Month: June 2008

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Politics & Technology Forum videos & tweets

Until I get time to write my essay about last week’s Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra, you can relive it on your own.

Thanks to Microsoft’s Nick Hodge, you can view videos of Matt Bai’s keynote address, Panel 1 on Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media with Annabel Crabb, Peter Black and Mark Textor, and Panel 2 on Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning with Joe Hockey, Senator Andrew Bartlett, Senator Kate Lundy and Antony Green.

You can also trawl back through the Twitter stream using Summize.com. There’s a lot of material, though, so unless you’re a complete political junkie and want to read through it while listening to the discussions you may want to wait for my essay.

[Disclosure: I was in Canberra as a guest of Microsoft.]

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Links for 26 June 2008 through 29 June 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 26 June 2008 through 29 June 2008:

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Another week according to Twitter

Twitter bird cartoon by Hugh MacLeod

On Wednesday my Twitter stream was dominated by the Politics & Technology Forum, and I’ll write more about that later. The other highlights this week:

  1. MYOB continue to flood me with far too much promotional material, even when specifically requested not to. Losers.
  2. People continue to install new software on the very day of its release, discover that it’s still buggy or insecure, and then complain. Do you never learn?
  3. The Aurora Hotel in Surry Hills and the C Bar on the corner of Pitt and Campbell Streets in the Sydney CBD have free Wifi.
  4. The comedians on stage at The Sly Fox Hotel on a Monday night are 300% more bitter & disturbed than I am.
  5. There is no evidence that 17 Massachusetts schoolgirls became pregnant because of a “pregnancy pact”
  6. There is not, but should be, continuous 3G or HSDPA phone coverage on the highway between Sydney and Canberra. In some places there isn’t even GSM!
  7. “The 7 categorises of satedness: Food. Sexual pleasure. Alcohol. Music. Visual appeal. Amphetamines. Blue cheese. Agreed?”
  8. The Concourse Bar at Wynyard Station has Coopers Ale for $4.70 a schooner and a choice of six cocktails for $7 each.
  9. “Backpacking” has descended from “travel world for enrichment” to “global party by indulgent drunken arseholes”. Hence, “gas them”.
  10. Automatic weapons really do solve so many everyday problems.

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh’s cartoons published online, it’s free to use.]

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I rarely remember my dreams…

Photo of chinese Lucky Cat with waving arm

… but last night I did. I had to present a TV news program and it was going very, very badly. Interpretations, please!

It was my first day as presenter of an established program called News Tower. The presenters’ desk was stupid. Me and my overly-blonde female co-host had to peer out between mock embattlements as if our News Tower was a medieval castle.

When I got my copy of the script just minutes before show time it was hand-written on scraps of paper, and I could barely read the appalling writing. The pages were all out of order, and the text was over-written with corrections and arrows showing how the sequence had been changed. When I asked whether the Autocue copy was typed OK, I got a blank look as if “Autocue” and “typing” were unknown words. And indeed, the camera lens watching me was naked: no cueing system could be seen.

Continue reading “I rarely remember my dreams…”