: Can the book industry learn from what’s happening to newspapers? Amongst the great questions asked is: “Will an author’s share of revenue on e-books be a traditional fixed percentage, or a variable, we’re-not-going-to-tell-you-what-we-received-from-your-work-but-here’s-a-quarter-go-buy-yourself-something-nice percentage of advertising revenue that Google might deign to dole out (as it does with ad revenue to site/blog owners)?”

Anzac Day 2009: Sacrifice

25 April 2009 in Defence, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Photograph of a sprig of rosemary, for remembrance

The cat vomited this morning. Again. Artemis has this habit of gorging her food and then, five minutes later, throwing up wherever she’s standing.

Today it was a projectile effort from the heights of the TV stand, a reddish-brown spatter right across the living room floor.

Remember that last time you threw up? How the acrid stomach acids burnt your throat and mouth? How it felt like it was surging up into the back of your nose? It’s just like that. Freshly warm and mixed with the reek of cheap fish.

You can’t help but get it on your hands as you wipe it up.

I’ll bet just the thought of that smell is causing tightness in your sinuses, clenching in your throat.

Wiping up cat vomit first thing in the morning is rather unpleasant, no?

If wiping up cat vomit is the worst you have to think about today, then you’re one of the luckiest bastards on this planet. It’s not a particularly demanding sacrifice to make in return for some furry companionship.

Today is, of course, Anzac Day, our national memorial for those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that other country.

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Episode 44, the slow edition

24 April 2009 in Stilgherrian Live by Stilgherrian | No comments

Yes, Stilgherrian Live episode 44 is now online for your viewing pleasure.

For some reason, I think it’s actually one of the best programs I’ve done. But maybe that’s just my reaction to the opening monologue. You be the judge.

You were the judge, of course, in choosing our “Cnut of the Week”. Senator Penny Wong, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change, and Tom Koutsantonis, South Australia’s disgraced ex-Minister for Road Safety — who I consistently called Tony Koutsantonis for some reason — drew for third place (17%). And in equal first place were neocon robot Karl Rove for his comments about torture and person-on-television Oprah Winfrey for something about Twitter I forget (33%). Which is weird, because I’m sure that as I closed the poll Oprah was in the lead. I blame the bees.

Bees can be blamed for most of the world’s ills.

I also spoke about Ashton Kutcher while showing a picture of Zac Efron, which actually proves my point that they’re all interchangeable muppets anyway.

As the Snarky Platypus says, “They all feel the same in the dark”.

There was a song at the end. And a duck. A duck and a dog, in fact.

The pleasure and (minor) pain of Telstra Next G

23 April 2009 in Internet by Stilgherrian | 6 comments

Over the last few months, I’ve been trialling Telstra’s Next G mobile broadband as part of an experimental “technology seeding program”. Despite my initial doubts, I’ve been impressed.

Previously I’d been using Vodafone 3G, tethering my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth to a Nokia N80. It worked just fine. I subsequently moved to a Nokia N96 and Virgin Mobile, which uses the Optus network under the hood. It’s terrible. I made a big mistake.

But that’s a story for another time…

Sure, Next G is the most expensive mobile broadband out there. But it’s also the best. Clearly.

On our road trip, we could use Next G almost all the way from Cowra back through Bathurst to Sydney. Yes, the signal dropped out as we drove through hilly areas, as you’d expect. But the data link automatically reconnected once it found a new cell — with the same IP address!

Seriously. Here I was in a moving car, running a ping and watching YouTube videos. The link dropped out. It reconnected. And when it did, perhaps six minutes later when the terrain sorted itself out, the video started playing from where it left off. Pings resumed with the very next packet number in the sequence — albeit with ping times of over 370 thousand milliseconds.

In another test, the data link kept the same IP address while I caught a train from Newtown across Sydney Harbour to Pymble. In CityRail’s loop under the Sydney CBD, there was no signal in the tunnels, but the link came back up within seconds of arriving at a station.

Somebody did some great network engineering. They deserve a pat on the back.

But what else?

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