Left Liardet Street, Weston at 18:44, got home in Reid at 20:45
Approximately 13.9km in 121 minutes = 6.89km/h
The best part is, I enjoyed every moment of it. Makes me wonder why I would bother having a car when I can just walk.
Samuel
Add comment July 6th, 2008 at 08:56pm
Apparently it just takes four beers in the space of 60-90 minutes (I don’t recall how long it was) when I’m on anti-depressants and painkillers to get me drunk enough for people to want to record embarrassing videos of me talking nonsensically.
I promised to post the video online, so for better or for worse, here it is.
I’ve previously had about the same amount to drink in about the same amount of time when not on medication, and it didn’t have anywhere near as much effect. That said, no excuses from me, I just don’t handle alcohol well. I’m pleased that there was no hangover, but it’s possible that I slept for too long (approximately sixteen hours) for that to happen.
This was last night (Friday the 4th) if you’re wondering.
Samuel
2 comments July 5th, 2008 at 11:52pm
Twitter is down for scheduled maintenance at the moment and I’m not waiting for nine hours just to make a quick remark.
The cheque’s in the mail! The ACT government are giving me a whole $11 for cancelling my car’s rego. Very desperate to get me off the road!
Apparently I can get a little bit more from the NRMA as they will refund the unused CTP component, but is it really worth my time to stand in line at an NRMA shopfront just to get another dozen dollars when I have already wasted half a morning at an ACT government shopfront?
It makes me wonder why the ACT government can collect money for the NRMA when you pay for vehicle registration, but they can’t refund it when you cancel registration. Seems like bureaucratic “make life harder for the people so they won’t try to get money from us” red tape to me.
If it were like New South Wales and we had a choice of CTP provider then it would make sense to claim a refund from the provider, but when the ACT government are enforcing a monopoly and are seemingly in cahoots with their provider of choice, surely it’s not too much to ask for both amounts to be refunded in one go.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that I was already in Dickson to see my doctor and I had to hand in the number plates at the government shopfront, I would think that spending half my morning being brainwashed by the annoying loop of ACT government advertisements on display at the shopfront, only to receive $11 after having paid the ACT government $6.60 for my transport for the day, would be a complete waste of time.
$11 in exchange for the remaining two months of rego…wouldn’t it be nice if vehicle registration only cost $5.50 per month. We might all be able to afford petrol then.
Samuel
Add comment July 4th, 2008 at 11:35am
People who listened to Clive Robertson when he was presenting New Day Australia on 2UE would probably remember his weather updates which would start shortly after the news, often turn in to a story about something, and end about twenty minutes later. Clive had an amazing ability to take the most mundane of daily information, and turn it in to something interesting to listen to every hour.
It would appear that back on the 13th of March 1989, Clive treated the weather to his unusual presentation style on Seven Nightly News, hosted at the time by Roger Climpson and Ann Sanders. I’m fairly sure that, if they didn’t have a story to run after the weather, Clive could have continued with the weather until Derryn Hinch’s show began.
It’s Friday, and it’s about time that the Friday Funnies made a comeback, so if you have a joke or a funny video that you’d like to see here on a Friday, send an email to samuel@samuelgordonstewart.com and it might just appear in the coming weeks.
Samuel
1 comment July 4th, 2008 at 10:29am
I could turn in to A Current Affair here and claim to have “exclusive, behind the scenes, never before seen by the public, pictures” but to be fair, anybody who has landed on this website in the last few hours by searching Google for:
mike welsh “ben fordham”
(and a handful of people have done just that) could have seen it, as the fourth result on Google at the time of writing this is for a page of the new, yet to be released, website.
It’s almost an annual tradition for 2CC to launch a new website, and so often they seem to release a seemingly circa 1995 static HTML website, thankfully this time around it looks like they’re actually using a content management system, and have a dynamic database-driven website which they might actually manage to maintain for more than a couple weeks. I’ve got to say, the new website looks pretty impressive.
