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Queensland Adopts Daylight Saving To Finish 2011 More Quickly

2011-12-31T19:43:00.001+11:00

After years of debate, Queensland has tonight moved in line with its southern cousins and introduced daylight saving time, in an attempt to finish 2011 an hour sooner.

Effective immediately, the Premier Anna Bligh announced this afternoon that Queensland will move into the GMT +11 timezone, in line with Sydney and Melbourne for the summer.

The change in policy and timezone is a result of 2011 being a really bad year.

“Queenslanders are a tough, resilient group. They breed them tough here north of the Tweed. But even we know when enough is enough.” The Premier said at a press conference earlier this afternoon.

“Frankly we’re sick of 2011, we want to leave it behind. If we can get into 2012 even an hour earlier than we would otherwise that is something we are prepared to do.” she said.

Although daylight saving for Queensland has been a contentious issue for many years, the shock introduction of summer time has been welcomed from all sides of politics and by the public.

LNP leader, Campbell Newman, welcomed the move shortly after it was announced.

“It would have been nice of Labor to give us all a bit of warning, but we do recognize the merits of the policy, and we welcome it as being good for Queensland.” Mr Newman said.

Former opposition leader and member for Surfers Paradise, John-Paul Langbroek also welcomed the news, dismissing claims that it might hurt tourism.

“As a member on the Gold Coast I am of course aware of the tourism attraction that is te Twin Cities new year’s eve, but I think that given the events of the last 12 months, the crowds will be happy to celebrate just the once this summer.” Mr Langbroek said.

He added that he wouldn’t be surprised if the crowds stayed to celebrate again at 1am as the feeling set in that 2011 was really gone for good.

While the government has made no commitment as yet as to whether daylight saving will be made a permanent fixture in Queensland, they have seen encouraging signs from the public, with a quick Galaxy phone poll of 500 people taken immediately after the announcement showing that the government as 91% approval for the move.

Only 3% of members of the public surveyed opposed the move into summer time.

Premier Anna Bligh listed the devastation 2011 brought as she announced the move.

“We started the year with floods, then we had cyclones, while abroad the flooding continued in the south while in the west they had bushfires. Then overseas we’ve seen earthquakes, tsunamis, a nuclear meltdown, blizzard and tornadoes wiping small towns off the map. The global financial crisis got worse... Nobody is not looking forward to throwing out the calendar I assure you.” The Premier said.

The Premier received thunderous applause and a standing ovation as she concluded her announcement.

Notable Songs of 2011

2011-12-22T15:29:00.003+11:00

It is that wonderful time of the year again when we all reflect on the year that has passed. While most people are in enthusiastic agreement that 2011 was a year to remember for all the wrong reasons the music has at least been good.

And so I present my annual list of the Notable Songs of the Year. Rules have somehow managed not to change since last year and stand simply as a notable song that was on an album or EP released in the calendar year of 2011. The list goes for about 4 and a half hours.

The first song is the Song of The Year, and from there they follow in a flowing order- like a rage playlist without videos. The playlist will flow just as well if you omit Friday by Rebecca Black.

Some awards are listed at the end.

0:00 Somebody That I Used To Know - GOTYE feat. KIMBRA
Taken By A Stranger - LENA
I Follow Rivers - LYKKE LI
Pumped Up Kicks - FOSTER THE PEOPLE
Contact High - ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI
Friday - REBECCA BLACK
Sun Of A Gun - OH LAND
Settle Down - KIMBRA
0:30 Talking Like I’m Falling Down Stairs - SPARKADIA
Shake It Out - FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
Right Now We Are Here - LITTLE SCOUT
Jungle - EMMA LOUISE
Colossus - WIM
Willow Tree March - THE PAPER KITES
History’s Door - HUSKY
Land Of The Bloody Unknown - THE MIDDLE EAST
1:00 Liquor & Sleep - THE GIN CLUB
I Would Die For You - MATT WALTERS
Clovis’ Son - JOSH PYKE
Feeding Line - BOY & BEAR
Majesty - THE PANICS
Paradise - COLDPLAY
1:30 You Are A Tourist - DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
Re-Wired - KASABIAN
Stay Please Stay - OH MERCY
Revolving Doors - GORILLAZ
Lotus Flower - RADIOHEAD
Green Ink - EUGENE KUSH
2:00 Sunwheel - ATOMIC SKUNK
Concentrate - NERVOUS_TESTPILOT
Paris Collides - RÜFÜS
The Walls Are White - PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCY
Fuggiii - LAX-O-MAT
Control - VNV NATION
Magic Fountain - ART VS. SCIENCE
2:30 Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves) - THE WOMBATS
Ready 2 Go - MARTIN SOLVIEG feat. KELE
Long Forgotten Town - FAKER
Midnight City - M83
Lose It - AUSTRA
Empires - NORTHEAST PARTY HOUSE
Just Got Started - 360 feat. PEZ
3:00 Are We There Yet? - THE LAST KINECTION
The Sum Of It All - THE HERD
Sing It (The Life Of Riley) - DRAPHT
Babylon - PHRASE
Skeletons - TIN CAN RADIO
Climbing Walls - STRANGE TALK
Such A Crime - THE BELLIGERENTS
Zimbabwe - NEW NAVY
3:30 Mr Polite - THE JUNGLE GIANTS
Sad Rude Future Dude - BALL PARK MUSIC
Under Cover Of Darkness - THE STROKES
Mine Smell Like Honey - R.E.M.
One Of The Animals - PAPA VS PRETTY
Borrowed Skin - THE GRATES
Trycolour - THE JEZABELS
Act Yr Age - BLUEJUICE
4:00 Second Chance - PETER BJORN & JOHN
Spirals - FLOATING ME
When We Were Kids - ESKIMO JOE
Empty Space - POWDERFINGER
Control - JEBEDIAH
Tongue Tied - GROUPLOVE
Air - SNAKADAKTAL
Warrior - WOLVES AT THE DOOR

Song of the Year: Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye feat. Kimbra
Album of the Year: Moonfire - Boy & Bear
Australian Song of the Year: Air - Snakadaktal
Video of the Year: It's Nice To Be Alive - Ball Park Music
Live Act of the Year: Northeast Party House

Australian Song of The Year 2011

2011-11-09T18:13:00.003+11:00

It is once again November, meaning that the days are hotter, longer and more Australian than ever, or something.

Yes, it is Aus Music Month again, as our dear friends at the ABC are reminding us, and what a great time it is to reflect on what has been a massive year for Australian music. Reflection like this blog post revealing my Australian Song of The Year for 2011.

It’s not Somebody I Used To Know by Gotye feat. Kimbra.
It’s not Jungle by Emma Louise.

It’s Air by Snakadaktal!

Snakadaktal emerged the winners of a very high quality Unearthed High competition, thanks to their song Chimera. Chimera itself was a very strong contender for being my Australian Song of the Year. The song they got Triple J to record as part of that prize, Air, was then given the great honor of being the first song ever played on Triple J Unearthed the radio station.

Yet even now that the song is on high rotation on Triple J, that fact is largely forgotten. The fact that they won an annual competition is given a higher standing than the fact that they will forever stand in the history of Australian music culture.

Snakadaktal are a band whose music has a transportive quality, it carries you away into another world. Their Unearthed page says “we adore playing at tropical full moon dream parties” and you listen to some of their music and you feel you’re right there. Actually the video to Chimera pretty well demonstrates this quality in action. (Another band with this quality, also from Melbourne, is Northeast Party House, whose live show marked the best 30 minutes of the whole year. There are some exciting sounds coming out of Melbourne at the moment indeed.)

Snakadaktal’s self titled debut EP is coming out later this month, and they’re touring to support it, so check out the dates on their Unearthed page and try to get along to a gig.

Air is a great song, by a great band who I look immensely forward to hearing from in the future and it’s my Australian Song of the Year for 2011.

As for the Song of the Year? It could still be Australian, but it won’t be revealed until the end of the year. So Emma Louise and Gotye may still leave with accolades…

Fizzy Trifle - Trifle Term Week 7

2011-08-27T16:20:00.000+10:00

We’re midway through school for term 3 so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I am making a trifle every week for the term. As week 7 came to a close I made a Fizzy trifle.

The ingredients I used were:

Easy lemon butter cake
Creaming soda jelly
Vanilla Instant Pudding
Whipped Cream
Sherbet
Sour Worms

I made the lemon butter cake from scratch using gluten free flour as per my dietary requirements. I also doubled the amount of lemon juice to ½ a cup rather than ¼ of a cup and I added a few drops of green food dye to turn the cake a subtle shade of green.

The creaming soda jelly is just another Aeroplane Jelly packet of crystals bought at the supermarket, prepared in 450mls of hot water and left to cool and set.

The instant pudding was made per the packet instructions.

For the cream, pour the thickened cream into a large bowl and mix with one packet of sherbet, then whip the cream normally with a whisk. Once the cream is whipped, add a second packet of sherbet and continue to whip it. As soon as you add the second packet the cream will effectively turn to batter, so you’re whipping it further is just to mix all the sherbet in. Do not add the second packet until the cream is whipped or it will not work.

To assemble the trifle I cut the cake into small cubes and placed them in the bottom of the trifle bowl. On top of the cake I put large spoonfuls of the jelly. I then sprinkled a few sour worms over them. Next I covered everything in the instant pudding, then put the cream on top. You can try to spread the cream over the whole top but given its thickness it may be hard to do. I then topped with more sour worms.

I’ll start by saying what’s wrong with the trifle. First of all the instant pudding. The pudding in this recipe is purely a custard substitute. After the banana trifle I’m avoiding using pre-made carton custard in case it liquefies again. I cannot eat custard powder because its bulked out on flour so until I can either source some gluten free powder or make my own custard from scratch, the pudding is it.

Using 1L of pudding is probably more than it should have, so don’t use all the pudding in the trifle. If using custard you could also mix in sherbet, which I was not game to try with the pudding in case it didn’t set. You could try this though and it would probably be a big improvement if you must use the pudding mix.

The next thing that didn’t work is the cake. Firstly lemon butter cake is not appropriate for a trifle as it is just too dense. The first spoonful of trifle I served was actually difficult to cut because the cake was so dense. Secondly, the lemon butter cake it awful cold. I suspect this is because it is gluten free and it may not be so if made with regular flour. Pretty much though if you make this cake you either eat it hot or you don’t eat it.

I also burnt the cake when I made it, which hasn’t helped. The recipe said 180 degrees for 45- 55 minutes so that’s what I did, and upon taking it out after 45 minutes it become immediately obvious that the 180 was for a regular oven, not a fan forced. My bad.

You may also choose not to add the sour worms as they become hard and chewy when cold, which makes them difficult to eat and not recommended for people with dentistry concerns.

The good things about this trifle then. The cake’s flavour works well. There is no bleed-through of flavours between ingredients, meaning even though the cake is very strongly lemon flavoured, it doesn’t clash with or ruin any of the other flavours. Every ingredient has its own flavour and they all work well, providing abundant variety without distressing your taste buds.

Next, the cream is perfect. The sherbet is not overpowering, but is definitely there. Its subtlety is its strength here and you don’t need to worry about it being too immature. This is definitely a grown up ingredient. The additional thickness provided by the sherbet, like I said it was batter consistency when it was made, means that the cream doesn’t blend into the instant pudding like it has in every other trifle. So you can enjoy the cream unmixed, keeping its own flavour to itself.

Do note though, although the sherbet is subtle in the cream, the sherbet aftertaste is much stronger.

Once the trifle had been sitting for a while the consistency of the cream returned to cream like, so its thickness is perfect for its position. The batter consistency is as good as gone by now.

The creaming soda flavoured jelly fits in perfectly.

The trifle is very colourful on the bottom, but the top is overpowered by the amount of pudding. With less pudding used it would be very nice looking indeed. The pink of the jelly and the green of the cake work well and identify visually the very different flavours of each ingredient. The sour worms make an attractive topping.

The trifle is quite rich, probably given the enormous amount of sugar in it. I’ve been unable so far to get through more than 2 bowls in one sitting. Even given the slower speed you’ll need to eat this trifle at, the sour worms serve as speed bumps, as you’ll need to stop taking spoonfuls to get through a worm once you get it, only moving onto the next spoonful once the worm is swallowed.

There are two ways you could go with this trifle if you want to make it. You could take the conservative route, aka the sensible route. Make it the way listed here, but use slightly less pudding and a different variety of cake. You’ll need to experiment with cakes to get one that works. A sand cake with ½ a cup of lemon juice might work, but you’d need to experiment.

The second way you could go is the bubbly route, aka the insane route. Use custard instead of pudding and mix sherbet into it. Dust each layer of the trifle with sherbet as you build it. Use spearmint flavoured cake instead of lemon flavoured cake. If the trifle bubbles and explodes in your mouth as you eat it, then fantastic. Go overboard!

This is a good trifle, good to eat, but more importantly it has potential to be not just good but great.

Fizzy Trifle: 7/10

Sludge-Bucket Trifle - Trifle Term Week 6

2011-08-18T15:57:00.004+10:00

We’re midway through school for term 3 so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I am making a trifle every week for the term- except this week. As week 6 draws nearer to its end I’m taking a week off making trifles to reflect on something of a trifle nightmare: the ominous Sludge-bucket Trifle.

The ingredients used are:

Shop-bought teacake (either apple or blueberry will do)
Port wine jelly crystals
vanilla custard

Before we get into making the the actual trifle, let’s explore the history of the sludge-bucket trifle. Why am I reviewing it, for instance? What is its significance?

It all started in term 3 as school lunches in grade 10. I was 15 and had been drinking 1L of custard for lunches. I also ate whole teacakes for lunch at stages through that year, but never had I combined the two before.

It was actually a full year later, term 3 in grade 11 that I finally thought of making a trifle to take to school. The trouble being it had to be able to be prepared instantly that morning, and had to withstand only partial refrigeration. This meant cream was out. Jelly was also out, but jelly crystals were in.

Let’s go back further though and explore why I eat dessert for lunch in term 3 anyway. It would have started when I was 14 or 15, and I don’t remember how it explicitly started, but two things started: one was I realised I was now old enough that I could eat dessert for lunches and my parents wouldn’t stop me; two was for some reason as we came through the rear end of winter I had some bizarre need for sweet food.

The bizarre need for sweet food, or more specifically sugar itself, is related to Seasonal Affective Disorder, which my GP continues to assure me I don’t have. Eating dessert for a term filled that need as well as being high in fat which theoretically contributed healthily to my weight gain (although practically did nothing and I continued unable to break past 45kg for all of my mid-teen years).

Back to the trifle now though.

To prepare the trifle break the teacake in half. You won’t need a knife, just use your hands. No further cutting is required. Place the half a cake in the bottom of a 2L ice cream container. Now pour 600mls of custard on top of it, straight from the carton. Finish by sprinkling the contents of a packet of jelly crystals over it. Place the lid on the ice cream container and keep upright and cool until ready to eat.

I’m not sure why it was always port wine jelly. That’s just the flavour my Mum always bought, so it stuck. Not much consideration was given to the flavour anyhow, the main objective of the meal was to boast being able to eat a bucket of trifle for lunch.

The cake becomes soaked in custard, and this is actually pretty nice. Probably nicer if it hasn’t been sitting in a container for hours, but it’s edible. The jelly crystals dissolve into the custard but do not set, in effect creating jelly flavoured custard. This makes the custard very rich and hard to eat in large quantities.

If you used apple teacake the apple breaks off and becomes a separate ingredient which adds more texture to the meal, as well as some desperately needed fruit content.

Does it sound disgusting? Yes it does. How long did I eat this for? Three days a week for a month. Hey, I was 16 give me a break.

But that’s actually a good point. It sounds disgusting reading about it now, but this is absolutely the kind of thing that seems like a good idea at 15 years of age. As I said to a friend on Twitter in the last week or two, being an adult is having the ability to eat ice-cream for breakfast every morning- but the sense not to.

Sludge-bucket trifle may epitomize an unclassy lunch, but it is a valuable low point to hit and at a time when it won’t do any damage. I don’t feel the need to make sludge-bucket trifle any more because I’ve already done it, I’ve moved on and I’ve decided that isn’t how I want to live any more. There is nothing to regret about it though, I just don’t want to eat it ever again. For now, it becomes a useful measure for assessing the quality of the trifles I do make now.

So after eating sludge-bucket trifle 3 days a week for a month did I have the epiphany that I should be better than this? No. I think the term just finished, but be sure as day follows night that when term 3 came around in grade 12 I brought the sludge-bucket trifle back in all its glory. But that is where it ended.

On only its second appearance I was sitting with two girls from a younger grade that I was friends with. They were sitting eating salad rolls and fruit, having an intelligent discussion about literature and I was sitting there, 3 years their senior, eating fatty, sugary slosh out of an ice-cream container. The appeal of my own lunch vanished as rapidly as my appetite.

For term 3 that year I was also eating Felicia Day’s Lazy Woman’s Lunch for breakfast every day (Frosties, Fruit Loops and Special K mixed together), and my body was getting its necessary dose of winter-ending sugar. After only a week of dessert lunches I voluntarily started bringing salads to school for the first time in my life.

Skip forward a couple of years and we’re up to today. The trifles are back but they are actual trifles made properly for human consumption. I can no longer eat gluten so sludge-bucket trifle is out of order anyway. And the trifle’s aren’t my lunches anyway, they are just something to eat whenever but I get other things for lunch that offer more and more varied nutrients.

The 15 year old alluded to in the review of the Strawberries and Cream trifle review is no more.

Sludge-bucket Trifle: 0/10

Jelly Mousse Trifle - Trifle Term Week 5

2011-08-13T14:54:00.001+10:00

We’re midway through school for term 3 so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I am making a trifle every week for the term. Week 5 has now come and gone and to mark its end I made a jelly mousse trifle.

The ingredients I used were:

Sand cake
lime jelly
strawberry jelly
chocolate instant pudding
whipped cream
100s and 1000s

For the jelly I used packets of Aeroplane Jelly from the supermarket, almost per the packet instructions (I use 450mls of hot water rather than 250mls of hot and 200mls of cold because I’ve found the packet method doesn’t set properly). Each flavour is made in its own bowl and they are not mixed together.

I made the sand cake from scratch using gluten free flour as per my dietary requirements. Half the cake is used in the trifle, the other half is free to be eaten alone (although I should point out that sand cake is flavourless; you may want to eat it with something if you don’t like the natural taste of butter and sugar).

The instant pudding was made as per the packet instructions and left to set. The instant pudding is the “mousse” from the title. Despite the title, the instant pudding is the intended ingredient, not a substitute. I have no idea whether actual mousse would work in the trifle.

I whipped the cream by hand and used the 100s and 1000s to sprinkle on top.

To assemble the trifle I cut the cake into squares and placed them at the bottom of the bowl. I then spooned the jelly out and on top of it. Each flavour had set separately so placing them together at this stage will not result in the flavours mixing unless you leave the trifle unrefrigerated too long and it starts to melt. The pudding and cream were poured over it and the 100s and 1000s were sprinkled over the cream for topping.

Each ingredient retains its own flavour and they work well together. The lime of the lime jelly and the strawberry of the strawberry jelly don’t come out strongly, they both just taste like jelly, but that jelly taste works well and distinctly from the pudding, cream and cake.

The cream and the pudding mix together in the process of serving the trifle, but they retain their own flavours. The mix leads to a more creamy texture in the pudding, but much of the pudding still retains its own texture.

The cake becomes damp at the bottom of the bowl, but does not become sodden. The 100s and 1000s sink into the cream and melt after a while, leaving the cream brightly mutli-coloured but not offering anything themselves. The cake, after sitting under two varieties of jelly and the now multi-coloured cream, turns brightly multi-coloured itself, but its flavour becomes no less neutral.

It was a good looking trifle, bright and colourful on top, and with each layer clearly visible with its own colour through the side. Because I made this trifle at night the photos do not reveal how good looking the trifle really was because of the poor internal lighting conditions.

I wasn’t really sure how this trifle was going to work. After last week’s tedious mess I desperately wanted to avoid a repeat, so picked ingredients that would stay drier. The result was great. With three ingredients required to set, the whole trifle had a jelly like appeal, and would wobble as the bowl was carried around. The looks good and tastes good with plenty of variety of flavours and textures.

The is not a particularly healthy trifle, containing lots of sugar and no real fruit, but it is probably easy to to feed to kids given its sweetness, colour and it’s not too rich.

Jelly Mousse Trifle: 7/10

Choc Banana Trifle - Trifle Term Week 4

2011-08-04T17:39:00.004+10:00

School is back for term 3 so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I am making a trifle every week this term. With week 4 rapidly drawing to a close I present a choc banana trifle.

The ingredients I used were:

chocolate cake
chopped bananas
vanilla custard
whipped cream
lolly bananas

The chocolate cake was a gluten free Chocolate Cake Express I made from scratch in the afternoon before making the trifle. Half was used in the trifle and the other half was eaten by the present members of the family, as there was no room in the fridge.

With bananas currently worth more than money itself I couldn’t buy any bananas, but we have banana trees and a freshly ripe bunch newly picked this week, so I used those, peeled and thickly sliced. The banana was then placed in the bowl over the squares of cake.

For the custard I used shop-bought vanilla custard. I was going to buy a carton of banana custard but it seems that Woolworths has a time machine with which they go forward one week into the future, find out what type of custard I need, come back and deliberately don’t stock that flavour any more.

I whipped the cream by hand and put it on top of the custard, then threw a handful of lolly bananas on top.

The trifle has a good balance of flavours. The custard and the cream blend together to make a custardy creamy mixture but each retain their own distinct flavours. The texture of the custard cream mixture goes well with the banana, which is soft and mashy and all together it has a creamy feeling. The cake doesn’t fit in so well.

The cake was still warm when I put together the trifle and that might have something to do with it. The cake is soft and moist inside but its edges are tougher and stringy. Possibly cooked slightly differently this could be one of those heavenly cakes everyone aspires to make, but it isn’t the most suitable cake for a trifle, and it just feels slightly out of place. The texture, although not great, is essential to provide balance to the creamy texture of the other ingredients.

The lolly bananas do not work at all. They were really put on as a bit of a joke, and I was going to put them through the whole trifle but was advised against it. Luckily, they spoil it.

It’s not the most appealing looking trifle ever. The custard has run down the sides to make it appear flat and solid custard on the sides, and the brown of the chocolate cake looks more like a drowning victim than an ingredient. The top doesn’t look as flat as the strawberries and cream trifle though, which is good. The lolly bananas serve as a good decoration even if they contribute negatively to the eating process.

This trifle works well as a vehicle for consuming bananas. Without the actual fruit in it there would be very little point. The cake doesn’t fit in too well but I think this is to do with how I cooked the cake rather than the ingredient itself. Overall, leave out the lollies and serve as dessert after a casual dinner party or lunch with friends when you have excess bananas to use. Of course in the current economic climate, unless you grow your own, you aren’t likely to have excess bananas. A good trifle for another time and place then.

UPDATE:
It's been a few days since I made the trifle and I feel I need to address what has become of it with age. The custard did not set, in fact has liquefied in the bottom of the bowl. The cake has become sodden and begun disintegrating, creating this watery, vaguely chocolate, custard mess in the bottom with saturated bits of cake in it. The rest of the trifle has sat soaking in this mess. The lollies have gone soft and sodden. It is awful and a chore to look at, worse to eat. I've downgraded the rating accordingly.

If you were to make this trifle yourself I have to urge you to make your own custard and allow it to set before adding it to the mix. I'd also suggest preparing your cake with enough time for it to cool properly before assembly and consume in as shorter time as possible to stop the fruit from going off. And don't add the lolly bananas.

Choc Banana Trifle: 2/10 (originally 5/10)

A brief explanation of the rating for each trifle:
The rating is not just a critique of the recipe, but also of my cooking performance in making that trifle. A great recipe made badly will score badly. A terrible recipe made well will score badly. A good recipe made well will score highly.

Strawberries And Cream Trifle - Trifle Term Week 3

2011-07-28T17:34:00.004+10:00

School is back for term 3 so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I am making a trifle every week this term. As we reach the end of week 3 I present a strawberries and cream trifle.

The ingredients I used were:

Sand cake
Strawberries and cream jelly
Strawberry instant pudding
Whipped cream
Fresh strawberries.

I made the sand cake myself from scratch using gluten free flour as per my dietary requirements. I also added a few drops of imitation strawberry essence to the mixture as well as a small splash of red food dye. When mixed in the cake turned pink, though when cooked it was pink on the inside and patches of pink and brown on the outside. The strawberry essence did not make the cake strawberry flavoured, but rather cancelled out the buttery flavour, making it more neutral in taste.

The jelly was just a packet of Aeroplane Jelly from the supermarket, dissolved in 450mls of hot water and left to cool before setting in the fridge.

After my introduction to instant pudding last week I have yet another surprise. In the same way that instant pudding resembles actual pudding like a tape recorder resembles Saturn, the strawberry flavour has the added bonus of resembling neither actual pudding nor in fact strawberries of any kind. The true taste of strawberries is often replicated poorly in artificial foods, but this instant pudding doesn’t even taste like artificial strawberry flavour- the likes of which can be seen in strawberry ice-cream or milk flavouring. I have no idea what strawberry instant pudding tastes like and frankly it isn’t even very nice so I would suggest you pass up the opportunity to sample it yourself unless it forms part of a greater dessert.

Before whipping the cream I began to prepare the trifle. I added cubes of cake to the bowl and then added the jelly on top of it. Next I spooned some of the cream out over the cake and jelly; the idea is to drizzle the cream over the cake and jelly but my cream had been sitting in the fridge for a week so it was too thick to drizzle.

I then whipped the cream, with a little help from my friends and we whipped it good. The instant pudding was then added to the trifle and sliced fresh strawberries were scattered over it, before topping with whipped cream and finally some more sliced strawberries.

I could not tell if the cake was again more dry than ideal based on my judging bowl. It didn’t strike me as being dry, but the trifle in general seemed drier than last week’s.

In the process of serving the trifle the cream and the pudding mix together and the flavours compliment each other perfectly, with the cream canceling out the pudding’s overpowering sweetness and the pudding adding a richer, more palatable feel to the cream. In fact if I were to have the instant pudding by itself again I’d probably mix some cream into it first based on this trifle’s performance.

The cake provides relief to the pudding-cream mix in texture only, as its flavour is really too neutral to provide any relief in taste. The jelly provides some relief but it is also much richer than plain strawberry flavour, which makes it unwise to binge on while breaking from the pudding.

Overall, it is too be expected that in a trifle where every ingredient is based on one of two ingredients (or two of two ingredients) that the separate layers would all taste more or less the same, but they still came across with far less distinction that those from the chocolate trifle in week 1 did.

The presentation was also disappointing. The strawberries topping the trifle, being slices, look very flat on the cream, and the pudding is a similar colour to the cream which makes it also look flat from the side.

Picture: The trifle appears flat from both top and side.

This trifle seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice it is too samey to have any real application, other than maybe a strawberry festival but even then the real strawberries are overpowered by the artificial strawberry flavours in other ingredients. The strawberries and the cream do not provide great enough counters to each other and it leans into a blur of sweetness. On a scale from 15 year old bachelor eating junk out of a bucket in front of the football to his 22 year old counterpart saving up 3 weeks’ pay to take his romantic partner into a quality inner-eastern restaurant, this trifle is most definitely the 15 year old, and even he would probably have something real afterwards.

Would not make again.

Strawberries and cream trifle: 4/10

Kids' Berry Trifle - Trifle Term Week 2

2011-07-22T16:07:00.004+10:00

School is back into term 3 so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I am making a trifle every week this term. Drawing week 2 to an end today we have a modified Kids’ Berry Trifle.

Based on a recipe from the Women’s Weekly Kids Cooking book, the ingredients are:

sand cake
strawberry jelly
vanilla instant pudding
whipped cream
frozen mixed berries

The original recipe called for sponge cake, but being unable to eat shop-bought cake and not particularly liking sponge anyway I went with homemade gluten free sand cake instead.

I used half the cake for the trifle, cutting the remainder into 6 pieces perfect for sharing with the family (sadly my family can’t eat it for dietary requirements).

The jelly was just a packet of Aeroplane Jelly from the supermarket. The packet instructions say to dissolve the crystals in 250mls of hot water, then add 200ml of cold water. I did this with another packet earlier in the week and when I came to eat it I had a top layer of jelly flavoured liquid and a bottom layer of hard semi-dissolved crystals. So for this one I just dissolved the crystals in 450mls of hot water. It worked perfectly.

For those of you unfamiliar with instant pudding you are in for a treat. It comes in tiny blue packets with a cost so small you probably didn’t know you had that money anyway and it serves 6 people from one packet. The next thing you need to know is that to make it you pour 700mls of milk into a bowl, pour the pudding mix on top of it, beat it for a minute, stick it in the fridge for 15 minutes and it’s done, ready to eat.

The next thing you need to know is that it resembles pudding in the same way an African bush elephant does. You may have correctly identified that in this recipe the pudding replaces the custard, the substitution is all too appropriate. Vanilla instant pudding most closely resembles set custard of any other likely food.

Picture: My bike. It resembles instant pudding as closely as actual pudding does.

I whipped the cream by hand and arranged the cake into squares in the bottom of a large bowl, before layering on squares of the jelly then scooping the pudding over that. I then put a handful of berries in before topping with the cream and finally adding the rest of the berries to the top. The trifle was then left to rest in the fridge.

The recipe suggests making the instant pudding, adding it to the trifle and then letting it set in the fridge as a part of the trifle. I made the pudding separately and added it at the end. I realised the error of my method upon removing the trifle from the fridge. Being already set when it was added, the pudding sat atop the jelly, rather than pouring in around it and through the cake as custard would. This left the cake tasting dry.

In the process of serving the trifle the cream and the pudding are inadvertently mixed together, with the berries being caught in the crossfire. While the textures blend into one indistinguishable blur the tastes remain separate and individually palatable.

Overall the presentation of the trifle is great. Each layer remains identifiable through the side of the bowl, and the berries are an appealing topping, not bleeding too much so the cream remains pure white beneath them.

The cake is suitably light for the recipe but it’s dryness is disappointing. Overall though a great trifle for any occasion, be it dessert after a suitable meal, a meal in itself or just a snack because you’ve now got a trifle and nobody else can eat it.

Kid’s Berry Trifle: 7/10

Chocolate Trifle -Trifle Term Week 1

2011-07-12T13:03:00.005+10:00

School has started again for term 3 today and so in keeping with my traditional choice of lunches for term 3 I have begun a term of trifle making. Kicking off the term we start with a chocolate trifle this week.

The ingredients are:

chocolate cake
chocolate jelly
chocolate custard
whipped cream
grated chocolate to top.

Not being a huge fan of sponge cake, I made a Chocolate Cake Express from scratch the night before, using the recipe from the Reader’s Digest Quick, Thrifty Cooking recipe book, adjusted to be gluten free as per my own dietary requirements.

I used half the cake for the trifle. The remainder of the cake was eaten as is.

For the chocolate jelly I wasn’t sure what I would do, but I found this recipe and used it.
The trouble I had with this recipe is that it is excruciatingly vague. As such I used 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder as the chocolate and only 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence for the vanilla. Prepared the night before this made a good amount of jelly and turned out well except it is quite bitter. I suspect that they meant shop-bought drinking chocolate rather than cocoa powder. In any case the jelly was quite bitter, not really like you desire jelly to be and in using the recipe in the future I would use much more sugar to make up the sweetness.

For the custard I used a carton of shop-bought vanilla custard. We mixed cocoa powder into it to make it chocolate. Ideally you’d use shop-bought chocolate custard for this, but Woolworths didn’t have any when we went shopping.

I whipped the cream by hand and arranged cake in squares in the bottom of a large glass bowl before layering on squares of the jelly then pouring over the custard and then the cream. I then grated Lindt Dark Orange chocolate over the trifle and placed in the fridge for 2 hours.

The trifle set well in the fridge.

Upon tasting the trifle it is disappointingly bitter. The jelly is quite bitter, as already mentioned but the cake is also very bitter. I’m not sure how this happened as the cake by itself was expectedly sweet both last night when it was fresh and this morning before I added it to the trifle. The custard, unlike the jelly, is sweet and custardy despite the addition of the cocoa powder.

Overall the presentation of the trifle is good, although it is mostly brown and the brown custard is not the most beautiful ingredient known to man.
Due to the bitterness it would go well with an accompanying beverage (I’d suggest Baileys but haven’t tried it with Baileys to check if it works.) The bitterness is also conducive to small serves. A good dessert for sharing among a large number of people.

Less appealing for eating persistently by oneself as I am now tasked with doing.

UPDATE:
On subsequent bowls the bitterness of the chocolate cake vanished. We suspect a poor mixing job left a concentration of cocoa powder or bicarbonate soda in the piece in the first bowl. The majority of the trifle has not been nearly as bitter, much easier to eat.

Chocolate Trifle: 6/10

Thoughts on Gypsy & The Cat Live at the HiFi

2011-05-15T12:56:00.003+10:00

I went to see Gypsy & The Cat live at the Hifi last night, didn’t really enjoy it and complained a whole heap on Twitter. I’d like to more fully express what was wrong because complaining in itself won’t fix anything, only feedback will. This is just an explanation of my thoughts on the night, not a review.

1. To go to a concert like this you need to buy tickets weeks in advance. I bought the tickets when I wanted to go, then come the night, even the week, of the concert I didn’t feel like going out. I would have preferred to stay at home where it was warm and I could go to bed at a reasonable hour.

2. I only got one serve of dinner before I had to leave, so I was quite hungry all night.

3. I was by myself. I was surrounded by loud, obnoxious idiots in groups (probably drunk) in the line to get in, where if they weren’t screaming swear words in my ear they were pushing and shoving me into each other and the wall.

