Here is an idea that I have thought about and ultimately decided to go ahead with. Many people may think this is not the most sensible idea I have ever come up with but I think it will work for several reasons.
As friends, family, regular readers and online stalkers will know, I am in year 12 this year and so my final year of school. Ever. It is potentially the most important year of my life and probably the most stressful. As a way of staying focused on achieving high grades this year I have decided that I will post my results for the year in each subject on the blog so the wonderful wide world can see how I’m doing.
There are two reasons I’m going to do this, one is the motivation factor. Anyone who has tried will know that by keeping clear goals and something tey can keep track of the goals with will help achieve those goals and I’m no different. In each subject we get profile sheets which show our marks for each assessment piece and we can see what we get, what we need to get and what our overall marks are. Putting these profiles on the blog I hope will keep them in my mind more clearly. There is also the added pressure of having the entire world know my results, the stakes are higher and I will be more determined to succeed.
The second reason is that even if I fail the year, have breakdowns and the like (hopefully none of which will happen) by putting the tale online it will be accessible for younger students to read and hopefully will serve as advice for future year 12s. I may be getting a little full of myself in that regard, but I know I’d certainly read a blog about surviving senior, in fact I intend to.
The reasons for not doing this that I have considered are that being open to everyone is can be read by future employers. I think the motivation reasoning covers this. Another reason for not doing it is that the school can see it. Well, actually I’ve never mentioned my own name on this blog. Occasionally it comes up in comments, but I’ve never said who I am. I’ve also never specified which high school I go to and I don’t and will not mention teachers by name. Even keeping that aspect anonymous I won’t be saying anything negative about teachers anyway; they are all professional and while some teachers are certainly incompetent, if I have any incompetent teachers, and I’m pretty sure I don’t, then it is not my place to defame them. There is of course the pride factor as well because my classmates will all be able to read it. I don’t mind my classmates knowing my results so much though.
So today was the first day of year 12. Too be honest I’m terrified. Probably not something I should say online, but I am. The workload doesn’t bother me at all, sure it will be hard and stressful but of the 3 periods I had today all 3 teachers said that we’d get stressed and that was normal, we’d have to work hard but we shouldn’t cancel our social lives because while they will need to be capped they are all that will keep us sane this year. I agree absolutely. Not going out every week is fine, not going out all year is stupid and causes breakdowns.
I’m fine with the workload, the people I work with are great and supportive. The reason I’m scared is that it is 10 months of mad assessing and then suddenly graduation and then I’m not going to be in school any more. I like school. Still, I know more adults than I do anyone else and they obviously all survived it so I’m not too seriously worried. I guess it is a bit like worrying you’ll die if bitten by an ant.
So those are my feelings about my final year after a day and my intentions for keeping the world informed.
On a non-school related front, I have in the past day discovered that my reader base is about 7 times larger than I thought it was and places all over the web that are completely unrelated to me are directing to me. As such I’m going to try and talk about things that people care about more often. In particular my Hottest 100 post which was viewed over 100 times in 2 weeks. Thanks Google!
Everyone have a good night!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Triple J Hottest 100 of 2008 pt 2
Ok, the Hottest 100 is over for another year, sort of. So it is time to do the wrap up things.
Of the songs I votes for 4 of them got in, the best being The Boy’s In Love at no. 8. This was the largest Hottest 100 ever and so my votes would have been nearly inconsequential in the overall scheme of things, but the two songs I wanted to vote for but didn’t both missed out on the 100.
I’m not sure if Triple J ballsed up the start, it seemed that they did but we can’t be sure cause nobody at our party knew the first 5 songs of the countdown- it seems I’m not the only one who didn’t listen to the radio all year. Eventually though we got into it.
I’m pleased to see that Sigur Ros got in at 93. It was also good to see Metallica get in at 88, although there is no surpries they got in so maybe a little higher would have been better. It doesn’t matter too much though. What was really surprising I thought was Beautiful Ugly – Muph & Plutonic only got 86. It should have been much higher than that, top 30 at least. There was also no TZU in the countdown as an anonymous commenter posted on the last thread. I found this strange but then TZU missed out on 2006 with In Front Of Me and that deserved to get in back then too. Come on people, where is the love for TZU?
Not surprising on the hiphop front was The Festival Song getting top 10. I could have lived without Jimmy Recard in there though, but I’d never heard the song until yesterday so whatever.
I think the thing that we should be most proud of is The Herd got to no. 13 for The King Is Dead. I thought that 2020 would do better, but I am almightily pleased to see The King Is Dead do as well as it did.
Moving away from Hiphop it was fun to hear Flight of The Conchords get three songs in. The party enjoyed that a good deal. Also fun, though not particularly musical, was watching the event being live blogged on Wikipedia. Wikipedia was updated more frequently and more quickly than the ABC website so it became the source of song titles as we listened. There has been a lot of talk on the Wikipedia page about vandalism, and there was plenty of it but I think they should lighten up a bit. I understand the frustration of the people updating it that they needed to keep getting rid of the rubbish, but anyone accessing the page would have known it was a current event, and so it was just a good laugh when in about the 20s the position for No. 1 song was filled in with “Kings of Leon are stupid and will not get no. 1”. Wikipedia calls it vanalism, I call it fun- given the circumstances. That article is locked until the 29th of January now but with the countdown being over anyone who mucks up on it will simply be vandalizing.
And yeah Kings of Leon did get no. 1 and no. 3. I’m disappointed in that, not because I don’t like Kings of Leon but because I am saddened to see Powderfinger’s record being leveled by a Southern Rock band from the USA. I’m also not immensely pleased with MGMT, but meh. At least Kids was in better than Time To Pretend. Kids is a much better song.
I’m also happy to see Ladyhawke do well, as with the Presets although I wish they’d done a bit better. This Boy’s In Love should have been No. 1 and I thought it stood a chance there, but it was not to be.
Because I knew so little new music from 2008 it really is more notable for me which songs weren’t in the 100. Particularly I noticed the absence of Bloc Party and Coldplay. We are Rockstars – Does It Offend you, Yeah? Didn’t get in, I thought it would do better than Dawn of The Dead but apparently not.
I’ve said over and over that I didn’t listen to the radio enough in 2008 though so I can’t make many more comments without overstepping my own knowledge on the matter. Overall I am happy with the results and look forward to the next one in… JULY!! Yes, after much campaigning Triple J has finally decided to do another Hottest 100 of All Time! The last one was on the 7th of June 1998 and No. 1 was Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana. I imagine the result will be the same this time although I’m hoping to get Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division at least back to No. 2 (it was only 16 in 1998, a dramatic fall seeing as it was the song responsible for the Hottest 100 becoming annual).
Just to finish off, the competition for predicting the top 10 was won by Matt, who seemed overwhelmingly pleased to have won. I finished one a positive score but didn’t do that well, I did a bit better than average. The prize was a trophy this year rather than iTunes credit so it was al fun and no expense.
The Hottest 100 of 2008 will continue in a few weeks when it comes on rage. As yet there is no date for that but it is usually mid to late February.
Until July, enjoy your day.
Of the songs I votes for 4 of them got in, the best being The Boy’s In Love at no. 8. This was the largest Hottest 100 ever and so my votes would have been nearly inconsequential in the overall scheme of things, but the two songs I wanted to vote for but didn’t both missed out on the 100.
I’m not sure if Triple J ballsed up the start, it seemed that they did but we can’t be sure cause nobody at our party knew the first 5 songs of the countdown- it seems I’m not the only one who didn’t listen to the radio all year. Eventually though we got into it.
I’m pleased to see that Sigur Ros got in at 93. It was also good to see Metallica get in at 88, although there is no surpries they got in so maybe a little higher would have been better. It doesn’t matter too much though. What was really surprising I thought was Beautiful Ugly – Muph & Plutonic only got 86. It should have been much higher than that, top 30 at least. There was also no TZU in the countdown as an anonymous commenter posted on the last thread. I found this strange but then TZU missed out on 2006 with In Front Of Me and that deserved to get in back then too. Come on people, where is the love for TZU?
Not surprising on the hiphop front was The Festival Song getting top 10. I could have lived without Jimmy Recard in there though, but I’d never heard the song until yesterday so whatever.
I think the thing that we should be most proud of is The Herd got to no. 13 for The King Is Dead. I thought that 2020 would do better, but I am almightily pleased to see The King Is Dead do as well as it did.
Moving away from Hiphop it was fun to hear Flight of The Conchords get three songs in. The party enjoyed that a good deal. Also fun, though not particularly musical, was watching the event being live blogged on Wikipedia. Wikipedia was updated more frequently and more quickly than the ABC website so it became the source of song titles as we listened. There has been a lot of talk on the Wikipedia page about vandalism, and there was plenty of it but I think they should lighten up a bit. I understand the frustration of the people updating it that they needed to keep getting rid of the rubbish, but anyone accessing the page would have known it was a current event, and so it was just a good laugh when in about the 20s the position for No. 1 song was filled in with “Kings of Leon are stupid and will not get no. 1”. Wikipedia calls it vanalism, I call it fun- given the circumstances. That article is locked until the 29th of January now but with the countdown being over anyone who mucks up on it will simply be vandalizing.
