My week of Monday 8 to Sunday 14 March began in Newcastle, paused in Sydney, and ended in Wentworth Falls. It was lovely for a number of reasons, but I’ve already said all that on Twitter.
I will say, though, that in Newcastle it’s worth taking any thunderstorm warnings seriously. My travel companion and I were right out the end of the Newcastle Breakwater when a massive storm hit. Wind so strong so that the heavy rain was horizontal and filled with the grit stirred up from the footpath, and we were nearly 2km from the nearest shelter. We were drenched to the bone.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Newcastle Rock, Radio, and Coal Chat with Carol Duncan and Nuatali Nelmes, being the first episode of The 9pm Autumn Series 2021. I’d planned to chat with Carol, yes, but Newcastle’s Lord Mayor also joined us.
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Videos
I’ve decided to start (slightly) cleaning up some of my ratty videos of or taken from trains and other vehicles. They’ll gradually appear in a YouTube playlist.
- A Sydney Trains K-Set at Telopea station, shot just before the Carlingford Line close for good in 2019. I posted a version of this at the time, but now I’ve added titles to start making them into a consistent set.
- The view from a southbound Newcastle to Sydney train running down Mullet Creek and approaching the Hawkesbury River, shot on Wednesday. It’d be helpful if NSW TrainLink washed their trains every now and then.
Media Appearances
- My ZDNet article Australia’s wobbly start to COVIDSafe app transparency is cited in the paper Australia’s ‘COVIDSafe’ law for contact tracing: an experiment in surveillance and trust by Graham Greenleaf and Katharine Kemp in the journal International Data Privacy Law.
- That site Advisor.Travel must be trawling Flick for random photo locations, because my photo of Gathgwyn, a cat, is on their page for St John the Baptist’s Anglican Church in Ashfield, Sydney.
Articles, Corporate Largesse
None, but you can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to get a compilation of new stories by email each Sunday morning, if there are any.
Recommendations
- Elite boys’ schools like St Kevin’s were set up to breed hyper-masculinity, which can easily turn toxic, a story from a year ago that’s kind of relevant to current news.
- Space Is a Great Commons. It’s Time to Treat It as Such, being an interesting look at some current issues in space law.
- Captain Amy Bauernschmidt is the first female commander of a nuclear aircraft carrier.
- Chronology of a cartoon gone viral, showing how an editorial cartoon was modified and copied until it became a meme.
- They call themselves “the highest rated ethical company in the flower delivery sector,” but the UK’s Arena Flowers has the most amazingly surreal Twitter feed. Enjoy,
The Week Ahead
It’s Week 52 of the Quarantimes for me, to be spent mostly at Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls. It’ll be a busy week, so Monday will be about preparing for it all.
I’ll be covering the Australian Cyber Conference which runs Tuesday to Thursday, although I’ll be attending remotely rather than heading down to Canberra,
On Thursday afternoon I’ll pop into a webinar from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Are you ready for the new critical infrastructure law?.
Thursday night is time for The 8pm Quiz S02 E02 at 8pm AEDT. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don’t miss out on any additional episodes that I might schedule in.
And on Friday I’ll heading down to Sydney again for various reasons. That afternoon I’m also recording a podcast with philosopher and reprobate Patrick Stokes, which I’ll edit and post on the weekend.
Further Ahead
Currently in the calendar:
- AusCERT 2021, Gold Coast and online, 11–13 May 2021 (TBC).
- Australian Cyber Conference, Melbourne, 15–17 November 2021 (TBC).
[Photo: The new headquarters of Newcastle City Council, photographed on 9 March 2021.]