4. I’m mildly agoraphobic and frequently, when in situations such as a crowded club, panic and flee. In an attempt to prevent this happening I try to get in the front row, because being against the barrier helps me to stay put. It meant that I was hungry, falling asleep, and from leaning on the railing of the barrier my arms and back both hurt.

5. The doors opened at 8pm, the first act didn’t come on stage until 9:20pm. Pro tip guys: if you have time to watch an entire game of football while you’re waiting for the band to come on, you’ve been waiting too long.

6. When the support act finally came on stage they were too loud. I don’t mean just volume wise, which they were too but I was standing directly under the speaker stack with no earplugs so I could have prevented that slightly, but they were mixed too loud…

7. They were so loud that you could not tell which instrument was making which sound; it all just blended into an indistinguishable wall of noise. The guitar sounded the same as the bass, as the keyboard and even as the vocals. There may as well have been two instruments on stage, the deafening drone and the drums, because that was all you could tell you could hear.

8. Worse still, they were so loud you couldn’t make out melody. The guitarist could play one chord and then play a completely different chord and they’d both sound exactly the same because at that volume you can’t differentiate notes. Look, the band were probably very talented musicians and song writers, but they might as well have been randoms from the street hitting instruments with sticks because at that volume you jsut wouldn’t be able to tell.

9. The bad mixing was such that even had I not been under the speaker stack or if I’d had earplugs they still would have sounded as bad. I might not have ended up with toothache at the end of their set though.

10. Gypsy & The Cat were good. The master volume was probably set the same, although they would have been a little quieter by virtue of having fewer instruments. They were mixed quieter though, so you could not only identify the melody and the harmony and tell the difference, but you could also tell which instrument was making which sound.

So the night was not ruined, Gypsy & The Cat redeemed it, got my dancing, singing and woke me up enough that I even went into the city for food afterwards (if you can count the McDonald’s at Central station as “going into the city for food”).

My advice to you all then is:

1. Gypsy & The Cat were good, but it was very much a first album tour. I’d say though they are going to be an experience not to miss in a few years, probably touring their third album. Good performers, but don’t have much material yet.

2. The support band, WIM, are probably worth checking out. They have an album coming out on the 27th of May 2011 (if I heard correctly). Check it out, it might be good. Don’t bother going to see them live though because you’d get a more enjoyable performance watching planes take off at the airport, which would be cheaper and probably quieter.

3. If you are Gypsy & The Cat: well done and thanks for a great show.

4. If you are WIM: please for the love of all things good sack your sound guy.

5. If you are the Hifi: Standing around for 80 minutes with no entertainment, surrounded by increasingly intoxicated morons is not a fun night out. I will be thinking twice before I attend concerts at your venue again.

Brisbane Daylight Saving Evaluation

2011-04-04T20:27:00.003+10:00

As you may recall if you read my From The Shotgun post of the 21st of October, or as you’ll probably know if you’ve had anything to do with me since October, I’ve been on daylight saving for the last 6 months, despite living in Brisbane- home of teh 4am sun.

As I said in that post, it has always been my intention to write an evaluation of my months on Cobar time, and here it is.

It would be invalid of me to simply write my experiences and impressions and say “that’s what daylight saving is like” because I have been operating in a time zone different to that which I geographically live in, and that difference needs to be addressed separately, so I will get to it separately.

But as far as the actual shift in daylight goes, I love it. It may be easy to scoff at this as I have always been an unashamed supporter of daylight saving, but I did approach it with an open mind. Because the only other time I’ve lived in daylight saving (other than one week on holiday in Sydney in 2009) was when Brisbane last had a trial in the early ‘90s when I was too young to remember it, this was really the first time I’ve properly lived through daylight saving.

I decided to wind the clock forward a few days late and suffered the full wrath of jetlag in the working week, it taking my body about three days to adjust to Hillston time.

During spring it was ideal: sunrise was now at the sensible time of 5:45am, with the sky getting light from 5:20am. I know this because (aside from looking it up) I invariably woke up at that time every morning. You may be interested to know the sky turns an ominous shade of deep green at about 5:30am. Now on most days I was able to close my eyes, roll over and go back to sleep for another three and a half hours, a regard in which I am luckier than most. However on those rare morning this summer when the sun actually shone in the Brisbane sky the kookaburras decided to have a noisy meeting in the tree over the back and there was no getting back to sleep from that. This normally happened shortly after sunrise.

I will take getting up, unable to return to sleep, at 6am in preference to 5am any day of the week.

Better still was, not only was it a sensible time to be getting up if you had to, but the sun was up and it was still the coolest part of the day. Perfect for getting up and going for a walk, which I did on some occasions and probably would have done more often except sunny days were too hard to come by to develop a habit for it. Even if I didn’t leave the house though, it meant an extra hour of doing whatever before I had to turn on the ceiling fan (read: air conditioning for those of you soft-skinned beyond environmental tolerance).

The trade off for getting to sleep undisturbed in the morning, followed by a more comfortable first hour after waking? The sun didn’t set until 7pm in the evening, meaning longer to spend outside reading, gardening or wishing I could listen to music outside in the sun. Quite simply having daylight saving at the end of the year has no downsides.

Then came the most brilliant time: January. Sunrise and sunset each moved later and meant that it was not getting light until about 5:20am and not dark until 8:10pm. All but two or three waking hours were spent in the daylight. This might seem unnatural but it felt anything but. In fact it may have been the first time in my life I’ve experienced such long daylight hours but it felt as though how could it be any other way. It was still cool in the mornings, which being January meant I could sleep in longer undisturbed although if I did get up at a normal time I could still get some relief before the heat of another day came by.

All good things have an end though. Sunrise continued to get later and later and sunset finally started to reel back in. In March I was getting up no earlier than 7am if I could avoid it (and I was back at work by this stage so long sleep ins weren’t always an option) to stop myself from getting up in the dark and yet sunset was rapidly heading back towards 7pm or even earlier by the end. Now I loved still getting the extra hour in the evening. Being at the train station coming home from work at 6:40pm would ordinarily be dreadful but even by the time my journey was over and I was ready to walk home at the other end it was still light. I give credit to this for keeping my mood relatively good heading towards winter (link note- I have not been diagnosed with S.A.D.)

The autumn mornings though were not good. Like I said, sunrise wasn’t until nearly 7am and while it still got light well before this it is usually only in the heart of winter that the sun doesn’t rise before a typical person. While getting up in the coolest part of the day in November is fantastic, the same cannot be said for April. I was sleeping in winter pyjamas and under two doonas each night, only to be dragged by the alarm out of my warm bed in the coldest part of the day because the clock dictates that is when to get up. I had the luxury to get up later if I wanted to, not everyone does. The late setting sun is some consolation but I would definitely empathise with someone who did not think it a worthwhile trade.

So to summarise: after six months of daylight saving I am more in love with the concept than ever. For the first 5 months I can see only one downside. By the end of it though I was pretty happy to wind the clock back even if it did mean sunset became uncomfortably early again.

The one downside I can see is how to explain it to young children. I can’t remember my first summer but I can remember one very early when we were having dinner and the news was on but the sun was still up and this just wasn’t natural! I knew it must have been though because the clock said 6pm. Kids are no different to anyone else though and adjust eventually, and having longer to play in the yard is always better than having less time to play in the yard.

Daylight saving is about more than just experiencing more of the daylight during summer though. If it was just about seeing more of the sun we could all just get up an hour earlier. Humans, unlike other animals, do not live by the sun, they live by the clock. A kookaburra will make noise from whatever hour sunrise is, a human will stay in bed until the clock says to- unless the kookaburra decides to loudly disagree.

People remember things by the time. At 6pm this TV show will come on. My bus arrives at 8:26am. A good time to eat is 12:15pm. The point of daylight saving is that there is no change to any of this. If the bus comes at 8:26am in winter, it will come at 8:26am in summer. If the TV show starts at 6pm in winter it will start at 6pm in summer. We get the extra hour of daylight with no disruption to our lives, it just happens and we happen and we all get along.

It is then ironic that by going onto daylight saving I encountered all the problems that daylight saving was created to avoid. My experiences living in a different places geographical to temporally follow:

If my bus left at 8:26am in winter it now left at 9:26am. My lectures changed times, social events changed times.

Right from October the thing that became most apparent was just how tiring it was. It is odd that we spend so much time thinking about time yet at the same time spend barely any time at all. We all know that we’ve got that meeting at 9am, but we never think about what 9am is. We switch off to time; we use it, but we do not consider it as more than a measurement. This is not a luxury I had. If I was awake, I was forced to think about time. On one of the mornings in spring I got up and went for a walk while nobody else was awake I thought of this and wondered if I would even survive to April given the toll it was taking on my mind.

As the summer went on I did become more accustomed to constantly being aware of the time. I spent less time pondering what time actually was and more time just doing the Brisbane-Wangarratta time conversion as necessary. I think I did very well for the most part, managing to stay treading the fine line between the short hands of Coolangatta and Tweed Heads for as long as I did, but after a few months the toll was showing. I wasn’t missing buses, but it was getting close on occasions, and my downfall was when I made a doctor’s appointment and remembered to write down the time, but forgot to write down the timezone. I then had to make a phone call to get the time confirmed. Twice.

Worse still was not everything was an hour behind. You may recall the reason I made to jump to Guildford time in the first place was that most of the media I consumed came out of Sydney anyway and so I was staying in line with that. If I wanted to watch Question Time I had to put on the TV at 2pm like always, but if I wanted to watch George Negus I had to turn on at 7pm, not 6pm like the rest of the east coast. Whether Triple J was live or not depended on whether I listened to it in the lounge (on the stereo) or in my room (on the internet). Having to keep track not only of what time something was but also which timezone just made everything even more exhausting.

It should be no surprise that when I went on holiday to Sydney in December the time was more valuable not as time away from home but time back in the same timezone as everyone around me. If finances had permitted it I would have headed to Tweed Heads for the same reason later in the summer, just to give my brain a rest.

Let’s not forget either that when I say I was living in a different timezones to the people around me I don’t just mean at parties and lectures; three other people in the same house were all still living on Queensland time, while I sat around on Nubeena time. The evening meal went from being at 7:30pm each night, a reasonable time for a meal, to 8:30pm each night which was too late for my digestive system and possibly played a contributing role to my getting sick and losing weight. And on nights when dinner was even later I frequently just didn’t eat as it was time for bed instead.

As well as my work colleagues, social acquaintances and nuclear family, I was fighting society as a whole. All of society is geared towards staying up late. You can play a guitar through an amplifier until 10pm, but don’t dare try it before 7am. This meant I had to remain silent in the mornings but anyone who wanted could keep me awake until 11pm. Now I’m not complaining that people did, because while it did happen I’m more tolerant than to demand I’m the only one who makes noise. If people want to keep me up then fine, I’ll stay up an hour later and I frequently did. But that gearing towards later nights is probably what stops many people from becoming morning people, and a reason why the anti-daylight saving argument that you should just get up and hour earlier doesn’t work.

Frequently I fought and lost my own mental battles to be disciplined and get up or go to bed at normal time, figuring “what’s the point in getting up now, I can’t do anything for an hour without waking the rest of the family”, or “what’s the point of going to bed now if I’ll be unable to get any quiet for another hour”. This was a matter of self-discipline not being good enough in a lot of cases, but the argument could still be made.

Whatever appeal Stawell time had to begin with was starting to disappear. I was exhausted mentally and physically. Calling it summer time is misleading too, it lasts for six months. Half the year. 50% of the calendar, not just summer.

There were some benefits though. When I was at uni I would have lunch at about 11:30am, which being only 10:30am local time meant the food court was almost abandoned. Church moved back an hour to give me a full afternoon even if I was on music. My argument for making the switch in spring was still valid too, I was still in the same timezone as most of the media I consumed, and half the people I interacted with online, not that online interaction depends on being in the same timezone which made it no more difficult to interact with Queenslanders either.

You can see that those advantages do not compare to the tide of disadvantages though.

So in the end, weighing up both the experiences of daylight saving and of living in a different timezone geographically and temporally, was it worth it? Yes, I think so. The advantages of daylight saving are huge, and not everything about living on Grenfell time while living in Brisbane was bad. For a six month experience it was worth it. But don’t count on me doing it again come spring. I might, but I’m not committing at this stage, as it is thoroughly exhausting and short of actually moving to Canberra (I feel guilty about the number of people who fell for that) I’m not sure I should inflict that on my mind and body too often.

I am now even more an avid supporter of introducing daylight saving to the south east corner of Queensland than I was when I began of course, and I intend to act on this opinion when Queensland has its 2012 state election in 19 years time.

Leaving Brisbane

2011-04-01T11:45:00.000+11:00

Needless to say, Darren Lockyer and I don’t have much in common. And I don’t expect this announcement about my life to have nearly as much impact as his decision to retire at the end of this season. But I have also been sitting on a decision about my future since January, and taking his lead I’ve decided to come out with it.

I will be leaving Brisbane this winter. I love this city. I always have. Brisbane isn’t a perfect city, some people would even suggest it isn’t a great city, especially when compared to Sydney or Melbourne, but it is my city, the city I’ve lived in my whole life and I love it. My complaints are potential improvements, my praises considered commendations.

Some of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed that I’ve developed a slightly peculiar attraction to Canberra recently, and have even been planning a trip down to the capital in September should my finances allow it. I’ve publicly maintained that this was a holiday to see new parts of Australia, and more importantly to visit parliament house while in session. These things are both true, however I did have other motives.

In January I received an unexpected email regarding a job position in Canberra. Being happy in Brisbane and studying full time I disregarded the email at first, but while bored at the computer one day I dug it out of the spam folder just to have a read, out of curiosity rather than any expectation it was something real.

The email said a new community group on Canberra was looking to start a digital radio station and was looking for people who would be interested in serving as on-air presenters and managing social media content. They offered on-the-job training and were particularly looking for people from around the country to bring a wider pool of life experience to complement the local talent. So basically, with the exception of being in Canberra, the perfect job.

I did some quick research and discovered that it was legit, and they had found me through my Twitter page, though didn’t specify which one. The job was paying and would get me to where I wanted to be career wise without having to finish my degree.

So I spoke to my lecturers and career advisors at uni about the job and was encouraged to go for it if I thought I should. The university has been supportive and says that it is possible to put the remainder of the degree on hold until I come back to Brisbane, so I’m not wasting $18 000 on a degree I’m not going to finish.

After more consideration I decided to take the job.

It was supposed to start next January, when the station launches. I would have a whole year to finish up everything in Brisbane, then leave home and move to Canberra a month before turning 20. It seemed pretty good. It was also fitting with the new album I’m working on supposed to be a tribute to the great city of Brisbane, which if I ever get around to writing and recording it, would be released in early September, just before I went on my holiday to Canberra to check out the place.

However, a few weeks ago I received another email.

The station has progressed a lot quicker than they expected and, with a little government assistance, has been able to move their launch forward by 6 months. So now the job begins in July. This caused a little bit of panic in me, now having only a few months before I leave my home, my city and my state. The anxiety even got up to the point where I decided to lock my Twitter account.

Because I’m now leaving so much earlier I have decided to make the news public today, so all my friends can see without delay. I would have preferred to have told everyone in person, but I would also have preferred to have told everyone in a few months from now, which is not an option.

I’ll endeavor to catch up with everyone over the next few months, in the meantime if there is anyone who knows of a good share-house in Canberra I could move into while I look for somewhere more permanent that would be great.

Goodbye Brisbane, hello Canberra.

And of course…

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY!

Because Love Isn't Complicated Enough

2011-03-08T20:07:00.000+11:00

While having a surprisingly intellectually stimulating conversation on Twitter last night (surprising only because it was after midnight when it happened), based sort of on yesterday’s post, some thoughts emerged.

Key among these was that the whole idea of viewing the world as “neutral” is based on trying to impose a good/bad dichotomy on the world. Within this discourse it is appropriate to declare the world a neutral entity, but in a more naturalist, more universal discourse trying to put fit the world into a human construct in that way is as appropriate as trying to describe the body on the basis of how one limb works.

Viewing the world through the good/bad dichotomy adds a mathematical factor to it, which is just a human application. Maths though is just another way of explaining the world. It fits in there with art and science, religion of all variations. Even the most basic arithmetic is just a way of explaining how something in the world works (for example how two things can be grouped together as a sum). It’s strict formulaic nature means that it isn’t appropriate for explaining everything, but that doesn’t mean some people won’t try.

Some people like me, who despite my inability to understand maths beyond a basic 11th grade standard still insists that maths can be used to successfully explain concepts eluding human understanding even at the best of times. Concepts like love.

Now recently I’ve been thinking that my blog has become sort of poisonous to the good idea. I’ve concluded that this is because it is really just a dumping ground for anything I say. As the subtitle says, this is where I talk. Good posts, like I dare say yesterday’s was, are left standing along side rubbish nothing posts and the credibility of the whole blog suffers.

I say that because I’m about to do it again. While the introduction may lead you to believe there is an involved discussion of love vs. mathematics to come, in fact I’m just going to explain my dating rule. If you want to start an involved discussion of love vs. mathematics in the comments though please do because it would be a fascinating discussion to have and we shouldn’t let my initial individual reluctance stand in the way of it. Just skip to the end and let the interesting stuff begin.

For those more boring among us though: a dating rule. When it comes to dating I’m not exactly experienced. By which I mean I have exactly no experience. Yet there are some rules that even I know belong in place to filter out relationships that just wouldn’t work. These rules are mostly personal and are based on my own beliefs but there are some fairly obvious ones like I must know the person. The person being a girl is another basic requirement, thanks to my heterosexuality.

The part of the rule that most people, including myself, refer to as their dating rule though is the age requirement. Some people have managed to make good relationships with a person of a dramatically different age. If you can do that, good for you, but I’m not trying it.

The most common rule is simply oldest person’s age (X) divided by 2 + 7 must be lower than the younger person’s age (Y). So the formula would be “Y > X/2+7”.

That formula is clearly not complicated enough, because let’s face it, if love is too anything it’s too simple. So I’ve got my own rule. For adults it is very simple, if both partners’ birthdays are within 5 years it’s all good. According to the rule adulthood begins at 20 years of age.

During the adolescent years however it gets complicated. Adolescence by this rule being ages 11- 19 inclusive with dating under the age of 11 prohibited.

Instead of using a one dimensional timeframe (a line) instead a two dimensional timeframe is used, where for every year from 11 to 20 a step is taken not only along the X axis but also along the Y axis. This results in a zig-zagging line resembling a flight of stairs. For calculating the age difference of a couple in this age range, a line is drawn from the age of the younger partner straight along the X axis, while another line is drawn from the age of the older partner straight down parallel to the Y axis. This should give two perpendicular lines which meet, providing effectively two lines of a right-angled triangle. To calculate the age difference simply add the hypotenuse to the triangle and measure it. The hypotenuse is the effective age gap.

The formula for this could then be seen as “X^2+Y^2=A^2”, where X is the older partner’s age, Y is the younger partner’s age and A is the effect age difference. The 5 year rule than applies to the effective age difference.

But there is another complicating factor, which is schooling. For most of the adolescent period one or both partners would be undergoing formal education, and this can make a big difference as well. To account for this a penalty year applies where a gap of more than one schooling year exists between a couple’s formal education level, with school leavers counted as effectively being grade 13. So if the older partner was in grade 11 and the younger partner was in grade 10 there would be no penalty. If the younger partner were in grade 9 though, 1 year would be added to the effective age difference.

The benefits this rule provides are that the dating range remains tight in the school phase where even an age gap of a few years makes a relationship unworkable, while broadening with time as the age difference between partners is less important; but remaining tight enough to ensure the couple goes through the different stages of life at more or less the same time.

The key disadvantage of it is that nobody will ever go out with you if you put this much effort into a dating age rule. There is more evidence for this statement than there is for the functionality of any other part of the rule combined.

So if you’ve bothered to read through all that I guess you’d be curious to know whether this rule will let me go out with my desired partner? Yes, but with an effective age difference of (I think) 4.93 years it is a close thing, and only possible by calculating it more precisely to the month. Of course, with them turning 24 and being immensely popular among people far greater than I, my chances aren’t good regardless of what any rule says.

I now look forward to my friends and family pestering me to know who that person is.

Where The Birds Always Sing

2011-03-07T22:44:00.010+11:00

Is the world we live in good or bad? It’s a question that has no doubt been debated as long as the concept of good and bad has been around, and no doubt everyone will have their own opinions on the matter and writing about mine is as tired as debating something tiredly contested to the point of being about as coherent as this sentence has ended up being.

For mine I’ve come to see the world as being a land of darkness under a starlit night sky. It isn’t an analogy I just came up with, rather it evolved naturally in my mind. I guess it plays on the age old concept of representing good with light and bad with darkness. I see the world is not a good place and the reasons I have for not ending my life right here and now are the wonderful people and things around me; the stars. There are a lot of those stars in the sky and they provide a lot of light, but at some times in life you just tend to not notice the light as much as it is overwhelmed by the darkness all around it.

I just don’t see that the world is a good place. Thankfully those stars, those people and things that make life worth living are numerous. My life is full of wonderful people, but if there are only three people my own age who I consider to be truly awesome, amazing people, people who just seem to be better than other people; three might not seem like a lot but let’s say I know about 600 people my own age, extrapolate that over the approximate population of the world for people about my age and there should be about 60 000 000 such people. No shortage of awesome there.

At the pub on Friday I was sitting down as two other people talked about something or other. One of them said the world was a good place and I just blurted out “no it isn’t” and put my head on the table. I can’t remember who the other person was, what the topic of discussion was or in fact any other details other than that I was feeling a little tired and emotional (not a euphemism) as well as maybe a little tired and emotional (euphemism).

This afternoon after I’d done a bit of work I felt like going for a walk in the forest. Fortunately this is something I have the option to do, although it isn’t a real forest it is just a bushland reserve. I took my camera and set out to explore the forest, taking photos of the trees. It was about 6:30pm when I finally left so 45 minutes until sunset. Following on from live streaming her concert earlier in the day, I had Optimist by Zoë Keating stuck in my head as I walked down the dirt path through the long grass under the high and mostly unbroken canopy, hopping over and around puddles of mud.

I never really liked the suburb where I lived when I was growing up. During primary school I was constantly comparing it to the neighbouring inner suburbs where I went to school and where my friends lived. During high school I didn’t do this as much but I would certainly have taken St. Lucia, Taringa or any of their neighbours far more readily than my own suburb. It is only since I began uni in the desolate wasteland that is greater western suburbia that I’ve come to appreciate my own suburb.

Growing up I always had the mental image of the suburbs as being like my own neighbourhood and the neighbourhoods of my friends. Houses with backyards, lawns, maybe a pool, a clothes line and a back shed. There were heaps of trees and grass, which is what made the distinction between the suburbs and the city which was all concrete and steel. The disparaging comments I heard made about the suburbanites never made any sense because the suburbs were a great place, why wouldn’t you like them?

I now understand why the suburbs are looked on with contempt. Forget ever seeing a tree again if you choose to move out west into Springfield or a similar estate. The suburbs are not areas of greenery and space, they are the place where the hopeless working and middle classes go to die at the age of 23; condemned forever to repay a mortgage for an unsustainable air-conditioned brick box on a block of land too small to make your own; a landscape of identical Colourbond roofs to the horizon, all built from scratch according to the mass produced designs shipped from Melbourne as the original environment was destroyed without any thought by the developers who bought and built this hell; a place where the only infrastructure is the local Westfield. You wonder why Western Sydney seems to breed unpleasant people? You’d be unpleasant too if you were a product of that place.

Having to witness this hell on Earth I have come to love my own suburb. The public transport mightn’t be great, getting here is hard and leaving rates among the top 5 most exciting things to do, but at least there are trees. At least there is green. At least there is space. If I look out my window I can see the next door neighbours, the road behind them, the house on the other side of that road, and then nothing but trees to the horizon. There are houses all the way to said horizon, but there are just so many trees the houses are obscured. This counts the next estate over which was only built in the last few years yet they built it responsibly and you cannot see a single house until you get closer.

Here I am skipping over puddles on my own bushwalking adventure in the forest only blocks from my house when I come out to the houses in the back of the next suburb. Small wooded houses, beneath large trees, which large backyards. These houses look like the idilic tree change houses of the woods in film, maybe somewhere your grandparents might live. Pass these houses and I come to the farm. Yes, 11 kilometers from the CBD of Australia’s third largest city and I’m walking passed a farm. Along the road passed the farm and I pass a few more houses and reach the river.

I cannot think of a more perfect place to live than in this pocket of houses, sandwiched between a farm, a forest and the river. Of course I might not have thought the same two months ago when all these houses were somewhat more submarine than they are today. As I walk back up the road from the river a side street I mistakenly turn down has a painted message on the road halfway up the hill; “12.2m -- 2011 high”.

I decide to take a different route home than the one by which I came, so I follow the road through the farm (it stands on two neighbouring blocks) and then up the hill before re-entering the forest behind the farm. It is here that I have a revelation.

This area I’ve been walking through is perfect. The trees, the houses, the location. Perfect. Nature makes it so. Yet barely two months ago nature turned the other way and put it all underwater. Nature is perfectly neutral. It has its good and its bad. Then it clicks. And people are the same. Humans are only animals, we just evolved more highly than those around us; high enough to forget we were animals and start questioning things like right and wrong, good and bad.

The cello in my head is peaking as I move back up the hill into the forest, continuing to take photos as I make my way home. Speaking of neutrality, 7:30 starts again tonight.

“Wait, that is the punchline?” You now ask. All this was just leading up to the fact that I decided the world is not a bad place but rather a purely neutral place? Yes. But at least you got to look at some nice photos while you read. I guess Robert Smith was right all along, and yes, the birds definitely sung.

The photos are the ones I took on my walk. All of them have been edited in iPhoto.

UPDATE:
The link for an example of unpleasant people in western Sydney was formerly a Lateline report about the protests against the construction of a Mosque in Camden. A friend who formerly lived there has advised me that Camden was not an accurate example of what I was trying to describe, suggesting instead a link to information on the Macquarie Fields riot. I've updated the link accordingly.

I've also added a link to the replay of the Zoë Keating concert, which you can stream at your leisure. Thanks to @Q2music on Twitter for sending me the link to that. And of course for hosting and streaming the concert in the first place.

Storm Season 2010/11 - Storm 3 Review

2011-02-21T23:39:00.002+11:00

Warning: This article contains coarse language.

It all began late last night as I went to bed with the fan on and no doona over me. This has only happened 3 this summer and did not happen at all last summer, I just do not sleep with the fan on. But it was so hot last night that I had to. I awoke at 5am local time this morning to turn off the fan and by the time I woke up again hours later it was already too hot to sleep.

There was some contention about what temperature it got to in Brisbane today. I’ve heard reports that it got to nearly 39 degrees. I find that very hard to believe. It was never hotter than 35 in my house, it was cooler outside and according to the Our Brisbane website during the heat of the day it wasn’t even 34 in the city.

It became obvious in the early afternoon that all would be relieved later when a severe thunderstorm struck at about 3pm local time (ok, all times should be local for Brisbane so I’ll stop specifying, but if you see a time that looks to be wrong it is probably just I forgot to convert it back from daylight saving). Which we should all have seen coming because I had to be at the doctor at 3:30pm.

I set off at about 3pm, under an increasingly dark sky and an eery calm that I didn’t immediately recognize as the calm before the storm but probably should have. As I turned off the main road and down a forest park the sky became suddenly much darker (not just because I was suddenly surrounded by trees) and drops of rain began to fall. I reached the bottom of the hill and turned out to the road to the surgery when suddenly a strike of lightning, fairly low in the cloud although only within the cloud, struck immediately above me. It was one of those times where you react much faster than you’d believe because in only a split second I managed to duck and look up in time to see the spark above me. The thunder was, of course, deafening and immediate and elicited a response along the adults only line of “AGSHITMAFUCK!” followed by a stumble, trembling walk out from the trees and sprint the rest of the way to the surgery, spurred on by the new smell of ionized air.

Upon arriving at the surgery the receptionist asked if I had been under the strike. I then sat down and attempted to tweet that I was ok, but was shaking too much to use my phone so managed the hugely intelligent “Aefjrjdbdxhdhdbcgh”. Then I remembered that I wasn’t actually supposed to use my phone inside the surgery so I stepped outside. The sky was now black in areas, it was so dark that you would easily have mistaken it for half an hour after sunset. The rain was now pouring down, although the strength of the wind was such that “pouring” maybe isn’t the best adjective. I tweeted “Almost got hit by lightning. Here safe now, though a little shocked.” then turned my phone off. Yeah shocked wasn’t the best choice of words perhaps.

Skip to coming out of the doctor’s and the time was now about 3:50pm or so. The sky was considerably lighter though still dark, still nowhere near the sort of light you’d expect on even just an overcast day. The rain was unabated and the wind was much the same. Worse though was the lightning, consistent and close. I was stranded at the doctor’s until the storm passed and I ended up staying there for about 40 minutes, watching the storm, showing the latest radar image to others trying to make an escape, buying spinach and the like. In that time there were enough close lightning strikes that the smell of ionized air was undying and I was starting to feel nauseas. Shortly before 4:30pm the rain had lightened enough that you could walk through it, though the lightning was still more abundant than I was ready to tackle.

With the nauseating stench of lightning and a second wave of storm looming I decided to make a run for it. In getting home I first discovered the ornamental brooke through the neighbouring estate had risen about 2 metres and broken its banks. The forest path I walked down earlier, which is on a steep hill, was now a waterfall with half an inch to an inch of rushing water coming down it all the way to the top. I made as stabler escape up the path as I could, before reaching a fallen tree at the top. Once across the main road again I discovered that the park on the way home was also again a flowing watercourse, with two modest but inconvenient streams running from various storm water outlets and into the local creek.

Finally I arrived home, so much manlier for having sprinted home in a storm while carrying a bag of frozen spinach. Then the wait began for the second wave…

The rain began to intensify again from about 6ish local time? Ok, I’ve got no idea but it was at about 6:30pm local time that I was outside admiring the thick of it from my usual storm viewing platform. It was the time when sunset would have been had we not been covered by black clouds, though as we were covered by black clouds the whole area was as dark as you’d expect hours later than it was. The storm continued like this, too loud to speak while outside, for about 20 minutes or so, the wind back up, the lightning back too so I was unprepared to turn my power back on and was operating from my phone. It was not long after 6:40pm or so that I looked out over the yard and could not see land, as the whole yard was again under no less than an inch of water at its shallowest. Well thank goodness the garden got watered earlier in the day.

I wasn’t home for the first wave, so these stats come courtesy of Dad who went and checked everything.

Final Statistics:
Wind: yes
Rain: yes
Lightning: yes
Hail: no
Blackout: no
House damage: no
Car damage: no
Human damage: no

Side yard: flooded
Car-tracks: flooded
Breezeway 1: flooded
Breezeway 2: flooded
Front Yard: flooded
Carport: flooded
Inside the house: dry

Apparently a tree came down on the roof of the people across the road, and ominous looking lights emitting from the cracks between tiles suggest they took some damage there, so not so good there. That first strike of lightning was pretty frightening at the time, and just as well it was cloud to cloud and not cloud to ground or else I might have been seeing the doctor about serious burns. As it happened though it was good to have a good strong thunderstorm, a good long thunderstorm, in a season that has suffered from so many other much more significant weather events (you might have heard but Brisbane got a bit of rain last month).

I will say thank you everyone on Twitter who exclaimed they hoped I was alright after tweeting that I nearly got hit. You guys do all know that in the event I was struck by lightning I would call the ambulance first and tweet second right? I mean, I love you but not that much. :-)

I’ll take points off for property damage others incurred but really I’m fine to have been scared and stranded; all just part of the experience.

Brisbane storm 21st February 2011:
8/10

You may have noticed I haven’t blogged all the storms this season. Some of those storms either didn’t hit my part of town or I was out, but I missed one beauty in particular because during and following the floods we were housing refugees and so my capacity to storm watching was lowered a bit.

Triple J Hottest 100 2010

2011-01-25T19:11:00.003+11:00

It's that time again where I need to put in my votes and predictions and make them available for the whole world to mock. And mock you all shall as despite being a student of the media I have listened to so little Triple J over the last year that if I have never heard the number 2 song I will not be completely surprised.

So my votes:

ABC News Theme - Pendulum
Bigger Than The Money - Clare Bowditch & The New Slang
Big Jet Plane - Angus & Julia Stone
Devil’s Spoke - Laura Marling
Addicted - Bliss ‘n’ Eso
Children Of The Grounds - Midlake
Watercolour - Pendulum
Doubt - Delphic
Barbra Streisand - Duck Sauce
Lights - Interpol

Yes, surprising I didn't vote for all 13 Clare Bowditch songs, which my Tweets from the last year might have suggested I would, despite it being illegal. The only "controversial" in my own mind song I voted for was Watercolour - Pendulum. It was a toss up between Watercolour and Witchcraft and I put Witchcraft on my Notable Songs of 2010 list so I voted for the other one.

My predictions:
1. Fuck You - Cee Lo Green
2. Big Jet Plane - Angus & Julia Stone
3. Rock It - Little Red
4. We No Speak Americano - Yolanda Be Cool & DCup
5. Wild At Heart - Birds of Tokyo
6. Barbra Streisand - Duck Sauce
7. ABC News Theme - Pendulum
8. Dance The Way I Feel - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool
9. Addicted - Bliss 'n' Eso
10. Solitude Is Bliss - Tame Impala

I will warn you all again before you try and mimic my list, I really don't know what will get in the top 10. In fact I've never even heard Rock It - Little Red, I only put it on the list because everyone else did.

