Stilgherrian » Only One Name

Skank Media registered!

Stilgherrian — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 22:01:06 +0000

Ah yes! The Plan gently unfolds. My new business name Skank Media is now registered. A shame that the Office of Fair Trading has got my name wrong on the certificate — again.

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Script Challenge: can you figure this out?

Stilgherrian — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 05:24:58 +0000

I’ve decided that each weekend I’ll dig out an object or two from my more distant past and write about it. To kick things off, here’s a challenge which was originally created by the same chap who coined my name.

The text you can see in the image below (at least if you happen to be sighted) is in an unknown script. Your task is obvious, I think. The only clues you have are that it’s a quote from a book by Ursula LeGuin and it’s nothing whatsoever to do with Tolkein.

Now originally I solved this in under 2 days, without the aid of computers or amphetamines. I reckon that in The Age of the Internet you can do better. I’ll negotiate a suitable prize for the first person who posts the solution.

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The Westpac Experience, Part 2

Stilgherrian — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 02:33:38 +0000

I can’t log into St George Bank’s Internet banking right now — presumably it’s overloaded with people like me doing their 30 June thing. So instead I’ll continue the story of moving to Westpac.

After that initial meeting, the cards and PINs and other stuff duly arrived — and as usual the cards didn’t record my name correctly. Now I’m OK with that, having only one name is more than a little unusual. And besides, I’ve never found it useful getting angry when something’s a simple mistake. After all, you want people to help you, and berating them won’t increase their chances of fixing your problem.

So I popped into the local branch to get it sorted.

The staff were friendly and helpful. And they were confident they’d made the right changes to get it fixed. But alas, yesterday one of the replacement cards arrived, and it still had me listed as “Stilgherrian Stilgherrian”. Back to the drawing board…

The test now will be to see how Westpac deal with this. Stay tuned…

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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.

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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?

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Winter Solstice Name Day 25

Stilgherrian — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:59:59 +0000

“Oh, no mate, I wasn’t Stilgherrian until after that was taken. For my student card, so that’d be… March, maybe February. Stilgherrian wasn’t until Winter Solstice…”

25 years ago today!

Daggy photo, eh? Am I scared or was I trying for cool and moody, somehow? Scared, I reckon. I was too nerdy to even know how to look moody, let alone actually achieve a significant level of floppy-haired angst. Now Stephen… now he pulls that off so well. But then he lives in Melbourne, it’s “of the place”.

Sydney doesn’t have the sandstone Victorian for a fully grey, Londonesque, Londonangstridden pout, 30% eye shadow and 70% the precisely-edited slow-motion curl of a designer black trench coat. Not with any genuine sense of ennui, anyway.

In the words of Ultravox:

A cool empty silence
The warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky
It fades to the distance…

Ah yes!

This means nothing to me
This means nothing to me
Oh, Vienna

Melbourne did the “faded grand city” thing a century ago. The richest city on the planet except London, thanks to a handy gold rush. But Imperial Glory fades when the cash runs out. After the high, the comedown must’ve been harsh.

But they’ve recovered.

Melbourne is self-confident, assured of its place in history. They hosted the Commonwealth Games knowing they’d hosted them before and they’ll host them again. They are not troubled by noisome fools.

Eddie Maguire is as the piss-stains of a mouse to this Grand Old Dame. He, too, shall pass. Dame Edna will be remembered, Bert will be remembered, Eddie shall not.

But Sydney!

Ah, Sydney is an amateur peroxide hooker at the end of a long, long night. The booze and pills have long since run out. The ashtrays are overflowing and soggy, the sun’s coming up and the dawn light reveals unpleasant things on the linoleum. Only some of which are clothed, and none of which know the names of any of the others, or how they got there.

But Sydney, she’s still dancin’.

Fuck I love Sydney!

I used to dance, you know, back when I wrote about dance music and played it on the radio. A decade and more ago, a decade and more after the photo. But I never had dress sense.

Some poorly-repressed memory reminds me that shirt was pale yellow. Calling it “repressed lemon” won’t save it.

“I never had dress sense,” that’s a laugh! Of course I didn’t. In 1981 I was busily getting distinctions in Computing Science III, you can’t get nerdier.

But, nerdy or not, I became Stilgherrian. And committed myself to two and half decades of explaining “No, I don’t have a surname” and “Yes, that is unusual” and “Good heavens, two plus two does equal four, I’ve never thought of it that way before.”

Two and a half decades of people not being able to spell.