Net culture
I’m ISP shopping. I’d been considering it anyway, as I’m still using ye olde ADSL1, and in the past couple of years, ADSL2+ has become available in my neck of the woods. I’ve been using my current ISP, Netspace, for about 7 years, I think. Over that time they’ve been pretty reliable, but not without ... [More]
Having moved offices to Latrobe Street, I wanted to know where the nearest ATM is — that is, those of my preferred (no fee) banks, St George or Westpac. The St George ATM/Branch locator will only show five results — including Westpac ATMs. Searching postcode 3000, it shows me those closest to the the corner ... [More]
Google has announced (somewhat early, and amongst other things) the top Australian searches of 2009. Most popular searches of 2009FacebookYouTubeHotmaileBayMySpaceGoogleYahooGmailBeboSeek So plenty of people search for Google in Google, despite the idiocy in doing so, and more significantly, the inherent dangers:
Yesterday’s great website discovery: nearmap.com, which shows high resolution (and recent) satellite pictures of Melbourne and other places — a leapfrog over anything currently on Google Maps. And I discovered that Ormond station has its official three-letter code, OMD, written on the top of it. How odd; I wonder why? View it at nearmap.com Alas, ... [More]
See here’s the thing, Mr Facebook. Just because someone I know on your fine service has managed to resist the temptation to add 300 “friends” (most of whom in reality he barely knows) who can bombard him with requests to play Mafia Wars and Farmville and endless pointless quizzes, doesn’t mean you can rope me ... [More]
When you throw two random words together, the likelihood of someone coming up with the same combination is, I think, fairly low. A great way to think up a dot com name, I reckon. Which is why I did a double-take when I saw this: (Originally here, but now only visible in the Google cache.) ... [More]
Lifehacker on signing-off emails: The Yanks might think “Cheers” is too “mock-Brit”, but Australians are comfortable with it. Personally I use Cheers on most. Regards on formal stuff. Or nothing when I’m talking to a regular correspondent and am in a hurry and/or on a mobile. An older Lifehacker article noted “Best” was awkward. I ... [More]
A fire in Springvale, to which the CFA responds. C’mon, Springvale. What is this, 1960? East of Westall Road isn’t paddocks anymore. Surely it’s time to re-draw the MFB/CFA boundaries? The metro/country taxi boundaries are similar, aren’t they? Time for an update. Odd. I found a quarterly magazine that retails for $7, but is $44 ... [More]
Just because you can edit Wikipedia doesn’t mean you should. I’ve merely dabbled. Added references to things where I knew of them, mostly. Added text on things where I knew for definite that relevant information was missing, and where I could cite a source. A couple of times I’ve added photos of a subject that ... [More]
Either someone broke The Age’s web site, or there’s just no news worth reporting. Or maybe it’s a Fairfax cut-back? (Oh, it’s back now.)
Nice to see the Prime Minister quoting a Twitter post in parliament, but jeez — reading it off a printout? Surely his staffers could have sent it to him on his Blackberry or something so he looked at least a little tech-savvy. (via Mumbrella)
Some brief thoughts and half-arsed things that I can’t be bothered developing into fully-fledged blog posts: Luz Station in Sao Paulo. Looks externally very similar to Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station, well if you don’t look too closely. Coincidence, or is one modelled on the other? Probably the former. I haven’t seen anything that suggests Luz ... [More]
Every so often, some new online service will present itself. Some turn out to be duds, but some turn out to be pretty compelling. As most of them are free, it’s often handy to grab your name early on while it’s available, in case it becomes useful later. In the prehistoric days of the net, ... [More]
You know you’ve been watching too many online videos when you look at something in real life and think “Wow that’s high resolution… and the motion is so smooth…”
A few weeks ago we watched Buster Keaton’s The General the other day. It’s public domain, a free download from the Internet Archive. Very funny stuff, and some quite remarkable stunts considering they had so few safety precautions compared to nowadays. I had been pondering if it was rude to talk during a silent movie. ... [More]
Oh great, I just got my first international phone SMS scam spam. I’ve had the odd domestic SMS spam before, but this is the first like this. I hope it’s not the start of a flood. It has a couple of hints that it’s probably a variation on the old Advance-fee/419/Nigerian scam — the claim ... [More]