And yeah Kings of Leon did get no. 1 and no. 3. I’m disappointed in that, not because I don’t like Kings of Leon but because I am saddened to see Powderfinger’s record being leveled by a Southern Rock band from the USA. I’m also not immensely pleased with MGMT, but meh. At least Kids was in better than Time To Pretend. Kids is a much better song.
I’m also happy to see Ladyhawke do well, as with the Presets although I wish they’d done a bit better. This Boy’s In Love should have been No. 1 and I thought it stood a chance there, but it was not to be.
Because I knew so little new music from 2008 it really is more notable for me which songs weren’t in the 100. Particularly I noticed the absence of Bloc Party and Coldplay. We are Rockstars – Does It Offend you, Yeah? Didn’t get in, I thought it would do better than Dawn of The Dead but apparently not.
I’ve said over and over that I didn’t listen to the radio enough in 2008 though so I can’t make many more comments without overstepping my own knowledge on the matter. Overall I am happy with the results and look forward to the next one in… JULY!! Yes, after much campaigning Triple J has finally decided to do another Hottest 100 of All Time! The last one was on the 7th of June 1998 and No. 1 was Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana. I imagine the result will be the same this time although I’m hoping to get Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division at least back to No. 2 (it was only 16 in 1998, a dramatic fall seeing as it was the song responsible for the Hottest 100 becoming annual).
Just to finish off, the competition for predicting the top 10 was won by Matt, who seemed overwhelmingly pleased to have won. I finished one a positive score but didn’t do that well, I did a bit better than average. The prize was a trophy this year rather than iTunes credit so it was al fun and no expense.
The Hottest 100 of 2008 will continue in a few weeks when it comes on rage. As yet there is no date for that but it is usually mid to late February.
Until July, enjoy your day.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Live Blogging Obama's Inauguration
Well this is going to be a long night. Welcome everyone! We are stuggling to work out when it will actually happen, it is currently 11:15pm Brisbane time and we are perhaps going to be waiting until 3am to finish this. I think it is easier if I work on Washington DC time (which will be referred from here on as local time) where it is currently 8:16am.
I'm using Blogger to do this live, if you are on MySpace seeing this then you need to come over to noiseboyscyberhome.blogspot.com or you'll miss all the fun.
So we are now talking about the first lady.
Oh what just happened? An ad break has just interrupted the program at a really odd place. They were in the middle of talking, then an ad break. But that back to school ad was kind of funny. The ads are really more interesting than the current discussion but it is the point that they just broke into an ad instead of the inauguration.
Now all these ads are for Invasion Day celebrations. The patriotism is making me ill. Hmmm... in that case maybe I'm watching the wrong program.
Now we've had a newsbreak. The newsperson just said good morning- sorry love you are 11 and a half hours too slow.
And the inauguration was Good Morning America anyway. Oh well, probably shouldn't be complaining, news is good. "It was a very busy 24 hours for fire fighters in 3 states, one house was damaged and dozens more threatened..." Wow, that must have been a REALLY big house.
Is Channel 9 supposed to have late news on now or something?
Oh Lleyton Hewitt is already out of the Australian Open. Skillz Hewitt!
It seems that newsbreak was coming out of Sydney, so explaining the good morning.
It is now 8:31am local time and Obama is going to church. The president sits in pew 54 in this church but before he is inaugurated he will sit in pew 2(?) I think she said. I'm wondering who sits in pew 54 when the president isn't in.
"If we don't pray now, when do we?" I'd be thinking that the best time to pray would be election day really, still the reasoning of the financial crisis is appropriate I suppose.
Oh no, the speech isn't until noon! I've got to sit up until after 3am! Good heavens, lucky thing I'm not doing anything tomorrow.
They keep saying that it is really cold. Wow, I've just changed my temperature to Washington, it is -7 degrees. Don't worry though because it will warm up, all the way to 0! It is forecast to snow but is currently fine. It is making me think that Obama will take the oath without a jacket, just like on The West Wing. Everything else about this has turned out like the West Wing, so why shouldn't the oath.
So the president doesn't go to church every Sunday. I don't think this is really the most important thing to expect of the president. I'm not God, but I suspect that God would like the president to do a good job in office and spend their time wisely to run the planet the best way possible. Going to church is important, depending on your personal beliefs anyway, but I don't think the ceremonial act of worship is as important as the actions of worship, and seeing as this is the inauguration of a president that will serve under God, I think I can draw this connection.
Maybe I shouldn't be delving into religious politics when I'm falling asleep.
They are mentioning coffee. I would like some coffee. I would like anything with caffiene right now though, if I'm going to last until after 3am. Sadly this household seems to have run out of ordinary coffee and all we have is decaff. Oh well, last week I lasted 38 hours awake with no caffiene whatsoever.
So the church is a community church the rest of the year... I figured that, but I still want to know who gets pew 54 when the president is out.
Hey look, that nice man everyone is making a fuss over! He is real, and here I was thinkng it was all made up. So the story seems to be that they could walk easily but instead they are using limousines because the streets are all locked down. And it would be faster to walk because the cars are going at lower than walking speed due to security. I'm seeing the motorcade go past, it looks faster than walking speed to me. Ah, apparently it was a shorter route than the commentators thought- a route switch as another security precaution. Hey, he waved to me. Whoa, here the cheering. And there is the minister. Well, they have entered the church.
I don't mean to alarm anyone, but the commentators aren't talking in sync. The church bells are tolling. Perfect time for an ad break. Well with church running for over an hour now, I'm guessing things are about to get pretty boring. I'm going to take a short break and maybe come back with higher battery power. At this rate it will only last another 3.5 hours.
Ok, back and fueled. It turns out we did have some caffeinated coffee after all. As well as that we have some wonderful pizza, Hawaiian of course.
There are a lot of TV screens there, they sure do know how to host an outdoor event. Pity they haven't yet mastered widescreen TV or properly synchronized sound. The sync appears to be ok right at the moment.
They are repainting the White House. Are they going to repaint the outside too? People are handing out free Starbucks coffee, please guys, this is supposed to be a celebration why would you try to ruin it like that.
Good news guys, it is up to -6 degrees now.
So there are staff members starting work as soon as this is over. The parade will still be going and they will be starting work.
An ad break. Oh dear it has reached that time where late night dating sites start advertising. "I think this proves that the kind of people who watch TV at quarter to one in the morning are sad desperate people" says Dad just as an ad comes on promising new technology that will give you a much better orgasm. The ads speak for themselves. And then they continue speaking all over the first sentence back from the ad break.
"I think we are all Americans tonight" the conversation here continues. Does that mean I've got to start speaking out of sync and no more widescreen? They (people on the TV again) think that this will mean that people around the world will see America in a different way. Well that is true on my part anyway, my estimation of the intelligence of the population has certainly risen now that Georgia Bush isn't in power any more.
Obama is out of the church and heading into the limo, heading for coffee with the Bush family. It will be a good opportunity for Bush to give Obama some useful information about being a president and for Obama to give Bush some useful information about being a human being.
Obama can't get out of the car until Bush comes out to meet them, presumably they want a clear shot for their shoes without Obama getting in the way.
Well, they have gone into another private event so I guess things are about to get a bit boring for a bit longer.
Hey look, 5 flags. Someone should point out that 4 of them are out of date, that could be very embarrasing. 4 out of date flags and a choir of singing oompa loompas.
Time for some more pizza I think.
If they can power LA with all the excitement of this crowd, why don't they. The electricity they don't generate by coal can be counted towards Obama's environmental credentials.
They have one toilet for every 400 people. I hope nobody is selling curry.
I can't get over the fact that the White House has a solarium. It's terrible they take money out of healthcare because the president's family is all going to die of cancer.
Ah and now for another ad break, so four minutes of adult site advertising. I'd think that buying the ads for this program would be quite expensive, but by watching what the ads are I'm guessing that they aren't. Oh no, here is a warning for premature ejaculation. Oh no, 63% of women can't orgasm properly. And back to the program. Just before anything of substance though, if you are worrying about sex problems of this on going nature then you probably have a partner. And if you have a partner then you aren't so desperate as to be watching these ads. So the are useless.
A 68 year old woman has been hit by a train. She is alive but they don't know what condition she is in and don't know if it is because of over crowding but it seems likely. The TV is having a fun time doing celebrity spotting. Ah and now an interview with a cleverly disguised FBI person, the van identified only by the subtle writing of FBI in enormous letters on the side. And there is a security guard, he looks like a ninja.
