David Hicks may be coming home, but Hew Griffiths has been extradited to the USA on charges of copyright infringement. He allegedly cracked software and distributed it for free — with the US-based copyright holders claiming it cost them A$60 million in lost revenue. In 2003, the US Department of Justice charged Griffiths with violating ... [More]
I got a note from my electricity provider AGL, which, unbelievably after the number of times I’ve told them, got my name wrong again. To add insult to injury, it appears that although I switched to green power just before moving in late 2005, when I moved they completely forgot about that, and I’ve been ... [More]
I try to shoehorn various activities into my day, some of which involves my public transport advocacy work. While I end up doing some of the media, the load is shared, and others do a lot of policy work which makes it pretty easy — once the policy’s been nutted out, as long as you ... [More]
So the Australian Do Not Call register launched yesterday (only for the web site to fall over under the demand). It sounds good in theory. But I’m pondering if I (with a silent line that virtually nobody ever calls except people I know) should bother joining. Apart from the fact that the registration expires after ... [More]
I’ve been doing so little driving that it had been a full month since I’d bought petrol. But that came to an end the other night, when the fuel gauge was finally getting very close to the big E. So I pulled into the nearest service station, a Shell. Despite what they’ve been up to ... [More]
No more laughing. The Comedy Festival has come to an end. Yesterday they were taking down the big Box Office sign with the Leunig characters on it off the side of the Town Hall. Just before it finished on Sunday, a bunch of us braved the Waiters (seemed to have bounced back from previous bad ... [More]
I used to be such a fast typist. From memory, in uni I could top 80 wpm. I seem to be slowing down, or at least, my accuracy has dropped. I’m not sure if it’s due to a. getting old b. the crap keyboard I have at work, which periodically seems to ignore what I ... [More]
In the morning it rained, rained, then rained some more. Garden nicely soaked, and even the bits of the back lawn that have been bare are (touch wood) starting to grow back. It conveniently stopped just before 11, when I had to go out. The kids and I strolled down to the shops, bought fruit ... [More]
Some great quotes from Lorraine Sommerfield in The Hamilton Spectator, Canada, on walking: “I watch people drive their children to every sport imaginable, to make sure they’re getting enough exercise. We’re idiots.” “Start walking to the gym — or perhaps instead of the gym.” “I don’t need to run out and buy a hybrid car ... [More]
It’s ANZAC Day, and time to pause and reflect on the sacrifices made by our forebears. Hardly the time to be thinking about money. But due to a set of circumstances last week that saw my bank balance drained to close to zero — something that hasn’t happened in quite some time — I have ... [More]
What’s the deal with those little car licence plates? Particularly on big cars which have plenty of space for normal licence plates. I seem to see them a lot on SS Commodores and 4WDs. Surely the point of licence plates is to make cars easily identifiable, in which case allowing smaller plates where they’re not ... [More]
Good numbers, considering it had poured with rain a couple of hours earlier. Human sign, as seen from ABC helicopter. Channel 7 also sent a chopper. We were on the A in “Climate”, where the cross-bar thingy meets the right hand side. Shot after the sign. They reckon about 2500 people turned up in all, ... [More]
If you’re worried about climate change, and the glacial (!) rate government is addressing it… and you’re in Melbourne, try this: on Sunday morning the Bayside Climate Change Group are getting together people for a human sign on Sandringham beach at 10am, to say “HALT CLIMATE CHANGE NOW!” (I’m assuming the team co-ordinating don’t all ... [More]
From the Daniel’s been playing around with web stuff in his copious spare time and trying to learn PHP and here’s a blatant plug department: You know how sometimes you go to the cinema and you can’t remember which membership card you need to show to get the discount? Is it the RACV card? Or ... [More]
There’s not much you can say about the tragic events at Virginia Tech yesterday. Just terrible, awful stuff. But I would note this: After Australia’s Port Arthur massacre in 1996, the State and Federal governments moved to ban a large number of weapons, and tighten controls on others. Since then, there has been no mass ... [More]
Hot Fuzz — Saw this the other week. Very funny, very bloody, very enjoyable comedy, which pays homage to cop buddy movies. The only problem was that the trailer has far too many of the best jokes in it, and I found myself watching some scenes, waiting for the funny line. I suspect I’d have ... [More]