I’ve just added a page to my website listing all of the media output I’ve generated over the years, not counting lots and lots of postings online. Is anything missing?
Fiddlers at Kelly’s
’Pong and I are having dinner at Kelly’s on King, and voilá, there are musicians at our table. It almost makes up for the free Wi-Fi running out at 7pm and having to roll our our Internet connectivity via my phone (which also took the picture).
My geek story
Microsoft “professional geek” Nick Hodge captured me on video muttering about punch cards as part of his Geek Stories series. This actually happened in November last year, but I just found the note amongst my draft posts.
The Perils of Smoking
The Snarky Platypus has already messaged me tonight: “You are full of too many thoughts. You need a course of what Stephen Conroy is taking.” So I’ll change the pace with a photo.
Here’s a picture of ’Pong I took in 2002, back when he was still smoking that evil tobacco stuff. His sister Toi and her friend seem… concerned. Perhaps we need to come up with a caption for this image.
Predictions for 2008
OK, I’m meant to be clever, so here are my predictions for 2008. The Snarky Platypus didn’t help me with these, as we decided we had better things to do on New Year’s Eve (gin and tonic, for example). So blame me alone.
- The Joy of Chairman Rudd’s Iced VoVo Revolution will be dulled by the end of January when they take some stupid actions which demonstrate that they are, after all, politicians like all others. Actually, this has already happened with the announcement of mandatory Internet filtering by ISPs. I’ll write more about that soon.
- At least one member of the (former) Howard cabinet will be charged with a criminal offence over something they did in office. I’d like it to be Brendan Nelson, because that deal to buy $6 billion worth of Super Hornet fighter aircraft stinks — mostly because the air force doesn’t want them and the process was, erm, rushed to say the least. However I suspect it might be something to do with the AWB scandal.
- Channel 7 will continue to win the Australian TV ratings. Channel 9 will fail to reinvent itself now that its owned by an investment vehicle and not a media proprietor.
- Telstra will be forced to separate its wholesale and retail businesses. Meanwhile the Sol Trujillo-led management team will continue to play nasty with the government, causing them to be increasingly sidelined — especially over the Rudd government’s new broadband rollout.
- Barack Obama will win the US Presidential election. I know Hillary Clinton is currently the favourite, but I have the gut feeling that the Oprah factor will be important, and that Hillary’s dirty washing will be aired.
- When former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra returns from self-imposed exile on 14 February the new government, which is a coalition led by a Thaksin-supporting party, will somehow drop the corruption charges against him. Another military coup will follow.
- At least one Australian company will suffer a major leak of its customers’ private data, prompting new laws on dealing with such things (like they already have in California).
- We’ll finally figure out what the Storm Botnet, the world’s largest network of hacked computers, is for. My guess: whatever the hell the designer’s paying clients want it to be for.
You might also like to read the interesting predictions from The Australian (not really predictions, but obvious events following on from their news calendar), advertising agency JWT, Peter Black and Rachel Polanskis, and predictions about toy names for 2008.
What are your predictions for 2008? And how do you think mine rate?
Distinctly personal reflections on 2007
As the sun sets on 2007 — literally, as I took the photo just before I sat down to write — it’s time to reflect on an astounding year. The Snarky Platypus will join ’Pong and me later, and (perhaps) help us put together some predictions for 2008.
This was a watershed year for me, for my household and business, and for Australia. Many of the changes happened late in the year, so we haven’t noticed the effects yet. But as 2008 unfolds I think we’ll look back and see that, yes, 2007 marked a change of direction.
Personally, my understanding of how I fit into my world (and yours) became much clearer.