Archive for October, 2003

80gsm toilet paper

Another case that shows how dangerous it is to keep a blog. Yeah, blogging’s a strange hobby. Yes, it’s a little voyeuristic reading other people’s blogs. But it’s only your own thoughts. No one cares what you think do they?

Could there be any truth in the thought that the solar flare thingies happening at the moment could have an effect upon a human’s brainwaves? While I have been going about my business in Melbourne city this week I have noticed people doing all sorts of crazy things on the road. I’ve witnessed 4 people tripping over on perfectly flat footpaths, 3 cars going through a set of red lights and nearly killing cyclists/pedestrians and at least 5 incidences of road rage (traffic tantrums as I like to call them). Everyone seems to be a bit ‘on edge’ this week. As for my household, we’ve been struck down by the inability to raise from bed in the mornings. Crikey! I was late to work this morning and when asked by my colleagues for an excuse I said, “solar flares and sun spots.” Sounds fair to me.

It appears as though a man thought to be behind all those ‘Nigerian scam’ emails has been arrested in New South Wales. He must’ve done well. The ABC news report states that, “Nine properties in Sydney and Nyngan in New South Wales’s west have been siezed, as well as five cars, several bank accounts and a home in the United Kingdom.”

Shannen Doherty: A Study in Asymmetry (via bluishorange)

Ok. Now for the geeky stuff. This Flash™ app. lets you preview the fonts in use on your system. Nifty. (via Kestrel’s Nest)

Q: How many bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Two — one to change it while the other apologizes for the recent lack of illumination and explains that they’ve been really busy lately.

smell my bisgra

Bisgra is Carribean (Spanish) slang for your armpit.

So Jorge has come an gone. Bobby Brown and his mate have gone for 24 hours too. That’s freedom of speech for you I suppose. He could have done what I used to do at school. Whenever there was some sort of special assembly in the De La Salle Scarborough quadrangle because of an important issue or a extinguished distinguished guest, I always had the incredible knack of dropping a whopper of a fart. That’s what Bob Brown should have done. That’s the Australian way of showing complete disrespect. Don’t yell out. That gets you in the poop. Just drop one and blame in on your best mate. Who does sit next to Bob Brown in the chamber anyway? And don’t call me infantile. I’ve been called it so often it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Here’s how the New York Times reported it all (if you don’t have a subscription just type tamesapien into the userID and password fields).

I just did a google search on my high school, as mentioned above. It doesn’t fill me with confidence in the Catholic education system when 2 of the top 10 search results relate to sexual misconduct by my former principal. Yuk!

Swearing makes the heart grow fonder

Change is good!

More right-wing fuckwits, this time in Switzerland. In the linked article there is something that Australians might find familiar about the way the right-wing People’s Party pitched itself to the voters of Switzerland - ” The party ran an anti-foreigner campaign, in which asylum seekers were portrayed as criminals and drug dealers.” At the last election here in Australia asylum seekers were said to have thrown their children into the open sea so that the authorities had no choice but to pick them up (among other lies). Still, the people get the government you deserve. We’ve got a bunch of deputy dawgs led by Sherrif Howard - the most awkward lookin’ law keeper in the west.

I’ve changed the look of the front page here, as you have probably noticed. There’s still no colour though. One day I will get adventurous and introduce pumpkin orange to the mix. I still have to change all the archive templates etc. Haven’t had the time to jazz up this site lately. Hopefully over summer when there’s not much Uni. work to be done, I can put up the myriad of photos I have prepared for exhibition here.

shaved and dangerous

I thought I was being original with the above entry title. It turns out that these words were the title of a Baby Animals release in 1993. It seems I am sub-conciously unearthing very scary memories from my brain cells. For the record, I must say I do own a Baby Animals double album. Knibff!!

If you want to change the colour scheme of your website give the online color schemer a whirl. There’s many shades of beautiful grey to choose from!

Heh! Via fridgemagnet comes something which doesn’t surprise me at all. US soldiers have been sending out letters to the editors of newspapers all over the US. Big deal you might say. The only problem is that they seem to be all form letters.

revenge of the printy-dater

Make sure you don’t do your eyes in reading the text on this site.

After your eyes recover, read a photo journal of what life is like as an Iraqi police officer.

After you have read that, do your best to watch these video clips. How about some freaky japanese advertising (you need quicktime) clips featuring the Governor of California.

whatever happened to the dude who wrote the celestine prophecy?

Yeah. What did happen to him?

Ah ha! May I present to you. MT - Blacklist. While it’s still beta, it is just the beginning of laying waste to that dastardly comment spam that’s afflicting Moveable Type users.

Here’s an interesting article on the music industry and it’s war on file traders. The author compares what’s happening now to the predicament of the American motion picture industry in the early years of last century (via slashdot).

swimming monks

A few people I know have moved uptown and got themselves an ADSL connection. That’s fine and dandy. $70 a month is a bit too much for me. I’ll jump on the bandwagon when it’s $30 a month with unlimited downloads. The worst thing about friends with ADSL is that once they have it they assume that everyone has it. All of a sudden their emails have 4MB attachments. Grrr.

The Russians have COSMONAUTS. The Americans have ASTRONAUTS. The Chinese now have TAIKONAUTS. If Australia was to put a person in space, what would they be named. Any suggestions? eg. Austranaut, stubbynaut…

too many candles on the cake

31 of the bastards are hard to blow out in one go. Phew!