Obama did used to be a basketball player so lets talk about that for a while. The Pope has messaged Obama as well.
Well that ad break was weird.
10:35am local time. Still only -5 degrees. In Brisbane right now 1:37am and 23 degrees. I think it is actually much hotter than that but whatever. Now the people on TV are saying it is getting warmer. It isn't, it is still below freezing.
They are talking about football support fashion. It's a great sign that nothing is happening. Guys, don't forget to talk about the people watching in Australia, we are sort of important too. They are saying history will keep them warm. I know you are expecting a cynical and smartarse comment here, but I'd fully believe that statement. They are witnessing something that will only happen once in a lifetime, the fact it is -5 degrees probably isn't bothering them.
Apparently this date was chosen because there is normally unseasonable warm weather at this time of year. D'oh!
Oh look a poor old man injured in a wheel chair. Should we feel sorry for him or should we remember his policies? Die scum die! Look, the presidents are out now. So George, how does it feel to be part of an inauguration that doesn't have rioters protesting against the new president? Have you been a part of one of them before? Guess not.
Those are really ugly cars. If I ever become the president, I want an Audi TT limo. Now that would be cool. Not these things these guys have, they look dreadful. The commentators are still talking about old presidents, oh no now they have started talking about the limo.
Now that is an awesome motorcade. It's enormous.
Channel 9 has just taken over the coverage, it is no longer ABC America. Wow, these guys make the Americans look good. No, you can't call it coffee, it isn't coffee.
I'm just going to quickly stop and let Cailie get a bit more battery. I'm not in any danger of running it low, or even near but I'm slightly paranoid. And could do with some more food anyway.
No guys, Al Gore wouldn't be leaving today. Also, Bush Senior didn't have access to the White House during the 8 years Clinton was in power. You ordinarily would say the Australian commentators are tired, but they are there so it is 11:15am. They don't know very much and the little they do know they are reciting from what we've already heard, but at least they are mentioning Australia. Not the most important thing but meh. Whoa this cross is bad. The other advantage of the Australian coverage is that the picture is widescreen and the people are in sync. Oh no now the coverage has frozen! Phew, it's back. A possum did just run heavily across the roof so it was probably an antenna problem.
So they like the Clintons. Hang on who is this Obama guy and what's wrong with my rock?
Ah, Obama used to nearly have an afro. Cool. He should grow another one. "And everything the Republicans threw at him was not enough" while showing a picture of Sarah Palin. Did they throw her at him? No, they nominated her for vice president. That's where they went wrong.
It is now 11:31am local time and it has moved up to -3 degrees. Time to start stripping off down to the 5th layer! Hey look that monster in a wheel chair. And people are booing George W. Bush. They say it is unusual for the president to be booed by a large crowed, but it isn't unusual for that to happen to Bush. He's got a 27% approval rate. That actually makes him more popular than Howard to put it in Aussie perspectives, and Howard is Australia's most hated PM and Bush is America's most hated president so to compare those two Aussies we win, we had a worse leader we win! Be proud Australia. And more laughing at the demon in the wheelchair.
They are calling out the entering people of importance. They are playing Hail to the Chief to Bush, should someone tell them that they have the wrong song. And Channel 9 has just made a joke about Cheney shooting himself. They have won over some respect from me. Yeah, I believe they should be playing a particular Radiohead song for Bush.
What's Obama looking so nervous about, he's not about to be president or anything. These commentators are actually winning me over. They aren't as competent as the Americans, but they have a better sense of humour.
The man is here people!!
Ok, we've had one speech and a prayer and now Aretha Franklin is going to sing for us. What a show! By the way I'm not going to talk over the speeches, just the bits between.
More music now. Biden has done his oath. "Sarah Palin get out of my happy place!" Parody politics is so fun. Wow have you seen the size of the sheet music for this song, it goes forever. The cellist is thinking "the faster I play the more I warm up". Munich is getting the best view of this, it is just after 6pm there. Ah and now more speeches.
He stuffed the oath!! Now back to speeches.
That was a great speech. There wasn't as much applause as I was expecting and in fact I don't actually think that this speech was as good as the victory speech, but it was still no less than great.
I'm not sure what is happening now because the Channel 9 commentators talked over the top of the introduction. They have lost my respect again.
And now the benediction.
Now that is why we like a black man preaching. That was an awesome prayer. The national anthem is a bit limp vocal only. I'm not dissing the anthem, I'm just saying a bit of instrumentation wouldn't go astray. How about getting Hendrix next time?
Well people it is 12:40pm and it is still only -3 degrees. The United States of America has a new president. The whole world can look forward to a new era in global politics. The celebrations are many but the work has just begun. The next four years will be very, very interesting.
However I am sitting in my lounge in front of the TV in Brisbane where it is 3:42am. The sun will rise in only an hour and I need to get some sleep.
To the future!!
I'm using Blogger to do this live, if you are on MySpace seeing this then you need to come over to noiseboyscyberhome.blogspot.com or you'll miss all the fun.
So we are now talking about the first lady.
Oh what just happened? An ad break has just interrupted the program at a really odd place. They were in the middle of talking, then an ad break. But that back to school ad was kind of funny. The ads are really more interesting than the current discussion but it is the point that they just broke into an ad instead of the inauguration.
Now all these ads are for Invasion Day celebrations. The patriotism is making me ill. Hmmm... in that case maybe I'm watching the wrong program.
Now we've had a newsbreak. The newsperson just said good morning- sorry love you are 11 and a half hours too slow.
And the inauguration was Good Morning America anyway. Oh well, probably shouldn't be complaining, news is good. "It was a very busy 24 hours for fire fighters in 3 states, one house was damaged and dozens more threatened..." Wow, that must have been a REALLY big house.
Is Channel 9 supposed to have late news on now or something?
Oh Lleyton Hewitt is already out of the Australian Open. Skillz Hewitt!
It seems that newsbreak was coming out of Sydney, so explaining the good morning.
It is now 8:31am local time and Obama is going to church. The president sits in pew 54 in this church but before he is inaugurated he will sit in pew 2(?) I think she said. I'm wondering who sits in pew 54 when the president isn't in.
"If we don't pray now, when do we?" I'd be thinking that the best time to pray would be election day really, still the reasoning of the financial crisis is appropriate I suppose.
Oh no, the speech isn't until noon! I've got to sit up until after 3am! Good heavens, lucky thing I'm not doing anything tomorrow.
They keep saying that it is really cold. Wow, I've just changed my temperature to Washington, it is -7 degrees. Don't worry though because it will warm up, all the way to 0! It is forecast to snow but is currently fine. It is making me think that Obama will take the oath without a jacket, just like on The West Wing. Everything else about this has turned out like the West Wing, so why shouldn't the oath.
So the president doesn't go to church every Sunday. I don't think this is really the most important thing to expect of the president. I'm not God, but I suspect that God would like the president to do a good job in office and spend their time wisely to run the planet the best way possible. Going to church is important, depending on your personal beliefs anyway, but I don't think the ceremonial act of worship is as important as the actions of worship, and seeing as this is the inauguration of a president that will serve under God, I think I can draw this connection.
Maybe I shouldn't be delving into religious politics when I'm falling asleep.
They are mentioning coffee. I would like some coffee. I would like anything with caffiene right now though, if I'm going to last until after 3am. Sadly this household seems to have run out of ordinary coffee and all we have is decaff. Oh well, last week I lasted 38 hours awake with no caffiene whatsoever.
So the church is a community church the rest of the year... I figured that, but I still want to know who gets pew 54 when the president is out.
Hey look, that nice man everyone is making a fuss over! He is real, and here I was thinkng it was all made up. So the story seems to be that they could walk easily but instead they are using limousines because the streets are all locked down. And it would be faster to walk because the cars are going at lower than walking speed due to security. I'm seeing the motorcade go past, it looks faster than walking speed to me. Ah, apparently it was a shorter route than the commentators thought- a route switch as another security precaution. Hey, he waved to me. Whoa, here the cheering. And there is the minister. Well, they have entered the church.
I don't mean to alarm anyone, but the commentators aren't talking in sync. The church bells are tolling. Perfect time for an ad break. Well with church running for over an hour now, I'm guessing things are about to get pretty boring. I'm going to take a short break and maybe come back with higher battery power. At this rate it will only last another 3.5 hours.
Ok, back and fueled. It turns out we did have some caffeinated coffee after all. As well as that we have some wonderful pizza, Hawaiian of course.
There are a lot of TV screens there, they sure do know how to host an outdoor event. Pity they haven't yet mastered widescreen TV or properly synchronized sound. The sync appears to be ok right at the moment.
They are repainting the White House. Are they going to repaint the outside too? People are handing out free Starbucks coffee, please guys, this is supposed to be a celebration why would you try to ruin it like that.