In the absence of any predictions then I will present some Hottest 100 trivia for you all:

Some songs and artists that you wouldn't expect to be "Triple J songs" can get in. For example, Kylie Minogue and Madonna have both been in Hottest 100s twice.

Sometimes a song or songs will get into a Hottest 100 despite not receiving any air play on Triple J the previous year. Last time this happened it was in 2004 when Vertigo - U2 was voted to no. 38.

At the same time though, some songs manage to get into two annual Hottest 100s, despite this being theoretically impossible. Such songs include:
I Alone – Live
Mutha Fucker On A Motocycle – Machine Gun Felatio
Naked Eye – Luscious Jackson
No Leaf Clover – Metallica
Thank You (For Loving Me At My Worst) – The Whitlams
You Give Me Something – Jamiroquai

Then there is of course Knights Of Cydonia which made it to no. 1 in 2007 despite being released in 2006. (Single release date was 27th November 2006, album release date was 11th July 2006.)

Two songs have made it into the same Hottest 100 by different artists. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand was no. 1 in 2004, while the Scissor Sisters cover of the song was no. 44.
Harpoon - Jebediah reached no. 7 in 1998 while its b-side twin by Something For Kate was no. 85.

So, now we just have to wait a bit more than 16 hours and the countdown begins. Onwards!

Won't Somebody Think Of The Cows

2011-01-23T20:15:00.000+11:00

In an article published in today’s Sun-Herald, accessible at the Sydney Morning Herald online, the potential negative impact of Coles’s “no added hormones” campaign is outlined.

I’d suggest you read the article but basically Coles has launched a campaign promoting beef that doesn’t contain growth hormones, and critics have said this is bad because people will start thinking growth hormones are bad and will stop eating meat that uses growth hormones. It states that despite a ban in Europe, neither the World Health Organisation or the Department of Health has found any negative health impacts in humans for eating meat grown on these added hormones.

Like I said, you should read the article.

The problem that nobody in the article raises is the other negative impacts of animals raised on growth hormones for meat production. The article is heavy on the economic impacts the campaign could have, and on the environmental impacts it could have, but nobody is thinking of the animals in this. Oh yes, won’t somebody please think of the cows!

Apparently we need to have animals raised on growth hormones because raising enough animals to feed everyone with normal animals would be costly for farmers and consumers, while the damage of all those extra animals on the environment would be considerable.

What we should be doing is scrapping the farming of animals raised on growth hormones and having all natural meat, and instead of then raising more animals we just all eat less meat.

If that seems way too hard for you how about eating more alternative meat, such as kangaroos, which have far less impact on the environment than cows or sheep which were never supposed to live on this continent.

So long as we keep eating enough lamb to keep Sam Kekovich happy, it’s all good.

Notable Songs of 2010

2010-12-31T18:55:00.003+11:00

The Notable Songs of 2010 list. Unlike last year's ridiculous blowout this year's list only goes for a bit over 4 hours 20 minutes. There are some awards at the end of the list.

The playlist starts with the Song of the Year for 2010 and then continues in a flowing order, much like a rage playlist without videos. Approximate time in marked every half hour.

0:00 Bigger Than The Money - CLARE BOWDITCH AND THE NEW SLANG
Bull Riff - STILL FLYIN’
Boy Lilikoi - JóNSI
Time To Wander - GYPSY & THE CAT
I’ll Get To You - SEJA
You’ve Changed - SIA
Stop And Stare - FENECH-SOLER
0:30 Way Back Home - BAG RAIDERS
Buffer - SEFIROS
Floating On A Cloud - FINAL LIGHT
Datascroller - APPARATJIK
Cold War - JANELLE MONáE
Dance The Way I Feel - OU EST LE SWIMMING POOL
I Feel Better - HOT CHIP
Break My Soul - HYBRID
1:00 Fur Lined - HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS
Witchcraft - PENDULUM
ABC News Theme - PENDULUM
Barbra Streisand - DUCK SAUCE
We No Speak Americano - YOLANDA BE COOL & DCUP
Doubt - DELPHIC
1:30 Resurrection (Penguin Prison Remix) - THE TEMPER TRAP
Hold On My Heart (Presets’ Remix) - SARAH BLASKO
I Need A Dollar - ALOE BLACC
MoneyGrabber - FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS
Falling - THE CAT EMPIRE
Do Anything Go Anywhere - THE PUBLIC OPINION AFRO ORCHESTRA
2:00 Put It On Wax - OZI BATLA
Addicted - BLISS ‘N’ ESO
Fuck You - CEE LO GREEN
Nothing To Lose - 360
Our Song - HORRORSHOW & SETH SENTRY
Paper Airplane - BUCK 65
Optimist - ZOë KEATING
Big Jet Plane - ANGUS & JULIA STONE
2:30 Waltz Of The Frog Prince - ATOMIC SKUNK
On The Gaudy Side Of Town - GAYNGS
Downtrodden - MELATONIN
Beyonder - GOLDEN DEATH MUSIC
Children Of The Grounds - MIDLAKE
Generator 2nd Floor - FREELANCE WHALES
3:00 Fall At Your Feet - BOY & BEAR
Devil’s Spoke - LAURA MARLING
Revolution - JOHN BUTLER TRIO
There’s Nothing In The Water We Can’t Fight - CLOUD CONTROL
Solitude Is Bliss - TAME IMPALA
Answer To Yourself - THE SOFT PACK
As Far As You’re Concerned - LAST DINOSAURS
Let’s Go Surfing - THE DRUMS
3:30 Undercover Martyn - TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB
Instead Of Me - THE RED CRAYON ARISTOCRAT CLUB
Everyone Wins - RINGO STARR
Coming Around - HUNGRY KIDS OF HUNGARY
iFly - BALL PARK MUSIC
When You Walk In The Room - FYFE DANGERFIELD
Madder Red - YEASAYER
Falling Away - BIG SCARY
4:00 Catcher In The Rye - CABINS
Lights - INTERPOL
Wild At Heart - BIRDS OF TOKYO
Reaction - DEAD LETTER CIRCUS
On The Rooftop With Quasimodo - APOCALYPTICA

Song of the Year: Bigger Than The Money - Clare Bowditch and The New Slang
Album of the Year: Modern Day Addiction - Clare Bowditch and The New Slang
Australian Song of the Year: ABC News Theme - Pendulum
Video of the Year: We Used To Wait - Arcade Fire

Storm Season 2010/11 - Storm 2 Review + Bonus

2010-12-16T16:35:00.003+11:00

The weather for me this last week has been awesome, let me just tell you. It was rainy and miserable in Brisbane but then I left on a family holiday to Sydney, where it was all sunny. The day the clouds rolled into Sydney we flew back to Brisbane just as they left and we had sun up here. Although no storm here yesterday, there was a storm hit Redlands to cool things off for us, then I awoke this morning to another fine day.

With Brisbane being the land of the 3 O’Clock storm and it being fine in every direction as far as I could tell, it was a bit surprising for me to have the following exchange of words with my father at about 11:20am local time (it was about then anyway).

Dad: I don’t think Stanthorpe is there any more.
Me: But it’s only… *looks at clock*
Dad: Exactly.

And from there the morning turned into afternoon, we started to watch that stupid ball sport in Perth (but the less said about that the better), I played TF2 and got a pretty awesome run as Soldier on 2Fort, then it was time to have a late lunch, preparation for which was held under lights because it was now so dark inside the house that you couldn’t do much without them.

While this was happening I opened the radar and the storm warning was no longer for Stanthorpe and northern New South Wales, but instead for 7 (yes, seven) storm cells moving across various parts of South East Queensland. I made lunch as we waited for the unmissable storm to come up from the south west.

I returned to check Twitter and on the radar noticed a most peculiar thing, another storm coming from this time the north west was forming over us at an alarmingly rapid rate. “This isn’t the storm we’re waiting for, this is another storm coming from the other direction!” I called, running through the house to get maximum attention, much like a toddler.

We had just enough time to disconnect computers from their power sources, chain up my bike in a more secure position, finish my lunch and then the storm hit.

The wind was swirling dramatically as the cells approached collision point, so a double round of window closures was necessary, a round in which the bathroom unfortunately missed out until quite a bit later but that doesn’t really matter, the room is designed to be waterproof anyway :-/ and then back out to watch it. There was hail falling constantly, not very large stones, but plenty of them and the neighbours’ yard was quickly becoming green and white speckled. The road also was taking on quite an amount of hail, as was our house. The hail lessened its intensity as the storm continued, but it never stopped from its start with the storm at 1:10pm until 1:35pm. I cannot remember the last time we had hail for as long even if its size was less then incredible.

The wind and rain had by now picked up an enormous amount and there was no place where one could stand without becoming wet. Furniture was re-arranged outside to minimize water damage but it could not be prevented entirely (though when I say damage I mean being wet and nothing permanent). It was amazing that the hail still around at this point didn’t do any damage, as the wind that strong could easily have carried the ice into any number of glass windows.

The lightning was so close and strong too that there was constant and deafening thunder. It was difficult to see through the strong wind and rain to the actual sky to oberserve the lightning, but it was definitely there. Even from several meters inside the garage it could be seen sometimes.

The rain continued and continued, with only a brief pause where we figured (having no internet access) that the storm changed from one cell to another. The yard was now taking on more water than it could handle. The water kept flowing from one yard to another, from the high end to the low end, and no area of the yard remained above water. The only recent comparable event was the flooding in February, but this was worse than that. If the water in the upper side yard rose much higher it would be level with the garage and entertainment area. Not that it would matter greatly, as the amount of wind and rain had already started flooding the entertainment area.

The storm finally died down enough to declare it over some time after 2:20pm. Possible some time much after 2:20pm, I can’t remember exactly. It was well over by the time I started writing this at a few minutes to three though.

Final Statistics:
Wind: yes
Rain: yes
Lightning: yes
Hail: yes
Blackout: no
House damage: no
Car damage: no
Human damage: no

Side yard: flooded
Car-tracks: flooded
Breezeway 1: flooded
Breezeway 2: flooded
Front Yard: flooded
Carport: flooded
Inside the house: dry

Some notes: we did not suffer from a blackout, however the friends we are dining with tonight did in their nearby suburb. The house remained dry inside except for the bathroom which, as I said, is waterproof and dried well before the storm ended, once we remember to shut its window. Interestingly the kitchen window, which has the same sized eve and is on the same side of the house, remained open the whole time and no water got in.

According to Twitter there were over 52 000 reported power outages, over 13 000 strikes of lightning over Brisbane during the storm. And public transport is a complete mess, as usual, but they have an excuse this time. Oddly at 2:10pm, when most of the grunt has gone out of the storm, the postie rode past and delivered our mail, so while Translink and Energex might have been crippled through the storm, Australia Post continued unharmed. Kudos to that postie. After the storm the local turkey population came by to inspect the damage. A drenched turkey is hilarious, they look even sillier than normal.

The only damage we sustained was couple of tree branches down, the vegie garden has possibly lost its most recent crop but only time will tell. The neighbours appear to have a tree down as well as damage to their trampoline and washing line. Nobody around seems to have taken any huge damage so far as I can see. The weather radar has dropped a few loops though, so maybe it got hit.

All in all this is the best storm that we’ve had in possibly as decade. If only it weren’t losing some points for damage…

Brisbane storm 16th December 2010:
9.5/10

Are you looking for the perfect soundtrack for this storm season? Well I’ve found that the One Cello x 16 EP by Zoë Keating is ideal. While the EP starts with Exurgency, an energetic piece that matches the dark grey clouds rolling past, the darkening and the wind and the electric atmosphere, the EP settles down as the storm concludes, becoming more peaceful until eventually ending with Coda, a calming ambient drone as the storm disappears into the distance.

The music is all Zoë Keating’s own live cello playing, digitally looped and layered as she plays to create rich and full textured sounds. While the music is not your conventional pop/rock sort of thing, it is undeniably beautiful and has melodies you can fall in love with as much as any alternative chart topper. Think of it as classical music for electronic fans, electronic music for classical fans and guaranteed art cred for anyone at all.

One Cello x 16 - Zoë Keating:
7/10

Australian Song of the Year 2010

2010-11-06T18:20:00.002+11:00

Being November again already there are two things that must happen. The first is men everywhere start growing facial hair whether it looks good or not, the second is everyone should listen to Australian music. It being Aus Music Month.

I haven’t been listening to the radio this year, an excuse you are certainly going to hear a lot more of as it comes to list making season and my annual failure to successfully guess the top 10 of the Hottest 100, so I was a little stuck this year on what the Australian Song of the Year might be. It was only about a week ago it it struck me that there was a song so obvious I needn’t look any further.

That song was of course the ABC News Theme as remixed by Pendulum.

I’m not sure exactly when this song first aired, I know I missed it. The first I heard of the song was thanks to Twitter when @612Brisbane started tweeting about it, following a presenter in Rockhampton (from memory) hearing a young driver in a car with a hotted up stereo driving passed with this song blaring (if I’m remembering right). Within a few hours I’d not only downloaded the song but so had my Dad.

If you haven’t heard the song it is pretty easy to work out: a drum & bass remix of the ABC News Theme. If you haven’t heard the ABC News Theme you are unAustralian, end of story.

I can’t really think of any song more deserving than this one despite my earlier fretting. In the same year ABC 24 was launched it is especially appropriate too. The fact that ABC 24 didn’t launch to the tune of this song is of great disappointment to me and many others though.

Am I going to ask you all to vote for this in the Hottest 100? Absolutely I am. Remember, the Media Watch theme song received enough votes to reach No. 7 in 2004, only missing out on officially taking the position because it wasn’t actually eligible. Salmonhater reached No. 26 in 2002 and they were a made-up band. There is a precedent for this song to do well, all it needs is the votes.

Mark Scott, if you’re reading, this song to end the 7pm News please. Pendulum, if you’re reading, well done, thank you and have you considered the Lateline theme :-)?

Sadly the ABC News Theme is not nominated for any ARIA awards (Warning: link has auto-play music), but Immersion (the album described as “doesn’t have the ABC News Theme on it though” by the girl who works at JB Hifi) is nominated for best dance release. The ARIA awards are on this Sunday.

As for my awards, while there is a separate title for Australian Song of the Year and Song of the Year, don’t rule out the Song of the Year also being Australian…

Cameron Speaks Out Against Zombies, Literally Zombies

2010-10-26T12:57:00.002+11:00

Tim Lester wrote an article in the Brisbane Times today about Labor Senator Doug Cameron speaking out against the government's internal processes. The article is news, it reads like you'd expect news to, but there were just a few corrections that I felt needed to be made, so below is the story complete with my corrections. None of my corrections are particularly clever, but do make gratuitous mention of the undead. You should read the originally article, which can be found here.

Cameron speaks out against 'zombies' and party culture
Original article by Tim Lester for brisbanetimes.com.au
October 26, 2010

The Labor senator Doug Cameron has ramped up his attack on his own party, suggesting the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, herself is prolonging rules that stifle public debate and turn government MPs into 'zombies'.

The former union leader turned NSW senator has also warned of the potential for a fight at the next ALP conference as his colleagues rise up against this systematic infection. "There will be a huge debate at the next national conference," he said.

Senator Cameron is a co-convener of Labor's Human faction.

Yesterday he described serving in the Labor government as "literally having a lobotomy. You can't speak your mind. You can't think about some issue because they are all off the agenda."

The senator calls the party's position on undead assimilation, which is shared by the opposition, ''bizarre''.

(Image: The Coalition has been supporting undead assimilation for years. Source: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/member.asp?electorate=Berowra)

"Governments and political parties of the left should not be infecting people with a cerebral degenerative virus that affects how they run their lives," he said.

Ms Gillard quickly ruled out any policy change on the issue.

"The party's polices and platform are that the Undead Act should stay in its current form with parliament being a place for humans and the undead alike."

Ms Gillard also defended Labor's rules that impose party solidarity on its MPs and senators.

"I want our caucus to be a place of debate, of ideas generation. I want that to happen in caucus committees and in caucus itself," she said.

"The way the team works is we process those thoughtful MPs internally and work things through, through our own processes."

After hearing his leader's comments, Senator Cameron hit back, having to be restrained by police and having his lead pipe confiscated by security.

"I think that typifies what I'm saying," he said.

"This is the culture of the party kicking in … not the happy dancing and chatting with friends culture of a party, more the waking up in a pool of your own vomit in the morning culture of a party."

Asked whether the ''political lobotomy'' Labor MPs experienced under Kevin Rudd has continued with Julia Gillard in charge, he answered, "Yes, and that's why I've been bringing my chainsaw to work since the election."

His comments are unlikely to stir debate at a caucus meeting planned for this morning, with his colleagues just groaning compliantly and lurching passed the press gathering when approached for comment.

The zombie apocalypse within the ALP is fictional. For what is actually happening in federal politics, read Tim Lester's article.

Storm Season 2010/11 - Storm 1 Review

2010-10-24T22:45:00.003+11:00

Before I start, if you read my last post you’ll know that I’m on daylight saving, meaning that while I’m geographically still in my usual little part of Brisbane, I’m operating in a different time zone. I’ll attempt to use all local times (GMT +10) for these reviews, but you’ll have to forgive me if I get a little confused and put Sydney times occasionally.

This storm season was supposed to be a good one. The most wild one we’ve had in a while. So it has been extremely disappointing so far, with not a single storm actually hitting us and it already 24 days into storm season. Maybe I should have expected a late start seeing as Winter somehow failed to notice it was supposed to be over 3 months ago. The weather has been very good for the last couple of days, clear skies, warm days, cool breezes. It has generally been extremely frustrating that I’m trapped inside doing study.

Today we were all set to get a storm, with a big, grey but hardly ominous cloud coming over at about lunch time, which eventuated into nothing. At the same time a storm warning was issued for Central Queensland, but nothing for South East Queensland.

At about 4pm we all sat down to watch the Korean Grand Prix, an event suffering from torrential downpour which delayed the start of the race and was temporarily red flagged. At the same time as we watched live pictures of the Asian weather, a storm warning was issued for South East Queensland and vast areas of gold and red moved across the western radar, a wall of red moving east from Toowoomba with another larger blob containing bits of black moving over northern New South Wales. Over the course of the Grand Prix we watched as this storm moved closer towards us, and typically split in the middle and missed us.

24 days into storm season and still nothing.

I would have gone to bed, it being 9:30pm DST, but for some reason I didn’t, like there was something I didn’t know about convincing me to stay up. Call it not being tired, call it fate, call it whatever you want, I stayed up and listened to Coldplay instead (10 years since Parachutes was released can you believe it?). I went to the toilet and didn’t have my watch on but I guess the time would have been about 8:45pm when the first serious thunder came. Oh great, I would have to go out and watch it struggle to precipitate for 20 minutes while a bit of thunder dodged us so I could review it. I wanted to go to bed.

At 8:50pm though, I headed outside and while the lightning was fairly sparse, the rain picked up considerably. A trip to the radar to see if this was really worth watching suggested a bit of yellow was coming our way, and it did, oh boy it did. The beginnings were disappointing, the paperbark tree providing enough cover that the car tracks weren’t even wet never mind flooded. But the rain just got heavier and heavier and eventually the car tracks were wet, the breeze way was wet and the stairs were being rained on. It was still nothing special but it was getting there.

More lightning came, getting closer and more frequent, nothing to write home about but it was something. The rain kept coming and although there wasn’t much by way of wind (aside from the wind that obviously was moving the storm) there was enough wind and rain that the motion sensor lights on the house opposite came on no less than three times during the storm. As the rain fell, creating a river of water on the road flowing down the hill I began to smile at last. Yeah, storm season at last. It took it’s damn time.

At about 9:10pm I went out and started taking photos, none of which were really great (the one above of the paperbark was alright though). The storm probably kept up until about 9:15pm because at 9:20pm I was inside and starting to write this.

Oddly enough, the severe storm warning was cancelled by the BoM at 8:25pm. There is still a large green and gold cloud looming on the radar towards us, and the lightning and thunder has not died down even though the rain has, but I’m willing to call the storm itself over.

Final Statistics:
Wind: yes
Rain: yes
Lightning: yes
Hail: no
Blackout: no
House damage: no
Car damage: no
Human damage: no

Side yard: flooded
Car-tracks: wet
Breezeway 1: wet
Breezeway 2: wet
Front Yard: wet
Carport: dry
Inside the house: dry

Had the storm in the afternoon not split and hit us then this would be a whole other story. A story of joy and excitement. It is not, instead it is a story of disappointment being overcome with a sense of positive consolation as the storm we did get became something notable. I was for the first half of this storm reluctant to even pay attention, never mind do a proper review of it because really it didn’t deserve that. In the end it does. Not a great storm, not a great start to the season, but hopefully now the season has started we might see something more substantial. In the mean time, this storm proved to be a delightful entrée.

Brisbane storm 24th October 2010:
6/10

From The Shotgun II + Nice Things

2010-10-21T23:28:00.000+11:00

I'm not going to italicize the bits that I'm not quoting this time around so good luck reading the whole thing. Not just stuff from the Shotgun this time either, I've written a whole lot of nice things at the end too, because saying nice things is nice and we should all do it far more often. But one thing I’m not going to be nice about is my stove.

I know you aren’t supposed to turn the stove on and then leave the room because it is a fire safety issue but I do it all the time. I’m doing it right now in fact, my room where this computer is being at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen. Still, I refuse to stop what I’m doing for over half an hour so I can stand over a pot of water that isn’t boiling.

This isn’t a case of being able to leave the room and come back in time for the water to boil; with this stove I could leave the state, meet a nice girl, move in together in another house, get married, start a family, raise kids until they are old enough to start cooking and then bring them back here to the kitchen and get them to cook the pasta, after all it should only have a few minutes longer to get up to boiling point by then.

The oven however is much better than the one it replaced so you take the good with the bad I suppose. And speaking of bad things, I recently decided that I’m quite funny (actually i’ve thought this for some time and everyone I’ve ever met trying to convince me otherwise has not deterred me), so I’ve started telling jokes:

A group of science students went into the lab one day to find a test awaiting them. For the test two bundles of glue were on a table, each with 7 glues in them. The glues were numbered from 1 - 14 and the bundles A and B. The science students had to, without reading the ingredients, determine which bundle contained the glue that contained wheat.

Most of the class spent an hour testing the glues in various experiments they had learned through the term, but one student just sat out smiling smugly. At the end of the class the teacher came in and asked this student why he was not participating.

“I already know the answer of cause! It was so easy.” said the student.

The teacher looked puzzled and said “but how?”

“Simple. The wheat must be in bundle B because bundle B contains glue ten.”

I know, a joke so bad that you’d need to be on drugs to get it, right? Well you just happen to be in luck:

A group of kids found a crop of marijuana on the way home from school one day. When they got home they decided to dry it out and roll it into cigarettes.

After they had smoked almost all of the dried weed a law enforcement officer found them using the drug. The kids were taken to the police station and charged with drug use and sentenced to death.

The next day the kids were taken to a square in town where rocks were thrown at them until they died, as per their sentence.

The moral of the story is if you smoke marijuana you’ll get stoned.

But life is not all about jokes, there is serious business in there as well. Specifically there are assignment to be written. Assignment that require research, but there is no research more frustrating than trying to find something you know is true but need someone to confirm for you to reference, but nobody is forthcoming.

I’ve recently been writing an assignment on the ABC, and as part of it there was a section I wrote about the ABC and commercials.

A few years ago the Bratz dolls put out a music video, which was shown on Video Hits and a couple of times on rage. I remember it being shown on rage and I remember it then not being shown on rage any more after it was banned by the ABC for breaching editorial policy as it was deemed to be too advertorial.

Wikipedia, in its article on rage, also describes this happening. Wikipedia does not cite any source for this information though. I know that Wikipedia is right because I remember it happening, but I can’t find any source that says this other than Wikipedia, Wikipedia doesn’t cite a source and I can’t use Wikipedia as a source for an assignment.

As an aside from academic problems though, another much more interesting memory of rage I have is from 2006 when the video for Black Fingernails Red Wine was released. It was released and rage showed it between 10am and 11am on Saturday mornings for over a month before the they were forced to stop because when the video went through the classification board it was given an M rating.

rage now only shows the alternative video (which features the band performing in a basement or something like that) in G rated timeslots now, with the real video only shown at night.

I know I’ve been hitting the segues kind of hard tonight, and speaking of segues you might remember at about this time last year (a year exactly on Saturday actually) I posted something called ‘Run Everywhere’. It was this crazy idea that instead of walking, we should run everywhere and how I was going to try it. I stand by that idea although I do far more walking than I do running these days, and far more sitting at a desk in front of a computer than either. This year so far I’ve not had one of these crazy ideas though, right? Wrong!

You’ll notice another thing I haven’t written about so far is my rant about Queensland being a backwards out of touch uncivilization full of barbarians that don’t know how to change a clock. Well I kind of have been saying that on Twitter, but no more because you see I am on daylight saving.

So much of what I do these days is either self-reliant or based in Sydney that there is a more or less even split in my interests between what is happening in the +10 timezone and the +11 timezone, and so being a strong advocate for daylight saving I decided to jump and leave the rest of the state behind.

So I’m now on daylight saving, despite everyone and everything around me not being on daylight saving. I’ll post a review of how my lonely little trial went at the end of the summer, until then it may interest you to know that the reason we don’t have a real trial in Queensland is because 64% of people want it, and according to the State government 64% is a minority. So not only can Queenslanders not change a clock, they can’t count either.

But I’m supposed to be saying nice things, not bagging out a whole state.

Some incredibly intelligent, altruistic and handsome person once said that you should always write your thank yous when you are in a good mood because then you’ll thank more people, even ones who maybe don’t deserve it so much, and thanking people is a good thing and should be done more often. Well that egotistical prick is right, and in the last month or so I’ve had a pretty good time and there are some people I’d like to thank for that.

We’ll start at the Hungry Kids of Hungary concert. It was my first clubbing experience and I was by myself so it was a little uncomfortable, but the Hungry Kids put on a great show and I was ultimately glad that I struggled through the agoraphobia to the end. Unfortunately that concert was on a Thursday night and public transport doesn’t run late during the week. I ran from West End to Central station to get the train. As I ran in, very exhausted by this stage, the person on the ticket barrier asked if I was going to Ipswich and then walky-talkied the person on the platform to ensure the train didn’t leave before I was onboard. So thank you to the station staff at Central and for the train driver on the last Ipswich train for that night. You guys got me home safe and $70 richer than if I’d needed a taxi.

The next night I was out again, to #BTUB this time and so first a hello and thanks to everyone from Twitter for all being so nice and wonderful. Having walked home at 2am the previous night though I left early so I could catch the last bus home (again, timetabling not as great as it could be but it is just a suburban connection bus so running until 10:30pm is pretty good I guess). I was the only person on the bus as is usually the case when I catch it, and oddly when I got off, instead of the bus driving off it sat there until I’d walked down a block and turned onto another street. It is a common courtesy for people, when giving someone a lift home, to wait and see that they get in until they drive off, it is not something you expect from a bus driver though. I don’t live in a rough neighbourhood, I do fear being mugged when I walk home at that hour but by a dog not by a person, but thanks to that bus driver all the same, had I been mugged getting off the bus that night I would definitely have appreciated it.

Talking about bus drivers makes me want to tell my favourite bus anecdote ever. This happened over a year, maybe several years, ago but it is still good. I was just on the bus as usual and a lot of old people tend to catch this bus to do their shopping. We got to a stop and an old woman tried to get off with her shopping, so the driver parked the bus and walked the old woman home carrying her shopping. When she and her shopping were home he came back and kept going with the journey. The stop this happened as was just past the train station so nobody missed the train, and while I don’t endorse buses running late it was fantastic to witness that sort of act of generosity by the driver.

Anyway, fast forward a week to the next Friday. 8th October. This time I was headed back to the Hifi Bar for a Clare Bowditch concert. I don’t want to rub it in too much because the completely stupid laws that enforce 18+ gigs mean that my 17 year old sister who very much wanted to go didn’t get the opportunity, but that Clare Bowditch concert was the best concert I’ve ever been to. Yes, I know my goth cred has just gone out the window, but trust me I wouldn’t say The New Slang were better than The Cure if they weren’t. I’m intending to do a proper review of the concert when I review Modern Day Addiction at the end of exams, so I won’t spoil too much but it was just an amazing gig. I danced all the way back to South Bank, while I was waiting for the train, and then all the way home at the other end. I danced during the concert as well, obviously. So thank you to Clare Bowditch and The New Slang for the best concert I’ve ever been to. Thank you to Glen Richards and Little Scout who were also both amazing and made it the almost perfect night it was. Thank you to the Hifi Bar for being friendly and still letting me in even though my printer died while I tried to print my ticket.

Then it was Brisbane Wonkdrinks the night after and everyone I met there was wonderful and interesting as well, and for the second night in a row I stumbled home at 2:30am, and it occurred to me that being 18 is really awesome. Being 18 is better than being 16 and 17 put together. I would even go as far as to say being 18 is better than being 16, 17 and having a driver’s license put together, but not having a driver’s license I’m not really qualified to make that judgement.

I know that for any adults reading this the full impact of that statement will be lost, but for those of you who aren’t 18 yet, don’t worry because, barring untimely death or time fixing anomalies, you too will one day be 18 and when that time comes everything will start looking up.

Being 18 is another topic that I hope to blog about in more detail soon. February would probably be the sensible time to do that, as I’ll be turning 19 then, but seeing as I blog everything on Valve time these days you probably shouldn’t hold your breath.

Finally there is one last group of people who I'd like to thank. You. My readers. You see I'm not actually sure who all of you are. I have a statcounter built into this site so I can get all your details and such, but I can't remember my password to log in and get them. (Details like IP address, what browser, referring links and other things you don't need to worry about.) I know a small group of friends will read this, and I know that a slightly larger group of friends will read this if I post it to Twitter and Facebook, but other than that anyone could be reading. It is difficult to write when you don't know who your audience is, and sometimes I feel like I'm just pumping stuff out into the void, but if you are reading this then I'm obviously doing something right, so thank you for reading and I hope you haven't been cringing too much/ bored out of your brain with what you've read.

Good day/ night everyone.

Oh and by the way, that egotistical prick was me.

Anonymity vs Pseudonymity

2010-09-29T17:15:00.004+10:00

We don’t really need another commentator on the Grog’sgate affair, but here I am all the same.

I’m not going to talk about the ongoing battle between News Limited and bloggers, I just want to talk about blogging (or tweeting) under a pseudonym.

The problem, as I see it, is that there is a distinction between pseudonymity and anonymity that nobody is drawing properly. Grog’s Gamut was not an anonymous blogger. I am not an anonymous blogger. We might write under pseudonyms but those pseudonyms are consistent across platforms. In my case Noise Boy, or Noise Boy Artist, is the same pseudonym I use for almost everything I do online, including my music and photography.

Journalists at The Australian might want to claim the moral high ground above pseudonymous bloggers because when they write they do it under their real names. They fail to realise that their real name carries just as much weight as a blogger’s pseudonym. They build up their brand around their real name, a pseudonymous blogger builds up their brand around their pseudonym. In both cases though it isn’t the name that is important but the credibility of the writing.

The Australian might think it is in the public’s interest for me to know Grog’s Gamut’s birth name, but really I don’t need to know, I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. His real name is completely irrelevant to me, I don’t know him. My respect to Grog is based on the intelligence of his blogging and tweeting and the insight he displays in those forums. Except for the fact that it has received so much media attention I probably wouldn’t even know who you were talking about if you mentioned him by his real name.

I think it is interesting though that for blogging while working as a public servant he deserves to be exposed by The Australian, yet if he had given an anonymous tip-off to The Australian he would be treated like a hero of transparency and his anonymity would be protected by the same journalists to the full extent of the law.

I don’t hold with the idea that your name is who you are. As far as I’m concerned your name is just a word or series of words to identify you. I’ve built up a brand around the pseudonym Noise Boy, if I wanted to write anonymously I’d be better off using my real name, Samuel, which has the advantages of not being linked to any of the work or creative output I’ve done publicly, it is a common name anyway and could be anyone called Samuel, and only one person I know calls me that anyway.

What matters isn’t name, it is identity. Some people identify themselves by their legal names, other people use online pseudonyms. If someone makes an intelligent point about something, the quality of that point is not affected by how the person who raises it chooses to identify their self. That is something people need to understand if they are going to survive in the free world of online debate and opinion.

Beautiful Sharks Review

2010-09-27T23:45:00.002+10:00

Something For Kate are a band that I came to be familiar with in 2001 with the release of Echolalia. I’d heard of them before that but it wasn’t anything that had taken my fancy. Up to about 2006 I continued to like Echolalia more and more and of course there was Déjà Vu in 2003 to keep me following the band. By 2006, Echolalia was one of my favourite albums. The same year Desert Lights was released, which I promptly bough, and then decided that it was time to start collecting all their other stuff. Haste is not a fair description of my efforts there and despite having all their b-sides up until 2006 I’ve still not bought The Official Fiction, and only recently did I buy Beautiful Sharks. It is that latest addition to my library that I’m going to review.

The album’s reputation preceded it for me, and what a fine reputation it has. While everyone will of course have their own favourite albums from a band, especially when the band presents a catalogue of the calibre that Something For Kate offers, but generally it seemed to me from reading online that fans seem to like Beautiful Sharks best. Echolalia having been one of my favourite albums and Elsewhere For 8 Minutes being, in my opinion, one of the finest debut albums by any band ever, it seemed only logical for Beautiful Sharks to be their finest work, assuming it was an equal step between Elsewhere and Echolalia.

