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Tram Town
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
 
Category: mp3
The only folks happy about selling music on-line are Apple. What bastards!

 
Category: Photography
I found the Gigapxl project's site very interesting. Your Mileage May Vary™.

Saturday, January 28, 2006
 
Category: Culture
Mr Potato Lucas?

 
Category: Technology
Semi-sentient Fridge Magnets .

Friday, January 27, 2006
 
Category: YCMTSU
This is a new category but one which we should have used on many earlier posts.
You Can't Make This Stuff Up!
Bed books.

 
Category: Exercise
My frozen shoulder is never going to get better unless I exercise but I find exercise very boring. The exercises I do are done neck deep in a swimming pool and I have been looking for a waterproof mp3 playing device. Oregon Scientific have one that is hard to get and there is the SwimP3 which has been pointed at before which I don't want to buy sight unseen because I think that is a bit risky.
Low technology to the rescue!

A small zip lock plastic bag safety-pinned to a black cap and a cheap (expendable) mp3 player. Just the trick!
I've been to the pool today and it was filled with boistrous splashy teenagers and it rained so the doohickey took a lickin' but it kept on tickin'.

Thursday, January 26, 2006
 
Category: Schapelle
Over at Paul and Carl's Daily Diatribe, there is a picture of a new perfume. In the comments there is a reference to an interview in the Oz with Schapelle's mum, Roseleigh Rose. When questioned about how she feels about three of her six children being in jail she replied:
What are you supposed to do? At least I know where my bloody kids are, even if they are in jail
You can't make this stuff up!

 
Category: Obesity
Again with Spiked, this time a horror story about a child with some sort of growth disorder who was assumed to be eating too much and was taken away from her parents.

 
Category: Cholesterol
Spiked has an interesting article entitled The Great Cholesterol Myth

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
 
Category: Internet
Semi and I have a few friends who do internet dating et al but this leaves them for dead. This bloke was internet dating and ended up with his Mum. Thanks Kenn.

 
Category: Fillums (I guess)
Ho Hum, as predicted Disney buys Pixar.

Monday, January 23, 2006
 
Category: Weird
Bonsai Kitten!

Sunday, January 22, 2006
 
Category: Science
Michael Crichton, who, by the way, is not a scientist, presented this speech entitled Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21st Century to the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy on November 6, 2005 (when, as a completely useless aside, I was still 45 years old). It is a must read particularly for those people who label me an anthropogenic climate change denier. Some of the gems include:
A friend of mine was an intern at Bellvue Hospital in New York. A 28-year old man from Aruba said he was going to die, because he had been cursed. He was admitted for psychiatric evaluation and found to be normal, but his health steadily declined. My friend was able to rehydrate him, balance his electrolytes, and give him nutrients, but nevertheless the man worsened, insisting that he was cursed and there was nothing that could prevent his death. My friend realized that the patient would, in fact, soon die. The situation was desperate. Finally he told the patient that he, the doctor, was going to invoke his own powerful medicine to undo the curse, and his medicine was more powerful than any other. He got together with the house staff, bought some headdresses and rattles, and danced around the patient in the middle of the night, chanting what they hoped would be effective-sounding phrases. The patient showed no reaction, but next day he began to improve. The man went home a few days later. My friend literally saved his life.
and
as David Brinkley once said, “The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.”
and
Would Citibank have spent the money to fix its Y2K problem without government urging? Of course, because not to do so would have put them out of business. The same is true of other banks and businesses around the world. Yet government takes the credit.
and (with an accompanying picture that you have to see to really understand the quote so go read the article)
According to Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller Institute, industrialized nations have been decarbonizing their energy sources for 150 years, meaning we are moving away from carbon toward hydrogen. In other words, the ratio of carbon to hydrogen decreases as you go from wood and hay (1:1) to coal to oil to gas (1:4). Here is an illustration from one of his articles:
and many more.
Hint to JackH: this is another one that you must read.

 
Category: Humour
There's a terrific read in yesterday's TTT by John Birmingham.
It'll be all right on the night
Political correctness has crippled the left's sense of humour.

Saturday, January 21, 2006
 
Category: Pitchers
Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay for Nanny McPhee and she used a really cunning plan to make herself, the eponymous heroine, look pretty by starting herself off in the movie ugly and gradually taking away warts, a big nose, and other unattractive features until she looked just like Emma Thompson... but prettier because of the comparison with herself earlier in the pitcher.
Colin Firth does his usual magnificent job, Kelly Macdonald is charming as the scullery maid and Angela Lansbury provides a nicely hateable Aunt Adelaide but, overall, it was a slow 97 minutes out at Airport West. The worst of it is that the children, with whom we are presumably supposed to empathise, do a classic sort of bunch of lovable rogues without the lovability.
6.5/10.0 certainly not an awful film but it will have to be a cheapish DVD for us to rush to a first day purchase.

 
Category: DVDs
A couple of notable recent purchases include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sky High
They both come up even better than my original prognostications would suggest. In fact, getting Charlie onto a sound system that I can control meant that my original complaints about the soundtrack have been thrown out the window.
Sky High gets better and better. I have watched it a couple of times now and will watch it several more. The kids will watch it another ten times after that is my guess.
Oh, also that Australian of the Year thing by Chris Lilley. I watched it all and it was often a bit painful but worth it for the extraodinarily funny bits.
BTW when we tried to buy CatCF from EzyDVD in Geelong they were unable to sell it to us due to contractual problems. What is that all about?

