Author: Stilgherrian

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Weekly Wrap 206: Two saints and a Caltrain, with wine

Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 May 2014 was spent in San Jose and San Francisco, covering NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference and more. And as I write this, I’m still in America.

Podcasts

I am very pleased to say that The 9pm Edict has, finally, returned with The 9pm Shire, an episode that includes a visit to Cronulla, shellfish, and a little Joe Hockey.

I am rather less pleased at the phenomenal amount of time it took to produce — at least 27 hours, once travel and the re-recording journey is taken into account, rather than the eight hours a “normal” episode would have taken. That was the cause of the delay. Once the podcast had overflowed its original spot in my schedule, it had to wait until a sufficiently large gap had opened up again. With travel booked, that was always going to be tricky.

In fact, the 11.5 hours I spent in writing and recording the links and post-production on Thursday really should have been spent on writing, or at least reflecting on SuiteWorld. Which is why in this next section…

Articles

… there are none. I did start doing some analysis of Australia’s Budget, because I may have had a piece to write for Crikey, but in the end that didn’t happen. Too many other, bigger Budget issues to be discussed.

Media Appearances

None. Thank the gods.

5at5

Only one this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • NetSuite paid for my trip to the US to cover their SuiteWorld conference. That included economy flights from Sydney to San Francisco and return; airport transfers; two nights accommodation at Hotel Vitali; a Sonoma Valley winery tour, with tastings at Cline and Gloria Ferrer wineries and a bottle of wine from each (a Cline 2011 Live Oak Zinfandel and a Gloria Ferrer 2005 Royal Cuvée Brut), pre-dinner drinks and antipasto at Tosca Cafe in North Beach, and dinner at the Americano Restaurant at the Hotel Vitale; coach transport to San Jose; four nights accommodation at the Marriott San Jose; dinner and drinks at ARCADIA by Michael Mina; breakfast and lunch in the press work room throughout the conference; dinner at Thomas Fogarty Winery (although I didn’t go, deciding to have an early night instead); and the conference party at the City National Civic Theatre. NetSuite also gave us all a goodie bag, which contained a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 tablet (Wi-Fi 8GB model); toiletries by Burt’s Bees; gourmet popcorn from Garret Popcorn; a chocolate sampler from TCHO; and a NetSuite branded hoodie from Alternative Earth, t-shirt and spiral-bound notebook. From the trade show floor: Jitterbit-branded earbuds. I could have taken advantage of much more alcohol and much more stuff from the other vendors, but I am not a bowerbird.

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s still Saturday in the US, and I’m spending the rest of the weekend here in San Francisco — wandering around and, in between drinks and occasional food, pondering all manner of things about the world and my life. I believe that’s called having a weekend. But that said, I’ll also be recording some bits and pieces for The 9pm Edict.

I fly out of San Francisco on Sunday night, which means I arrive back in Sydney early on Tuesday morning. I’ll be spending Tuesday and Wednesday in Sydney, taking care of various meetings, interviews and errands, before returning to Wentworth Falls on Wednesday night.

The rest of the week, including the weekend, is unplanned. Please feel free to make suggestions.

[Photo: Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir , photographed at San Jose Diridon Station on Friday 16 May 2014, just before it was to power the 1310 to San Francisco..]

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Updated: Christopher Pyne clearly says the C-word? Nope

[Update Friday 16 May 2014, 1115 AEST: Having read the spectrogram analysis by “Fully (sic)”, the language blog at Crikey, I withdraw pretty much everything I’ve said in this post. I did indeed hear the word I thought I heard, but only after having read a headline that told me that’s that I was going to hear. I forget the name for that psychological phenomenon — is it “priming”? — but I know it’s a thing. Anyone listening to the audio files here would have been subject to the same phenomenon.]

Today in the Australian Parliament, Christopher Maurice Pyne MP, Member for Sturt, Minister for Education and Leader of the House, said a word which he says was “grub”. I call Christopher Pyne a liar.

The sentence said across the chamber to Opposition leader Bill Shorten (or maybe someone else) was, quite clearly [to me], “You’re such a cunt.” Listen for yourself.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:26 — 737.7KB)

I will be discussing the phonetics of “grub” versus “cunt” in the next episode of The 9pm Edict. Read the analysis at “Fully (sic)”.