Good news guys, it is up to -6 degrees now.
So there are staff members starting work as soon as this is over. The parade will still be going and they will be starting work.
An ad break. Oh dear it has reached that time where late night dating sites start advertising. "I think this proves that the kind of people who watch TV at quarter to one in the morning are sad desperate people" says Dad just as an ad comes on promising new technology that will give you a much better orgasm. The ads speak for themselves. And then they continue speaking all over the first sentence back from the ad break.
"I think we are all Americans tonight" the conversation here continues. Does that mean I've got to start speaking out of sync and no more widescreen? They (people on the TV again) think that this will mean that people around the world will see America in a different way. Well that is true on my part anyway, my estimation of the intelligence of the population has certainly risen now that Georgia Bush isn't in power any more.
Obama is out of the church and heading into the limo, heading for coffee with the Bush family. It will be a good opportunity for Bush to give Obama some useful information about being a president and for Obama to give Bush some useful information about being a human being.
Obama can't get out of the car until Bush comes out to meet them, presumably they want a clear shot for their shoes without Obama getting in the way.
Well, they have gone into another private event so I guess things are about to get a bit boring for a bit longer.
Hey look, 5 flags. Someone should point out that 4 of them are out of date, that could be very embarrasing. 4 out of date flags and a choir of singing oompa loompas.
Time for some more pizza I think.
If they can power LA with all the excitement of this crowd, why don't they. The electricity they don't generate by coal can be counted towards Obama's environmental credentials.
They have one toilet for every 400 people. I hope nobody is selling curry.
I can't get over the fact that the White House has a solarium. It's terrible they take money out of healthcare because the president's family is all going to die of cancer.
Ah and now for another ad break, so four minutes of adult site advertising. I'd think that buying the ads for this program would be quite expensive, but by watching what the ads are I'm guessing that they aren't. Oh no, here is a warning for premature ejaculation. Oh no, 63% of women can't orgasm properly. And back to the program. Just before anything of substance though, if you are worrying about sex problems of this on going nature then you probably have a partner. And if you have a partner then you aren't so desperate as to be watching these ads. So the are useless.
A 68 year old woman has been hit by a train. She is alive but they don't know what condition she is in and don't know if it is because of over crowding but it seems likely. The TV is having a fun time doing celebrity spotting. Ah and now an interview with a cleverly disguised FBI person, the van identified only by the subtle writing of FBI in enormous letters on the side. And there is a security guard, he looks like a ninja.
Obama did used to be a basketball player so lets talk about that for a while. The Pope has messaged Obama as well.
Well that ad break was weird.
10:35am local time. Still only -5 degrees. In Brisbane right now 1:37am and 23 degrees. I think it is actually much hotter than that but whatever. Now the people on TV are saying it is getting warmer. It isn't, it is still below freezing.
They are talking about football support fashion. It's a great sign that nothing is happening. Guys, don't forget to talk about the people watching in Australia, we are sort of important too. They are saying history will keep them warm. I know you are expecting a cynical and smartarse comment here, but I'd fully believe that statement. They are witnessing something that will only happen once in a lifetime, the fact it is -5 degrees probably isn't bothering them.
Apparently this date was chosen because there is normally unseasonable warm weather at this time of year. D'oh!
Oh look a poor old man injured in a wheel chair. Should we feel sorry for him or should we remember his policies? Die scum die! Look, the presidents are out now. So George, how does it feel to be part of an inauguration that doesn't have rioters protesting against the new president? Have you been a part of one of them before? Guess not.
Those are really ugly cars. If I ever become the president, I want an Audi TT limo. Now that would be cool. Not these things these guys have, they look dreadful. The commentators are still talking about old presidents, oh no now they have started talking about the limo.
Now that is an awesome motorcade. It's enormous.
Channel 9 has just taken over the coverage, it is no longer ABC America. Wow, these guys make the Americans look good. No, you can't call it coffee, it isn't coffee.
I'm just going to quickly stop and let Cailie get a bit more battery. I'm not in any danger of running it low, or even near but I'm slightly paranoid. And could do with some more food anyway.
No guys, Al Gore wouldn't be leaving today. Also, Bush Senior didn't have access to the White House during the 8 years Clinton was in power. You ordinarily would say the Australian commentators are tired, but they are there so it is 11:15am. They don't know very much and the little they do know they are reciting from what we've already heard, but at least they are mentioning Australia. Not the most important thing but meh. Whoa this cross is bad. The other advantage of the Australian coverage is that the picture is widescreen and the people are in sync. Oh no now the coverage has frozen! Phew, it's back. A possum did just run heavily across the roof so it was probably an antenna problem.
So they like the Clintons. Hang on who is this Obama guy and what's wrong with my rock?
Ah, Obama used to nearly have an afro. Cool. He should grow another one. "And everything the Republicans threw at him was not enough" while showing a picture of Sarah Palin. Did they throw her at him? No, they nominated her for vice president. That's where they went wrong.
It is now 11:31am local time and it has moved up to -3 degrees. Time to start stripping off down to the 5th layer! Hey look that monster in a wheel chair. And people are booing George W. Bush. They say it is unusual for the president to be booed by a large crowed, but it isn't unusual for that to happen to Bush. He's got a 27% approval rate. That actually makes him more popular than Howard to put it in Aussie perspectives, and Howard is Australia's most hated PM and Bush is America's most hated president so to compare those two Aussies we win, we had a worse leader we win! Be proud Australia. And more laughing at the demon in the wheelchair.
They are calling out the entering people of importance. They are playing Hail to the Chief to Bush, should someone tell them that they have the wrong song. And Channel 9 has just made a joke about Cheney shooting himself. They have won over some respect from me. Yeah, I believe they should be playing a particular Radiohead song for Bush.
What's Obama looking so nervous about, he's not about to be president or anything. These commentators are actually winning me over. They aren't as competent as the Americans, but they have a better sense of humour.
The man is here people!!
Ok, we've had one speech and a prayer and now Aretha Franklin is going to sing for us. What a show! By the way I'm not going to talk over the speeches, just the bits between.
More music now. Biden has done his oath. "Sarah Palin get out of my happy place!" Parody politics is so fun. Wow have you seen the size of the sheet music for this song, it goes forever. The cellist is thinking "the faster I play the more I warm up". Munich is getting the best view of this, it is just after 6pm there. Ah and now more speeches.
He stuffed the oath!! Now back to speeches.
That was a great speech. There wasn't as much applause as I was expecting and in fact I don't actually think that this speech was as good as the victory speech, but it was still no less than great.
I'm not sure what is happening now because the Channel 9 commentators talked over the top of the introduction. They have lost my respect again.
And now the benediction.
Now that is why we like a black man preaching. That was an awesome prayer. The national anthem is a bit limp vocal only. I'm not dissing the anthem, I'm just saying a bit of instrumentation wouldn't go astray. How about getting Hendrix next time?
Well people it is 12:40pm and it is still only -3 degrees. The United States of America has a new president. The whole world can look forward to a new era in global politics. The celebrations are many but the work has just begun. The next four years will be very, very interesting.
However I am sitting in my lounge in front of the TV in Brisbane where it is 3:42am. The sun will rise in only an hour and I need to get some sleep.
To the future!!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Online Advertising Talk
Well this is an exclusive Blogger post, firstly because MySpace can't support this kind of work but also because MySpace has their exclusive Noise Boy Dates for 2008 calendar which you'll need to go there to see.
What I'm talking about here is ads. I talk about ads kind of frequently and this time I've been screenshotting them so I can make my points. Now these are all online ads and some are good and some are bad. Some are just interesting in my opinion.
Because I can't format this properly, the ads are at the top of the page and out of order, hopefully you'll be able to make some sense of it all.
The first ad is by AUMobi and appeared on my Yahoo Webchat page while talking to a friend. These ads have been on that page regularly in the last little while. Basically the ad is a quiz, it asks a simple question about pop trivia and then you guess the answer and win something. I think anyway, I've never clicked on it so I don't know. This one asked which city is not in Australia.
Have a look at the ad.
How should I trust these people to know what cities are in this country if they can't even spell Sydney correctly? Sydney is Australia's largest, most famous and arguably most important city, it isn't hard to spell and even if it was I would expect that somebody might have the care to spell check it before it went to every Yahoo webchat user online at the time, not to mention however many other pages it appears on.
AUMobi is also responsible for one of the other dumb ads I've got below. The same concept but this time the question is which movie has robots in it. This one also confuses me and maybe I'm just an idiot but I can see two movies on that list that have robots in them. Obviously the answer is Transformers, but The Matrix had the machines in it and I'd suggest they definitely count as robots as far as movies are concerned. Where I may be wrng here is that I've not seen The Matrix in a few years so I may be confusing scenes with the sequals, but I'm sure the machines were in The Matrix and even if they never appeared, they were surely mentioned. In fact, they showed Neo waking up so they must have had machines in there somewhere. Those are robots as far as I am concerned.
