warren view hotel – Stilgherrian

06 November 201007 July 2011

Weekly Wrap 22

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth — and this week I’ve done a lot of writing.

Articles

The information ‘vacuum’ over secretive ISP data retention scheme, for Crikey. The Attorney-General’s Department has been holding discussions with internet service providers and others about the potential for ISPs to retain customer data for use by law enforcement agencies. Secret discussions. Last week a Senate Inquiry initiated by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam dug out some details. The Twitterverse is using the hashtag #ozlog for this issue.
Information Commissioner’s toe in the Government 2.0 waters, for Crikey. On 1 November the new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) opened for business. The first Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan, is showing political nous from day one. (As an aside, I’ve interviewed him for the next edition of the Patch Monday podcast, which will be posted on, erm, Monday.)
Citizen journalism is dead, long live crowdsourcing, for Crikey. At Wednesday’s Future of Crowdsourcing Summit, some media folks talked about the changes in journalism that are being triggered by this buzzword.
Timeline of misinformation: Twitter’s plane crash down to human error, for Crikey. On Thursday, media outlets including Reuters and Fox News were actually reporting that Qantas flight QF32 had crashed in Indonesia when, in fact, it ended up landing safely in Singapore.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 63, “The govt’s data retention dreams revealed”. If you’d prefer to listen to the edited highlights of that Senate hearing rather than read about it, this is the go.

Media Appearances

Parity Bit episode 1. A new IT-related video podcast produced and presented by Owen Kelly. I was chatting with him and the other panellists about #ozlog and other news stories. I didn’t swear once.

Geekery

Not a sausage.

Corporate Largesse

I got free entry to the Future of Crowdsourcing Summit, of course, and they provided lunch.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been invited to San Francisco by Salesforce.com.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Enmore village in the spring rain, taken from the Warren View Hotel. Compare this with the similar view from a few weeks ago.]

11 September 201030 October 2011

Weekly Wrap 13 and 14

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, once again done fortnightly because I forgot to do it last weekend. Suffer.

Articles

Nile’s porn excuse doesn’t hold water, for Crikey. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph alleged that various NSW politicians had been using their parliamentary computers to access pornography, and that anti-sex-industry campaigner and Christian Democrats leader Reverend Fred Nile was the worst culprit. He denied it, but as the story stood on 2 September 2010 I didn’t believe him.
NSW Parliamentâ€™s flawed porn hunt, for Crikey. By the following day, it was clear that the “audit” of parliamentary web browsing was deeply flawed.
What the NBN will deliver to Windsorâ€™s mob, for Crikey. Independent MP Tony Windsor said that the National Broadband Network was a major factor in him choosing to support Labor over the Liberal-National Coalition.
ACMA and Nine demonstrate Australia’s institutionalised racism, for ABC Unleashed. Sam Newman’s continued low-brow bigotry on The AFL Footy Show gets “punished” with a slap on the wrist. Again. It took only six comments before someone accused me of political correctness gone mad and compared Australian with North Korea. And another commenter said that I “looked like a potato that had been boiled too far”. The standard of discussion at ABC Online isn’t all that flash.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 55, “BYO computers: cloud security risk?”.
Patch Monday episode 56, “Parliament’s poor porn probe exposed”. If ZDNet allowed longer headlines and more robust language in their stories, I’d have entitled this podcast “Pollies’ piss poor Parly porn probe exposed”. Poetry.

Media Appearances

On Thursday 8 September 2010 I did a brief spot on ABC Radio’s Statewide NSW to chat about Stephanie Rice’s Twitterfaggotgate. Alas there is no recording.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos eventually appear on Flickr.

[Photo: Enmore Village on a Spring evening, taken from one of my favourite afternoon working spots at the Warren View Hotel, corner of Stanmore and Enmore Roads. Compare it with the photo in this post, My village really is home.]

08 January 200711 September 2010

My village really is home

When Clover Moore, Sydney’s time-share Lord Mayor and state MP, started talking about “a city of villages”, I thought she was giving it a tug. (No anatomical pedantry, thanks.) But now it’s the city’s official slogan, and a few relaxed Sundays have persuaded me she’s got it right — at least for the inner and inner-west villages which have some historical reality.

Photograph of Enmore Rd, Enmore

This photo ain’t art. But last night’s view from the front bar of the Warren View Hotel really does say “This is my village”.

From the art nouveau shell of the old post office on the left — apparently used by the mission of Our Lady of the Snows to help the local homeless — and past the over-priced pharmacy to The Sly Fox Hotel, and then on the other side with its medical centre, pharmacy and greengrocer no-one goes to, this is our Victorian village.

Sure, the Golden Barley Hotel is technically in Enmore too, and it’s only just down the hill a bit. They’re nice people and all — but it just feels like it’s in the next village, Marrickville.

But just was is it that creates this sense of “my village”…?