At long last they have a “Now, next, later, then” system and some useful information about the station on the homepage. It’s certainly a vast improvement over the current website:
Having had a look around the website, it’s clear that there are a few bits of content that need to be modified before the website can go live, such as open line numbers, email addresses, the fact that you need to prefix text messages with “2cc” etc, but overall the website is quite impressive and seems to suit the image the station is trying to portray.
It’s also good to see that, unlike the current website, 2CC have taken new photos of their staff and are no longer relying on the existing photos which are at least four or five years old.
Each presenter now has a readable page, unlike the previous “one solid block of text each” site, and although it’s not visible within the screenshots, each page has a comprehensive summary of regular guests and segments:
Even the newsroom get their own page (although I do recall an old version of their website containing a picture of James Goodwin when he was their afternoon newsreader).
It looks like 2CC have also managed to source the staff photos from 2UE which were used as the basis for the photos on the 2UE website (although the versions on the 2UE website mostly contain a modified background)
Unfortunately there is no sign of online streaming, so it looks like that’s probably not happening. I have reason to believe that the website will be launched in conjunction with a very noticeable and (I would consider it) major change to the station…unfortunately I’m not allowed to tell you about that just yet (you hear things inside buildings that sometimes you just have to keep secret) but suffice to say, I’m making some recordings for before and after comparison.
When will the new website be launched? Well that’s anyone’s guess. I’m not going to post a link to it in its pre-launch state. If you’re really desperate to have a look, then you already have enough information to find it yourself.
The amusing thing is, whoever is developing the site could very easily have locked access down to a few select IP addresses or password protected it. Even a simple robots.txt file would have stopped Google from indexing it…clearly they weren’t too concerned about “sneak peeks”, which for me at least is probably a good thing, because I’ve been trying to work out what they’re doing with their website for a while now…they haven’t been attempting to update the old one for ages, and the new one explains why. Mystery solved, and my head can go back to working on the 15 million other mysteries I seem to ponder at any given time.
Samuel
1 comment July 4th, 2008 at 02:45am
I must have been really out of it for the last few days to miss this rather sad news.
Actor Don S. Davis, arguable best known for his portrayal of Major General George Hammond on Stargate SG-1 (and the odd appearance on spin-off show Stargate Atlantis) passed away on the 29th of June after suffering a heart attack. He was aged 65.
Davis will still appear in the upcoming direct-to-DVD film “Stargate: Continuum”.
I would like to take this opportunity to post two videos, the first is a brief profile and interview of Don produced for the first season of Stargate SG-1.
The second is a tribute to Don, put together by a YouTube user going by the name of edison700
May you rest in peace Don.
Samuel
Add comment July 3rd, 2008 at 07:47pm
This afternoon a bit before 5pm, A Current Affair’s Ben Fordham rang 2CC’s Mike Welsh to take exception at something Mike Said yesterday. Ben made the call after reading a Media Monitors notice which said that Mike referred to Ben as a bully.
2CC have placed the somewhat peculiar exchange on YouTube:
As I said to Mike when I spoke to him a bit later in the day, I don’t know what Ben thought he was exposing because it was blatently obvious that Mike had not seen the video when he spoke about it yesterday, as the video had not gone to air, and Mike had been referring to Ben’s boasting on the Steve Price morning show.
I also have to wonder if the whole thing was a strange attempt by Ben to plug Channel Nine as much as possible.
Very odd.
Samuel
Add comment July 3rd, 2008 at 06:07pm
2GB breakfast host Alan Jones has just announced at a press conference that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will be off the air for the next few weeks for a few weeks when he has surgery, which is expected in a couple weeks.
More details shortly.
Update 12:33pm: I had to step away from the computer for most of the press conference, but I managed to record it anyway.
Download MP3
Audio courtesy of Radio 2GB
I suppose there’s not much to say, other than to wish Alan a speedy recovery. Best wishes Alan.
End Update
Samuel
1 comment July 3rd, 2008 at 12:03pm
I’ve had a few requests for photos of the car that I crashed last night. As requested…
Samuel
4 comments July 1st, 2008 at 12:22pm
Following on from my car crash last night, all of the “what ifs” surrounding it have been running through my mind. I’m surprised that I managed to get any sleep last night with various parts of my body trying to punish me with pain.
