Tram Town
Sunday, November 30, 2003
| Category: Grauniad No great surprise here, Julie Burchill has decided to leave the Guardian. She says: if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.She's off to The Times. Their gain, Guardian readers' loss. |
Saturday, November 29, 2003
| Category: Wind Windmills used for power generation are not a good thing. |
| Category: Technology Cringely has an interesting article on IEEE 802.15.3 and possible applications to my favourite fruit company! It fits with the "Digital Hub" concept but somehow I'm not real sure. Nice idea though. |
Friday, November 28, 2003
| Category: Smut Perhaps I'm reading too much into this story of a 38-year-old senior constable and his apparently unloaded firearm's deployment on the leg of a female teenager. I'll have to look up my copy of the Kama Sutra but my memory is that the firearm is usually loaded during Serious Misuse of a Police Officer's Position. From the same source (The Melbourne Truth of Blogs), a story on why South Australian parliamentarians and their ability to say bloody but not please in parliament. No mention of pink hot pants-wearing premiers, though. |
| Category: Science The Museum of Burnt Food has some prime examples of, you guessed it, Burnt Food. Deborah Henson-Conant is the curator of (and founder and primary contributor to) the Burnt Food Museum. The museum is housed in Arlington, Massachusetts, but is temporarily closed due to fire damage... |
Thursday, November 27, 2003
| Category: Audio The audiospotlight from Holosonic Research Laboratories would be a really useful thing is it went close to doing what they claim. The current installs, though, are hardly what you'd call demanding. If they really got that car thing going I'd be a convert. Still, who'd have thought we'd be travelling everywhere in helicopters and going back and forth to Mars on a whim? Oh, we're not, are we? |
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Monday, November 24, 2003
| Category: Sony On the Sony.net website is a nice history of Sony that is well worth the read. The only problem is that this almost comes across as a machine translation and just as there are nine Eskimo words for the English "snow", there are many Japanese words that translate to the English "nonchalant". UPDATE: As reading continues, I abandon the machine translation theory when I come across "collelation" where "correlation" might better serve. I now favour the "scholarly interpretation" theory. |
Saturday, November 22, 2003
| Category: Music/Culture (Updated) By Jingo! this is so much worth a further look that it hurts! (Update) No Look, look, look! If you never hit another link hit this! The opportunities for seasonal party tapes are endless. (Not sure about the copyright issues though. Less than 10 seconds was it?) |
Friday, November 21, 2003
| Category: Technology History The incredibly sad thing is that not only do I remember a lot of this stuff but I still own most of it. (Keep clicking Next to see the technology stuff I'm referring to as opposed to German Bands). (Apple Safari Warning!) |
| Category: Media Glenn Reynolds, who is the Instapundit, has written on many occasions about many things and he is almost always interesting. A couple of days ago on Tech Central Station he wrote about the effective end of MP3.com, including this obvious but needs-to-be-said statement: I've always had a suspicion that shutting down these independent channels for music distribution, more than cracking down on piracy, has been the real goal of big record labels. |
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
| Category: Technology/Culture (The line's becoming blurred, sorry) I fell in love with a modern girl! |
| Category: Music The Shepard Scale. It's not an audio illusion, it just sounds like an audio illusion. I encourage you to go and look at the whole Sandlot web site. Fascinating! Sorry! It appears to need MSIE. |
| Category: History As Professor Bunyip points out, it's not just Tasmanian history that Bob Manne wants to fictionalise, he's also keen on changing the present! |
| Category: Computer Music Would you like a keyboard with that keyboard, sir? Whenever you feel the musical urge, simply put work aside, slide out the translucent palm-rest and the Creative Prodikeys DM is immediately transformed into a musical keyboard! Five easy-to-follow lessons in the Learn Mode makes music-learning so much fun and easy! Impress your friends with the different fill-ins and effects available or mix professional DJ-style samples in the FunTunes mode.I want one! ~$US90 at Amazon. |
Monday, November 17, 2003
| Category: Audio This could be the most necessary pre-amp ever built or a piece of rubbish. I just can't wait to see the reviews rolling in. And then, and more importantly, I can't wait to hear the thing. |
Sunday, November 16, 2003
| Category: Men Sshhh...! If my wife knew I was reading Kim du Toit she'd have me castrated. Slatts had pointed at Kim du Toit's site before but I had never gone there until this morning. Kim points to some recent news linking Saddam and Osama. No sign of it in the local papers yet. I will keep an eye out. UPDATE: I guess these reports are everywhere (except the Australian press). |
Saturday, November 15, 2003
| Category: Humour At first I was attracted by the domain name http://www.bobfromaccounting.com/, then I found myself laughing: I'm not paying a fucking late fee on my Halloween costume. They claimed I left some kind of stain on it and they wouldn't take it back until I got it cleaned. Anyway, it was WAY too tight and I had serious male cameltoe, which I know people at work noticed because they were staring at my crotch and then looking away quickly as if something was wrong down there-- which is EXACTLY what I do with Mary Kate from payables who also wears spandex and obviously has some kind of giant freakish vagina.I really loved the thing about the Chinese space program! |