Another ad that isn't actually wrong in any way but is worth a laugh is from Facebook. Facebook applications advertise themselves by putting an ad on your page whenever one of your friend ads the application. It also works for non-app things. An example is for Vegemite. It is set out like any other banner ad and has the picture and a flattering description of the product but then at the bottom it says "one friend is a fan". Sometimes they over step the line slightly and I am concerned about one of my friends actually had their picture appear on an ad once as if they were paid to endorse it when really they wouldn't have known the ad even existed. Most of the time it is fine though.
But the funniest ones are the IQ quiz ads. You get these elsewhere on the web too, but Facebook actually does have access to all the information on your friends and their results which makes it funny when you see the ad saying "(4) of your friends are IDIOTS!"
If only they said who...
Some clever ads now and I've only been able to screenshot one of them, but when I see the other one I'll do an additional post with it. This one I have got though is for Domino's Pizza. How can you not like Domino's? I mean they are everywhere, they are a high youth employer and in an age where even McDonalds is trying to be healthy Domino's are stuffing more cheese and meat onto their now oversized pizzas than ever before. They do for people like me what celery does for people 12 times my size.
But this ad isn't clever because a single glimpse will raise your cholesterol higher and faster than drinking butter, it's clever because it is a clock. It isn't a gimmick clock, it is a real clock, accurate to the second for your timezone. Being an online computer user my computer clock is accurate to the second and I checked, the Domino's ad was telling exactly the right time. The clock face is a little hard to read, pepperoni isn't the most accurate of toppings I suppose, but if ever you wonder when pizza time is, apparently it is right now, now, now, now, etc.
The final ad I've got here is a MySpace jobs ad and it appeared on MySpace (shock horror). Oh yeah the Domino's ad was on MySpace too. The MySpace Jobs ad isn't clever or intersting for any noticeable reason of the kind the others were. I just find it interesting after doing all my research about Mac VS Windows things that this ad should look like this.
Look at the ad.
I want to know why it is that if they are using the program Microsoft is most probably most famous for they are running the Mac version. Windows is a more common operating system and I just think it makes more sense that it should be a Windows computer running the ad, not a Mac. I guess the reason for this is that MySpace is run on a Mac platform and so they just used any computer lying about to make the ad. If this is the case, they have no excuse for claiming not to be Mac compatible (which they aren't ding any more after I spent a whole week complaining online at every given opportunity, thank you MySpace).
Right, that is all. If I find that other clever one I'll upload it and do a talk. As for now I'm done.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Hurry Up Microsoft!
So I am sitting here with my beloved Macbook, using Microsoft Word for Mac 2004. Airport is off because Microsoft’s illogical and unexpected licensing means only one person can use office at a time (even though the license is for three computers) and OpenOffice, a program I despise yet for some reason still have installed, has just crashed the computer. Only three programs have ever crashed my computer before, Word was one of them and it doesn’t really count because that is just what Microsoft products do- heck they even built a gaming console that crashes. The second is iChat. I’m not sure how it crashed but it was when I first got the computer and I was playing around to see how it worked. It didn’t work, largely because I didn’t have an account it could run off and also because I had no idea how to use it. But that was a minor crash, it froze for about a minute (the program froze, the rest of the computer was fine) and then closed itself. The third crashing program was Starcraft which you should all know I am in love with. I was trying to join a private Battlenet game my friend had set up and no matter what we tried, as soon as I joined the game the program would close and my desktop would screw up. Battlenet is ordinarily fine and it was only playing with him that caused this problem, so while neither of us know what it was causing the problem I suspect date differential in patch versions and such may be responsible.
But now it seems that OpenOffice has just crashed and this time I am fully uninstalling it.
However right now I will ignore it and hope it dies in a permanent fashion. All this talking about my current computer situation isn’t just because I’m bored (well it is to an extent I suppose, but it isn’t irrelevant to the point of this post), it is because this post is about computers.
Since June I have been on the light side of the computing force and have been using my Macbook, which is confusingly enough called Cailie and when I talk about how much I love it many people online take a while to work out that Cailie is in fact my computer. The reason I have a Mac is because I urgently needed a new computer and I was given the option of Windows Virus- I mean Vista, Mac OS Leopard or Linux. I have no idea how to use Linux so after some consideration about the type of people I would be most likely to communicate with online I decided that I’d go with the Mac. Since the release of Windows Virus- I mean Vista there have been many people switch to Macs, in fact most IT people hate Windows Virus- I mean Vista and suggest the best thing you can do for your PC is hold on to your XP install discs with everything you’ve got.
In terms of OS popularity Windows has been in the lead for well over a decade, mainly due to dodgy business aggression but also due a little bit to the fact that Windows has been the defining state of computing for so long that’s just what people use. When I started school we had Macs in the classroom and I was relieved when the school got its first computer room because the new computers ran Windows 98. Until June when I got Cailie I was still using Windows 98, really I don’t see any problem with it, it was a good operating system. Terribly outdated now and not really suitable for anything but basic operations like word processing and solitaire but that is still a good deal better than Windows Virus- I mean Vista.
But although a good computer will continue working until the day you switch it off for the last time in a decade (bad computers on the other hand last about 3 years and then the memory dies and you buy a new one), you will need to upgrade long before that which is why it is more important to look at recent events.
Which is where Apple comes back into play. It started with the iPod and iTunes and from there Apple has successfully asserted that they are the best computer choice for all your entertainment needs- all your entertainment needs that is except for gaming.
So Windows, still living the glory of XP and about to release Vista can claim that. Get a Mac if you want easy to use entertainment, both production and consumption. Get a Windows PC if you want games and compatibility.
If you are just doing business then you need not worry because Microsoft Office has been available on Mac as far back as I’ve known people with Macs (and earlier, apparently back to 1997).
So now Apple and Microsoft are waging their next battle. Microsoft isn’t trying much harder than they ever did but when you dominate the market with as much force as they do and have done for so long sometimes you don’t think properly about campaigns. So Microsoft is waving the gaming flag. And they have a right to because I’ve spent much time browsing for games on the Mac and really they are puzzles and kids games. The only serious stuff I’ve found is of course anything by Blizzard (though if you have Mac OS X then you’ll be unable to run Warcraft, Warcraft 2 or Diablo. Starcraft, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 all run though) which includes World of Warcraft, a point that many people have used to state “yeah I could probably live with a Mac, it runs WoW.” But anything else and you’ll walk into EB and see “Games For Windows” on every box, nicely sitting beside the Windows Virus- I mean Vista logo.
It’s not a complicated situation, if you want to play games buy a Windows PC.
However what Microsoft is doing they have been doing for years, it is what Apple is doing that is exciting and if you are a Microsoft employee, pretty terrifying. Apple is waging full force into the compatibility battle. The excuse for not buying a Mac had always been that you’d only be compatible with 5% of the world. That is no longer the case with most websites supporting both major platforms, and I imagine also Linux but I don’t use Linux so really can’t say. But as someone who is living on a network comprised of both Macs and PCs I can tell you that it’s the PCs that cause all the problems.
I’ve been spending too much time on the Apple site recently (I say too much because now I am just heartbroken at the fact I’ll never be able to afford a Time Capsule even though I really want it) and everything they’ve released recently (including the Time Capsule) is fully compatible with Windows. In fact if you buy a new Time Capsule you actually get Windows software with it. As means of nagging for an iPhone I’ve been pointing out that an iPhone can be used as a remote for a Mac, but it was only just before writing this that I discovered that it can also be used as a remote for Windows. If this keeps up with all further Apple releases the situation will be that if you go Windows then you’ll be compatible with Windows users, the large majority of computer users. If you go Mac then you’ll be compatible with Mac and Windows users. (I’m leaving out Linux because I know so little about it, but most of the recent Apple releases support Linux as well. I can’t say about whether this is the case with Microsoft.) That makes Macs more generally compatible than Windows, which should scare Microsoft silly.
So what is Microsoft’s big news other than “look- games!”? Well their new operating system Midori. They are trying very hard for Midori not to be their big news and aren’t offering sufficient details about it but we do know that it is being built completely from scratch, rather than just building on top of the latest version of Windows- a practice used for every version of Windows since who knows when, which could explain why Windows Virus- I mean Vista- is so system draining. We also know that Midori is a web-based OS, the next generation of computing, an OS to keep up with the fact most computing is done online and putting all the power in the individual machine is useless. In my previous post about Midori I stated my opinion about this and the problems it will cause. Being unable due to Microsoft’s stupid licensing crap I’m unable to go back and check whether it was Microsoft or the author of the article I was reading that said this new OS model was necessary because Windows wasn’t keeping up. While I don’t like the idea my grounds a political rather than technical and if this is the way computing goes in the future (as it looks like it will be) then so be it.