Ultimately it was my own stupidity that caused that crash and I’m not going to try to diminish my responsibility for it. I am going to try to work through the “what ifs” though, so that I can try to understand what was going through my head at the time, and to help me learn from the experience.
After the crash it occurred to me that if I hadn’t managed to miss an appointment with a neurologist yesterday morning (which has since been rescheduled now that I have realised my mistake), I probably wouldn’t have had the money to pay for the tow truck. But what if I had gone to see the neurologist? Would I have then made my trip in to Weston once I was finished with the doctor? If so, would I still have crashed on the way home from Weston?
I believe that I would have gone to Weston and that I probably would have avoided the crash because:
1. The roads were dry at that time of the day.
2. With more traffic, I wouldn’t have been speeding.
Then there are the immediately more relevant questions:
What if I’d gone home a couple hours earlier rather than sticking around and going to the Weston Club for a while? (And before you ask, no, I wasn’t drinking…although I’m surprised that the Police didn’t bother to breath test me)
More traffic, and it was still raining at that time. I probably would have been driving slower…in fact the stupid thing is that I left Weston, drove around for a bit and went back, if I had just gone home, I doubt that this would have happened.
What if I had stayed in Weston for longer?
I doubt that it would have made a difference. I would have been driving just as fast, and the roads would have been slippery, not to mention the impossible winds on Parkes Way at the time. It probably would have been just as bad, if not worse.
What if I had a passenger at the time?
That might have saved me. I’ve noticed that I’m more cautious when I have a passenger than when I’m on my own. I knew that I was going too fast last night, and there is no way that I would have done that if I had a passenger in the car. With a passenger, I highly doubt that there would have been an accident to talk about.
OK, but what if I’d had the accident anyway?
The passenger would have come off worse than I did as pretty much everything that was loose in the car (eg the CD cases in the console, my mobile phone, my glasses which flew off my head, and even the dirt from the side of the road after the windscreen was pushed back a bit) flew in that direction. The structure of the body of the car survived, so the passenger wouldn’t have been too bad, but the debris flying in their direction could have done some serious damage. In fact it could easily have flown in the other direction and injured me.
There are more “what ifs” where they came from, but I’m going to wait until I’ve spoken with the Police today before I write any of them.
I should have known that yesterday was going to be weird from the moment that some drug-crazed nut interrupted me to babble about “gear” and “five dollars” before wandering off as quickly as they had appeared. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but I feel like telling the story anyway.
I’m lucky to be alive, but considering that I often struggle to feel safe in vehicles being driven by others, and that I don’t trust myself now (I’m still debating whether I ever want to drive again), I think I’ve just put myself in my very own psychological hell.
One day a time for now I suppose…and this one is not going to be one of my best.
Samuel
Add comment July 1st, 2008 at 09:01am
You may recall that, prior to the introduction of the GST, the federal government ran a lengthy advertising campaign featuring Joe Cocker’s “Unchain My Heart”, images of people being freed from the chains and shackles of the old tax system, and voiceovers answering “questions” about the new tax system in much the same way that a government MP will gladly waffle on for many minutes during Parliament Question Time in reply to a Dorothy Dixer.
I was trying to find footage of some of these advertisements online. I didn’t find any (although I didn’t look very hard) but I did find a rather amusing sendup of the advertisements by Paul McDermott and the rest of the Good News Week team. It features voiceovers by Robbie McGregor so there is definitely no way that I can stop myself from sharing the video with you. Happy eighth birthday of the GST!
Incidentally, I forgot to mention it when I wrote this the other day, but at the time this was filmed, Australia was going through one of its many “Sorry” debates, this one in the leadup to the Sydney Olympics. How is that relevant? Watch the video and you’ll see.
Samuel
Add comment July 1st, 2008 at 04:38am
This evening at about 8:05pm I rolled my car on Parkes Way. I was stupidly going too fast in wet conditions and lost control on a bend, the details are a bit hazy but I believe I hit the gutter and rolled once, landing in the left hand lane. It was impossible to move the car on to the shoulder so I tried to get it across to the median strip, however the car stopped with the rear wheels on the road.