I must admit to being disappointed when I first listened to the album then. It didn’t seem obviously a transition between their 1997 work and their 2001 work (although released in 1999 it is right between the two). Instead it felt less energetic, less full. The only songs I could honestly say I’d heard were the ones whose alternative versions are found on Phantom Limbs (I had heard more than that of course I just couldn’t remember any of them) and I thought these songs would, in their original album form, be harder and more substantial. They weren’t.

Beautiful Sharks is also nine minutes shorter than Elsewhere For 8 Minutes, and with a longest song length of only 4:54 it seemed that this was far from the mature development of the first album.

I had read that Beautiful Sharks used interesting chords structures which didn’t really strike me at first; what did strike me was the strange timing, which given that I like to obnoxiously sing along to my music on even the first listen, did nothing to comfort me.

I guess Beautiful Sharks then is a grower, because while my first observations of the album, as you can see, were not all that flattering, my opinion of the album has just gone up with every listen. And I’ve been doing a lot of listening.

The album begins with Whatever you Want, a much more laid back introductory piece than Anarchitect, and far more in keeping with Echolalia’s opener Stunt Show. The lyrics are excellent as always. Something For Kate’s lyrics are probably their best feature, certainly the thing I like most about their music. Of special mention in this song is the line “yeah curiosity killed the cat, he's buried alongside every great mind we never had”.

The second track, Hallways, brings in some of the post-grunge flavour from Elsewhere For 8 Minutes. This song is the number 1 culprit in the funny timing, something which I would elaborate on further except I haven’t worked out what is actually happening yet.

The title track is third and the most notable description of this song that I can recall is “the most beautiful thing Australia has to offer the world” which was written by a fan on Last.FM. I can’t remember they’re user name or I’d attribute it to them. I wouldn’t go that far. The song is beautiful… I guess. Beauty is a very subjective thing and while there are cases that most normal people would agree to call beauty most things find their beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Or ear in this case. Yes, for lack of a better adjective this song is beautiful. I can see how some people would think it is one of the most beautiful things they’ve ever heard. I wouldn’t go that far; it is a song to cuddle your partner to, not a song to achieve world peace to, if that puts it in perspective which it probably doesn’t because that analogy was as hopeless as this song is “beautiful”. I’m sure I’ll think of what my preferred adjective for the song is one day.

While I do though, the album keeps moving along at ‘lightning pace’ to the fourth track and lead single Electricity. A fast, loud number in the same post-grunge style as Hallways and most of the album’s predecessor, Electricity features during the verse a rolling snare beat, militaristic almost in its nature. This is accompanied on guitar by a high note- low note alternating figure which doubles speed during the chorus, the ebbing being similar to that of electrical current (unless I’m horribly confused about how electricity works), which I can only assume was a deliberate and very effective style given the song’s title.

The whole album reminds me of a trip I made up to my mate’s place up the coast a few months back. I have no idea why, as it didn’t the first couple of times I listened to it, I didn’t listen to it on that trip and I haven’t listened to it up the coast at all. Maybe it was just because I felt like going to the coast while listening to it recently and now my brain’s made that link between the two a semi-permanent thing.

Big Screen Television is the song that most reminds me of up the coast, slightly appropriately but also I imagine coincidentally because my mate does have a huge TV. “Big screen television, say no more, switch it on and I'll see you in hell” opens the song, which by my interpretation is about the conflict of our time between the joys of nature and the artificial wonderland that is television. Musically it is slow and more laid back than Electricity. Laid back is a deceptive description though because there is a lot of tension in the song, whether it be by virtue of the key or the restraint on the vocals. The chorus, which is musical only and mightn’t be considered a chorus by some people, features a faster figure and drum pattern. Faster by means of more notes and not tempo increase. The song builds at the end and ends with an energetic instrumental, releasing the tension built up through the song. The instrumental begins with the final lyrics of the song, arguably the best lyrics of the album and something everyone can relate to: “send a message to the birds that sing in the trees, always awake before me and always louder than TV!”

The Astronaut is a slow, simple, sing-a-long which I feel would be best played at the end of the night while all the guests are standing arms around each other, swaying and singing loudly. This song is “beautiful” in the same way that Beautiful Sharks is “beautiful”, but in a less solitary way. That mightn’t be anything to do with the songs themselves, but The Astronaut feels like a more group like affair.

These six songs that make up the first half of the album are all very strong by themselves and their order is such that they together give an extra dimension to their collective form, the difference between an album and a collection of a dozen or so songs. The second half of the album is not as strong, carrying with it fewer songs that strike out directly and get stuck in your head. This is apparent by the lack of any singles chosen from the second half of the album. Nonetheless the songs are good and work together and without them the album would suffer.

Easy is another song still bearing some of the post-grunge feel of Something For Kate’s earlier work, but still in diluted form. The song has two large instrumental breaks, the first in the middle of the song and the second at the end. The end break has a different sound to the rest of the song and carries a mysterious quality from guitar effects and the drums being faded up.

Slowdance has a mood which fits its title. While the beats per minute might be lacking and the song starts quietly it builds up and gets quite a dramatic performance. Before Butterfly Wings bears a sonic resemblance to Whatever You Want. The song carries more energy than Slowdance and has a bright chorus which struggles to encourage singing along.

Anchorman has a strange timing which I will have to listen to a few more times before I can understand it. Something uncomfortable with missing beats appears to be happening. The feeling of unease this creates along with the opening lyrics “you've never met. someone you've never met. it's okay, it happened to someone you've never met” perfectly captures the feeling of watching the news of a disaster, with the initial worry and panic because something has happened then as the facts come in the distance of the event comes with it and you feel relief at first and then disconnection. This song reminds me of about a month ago when the bus siege happened in Manila. I watched the end of the siege live on ABC24 and there was first the horror of the siege, the dead bodies being shown live on television into my living room, but as everything turned out alright it became just another overseas incident, reported on the news along side car bombs and riots, all involving people I’ve never met, never will and in places I’ll possibly never go.

The song, by my interpretation anyway, is about that disconnection. The very next line in the song is “so you can stay, you can remain fearless”. In the second half of the song the line “the anchorman's voice guides me through the night” is repeated. There is nothing to fear, disasters unfold but they happen away, here I am safe to see the events, be told of the events thanks to the news, but never have to be involved. It is a great testament to modern news media. It could also be that I’ve horribly misinterpreted the song though.

The penultimate song on the record and my personal favourite is Back To You. The song carries the same brooding tension that Big Screen Television had so maybe I just like that tension as they’re my favourite songs on the album. For all the debating about whether “beautiful” is the appropriate adjective to describe other songs earlier on the album I can stand sure in saying that Back To You is, in my opinion, a beautiful song. Lyrically it is superb, with lines like “forever side stepping your own shadow and knowing only what you wanna know” and “with hopes like that you're gonna need help avoiding the facts”. Towards the end Paul sings “i watch her making so much noise that she thinks that she can win them over”, which reminds me of an edition of Lateline where the two guests (I can’t remember who they were but I recall disliking both of them) started arguing and just kept talking over each other, leaving Leigh Sales to sit there saying “gentlemen” over and over until they finally shut up and let her keep going with the interview. That incident is not what is described in the song, it’s just what I remember when I hear the song.

Musically it shifts through various short breaks but no chorus. The song is in ¾ time, like many Something For Kate songs are, something which has inspired me to investigate time signatures other than 4/4 in my own music. I love this song but equally I love its alternative piano version which was on Phantom Limbs. The piano version is the more beautiful of the two but carries a different feel to it, a less polished and also less tense feel. I definitely suggest you listen to the piano version if you can.

The final song, Photograph, ends the album on a nice note, relieved of all the pressure of the previous track. While the usual trick of looking at the album’s first and final lines doesn’t really work here “picked the wrong time to be looking up at the night / take a photograph” (hey that actually works pretty well), Photograph sounds like a final song. The album feels to have come full circle, not back to where it started but to the appropriate end point. Time to get off the bus now, you’ve reached your destination. It shouldn’t be necessary to praise an album for a last song that ends the album, that being what they are supposed to do, but seeing as some bands seem to have missed this point well done to Something For Kate.

The cover art for the album is something I don’t like. It doesn’t help that the iTunes art is such poor quality but even the physical print just looks boring. The multiple photos on the cover look worked well for Elsewhere For 8 Minutes which has a cover I really like, and it could have worked again this time but just didn’t in my opinion.

I thought that Echolalia would be unchallenged as my favourite Something For Kate album, though I am appreciating their other work a lot more now that I’m more familiar with it. Beautiful Sharks is really making me rethink that though. If I feel like listening to Something For Kate now I’ll usually feel like putting on Beautiful Sharks. I’ve had songs from Beautiful Sharks stuck in my head continuously over the past few months, probably from listening to them constantly, but that is a chicken-egg cycle. The album contains elements of both its 1997 and 2001 counterparts but it doesn’t sit perfectly between them on a transitional road.

A different kind of brilliance to what I was expecting, but brilliant all the same.

Beautiful Sharks - Something For Kate:
8/10

From The Shotgun I

2010-09-26T17:08:00.003+10:00

It is becoming apparent that I need to stop putting time-relevant things on Tumblr because by the time I actually come to put them somewhere else they are out of date.

All the same:

In the wake of the announcement this week that Kerry O'Brien will be retiring from 7:30 Reportland at the end of the year I feel it is appropriate to share this screenshot from my Twitter feed on the night of the election:

Kerry will be staying at the ABC next year, just leaving the 7:30 Report. No word yet on who will be the new host, although a lot of people on Twitter are giving their support to Leigh Sales. Not that, as far as I'm aware, Twitter is actually responsible for making the decision (though wouldn't it be great if they were).

Whoever wins the ticket to 7:30 Reportland though what has been bugging me in political interviews recently isn't the interviewer but immature derailing tactics used by interviewees. After Andrew Robb did it four weeks ago I finally expressed my view:

I’ve been noticing as I’ve been watching Q&A and Lateline in recent months that a more and more common tactic being employed by defensive politicians and partisan interviewees is to accuse the interviewer or panel moderator of being biased with the time they allow for answers.

This tactic is certainly not a new one, but it seems, as far as I can tell, to have increased in usage of late. It drives me nuts and I don’t think it reflects well on the interviewee.

In the textbook The Daily Miracle: An Introduction To Journalism by David Conley and Stephen Lamble, it is explained that “[a] common ploy of politicians… when confronted with an uncomfortable truth is to explode with indignant anger—thus attempting to overwhelm the question with their response.” This is also a technique used especially when the interviewer is less experienced as it deals a blow to their confidence and gives the interviewee the upper hand.

But Tony Jones nor Leigh Sales are inexperienced journalists; between them they have been working at the ABC for about 35 years, never mind the time they’ve spent working at other network. The indignant suggestion of bias may reach some of the less informed viewers of the show, but it won’t have any impact on the mindset of the interviewer.

On Lateline last night Andrew Robb got upset and demanded he be given more time to talk. I guess that was really the catalyst for me to write this. When watching the programme I thought he and his fellow guest Anthony Albanese had been given about the same amount of time to talk, but I watched it again before I wrote this and I timed how long they each spoke for.

Bear in mind my timings aren’t completely accurate (they will be out by a couple of seconds) and I couldn’t count time the guests spent talking over each other to both of them because of the way my timer works.

At the point Andrew Robb made the accusation he had spoken for 4:15, having interrupted a question asked of Albanese just once. Anthony Albanese had spoken for 5:39 and had not interrupted a question asked of Robb.

On those figures, allowing for some margin of error, Robb appears to have a valid point. But it should be noted that the time difference was equal to about one question and that question asked of Albanese was about Labor’s campaign. Albanese’s answer was predominantly spin but nobody really expected anything more.

After Robb’s accusation he proceeded to attack Labor’s campaign in an exercise that made Albanese’s seem to be made of substance. At the end of the interview Albanese had spoken for 5:47 and Robb had spoken for 6:04, with each guest interrupting the other once.

Maybe if you were watching a clock instead of the interview itself you would suggest that Andrew Robb was justified in his accusation, but in the context of the interview Albanese had not been given significantly more time to talk and in the extra time he did talk he didn’t say anything that attacked Robb or the opposition. Robb blew up at the interviewer and then raved meaningless attack at the government. There was no winner out of it but it did lower the tone of the interview.

If you are a politician and an interview isn’t going your way then there are many techniques you could use to turn it around for yourself (including honesty not that I expect a major party politician ever to use that) but blowing up at the journalist on an accusation of bias just makes things worse, keeps the interview off track and most importantly for public interviews, annoys the audience you are trying to win over.

And as Kanye West points out, Yo Andrew Robb, I’m real happy for you and Imma let you finish but Kevin Rudd had the best interview blow up of all time!

Another journalism related observation, this time while studying last semester:

In my journalism course material this week it is talking about how as journalists we should be on the look out for stories in our everyday lives, and it gives some examples. One of the examples is your friend awakes to find a 20m wide hole in their front yard and seeing as it is a mining town it suggests you ask whether mining veins run under your property.

Which is a different take because the question that first came to my mind was who is this friend doing under the table deals with to afford a property that has a front yard larger than 20m square.

Growing up poor in the suburbs strikes again.

Moving away from journalism but still asking questions:

In movies and tv shows and tv commercials you often see people, usually women, reading a book while taking a relaxing bath. I’m curious to know, do people actually read in the bath?

I wouldn’t trust myself with a book anywhere near a bath for the simple reason that it might get wet and paper and water tend not to get along so well. Also, if you found the book particularly engrossing you’d be there for quite a while, and once that water starts getting cold no quality of book is going to convince me to stay. A bed on the other hand gets warmer the longer you read.

I guess that people who do read in the bath only do so when it is a relaxing bath and not when it is a clean yourself and get out bath, but as I’m confused a bit that people read in the bath at all, does anyone go in to get clean and take a book in with them?

Does anyone think there could be a market for waterproof books, or maybe waterproof e-readers, for people who might read in the book but don’t trust paper and water together?

Just some things to think about I guess.

Finally, this was posted during the World Cup and so isn't really relevant any more but I think it is important so I'll fire it off over here anyway:

I’ve been reading up on the trading hours for the Pig and Whistle ahead of the World Cup starting this week. Pig and Whistle at Riverside will be open all night so you can see games there live. Indoorooopilly won’t be doing this, I suspect because, being a suburban venue, the government won’t let them.

Unfortunately for Riverside, the 3am lockout will still apply which means if you want to see a 4:30am game of football you need to be there by 3am. So there is an hour and a half (the length of a game of football no less) where the pub is going to be full of people who can’t leave all waiting with nothing to do but get drunk. Isn’t that the sort of situation the lockout is supposed to prevent?

Lockout fail.

(You could also bear in mind there is no public transport at that hour so everyone needs to get to the pub at midnight anyway.)

So there you have it: the first round from the Shotgun. If you missed what the Shotgun is, it is my Tumblr page where I post random little thoughts, stuff not important or developed enough for a full blog post. You can read about it here, in a post written in April when I was supposed to start posting stuff here.

Sorry if you found this post difficult to read. I know the convention is to put the quoted material (in this case the posts copied from Tumblr) in italics, but seeing as most of it is quoted I put the filler between posts in italics instead. Nobody really likes reading everything in italics do they?

Storm season start next Friday (though the BoM site reckons we're a chance at an early one on Tuesday), and according to this from the ABC, it is going to be a great one! (Though here's to hoping for spectacularity without destruction.)

If you want to leave a comment please do. Otherwise and as well: hope you have a good week.

Brain Crash

2010-09-14T12:13:00.000+10:00

What happened? Who should I vote for? Are the Greens really going to put an injecting room on every street corner? Who is this Nazi party you’ve been going on about on Twitter? Will Tony Abbott really stop the boats? WHY AREN’T YOU UPDATING YOUR BLOG?!

First the election was called and I was immediately in full politics mode. I was even dreaming about politicians, and the blog was my broadcaster as I attempted to wade through all the parties’ policies and bring them to the world in one easy location to make informed voting easier this election. Then Starcraft 2 was released and I disappeared for a bit. Then I came back more motivated than ever. Then without touching on even the larger of the minor parties I’m gone again and the election happens without my blog mission finishing. What’s more, we go through the most interesting political situation the country has faced in 70 years and I say nothing despite my previous enthusiasm for politics and then it is all resolved with still no comment. Not even an update on Starcraft.

So what happened? I’ll explain that, but also tell a cautionary tale of the importance of the work/ life balance.

What happened in that final week before the election was that I got sick. It was only a cold as far as I’m aware or concerned, but sick is sick. I’d also been slipping behind in my assessment at uni through prioritizing the election stuff and so I found myself sick, stressed and under a looming mountain of assessment. Something had to give and the blog was it.

I got better again by election day but still had a heap of uni stuff had to do, so I set out trying to get back up to speed with uni and follow the political situation even though I was no longer posting it on my blog. This was a task I thought I could manage. I hadn’t used the gaming PC in so long by this stage I’d taken parts off it to make using the laptop easier and I set out with full speed to do more work. I wasn’t doing work all day every day, there was a lot of watching TV and reading books. I spend 4 hours a day in transit to get to uni as well which was time not doing anything useful. I was however thinking about work nonstop.

It was the final week of August/ first week in September when I had to stop watching TV to get on with uni work. When I say watching TV I mean things like Media Watch and Lateline, things that are valuable to my studies, not things like The Simpsons. I was still on track to get everything finished and in on time.

The Broncos had a game against Canberra coming up on Friday and they faced the very likely scenario of failing to make the finals series for the first time in my life. I might not show it so much at times, but I am really quite a passionate league fan and I had a lot of emotional investment in that game (as people at the pub that night can attest to). It was also the day that U2 tickets went on sale and as everyone knows, you either get U2 tickets early or you don’t get them at all.

The emotional investment in getting U2 tickets and in a Brisbane 16 point win against Canberra (something I had no control over) was probably not healthy, but what really killed me was that I got the flu that week. My immune system was still red hot after fighting off a cold weeks earlier so I managed to get through the week with no more than a headache of an evening, but it did make me excessively tired and I needed to go to bed early each night when I’d otherwise be studying.

What ended up happening was that after starving my brain of thinking about anything except work, investing so much emotionally into getting U2 tickets and into Brisbane winning the football and the stress of the workload getting larger and due dates getting closer while I was too sick to keep up was that on that Friday my brain crashed. I did actually get in 2 of my 3 assignments that day, but I couldn’t concentrate on the third.

That Saturday I had severe mental block, the likes of which is supposedly a symptom of depression, though I’m confident that on this occasion it was just my brain had crashed. I spent a fair amount of time reading that day because it was all I could do. That and listening to music. I at one point thought I should play some computer games to try and kick my brain into gear but even Plants vs Zombies was too intellectually involved. I thought about watching some Lateline but loading iView was too much effort. The internet was playing up as well so I doubt it could have sustained a video stream.

Sunday was better but not by much. Getting any sort of work was a real struggle.

So that is what happened. I share this story not for pity but as a warning. People talk about the work/ life balance constantly and usually saying that we need to spend more time working (to people my age anyway). I had maintained for a long time that 100 hours of Team Fortress 2 during year 12 was necessary to keep me sane. I think I’ve proved myself right. Getting sick is always unfortunate and failing to prioritize is your own fault but thinking about nothing but work is not worth the consequences. Better to have those hours of Starcraft during the week and an assignment in one day late than full flight, a brain crash and the assignment in 4 days late.

So sorry to anyone who I disappointed by not fulfilling the obligations I set for myself in relation to the election. I hope that you were able to find other sources of information to help make your mind up before you voted.

Normal blogging will now resume to its usual irregular schedule.

Carers Alliance Policies - Election 2010

2010-08-17T16:07:00.001+10:00

Policies of the Carer’s Alliance. These policies are in depth and I’ve had to write them out myself based on, at times, whole paragraphs describing the details of the policy. For that reason I urge you to visit their website and have a look at their policies yourself.

Carers:

Federally funded network for families fulfilling carer responsibilities, to create an avenue for carers to communicate with others in the same or similar positions and reduce the mental and emotional stress on carers.
Proposition of a Regional Disability Family Network as proposed by the National Carers Coalition, including:
Each State and Territory to be provided with a recurrently funded regional service based upon the relevant Department of Human Services regional structure for all disability families caring for a person aged less than 65 years and will actively promote the rights of family carers and the rights of the people that carers support.
Regions will nominate a representative to the State Peak Disability Family Advocacy Body.
The regional networks will liaise with State Government, agencies, carers councils and disability advocacy groups to ensure that the role, rights and needs of caring families are heard and supported.
States will nominate representatives to the National Disability Family Peak Body.

Protecting Children’s Rights:

All children must have a legislated right to age appropriate assessments that ensure their physical and emotional needs are met at all time.
National global assessment of developmental, emotional and physical ability at prescribed stages of infant and early childhood.
Full assessment of the physical (including vision, hearing and dental), emotional and psychological health of the child at prescribed developmental milestones up to the age of 16 years.
Incentives attached to these mandated assessments, possibly linked into existing payments currently offered by the Family Assistance Office.
A child centered partnership between government and parents should be central to welfare policy and citizenship.
A child identified as having additional needs that child must be able to access immediate support such as early intervention services, aids, appliances, modifications, accommodations, technology and needs-based educational assistance.
Such assessments to also serve as a default child protection mechanism, lowering the need for crisis intervention.
Assessments to judge the viability of the family unit and determine whether additional support is required.
All children with special or additional needs must have a legislated right to service and equipment.
Mandated assessments of all children would give an overall view and would not only target disability but also the social, physical and psychological well being of each and every child regardless or cultural sensitivity regarding disability which can lead to delayed assessment of need.
Assessment data would provide healthcare projections for future care and equipment needs.

Education:

Support for choice in schooling with equitable funding irrespective of the educational setting with funding following the child to ensure flexibility and choice (including home schooling).
Universal Design for learning, including:
Various modes of presentation of learning materials to meet different learning styles.
Not simply dumbing down content for people with learning difficulties.
Various and flexible modes for students to express their understanding of curriculum material (rather than forcing strict assessment conditions upon everyone for example).
Questions of engagement into why a child wants to learn and how to harness that spirit of enquiry into useful learning.

Special Needs Health:

Specialist developmental disability clinics in all major teaching hospitals to provide educational and clinical practice supports for primary care physicians and speciality nurses caring for people with intellectual disabilities.
Traveling developmental specialists who can travel to regional areas which are often poorly served with such specialist services.
Adoption of a lifespan approach that recognizes the progression or consequences of specific diseases and the therapeutic interventions to assist care for people with intellectual disabilities of all ages.
Identifying associated disabilities such as epilepsy, visual disorders and cerebral palsy should be a priority.
Medical practitioners trained to respond to the often complex abilities of patients with developmental disabilities, allowing those patients to receive the same array of lifespan preventative health practices as those offered to the general population.
Use of Medicare cards with embedded medical information as well as contact details of the persons responsible to assist health professionals when a patient presents in crisis.
Intensive mental health care to be provided within the public health system with stand alone wards that can offer physical protection and targeted services that assist not only with responsive mental health outcomes but by providing ongoing support for community living.
Training of specialists in the promotion of mental health care.
Prevention of mental illness through a range of therapies and strategies.
First resort care for people with developmental disabilities should not be medication when better alternatives are available.
Incentives to encourage clinicians to undertake further studies in the field of psychiatry.

Mental Health:

12% of the health budget for mental health services.
Mental health consumers should have mandated rights to service, including:
The right to expect access to specialist medical services,
The right to the least restrictive or intrusive effective treatment,
The right to obtain treatment at an early stage of their illness in order to minimise the likelihood of involuntary admission to a treatment programme,
The right to having mental health problems or mental disorders assessed, diagnosed, treated and reviewed in accordance with professionally accepted standards,
The right to have age, gender and culturally appropriate mental health services provided in an environment which is conducive to his or her continued participation in community life,
The right to be protected from the threat of sexual harassment and abuse,
The right to a co-ordinated ongoing range of adequately resourced care, treatment and rehabilitation,
The right to have treatment appropriate to his or her health and rehabilitation needs,
The right to the protection and safety of themselves and others.
Individual support packages, allowing:
Choice of service type by the user of the services,
Portability of funding allowing choice of service provider or to pay for the care they choose to have in their own home,
Consumer controlled funding.

Aged Care:

Individualised funding for in home services and community support services, allowing:
Choice of service type by the user of the services,
Portability of funding allowing choice of service provider or to pay for the care they choose to have in their own home,
Consumer controlled funding, if that is the choice of the person with disabilities or their families/ nominated representative.
Intensive EACH packages and Home and Community Care packages should be made available as an alternative for block funded packages designed to assist the elderly to stay at home.
Flexibility for service users to manage their lives and supports around their lifestyle.
Individual support to remain at home must be made available to all ageing Australians as required.

Veterans:

Disability and mental health issues of sons and daughters of returned servicemen and women should fall under the veterans packages of both TPI and Goldcard as the health impacts of veterans’ children are more likely as a direct consequence of their parents military service.
These children should not have to wait until the death of the parent to qualify for these services.

Person Centered Funding:

Shift the model of services and support for people living with disabilities from welfare to legislated rights and entitlements.
The consumer to be at the heart of service provision.
The choice to self direct services should be available to everyone even if not everyone wants to take it up.
Those not choosing to self direct their own services should be provided with a bank of money that they control so they can move away from a provider who is failing them.
Services will become market driven.
Support for a universal insurance scheme.

These policies came from The Carers Alliance website. Some of them are copied verbatim, most of them have been paraphrased by me. I’ve not added my own bias to the ones I’ve re-written.

If you are from Carers Alliance and you’ve noticed something wrong in this post please contact me and I will not hesitate to implement any corrections.

Throughout the campaign if I find further policy details or other information from/ about Carers Alliance I will update them here and link back here in a new post making notice of the update.

Updates and More QLD Senate Independents Policies - Election 2010

2010-08-16T01:05:00.001+10:00

A kind of all in one post this time.

1. Sex Party Policy Updates.
The Sex Party have released more policies so I’ve updated their post. Again. I was leaving the major parties til last so I wouldn’t need to keep going back and updating them and now the minors are starting to do it as well. Not that this is a real problem as the Sex Party have been good at keeping me informed on Twitter as to when they release more policies and they keep their policies easy to access and in one place, so they are still well ahead of most of the other parties I’ve looked at.

2. Who are Senator Online?
Senator Online. You have probably seen them on the Senate ticket and wondered who they are. They are running with the intention of, if elected, putting every bill facing the Senate to an online poll, the result of which will determine which way they will vote. They have no pre-determined policies and have no political allegiances other than the preference deals which they are required to field to be eligible to run in the Senate (interestingly they put the 3 major parties (LNP, ALP, Green) last and in a different order for each state so it is federally balanced).

The checks they have on the online voting process are very tight as you’d imagine they would have to be, so fraudulent voting or stacked voting isn’t possible, so ruling out the possibility of interest groups hijacking the party. Possibly this could be the party’s downfall though as they won’t vote for a position the online poll failed to produce a sufficient majority view on. Certainly they deserve credit for the progressive and democratic concept on which they are running; whether you support it enough, or believe it will be successful enough to vote for is a matter I’m not going to comment on.

I would suggest everyone goes to the Senator Online website and checks them out.

3. John Pyke and Christopher Tooley - QLD Senate Independents Group F Policies
Aka Limit The Pokies. I think I read that they were going to be a party called Limit The Pokies but they couldn’t quite get enough support to form a party so instead they are running as independents, but I can’t find where I read that and it is quite likely I’m confusing them with someone else. Regardless of who they are their main policy is to limit poker machines and reduce government dependance on funding from gambling. That is the only policy I have found of theirs.

I found this information about them at this site here.

4. E-Jay Lindsay-Park and Lachlan Guerin - QLD Senate Independent Group G Policies

Opposition to underground coal gasification projects. Opposition to UCG projects over underground aquifers or near any waterways.
Increase support for Geo Thermal, Wind and Solar energies.
Stop importing unregulated foreign produce. Support Australian farmers producing high quality fresh produce to Australian standards.
Health services to be available and easily accessible for all Queenslanders, including those in rural areas.
Stronger support for school principals to manage violent, abusive and dangerous behaviour.
Support values promoted in youth groups and through Chaplaincy programmes.
All households to be able to access internet censorship software.
Closer consultation with parents in regards to school based sex education.

I’ve taken most of those policies from http://www.mysunshinecoast.com.au/business/display/e-jay-lindsay-park-independent-senate-candidate,38271,2837 and tried to work out others myself based on a values page.

5. Russel Wattie and John Dowell - QLD Senate Independent Group I Policies

Uniform road rules nationwide with only exceptions for particular areas such as Road Train areas.
Tests conducted on the safety of Wire Rope Barriers for motorcyclists.
Allow motorcyclists to lane filter to the front of traffic at lights for safety and introduction of uniform lane filtering laws nation wide.
Food security to be highest priority and placed above mining.
Government protection of small business against big business.
Support for asylum seeker intake for those with official papers only.
Road and rail infrastructure to be integrally incorporated into planning of future urban development.
More competitive pricing for renewable energies as opposed to non-renewable energies.
Support the introduction of an R18+ rating for video games.
Opposition to mandatory ISP level internet filtering.
Abortion to be an individually assessed issue with ready access to free, safe medical treatment.
Euthanasia to be available to individuals if they feel it is in their best interest.
University degrees such as Arts not to be subsidized by government. Degrees such as engineering to be subsidized by government.
Man made climate change is not real.
Opposition to an emissions trading scheme or carbon tax.
River management to be handled federally.
Support for piping water from the Ord River to the top of the Darling River.

I’ve tried to work out these policies myself based on writings here and on answers provided in a Both Kinds of Politics questionnaire here.

If you are any of the candidates whose policies appear in this post, or someone working with them in this campaign, and you’ve noticed something wrong in this post please contact me and I will not hesitate to implement any corrections.

Throughout the campaign if I find further policy details or other information from/ about any of these candidates I will update them here and link back here in a new post making notice of the update.

Thank you to Possum O'Doom (Greenglowgrrl) who wrote "Who ARE these people? Greenglowgrrl's guide to Independent Candidates for the Queensland Senate." over at Brisneyland, an excellent post where I found the links for the information I used to make this post.

Some Election News - Election 2010

2010-08-10T16:59:00.003+10:00

A couple of issues I want to address this afternoon.

The first issue being the Broadband Debate at the National Press Club. Other people will talk about who won the debate, who had the best policies, etc. I just want to remark how fantastic it was to see Scott Ludlam involved. It is about time we had a debate where the Greens had a spokesperson and given the hard work Senator Ludlam has been putting into the portfolio for the last few years I can’t really think of a better topic for it to happen in. Hopefully this is a sign of many more good things to come.

Obviously the National Press Club is going to host more important debates than commercial breakfast shows, but Sunrise had a short debate between The Sex Party and Family First earlier in the campaign. While I imagine the true reasoning behind the debate was the ratings potential behind a debate between the most conservative party in the election and the most progressive, it was good to see minor parties getting air time all the same. The video can be seen at the Sex Party’s website here.

Speaking of The Sex Party, they today announced a fairly detailed drug policy. I’ve updated the policy post I made for them to include the new information. I’d like to thank the Sex Party for notifying me of the updates via Twitter this afternoon.

And speaking of Family First although in far less flattering terms. It was my intention to post their policies today but I will not be doing so on account of I can’t actually find any. Other than their intense opposition to homosexuality the policies on their website seem to contain nothing other than meaningless rhetoric and spin. The meaningless rhetoric might be all very appealing but without any actual policy in there I have nothing to post and I feel that if I were to put my interpretations of what they mean it would be prejudiced against them and I will not forsake the integrity of my coverage here to do that. So no policies from Family First.

I stress again: I am not refusing to post Family First policies because they conflict with my own beliefs, but simply because they have not provided me with anything I feel I can post without forsaking the integrity of my election coverage. If they provide real policy details soon then I will post them, but until then they get nothing here.

Incidentally I did find their youth lack-of-policy fairly offensive. (No seriously, that video is their youth policy.)

That is all for today, more to come later. Hope your day was good. :-)

Australian Sex Party Policies - Election 2010

2010-08-09T18:40:00.003+10:00

Policies from The Australian Sex Party now. May I start by congratulating the Sex Party on having the easiest to find policy information of any party I’ve looked at so far (though this is probably not surprising for a party whose formation was initiated by online activism).

Censorship:

Create uniformity in the classification scheme across states, including a uniform X rating for non-violent erotica in all media.
Introduce an R and X rating for computer games.
Opposition to mandatory ISP based web filtering.
Opposition to retention of Australian user’s internet browsing history and emails by ISPs for at-will inspection by law enforcement agencies.
Support for strong judicial oversight over the ability of law enforcement agencies to access individual’s internet and email data.

Education:

Develop a national sex education curriculum with aims to serve as a first step in the prevention of the sexualisation of children.
Develop a national internet education scheme for parents.

Equality:

Enact national anti-discrimination laws which make it illegal to unfairly discriminate against people or companies onthe basis of job, occupation, profession or calling.
Extending jurisdiction of the Federal Discrimination Act to include political parties.
Creation of total equal rights in all legal areas, including...
Support for same sex marriage.
Overturn laws banning adults living in and visiting aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory from possessing erotic and sexual media.
Ensure the sexual rights and freedoms of people with a disability and the elderly.
Ensure the introduction of paid parental leave is fair and equitable for small businesses.
Introduce non morality-based immigration policies that allow bona-fide sex workers to work legally in Australia with aims to abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude.

Health:

Allow pregnancy abortion along the same lines as divorce law.
List Viagra, Cialis and other drugs used to treat sexual dysfunction on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Overturn restrictions on aid to overseas family planning organisations that reference abortion.
Support for legalising voluntary euthanasia.

