john-bird

Recent Articles

• Script Challenge solved, finally!

  08 February 2012 in Language, Personal

  On 4 August 2007, I set a challenge. Could people decipher a passage of English text written in an unknown script? Well yesterday, 66 months later, dario finally posted a solution. Congratulations, Sir! As I mentioned in my follow-up comment, it turns out that the text wasn’t the work of Ursula K Le Guin as [...]

• Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

  07 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media

  If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper… Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now [...]

• The 9pm Edict #17A

  07 February 2012 in The 9pm Edict

  Residents of the depressingly tight-sphinctered Melbourne suburb of Prahran torture their dogs. True. And it’s ugly. Also this week, Australia gets a new masthead for quality journalism, and everyone goes all wet and judgemental. Something something football on the internet. And I finish all the things that I meant to do on New Year’s Eve [...]

• Talking “The Global Mail” on Radio 2SER

  06 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media

  I thought I’d be too busy today to pay much attention to the new quality Australian news outlet The Global Mail. But then around 2pm I got a call from Radio 2SER in Sydney asking for a comment. And so it was that at 2.30pm I was interviewed for the station’s current affairs program The [...]

• Weekly Wrap 87: Rain, unseasonable risk and videos

  05 February 2012 in Weekly Wrap

  My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 30 January to Sunday 5 February 2012. It was an odd week. It rained. A lot. And the continual greyness felt like it was threatening to trigger seasonal affective disorder unseasonably. I figured it was [...]