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!
NASA sends a boy band to Pluto. Prime Minister Crusader Rabbit makes sense of the Middle East, more or less. And we hear some presciently ironic words from Singapore.
In this podcast, there’s talk of Singapore, censorship, wine, and taxes. Amongst other things.
Continue reading “The 9pm I Can’t Believe It’s Not a Planet”
My week of Monday 25 to Sunday 31 August was hectic. Again. Hence so many missing blog posts until now. But it also marked the end of winter. I therefore have some hope that today, 1 September, will mark some new beginnings.
“New beginnings” sounds a bit naff, I know, but “spring cleaning” sounds a bit naff too.
Only one edition this week.
Head to the 5at5 site to subscribe or browse through recent editions.
It’s another busy one. Monday has already gotten off to a slow start — though deliberately. I’m writing this post on the train from Sydney to the Blue Mountains. En route and later this afternoon I’ll be planning a month-long fundraising campaign for my podcasts, and particularly The 9pm Edict.
On Tuesday I’ll launch that fundraising campaign with a podcast and appropriate noises on Twitter. I’ll also be starting some spring cleaning, starting off with the backlog of audio recordings that need sorting out.
Wednesday will see a continuation of the spring cleaning theme. It’ll also see 5at5 number 100, so I might mark that occasion in some way. Bursting into tears, perhaps.
Thursday will be a day of writing, with the usual column for ZDNet Australia, and perhaps something else. Friday will also be a day of media production, but I’m not sure what that’ll entail, apart from another mini-podcast.
Saturday is a day of cleaning and tidying at Bunjaree Cottages, before heading to Sydney to spend a month housesitting in Hurstville.
[Photo: Sydney skyline at dawn, photographed from Camperdown on 31 August 2014. Not quite the first day of spring, but it certainly had that feel about it.]
My week Monday 3 to Sunday 9 June 2013 was laid low by an excess of the black dog. Most unproductive. Most annoying.
I’d intended things to be fairly quiet, to counterbalance the previous week’s hectic pace. Well, quiet it was, because it was the beginning of a new month and nobody had paid me yet. Most inconvenient before a long weekend.
Still, I did nearly drink a spider (pictured), and did quite a bit of pre-production for my new SEKRIT podcast project. The first episode will appear very soon.
None.
Monday is a public holiday for the Queen’s Birthday, in theory, but I’m planning to continue my planning for the weeks ahead.
The only fixed appointment is on Wednesday afternoon and early evening, when Intel launch their 4th Generation Core processor chips in Sydney. So that means I’ll probably stay overnight in Sydney that night and cluster some appointments around it.
My writing schedule says that I’m doing pieces for Technology Spectator and CSO Online, as well as my usual column for ZDNet Australia.
[Photo: Spider in my water glass, which I nearly drank, but managed to spot it at the very last moment — and there was water everywhere.]
My week Monday 13 to Sunday 19 May 2013 was spent in San Francisco and San Jose which, I am reliably informed, are cities in The America.
It also finished nearly a week ago, so I’ll just list the things for now. Should I be in the mood, I’ll reflect upon the week tomorrow.
Since it’s already Saturday afternoon, there’s not really much point, is there? There’ll be a new Weekly Wrap tomorrow.
[Photo: Vesuvio’s $8 Bloody Mary. At Vesuvio in San Francisco, the bar where Jack Kerouac used to drink, you can get one of these fine Bloody Marys for just $8. Plenty of vodka, spiced as you require, with a huge stuffed Spanish olive, white pickled onion, lemon and lime.]
[As it turns out, my planned Budget commentary for Crikey didn’t happen. I got up early in San Jose, read the budget papers and made notes, but then my as-yet-unwritten article got spiked. This is a quick and somewhat belated post based on my notes, not as polished as it might have been if written for Crikey.]
The problem with Australia’s Labor government is that after having had One Big Idea for a bold new future in the National Broadband Network (NBN), they’ve come up with almost nothing anywhere else. This year’s federal budget was a dull plod. Again.
There was even one move which struck me as remarkably dumb: capping the available tax deductions for self-education expenses at just $2000 a year. Apparently that saves $500 million, and that’ll go to the schools — and schools are good for the kiddies, of course — but that’s half a billion dollars less for people to be able to keep up with a rapidly-changing work environment.
This strikes me as particularly stupid when so many of the people servicing the computers, networks and other technology that powers small business are often freelancers, as are so many web developers and designers.
Two grand a year doesn’t go far when it costs nearly half that just to attend the annual user conference for just one of your core software toolsets — more if you have to add airfares and accommodation — and the rest would soon be burnt up on a handful of reference books.
Back when I used to work in various management and staff development roles, I was told that any organisation that wants to advance its knowledge base should be spending at least 5% of its time on staff development. In a technology field, in my opinion, that should be at least 10%. That’s four hours a week, or a week or so every three months.
That still doesn’t sound very much, but it’d cost at least four times that capped amount. And that’s still not compensating freelancers for the loss of billable hours.
“Business and training groups have already said capping the expenses will stop employers from being able to offer staff new training initiatives. There were reports [the week before the budget that] the government would end up reversing the move, but the budget papers now state the change is locked-in,” wrote Patrick Stafford at SmartCompany.
“The announcement is sure to raise the ire of small business groups. Many business owners also use these deductions for short courses and industry-based training sessions.”
There’s two particularly galling lines in the budget papers themselves. First, the tax deductions are now only available…
…where these expenses are incurred in the production of the taxpayer’s current assessable income.
So you’re discouraged from educating yourself for the jobs that will become available even in the very near future. Why?
The potential for uncapped claims for a wide range of expenses provides an opportunity for some people to enjoy significant private benefits at taxpayers’ expense.
Orly? That’s a bit rich, given that vast sums already given to private schools. Or the “baby bonus” that people on quite significant household incomes still get for extruding another brat. That simply reeks of hypocrisy.
Continue reading “Australia’s Budget 2013 keeps us stuck in the past”
Monday 12 to Sunday 18 November 2012 was another week dominated by travel — this time returning from Singapore on Monday, spending almost two days in Sydney, then heading to Coffs Harbour on the mid-north coast of NSW through until Saturday.
This is also another week where you just get the facts of the media objects I produced. Heck, if you really want to know what’s happening in my world then follow my Twitter stream.
Two more articles were written as well, but they won’t appear until the coming week.
The week ahead is annoyingly unplanned. I had intended to go to Melbourne on Wednesday for the 5th birthday party of Business Spectator, parent of Technology Spectator, a masthead for which I write. But it’s looking like my cashflows won’t be good for that.
So, I’m going to map out the week in detail tomorrow, Monday. I’ll do a supplementary blog post then.
[Photo: Sydney Harbour from the air, taken from Qantas flight QF2117 yesterday. The image isn’t the sharpest, and neither does it have the best colour grading, because it was shot through both the plane window and the arc of the spinning propeller. But at least it gives a small flavour of the magnificent view.]