Drugs:

Decriminalisation (not legalisation) of possession and consumption of all drugs for personal use of a quantity of 14 days worth or less.
Infractions to be treated in an administrative framework and not the criminal justice system.
Immediate cessation of use of drug sniffer dogs in public areas like streets and parks.
Legalise and regulate cannabis for specified medical uses.
Laboratory quality drug testing stations to be provided at all music festivals and similar events.
Subsidised high quality drug testing kits to be made available through pharmacies, age restricted premises and mobile distribution centres.
Legalise and increase the number of medically supervised injecting rooms.
Legalise the prescription of heroin to registered and habitual users.
Trafficking and dealing in drugs is to remain a criminal offense.
Supply of any drugs to a minor is to be a criminal offense.

Protection of Children:

Convene a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in the nation’s religious institutions.
Develop global approaches to tackle child pornography which focus on detection and apprehension of the producers of the material.

Religion/ Ethical Issues:

Ending the tax exempt status for religions.
Cessation of tax-exempt status on all byt the charitable work of religious institutions.
The public education system should be secular in nature and not provide for any religious instruction whatsoever.
An Ethics course along the lines of the current NSW trial, developed by St James Ethics Centre, to be incorporated into the national curriculum.
Supports stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research, and maintains it is a vital medical issue, not a religious issue.
Opposes a blanket ban on women wearing the burqa conditional upon it being the woman's choice.

Euthanasia:

Voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide for patients with a terminal illness and suffering severe pain to be decriminalized.
In addition to the patient's primary medical pracitioner a second and independent practitioner would be required to confirm his/ her agreement with the diagnosis and prognosis.
Information about palliative care options must be given to the patient and having been given this information the patient must confirm to the primary medical practitioner that all other options are not acceptable and that he or she wants assistance.
A period of seven days must be allowed for before assistance can be provided.

Abortion:

Uniform abortion laws across Australia.
Full decriminalisation of abortion- removal from criminal statutes.
Abortion to be treated as a medical matter not a criminal matter.
All abortion providers to have authority to prescribe Mifepristone (RU486).
Medicare funding for abortion at all stages of pregnancy.
An abortion may be performed at any time with the consent of the woman and if a medical practitioner certifies that it is appropriate under the circumstances.
People under the age of 16 may obtain an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian.
Ensure abortion is art of sex education at school.

These policies came from The Sex Party website except for the euthanasia policy which was announced in the debate with Family First on Sunrise. You can see that video here.
Some of them are copied verbatim, most of them have been paraphrased by me. I’ve not added my own bias to the ones I’ve re-written.

If you are from The Sex Party and you’ve noticed something wrong in this post please contact me and I will not hesitate to implement any corrections.

Throughout the campaign if I find further policy details or other information from/ about The Sex Party I will update them here and link back here in a new post making notice of the update.

UPDATE:
10/8/10 - Added drug policies following a notification from the Sex Party on Twitter. Thanks for the heads up guys!
UPDATE:
16/8/10 - Added the Religion/ Ethics, Euthanasia and Abortion policies. Again thanks to the Sex Party on Twitter for letting me know the changes were coming.

Climate Sceptics Party Policies - Election 2010

2010-08-08T19:39:00.001+10:00

Time to post more policies, this time from the Climate Sceptics Party.

Environmental Policy:

Humanity is at the top of the ecological process and policies should reflect this.
Climate science is far from settled, as evidenced by recent revelations.
An objective and quantitative risk-benefit analysis of any proposed climate legislation is crucial.
Opposition to an provision or Bill that uses carbon dioxide as an arbitrary criterion.
Call for a Royal Commission into climate science.
Urge Parliament not to consider climate change at the expense of other environmental issues.
Strong opposition to the introduction of an emissions trading scheme (ETS).
Support for incentive-based policies that reward good landcare outcomes.
Direct action should be favoured over advertising and educational programmes.
Farming of native animals, leasing of national parks and other related issues should be assessed objectively.
Securing a reliable water supply for all Australians is of primary importance.
Governments to play a crucial role in water infrastructure such as desalination plants and recycled water facilities.
Introduction of a national plan for water infrastructure to rural communities and industry is crucial as we face population expansion.
Landholders and communities should have the inalienable right to implement balanced bushfire fuel reduction measures.
Support for funding renewable energy technologies, except where funding is provided as part of a climate change policy.
Opposition of any departments whose existence is based on the belief that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
Opposition to funding of climate change conferences, meetings, advertising, etc. unless the conferences, meetings, advertisements, etc. address shifts to colder as well as warmer eras.

Property Rights:

Opposition to future, and overturning of already introduced, restrictions on property rights made in the name of climate change.
Governments should not appropriate the property rights of Australians except in extraordinary circumstances.
The objective evidence for the need for such action must be overwhelmingly conclusive.
The constitutional guarantee of “just terms” compensation must be strengthened and extended to the States.
Increase the amount of land available for housing development.
Where possible, develop satellite cities, with populations of up to 1 million, organised around a city centre with efficient transport and modestly priced privately owned housing options.
Coastal property owners can continue to develop their properties.
Coastal development should not be limited due to predicted sea level rises.

Transport:

Introduction of high speed (300km/h) commuter transport between the inner city and outer suburbs to provide an option to live further from the city centre.
National transportation infrastructure spending should better reflect the amounts collected by fuel taxes, with shortfalls reported annually.

Broadband:

Support for continuously improving broadband infrastructure making broadband access available to all Australians.
Government owned broadband infrastructure to be leased by internet service providers.
Ensure the highest level of service for the lowest cost with full transparency to the public.

Governance:

30 minutes of free TV advertising for all political parties who polled with more than 4% of the vote at the last election.
A cap on the total media expenditure per party during an election campaign.
New parties and Independents must be provided with public funding commensurate with that of established parties.
Issues of fundamental importance not decided on at an election should be put to referendum.
Citizens should be able to initiate a vote if 10% of the public in a council jurisdiction sign a petition calling for one.
Local issues might be voted on at a council or State level.
Mechanisms for acting on the results of these votes should evolve through experience facilitating them.
Support for higher standards achieved through rewards and competitive freedoms.
Incentive based programmes should be employed where possible; enforcement should be boosted where necessary.
Public servants should be rewarded for eliminating inefficiencies (cutting red tape).
Public servants should be redeployed rather than retrenched.

Unemployment Training:

Work For The Dole is too inflexible to deal with the changing requirements of a rapid economic downturn.
Community groups can often provide more suitable training than centralised bureaucracies.

Retirement:

Support linking pension increases to metrics better representing the true increase in the cost of living for pensioners.
Support linking pension increases to politician’s wage rises (backdated to last election).
Support greater incentives for Australians to reliably and stably fund their own retirements (superannuation).
Opposition to increasing the retirement age.

These policies came from The Climate Sceptics website as well as the Climate Sceptics Policies PowerPoint, of which a ppt copy is linked to from the same site.
Some of them are copied verbatim, most of them have been paraphrased by me. I’ve not added my own bias to the ones I’ve re-written.

If you are from The Climate Sceptics Party and you’ve noticed something wrong in this post please contact me and I will not hesitate to implement any corrections.

Throughout the campaign if I find further policy details or other information from/ about The Climate Sceptics Party I will update them here and link back here in a new post making notice of the update.

And just my own note about their broadband policy: although they do not explicitly state in their policy that they support the National Broadband Network (NBN), their policy would be met by the NBN except for the eventual privatisation of the NBN. That is not to say though that the Climate Sceptics would necessarily support the NBN if elected if they deemed it to be unviable from a cost perspective. If anyone from the Climate Sceptics Party reads this and wants to clarify, or if anyone else has seen some sort of clarification elsewhere please leave a comment.

A Plug For Good Websites - Election 2010

2010-08-07T16:50:00.002+10:00

Sorry I’ve been neglecting the election coverage for the last 2 weeks; Starcraft 2 was released and my mind went blank to all else. I don’t like posting multiple times on a single day which is why I’ve backdated some of the new posts. Sorry if it breaks your RSS feed.

Living in the online age as we do you probably have no shortage of websites to visit for election news but I just want to plug two of the best I’ve found.

The first one is The Political Compass. It isn’t an election site, but it has got a page for this election. The idea of the Political Compass is to plot yourself, parties, political leaders, etc on a 2 axis graph rather than the conventional one dimensional left-right spectrum. Instead there is the left-right axis for economic position but also the north-south axis for social position.

You can sit a test which will put before you various propositions. At the end it gives you co-ordinates for where you would sit on the compass. There is also a Facebook app so you can display your compass on your Facebook page, along with your friends who have also installed the app.

The reason I think everyone should look at the Political Compass is because it dispels a lot of the inaccurate positioning of parties as left or right that goes on in the media. On one horrific episode of Q&A someone, I believe Julie Bishop but my memory may be deceiving me, declared that Labor was a leftist party and that the Liberals were the mainstream moderates. A look at where the four major political parties in Australia fall on the compass will show clearly this is not the case. (The Liberals are what I’d call far-right while Labor are slightly to the left of mid-right but still nowhere near “the left”.)

There is a comprehensive FAQ section on the site as well.

I encourage everyone to look at the site at least, but if you have time to sit the test. Some people may be quite surprised to find they are in line with one party when they have always supported another. Then again some people will be completely unsurprised.

By the way I’m not posting the images here because they are covered by copyright and I strongly encourage you to look at their page yourself so I’m just linking rather than seeking permission to reproduce them.

If you want to know where I fall, I’m at -5 economically and -4.31 socially, which puts me in about the middle of the bottom left quadrant (collectivist libertarian), or as I prefer to put it: somewhere between Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

The other site that everyone should go to is Below The Line. John linked to it in the comments to A Sensible Vote For The Greens Is Not A Vote For Labor.

Below The Line is an interesting site because it shows the preference deals for the Senate. If you like the preferences done by the party of your choice you could vote for that party above the line, if you don’t like them you can rearrange them to make your own how to vote card.

I strongly oppose voting above the line and looking at this site has just confirmed my belief that you can’t trust any political party with your vote.

Given all the fuss about the Greens-Labor preference deal though I think it is interesting to see if you vote for Labor above the line your preferences go to the Greens. If you vote for the Greens above the line your preferences go to the Democrats, Secular Party, Carers Alliance, some Independents, Socialist Alliance, more Independents, Sex Party, yet more Independents, Senator On-Line, hordes of unaligned Independents and THEN Labor. Good to see the government benefiting so much from that preference deal then, in Queensland at least.

The preference deals are different in every state so make sure you check for your state. (The most notable difference will be that neither the Liberal Party nor the National Party appear on the ballot paper in Queensland; instead we have the LNP.)

It goes without saying of course that while you should look at both these sites, the Political Compass can tell you where your political ideologies sit on a graph but it can’t tell you who to vote for, and while Below The Line shows party preference deals it doesn’t show policies which are the really important things to consider when voting. Nonetheless I recommend checking out both sites.

Paul and Mary Spencer - QLD Senate Independents Group C Policies - Election 2010

2010-08-06T17:09:00.000+10:00

Policies for Queensland Independent Senate candidates Paul and Mary Spencer, group C on the Queensland Senate ticket.

Health:

Immediate construction of Aged Care Facilities to provide a space for people taking up hopsital beds simply because they have nowhere else to go.
Opposition to spending on advertising.
A set of Rules of Wellness should be written in order that patients recuperate as fast as possible.
Investigate the possibility of re-introducing a government advisory board for pricing of drug bought by the government.
Construction, by the Royal Australian Engineers, of a medical school and hospital at the Royal Military College.
The above mentioned hospital should cater to military personnel and their immediate families.
Students, doctors and nurses should be paid while training and work in the Australian Hospital System for a to-be-determined number of years after graduation.

Taxation and Finance:

Partners in single income families should be able to split that income between them and the tax threshold should be raised in order that a family can survive on one income, enabling one partner to stay at home with the children.
Raise the tax threshold for self funded retirees.
Look at scaled taxes for companies.
Look at scaled tax deductions, for example to make donations to disaster relief 100% deductible while advertising for unhealthy foods could be only 50% deductible.
Scaled tax deductions of salaries of over $3 million.
No GST on fuel and freight.
Breaking up of illegal oil cartels.
The Federal Reserve Bank to lend money, at their base rate, to first home buyers.
Deposits to be held independently and returned to the depositor if the business fails.
Any goods on the property of the failed business that does not belong to the failed business be returned to the rightful owners.
Employee’s entitlements to be paid in full before any creditors are paid.
Stop paying political parties for the votes they receive.
Pay all politicians 10% super.
Political donations not to be tax deductible.
All campaign costs and where the money came from to be tabled for the public to see.

Environment:

Eliminate greenhouse gas emissions rather than simply increase their financial cost.
All funds raised through a carbon tax to go to low income families who suffer from the tax.
Government research facilities to research more efficient and less toxic batteries.
Eventual phasing out of internal combustion engines.
Investigate introduction of monorails.
Opposition to nuclear power stations.

Other:

Australia should accept political asylum seekers.
Public transport should remain a public utility in order to remove the profit margin of private companies.
Support for introduction of an R18+ video games rating, provided the restriction is enforced.
Support for stem cell research leading to medical recovery. (It is not explicit, as far as I have found, to what extent the candidate supports stem cell harvesting. The example they provide is based on stem cells from a mature patient used to help that same patient recovery from injury.)
Belief that climate change is real, but would like to see more research into the cause and best solutions before making a more detailed policy.
Opposition to politicians voting along party lines at the expense of representing their electors.
This candidate says they will never abstain from voting if elected.

These policies came from [ http://www.mysunshinecoast.com.au/business/display/paul-and-mary-spencer-queensland-senate-candidates-for-2010-federal-election,38265,2837 ] with some filled in by me based on answers given in a question list at Both Kinds of Politics. Some of them are copied verbatim, most of them have been paraphrased by me. I’ve not added my own bias to the ones I’ve re-written.

If you are Paul or Mary Spencer, or someone working with them in this campaign, and you’ve noticed something wrong in this post please contact me and I will not hesitate to implement any corrections.

Throughout the campaign if I find further policy details or other information from/ about Paul and Mary Spencer I will update them here and link back here in a new post making notice of the update.

Thank you to Possum O'Doom (Greenglowgrrl) who wrote "Who ARE these people? Greenglowgrrl's guide to Independent Candidates for the Queensland Senate." over at Brisneyland, an excellent post where I found the links for the information I used to make this post.

A Sensible Vote For The Greens Is Not A Vote For Labor

2010-07-20T15:15:00.002+10:00

After yesterday’s preference deal was made between the Greens and Labor a lot of people have started saying “a vote for the Greens is a vote for Labor”. This is simply not true.

The preference deal means only two things:
1) preferences from the Greens will flow to Labor and vice versa if you vote above the line in the Senate.
2) Labor will appear higher on Greens how to vote cards and vice versa.

How to vote cards can be useful if you don’t have time to find the policies for every party in the lead up to an election, as many people don’t, as you can take the advice of the parties you do know the policies of as to where you should preference those parties you aren’t so sure about. For example if you know the Greens policies and like them but you don’t know the Socialist Alliance policies you can look at the Greens how to vote card and get a rough idea of where you should preference Socialist Alliance. These preference deals aren’t always accurate though; reading through the preference deals can be maddening and a little scary if you do know the policies because sometimes preference deals just don’t make sense.

When it comes to voting in the Senate I don’t know how much more clearly I can stress this: VOTE BELOW THE LINE!

If you vote above the line then you are saying you want political parties to decide who you vote for.

If you vote above the line then you are saying that you are too stupid to count and therefore will not have your say in who gets to run the country. You are saying your opinion doesn’t matter because you can’t be bothered taking the time to fill out every box.

Yes the major parties will tell you not to vote below the line. Of course they tell you that, if you take their advice and just put a 1 in their box above the line they get to decide who you vote for. It is promoting undemocratic practice. I especially remember the 2004 Liberal Party how to vote card which even had, in large print over the bottom half of the ballot paper, “don’t worry about this part”. It is disgusting.

If you vote above the line then you are, without reservation, a moron. You are worse than the people who don’t vote at all because at least their vote (or lack thereof) can’t do any damage.

Still, the Greens - Labor preference deal has greater ramifications than just how the preference flow from stupid people’s votes will go. Bob Brown has been a strong advocate for abolishing back room preference deals, saying he’d much rather have people choosing to vote above the line fill in every box with their own preferences and get rid of how to vote cards. I’m sure Bob Brown wouldn’t use as stronger terms as I have to describe the people who vote above the line though.

Bob Brown has said that he encourages voters to make up their own mind as to who they vote for regardless of what it says on the how to vote cards, and he made sure nobody had any doubt of his position when he spoke to Leigh Sales on Lateline last night.

“LEIGH SALES: So, basically you're saying to people, "Well, ignore the preference deal that my party's announced."

BOB BROWN: Exactly and ignore the preference deal that Labor's done and the Liberals have done and put your own preferences where you want to.”

The man came out and gave an answer with no spin whatsoever, he maintained his integrity and followed his personal beliefs and gave advice that is best for the future of Australia as a democratic nation even if it wasn’t necessarily the best advice for the benefit of his party.

"LEIGH SALES: But I can't imagine that Labor would be very happy having negotiated this deal then to give your their preferences for the Senate, I can't imagine that they'd be very happy to hear you saying this.

BOB BROWN: But, Leigh, I'm not here to make Labor happy. I'm here to do the right thing by voters…I'm concerned that voters hear about all this preference deals and think, "Oh, well, I must get a card and find out where I should put my preferences." And what I'm here to do is to tell people they have a right, and it's their democratic obligation, to put their preferences where they want to."

Agree with his stance and the Greens stance on many issues or not, there can be no denying that Bob Brown is the sort of politician we need far more of in politics today. Good on you, Bob, for doing what is right for democracy!

You can view the full transcript of that interview, or watch the video, on the Lateline website. You can also see it on iView. Lateline airs on ABC1 at 10:30pm weeknights.

You can also follow Leigh Sales, Bob Brown and Lateline itself on Twitter.

Bob Brown is midway through his Senate term and is not up for re-election.

Shooters and Fishing Party Policies - Election 2010

2010-07-19T18:51:00.004+10:00

Time to start posting policies. Because the major parties like to have big announcements all through the campaign I can’t start with them because their policies change almost daily, so I have to start with smaller parties more focused on single issues.

So here are the policies for The Australian Shooters and Fishing Party (formerly The Australian Shooters Party). Their websites (yes, two of them) are terrible and I’m a little unclear as to whether the name change is at a federal level or just a NSW state level. You should be able to tell which party I mean though.

Firearms Legislation:

It is the right of a law-abiding citizen to own and use firearms.
Firearms ownership and use should be legislated by the States and that responsibility should not be taken away from the States.
Firearm permits issued in one state should be considered valid in all states.
Common technology platforms across the States with regard to Firearms Registry inter-communication.
Opposition to any attempt by the Commonwealth Government to circumvent the various State firearms laws, through the use of customs restrictions, Australia Post restrictions, taxation or levy; or by any other means.

Law and Order

It is the right of a law-abiding citizen to protect self, family and property by as forceful means as a required to meet that end.
Support and promotion of non-lethal defense means (such as carrying mace) especially for vulnerable groups such as women.
Crime reduction aims achieved through punishment of the criminals.
Identification and repeal of laws found to be unfair, repressive or impractical.
Custodial parents should be held responsible for the criminal actions of their minor children.
Juveniles should be identified in court cases for heinous crimes (no example provided).
No law is to restrict or hinder any individual’s rights unless the exercise of those rights directly interferes with the rights of others.

Violence

Opposition to gratuitous portrayal of violence in the media. This is on the belief that violence in the media has a causal link to violence in the community.

Governance

The government is to serve the people. Opposition to interventionist government.
Any law that has no demonstrable benefit is to be repealed.
State legislation is not to be transferred to the Commonwealth except when under mandate by a referendum to do so.
Amendment of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to prevent third parties taking court action.
Amendment of the Act to exclude Commonwealth veto of State infrastructure projects.
The Commonwealth is to fairly compensate citizens when the State acquires a citizen’s property under the obligation of a Commonwealth treaty, covenant or protocol.
Citizens are to be fairly compensated for reduction of property use (for example loss of water entitlements).
Senators are to act at all times in the interest of the state in which they were elected.

International Relations

The Commonwealth is not to enter into any international treaties or other binding agreements without agreement to do so being passed through parliament.
Where the Commonwealth has entered an international agreement the whole agreement will be honored unless amended by parliament.
All immigration (authorized entries and asylum seekers) to stop immediately and then be re-introduced at a capped level to ensure a maximum population below a level determined by referendum.
Immigration cap to be adjusted annually in accordance with aim for above mentioned maximum population.

Hunting and Fishing

Support and promotion of all legitimate forms of recreational hunting including fishing.
Support of a fair and equitable share of fish stock for recreational fishers.
Support of Marine Conservation but opposes the creation of Marine Protected Areas unless based on sound scientific study.
Imposition of reasonable license fees for saltwater and freshwater fishing with revenue from those fees to be managed by anglers and used for the improvement and promotion of fishing and fishing facilities.
Support for the establishment of recreational fishing havens.
Closure of commercial fishing activities where evidence exists to prove those commercial activities are unsustainable and/or are depleting fish stocks.
Support for the stocking of fish species to assist and maintain fish populations. Wild stock are to be utilized to ensure quality of stock.
Advocacy for proper use of catch and release practices to maintain stocks while allowing reasonable catch limits.

Other Environmental

Environmental laws to be considered for the greater good and not minority interests.
Compromise between responsible usage and development of and in the environment and preservation for future generations.
Opposition to the creation of a Coral Sea Marine Protection Area within Australia’s Economic Zone.
State Governments should be required to issue Community Impact Statements before substantially altering the levels of their involvement in rural areas.

These policies came from The Australian Shooters and Fishing Party website as well as the Policy Statement of The Shooter’s Party, of which a PDF copy is linked to from the same site.
Some of them are copied verbatim, most of them have been paraphrased by me. I’ve not added my own bias to the ones I’ve re-written.

If you are from The Australian Shooters and Fishing Party and you’ve noticed something wrong in this post please contact me and I will not hesitate to implement any corrections.

Throughout the campaign if I find further policy details or other information from/ about The Australian Shooters and Fishing Party I will update them here and link back here in a new post making notice of the update.

Australia, I Am Ready

2010-07-17T21:59:00.003+10:00

Today Julia Gillard called the election to be held on the 21st of August 2010. Being keenly interested in politics I’ve decided that I’m going to cover the election on this blog, for my own amusement largely but also as a chance to provide some information some people might not look at otherwise and also to challenge myself to publicly exercise some skills I’ve learned over the years but never shown off.

Before we get underway though I want to start by writing something far more personal than the largely objective writing I’ll be doing over the next 5 weeks. I want to write about how I came to be interested in politics.

Sure I’ve grown up in a politically active family but there has certainly been personal development otherwise I’d still be at the stage I was on the Monday after the 1998 election where I joined my class mates at school to discuss whether we were supporting the blue side or the red side, not giving any care to the implications the election actually held for the country. We were all six or seven years old then so I don’t think federal governance was really supposed to be within our understanding.

Let me take you back to the year 2000. I was eight years old. It was the year of the Sydney Olympics which possibly had an impact, but everything seemed to be the way it should be. Both in the media and in what I was taught at school Australia was a great multicultural melting pot. We were the kind country whose population was now made up of many races from all over the world living together mostly peacefully, a population that came to be diverse thanks to Australia taking in refugees during wars of the 20th century.

It was then by stark contrast to my education and beliefs to hear the Australian Prime Minister John Howard say in the very next year, 2001, “We decide who comes into this country, and the circumstances in which they come.” We had had the September 11 terrorism attacks in the USA which despite terrorism happening all over the world all the time had caused a war, which seemed completely out of proportion (that is what I though at the time when I was nine years old), and naturally the war was leading to boat people coming to Australia. So why, unlike every time this had happened previously in Australian history, so I had been taught only 12 months ago, were we this time turning them away?

So then came 2002 and again in school we were taught that Australia was a great multicultural country and certainly this is what I wanted to believe and what I felt most comfortable with. This was the normal state of affairs. Yet every night I’d come home from school having been taught this and on the news I’d see the war in Afghanistan, I’d see the navy intercepting boats of asylum seekers and those asylum seekers, including children, then being locked up in detention centers. And of course the talk of invading Iraq if they didn’t hand over their oil, err I mean weapons of mass destruction. These conflicting views were apparent and something had to give.

It was in 2003 that things did give. On two occasions, both at school, which as good as set in stone my political interest for the future. The first of those occasions was the day before Bush War II, when our afternoon lessons finished early so the teachers could talk to us about what the war meant before we went home. They weren’t trying to tell us it was right or wrong in any political sense, they were just explaining what was going to happen, an understandable thing to do because wars can be pretty traumatizing even from a distance. It was of course pretty hard to make bombing a country home to mostly innocent citizens look anything but wrong. That was the moment where the great multicultural Australia I was taught about in grade three ceased to exist.

The other moment from 2003 was right at the end of the year and was probably one of the moments that stuck with me most from primary school. I think I was one of the few people in the class who had an interest in politics and what kind of weight did that carry against a whole class of other people who just wanted to listen to Britney Spears? Especially when you’re only eleven. But one of the teachers said to me that I shouldn’t worry about being interested in politics because it was out of an interest in politics that the ability to do good in the country came. In fact people interested in politics were more likely to be the people who were successful and understanding in the world whether or not their dealings were directly linked to politics. The way I recall this occasion here makes it seem far less inspiring than it really was. I guess you'll need to take my word for that in place of my rather poor writing of the anecdote.

So there you go, I was effectively ready to take my place in the Australian democracy at the age of 11. In 2004 we were taught all about how to vote and how the electoral system worked, which being in 2004 was particularly convenient because there were three elections that year, all of which I wanted to vote in but none of which I was constitutionally allowed to. All through high school my school was very multicultural and very proud of the fact. High school was like a haven where things were still like they were when I was in grade three. Still I went on ready to participate in the democracy but not allowed to because of my age.

The longer I was ready to have my say but not given fair chance the more and more disillusioned I became with the political system. From the age of 14 I started openly declaring Australia was not actually a democracy and even obtained a copy of the constitution to prove my point. Letters to the local member or the newspaper don’t make a difference. Heck, I’ve written a dozen or more letters to politicians and I’ve only ever once received even an acknowledgment that they received my letter and then still not a real reply. I learned letter writing was useless long ago in spite of what the schools were forced to teach me. Readers of this blog will have no doubt seen my frustration at not having my views taken notice of before.

Well it has been 10 years since I learned that Australia was a nice country and seven years since that belief was well and truly destroyed. Now, after six years of having my eagerness and opinion dismissed because of my age I’m finally 18. The constitution is finally letting me access my rights as an Australian citizen.

And I’m ready.

Some Notable Songs of 2010 pt 1

2010-07-03T16:05:00.002+10:00

It being now halfway through the year, here is a playlist of just under 2 hours of music released this year. So if you have looked at the calendar and thought "oh no, it is July already and I can't think of any good music released this year", now you know at least 26 good songs from this year.

Usual deal, the playlist starts with the most notable song and then continues in a flowing order. Like a rage playlist without videos.

0:00 Lights - INTERPOL
Catcher In The Rye - CABINS
Beyond All - THE CAT EMPIRE
Future Africa - THE PUBLIC OPINION AFRO ORCHESTRA
Put It On Wax - OZI BATLA
Nothing To Lose - 360
0:30 Hold On My Heart (Presets Remix) - SARAH BLASKO
Falling Away - BIG SCARY
As Far As You’re Concerned - LAST DINOSAURS
Answer To Yourself - THE SOFT PACK
Telepathic Head - MACHINE TRANSLATIONS
Madder Red - YEASAYER
Children Of The Grounds - MIDLAKE
I Know Now Why You Cry - FINAL LIGHT
1:00 Nautilus - ATOMIC SKUNK
I’ll Get To You - SEJA
You’ve Changed - SIA
Undercover Martyn - TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB
Instead Of Me - THE RED CRAYON ARTISTOCRAT CLUB
Doubt - DELPHIC
ABC News Theme - PENDULUM
1:30 Break My Soul - HYBRID
I Feel Better - HOT CHIP
When You Walk In The Room - FYFE DANGERFIELD
I Go - JESS HARLEN
Boy Lilikoi - JONSI

I will start updating regularly again soon, I promise. In the mean time, I have a Tumblr. You can check it out and/or ask me a question.

The Speech Kevin Rudd should have made

2010-06-24T07:24:00.001+10:00

While the events of last night are still coming as a shock to some and while we await this morning’s announcement of a change in government, err I mean prime minister, I have ducked briefly into an alternative reality where the ALP didn’t swallow a cannonball and brought back the speech that Kevin Rudd should have made.

“Hi folks,

Earlier this evening I entered meetings with Julia Gillard and John Faulkner, later joined by other key figures in the government such as Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner, to have a discussion about the direction of this party and this government.

As you good people in the press gallery and no doubt the mums and dads in working families around Australia will know, we haven’t been seen to be doing such a great job recently, and this is something I regret. We’ve taken a hit to our popularity, I have taken a hit to my popularity, and while we are still ahead of the opposition in the areas of two party preferred, primary vote and preferred prime minister, it is clear that we need to work harder.

Which is why I was approached for this meeting tonight. You see I’m just one man, I’m only human and I make mistakes. I never pretend to be anything other than human, I never pretend to be perfect and the people of Australia know this. Fortunately I am backed by a great team, this government. So tonight my team came to tap me on the shoulder and have a quiet word about the direction we are heading as a party and as a government.

I am fully up to the challenge of leading Australia. We’ve had some great achievements over the last 3 years, such as the apology to the Stolen Generation, leading us to avoid the global financial crisis largely unscathed compared to other developed countries, and I am truly proud to have been able to lead us through those landmarks. And I look forward to continuing to lead us through many more in the future.

Tonight concerns were raised about the direction of this party and let me just say that these concerns will be addressed. We have an opposition who makes it hard for us to deliver on every promise we make, but we try our hardest. Some people have suggested that this government’s communication to the public, and my communication as prime minister could do with some improvement and that is something we’ll address.

But can I just say this. We are working together as a unified party and a unified government to deal with our problems. When I was approached tonight by Julia and others it was for a serious discussion about the future of this party and we are all treating it very seriously. But we are treating it seriously together as a team. This stands in stark contrast to the opposition who have had 3 leaders in as many years and who at the end of last year backflipped on a promise they made to help tackle climate change by stabbing their leader in the back and replacing him with someone who thinks that climate change is “absolute crap”. We are not like that party, we deal with things in due process without blood and backstabbing and I think the Australian people can see who is a more trustworthy party to lead Australia through the uncertain times ahead.

So to sum up. We’re not perfect, we’re only human and we sometimes don’t head in the right direction. But we are working together as a unified team to address these problems so that we can get back on with the job of leading Australia for the better of all Australians. I will lead this party tomorrow, I will lead this party at the next election, and I will lead this party as a team leader ahead of some of the best minds in the country, with everyone getting a fair shake of the sauce bottle and everyone working together to serve the Australian people who elected us.

Thank you.”

Friday Review: Altitude

2010-05-28T12:14:00.004+10:00

No Friday Review again last week because I was doing assignments again. I should probably express that the Friday Review won’t be every Friday because I do often find I have to finish an assignment on Friday afternoons and the assignments are more important. It will be most Fridays though, maybe three a month?

Anyway, back this week with a review of Altitude.

Altitude is a 2D aircraft shooter by Nimbly Games available for Mac OS and Windows. Steam gave it a free weekend last weekend and me a chance to review it.

The game’s description in the Steam store says: “Altitude combines Call-of-Duty style perks with the gameplay variety of Team Fortress 2 in a fresh multiplayer experience”. Well yes the game is a shooter and does have perks but that is where the similarities to CoD end, and yes it is a class based shooter with a variety of multiplayer modes, but that is where the similarities to TF2 end.

You may also get the idea from the description that this is a serious game, which it is not. First of all there is no story or campaign, there are a few tutorials and then skirmish mode or multiplayer, or to put it simply a single tutorial level followed by multiplayer with bots and then if you’ve got an internet connection multiplayer without bots. Second of all this game could have been made in the mid 90s and given a recent graphics update and you’d be unable to tell. It has that old style of graphics and play that just screams 1995.

So if you are looking for a serious aircraft shooter, something like CoD4 in a helicopter then look elsewhere because this game is not what you are looking for. This game is where you go for a bit of quick online fun.

I guess another comparison you could make to TF2 would be the friendliness of the community, except that in TF2 there are a nice mix of 13 year old loud mouths whose sole objective is to bug the rest of the team and boasting loud mouths of unidentifiable age who are absolutely certain they are the only decent player on the server, yet spend their whole time typing this fact and mysteriously not dying. Altitude doesn’t have that. The noobs who have just entered the game for the first time are pretty much on an even footing with the pros who have been playing for 15 years.

Altitude isn’t a casual game but that is sort of how most serious gamers will probably think of it. Your mother isn’t going to play Altitude, they will stay with Bejeweled and Freecell. The serious gamer looking for a bit of quick fun when they don’t feel like Call of Duty will probably play this.

The gameplay is simple, you fly a small plane around a cave, lost city, football field, whatever other map you are playing, and shoot down other planes, or crash and burn if they beat you to it. The game is 2D so you don’t need to worry about pesky depth perception complicating things. There are free for alls, team deathmatches, football games and bomb the base modes to play. As you advance in level you unlock new planes and new perks. You’ll soon learn that of the 10 planes there are actually only 5 planes and the others are the same planes again with different perks pre-loaded.

There are challenges which you try to complete while playing multiplayer and when you complete one you get the achievement for it. The in game achievements are mirrored in the Steam community if you’ve got it on Steam.

