Tram Town
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
| Category: Telly When I heard (but was not surprised) that ABV was changing their branding, I further researched (in my own nostalgic way) the rest of the Victorian TV stations -- I was astonished at what I found. HSV, GTV, ATV. Indeed, the Internet is your friend! Interesting how the National Broadcaster has the least detailed entry. Semi probably knows why this is. |
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Category: Marketing From Theo Spark's site which you are welcome to visit but I would advise against it for the more mature TramTown visitors. |
Friday, January 25, 2008
| Category: Science Anyone who knows me even a little bit well knows that I believe we are living in a post-scientific age. I must put together an essay some time soon explaining what I mean by that. In the meantime, Frank Furedi has written a very thoughtful article over at Sp!ked that goes someway towards an explanation. Well worth a read! Oh, and by the way, We Have Way Too Many Scientists in this World™. |
| Category: Music According to Simon Napier-Bell "[t]he record industry is careering towards meltdown". No surprises there, move along citizens. It is worth a read, though. There's lots more from Simon on his own site. |
| Category: Magic Here is an extraordinarily well constructed little vid where Penn and Teller Explain Sleight of Hand. |
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
| Category: Music A couple of decades ago we seemed to get a report linking cancer to a new common substance every week or so. Science "progresses". One of the current "causal relationships" we now find is between music genres and human behaviour, in particular propensity to suicide. Before now, though, I had only seen the link made with thrash/metal styles of music. This paper, from as far back as 1992, makes the link with country music. |
| Category: AFD When I saw this I thought April Fools' Day had come early. The second Climate Change & Wine conference is to be help in Barcelona in mid February. Their special guest... As Vice President of the United States, winner of the popular vote in the mind-whirling campaign of 2000, congressman, Vietnam veteran and journalist, Al Gore offers a unique perspective on national and international affairs. He is also one of the most powerful champions of environmental awareness in America today.Also, he's an expert on the whine thang. |
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
| Category: Ants This GooTube video taught me more about ants than I had ever known hitherto. It is Facinating. |
| Category: Trains A while back our friends at Connex had a spot of bother with some of their trains being sub-optimal in their stopping capacity. You Can't Stop The Seimans! |
Sunday, January 20, 2008
| Category: Technology Some of our readers will find this interesting: Lies My Calculator and Computer Told Me. Have a read, Jack. |
| Category: Lunacy I've just been reading a great blog called Panic Watch!. Amongst other things they alerted me to some public statements made by a Canadian polly called Paul Hellyer. Get this... In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change. "I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet," Hellyer told the paper. He also said that "We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough,"Also, a comment on why the US is racing back to the moon... "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning" and "The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."From Panic Watch!... After years (or minutes) of deliberation, we are proud to announce the winner of the first Panic Watch! True Genius Award--the Honorable Paul Hellyer. |
| Category: Travelling We're just back from a trip to:
I'm happy to see that DB has been blogging a'plenty while I've been away. I'm back on board now. |
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
| Category: Music Lovely web-app Roland TR-909 Drum Machine. (Not a patch on the Dr. Rhythm that Semi and I used in our younger, crazier days) |
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
| Category: Offspring If I hadn't been spayed I'd love to utilise this! I reckon it'd be a cracker -- a rice-cracker! |
| Category: Apple At MacWorld this morning Apple released a truly beautiful laptop, oh, just one more thing, Beautiful as long as you don't want a spare battery, a CD/DVD drive, any ports, Ethernet, expansion, etcetera... Given Apples penchant for performing major upgrades via bootable DVD's, how will this puppy be upgraded? Maybe it's a flawed beauty. I'll look at it but am unlikely to buy without further information. They also did some stuff with the MacTelly and 802.11n SANS and a (purchasable) upgrade for the dog'n'bone & iTouch, but I'm not real excited and the credit card is still in the wallet -- new laptop looks nice but. PS Some other guys opinion. |
Monday, January 14, 2008
| Category: Audio Our friends at Time Inc reckon it's Back to Vinyl! Lordy! Next it'll be Back to Mono! |
Sunday, January 13, 2008
| Category: Apple Why the iPhone may have made more of a difference than first apparent (in the US at least). |
Friday, January 11, 2008
| Category: Past (the) On a receipt from a purchase at the local post office I found this:  |
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
| Category: Ronnies (2 of) At the Royal Air Show today, Luigi Bregonzi, the famous Italian air ace, was not permitted to do his celebrated dive through the sound barrier. The controller said he could not endanger the crowd with a high tiddley iteye boom boom! |
| Category: Audio Usually control surfaces for audio have [motorised] knobs on them. This one, Dexter, is quite simply just a surface. There is a glowing review here. Dexter appears to be an application specific interface built on top of Lemur. Both communicate with the devices they are controlling using OSC which many hope will supersede MIDI. I can imagine sitting in an auditorium controlling sound over WiFi from a Lemur. This stuff is worth watching. |
| Category: Kenya Melanie Phillips has highlighted another instance where the mainstream media is giving us only some of the truth. In this case it seems that most of the post election violence in Kenya is Muslim vs Christian. This has certainly not been mentioned in any of the reports I have seen. |
Sunday, January 06, 2008
| Category: YLStEd* If you go to eat at a buffet there may be a table with just seafood and another with just salads and yet another with just desserts. Many of the regions of inland Australia might be considered just deserts. If you are punished appropriately for a transgression of which you are obviously guilty, you get your just deserts. * You learn something everyday |
| Category: Quotations From John Fogle comes this: I believe it was P.T. Barnum who said that there is a carbon credit purchaser born every minute. Or, did he say that a carbon credit purchaser and his money are soon parted? Well, it was something like that.Also: The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out. |
Saturday, January 05, 2008
| Category: Theatre Today we went and saw SPAMALOT at Her Majesty's and had a terrific time. We went on a ~$300, 2 + 2, family ticket and we had very good seats in the 10th row of the stalls. Outside of the direct Holy Grail references, it is more like Forbidden Broadway than anything Python but I'm here to say that that can hardly be seen as a criticism. Just don't go along thinking that you're going to relive your youth as a Python dork. There is no new material here of that genre. The entire cast were great but I have to say that my absolute favourite was Derek Metzger as Patsy, Arthur's offsider. BTW, the kids, 10 and 12, had a ball. |
Friday, January 04, 2008
| Category: Abortion For some, like me, who have no particular problem with first trimester pregnancy terminations (see category for more emotionally loaded term), the notion of a deaf couple terminating a likely-to-be-hearing embryo presents a dilemma. Prima facie I find the notion abhorrent but, unless I find myself believing in interfering other people's control of their own bodies, I am going to have to accept belief in "designer babies". Sometimes it is hard being a Right Wing Death Beast™ with libertarian leanings. |
| Category: Viromunt Here's a nice article about governments' demands that we no longer use incandescent globes on environmental grounds. For the record, I'm in favour of consumers deciding for themselves which option suits them best. |
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
| Category: Health The latest posting by Sandy Szwarc over at Junk Food Science is the best I've ever read. You must read it to the end, Grandma. I teared up but it is very important reading and must be endured. |
| Category: Warmening Jack Lacton over at Kerplunk refers to an article by John Tierney in the New York Times entitled "In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm". In it he says, of warmening : ...there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard) |
| Category: Law TramTown appears to have been on a bit of a holiday but we return with this pointer to an article by Peter Faris in the small paper about the new charter of human right foist upon an unsuspecting public by the state government. Faris concludes: Not only will the charter revolutionise the practice of law in this state, it will be yet another lawyers' picnic. |