But first a jump back to Apple. Although you can get the Leopard Server which is compatible with every system in the known universe (or at least popular computing, including Linux and their clones) they don’t have anything in the same league as Midori. Seeing as Windows and headache are today synonyms Midori could be the fast relief needed to restore popular faith in Microsoft. The technology they are basing Midori on (which I understand but not well enough to explain it) has been in development since 2003, so this is by no means the quick fix to complaints about Windows Virus- I mean Vista.
The problem that Microsoft faces is that Midori isn’t even being spoken about openly yet, they are nowhere near releasing it and before they consider that they have plans to release the next Windows OS. The release date I’ve read for the new Windows is 2010 but I’ve heard from a reliable source that it has been moved forward to this year. This new operating system is the natural progression from Windows Virus- I mean Vista. Apple are becoming the great compatible monster happy to share with everyone with a computer right now. People are still stuck in the Windows way, but it is changing quickly and if Apple can convince the computer using population that they are in fact more generally compatible than Windows then no amount of gaming talk will be able to save Microsoft. I’d even go as far as to say it will be “game over man, game over!”
It seems to me that Microsoft had better act quickly because I see it that they are like an enormous country with no border patrol and Apple is a plague of invaders, armed with the most soldiers and best weapons available knocking loudly on Microsoft’s door and Midori is the only thing that can stop them.
Computing over the next year will be very, very interesting.
Oh and OpenOffice is still frozen.
But now it seems that OpenOffice has just crashed and this time I am fully uninstalling it.
However right now I will ignore it and hope it dies in a permanent fashion. All this talking about my current computer situation isn’t just because I’m bored (well it is to an extent I suppose, but it isn’t irrelevant to the point of this post), it is because this post is about computers.
Since June I have been on the light side of the computing force and have been using my Macbook, which is confusingly enough called Cailie and when I talk about how much I love it many people online take a while to work out that Cailie is in fact my computer. The reason I have a Mac is because I urgently needed a new computer and I was given the option of Windows Virus- I mean Vista, Mac OS Leopard or Linux. I have no idea how to use Linux so after some consideration about the type of people I would be most likely to communicate with online I decided that I’d go with the Mac. Since the release of Windows Virus- I mean Vista there have been many people switch to Macs, in fact most IT people hate Windows Virus- I mean Vista and suggest the best thing you can do for your PC is hold on to your XP install discs with everything you’ve got.
In terms of OS popularity Windows has been in the lead for well over a decade, mainly due to dodgy business aggression but also due a little bit to the fact that Windows has been the defining state of computing for so long that’s just what people use. When I started school we had Macs in the classroom and I was relieved when the school got its first computer room because the new computers ran Windows 98. Until June when I got Cailie I was still using Windows 98, really I don’t see any problem with it, it was a good operating system. Terribly outdated now and not really suitable for anything but basic operations like word processing and solitaire but that is still a good deal better than Windows Virus- I mean Vista.
But although a good computer will continue working until the day you switch it off for the last time in a decade (bad computers on the other hand last about 3 years and then the memory dies and you buy a new one), you will need to upgrade long before that which is why it is more important to look at recent events.
Which is where Apple comes back into play. It started with the iPod and iTunes and from there Apple has successfully asserted that they are the best computer choice for all your entertainment needs- all your entertainment needs that is except for gaming.
So Windows, still living the glory of XP and about to release Vista can claim that. Get a Mac if you want easy to use entertainment, both production and consumption. Get a Windows PC if you want games and compatibility.
If you are just doing business then you need not worry because Microsoft Office has been available on Mac as far back as I’ve known people with Macs (and earlier, apparently back to 1997).
So now Apple and Microsoft are waging their next battle. Microsoft isn’t trying much harder than they ever did but when you dominate the market with as much force as they do and have done for so long sometimes you don’t think properly about campaigns. So Microsoft is waving the gaming flag. And they have a right to because I’ve spent much time browsing for games on the Mac and really they are puzzles and kids games. The only serious stuff I’ve found is of course anything by Blizzard (though if you have Mac OS X then you’ll be unable to run Warcraft, Warcraft 2 or Diablo. Starcraft, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 all run though) which includes World of Warcraft, a point that many people have used to state “yeah I could probably live with a Mac, it runs WoW.” But anything else and you’ll walk into EB and see “Games For Windows” on every box, nicely sitting beside the Windows Virus- I mean Vista logo.
It’s not a complicated situation, if you want to play games buy a Windows PC.
However what Microsoft is doing they have been doing for years, it is what Apple is doing that is exciting and if you are a Microsoft employee, pretty terrifying. Apple is waging full force into the compatibility battle. The excuse for not buying a Mac had always been that you’d only be compatible with 5% of the world. That is no longer the case with most websites supporting both major platforms, and I imagine also Linux but I don’t use Linux so really can’t say. But as someone who is living on a network comprised of both Macs and PCs I can tell you that it’s the PCs that cause all the problems.
I’ve been spending too much time on the Apple site recently (I say too much because now I am just heartbroken at the fact I’ll never be able to afford a Time Capsule even though I really want it) and everything they’ve released recently (including the Time Capsule) is fully compatible with Windows. In fact if you buy a new Time Capsule you actually get Windows software with it. As means of nagging for an iPhone I’ve been pointing out that an iPhone can be used as a remote for a Mac, but it was only just before writing this that I discovered that it can also be used as a remote for Windows. If this keeps up with all further Apple releases the situation will be that if you go Windows then you’ll be compatible with Windows users, the large majority of computer users. If you go Mac then you’ll be compatible with Mac and Windows users. (I’m leaving out Linux because I know so little about it, but most of the recent Apple releases support Linux as well. I can’t say about whether this is the case with Microsoft.) That makes Macs more generally compatible than Windows, which should scare Microsoft silly.
So what is Microsoft’s big news other than “look- games!”? Well their new operating system Midori. They are trying very hard for Midori not to be their big news and aren’t offering sufficient details about it but we do know that it is being built completely from scratch, rather than just building on top of the latest version of Windows- a practice used for every version of Windows since who knows when, which could explain why Windows Virus- I mean Vista- is so system draining. We also know that Midori is a web-based OS, the next generation of computing, an OS to keep up with the fact most computing is done online and putting all the power in the individual machine is useless. In my previous post about Midori I stated my opinion about this and the problems it will cause. Being unable due to Microsoft’s stupid licensing crap I’m unable to go back and check whether it was Microsoft or the author of the article I was reading that said this new OS model was necessary because Windows wasn’t keeping up. While I don’t like the idea my grounds a political rather than technical and if this is the way computing goes in the future (as it looks like it will be) then so be it.
But first a jump back to Apple. Although you can get the Leopard Server which is compatible with every system in the known universe (or at least popular computing, including Linux and their clones) they don’t have anything in the same league as Midori. Seeing as Windows and headache are today synonyms Midori could be the fast relief needed to restore popular faith in Microsoft. The technology they are basing Midori on (which I understand but not well enough to explain it) has been in development since 2003, so this is by no means the quick fix to complaints about Windows Virus- I mean Vista.
The problem that Microsoft faces is that Midori isn’t even being spoken about openly yet, they are nowhere near releasing it and before they consider that they have plans to release the next Windows OS. The release date I’ve read for the new Windows is 2010 but I’ve heard from a reliable source that it has been moved forward to this year. This new operating system is the natural progression from Windows Virus- I mean Vista. Apple are becoming the great compatible monster happy to share with everyone with a computer right now. People are still stuck in the Windows way, but it is changing quickly and if Apple can convince the computer using population that they are in fact more generally compatible than Windows then no amount of gaming talk will be able to save Microsoft. I’d even go as far as to say it will be “game over man, game over!”
It seems to me that Microsoft had better act quickly because I see it that they are like an enormous country with no border patrol and Apple is a plague of invaders, armed with the most soldiers and best weapons available knocking loudly on Microsoft’s door and Midori is the only thing that can stop them.
Computing over the next year will be very, very interesting.
Oh and OpenOffice is still frozen.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Post About Sport VS Well Nobody But I Wanted The Title To Look Like A Sport Score. You Can't Blame Me For Wanting To Be Clever!
Soccer is not the most exciting sport of all time, 22 people run around a field kicking a ball back and forward for 45 minutes while nothing else happens, then after a 20 minute break they go inside for a chat and a quick bite to eat before coming back out and doing the same thing for a further 45 minutes before again returning inside to chat a bit more and finally out again for 10 more minutes in which time the poor guy standing by himself in the nets, tired after standing there as the ball nearly but not quite comes near him for the last 95 minutes, has a lapse in concentration and the ball goes into the net, with the result of the entire game resting on that one pivotal moment.