Wednesday, January 18, 2006
 
Category: Space TFF
That Brain Gal has a fascinating piece on Spaceship propulsion.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
 
Category: Crime
I'd hada lot of trouble finding this story online, but the simple answer is never steal a cartoonist bike!

 
Category: Nostalgia
During the 60's I was a happy little Sunbeamer (in fact, I seem to remember that I still have 114 Corinella points somewhere), in fact, I drew a fantastic picture of the Robot from Lost In Space which was featured in Saturdays Sun as a colouring-in gig. I never knew that it was still going!

Monday, January 16, 2006
 
Category: Telly
Interesting history of the Doctor Who theme.

Sunday, January 15, 2006
 

This is one of a series of Danish Cartoons that are sparking controversy across the globe.
The cartoon refers to the supposed afterlife of ease and plenty Islamic martyrs have to look forward to:
As a curious example of ijtihad, Manji questions the concept of literal truth by looking at a passage that has had plenty of buzz of late in some (mostly Western) intellectual circles. Islamic martyrs, at least according to their cheerleaders, can look forward to an afterlife of ease and plenty including 70 willing virgins. It seems this passage may be a terrible case of mistranslation. The 70 dark-eyed virgins might actually have been, originally, white raisins, apparently a highly prized delicacy in days past.

 
Category: RDC
And she was in one of my favourite movies (although I haven't seen it for a while so it may have dated some)

Saturday, January 14, 2006
 
Category: Latin
Latin for the Masses contains the latin for a whole bunch of common modern phrases. It'll definitely come in handy at some point.
UPDATE: A comment from a friend to whom I sent the link: It was a wise man who once said, "a gentleman need not know Latin. But he should at least have forgotten it".

Wednesday, January 11, 2006
 

I'm fairly easily amused and I don't even have a reason to be amused but this name for a ballet school amused me. The "Shirlene School of Ballet" is less than one click from my home but I had never come across it until a random walk this afternoon.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006
 
Category: Media
This woman I believe is doing the Radio 1/3LO/774 arvo gig at the moment and whilst hitting well below Stubby Dick's weight (interesting thing in itself, actually) she has incurred my wrath as she appears to back announce Station ID's with no understanding of the fact that the various Local Radio's play their own DigiCarts so back announcing is totally meaningless to those of us not listening to 702. (sorry, couldn't find any online reference for "DigiCarts" -- that surprised me too)

 
Category: Transport
Across USA the Segway way! (funny lot, Americans) ( sounds to me like "Davy Jones" might be singing the song though). (If they pay for more bandwidth you may find more information here).

 
Category: Defense
Fascinating post from that Brain Gal. (well, I found it fascinating)

Monday, January 09, 2006
 
Category: mp3
Whistle while you swim, whistlenoisewhistlenoisewhistlenoise.

 
Category: Iraq
I hadn't noticed this story in our mainstream media. By all accounts, a series of documents has been found that show that Saddam was running terrorist training camps. It had hitherto been claimed that he was doing no such thing.
It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.
It seems that of 2 million "exploitable items", only 2.5% (50,000) have been examined. Expect more revelations to come... sometime before our grand children are dead.

 
Category: Technology
Name That Tune! (looks interesting but haven't tried it yet)

Sunday, January 08, 2006
 
Category: Green
You can't make this stuff up...
UP to 200 employees of a government department are being tested for lead poisoning after the discovery that drinking water had been contaminated with lead, zinc and copper.

The embarrassing discovery of the contaminated recycled water system in the Department of Environment's Greenhouse Office in Canberra prompted a Christmas shutdown of the water supply and emergency investigations by health officials.

 
Category: School
The Hun is carrying a sickening story of a girl who was hounded into "borderline anorexia" by constant weigh-ins at her primary school.
I wonder if she knows her times tables.

Friday, January 06, 2006
 
Category: Technology
I've always liked Robert Fripp, like, for a long time.
But it looks a lot like Fripp Does Vista that's sorta cool as Eno did Windows!

 
Category: Global Warmongering
Iam Plimer (a professor of geology at the University of Adelaide and former head of the school of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne) apparently didn't get the memo about consensus and the debate being over.
Ian Plimer: Global warming a damp squib
Hint: Jack H. you should definitely read this one but don't tell your children that I pointed you at it.
Thanks go to Slatts for pointing at this one.

Thursday, January 05, 2006
 

What is this flower from my backyard? Anyone?
UPDATE: From my mother: A Hibiscus!

 

Me and the boys went on a tour of the Royal Exhibition Building. They really have done a great job doing it up to 1901 spec. Just one thing...
From the web page pointed at above:
Date: 25/06/2005 - 31/12/2007
Days: Daily subject to availability.
Please contact the booking office on 13 11 02
Session Times: 2.00 pm
Bookings: Required
Phone: 13 11 02
So I rang the number and was automatically put on hold for about 15 minutes. When I got through the information operative said that there was no need to book and that I should just turn up 1:45 for a 2:00 tour and buy tickets then. I turned up at 1:30 and the ticket operative told me it was sold out. He could see me getting angry and checked again and managed to find three spaces. I shouldn't have needed to get angry IMHO.
Try to book if you can and, if you do get in, it is well worth the effort.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
 
Category: Web
MacIE is dead. (interesting developer perspective)

 
Category: Headline
Gong awarded for making Firewire™ USB drive pretty

Monday, January 02, 2006
 
Category: RDC
From the Naked Vicar Show as a bloke sits watching telly: "If that's Swan Lake, where's Bobby Limb?".
Both gone now, sadly.

Sunday, January 01, 2006
 
Category: Theft
Looks like I can finally stop breaking the law!


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