Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Australia’s treasurer Joe Hockey exudes love and understanding. We take the train to Cronulla to find out exactly what makes this southern Sydney suburb so great. And there are shellfish, damn fine shellfish.
Continue reading “The 9pm Shire”[Update Friday 16 May 2014, 1115 AEST: Having read the spectrogram analysis by “Fully (sic)â€, 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 “primingâ€? — 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.]
My week of Monday 5 to Sunday 11 May 2014 was another productive one again, which is a pleasant happenstance.
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.
Only two this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.
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.]
Tweeting 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 (5.2MB)
The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.
Here’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.
Last week I recorded an interview on the state of internet security with The Wire, the current affairs program for Australia’s community radio network produced by 2SER in Sydney. It went to air on Monday night, 5 May.
This year has seen some major internet security breaches — from Heartbleed to iOS. But between these headline grabbing flaws there are numerous smaller bugs that pop up every day. As our devices and services become ever more ubiquitous, and flaws continue to popping to, we take a look at internet security.
I spoke with journalist Josh Nicholas for maybe 15 minutes, so this 4-minute edit is very much a condensed version. However we did manage to cover such subtleties as Apple’s secretive approach to security vulnerabilities, Heartbleed, bug bounties, and calls for better disclosure of vulnerabilities — that last link being to a story I wrote this week.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.7MB)
The audio is ©2014 2SER-FM 107.3. It’s also available at The Wire program website — that’s exactly the same as what you can hear here, it’s just that the audio file here has my branding — and you can also listen to the entire episode.