Two questions need to be asked now. The first question is how is this sport not only the most popular game in Europe, not to mention Africa and South America? The second question is why is this sport more interesting to be a spectator for if you sit there watching nothing happen for the whole 97 minutes than if you just watch highlights packages of thing nearly happen for the most exciting 2 minutes.
I can answer both those questions, and will but I’ll do it in the wrong order. The reason it is more interesting to watch a full game of soccer is the same as why it is more interesting to watch any other sport (with the exception of gridiron, baseball and golf). Scoring is the most important part of sport and it doesn’t matter how well the team plays, if at the end of the game the score is lower than that of the opposition then the team will lose. However people sometimes seem to get the impression that scoring is everything. This is certainly not the case, and the perception that it is leads to sports being either ruined, or made more boring.
The sport will be ruined if as a spectator you are unable to view it in its entirety. Being that time of year again I think I should pull out my anecdote about Channel 10’s Beach Cricket series. When it started in January 2007 I was really excited. I think everyone has thought of playing beach cricket at some point and now the retirees of cricket’s greatest agreeable nations would be playing. It was a hype-able event even without Channel 10 pouring heaps into promoting it. But they didn’t understand it and instead of an afternoon of cricket- cricket on the beach in fact- we got lots of talking about how great the game was, how it worked and highlights of the game. It was appalling and after I had been looking so forward to it I wasn’t just disappointed, I was kind of angry.
I don’t watch it any more and I also don’t watch any other highlights of sport. I’ll watch sport but as soon as I realize it is only highlight I immediately lose interest, regardless of how interesting it was until I realized.
Sadly sports highlights take less air time and are cheaper than live sport so TV stations are going to keep them. I hope Channel 1 doesn’t fall into this trap when they start broadcasting in autumn. All the same this is the reason why I took no interest in some team (I’ve forgotten who now) and their epic journey to the prime of English football under their new coach with all the brilliant moves, tactics and goals along the way, yet I did sit enthralled for 45 minutes to watch the second half of Liverpool kicking Newcastle. (A game that I may be slightly biased towards given that Liverpool is my favourite club and Michael Owen is my favourite player.)
To answer the second question now soccer is huge in Africa due to the occupation of the British Empire, same reason cricket is so popular in Africa and India. I’m not sure why soccer is so big in South America but if it isn’t for the same or similar reasons then it would be because when a sport is that popular in areas such as Europe the rest of the world follows, so follows the popularity in Asia.
Soccer is also amazingly playable. In Australia, with the exception of June/ July 2006 and the few people able to watch the A League on pay-bloody-television soccer isn’t very popular. As evidence I’ve been calling it soccer all post (mind you that is intentional to draw distinctions between other codes of football such as union, league, aussie rules and the stupid American game). The lack of popularity in this country hasn’t stopped the fact that right from year 1 at school people have been playing soccer rather than any other sport at lunch and that hasn’t changed over the last 11 years, or why there are more soccer clubs in the local area than any other type of clubs. Soccer is really fun to play, and why not, we all love to kick a ball around now and then.
The final reason I can provide for why soccer is so popular is because while it is by no means a high scoring game, the plays are good enough that you don’t watch the game for the scoring. If you watched football for high scores then you’d watch AFL and nothing but. People who don’t like soccer or don’t understand it don’t get this, but the subtle fieldwork like kicking the ball back 40 metres and then forward 40 metres and wondering why that happened is interesting and what makes the game. What it lacks in conventionally recognized skills such as the ability to tackle someone with more force than anyone else it make up for with the masterful judgment all players are required to have. Which may lead you to wonder why football is played by footballers, but never mind.
I feel like I’ve missed a point and I believe it is games becoming boring due to sole interest in scores. These games I would count as basketball and Twenty20 cricket. First of all these games are both designed to be spectator sports, like Rugby League although I think they got it right with that one. Basketball is fast paced by necessity because they enforce a score timer, an idea designed to force the game to be fast, produce high scores and keep audiences entertained. I find basketball dull as anything to watch and I’d rather watch lawn bowls (although as anyone who has watched a game of lawn bowls can confirm is far more exciting than it sounds). Playing basketball is heaps of fun though, I like playing it, I just don’t like watching it. Twenty20 cricket advertises itself as being 20 times the excitement, which I pointed out means that conventional limited overs cricket is 50 times the excitement and test matches are 450 times the excitement. Some people (people often referred to as Americans) think that cricket is an appalling boring game and if you describe it in the right way it can seem that way. Best quote I’ve heard about cricket comes from My Hero and went something along the lines of:
“You can’t be serious, how can a game that boring go all day?”
“Well test matches go for 5 days.”
“Oh now I know you’re joking. You’re not joking are you.”
You may want to check the accuracy of that yourself cause I’m going from memory.
But only truly exceptional cricket is sit down and watch a whole game from start to finish sport. Ordinarily you put it on and then go about your business for the day (which being over summer ordinarily involves watching the cricket). The game is so boring at times that you’d lose your sanity if you watched a whole game. Even the commentators don’t watch the whole game. It’s a relaxing sport because it is there, peacefully and you can be flexible watching it and multitask, only stopping to watch it actively when something interesting is happening or when you run out of other things to do. Treating it like that you can easily watch a whole game from start to finish.
Twenty20 cricket on the other hand goes for only 3 hours and while having big hits to every corner of the ground all game, it gets boring because it is just big hits and nothing more subtle and skillful. I get the impression that England are good at making subtle sports.
(Before finishing about cricket I’d like to say that the ABC commentary is great and really livens it up, although doesn’t work with digital TV due to the large difference in transmission time.)
Well this has been going for 2 and a half pages and seems to lack paragraphs, so I’ll wrap it up. Sport is about so much more than scoring even if scoring is ultimately the determining factor for the result. People who don’t understand this fact may dislike the longer more subtle sports like cricket and tend towards more score active sports like basketball. Personal preference obviously plays a large part in what you like but I think that a sport with the skill taken out is ruined and particularly do not at all like highlights games. I rambled on a lot about soccer and cricket but before wrapping up I think an opinion about golf is in order. Golf is a fun game to play, not because there is anything interesting about the game itself but because you are out in great surrounds with a mate (to play without a mate you’d be mad) and it is slow paced enough that you can relax and just enjoy the time off. I do not understand people who watch golf, that seems very pointless to me, but if you like golf then do please try and explain why on earth you do.
All other comments welcome, though if you just spam me with hate mail about my dislike of gridiron I will delete your comments. I’ve both watched and played that game and it is entirely stupid in both regard. Baseball is included by this policy also, but one less rant from me tonight will do us all the world of good.
Good game.
Two questions need to be asked now. The first question is how is this sport not only the most popular game in Europe, not to mention Africa and South America? The second question is why is this sport more interesting to be a spectator for if you sit there watching nothing happen for the whole 97 minutes than if you just watch highlights packages of thing nearly happen for the most exciting 2 minutes.
I can answer both those questions, and will but I’ll do it in the wrong order. The reason it is more interesting to watch a full game of soccer is the same as why it is more interesting to watch any other sport (with the exception of gridiron, baseball and golf). Scoring is the most important part of sport and it doesn’t matter how well the team plays, if at the end of the game the score is lower than that of the opposition then the team will lose. However people sometimes seem to get the impression that scoring is everything. This is certainly not the case, and the perception that it is leads to sports being either ruined, or made more boring.
The sport will be ruined if as a spectator you are unable to view it in its entirety. Being that time of year again I think I should pull out my anecdote about Channel 10’s Beach Cricket series. When it started in January 2007 I was really excited. I think everyone has thought of playing beach cricket at some point and now the retirees of cricket’s greatest agreeable nations would be playing. It was a hype-able event even without Channel 10 pouring heaps into promoting it. But they didn’t understand it and instead of an afternoon of cricket- cricket on the beach in fact- we got lots of talking about how great the game was, how it worked and highlights of the game. It was appalling and after I had been looking so forward to it I wasn’t just disappointed, I was kind of angry.
I don’t watch it any more and I also don’t watch any other highlights of sport. I’ll watch sport but as soon as I realize it is only highlight I immediately lose interest, regardless of how interesting it was until I realized.
Sadly sports highlights take less air time and are cheaper than live sport so TV stations are going to keep them. I hope Channel 1 doesn’t fall into this trap when they start broadcasting in autumn. All the same this is the reason why I took no interest in some team (I’ve forgotten who now) and their epic journey to the prime of English football under their new coach with all the brilliant moves, tactics and goals along the way, yet I did sit enthralled for 45 minutes to watch the second half of Liverpool kicking Newcastle. (A game that I may be slightly biased towards given that Liverpool is my favourite club and Michael Owen is my favourite player.)
To answer the second question now soccer is huge in Africa due to the occupation of the British Empire, same reason cricket is so popular in Africa and India. I’m not sure why soccer is so big in South America but if it isn’t for the same or similar reasons then it would be because when a sport is that popular in areas such as Europe the rest of the world follows, so follows the popularity in Asia.
