Blog – Page 271 – Stilgherrian

22 October 200822 October 2008

Links for 18 October 2008 through 21 October 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 18 October 2008 through 21 October 2008, slightly burnt at the edges:

The twisted language of politics | Bloghound: A nice post on the hypocrisy shown in the differing descriptions of Republican US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Send an e-mail message on behalf of someone else | Microsoft Office Online: The procedure for setting up delegated email access in Office 2007, e.g. a secretary having access to their boss’ email. I think it’s rather quaint that Microsoft still uses “e-mail” with a hyphen.
Use Outlook Anywhere to connect to your Exchange server without VPN | Microsoft Office Online: This is the procedure for making individual Outlook 2007 users connect securely to a remote Exchange server over the Internet. “Outlook Anywhere” is what used to be called “RPC over HTTP”. I’m tagging this because I’ll be making this work for a client shortly.
Configure Outlook Anywhere in Outlook 2007 | Microsoft TechNet: This is the procedure for making a group of Outlook 2007 users connect securely to a remote Exchange server over the Internet. “Outlook Anywhere” is what used to be called “RPC over HTTP”.
2006 Olympic Food Stealing Champion – My Dog! | First Dog on the Moon: One of First Dog’s more delightful (as opposed to deeply cynical) cartoons.
Cursebird: What the f#@! is everyone swearing about?: A live feed of everyone who swears on Twitter, with a nice animated effect when a new curse pops up. Compelling viewing.

16 October 200817 October 2008

Safely home in Sydney

’Pong and I have returned home safely from Cowra, a 655km round trip, thanks to the wonders of Matthew Hall and the Success Whale. All hail the Success Whale! (Except Stephen Stockwell, unbeliever.)

The journey home was enlivened with an interesting experiment. Instead of me broadcasting Stilgherrian Live — bright TV lights in a moving car at night would be a plan full of FAIL — we created an inside-out radio station. Some of my followers on Twitter took up the offer to send us links to music — which we streamed live from YouTube. The audience chose the music and we listened to it.

This experiment in crowdsourcing a playlist was remarkably successful. I’ll publish the music later. But even more remarkable was the power of the hyperconnectivity. Even though we were driving through rural New South Wales, we were still in touch with our friends — wherever they were too — doing the usual things we do of an evening, like swap links and tell each other bad jokes.

I’ll have much more to say about this soon. But for now I must rest.

15 October 200816 October 2008

Success Whale protects us in Cowra

Success Whale with the towels at the Alabaster Motel, Cowra

We’re made is safely to Cowra, thanks to our driver Matthew Hall and our trusty new mascot, Success Whale — but I think I’m going colour-blind.

The photo above shows Success Whale sitting on the bed at the luxurious Alabaster Motel. As you may see, all three and a half stars of colour are certainly on display! The clash of styles almost makes me vomit — but at least that proves we’re arrived. Somewhere.

So many things happened along the way. We saw cows. And sheep. And crows. And currawongs. The Navman satellite navigation toy told us to “Go to nearest road”, despite being on a rather fine highway. We did the world’s slowest lap of Mount Panorama race track (thankfully I forgot to press “record”). And much more I’ll tell you soon, I promise.

15 October 2008

Links for 12 October 2008

Here are the web links I’ve found for 12 October 2008, posted not-quite automatically.

ABC overtakes Ten in audience share | AdNews: Australian television turned upside down! The traditional pecking order of Channel Nine, TEN, Seven and ABC is now Seven, Channel Nine, ABC and TEN. SBS is still in 5th place, but amongst the “main four” things are very different.
The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies: A nice structural map of the various logical fallacies, with links explaining them.
Long Pig the Movie: I stumbled across this new movie website. It’s won a few awards so if you’re into horror it might be your thing.

15 October 2008

Off to Cowra!

Road Trip! ’Pong and I are about to leave for Cowra for his OLPC video shoot and my “interpretation” of the journey in words and pictures. Our driver is Matthew Hall.

You can follow our adventures on Twitter by searching for all tweets containing the hashtag #rtcowra. Wish us luck! More soon.

14 October 200814 October 2008

Marcus Westbury’s “Not Quite Art” is quite unmissable

I can’t be “objective” about Marcus Westbury and his truly awesome TV series Not Quite Art. Marcus, I am totally envious and I want to have your babies!

OK, failing that (for various biological and logistical reasons) I’ll simply demand that everyone — and I do mean everyone — watch Not Quite Art when series two is squeezed like a threatening pimple from ABC1’s transmitters across Australia tonight at 10pm. Or ABC2 at 7pm Sunday. Or streamed from ABC iView. ~~Or downloaded illegally from the torrents.~~

Quite frankly, if you reckon you’re interested in “art” and “culture” and how it’s evolving, then you must consider Marcus’ worldview. If you fail to watch this program, you’re missing out on a delightful, witty and above all intelligent journey.

Now I suppose I’ll have to explain why this series is so important…

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