To play the game you need an account which will be created when you first open the game. This is slightly confusing for Steam users because your Altitude account is not your Steam account though the two are tied together. This means two sets of log ins and everything gets a bit more complicated, but it seems to be so Steam players and non Steam players can be in a community together which is more than worth the additional complexity to opening the game.

You can also get the Altitude Facebook app and tie your Altitude account to your Facebook account which seems like a good idea and is the future of social networking where everything is integrated that Facebook really wants. Unfortunately for Facebook and Altitude I won’t be doing this and nor will anyone I know as one more spam generating security hole to abuse our privacy is not really a good idea. But the thought was good so kudos to Altitude, it is just a pity that Facebook isn’t good enough to make it as brilliant an idea in practice.

That is really all there is to say. Altitude isn’t a great game, but it is ok for a bit of quick fun. You can’t play it for prolonged periods of time, but you can come back to it pretty easily after a short break. So did I buy it after the free weekend? Yes. You could do a hell of a lot worse for $10. The system requirements are light too so you can play it on your old laptop without any problems. It probably won’t ever be immortalized by Google, but Altitude is good for some fun.

Altitude:
7/10

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Or if you have something to say about this article specifically, leave a comment.

Friday Review: Steam For Mac

2010-05-14T19:47:00.003+10:00

Before I start I should just point out to anyone who doesn’t know that ‘Still Alive’ from the Portal soundtrack will seed a Genius playlist in iTunes. It is on that theme that I this week review Steam’s arrival on the Mac.

The first thing I’ll talk about is motive, because I’m among the first to whip out a marriage proposal to Gabe Newell, but I do think Valve has been getting off too easily from Mac users since they announced they would be bringing Steam to the Mac.

Previously if you wanted to give Valve lots of money you needed to have Windows, and an increasing number of people are leaving Windows in favour of Mac OS, so bringing Steam to the Mac means that Valve now has a new pool of users–a pool of users that grows in size every day–who they can now make money out of.

Also consider that if you use Windows, as you’ve previously needed to in order to play Valve games, some of your money is going to Microsoft. Microsoft are Valve’s rivals in gaming and are about to launch (or possibly just have launched) their own digital games store that will run as a direct competitor to Steam. By launching Steam for Mac Valve are not only opening themselves up to an audience their rivals Microsoft don’t have, but are also reducing the number of people Microsoft can make money from.

There are a lot of people who, like me, got the Windows 7 RC to run games and who were about to buy the full release when suddenly out came the news of Steam for Mac. I’m not going to stop buying Windows but a lot of people I’ve read on forums are. Also bear in mind that games are the one thing that Windows has over other operating systems. And now it doesn’t any more. Games For Windows might try to look like a good idea but it is rubbish and with the new Steam UI I see no reason why anybody would use GFW if they don’t need to.

So Valve are not being altruistic with bring Steam to Mac. It spells money for them, and a lot of it. Valve are a company that I would happily throw money at just because I like them so much, but in doing so I realise that is really all they want from me at the end of the day.

The same applies for the release itself. Everyone was expecting some sort of sale for the release but I don’t think anyone was expecting Portal for free. That was genius and although I already owned Portal I’m grateful to Valve for giving the rest of my family a copy so my account is now completely my own. But Portal was only the short Half Life spinoff bonus game thrown into the Orange Box to add to its value. The fact it is one of the best games of the past 5 years is irrelevant from a marketing perspective, but with Portal 2 being released later this year (knowing Valve Time that could actually be early next year mind you) giving free copies of Portal to everyone is not generous, it is strategic.

Picture: Some shops open according to Valve Time too.

Bringing the Steam client to Mac is obviously a good thing. I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise. I can now use Steam’s social networking capabilities from my main computer. I can access the Steam network more easily than I could when I had to go through Firefox (ok, so it wasn’t hard to start with but it is still easier now).

I can play Torchlight now, though because Runic didn’t develop it to be cross platform the save files don’t cross platform even if the Steam Cloud allows it to. My sister can play Portal now. Adding shortcuts to Steam has me playing some of the Mac games I already owned but didn’t play more often, so it is good to get me playing those games even if I didn’t buy them on Steam.

That is a good point for Mac developers in this. Steam on the Mac means a mainstream avenue of sale for independent Mac games developers. So those guys win out of this.

Mac users win out of this. Not necessarily out of the games that Valve are bringing to Mac but out of the potential for more. Games companies will be watching carefully what happens over the coming weeks and months because if the take up rate of Steam for Mac is high enough more and more companies will make the jump to cross platforms which will be easier with Steam already there to distribute for them. Other companies will be able to see the profit gain Valve is going after, they just need to decide if they want in on it. So we should see more games for being release for Mac.

As well as more games, Mac users will be able to actually find the games already on Mac. Did you know Halo is on the Mac? Cod4? Black and White? They are, but you’d be hard pressed to find a copy anywhere. Until now. (Well except that of those titles only CoD4 is actually on Steam and at the moment it doesn’t have Steam Play.)

But the thing that has the largest ramifications out of this is actually not related to games as much as it is to Apple computers in general. Macs are often accused of having poor specs. This isn’t really true, Mac OS X is far more efficient than Windows even dreams to be so to run Mac OS you don’t need a computer to have as higher specs as a PC. While some games are demonstrating this too by having lower system requirements on the Mac than on Windows, gaming is still a hugely inefficient area. Game designers make pretty games, they don’t make well designed games and I’d say as much to the face of any games developer.

If gaming gets as big on the Mac as Valve and most Mac users hope it does then Apple will have to lift their game and make computers that don’t just have the specs to run their own products but also the far less efficient products put out by the games companies. So Valve may have just had extra profit in mind when they brought Steam across to the Mac, but with a big enough take up rate Steam could be the difference between the next generation of Macbook have 2GB of RAM and integrated graphics and 4GB of RAM and a top of the range GeForce for the same price. (I know the latest generation did have a GeForce card but I think my point still stands.)

Like I said at the start, I’d probably jump off a cliff–and pay to do so–if Valve told me to. Bias aside though and even taking into consideration that the ability to make even more money is the real reason for bring Steam to Mac, the benefits are clearly huge. The potential for this to change the face of computing as we’ve had it marketed to us for the last decade is very real. Gaming and computing in general have just become very, very interesting.

Steam for Mac
8/10

Too Popular For Introduction

2010-05-12T10:59:00.003+10:00

From Gamespot AU:

“A strong response from gamer groups in the Australian federal government's R18+ public consultation has led censorship ministers to claim that more views from the community are needed before a decision into the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games can be reached.”

You can read the full article here.

They aren’t going to introduce the R18+ games classification yet because gamers say they want it. Yes, it would seem that gamers are the people most interested in a new games rating. So to stop these “interest groups” from having too larger influence on the decision, they are seeking further public opinion.

Now I think a lot of people see this as spin on what should read “we don’t want to introduce an R18+ games rating and so we are going to keep looking for more opinions on the matter until we finally find someone who agrees with us.” That would of course be a complete denial of the democratic process, but do we really expect any better of our governments?

Still, it is important to remain optimistic. Anyone who knows what they are talking about will support the R18+ rating being introduced, so if they are just ignoring the public and doing what they want it will be revealed as such before too long. That or we’ll get the rating so everyone wins.

While leaving the fate of a new game rating up to non gamers is like polling the public on a change to the road rules, but not taking an opinions from anyone who has a driver’s license, this could be a good thing. Use of this logic could result in unwanted changes being decided on by the groups most likely to cause the destruction of those changes. For example:

Next time the parliament wants to give politicians a pay rise the decision will be put to referendum.

All matters relating to government subsidies for coal trade, or appeals against the new mining tax will now be discussed with the Australian Greens, while the coal lobby is allowed no input.

Safety ratings for 4WD will be tested and rated by local cycling groups.

Liberal Party policies will continue to be formulated by members of the Liberal Party.

So there is good in all this.

In other gaming news: Steam will be released on Mac today! (Today meaning late tomorrow afternoon.) It has been announced that among the first of the games for Mac will be Torchlight. I went on a happy run at the news. Top work, Runic! Top work, Valve!

Hottest 75: 2008

2010-05-09T10:24:00.002+10:00

Only 17 months late! Here is the list of the 75 best songs I bought during 2008.

75. If I Know You - THE PRESETS
74. Lost In Violence - GOLDEN DEATH MUSIC
73. All Fired Up - INTERPOL
72. Crazy - EXPATRIATE
71. Paintbrushes - SOMETHING FOR KATE
70. Lovers In Japan/ Reign Of Love - COLDPLAY
69. Mammoth - INTERPOL
68. 42 - COLDPLAY
67. Honeybear - YEAH YEAH YEAHS
66. Pace Is The Trick - INTERPOL
65. Inbetween Days - THE CURE
64. The Unmaking - GOLDEN DEATH MUSIC
63. Postcard Of A Painting - MAXIMO PARK
62. Don't Fight It - THE PANICS
61. My People - THE PRESETS
60. Better Than - JOHN BUTLER TRIO
59. No I In Threesome - INTERPOL
58. Apply Some Pressure - MAXIMO PARK
57. Strategy - SOMETHING FOR KATE
56. Blueprint Architecture - SOMETHING FOR KATE
55. You Can't Please Everybody, Rockwell - SOMETHING FOR KATE
54. Song For Clay (Disappear Here) - BLOC PARTY
53. A Time To Be So Small - INTERPOL
52. Vitriol - BLUEJUICE
51. The Prayer - BLOC PARTY
50. Viva La Vida - COLDPLAY
49. Turn Into - YEAH YEAH YEAHS
48. The Coast Is Always Changing - MAXIMO PARK
47. Narc - INTERPOL
46. Jigsaw Falling Into Place - RADIOHEAD
45. The Scale - INTERPOL
44. Gold Lion - YEAH YEAH YEAHS
43. The Baby Screams - THE CURE
42. The Spaces Between - EXPATRIATE
41. Bones - EDITORS
40. Push - THE CURE
39. Are You Awake? - EXPATRIATE
38. Anarchitect - SOMETHING FOR KATE
37. Submarine - SOMETHING FOR KATE
36. Pioneer To The Falls - INTERPOL
35. Two Receivers - KLAXONS
34. An End Has A Start - EDITORS
33. Recapturing The Vibe Restrung - HILLTOP HOODS
32. Losing My Mind - SOMETHING FOR KATE
31. Cemeteries Of London - COLDPLAY
30. My Love Is Stronger Than your Love - RED RIDERS
29. Dashboard - MODEST MOUSE
28. Talk Like That - THE PRESETS
27. Ruby - KAISER CHIEFS
26. Captain (Million Miles An Hour) - SOMETHING FOR KATE
25. Truly - SOMETHING FOR KATE
24. Where Is Home - BLOC PARTY
23. Violet Hill - COLDPLAY
22. A Night Like This - THE CURE
21. Four Winds - BRIGHT EYES
20. Hanging On The Telephone - SOMETHING FOR KATE
19. Pogo - DIGITALISM
18. Rock The Casbah - SOMETHING FOR KATE
17. Play A Part - EXPATRIATE
16. Hawaiian Robots - SOMETHING FOR KATE
15. Pinstripe - SOMETHING FOR KATE
14. Hunting For Witches - BLOC PARTY
13. Knights Of Cydonia - MUSE
12. The Racing Rats - EDITORS
11. Around The World / Harder Better Faster Stronger - DAFT PUNK
10. Aeons - THE PRESETS
9. Slow Hands - INTERPOL
8. Golden Skans - Klaxons
7. Hearts On Fire - CUT COPY
6. No Cars Go - ARCADE FIRE
5. The Heinrich Maneuver - INTERPOL
4. This Boy's In Love - THE PRESETS
3. When Anger Shows - EDITORS
2. It's Not Over Yet - KLAXONS
1. Take You On A Cruise - INTERPOL

Loading The Shotgun

2010-05-08T07:58:00.003+10:00

Some time last year I had a look for a micro-blogging thing, something like Tumblr only with decent terms and conditions, an interface usable by humans and less of a community feel and more of a post stuff feel. I guess I was put off by the lolcats being reblogged from one user to another mindlessly.

After searching I eventually found that there was only 1 site in existence that did what I wanted, and that was Tumblr. I did sign up to Tumblr, and after about 15 minutes deleted my account again on account of unusable interface, worse terms and conditions than I’ve ever read before, etc.

Well I today went back to Tumblr to just see if I could somehow justify having an account without selling all my soul. It turns out the terms and conditions, aside from being linked to on the front page now unlike they were last time I came (otherwise I wouldn’t have got as far as signing up) have been revised and are now not only intelligible, but quite sensible. In fact I could find only one contradiction.

The t&c preface says:
"You own and control what you share on Tumblr – and we want your experience here to be perfect."

Yet section 2 of the t&c says:
"All materials displayed or performed on the Site, including, but not limited to text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations and Themes (as defined below), including without limitation the Tumblr Template Code (as defined below) (collectively, “Content”) (other than Content posted by Subscriber (“Subscriber Content”)) are the property of Tumblr and/or third parties and are protected by United States and international copyright laws."

I’m confused. I own and control what I share… but it is property of Tumblr?

Anyway, I figure now that to hell with that. So long as I don’t use Tumblr for any of my creative endeavours they probably aren’t going to want to sell what I say anyway.

I also found a problem in the privacy policy where they said they wouldn’t sell my information to people… unless those people agreed not to sell it to anyone else. That sounds a lot like how school-yard secrets get spread and I’m not sure I want my details to be one of those school-yard secrets. But then I remembered I’ve got a Facebook account and their privacy policy says they’ll sell all my information to everyone without limit, so if Tumblr does sell me out I’m probably not going to notice it in the wave of spam I get because of Facebook.

So with that off my chest, here I am on Tumblr. I don’t know how to use it properly, but I’m sure I’ll find my way around somehow.

Basically the reason I’ve got a Tumblr is to post the short and irrelevant pieces of information that aren’t good enough for my blog. Just stray thoughts here and there. When there aren enough of them I’ll post them all together at Blogger, so don’t feel any obligation to actually follow my Tumblr.

I’m also using the Ask function, even letting anonymous people ask questions (oooh scary) so ask anything. I’ll probably fail to reply immediately, but you never know. The questions that get the longest and most considered answers will be answered at Blogger (also Tumblr I guess because that is how it works) and the rest will just migrate across with everything else.

Friday Review: British General Elections 2010

2010-05-07T15:29:00.004+10:00

Yes I know I missed the review last week. Last Friday night I had such a terrible time you wouldn’t have wanted to read anything I had to review anyway. Still, I’m back this week and with a topical review: the British General Elections.

I don’t have much of a grasp of British politics other than where it is the same as Australian politics. I knew some of their parties due to Top Gear and Twitter and I knew Labour was the current government and that Tony Blair, whom I dislike strongly, was formerly a Labour PM, but that is pretty much it. Everything else I learned this morning while watching the election.

Not living in Britain and not having a great deal of interest in British domestic affairs or local governance, I’m not overwhelmingly interested in which party forms government at the end of it all. Really I’m in it for an interesting result, I don’t support any of the parties or candidates.

It was looking when last I heard a result, that the Conservative Party was going to win, but not by enough to form an outright government. It was also looking like even Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party together would not be able to outnumber the Conservatives. As far as I’m concerned this is a good thing. As I said, I don’t know much about British politics but personally I see that discussion in government is always a good thing. If the Australian parliament spent more time working together to make the country a better place it probably would be. Instead each side of the house just adds increasing amounts of spin and attack to the argument until the signal to noise ratio is 0:infinity.

I’m also obliged to give points to the election coverage because it has been exciting to watch. It has been informative. It has been on while I’ve been awake, which is more than I could say if I lived in Europe who are only now waking up. From a broadcast rights management perspective, we were streaming the BBC telecast and while it was no doubt enormously expensive for the download quota the fact that you could stream it internationally is better than I’ve come to expect of the internet recently. (I couldn’t even stream rage although that was a technical problem.)

It has been remarked, and I absolutely agree, that an election telecast is like a sports telecast. Only longer and with more focus on numbers than running and the outcome is more important but less pleasant (at least in sport there is a 50% chance the good guys will win).

I was a little surprised to find that Britain doesn’t use preferential voting. I’m a huge fan of preferential voting, although it is responsible for Steve Fielding being elected so I guess it isn’t all good.

What I was very surprised about though was that Britain has non-compulsory voting. Aren’t these guys supposed to be the fathers of modern democracy? Nope, apparently not. In some constituencies only a little more than 50% of the population voted. Across the country hundreds upon hundreds of voters were turned away from voting stations at 10pm unable to vote. In Liverpool they ran out of ballot papers!
The electoral commission said of the shortage of ballot papers "There should have been sufficient resources allocated to ensure that everyone who wished to vote was able to do so”. That is just the thing: everyone who wished to vote. They don’t know how many people that is going to be if voting isn’t compulsory.

It’s shocking and disappointing to see the United Kingdom joining the ranks of other third world countries such as Zimbabwe, Kenya or the United States when it comes to elections.

Of course I am not aware of any actual democracy anywhere in the world, not even Australia, as all the countries we call democracies are in fact representative democracies: the people don’t have the power, the politicians do, the people just decide who those politicians are. As no politician I can vote for shares my views I feel right in saying that I am not represented even if I can vote. And then the wonderful minimum age law that says you can’t vote until you’re 18. So anyone under the age of 18 is absolutely correct and absolutely justified in claiming they don’t live in a democracy.

Still, at least now I am 18 I will have the right to go to a polling booth come next election and have my name crossed off and give my vote for who will be the least bad candidate, which is a damn sight more than millions of British citizens could do. So in that sense the British elections have been good in reminding me how lucky I am.

A final point goes to the openness in expressing opinions on some candidates. The BNP were called fascists for the duration of one whole interview, and even the host of the BBC’s coverage (I’m unfamiliar with who he is or what role he plays at the BBC) described the BNP as racist. Yeah we know that most of the Australian parliament are racist and that One Nation could call themselves the Australian Fascist Party and nobody would know the difference, but nobody actually says that. So points to the BBC for being open. I like that.

Overall though, as exciting as the telecast of the election, the outcome and whatever else good comes from it, I can’t give a good score to an election where every citizen is not able to express their democratic right, whether they want to or whether they simply didn’t reach the front of the queue by the time voting closed.

British General Elections 2010:
4/10

Friday Review: Balls of Steel

2010-04-23T15:33:00.006+10:00

This week I review Balls of Steel. As it is an old game that many of you may not have heard of, allow me to first tell you all about the game. Those of you who are familiar with the game can skip to the 8th-to-last paragraph, or for that matter the final score if you wish.

Balls Of Steel is an action game developed by Wildfire Studios. The game has 5 settings which you an choose from to play.

The first of these settings is Darkside. This setting puts you as the commander in a spacecraft under the attack of aliens. The main gameplay mechanic is that the story progresses based on the movements you make around the map (in this case the ship), with different movements triggering different actions becoming available in different positions of the map (ship). These actions are such as upgrading weapons until you have authorization to use the ‘Super Cannon’ to destroy alien hatchlings, attempting to crush as many ‘Crawlers’ as possible (spider like aliens that crawl across walls) or reporting to the Command Post to embark on one of any range of missions which include everything from routine patrols of the ship to shooting meteors before they hit the ship.

If that sci-fi Alien-esque setting doesn’t grab you then maybe you’ll like to take the role of a member of a US Police Department, fighting to keep the city safe from a mad bomber/arsonist in Firestorm. Or at least you mostly play in the police position, where you face such duties as searching out hoaxes, evacuating buildings where bomb threats have been made or even trying to defuse a bomb; some missions in Firestorm actually have you take on the roll of the bomber where you will make bomb threats to every building you can, or cause freeway chaos.

Perhaps you are more a fantasy person though in which case Balls of Steel will not disappoint with the Barbarian level which sees you take the role of an adventurer who seeks quests for valuable gems, fights the elements themselves (release the Kraken!) and travels the mountains and valleys with the blessings of the gods themselves. If you survive long enough you may even get to storm the Citadel where you fight passed the guards and possibly get away with the treasure of the kingdom!

There is also the Mutation level where you fight for your life in the name of science! Or rather conduct life threatening scientific experiments as you take on the role of the very embodiment of the stereotypical mad scientist, or if none of those levels take your fancy you could always just settle for the shameless tie-in with a Duke Nukem level (he’s got balls of steel you see).

“Wow”, I can hear those of you previously unfamiliar with Balls of Steel saying. It does sound incredible one game packed with 5 such in depth, action filled levels of such diverse and unique (albeit unoriginal)settings . And occasionally while blasting aliens out the airlock, quelling that radiation leak, fighting off that dragon or chewing bubble gum a game of pinball might even break out.

Oh yeah, Balls of Steel is a pinball game. Did I fail to mention that?

Well yes I did fail to mention that and the reason is because Balls of Steel is just so much more than pinball. If I had started the review by saying “Balls Of Steel is a pinball game developed by Wildfire Studios.” then most of you would have assumed this review would be something like my review of Zombie Bowl-O-Rama or that the game despite how good I might say it was would still prove to be naught more than an overpriced extension for what Windows XP already provides for free.

Of course my deliberate deception would not have worked on those of you who have heard of Balls of Steel before, nor on those of you who have some idea of what the name could possibly have meant.

The 5 different settings are the 5 tables on offer. The main gameplay mechanic of moving around the map to trigger story progression in different areas of the map is simply a case of ‘shoot the (x) ramp (y) times to activate (z) at the (a) slot’.

I think possibly describing the game as an action game is possibly more accurate than describing it as a pinball game. An action game that uses pinball as its gameplay perspective.

The physics of each table are pretty accurate, although exceptions must be made for some parts (most pinball tables don’t have teleporters or ball duplicators or fire). The graphics depict the tables as if they were true 3D tables so you can see how the physics work from just looking at the table. The graphics are also very realistic for the mid 90s. It looks like a real pinball table. You can’t say that your Diablo avatar is like putting on armour and looking at yourself in a mirror.

The game is enormous fun single player but if you have mates why not make it multiplayer? Multiplayer is the same as single player except between two and four people play. It is as exciting and engaging the first time you play it as the last time you play it, the novelty eventually wearing off and being replaced with invigorating skill. By the time you’re posting scores of multiple hundreds of millions of points, or even billions of points, the game can go on for a while as you earn extra ball after extra ball after extra ball. Even then you can just change game modes which through addition or removal of different rules construct multiple difficulty levels without actually adjusting the difficulty.

You come to splatter aliens across the screen with nothing more than a small steel ball and 3 flippers, you stay for the high scores, the glory and the outright status as alpha-male.

The only, and I mean only, thing that is not good about this game is its age. Age is not necessarily a bad thing and being still so engaging 13 years after its original release is surely just another indicator of how great Balls of Steel is, but it does raise some problems. First problem is that when you try installing it you will get an error message declaring that you need to have Windows 95 to run this game. Fortunately there is a patch to fix this. The patch was designed to make the game run on Windows 98 but I’ve found that it can get the game to run successfully on even Windows 7.

Well it sort of runs on Windows 7, there is a bad graphical error with the dot matrix bar which makes video mini-quests difficult, but it is the same problem that Windows 7 has running most old games including Starcraft, Diablo, Age of Empires, etc. I’ve got it running on Windows XP at the moment but you can’t change out of scroll view or the computer crashes. This makes multi-ball especially difficult as you can only see half the table at any given time.

What really kills it though is that this game was supposed to run on a 133Mhz processor with 16MB of RAM. My gaming PC has a 2.7Ghz dual core processor and 2GB or RAM (soon to become 4GB when I have the money). Yes the game runs with only minor graphical problems, but it runs so fast it is impossible to play. I suspect that running it through an emulator such as DosBOX would help this as you can reduce CPU cycles, but I’ve not tried it so I’m not sure if it will a) slow it down or if b) Balls of Steel is even compatible with DosBOX. I’m not going to try anything until I’ve got a stable operating system to work with, so it will be June before I know for sure.

If they were to release this game again tomorrow the only things that should be different would be it runs properly with no errors on Windows 7, you can post scores in Tournament mode to online leaderboards (this used to be a feature but it has been removed in recent years) and maybe some achievements if you have a Steam copy. (The game is not available on Steam.) Not a single other thing about it needs changing. Maybe the ability to add extra tables as DLC would be good too, but it isn’t necessary, the 5 existing tables are plenty.

Balls of Steel, despite what expectations you might have of a pinball game, is one of the best video games of all time. And Wildfire Studios are based in Brisbane, so I can even feel a sense of hometown patriotism as I play it.

10/10

In more topical but completely unrelated news... What is the difference between the Melbourne Storm and a pencil?

A pencil has a point.

Friday Review: R.U.S.E. Public Beta

2010-04-16T10:54:00.004+10:00

If you are on Steam you will have no doubt seen the new real time strategy game by Eugen Systems: R.U.S.E., published by Ubisoft. Steam kindly gave everyone a free copy of the Beta version to play until Monday passed in the lead up to the game’s official 4th June 2010 release.

So here is my review of the R.U.S.E. Public Beta.

The game is a World War II real time strategy which put me off to start with but that is a purely subject thing. As much as I love RTS, World War II just bores me; I want to blast aliens out of the sky, not Germans. World War II buffs should have fun though.

The main gameplay mechanic and the basis for the whole game pretty much is the ability to deceive your opponent. The game is as much about intelligence and counter-intelligence as it is about actual command and combat, more so even. This is really the main problem I have with the game. Starcraft also has decoys and traps. Except in Starcraft a decoy is a small group of marines to distract the enemy while you move an enormous force in behind their mineral field. In Starcraft you put dummy bases around and expand to block and confuse your opponent. In R.U.S.E. you do all that by playing cards. Not in a Solitaire manner, but in a Risk manner. As you play you collect Ruse cards which you play to decoy buildings, jam your opponent’s radar and stuff like that. While I can see the appeal of it I just don’t see that it is as great as the game itself publicizes. It just takes a small part of every RTS and makes it the focus.

Well I’ve just blown away the whole attraction of this game with my first point but wait because it gets better. You see while I argue that this game is not good or innovative because of its main mechanic that doesn’t mean this game isn’t going to be fun for bashing around at a LAN party. I certainly don’t see it having the appeal of something like Dawn of War and it is never even going to scratch the surface of Starcraft, but for a year or so after it is released the people who are into this kind of thing will be able to have some fun with it.

Only being a Beta version it was very limited. I could play online deathmatches or I could play offline deathmatches against the computer. The especially troubling thing about this is that there was at no point a tutorial level. Now I don’t need an in depth tutorial to explain everything about the genre to me, but some indication of what does what would be nice. I guess the presumption is that you can figure this out by yourself just by playing to which the answer was, in my case at least, no because by not knowing how to play the computer was always able to destroy me in about 10 minutes. It is all very good I learned how to make anti-tank bases but then the computer destroys that with a unit I didn’t know existed and don’t know how to counter.

Not being told how to actually play the game made it unpleasant but the full release will feature a campaign mode that hopefully explains everything and adds some meaning to the battles. Put more succinctly: the full release should be better and more fun than this beta.

There was an aspect of the game which I am weightily impressed with, despite my lack of amusement with the game overall, and that is with the graphics. The graphics are outstanding. The whole map is just one of those tables that you move around the figures on in a strategy room, and this is revealed if you zoom out as far as you can. If you leave the zoom at a normal level then it is just as like any normal RTS view, but you can also zoom in so close that you can see the handles on the doorways of buildings and the individual troops turning those handles as they enter buildings. (Note that I don’t actually know if there are door handles, I’m just trying to demonstrate the level of graphic detail.) The smoothness between these zoom levels is unparalleled in anything I’ve seen before and even at the most extreme zoomed out position you can still see the action happening in minute size. The map is also extremely realistic with full world detail.

There is a final thing that puts me off the game though. This is not an actual gameplay component but rather the terms of use. Long gone are the days, it seems, when you could buy a game and play it. Steam has a lot to do with this I suppose and I would not go back to the old ways if it meant abandoning Steam regardless of how appealing the old ways are. But this game requires a permanent high speed internet connection to not only open but also run the game, even if you aren’t using an online mode. Not only this but you need a Ubisoft account to not only open but also play the game, even if you aren’t using an online mode. The only reason I can think of this being in the terms of use is that there is DRM hidden somewhere. Ah yes, my SecuROM sense is tingling. I checked everywhere that I could to see if SecuROM was used in the Beta because I refuse to install anything with that evil seed in it, and I couldn’t find it, nor could I find any other DRM. Maybe the constant internet connection itself is the DRM? Whatever it is I am more than a little suspicious and very cautious about having R.U.S.E. on my computer.

The game will be sold on Steam for $50 US or if you pre-order it you can wipe $5 off that cost and get some bonus content. I won’t be buying it though, not least because I don’t have $50. Some people will buy this game and have some fun with it, but I’m not going to be one of those people. I can’t see the main deception mechanic is worth all the hype and it just isn’t anything outstanding without it. Really this game is an excellent one for your mate to buy so you can go around and check out the graphics, but not actually play. As I said it could be a good bash at a LAN Party but with those terms of service I wouldn’t be surprised if the only way to actually use it at a LAN is to use a cracked copy courtesy of Bit Torrent.

R.U.S.E. Public Beta: 4/10

Happy Third Birthday Cyberhome!

2010-04-07T11:28:00.000+10:00

Age is a funny thing. Being old is considered an achievement, but then it is considered a shame, but then it is considered an achievement again. Think about it. A seven year old considers themself better than a a five year old. A forty-three year old considers themself not as good as a twenty-three year old. A one hundred and three year old is considered by everyone else to be better than a seventy-three year old.

That’s just a thought I had that I thought was worth posting. It seems your early twenties are the age you aspire to be, even when you are well past them, until your old enough to have actually achieved putting off death. Personally I’d rather be in my forties and feel like I’m in my twenties than actually be in my twenties. Youthfulness is something to aspire to, youth is just a stage that everyone goes through, what is there to celebrate there?

As you’ll notice from the title of this post today is this blog’s third birthday. It hasn’t really reached old age but I suppose the life expectancy of most blogs is a lot less than three. It also isn’t young so much any more, but is a youth in a blog something that you should aspire to? I’m not sure.

Yes, it was 7th April 2007 when I made my first post, Pet Music, to the blog of my MySpace page. The post speculated that, based on the playlist of JTV on Saturday morning, our pets had a better taste in music than we did.

I’ve come a long way since then. Not necessarily better, but further. So welcome to some self-indulgent reminiscing, some advice to people starting a blog and what you can expect for future reading.

As I said, my first post was made on the 7th April 2007. I was thinking about starting a blog before that, but I didn’t want to just post any crap. I thought that if I was going to say something on the internet I had to say something worth the internet knowing. I got over this by my second post if the quality of my writing is to be believed.

The post I thought most about posting before actually hitting submit was ‘Education Queensland Are Racist Nazis’. I actually wrote the post at school after my attempt to research stem cell science was blocked by the EQ firewall not because there was inappropriate content on the website but because the website of written by a Jew. The nature of the post was definitely to highlight my point by making it as dramatic as possible, but I was hesitant to post it given it was a fairly serious allegation. After asking whether I should post it on Facebook and having a positive hit of comments from school friends saying I should post it, I did. It was then the highest hit on Google for this blog for a while, which was not something I really wanted but whatever.

The most popular post I’ve made is the ‘Macbook Won’t Wake Up From Sleep’ post I made about how I stopped my Macbook from failing to wake up from sleep. At the time I posted it Google was not much help is offering advice so I posted what I’d found to my blog to help out people having the same problem. Google is now full of problems and as the comments on that post suggest, it is actually a common problem caused by many things. If you have a Mac you might be interested in reading it because upgrading to Snow Leopard.

I started the Blogger blog on the 17th of November 2008. MySpace was too limited, accepting comments only from people who had MySpace pages and seeing as my audience was mainly people who didn’t, this seemed silly. Ever since then most posts have appeared on both blogs. The exceptions are Noise Boy music posts which only go to MySpace, and picture blogging which usually only happens at Blogger.

Some advice to new bloggers:

As I said, I made my first post in the 7th April 2007 because that was the first time I felt I had something to say that was worth the internet hearing. I think the desire to post only important or intelligent things is a good rule to start with, but as I said, I had pretty much abandoned it by my second post. In fact this isn’t strictly true. I just changed my definition of what was important or worth the internet hearing.

If only one person benefits from hearing me say something on my blog I consider it worth posting. At the same time, I don’t want to write for that one person. This is in relation to posting about my own life. Especially with age and such. For instance if I’m having a hard time with something I might post about it. Nobody will care until one day in a few years someone in the same situation might find that post and realise they aren’t alone with it. That makes it worth posting. The counter to this is that you don’t want to lose your privacy, so you aren’t going to post every problem you go through.

Another counter to that last point is that you can’t target just one person when you post. Four billion people can read what you say, so if you are only trying to get one person to read you a blog is overkill. Just think about who you want to read you and don’t worry to mix up the target audience a bit. Macbook Won’t Wake Up From Sleep was targetted at anyone using a Macbook, Always Moving On was targetted at a small group of girls I used to catch the bus with. Big difference in who is reading it. To follow on this, don’t expect everyone to read everything you post, but expect enough people to read it that it needs to be worthwhile.

I’ll point out here that just because I am giving this advice doesn’t mean I follow it. I should follow it but I’m not perfect. You shouldn’t try to be perfect either. If you have a dud post, you say something stupid or just ramble incoherently for a few paragraphs but say nothing, that is fine, it happens to everyone. It can even add personality to the blog to show you aren’t the perfect considered writer. Actually, you should try to be perfect. Saying you shouldn’t try to be perfect is a really dumb thing to say so scrap that. You should try to be perfect but you shouldn’t be worried when you inevitably fail.