I’m happy to respond to your comments on this stuff, but I’ll be busy recording my podcast sleeping and covering a conference in San Jose before finishing my podcast production, and won’t respond until that’s all finished. Be warned, however, that I’ll simply delete comments that are nothing more that party-political trolling. Keep it to the discussion of phonetics, appropriate language for parliament and suchlike. My website, my rules.

What I will say, however, is that I don’t really care what Pyne said. In the heat of the moment we’ve all said things we later regret. Sometimes, for some people, that might involve swearing. What concerns me is the character of a man who simply lies in the face of the evidence, rather than taking responsibility for his own words and actions. That’s just low.

Christopher Maurice Pyne, you truly are a grub. No, the other word.

There will doubtless be questions about the authenticity of this recording, so I’ll spell out precisely what you’re listening to here.

This audio file is the result of going to a ninemsn news story, since removed, at the URL http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/pyne-calls-shorten-c-bomb-in-parliament/x78q4ru in the web browser Safari for OS X, and using Audio Hijack Pro to extract the audio of the video as it streamed and saving it into a 16-bit 44.1kHz AIFF audio file. I imported that file into Reaper, a digital audio workstation, trimmed the ends to fit, and saved it as an intermediate AIFF file with the same settings.

I then processed that file by normalising it (which means adjusting the volume so that the loudest sound in the file is set to the maximum audio level possible), creating another intermediate file, and then compressing it to an MP3 file with a variable bit rate of 128kbps at 21,050Hz.

[Update 16 May 2014: Edited to reflect the fact that I’ve put the podcast production back a day.]

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Weekly Wrap 205: Productivity reigns again, bringing joy

Touchdown San Francisco: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 5 to Sunday 11 May 2014 was another productive one again, which is a pleasant happenstance.

Articles

Podcasts

The resurrection of The 9pm Edict has continued to be delayed by the continuing self-satire of the Australian government and my own busy schedule. Once it had overflowed its original allocated slot in my work plan, it’s had to wait until everything more time-critical is out of the way. We’ve nearly reached that point.

Media Appearances

5at5

Only two this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s already Monday in Australia, but it’s still Sunday morning here in San Francisco. This afternoon NetSuite is taking us on a tour of the Sonoma Valley, visiting the Cline and Gloria Ferrer wineries, then returning to San Francisco for pre-dinner drinks and “a special surprise guest” at Cafe Tosca in North Beach and dinner at the Americano Restaurant.

On Monday we make the journey to San Jose, with a meet-and-and-greet cocktail party in the evening. SuiteWorld proper then runs Tuesday to Thursday, with the evening events including dinner at the Thomas Fogarty Winery on Tuesday and the conference party on Wednesday.

On Friday I plan to catch the Caltrain back to San Francisco, recording part of the next episode of The 9pm Edict en route. My schedule is then open through to Sunday night, when I catch a late evening flight back to Sydney.

[Photo: Touchdown San Francisco, the view from United Airlines flight UA870 as it was about to touch down at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) on Saturday 10 May 2014.]

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Talking online theft on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide

FIVEaa logoTweeting leads to media coverage once more. I wondered aloud why a $50,000 theft from a real estate agency in Broome, Western Australia, had gone unreported when that amount stolen from a physical shop or pub would have been major news.

Here’s part of how it was reported in Real Estate Business Online:

WA Consumer Protection has confirmed the hackers stole $50,000 from a Broome real estate agency after they hacked into the company’s online banking system in February.

Mandy Reed, general manager at Hutchinson Real Estate, told Real Estate Business the cyber fraudsters most likely accessed the company bank account after a compromised email allowed malicious software (or malware) to be installed.

My tweets caught the eye of Will Goodings at radio 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide, and we spoke about it live on Wednesday 7 May. Here’s the full conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:39 — 5.2MB)

The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.

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Talking mobile app privacy on radio 2MFM

2MFM logoHere’s the final of this week’s media spots that was triggered by Privacy Awareness Week, a chat about the privacy issues relating to mobile apps on Sydney’s Muslim community radio station 2MFM.

This interview was recorded on Tuesday 6 May, and this 23-minute edit was broadcast the same day. The presenter is Nadia Zahr.

2MFM has made the audio available on SoundCloud, but has not allowed for the file to be downloaded, so I’ve just embedded the SoundCloud link immediately below.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/148141679″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&show_playcount=true&show_comments=true” width=”100%” height=”81″ iframe=”false” /]

The audio is of course ©2014 Muslim Community Radio 92.1 FM.