Soccer is also amazingly playable. In Australia, with the exception of June/ July 2006 and the few people able to watch the A League on pay-bloody-television soccer isn’t very popular. As evidence I’ve been calling it soccer all post (mind you that is intentional to draw distinctions between other codes of football such as union, league, aussie rules and the stupid American game). The lack of popularity in this country hasn’t stopped the fact that right from year 1 at school people have been playing soccer rather than any other sport at lunch and that hasn’t changed over the last 11 years, or why there are more soccer clubs in the local area than any other type of clubs. Soccer is really fun to play, and why not, we all love to kick a ball around now and then.
The final reason I can provide for why soccer is so popular is because while it is by no means a high scoring game, the plays are good enough that you don’t watch the game for the scoring. If you watched football for high scores then you’d watch AFL and nothing but. People who don’t like soccer or don’t understand it don’t get this, but the subtle fieldwork like kicking the ball back 40 metres and then forward 40 metres and wondering why that happened is interesting and what makes the game. What it lacks in conventionally recognized skills such as the ability to tackle someone with more force than anyone else it make up for with the masterful judgment all players are required to have. Which may lead you to wonder why football is played by footballers, but never mind.
I feel like I’ve missed a point and I believe it is games becoming boring due to sole interest in scores. These games I would count as basketball and Twenty20 cricket. First of all these games are both designed to be spectator sports, like Rugby League although I think they got it right with that one. Basketball is fast paced by necessity because they enforce a score timer, an idea designed to force the game to be fast, produce high scores and keep audiences entertained. I find basketball dull as anything to watch and I’d rather watch lawn bowls (although as anyone who has watched a game of lawn bowls can confirm is far more exciting than it sounds). Playing basketball is heaps of fun though, I like playing it, I just don’t like watching it. Twenty20 cricket advertises itself as being 20 times the excitement, which I pointed out means that conventional limited overs cricket is 50 times the excitement and test matches are 450 times the excitement. Some people (people often referred to as Americans) think that cricket is an appalling boring game and if you describe it in the right way it can seem that way. Best quote I’ve heard about cricket comes from My Hero and went something along the lines of:
“You can’t be serious, how can a game that boring go all day?”
“Well test matches go for 5 days.”
“Oh now I know you’re joking. You’re not joking are you.”
You may want to check the accuracy of that yourself cause I’m going from memory.
But only truly exceptional cricket is sit down and watch a whole game from start to finish sport. Ordinarily you put it on and then go about your business for the day (which being over summer ordinarily involves watching the cricket). The game is so boring at times that you’d lose your sanity if you watched a whole game. Even the commentators don’t watch the whole game. It’s a relaxing sport because it is there, peacefully and you can be flexible watching it and multitask, only stopping to watch it actively when something interesting is happening or when you run out of other things to do. Treating it like that you can easily watch a whole game from start to finish.
Twenty20 cricket on the other hand goes for only 3 hours and while having big hits to every corner of the ground all game, it gets boring because it is just big hits and nothing more subtle and skillful. I get the impression that England are good at making subtle sports.
(Before finishing about cricket I’d like to say that the ABC commentary is great and really livens it up, although doesn’t work with digital TV due to the large difference in transmission time.)
Well this has been going for 2 and a half pages and seems to lack paragraphs, so I’ll wrap it up. Sport is about so much more than scoring even if scoring is ultimately the determining factor for the result. People who don’t understand this fact may dislike the longer more subtle sports like cricket and tend towards more score active sports like basketball. Personal preference obviously plays a large part in what you like but I think that a sport with the skill taken out is ruined and particularly do not at all like highlights games. I rambled on a lot about soccer and cricket but before wrapping up I think an opinion about golf is in order. Golf is a fun game to play, not because there is anything interesting about the game itself but because you are out in great surrounds with a mate (to play without a mate you’d be mad) and it is slow paced enough that you can relax and just enjoy the time off. I do not understand people who watch golf, that seems very pointless to me, but if you like golf then do please try and explain why on earth you do.
All other comments welcome, though if you just spam me with hate mail about my dislike of gridiron I will delete your comments. I’ve both watched and played that game and it is entirely stupid in both regard. Baseball is included by this policy also, but one less rant from me tonight will do us all the world of good.
Good game.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Triple J Hottest 100 of 2008 pt 1
So it is January again which means that first of all I must wish you all a Happy New Year. I’ve got a very good feeling about 2009, maybe because I didn’t enjoy 2008 as much as I should have, maybe just because I get the sense that this could be “the year”. Certainly the last year of school ever puts an interesting spin on the year.
My new year’s resolution for 2009 is to watch more rage because I watched very little of it in 2008 and as a consequence knew very little music from 2008. This is a problem that I have already discussed with my list of notable songs for 2008, but which arises again now that it is Hottest 100 time.
Unlike last year I have had very little trouble getting a list this year. I voted for:
Mercury - Bloc Party
Cemeteries of London - Coldplay
The Only One - The Cure
Lights & Music - Cut Copy
We Are Rockstars - Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Never Miss A Beat - Kaiser Chiefs
Paris Is Burning - Ladyhawke
Discipline - Nine Inch Nails
This Boy's In Love - The Presets
Got To Do – TZU
Now there are two problems with this list. The problems are that I really wanted to vote for Into The Chaos – Howling Bells and The Rip – Portishead. I love both those songs, however they left my mind while voting and now it is too late. So I guess I am sending out a plea to anyone who hasn’t got a clue what to vote for this year to vote for those two songs.
I guess a little extra care could have definitely been used, but I just overreacted after last year.
However the Hottest 100 isn’t just about voting for the 10 best songs of the year, it is also about predicting the top 10, betting on it, running around gloating the whole afternoon as everyone around you has their songs fall out in the 50s and then collapsing in a pile during the teens and having to give your iTunes money to someone else at the end of the day. The competition is all about fun though, so just because I don’t know any music from 2008 doesn’t mean I won’t enter. I just don’t expect to win anything, but I only lose $1.69 and that really isn’t very much at all.
I’m still compiling my predictions but so far I am putting these songs into the top 10:
Use Somebody – Kings of Leon
Make You Happy – Josh Pyke
This Boy’s In Love – The Presets
White Noise – The Living End
No Sex For Ben – The Rapture
Those aren’t in order, I can’t give away too much because although I do not expect to be a threat in the competition, I am still in it.
So now I must go and find 5 more songs that were good this year and we all must wait until Invasion Day to find out what the Hottest 100 songs of 2008 will be.
Just a final bit of trivia. The most played song on Triple J at the moment is Vitriol – Bluejuice. It was No. 11 last year.
To the event!
My new year’s resolution for 2009 is to watch more rage because I watched very little of it in 2008 and as a consequence knew very little music from 2008. This is a problem that I have already discussed with my list of notable songs for 2008, but which arises again now that it is Hottest 100 time.
Unlike last year I have had very little trouble getting a list this year. I voted for:
Mercury - Bloc Party
Cemeteries of London - Coldplay
The Only One - The Cure
Lights & Music - Cut Copy
We Are Rockstars - Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Never Miss A Beat - Kaiser Chiefs
Paris Is Burning - Ladyhawke
Discipline - Nine Inch Nails
This Boy's In Love - The Presets
Got To Do – TZU
Now there are two problems with this list. The problems are that I really wanted to vote for Into The Chaos – Howling Bells and The Rip – Portishead. I love both those songs, however they left my mind while voting and now it is too late. So I guess I am sending out a plea to anyone who hasn’t got a clue what to vote for this year to vote for those two songs.
I guess a little extra care could have definitely been used, but I just overreacted after last year.
However the Hottest 100 isn’t just about voting for the 10 best songs of the year, it is also about predicting the top 10, betting on it, running around gloating the whole afternoon as everyone around you has their songs fall out in the 50s and then collapsing in a pile during the teens and having to give your iTunes money to someone else at the end of the day. The competition is all about fun though, so just because I don’t know any music from 2008 doesn’t mean I won’t enter. I just don’t expect to win anything, but I only lose $1.69 and that really isn’t very much at all.
I’m still compiling my predictions but so far I am putting these songs into the top 10:
Use Somebody – Kings of Leon
Make You Happy – Josh Pyke
This Boy’s In Love – The Presets
White Noise – The Living End
No Sex For Ben – The Rapture
Those aren’t in order, I can’t give away too much because although I do not expect to be a threat in the competition, I am still in it.
So now I must go and find 5 more songs that were good this year and we all must wait until Invasion Day to find out what the Hottest 100 songs of 2008 will be.
Just a final bit of trivia. The most played song on Triple J at the moment is Vitriol – Bluejuice. It was No. 11 last year.
To the event!
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