| Category: Ordnance This site is all about works of art that happen to also be back yard weapons, some automatic. The Pig Catapult is a particular favourite of mine. And... The POTATO GUN |
| Category: Technology By jingo, it's a funny old world. (To be fair though I'm not reading as much into it as some of the other Apple watchers). |
Friday, November 14, 2003
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
| Category: DVD I haven't looked at the site as much as I'd like before recommending but this looks potentially interesting, sorta like a CDDB for DVD (I think). Thanks Kenn. |
| Category: Blogging I was looking at a Lawrence Lessig's blog (which is always an interesting read), and he pointed at a Blog Tips site, and someone there pointed at a Melbourne Bloggers' Ring (yes, the apostrophe is correctly placed). |
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
| Category: Television I didn't even watch the new mini-series penned by John Doyle for the ABC. I did, however, try to watch Changi and got about ten minutes in before turning it off due to confusion. I'm not an intellectual so I don't understand such stuff. Some people who did watch Marking Time were not impressed. |
Sunday, November 09, 2003
| Category: Workplace behaviour Though I love The Onion, I never thought I would find myself linking to it on Tram Town. But, this item on office place behaviour must be seen. |
Friday, November 07, 2003
| Category: Why be politically correct when you can be right? I couldn't agree more. I had not seen Truth, liberty and an Akubra until Slatts pointed it out but it is "going straight into the pool room" (AKA the "open in tabs" group of daily blog-chow). |
| Category: iTunes Big MacMac Music (would you like fries with that?) Hmmm, greasy fingerprints on your iPod. |
Thursday, November 06, 2003
| Category: Meeja Andrew Bolt has come up with the most substantial analysis of the Meldrum Bake-a-thon that I have seen. Read it to the end. |
| Category: Audio Earlevel has some nice primers and explanations on digital audio. I wish I'd known about this a few years ago. |
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
| Category: Humour Graham Rawle's sense of humour appeals to me. Here he is interviewed by regular participants on the bizarre b3ta site. I particularly like the Lost Consonants series. Can you spot the lost consonant in "Andrew Lloyd Webber writing another hit musical"? That's right, S. |
| Category: Home Technology Stuff Stephen Withers, IT Journalist in the Mac, ACS and popular press arena, raises some interesting points in his blog dated 4/11/03. (Time Critical I suspect). |
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
| Category: Culture (sprung!) An Australian Idol contestant who has a girlfriend has been on-the-job Billy Snedden-style with one of the Hilton |
| Category: Music Pete Townshend has remixed the original Tommy in 5.1. Unfortunately it is only going to be issued in the technically interesting (and maybe even superior) SACD format initially. Can't wait for the DVD Audio/DTS/DD format release. On SACD, the so-called Beta to DVD-Audio's VHS, just as with the Beta/VHS wars, Beta was subjectively better on many counts, but certainly not all counts. Also, as with VHS, DVD-Audio is already a good head in front and most DVD-A disks can be played on most DVD-Video devices. Also, Also, DSD is interesting, even elegant in that a low pass filter applied to the bit stream is an effective D-to-A, but the editing tools that are out there are all much more comfortable in the PCM domain. SACD will, however, be hailed by fans of reproduction, they will at last have a new ivory tower to sit in and sneer at people using CD and DVD-Audio as their signal source (having finally given up on their crackly old turntables). Yah Boo Sucks to them! |
| Category: Culture Sometimes I think that I'm either getting too old or just wasn't made for these times but I keep stumbling across stuff on the internet that I have no cultural reference to put into a context. |
| Category: Technology From the same country that gave you the Hills Hoist, Black Box Flight Recorder and Wine Cask now has perfected this. Why am I not surprised? |
Monday, November 03, 2003
| Category: SFX This is a source of sound FX that I had not previously found. It has some potentially very useful fire and electrical noises. |
| Category: Politics Once again I express shock and surprise at something decent in The Guardian. I love Julie Burchill. |
Sunday, November 02, 2003
| Category: Nigerian Fraud I am Mr. Mohammed Ajayi, a Lawyer by profession. I am the personal attorney to Mr. Richard Scott, who worked for the Chevron Oil Exploration Company in Nigeria, herein after shall be referred to as my client. I saw this in the paper on Friday and had been meaning to post it. Makes me feel proud to be an Australian! Unfortunately Mark beat me to it. |
| Category: A letter to you from Jeff Bezos. This is the leap forward we have been waiting for IMHO. BIG IMAGE ALERT |
| Category: Intellectuals Last week, Paul Sheehan reported, with sadness, that Robert Hughes is an ex-Australian. It is a bit of a ramble but well worth a read. The article was pointed out to me by WhackingDay.com which leads with "Good Riddance". Amen to that, one less intellectual means one less idiot who can't think worth a cracker. Also... Why I set myself on fire and rode a bike off a roof. |
Saturday, November 01, 2003