Don’t try to be someone you aren’t. If you can’t believe what you are writing then nobody is going to believe it when they read it. What this means is if you are into gaming, photography or nature you should blog about gaming, photography or nature. You probably shouldn’t blog about changes in parenting laws. If you have a strong opinion on changes to parenting laws then post it by all means, but don’t post something just because everyone else is and it seemed like you should too.

To counter the last point, don’t be afraid to try new things. You might find you do quite well, so it is worth a try. If you find you are no good at it though, just don’t keep posting over and over until you are good because you’ll lose your readers. I tried satire writing at the end of last year and thought about posting it because I thought it was quite good, but I have never posted satire before so it would just look out of place. Maybe in the future though.

This last point is the most important so I’ll say it again. Audience is not everything. Every post should have an audience, but that audience doesn’t have to be the same for every post. If you start losing readers it isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they aren’t the people you are writing for. Take some good marketing advice: you should capture your target audience. Any additional audience is just bonus.

What can you except to read on this blog in the future?

Well, hopefully some of that advice I have given. Also, that would depend on which blog this is. The first and most significant change is that this will be the last post I make to MySpace. This is for many reasons:

The process I use for writing blog posts is I sit down and write the post in an offline word processor. I then copy and paste what I’ve written into the blog post editors at both MySpace and Blogger and hit post. What this means is that the posts don’t have any fancy online things such as citations (links specifically rather than mere attribution). There don’t even have rich text editing. By only posting to Blogger from now on I’m hoping to take advantage of these online aspects of writing and make it a more polished work.

The MySpace blog is also largely redundant. Anyone can access Blogger so my MySpace readers can just read at Blogger. Blogger is a much nicer platform than MySpace, which isn’t MySpace’s fault. MySpace isn’t a blog, it just has a blog in it. Blogger is a blog. I’ll keep using MySpace to post Noise Boy music stuff, but it won’t be kept in sync with Blogger any more.

This blog is as much known for its errors in spelling, grammar and even idea as much as it is for the actual posts. As I have always maintained: this blog is not a demonstration of my writing ability. I don’t proof-read posts before I post them, I don’t put careful consideration into format. If you want a demonstration of my writing ability read an assignment. Well I’m possibly going to change this habit. At least I might start proof-reading. Still, I’m not going to say this is an accurate demonstration of my writing ability just yet.

Angry rants and defamation. This is something that really got going last year when I was not a happy person. Hopefully now that I am a happy person again they will disappear. To some degree anyway. As unlikely as it sounds I do think about what I say before I choose to post something defamatory. Ageist parent on the bus needs an especially intelligent 10 year old to slap some sense into her, she doesn’t need me to tell the whole world she is a bad parent. The former South Australian Attorney General starts suing people for using hyperbolous expression of their opinion online, I have no opinion one way or the other. But one could assume that if I had the $20 000 required to pay the defamation fine he may or may not have been bullying underclass citizens in his electorate with maybe my opinion would be less deliberately vague.
You will probably see a decrease in angry rants though. I’m just trying to be more positive because really positive is a better way to write. Let me start this positive writing right now by saying I fully endorse the LNP at the next Queensland state election. You can make up the angry anti government rant for yourself. Have fun!

Something I wanted to do when the blog started was have people ask me questions and I’d post answers to these questions. It is a far more open way to blog and with things like Formspring existing now it will be something I will definitely look into. It may take a while because I’m wanting to answer questions in depth as posts, not just do Q&A.

Regular segments! Woohoo! Everyone loves regularity. On Fridays, starting in a couple of weeks probably, I’m going to post the Friday Review. Pretty much I’m just going to review stuff and then post the review on Friday. Think mostly games and music which I’ve already done some of in the past, but also silly things like bus trips, hair dye and cloud formations.

The summer storm reviews will continue October to March each year. State of Origin live-blogging will not be. I’ll be keeping just to Twitter for sports and political debates. I’m not sure if I will do live-blogging at all in the future. Don’t count it out I guess but I’ve got no plans to do it at the moment.

I’m also looking to try and start another blog where I can just post undeveloped ideas. If this is Noise Boy’s Cyberhome, the other blog will be Noise Boy’s Shotgun. Somewhere I can just post things that are too short for a blog post or not developed enough, but too long or important for Twitter. I’d then post the week or month’s worth of Shotgun stuff as a single post here when there is enough to make a full post. The reason this hasn’t happened yet is because the only platform I’ve found that is suitable is Tumblr and I’ve read the terms of use for Tumblr and absolutely will not use it. They weren’t quite as bad as Facebook’s privacy policy, but then nothing is that bad. The two are comparable in terms of badness though.

I might also look into things like podcasting at some point, but nothing in the immediate future.

So that is basically it for the self-indulgent birthday blog post. I hope that people have enjoyed reading what I’ve had to say for the last three years, or that you’ve read something thought provoking. I’ve enjoyed writing for the blog and I look forward to continuing to do so in a manner that is more intelligent and more interesting than it has been so far.

Now seeing as you’ve been good enough to read through 4 pages of this, I should definitely tell you about the other anniversary for the day. The 7th April 2007 was also the day I released my first single, appropriately titled ‘Single’. As with every year, to celebrate the anniversary of that release all Noise Boy music will be free until the 24th of May. So head along to Last.FM and download what ever interests you. I’ll upload the latest album (released November last year) as well as soon as I’ve worked out what the technical difficulty that has prevented me from doing so yet is.

Have a good day everyone!

PC Upgrading Woes

2010-04-01T12:41:00.000+11:00

Some of you may have heard that for Lent this year I gave up buying games on Steam. The reasoning behind this isn’t charitable, rather than self-beneficial. I haven’t got much money at the moment and so a religiously imposed ban on buying games until such time as I did have money seemed like a good idea. Also, I’d forgotten when Lent started and by the time I’d remembered I’d already done everything on the church’s recommended things to give up list.

Anyhow, with Easter this weekend my ban on buying games from Steam will be lifted, and so I thought it was time to buy the memory upgrade that I need before I can run Dragon Age Origins. I could complain about how ridiculous it is that you need 3GB of ram to run the game, possibly due to the inefficiency of both the game and the useless operating system it runs on. But I have been supposed to buy the additional ram for a while so I just went to get it.

I can’t remember what type of memory I’ve got (no pun intended) so I went to my good friends at The Disc Shop over on the north side, as they are the ones who did the design of the computer for me. Getting there is more tricky though.

Typically the rail network was experiencing problems, just track faults and such, but it meant that the train was delayed for a while at Bowen Hills. When we finally got to Zillmere I was quite hungry, so before continuing on my walk to the shop I went into one of the street side corner stores and bought an ice cream.

20 minutes later I was nearly to the shop and I started feeling pretty awful. I guess the ice cream may have gone off or used bad milk or something but I was feeling real sick. No point complaining about it until I was somewhere useful though, so I went into the shop and bought my memory.

On the way back I was feeling way too sick and I needed to vomit, so with the nearest toilet still 20 minutes away I ducked behind a tree in a nearby park and let hurl. I felt guilty about vomitting in a park but I really had no choice. I wish I did though, because no sooner had I started walking again than a bunch of late teens came up to me on the footpath and enquired about the vomit.

Turns out the park was their “turf”. Honestly I thought people only referred to their territory as turf if they were in a movie or comic or taking the piss. Well, no, so they kindly explained to me in a not so delicate manner exactly what they would do to me if they ever saw me in that park again. I thought I’d got away clean but then they decided to take my shopping, so I summoned the energy to run and attempted to flee.

Being sick though I managed about a block before they caught me, and started beating me up on the street. Covered in my own blood and vomit, with my shopping gone, wallet gone, phone gone, and now no way to get home or contact anyone at home, things were really bad.

I figured I’d walk back to the train station because there was nothing else to do, and with any luck there might be police at the station or something. Not that I ever found out because while trying to cross the road at the intersection near the station a semi trailer came speeding through a red arrow and hit me.

As you can imagine, being hit by a speeding semi trailer was quite bad. Bad enough even to be fatal. At least now I was dead I didn’t need to worry about the loss of dignity of walking through Zillmere covered in blood and vomit.

So next time someone jokes about how computer upgrades are a killer, you’ll know just what they mean. Still, maybe I should have known better than to go on a cross city shopping trip on the 1st of April.

...APRIL FOOLS!!

Hottest 100 2009 Reworked

2010-03-29T23:20:00.003+11:00

To avoid the shame of going a whole month without posting anything, here I present Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2009 re-ordered so the songs are in order from worst at No. 100 to best at No. 1. I did the re-ordering. It is the usual balance of subjective and objective quality decisions.

If I have the time and inclination I might do this for some other years as well, but for now here is 2009.

100. Creeping Out Sara - NOFX
99. Kiss With A Fist - FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
98. Sticks ‘N’ Stones - JAMIE T
97. Not Fair - LILY ALLEN
96. Awesome - THE BLOODY BEETROOTS feat. THE COOL KIDS
95. D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-Tune) - JAY-Z
94. In For The Kill - LA ROUX
93. She’s A Genius - JET
92. New Moon Rising - WOLFMOTHER
91. Vanilla - BRITISH INDIA
90. Wheels - FOO FIGHTERS
89. Pursuit Of Happiness - KID CUDI feat. MGMT & RATATAT
88. I’ve Got Friends - MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA
87. New Fang - THEM CROOKED VULTURES
86. Blue Lips - REGINA SPEKTOR
85. United States Of Eurasia - MUSE
84. My Girls - ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
83. Remember Me - TAME IMPALA
82. We Won’t Run - SARAH BLASKO
81. Raindrops - BASEMENT JAXX
80. Hurt Feelings - FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS
79. Coin Laundry - LISA MITCHELL
78. No You Girls - FRANZ FERDINAND
77. Carol Brown - FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS
76. Horchata - VAMPIRE WEEKEND
75. One Way Road - JOHN BUTLER TRIO
74. Zero - YEAH YEAH YEAHS
73. Love Lost - THE TEMPER TRAP
72. Blood Bank - BON IVER
71. Audacity Of Huge - SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO feat. CHRIS KEATING
70. Cement - WASHINGTON
69. Crying Lightning - ARCTIC MONKEYS
68. 11th Dimension - JULIAN CASABLANCAS
67. Dog Days Are Over - FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
66. Warp 1.9 - THE BLOODY BEETROOTS feat. STEVE AOKI
65. Too Many Dicks On The Dancefloor - FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS
64. If You’re Wondering If I Want You To I Want You To - WEEZER
63. Where Did All The Love Go? - KASABIAN
62. All I Want - SARAH BLASKO
61. Help I’m Alive - METRIC
60. Skeleton Boy - FRIENDLY FIRES
59. Sleepyhead - PASSION PIT
58. Fader - THE TEMPER TRAP
57. Laughing With - REGINA SPEKTOR
56. Home - EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROES
55. Resistance - MUSE
54. Cousins - VAMPIRE WEEKEND
53. Bonkers - DIZZEE RASCAL & ARMAND VAN HELDEN
52. Parlez Vous Francais? - ART VS. SCIENCE
51. Two Weeks - GRIZZLY BEAR
50. Little Secrets - PASSION PIT
49. And The Boys - ANGUS & JULIA STONE
48. Underdog - KASABIAN
47. 22 - LILY ALLEN
46. Islands - THE XX
45. Buttons (CSS Remix) - SIA
44. Animal - MIIKE SNOW
43. Meet Me On The Equinox - DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
42. Drumming Song - FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
41. Hell - TEGAN AND SARA
40. Uprising - MUSE
39. The Cave - MUMFORD AND SONS
38. Still Standing - HILLTOP HOODS
37. Thump - BERTIE BLACKMAN
36. Broken Leg - BLUEJUICE
35. Fire - KASABIAN
34. I’m Not Alone - CALVIN HARRIS
33. Holiday - DIZZEE RASCAL
32. Ghosts ‘N’ Stuff - DEADMAU5
31. All Of The Dreamers - POWDERFINGER
30. Getting Wise - YVES KLEIN BLUE
29. The Good News - PHILADELPHIA GRAND JURY
28. Friend In The Field - ART VS. SCIENCE
27. Undisclosed Desires - MUSE
26. The Darkest Side - THE MIDDLE EAST
25. Heartbreaker - MSTRKRFT feat. JOHN LEGEND
24. Byrds Of Prey - BERTIE BLACKMAN
23. Bulletproof - LA ROUX
22. Set Fire To The Hive - KARNIVOOL
21. Ramona Was A Waitress - PAUL DEMPSEY
20. Shooting Stars - BAG RAIDERS
19. 1901 - PHOENIX
18. Pictures - ILLY
17. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
16. Brother - LITTLE BIRDY
15. Heavy Cross - GOSSIP
14. Heads Will Roll - YEAH YEAH YEAHS
13. Lisztomania - PHOENIX
12. All I Know - KARNIVOOL
11. Sometimes - MIAMI HORROR
10. You’ve Changed - SIA
9. Panic Switch - SILVERSUN PICKUPS
8. Chase That Feeling - HILLTOP HOODS
7. Foreign Land - ESKIMO JOE
6. One More Chance - BLOC PARTY
5. Science Of Fear - THE TEMPER TRAP
4. Omen - THE PRODIGY
3. Blood - THE MIDDLES EAST
2. The Waitress Song - SETH SENTRY
1. Little Lion Man - MUMFORD AND SONS

Media Responsibility vs. Censorship in Flood Reports

2010-02-18T12:33:00.001+11:00

I’ve just read an intersting article on the floods over at the Brisbane Times. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/keep-the-swimming-snaps-for-the-beach-authorities-20100217-od5h.html

The report basically gives a summary of the floods and asks should there be a ban on people playing in flood waters.

It is an interesting thing this, because there probably should be. Flood waters are dangerous and people should not play in them, or risk injury or death for themselves or anyone trying to help them out of that situation. If the news didn’t show people playing in flood waters people would still do it, but the chances are high that less people would. The media has an obligation, a responsibility to report things in a manner that don’t cause problems, such as people playing in flood waters.

Reporting on the floods is good, reporting on people surfing in them not so good. The media shows us these images, they need to take responsibility for the consequences of those images.

However the 6 comments on the article all quite savagely attacked the idea, labelling it as censorship. If there was a ban on photographing stupid activities in flood waters then yes that would be bad because it would be an infringement on rights and so on, but a rule, even if not a law but just a widely acknowledged agreement, to prevent the media from showing these images isn’t really censorship in such a bad way. They aren’t going to stop people from looking at these photos, Google isn’t going to block results for “Queensland Floods Boogie Boarding”, but the spread of the images would be lessened and if that means people are safer during wet season then that is a good thing.

It would be interesting to know if the savage anti-censorship stance shown by those commenters is a reaction to moves like the net filter, or if it was just coincidence or if people have never wanted censorship. They also attack the nanny state so maybe adults are just sick of their governments trying to protect them from themselves.

I just thought it was interesting the way the media responsibility vs censorship angles came out in this article and its comments.

18th Playlist

2010-02-14T15:29:00.001+11:00

Yesterday was my epic 18th party. A lot of preparation went into it but for me there was no task more important than the music. For most people this will just be a reference playlist for what was played, but I’m going to crap on about it for a while first, so just scroll down to the playlist if that is all you’re interested in.

I had been looking forward to compiling the playlist for months, but had been holding off until after the Hottest 100 so I could take some hints from that as to what should go on. After the Hottest 100 I decided to take no notice of what the people of Australia thought and just go with what I’d already had in mind. It took a couple of weeks getting the songs in order.

I decided which songs should go in and go where based on a couple of things. The first thing was who would be there. If there was a song that somebody liked, I’d put it in when they would be there. This was not a foolproof thing because it was based on invitees, not attendees. The next thing to be mindful of was the time of day. Early in the planning stage I looked up when sunset would be and put the appropriate songs then (6:34pm).

The third and most important thing was party dynamic. This is also the most complicated part of any party mix because it is all prediction. You can’t know exactly how the party will be going until the party is going that way, so preparing a list ahead of time makes this really difficult.

More than anything though this list is more an indulgence in musical wankery than anything else. If you are putting together your own party mix the best and easiest thing you can do is grab a heap of Triple J Hottest 100 compilations and put them on an iTunes mix and hit shuffle. Choose years from the era most of your guests were teenagers in and you can’t go wrong.

This list had to start at exactly 9:40am to fit with the day, and after a brief bit of trouble to start with we got running fine. The first 5 songs go for exactly 20 minutes, and are supposed to be symoblic. You can guess their significance in the comments if you wish.

9:40am Treaty - YOTHU YINDI
Children Of The Grounds - MIDLAKE
Burning Sand Trees - NOISE BOY
Party - AGE OF EMPIRES
18 - MOBY
10:00am Party Started - THE CAT EMPIRE
Man On The Moon - R.E.M.
Unfinished Sympathy - MASSIVE ATTACK
An Honest Mistake - THE BRAVERY
Don’t Worry About Nothin’ - MUPH & PLUTONIC
Australia - THE SHINS
Getting Wise - YVES KLEIN BLUE
10:30am Propane Nightmares - PENDULUM
Party To Survive - NO THROUGH ROAD
Gone Daddy Gone - GNARLS BARKLEY
Half Full Glass Of Wine - TAME IMPALA
Black Bugs - REGURGITATOR
Speed Your Love To Me - SIMPLE MINDS
Oxford Comma - VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Yamanote Line - THE PAPER SCISSORS
11:00am Bat Out Of Hell - MEATLOAF
Short Skirt, Long Jacket - CAKE
It’s Not Enough (The Garland Cult Remix) - TYCHO BRAHE
Stay - PAULMAC
Ricochet - FAITH NO MORE
House Of Fun - MADNESS
11:30am Jam for The Ladies - MOBY vs. PRINCESS SUPERSTAR
Do You Want To - FRANZ FERDINAND
300 This is Sparta! - FUNTASTIC POWER!
The Well And The Lighthouse - ARCADE FIRE
We Are Rockstars - DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH?
Let’s Dance - DAVID BOWIE
C’Mon C’Mon - THE VON BONDIES
The Rockafeller Skank - FATBOY SLIM
Around The World / Harder Better Fast Stronger - DAFT PUNK
12:00pm Hey Boy Hey Girl - THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
Paranoid Android - RADIOHEAD
Discipline - NINE INCH NAILS
We Get Around - URTHBOY
Keep Fishin’ - WEEZER
Funky Shit - THE PRODIGY
Transmission - JOY DIVISION
12:30pm Let’s Dance To Joy Division - THE WOMBATS
Where’s Your Head At - BASEMENT JAXX
Dare - GORILLAZ
Invaders Must Die - THE PRODIGY
Prisoner Of Society - THE LIVING END
Not Many- The Remix! - SCRIBE
Lotion - GREENSKEEPERS
1:00pm Enter Sandman - METALLICA
Ruby - THE KAISER CHIEFS
Message In a Bottle - THE POLICE
Epic - FAITH NO MORE
A Little Less Conversation - ELVIS PRESLEY vs. JUNKIE XL
Into The Galaxy - MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS
One A Million - BODYJAR
Still Alive - VALVE
1:30pm Entrails - SOUNDS LIKE CHICKEN
Everything’s Gone Bad - THE FERGUSONS
Being Followed - ROCKET SCIENCE
Push Up - FREESTYLERS
My Friend Robot - REGURGITATOR
Fit But You Know It - THE STREETS
Slow Hands - INTERPOL
Bodyrock - MOBY
2:00pm Lost - PHIL GRAHAM BAND
The Salmon Dance - THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
I Thought About You - THE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS
Dashboard - MODEST MOUSE
Structure - VNV NATION
Window And The Watcher - THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
Rob The Past Feed The Future - GOLDEN DEATH MUSIC
My People - THE PRESETS
2:30pm Give It Away - RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
2020 - THE HERD
Breakout - ASH GRUNWALD
Mass Destruction - FAITHLESS
I’m Going Paranoid - DJ MORGOTH
Jimmy Recard - DRAPHT
The Bold and The Beautiful - THE DRUGS
Hot Kisses, Cold Tiles - FERGUS BROWN
Walking On A Dream - EMPIRE OF THE SUN
3:00pm I Feel Fantastic - JONATHAN COULTON
It’s The End of the World As We Know It - R.E.M.
Hello - THE CAT EMPIRE
Pogo - DIGITALISM
One - METALLICA
Ace of Spades Feel Good - DJ MORGOTH
They’re Red Hot - ROBERT JOHNSON
Where The City Meets The Sea - THE GETAWAY PLAN
3:30pm The Waitress Song - SETH SENTRY
Strange Attraction - THE CURE
Broken Bones - BIRDS OF TOKYO
Transmission - THE DIRTY SECRETS
Take Me Out - FRANZ FERDINAND
Make Up Your Mind - YVES KLEIN BLUE
Electric Feel - MGMT
We Can’t Hear You - THE HERD
4:00pm Little Lion Man - MUMFORD AND SONS
Ghosts - LAURA MARLING
Hand In Glove - THE SMITHS
Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up - DJ MORGOTH
6.66 - SALMON HATER
Float On - MODEST MOUSE
From The Sea - ESKIMO JOE
My Enemy - COG
If You’re Wondering If I Want You To I Want You To - WEEZER
4:30pm Coca Cola - LITTLE RED
Don’t Mug Yourself - THE STREETS
Rock The Casbah - SOMETHING FOR KATE
Dance Wiv Me - DIZZEE RASCAL
Black Betty - SPIDERBAIT
Ice Cream - MUSCLES
Shiny Happy People - R.E.M.
This Heart Attack - FAKER
Farewell Rocketship - CHILDREN COLLIDE
5:00pm Aeroplane - RRED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
Kids - MGMT
The Good News - PHILADELPHIA GRAND JURY
The Festival Song - PEZ
Ramona Was a Waitress - PAUL DEMPSEY
Stay With Me Bright Eyes - SOMETHING WITH NUMBERS
Fences - PHOENIX
5:30pm Carry On - MOTOR ACE
We Are The People - EMPIRE OF THE SUN
Somebody Told Me - THE KILLERS
Captured Vibe/ Recapturing the Vibe Restrung - HILLTOP HOODS
My Happiness - POWDERFINGER
Run On - MOBY
Wonder - SHELLEY HARLAND
6:00pm Bird Of Feather - COG
Better Than - JOHN BUTLER TRIO
Omen - THE PRODIGY
Flippers - ART VS SCIENCE
The Price - DAPPLED CITIES
I Know It’s Over - THE SMITHS
Hearts on Fire - CUT COPY
Embrace - PNAU
6:30pm Fall For You - THE WHITLAMS
The King Is Dead - THE HERD
Birdmad Girl - THE CURE
Intransient - RISE APOLLO
Pinstripe - SOMETHING FOR KATE
These Days - POWDERFINGER
The Nosebleed Section - HILLTOP HOODS
7:00pm Regret (Fire Island Mix) - NEW ORDER
It’s Not Over Yet - KLAXONS
No Cars Go - ARCADE FIRE
Middle Of The Hill - JOSH PYKE
Make You Happy - JOSH PYKE
Bastard Son - GEORGE
Standing - VNV NATION
7:30pm The Rip - PORTISHEAD
This Charming Man - THE SMITHS
The Perfect Drug - NINE INCH NAILS
The Prophecy - SEFIROS
Treaty- Radio Mix - YOTHU YINDI
Go Go Boys (Scan’s Club-Trance Mix) - SCANVOICE
The Hard Road Restrung - HILLTOP HOODS
8:00pm The Battle Of Stentorian - SOUNDS LIKE CHICKEN
The Day You Come - POWDERFINGER
Here - MACKINTOSH BRAUN
Peach - LOUIS LA ROCHE
Apply Some Pressure - MAXIMO PARK
When The River Runs Dry - HUNTERS AND COLLECTORS
Our House - MADNESS
8:30pm Born Slippy - UNDERWORLD
Remember Me - BLUE BOY
My Love Is Stronger Than Your Love - RED RIDERS
Run - COG
In These Hands - THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
9:00pm U Can’t Touch This - MC HAMMER
Just Can’t Get Enough - DEPECHE MODE
Under The Bridge - RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
My Sun - THE TEMPER TRAP
Here Comes September - WAIKIKI
Breathe - THE PRODIGY
You Don’t Know Love - EDITORS
9:30pm The Lighthouse Song - JOSH PYKE
Not Even Jail - INTERPOL
Green To Red - THE SKY DROPS
Coming Back - GOTYE
Blood - THE MIDDLE EAST
The Killing Moon - ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN
10:00pm Skullcrusher Mountain - JONATHAN COULTON
Common People - WILLIAM SHATNER
Knights Of Cydonia - MUSE
6 Underground - SNEAKER PIMPS
Dead Souls - JOY DIVISION
Where Is My Mind? - PIXIES
Left For Dead - MUM SMOKES
10:30pm Nothing Else Matters - METALLICA
Water Pistol Man - DISPOSABLE HEROS OF HIPHOPRISY
Aborigens 2207 - ORXATA SOUND SYSTEM
Your Way - SARAH BLASKO
Take - JOHN BUTLER TRIO
11:00pm Something Borrowed Something Blue - BEN LEE

The funny thing is that is where the playlist originally finished. On Thursday night though I looked up the rage playlists and added more songs to bring the end of the playlist up to the rage start time. rage it turns out actually started at 12:15am, not 11:50pm like the website said on Thursday, but the party finished at 11pm anyway, right as the last song from the original playlist played.

The added songs would have been:

Numb/ Encore - Jay-Z and Linkin Park
Red Version - Ghostwood
Gold Lion - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Glory Of Dory (Stadi Remix) - Rube & Luki
Shadowrun - Plastique Noir
11:30pm Cheerleader - Grizzly Bear
Intervention - Arcade Fire
Still Waters - VNV Nation
Islands - The XX

Outsourcing Is UnAustralian

2010-02-03T14:24:00.001+11:00

Time for another anti-capitalist rant I think.

First thing on my list for daily activities today was to watch last night’s 7:30 Report, something I didn’t do at 7:30pm last night because I was watching something else. Although I have now decided that Conroy is absolutely right- we do need to censor the internet because that is the only way to protect our children from horrific images such as Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers- it was not actually the report on the coalition’s climate change policy that bothered me. It was the report that followed it on off shore working.

We all know that big business moves overseas so they don’t need to pay their employees as much and we all hate them for it, but now the internet is making it possible for small businesses to do the same. They spoke to people who think this is the greatest thing for business and they spoke to some unionists who of course oppose the trend.

The unionists are absolutely right- if Australian jobs need to remain competitive with low cost labor overseas, the only way that can happen is to reduce the pay and conditions. Why should we have sweatshops in Australia just because it is the only way to make jobs in Australia cheaper than those in Asia?

The business people who are claiming this is all a good move are too short sighted, blinded by their own greed, to see that this is a terrible trend. Although business is something where money is one of the most important factors, it still isn’t the only factor, there is still some social aspects to business. Hiring cheap off-shore labor will save money, sure, but it does no favours to anyone else in the country.

It doesn’t even help the economy. While your business does really well, because you don’t hire any Australians, unemployment starts to rise, which is more damaging than your business earning money is good.

It might be wrong to say that small business doesn’t deserve this chance to get ahead, but they don’t. Nobody can stop them hiring off-shore workers via the internet, but that doesn’t make it the right thing for them to do.

What happened to the great Australian values of mateship? A fair go? You are hardly helping your mates if you won’t give them a job cause you can pay only half minimum wage for someone in eastern Europe to do it. It isn’t a fair go if you can’t get a job in your own country because all the jobs are taken by people overseas. I guess really what I’m trying to do is make the obvious as day statement that off-shore outsourcing is unAustralian.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying foreigners are bad because they steal our jobs, and I still support immigration and people coming to Australia to work. I’m just talking about people who don’t come to Australia but take Australian jobs via the internet- or rather I’m talking about the shameful business men who give the jobs to the cheap workers overseas for their own benefit while screwing over the Australian people and the Australian economy.

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2009 pt 2

2010-01-31T14:14:00.000+11:00

It is all over again for another year, and what a year it has been.

The countdown actually began at no. 1 on the 22nd of January when the new edition of JMag was uploaded to the ABC store online and probably 3 people in the world saw that it declared Mumford and Sons the winner. One of those 3 people worked for Crikey though and they published it and the whole world then knew what no. 1 was.

This led to extremely interesting radio over the next couple of days, as every announcer carefully skirted around what the number one song would be. When normally everyone would be asking what they expected no. 1 to be, we heard announcers asking what they thought would be top ten? What would be in there at all? What will your highest vote be? Nothing mentioned about no. 1 at all. Even on the day of the actual countdown at no point was any caller ever asked what they thought no. 1 would be. No mention at all was made of the leak, the no. 1 song until The Doctor and Zan were already in the top ten and mentioned something like “you may know what could be coming up already.” That was it.

The advertisement for the countdown that featured Little Lion Man also stopped being played, in fact Little Lion Man stopped receiving airplay. The Hottest 100 lead up and countdown were like going to dinner with Triple J and having them all very carefully fail to mention the elephant who is also dining with you.

Then when they reached the top 2, all the special tactics used to normally reveal the no. 1 song were instead used to reveal no. 2. Little Lion Man was finally revealed with a live performance in the studio by Mumford and Sons. In 2004, when Take Me Out was voted the most popular no. 1 ever, they played the song twice when they reached no. 1, first the album version and then a per-recorded live version. This time was similar, Little Lion Man being the most popular no. 1 ever and they played it twice, but the live one being live in the studio was a new thing.

Coming out of the whole thing, while there can be no doubt that ABC Commercial “really fucked it up this time”, Triple J handled it very well if not a little awkwardly, and it made for really interesting and exciting radio.

Everyone blamed Crikey for publicizing the leak, though while discussing it with my Dad, he pointed out that had Crikey not spread the leak, forcing Betfair or Sportsbet or whoever it was, to cancel their competition, the two other people who saw the result before JMag was pulled could have profited unfairly, so it was a necessary leak.

As for the countdown itself, extremely disappointing. My Facebook news feed has been full of people complaining about it for a week and I agree. This was easily the worst Hottest 100 we’ve had for years. They’ve continued the tradition of a no. 100 I’ve never heard before, but then they continued that trend for most of the countdown. I did listen to the radio a lot last year, so it wasn’t that I was out of touch, it was just that people voted for crap.

Though I shouldn’t complain too much because I did get a good number of my own votes in the countdown, 68, 65, 64, 48, 31 and of course no. 1.

Bloc Party came in which surprised and impressed me. The Prodigy came in above where I expected it to. All the good artists that released albums last year didn’t return this year with songs from the same albums, which is good but did surprise me and slightly disappoint me but that is just because I missed it all the first time.

Little Lion Man absolutely deserves to top the countdown and even deserves to be the most popular no. 1 ever, it is really not at all overrated it is just an amazingly good song, and good to see that another Mumford and Sons song got in as well. And of course I can’t write about the Hottest 100 without thanking every single one of you fantastic people who voted for Seth Sentry. I wasn’t expecting it to come in that high and only about 5 songs before it was played remarked that it would probably miss out now. Then it came on and I just froze. You guys are all brilliant, thank you very much and congratulations Seth Sentry on a deserved placing.

I’m still not going to retract my statement voters not supporting good hip-hop though. Yes, Seth Sentry got in, Illy got in and well done too, the Hilltop Hoods got top 5 again. But where was Urthboy? Horrorshow? Astronomy Class? Phrase missed out again? Meanwhile Jay-Z and Jamie T both got in?

Australia only made up 36 songs of the countdown, which according to Wikipedia, is the lowest we’ve had since 1997.

I found 2007 disappointing as well and learned that you just don’t have to pay full attention to the Hottest 100. 2008, the more I listen to it, the more I feel it was probably the best Hottest 100 in years, 2009 was disappointing as hell again. I guess it all balances out, and 2009 was a great year in music whether the poll shows it or not, so there is no need to call everything a failure.

Some of the songs I’d never heard before were good, like Shooting Stars - Bag Raiders, or Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.

At the end of the day though, I don’t mind that Art vs Science were no. 2 and it’s ok I’ve never heard of the the Bloody Beetroots, no I don’t mind, no it’s fine ‘cause The Waitress Song was all that I was listening to.

They're Running From The Government Censorship!

2010-01-28T00:38:00.004+11:00

No, I’m just never going to get sick of naming blog posts after that line.

With the current federal government infamous for its support of appalling censorship measures, there is a lot to talk about censorship, if we can stand talking about it being the only first world nation in the world trying to universally censor the internet. One of the largest censorship related problems of last year in the gaming community came from the banning of Left 4 Dead 2.

I saw Left 4 Dead at a LAN party and decided I would be interested in playing it, but it I had to wait until Valve gave all us lucky Steam users a free and automatically installed version of the demo shortly before the release last year before I could actually play it.

It was huge fun and I didn’t see the problem with the censorship. The zombies evaporating once you killed them just added, I thought, to the “fun” of the game, the term fun being synonymous with arcade style and not necessarily enjoyable. But it was enjoyable, and the afternoon of year 12 graduation I came home to drinks and the Left 4 Dead 2 demo. It was a great afternoon.

During the Steam sale over Christmas I bought both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, and as you will all be aware, I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead obsessively ever since. Well, ever since I broke free of the hold Zombie Bowl-O-Rama had over me.

Violence wise Left 4 Dead has a good amount of violence. Yes it is violent, but it is the zombie apocalypse, if you were expecting it to be G rated you aren’t going to survive very long. Some players may appreciate being able to turn down the amount of blood, but considering you’ve just fired an extremely powerful shotgun blast into someone’s head at close range, of course there is a lot of blood. Compared to the first game, the Australian version of the sequel looks extremely tame.