I often wonder how easy it is for bloggers to have their identities stolen. I mean, doing a WHOIS search for a domain name is easy. You can get address details there. If you then give away your birthdate, well, it makes things much easier for someone who wants/needs that information. Hmmm.

Does anyone know of a person who keeps an online journal/blog and has had trouble (other than from stalkers)?

who regulates the regulators

A friend of mine who works in the financial services industry sent me the following.

Following the Australian Financial Services Reform Bill, the Australian Shoe Industry Commission (ASIC) has also introduced new guidelines. Here is a case study which illustrates how these might be implemented:

“I’d like to buy a pair of black leather shoes, please?”

“Sir, if it were only that simple. Here’s my card and here’s your Buyer’s Guide.”

“What’s this for?”

“It tells you that I can only talk to you about shoes and allied products sold by this shop. I can’t talk to you about shoes sold by any other shoe shop, nor can I give any advice on, say, sausages, for example.”

“Er?”

“Probably the best way to proceed is to show you where we fit into the footwear industry. We buy in most of our products from the Far East at a fairly modest price and sell them on to the public at a considerably higher price; but of course, out of the mark-up we have to pay for transportation, import duties, rent and rates, display, staff, sales staff, cleaners and administration, etc, and our shareholders have to be paid a dividend out of the remaining profits. Not many people think about this when they buy their shoes, but we think it’s important. With this in mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions to make sure you get the shoes, or even boots, which are exactly right for you. It may be that when we have all the facts, I recommend that you do not buy my footwear at all. May I proceed?”

” What do you want to know?”

“Well, how many arms and legs have you for a start?”

“What have arms got to do with shoes?”

“Well sir, if, for example, you only had one arm and I sold you a pair of shoes with laces, that could be construed as bad advice by LAUSTRO.”

“What is LAUSTRO?”

“The Laced and Unlaced Shoe Trade Regulatory Organisation.”

“What do they do?”

“Put the boot in. A friend of mine had to leave the industry.

“What did he do wrong?

“Sold a pair of carpet slippers.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Turned out the guy didn’t have carpet. So you see, I need to build a full picture for you. For example, do you need shoes for business or pleasure, or business and pleasure? How many shoes do you have already? How many brogues, casuals, suedes, plimsoll’s, slippers, sandals, Wellingtons, etc? How many suits ? what colour are they? Do you have athlete’s foot? Can you touch your toes? Any corns or bunions, or does your family have a history of dropped arches? What kind of socks do you wear? How often do you cut your toenails? How much do you earn and what is your overall clothes budget?

An hour later full details are provided.

“Well, thank you for that information. I’ll give it some serious thought and get back to you.”

Two weeks later……..

“Ah, good morning sir. I’ve given serious thought and what you need is a pair of black leather shoes.”

” Isn’t that what I asked for in the first place?”

“With respect sir, you have now had the benefit of my professional advice, based on all the relevant facts as given, and you now know with some certainty that what you need is a pair of black leather shoes. All the guesswork’s been taken out of it. Here’s your Reasons Why letter. I recommend that you buy these black leather shoes because they’ll keep your feet dry, match your suits, look smart and you can afford them.”

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled.”

“You want the shoes, then?”

“Yes, please.”

“Right, if you’d like to complete this application form, here’s your illustration, which I’d like you to sign. It shows a complete breakdown of costs and profits and includes my commission. Your Product Particulars describe in great detail how the shoes are made and the Key Features are a summary of the product’s particulars, highlighting the risk factors.”

“Risk factors?”

“Yes. For example, if you live too long, the shoes may need repairing. On the other hand, if you die before you’ve had your wear out of them, I’m afraid there’ll be no refund, even if they don’t fit any other member of the family.”

” I see.”

“So, just to recap. You’ve got my card; your Buyer’s Guide; Product Particulars; Key Features; Illustration; Reasons Why letter. You will get a letter from my Head Office telling you that I do, in fact, work for this company and also a Cooling Off notice. You can return the shoes within 14 days and have a full refund if you don’t like them for any reason. How would you like to pay sir?”

“Cash.”

“Ah, well, would you mind nipping home for a copy of the gas bill or something to prove your identity, as you are not known to me. One last thing sir. Do any of your friends require shoes?”

Heh!

Sometimes I take some great photos of weird stickers on cars/trucks. One I snapped the other day was of a bright yellow warning sticker on the back of a small truck. It read, “CAUTION: CRAZY DUTCHMAN DRIVING.” However nothing, nothing at all will beat the following picture from fridgemagnet.org.uk. A car shaped like a goldfish?

synthetic aperture radar explained

Once a year I go through my bookmarks and hoik out all the crap that I’ve thought might be useful, but was mistaken. One site I never delete from my bookmarks is The Phobia List. Teutophobia sounds pretty evil. It’s the fear of Germans or German things. Hoopla! Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns and my phobia of late has to be Methyphobia, the fear of alcohol.

nasal hairs to the grindstone

Arrgh. Back to work. Damn having to earn money! There must be a better way.

relax

It’s been a while since I posted to this thing. The reason for my lack of interest in blogging is that I am having a holiday. And where does a bloke and his wife go when they leave Melbourne’s hussle and bustle for a week? Sydney. Of course! Why not go to an even busier city for a holiday? It makes sense to me…

The best thing about this holiday was that it has been filled with absolutely nothing. Lots of sleep ins, a couple of dinner dates with friends and a compulsory visit to Wagamama at the King Street wharf. Later this afternoon will be the highlight of the week off as I will be walking to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It should be fun telling deadly snake/dropbear stories to the hoard of English backpackers who will undoubtedly be walking up with me.