If you have by some amazing fluke managed to avoid hearing all about Left 4 Dead 2, what happened was: it was failed to pass the classification board at an MA rating by 1 vote. Australia having the only system that lacks an R rating for games (something also being blocked by 1 vote only), the game was refused classification.
Valve resubmitted it but it was again blocked, and they were forced to make a censored version for Australia. The censored version lacks most of the blood, it lacks all the blood splatter on the screen, there is no dismemberment and the corpses of the zombies you have killed fade away to nothing instead of littering the ground.

Australians naturally complained because the government had meant they miss out on the gaming experience everyone else except Germany gets (Germany also has a censored version, but not as heavily as the Australian one) and everyone else in the world complained because the lack of visual detail in the Australian version means less work for the processor and consequently the game runs better on slower machines.

Does the censorship actually effect gameplay negatively then? As far as I am concerned, not much. There is still some blood, it looks a lot like other games I’ve played, so not as realistic but it is there and doesn’t lead to any confusion as to where you’ve hit someone. The lack of blood splatter on the screen is something I like, but I’ll explain why when I review Left 4 Dead as that is a purely stylistic preference. The corpses fading away at least makes it easier to tell if someone is dead or not.
The lack of dismemberment does have negative effects when using melee weapons though, the addition which started all this “too violent” nonsense to start with. You swing an axe or a sword to chop the zombie’s head off. The sword goes through their neck which then flies off to the angle which it would had there been a decapitation, the blood comes flying out as if it would if there were a decapitation and yet the head is still attached. Even worse, the zombie then disappears right in front of you. While the disappearing zombies looked intentional when killed with a gun, using a melee weapon adds a clunky level that shows it was really an after though forced upon them.
It also makes it a real pain getting the achievement for decapitating zombies.

That is it though, other than the lack of dismemberment with melee weapons and the slight clunky-ness of the fading with melee weapons, the censorship hasn’t done any damage to the play-ability of the game. It is still fun, worth playing and well worth getting.

That certainly doesn’t make it alright though. The low violence version isn’t too bad, but it isn’t what Valve intended it to be. As an artist I can’t just say “well the game is alright so the censorship is ok”, what if I wrote a song and the government came and made me remove all the reverb? It might still sound ok, but I put the reverb in there for a reason and the government has absolutely no right to change my artistic output. The same applies for video games. Yes it is a violent game, but it is supposed to be a violent game. If the government wanted to lower the violence without destroying the artistic integrity of the game, why not approach Valve and request a low violence setting, whereby the user can adjust the degree of violence to their own suitability?

If the game was, as one person thought, not suitable for 15 year olds, then don’t let the 15 year olds play it. But not letting 18 year olds, 25 year olds, 50 year olds play a game because one person on the classification board thinks it isn’t suitable for 15 year olds isn’t logical in anyone’s eyes. Well except clearly the government’s.

If the game had to be censored, if all other reason failed, why did it have to be censored so much? The censorship was to bring it to an MA level, but the first game was MA and it was much more violent than this.

My largest objection to the censorship though is the reasoning behind the ban. According to the classification board, the gore relating to the dismemberment with melee weapons was excessive because the zombies look too similar to humans. They are absolutely right actually, they do look like humans, that is because they were humans. The zombies in Left 4 Dead are humans who caught a deadly mutating infection which turned most of them into common infected and some of them into more specially mutated beings. But the common infected, although once human, aren’t human any more, now they are zombies and zombies have a special place in every geek’s heart.

Violence in games is a problem area for classification boards because, as I believe, they believe and many intensive studies have proven, violent games do more than any other content, impact on the violent tendencies of the player. That is to say someone who plays violent games is more likely to become a violent person than someone who plays nothing but Guitar Hero (who is far more likely to develop a habit for heroin and trashing hotel rooms).

I agree that measures, by means of a high rating, should be given for games where the objective is to kill people in realistic fashions. But there is a huge difference as soon as the people you are killing are zombies. Somebody who takes immense pleasure in watching as their screen is bathed in blood as they use a chain saw to cut the limbs off a living thing is very likely a mentally unstable psychopath whose habits should not be fed by violent games.
Someone who takes immense pleasure in watching as their screen is bathed in blood as they use a chain saw to cut the limbs off a living zombie is very likely a geek. Not that I am at all suggesting all geeks like violence against zombies, but people who like violence against zombies are more than likely geeks.

So to dumb it down for the federal politicians among us, what I’m taking away from this is that the government can’t tell the difference between psychotic mass murderers waiting to happen and the innocent geeks with a passion for stopping the undead.

The people who are going to be offended by the high level of violence in Left 4 Dead 2 are the people who wouldn’t play it anyway. The people who would play it anyway aren’t going to care that it is really violent. By censoring it all they are doing is making it safe for the people who don’t play it and unpleasant for the people who do. I think parliament should be underwater, so for my benefit we are going to make parliament underwater. I’m not in parliament so I even though we are doing this for my benefit, I’m not actually benefitted in any way, and it will be frustrating for the people who are in parliamant, but this is the logic the censors use so why shouldn’t it be the logic we all use for everything?

In short: if you don’t like high violence don’t play highly violent games. It is that simple, but because the Australian government is too stupid to realise this the game has had the artistic intent behind it ripped out and burned. The game is still playable, it was the art that was destroyed.

Well, not quite. You see it is actually quite easy to undo the government censorship if you know how, and I now know how. Personally I do think it is more violent than I prefer, like I said I thought Left 4 Dead really had the right amount of violence and increasing it doesn’t make it a better game.

Because the regular, high violence, version is refused classification in Australia, posting how to undo the censorship on my blog would get my blog black listed and banned by the next national abhoration of human rights, the internet filter, where it would be blocked for RC content and instructions for doing illegal stuff. So I couldn’t possibly tell you how to do it. I could tell you that the low violence version has the steam ID 550 while the normal version has the steam ID 510, but I couldn’t tell you more than that.
It will let you play the game as the artist intended, I personally don’t think the violence improves the game, but as a matter of art it is worth it at least to try once.

Hear that Conroy? A matter of ART. Not a matter of wanting to kill people, or r4pe babies or whatever you think people do on the internet.

Election this year, let’s get us a government that doesn’t keep trying to protect people from things they are mature enough to cope with or avoid.

And if you were wondering about the title of this post and the many similar ones from the last month, first of all shame on you for not knowing already, and second it is a play on the line from 28 Days Later “they’re running from the infected!”

EDIT: I've been playing this more and found a problem that I didn't notice at the time of writing/ posting. In the Australian censored version, infected do not catch fire, the stumble around as if they are on fire and they take damage, but they are not covered in flames. This makes it extremely difficult to use incendiary ammunition and fire traps such as those with gas cans.

Charlotte Sometimes Review

2010-01-25T13:18:00.001+11:00

WARNING: Spoilers may follow.

The Cure song based on its namesake Charlotte Sometimes is one of my favourite songs, so I for a long time thought I should read the book and I finally did so here is my review of it.

The story follows Charlotte Makepeace as she begins her time at an English boarding school. She soon begins waking up only in her own time sometimes, for sometimes she wakes up in the same bed only in 1918 as a girl called Clare Moby. Hence she is Charlotte sometimes and Clare sometimes. Clare and her younger sister Emily are soon to be moved out of that room though and into an off-site residence, a move which is timed so Clare will be in 1918 when it happens. Unfortunately the move is delayed by a day and Charlotte wakes in 1918 the day of the move and from that point on, being unable to sleep in the same bed, is trapped in 1918 with Emily, while Clare becomes trapped in the modern day (according to wikipedia 1963, though I think this year was only hinted at in the book itself).

The two main discourses in the book are identity and war. Charlotte is forced to live as Clare while she is in 1918 and the longer she spends there the more she feels like she is losing herself- forgetting what it is to be Charlotte. This is not entirely helped by Emily who after every significant action Charlotte makes, informs Charlotte of how Clare would have acted, nor by Charlotte’s assumed care of Emily. At one point Charlotte begins to feel adrift of everything and even dreams herself as Agnes, the youngest of the family she is staying with.

A large part of the story also focuses on the First World War. The stories Agnes tells Charlotte and Emily of her dead brother Arthur who always dreamed of becoming a soldier and then did but died in battle in France. The children play with toy soldiers that used to belong to Arthur and there is a great deal of imagery comparing the toy soldiers to their real counterparts. At school, Bunty- one of Emily’s friends- receives word that her father has been killed in the war. When the armistice comes there is a huge celebration in the town which Charlotte and Emily run away to participate in.

The feelings captured in the book appear to be those that were felt in Britain concerning the end of the war, although I’m not strong with my early 20th century history so I may be mistaken. There is certainly a lot of national pride and pride in fighting for the sake of the world, without any consideration given to the opposition’s view of it all. At the same time it doesn’t glorify the war though, and in one scene where the hospital vans arrive with injured soldiers Charlotte notes that the soldiers were often thought of as being tall and proud and strong, not bleeding and crippled as they were being taken to the hospital.

The war themes in the book also inspired another Cure song, The Empty World, from The Top.

I was initially reluctant to read Charlotte Sometimes as it was a children’s book and although my reading level isn’t super advanced (I did finish The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie though so it isn’t too bad) it has surpassed a juvenile level. I’m also not even vaguely interested in early 20th century school-girl fiction as a genre.

The second of my concerns never eventuated while the first did give me some lack of pleasure at times. The school prefect, Sarah Reynolds from Charlotte’s time, reveals to Charlotte that her mother had told her to be nice to a girl called Charlotte Makepeace and it is almost immediately obvious that Sarah’s mother was Clare or Emily. As the book continues Charlotte begins to realize the same thing and even wonders if she herself is Sarah’s mother if she can’t find a way back to her own time. I also had the feeling the whole way through the book that Charlotte would get back to her own time because this was a children’s book and it would have a happy ending and the speed and flow of the narrative was certainly gearing towards the happy ending just in time for the end of the book.

I was very pleased then to discover the well written twist at the end of the story, once Charlotte does indeed find her way back to her own time, which instantly made anything that seemed too obvious before hand seem worthwhile. The twist was a genuinely unexpected turn, or at least would have been if I didn’t know it was coming thanks to the Cure song. (“On that bleak track see the sun has gone again...”)

Ostensibly this is a ghost story, or at least it calls itself a ghost story in the final chapters. Personally I think that is a cop out to the far more complex explanation for what has happened in the book. That far more complex explanation being that there isn’t necessarily an explanation for it all. It just happens. The need to explain it as a ghost story probably comes from the necessity of making it easy to categorize for young readers. It doesn’t hurt the book at all to consider it a ghost story though.

I am very glad I read this book and it was a pleasant break from books that take me forever to read (I’m looking in your direct Rushdie, Austen). Even being a child’s book this is a great read for any age and even for people who aren’t normally fans of the genre. Not dense reading by any means but that is good too.
I suppose that having now read a book about zombies and about ghosts I had better make use of my copy of Dracula next.

Charlotte Sometimes: 9/10

Hypotheticals for Zombie Motives

2010-01-21T23:55:00.001+11:00

Questioning the motives of the brainless: thoughts inspired by Left 4 Dead.

There is some sort of infectious mutation which causes any person contaminated with it to have their skin die, their brain functionality reduced to the most basic, unintelligent animalistic urges and their digestive system to become hap-hazard. The infection can be spread, presumably, by the transmission of any bodily fluid; that is to say being bled on, vomited on, bitten, spat on, scratched with blood or vomit stained hands, etc.

The infected react to some occurrences and not to others. For instance, they are attracted to beeping but not to gun fire, allowing even the most obvious of machine gun rounds to leave them undisturbed while a pipe bomb’s pre-detonation beeping attracts the horde. They are also attracted by direct lights, alarms, bells, etc.

The scenario here is The Church from the Death Toll campaign in Left 4 Dead, but could apply to any survival scenario. The survivors reach the safe room but another survivor, driven insane by fear and paranoia, refuses to unlock the door for them and instead begins to ring the church bells, attracting the hordes to come and kill and eat the 4 intruding survivors.

The bell does attract the infected, who all run to the church, break in through every destructible wall, door and window and begin to attack the survivors. The survivors figure their best method of surviving until they are able to enter the safe room is to stay by and fight off the hordes.

Would it instead be more wise to, as soon as the church bells ring, flee the church and hide in an out of the way corner of the graveyard? The gamble being that the instinctive attraction to the noise is powerful enough to overcome the instinctive attraction to human brains.

Evidence to suggest that this is a safer approach is that when a pipe bomb is thrown the horde immediately loses interest in any humans and proceeds to gather around the pipe bomb instead. Would fleeing then mean the church filled with zombies until they could not fit inside and then some more?

What about the special infected who are also attracted to the ringing? Special infected do not follow the pipe bomb but are nonetheless called to the church by the bells, so would they come to the church but then seek out the hiding survivors near by, or would they just lurk around the church where their attraction to the noise can be satisfied?

Let’s run with the assumption that all the infected gather to the church, ignoring the near by survivors. When the bells cease and the hordes stop gathering, it would only require the church to be razed and safety would be achieved. Well, almost, it would mean waiting until the fire was gone out before heading back into the ruins to enter the safe room.

To be sure that this would work though I think it is necessary to have a better idea of how the infection works. At what level of mutation does the attraction to noise outweigh the attraction to prey? Presumably the highest, as the common infected, the least mutated and most stupid will run to anything that beeps- with the possible exception of if the hypothesis in this case were to fail. The special infected, while still drawn to the bells, are not put off by the sound of a pipe bomb. The Witch, arguably the most highly mutated and also the most intelligent, is not attracted to any noise and will require the direct interference by a survivor, or an explosion right next to her before she will even move.

This hierarchy of mutation and intelligence also suggests that the mutation, although wiping out all intelligence with first infection, actually then rebuilds intelligence as the mutations become more developed. Hence a common infected will stand around and run up to you when it sees you, and then just hit you around, while a Smoker will hide out of sight on a rooftop, then shoot its tongue down to constrict a survivor before reeling them in and attacking them, and even more advanced the Witch will sit on the ground and cry, luring innocent survivors towards “the helpless, scared young girl”, before releasing her instantly fatal clawed swipe.

Back to the church, maybe the bells don’t in fact attract the horde because of the sound, maybe they only attract the horde by association of sound and prey, and the zombies are only coming to the church to kill the survivors, the sound just alerted them to the presence of the survivors. This leaves no sound explanation for the attraction to the beeping of a pipe bomb, but then again a bell and a pipe bomb do sound very different and a pipe bomb thrown to the nearby graveyard will take with it all nearby common infected- all who immediately abandon the survivors and the ringing church bells with them.

These questions are hypotheticals based on and set in the game, but not a discussion of the game itself. When attempting the strategy in the game the following was revealed: first some key environmental features were moved so you can’t escape the graveyard surrounding the church, making the fleeing attempt a failure. Second of all, given the now enclosed space which the survivors are confined to, the zombies must travel past the survivors in order to reach the church, so the survivors are at risk simply because they are in the way. Ultimately by hiding in the bottom corner of the graveyard it did provide much more time between each wave of attack, but all the ammo and health is in the church, so you are no better off fighting in the yard than you are in the building.

If the zombie apocalypse were to happen in the foreseeable future though, with an isolated church, scientific minded survivors and a good back-up plan, it would be good to try and test this scenario in the real world.

Or maybe I’m playing too much Left 4 Dead and probably should have gone to bed instead of sitting up to write this.

Diablo/ Torchlight Review

2010-01-19T15:36:00.000+11:00

If you haven’t played Diablo then there is something wrong with you. No really there is. The 1996 Blizzard RPG set in the medieval town of Tristram where your character (either a warrior, mage or rogue) comes... I’m not sure why you came now, but you end up talking to the townsfolk who tell you all about the corruption and rising of hell to Earth. It all began in the cathedral on the end of town, so that is where you head and you venture down into deeper and deeper levels of the dungeon fighting at first skeletons and zombies and later on demons.

The game is extremely limited by modern standards- you get the choice of only 3 playable classes and you can’t customize your character beyond your choice of class and your name. The dungeon consists of only 4 actual levels (cathedral, catacombs, caves and hell) and while each of these has 4 levels they all look the same. The main gameplay involves going to the dungeon, clicking to move, clicking to kill monsters, clicking to move, clicking to come back to town and clicking to do it all again. All the quests involve just killing boss monsters, or collecting loot and then killing boss monsters, so it gets extremely repetitive and offers no variety. Even Left 4 Dead has more than just killing zombies.

The limited gameplay is not a problem for Diablo though. Something about that formula of click to play and repetition to make your eyes bleed just works. One other problem with Diablo is that it inspires a fear of open rooms, as Diablo forces a very cautious style of play. By standing in a doorway only one skeleton can attack you at once, if you run into the room they kill you. This can be overcome easily by playing multiplayer but not everyone has friends.

The simplistic setting is somehow enveloping. The story of Tristram and the chaos it felt is really great even if it lacks the narrative complexity of the instruction manual. Possible it is a side effect of playing the game for so long, but I feel like if I ran into any of the characters from Diablo on the street I’d have no trouble talking to them. “Oh hi Wirt, how’s stuff going? How’s business, leg not treating you too bad?”

Diablo is one of the greatest games of all time. It just works and Diablo 2 hasn’t been able to capture the same magic, Diablo 3 won’t be able to, no clone since has been able to. As good as games of this style and genre come they just don’t get as good as the original Diablo.

So why should you play Torchlight then? Why even bother. Torchlight, if you haven’t heard of it is the 2009 Runic RPG set in the medieval town of Torchlight where your character (either a warrior, mage or rogue) comes after hearing about the troubles of the town. You talk to the townsfolk who tell you all about the corruption of the ember mine that sustains the town. You head to the mine and you venture down into deeper and deeper levels of the dungeon fighting at first skeletons and zombies and later on demons. It was made by some of the same designers of Diablo and has a soundtrack scored by the same composer.

While Diablo’s graphics aren’t so hot by modern standards they still bear a sort of timeless “oh yeah but it is Diablo” excuse. Torchlight on the other hand looks just like World of Warcraft, an interesting choice of graphics when there is so much better available. These are the sort of graphics we had on the PS2 8 years ago, why are we still stuck with them on PC? I can’t complain though because it was a deliberate decision by the designers to mean the game could run on the most computers possible. It will run on my gaming PC, it will run on the family PC (though lags a bit which just makes it even more like WoW) and if you check the “netbook mode” in the settings it will theoretically run on a netbook. The graphics, therefore, are not the nicest to look at but do make the game easier to run than Windows Vista, which although not a challenge, is still something of an achievement when every other software designer on the planet is trying to make their products as bloated and system intensive as possible.

The game itself may be the least original thing I’ve ever played. It looks like WoW, it feels and sounds like Diablo. You get a pet, but that is like some classes in WoW or even games for the old Nintendo 64, so no original ideas there even if they haven’t been used in Diablo clones before (and they may have been, I usually play Diablo rather than clones of it). The plot is the same as Diablo in all ways except cosmetics.

Some things I like about the game include inventories. You get 4 for equipment (your, your pet’s, your stash and the shared stash), you get 2 for spells and fish (yours and your pet’s). The items all fit a standard slot so a diamond the size of a penny takes up the same amount of inventory room as a full suit of armour, which although inconvenient for storing diamonds does make for incredibly convenient storage of armour. Potions and scrolls stack so you can carry lots of them without wasting room, though they only stack in lots of 20 so carrying 122 potions as I am still has its disadvantages.

Things I don’t like about the game, and this is becoming more common in every game I play, you can’t save the game, so when you die you need to either take a penalty or respawn at town and walk agonisingly all the way back. Unless you select hardcore mode in which case it is game over, character gone. Why can’t we just have the good old days of saving every 5 steps and if you die you load from the last save point?

Another thing I really don’t like about the game is the difficultly level. There are 4 of them: easy, normal, hard and masochist. I started playing on Normal to start with because that is where I play all games. Yes, as much fun as I have with games I’m not the greatest player in the world. In fact my Steam profile says “The amount of fun I have playing and my level of skill are almost perfectly inverse.” But I had to delete my character and start a new, albeit identical, one on Hard because normal was just too easy.

I also don’t like the game being single player only. Multiplayer is what makes games like Diablo so fun after the initial novelty of killing skeletons has worn off. Co-op games are just much more fun than any other sort. (Left 4 Dead appreciates this fact so much that they made the single player campaign co-op as well, but NPCs are never willing to take one for the team, so a human player you can push around is still better). There is word of a free-to-play Torchlight MMO coming out in a year or so though, so I guess that will make up for it so long as we can import our single player characters.

Torchlight is also cheap. $20 US on Steam, cheaper if you got it during the sale. That means $40 if you need it on two accounts, but if you think about it $40 is about right for a new computer game if you buy a CD version. Steam also gives you cloud benefits, so you can run with your characters regardless of which computer you are using- a feature that is much more useful than it at first seems- and you get 67 Steam Achievements to collect. I am a little suspicious of the achievements though, it looks for all the world like Valve made them after the game was already complete. They just seem to be for stupid things rather than actual achievements. You also get achievements based on how many game mods you are running at a time. Seeing as the game includes the Torchlight editor which I haven’t yet played in so I;m leaving out of this review, it seems a little pointed that you get achievements for it. The main problem with the achievements though is you get one for finding the entrance to the mine. It is impossible to not get this achievement, it is like giving you an achievement for successfully downloading and installing the game. It just makes it all the more confusing then that only 67.9% of players have that achievement.

Overall though, Torchlight is a good game, whatever complaints you may have about it. I haven’t had this much fun playing a game since the original Diablo, and maybe I’m having even more fun. If you are looking for complex characters and having to think before you act, save your money and get Dragon Age Origins. If you are looking for simple fun, clicking stuff and watching it die, get Torchlight. In fact get Torchlight anyway because it is worth it.

Diablo 9/10
Torchlight 8/10

More Thoughts of American Imperialisation

2010-01-09T17:37:00.001+11:00

Seeing as I talked about it the other day this seems like as good a time as any to talk in detail about American Imperialisation. I don’t like it. If TV in Australia is going to be 15 channels of crap I think it should be 15 channels of Australian crap, not 15 channels of American crap. My word processor thinks I spelt imperialisation wrong because it has an S in it and not a Z. When I was in primary school we had to spell things properly, in high school we didn’t because there was no way they could stop us using American spelling when the computers forced us to. Some people know more about life in America than they do about life in Australia because they just get flooded with American culture through the media. I see this as being a bad thing.

It may then surprise you to hear that I fully support globalisation. I think globalisation is a great idea, and the natural progression from the days of global exploration back in the 17th and 18th centuries. We know what the whole world looks like now, let’s start making an open world where all people of all nations can communicate and share with all people of all other nations. Globalisation isn’t a model without its flaws, especially in economic terms, but then nothing is perfect and I think what globalisation needs is improvement not abandonment.

Maybe that KFC ad is a good example here. KFC is an American company, in fact it is named after the state in America where it was first made. That ad though was unquestionably Australian and when the American audience saw it problems emerged. The company might be American, but it doesn’t operate solely as an American company, rather it operates as a global company with marketing and some products made just for some regions.

To go back to TV, I don’t like all the American crap on TV, but I don’t think you can blame America for all their crap ending up on our screens, you have to blame the Australian networks who choose to put it there. It is also stupid to suggest we stop consuming American stuff because American also produces some excellent stuff. The best TV show of the last 10 year, Firefly, was written by an American, produced by a team of Americans and acted out by Americans. The song I’m listening to right now is by an American band. I’ve seen two movies in the last 2 weeks that both came partially out of Hollywood. The book I’m reading at the moment is co-written by an American author. These are all excellent things (well at least better than average things) to come out of America.

I don’t object to globalisation, I object to Americanisation, and the trouble is just that the two are virtually synonymous at the moment. The solution isn’t to have less American stuff though, it is to have more stuff from everywhere else. Including Australia. A film in Australia can’t receive government funding unless it meets criteria for boasting Australian culture, so if you want to make just a normal film you need to go to America to do it. That is a policy that should change. TV networks should invest more into making their own good shows rather than just spending it on importing good foreign shows.

It is natural that in Australia we would have mainly media content produced in America or Britain because those are the two major English speaking countries, and as an English speaking nation it is common sense to watch and listen to other things in English. But America and Britain aren’t the only english speaking nations besides Australia, so lets get more stuff from the other English speaking nations.

Then let’s broaden our experience with some non-English stuff. Not as much, but much much more than we have now. There is a lot of good German music, and just because I only understand a few of the words doesn’t mean I shouldn’t hear the songs on the radio.

Just pulling some rough, uneducated and unresearched figures out of my head, the breakdown of Australian media content by origin should be:
50% Australian, 30% Other english speaking, 20% non-english speaking.
And within the two foreign categories there should be an even spread of nations.

I don’t like the flood of American culture crushing our own culture to death, but to place the blame for this flood on America is sort of like going to a pot luck dinner where only one person brings food, and then complaining that you don’t like it. Why did nobody else bring food? That is what we should be complaining about.

Ad Reaction Just Not Cricket

2010-01-07T22:47:00.000+11:00

You might have seen in the news that one of the KFC ads made for the cricket got up on the internet and some ignorant Americans saw it and started jumping up and down yelling “racist” because it depicts a white guy sitting in a crowd of crazy black people and he calms them down with fried chicken. This has been interesting because of two things and I was going to post here about one of them but I’m actually going to post about the second.

You see, while my opening description of the ad might be what those attacking it saw the ad actually depicts an Australian cricket fan in the middle of a crowd of West Indian supports, who are cheering on their team fanatically as any enthusiastic supporter would. The Australian decides to get himself out of this awkward situation he offers the surrounding crowd some KFC, just as another fan used KFC to bribe a player into giving him an autograph or how a guy gave his mates some KFC so they’d shut up and let him watch the cricket on TV. It is a series of ads that all carry the message that KFC is so popular you can use it as currency to make the summer of cricket better for you.

My first thought when I saw the ad and heard about the fuss being made over it was that the American audience who had got so offended clearly didn’t understand it and should stop trying to get it banned because they don’t understand it. Americans won’t have seen any of the other ads in the series, and in Australia the ‘black people eat fried chicken’ stereotype, while known thanks to American imperialisation, doesn’t carry any of the same weight here. Also, most Americans don’t watch cricket so why they would be watching an ad specifically designed for the cricket I’m not so sure. The point is that whoever started the racism accusation was being ignorant and shouldn’t be entitled to cause this sort of mess because of their ignorance. And I was going to write a blog post saying that, but that isn’t actually the most interesting thing about this whole problem.

The interesting thing is that with the exception of the media who love any sort of public outrage story, and the ignorant Americans who started it all, everyone seems to be against the Americans rather than against the ad. It hasn’t been just saying that the accusing audience is ignorant and should shut up either, people are retaliating with accusations that America as a whole is an ignorant nation that should shut up about everything and learn to observe the rest of the world rather than just open its mouth without speaking.

I agree with these counter accusations to some extent; I guess it is to be expected that a nation built on a liberal economic ideology should flood the whole world with its own culture and not pay as much attention to other’s cultures as it should. In relation to the KFC ad though it seems people aren’t attacking the ignorant minority of Americans who seem to think everyone in the world fits into their ow narrow beliefs, but rather attacking American imperialisation itself and just saying they are attacking the minority who had a problem with the ad.

So while I am quite confident that the ignorant audience who lay the first accusation of racism against KFC will be too ignorant to understand, or even notice, the tsunami of opposition they have created themselves, they certainly have created an opposition for themselves here, giving the Australian audience a convenient outlet for their frustration at being constantly flooded with American culture. I just feel sorry for the much larger number of Americans who are now being mis-labelled after seeing the ad not as racist but rather as intended for an audience with different cultural expectation to their own.

They're Running From The Missing Achievements!

2010-01-05T20:51:00.000+11:00

At a time where people have attention spans shorter than the average goldfish it is difficult, as a game publisher, to make sure that people play your game and continue to play your game. The re-playability factor in many regards is more important than anything else.

In the past you could just make a really fantastic game and make sure you marketed it really well and re-playability came as assured as market share, but seeing as market share is a tougher thing to come by now that 13 year old can cobble together some code and sell it online, you need to bribe people to keep playing more than you used to.

Diablo boasted amazing replayability because it created new dungeons every time you played, offered 3 unique character classes and quests that were different each game. Anyone who has played Diablo will know that all 5 dungeons are basically the same, you can play all the quests by completing the game just twice, and character class determined nothing but combat style. But that was 1996 and that is all it took.

For all the many ways of trying to guarantee re-playability now, I think the best one I’ve seen is Steam Achievements. In more and more Steam games, not just those developed by Valve, you can get achievements for certain feats in game. This is a brilliant way of getting people to replay the game because you play it once for the story, then again as many times as it takes to get all the achievements. Then Valve usually goes and adds more achievements. Team Fortress 2 goes as far as to release whole sets of new achievements every couple of updates.

I’ve been playing lots of Left 4 Dead recently because it is a great game and because I want to get achievements. I decided to play through and get the achievements for finishing campaigns first because that will mean I can play through for the story and also get achievements and it saves me from having to play over and over and over, which, given I play single player, can become tedious, especially when each campaign takes an hour and a half to complete. Then I can move on to survival and multiplayer, and all the fun that entails. But it isn’t working because I keep losing achievements.

The agonising story goes like this:
I spend an hour and a half playing through No Mercy and 5 minutes from the rescue chopper arriving friends arrive at our house and I have to start entertaining an 8 year old. No problem, but it is hard to fight off the zombie hordes while being bounced on by someone who is really not old enough to be watching this game, so 5 minutes from the end of the 90 minute game I died.
That night I played it all again and this time, being more familiar with the level layout, I won and got many achievements for doing so. The next time I opened the game however I had lost Pyrotechnician (blow up 20 infected in a single pipe bomb explosion), No-one Left Behind (all 4 survivors escape) and Mercy Killer (survive the No Mercy Campaign).
So after a bit of swearing, a bit of crying and a bit of wondering what to do next I played the whole campaign over again and got the achievements back.

With No Mercy finally out of the way I moved onto Crash Course. I got to the end of the game, which thankfully only took about 45 minutes, and then I got held up by zombies just before I could get into the truck, and I died. I was literally 1 step away from getting in. The most traumatizing thing though was that I still won the game even though I was dead, but the credits opened with “In memory of Prof.| Archer” and then all through the credits my name had (deceased) after it.
So I just finished playing it again and this time, making sure I was the first in the truck and no force in this verse was going to make me get out of it again, I unlocked Crash Proof (survive the Crash Course campaign) and Stand Tall (finish a campaign without being incapacitated). But then when next I opened Left 4 Dead, I’ve lost those achievements again, as well as Pyrotechnician for the second time.
So tomorrow I have to play it all a third time.

Certainly the loss of achievements is keeping me playing again, but it won’t for much longer. The carrot approach to incentive doesn’t work if you take it away again before it can be eaten; I’m beginning to feel that the achievements aren’t worth playing for and I will just finish the story not caring for achievements and then never play the game again. (My friends all have Left 4 Dead 2, so I’ll play it in preference to Left 4 Dead unless I have incentive to do otherwise).

I guess what I could be seen to be saying here then is that Valve have got a really good idea with Steam Achievements. I think they are a great concept and they certainly make gaming more fun and give you more to strive for than simply the end of the story. I don’t lose the achievements on the Steam Community, only in game, so I can still compare to friends, but it just isn’t the same and Valve made Left 4 Dead so this is still their fault. Overall though, while this particular problem needs fixing, I congratulate Valve on a good idea, a good job, and an almost entirely successful implementation of it.

I guess what I am actually saying here is STOP LOSING MY BLOODY LEFT 4 DEAD ACHIEVEMENTS!

Happy Australia Day

2010-01-01T10:38:00.000+11:00

Happy Australia Day everyone! No, I’m not stupid, I do realise it is the 1st of January, but that is when Australia Day should be. We became a nation on the 1st of January 1901, before that we were just the Australian colony of Britain. The reason for celebrating on the 26th of January is because that is when the first fleet arrived, not because that is when the country was formed. The date of the 26th is really only significant for European Australians; the Aboriginal community has a major problem with it then because we are celebrating the invasion that led to their culture almost being wiped out.

Or are we? I know I’m certainly not celebrating that, I’m celebrating Triple J’s Hottest 100. Oh and also what a great country Australia is. I think most people are celebrating what a great country Australia is. The holiday has been turned into the celebration of all that is good about Australia, it is just the date that is causing the problem and making it an ignorant celebration at best and a racist one at worst.

The solution, you could suggest, would then be to change the date of Australia Day. 1st of January is when we became a nation so we could have it today. That won’t work though because everyone is too tired and hungover to have a major celebration on New Years Day. Also, we already have a holiday for New Years Day and if we were to make this the Australia Day holiday we’d lose one, and that is just UnAustralian. In terms of when a good time for a holiday is, the 26th of January is really a fantastic time of year. People have just gone back to work, school starts either the next week or that week and it gives people plenty of time to vote in the Hottest 100.

Really there isn’t anything that we can do now. To change the date of such an important holiday is going to take a lot of effort and I know a lot of people who find the celebration of Invasion Day to be offensive are willing to put in that effort every year when the 26th come around, but that isn’t enough to make real change. But we aren’t going to be a part of the monarchy forever, so I think, and I believe some other people also think, that when we become a republic, the holiday to celebrate becoming not just a nation but our own nation should be the 26th of January. I mean it kind of makes sense anyway to become our own nation on our national holiday.

The 26th of January would become a time for all Australians, not just those who benefitted from the British Invasion. The date would reflect the attitude of the celebration, not the attitude of the anniversary. And we’d keep celebration the Queen’s Birthday anyway as a tribute to the past, so we still get our extra holiday.