Surprisingly I managed to escape with only a small bump to the head, and a slightly grazed shoulder and knee. The main body of the car survived almost intact whilst the boot and most of the front of the car were demolished. The police officers who attended the scene were surprised that I was still standing.
Thank you to the people who stopped to check if I needed any assistance, especially the couple in the ute who parked on the median strip to flash their lights at oncoming traffic to warn them about my car protruding on to the road on a blind corner…not that they all paid attention. Also a big thanks to a friend who took my call and sent me the phone number for a tow truck.
I’ll be heading down to the Civic police station tomorrow to hand in the accident report, it will be interesting to see what happens after that.
Samuel
2 comments June 30th, 2008 at 10:02pm
I don’t know if any of you remember PodZinger as it came and went from the public spotlight very very quickly a few years ago, but basically it was a semi-promising new search engine which aimed to automatically index and transcribe podcasts. If it worked, it would have been a good way to find information in what is otherwise an awful medium to search.
But of course, it was doomed from the beginning as anybody who has ever used voice recognition software would have known. To get a computer to recognise a voice with any amount of accuracy, you have to train it. Usually this involves two steps, the initial preset “read these sentences” training exercises where the computer gets to hear you say things that is asks you to say, and then the ongoing “no, I said “cat” not “hat”, the hat is not in the hat, the cat is in the hat…no, the cat is not in the cat either” intermittent corrections which also help the computer to learn how to understand your voice.
The reason we need to teach the computer how to do recognise an individual’s voice is that everyone has a slightly different voice and a slightly different speech pattern…and if humans who are predisposed to understanding the speech of other humans have difficulty understanding people with accents, what hope does an untrained computer have?
As far as I can tell, PodZinger had no form of quality control…the robot listened to the audio, produced a mangled transcript of it, and nobody bothered to check the accuracy of it. A system where corrections could be submitted by listeners could have worked better, but I don’t think PodZinger were ever interested in having masses of voice samples floating around in their system, nor do I think that having masses of voice samples from different people would have helped with individual transcriptions.
So, why am I babbling about an ultimately failed search engine of little-to-know consequence? Because they’re still around under a different name (EveryZing) doing much the same thing, albeit with expansions in to the more profitable and sane market of search engine optimisation, and expecting people to pay them for it. Maybe the transcription software is better today than it was in 2007, but I wouldn’t be willing to pay them in order to test the theory.
I noticed that they are still around on the weekend when I was wondering if they are still around and was shocked to find that they are. They also have all of their old archives…and if you search for my name, you can be informed about my Chinese communist leanings by their transcription robot.
It has transcribed the Feedback segment from Samuel’s Persiflage #13, specifically the section from 47 minutes and 58 seconds. According to their robot, in that segment I said:
can go to get sort of course if you concentrate back podcasted Samuel Gordon Stewart — Communists the email address or you can leave comments in the China nights or irritants Samuels who supplies were sought to
Maybe the robot’s ears are blocked, because when I listen to that segment, I hear:
feedback to get through and of course if you’ve got some feedback, podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com is the email address or you could uh leave the comments in the show notes or go to the samuel’s persiflage website and
That said, I have been (jokingly) accused of encoding secret messages in Samuel’s Persiflage…maybe they were on to something…I would have to be among the last people on Earth that anybody would consider as a possible communist, so I would have to be the perfect vessel for hiding and broadcasting such messages.
It leaves me pondering the question: “Why am I giving the conspiracy nuts something to work with?”
Samuel
Add comment June 30th, 2008 at 06:10am
This week the award goes to the UK group “Free”, and the feature song is “All Right Now”.
There she stood in the street
Smiling from her head to her feet
I said “Hey, what is this”
Now baby, maybe she’s in need of a kiss
I said ” Hey, what’s your name baby”
Maybe we can see things the same
Now don’t you wait or hesitate
Let’s move before they raise the parking rateAll right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right nowLet me tell you now
I took her home to my place
Watching every move on her face
She said “Look, what’s your game baby
are you tryin’ to put me in shame?”
I said “slow don’t go so fast,
don’t you think that love can last?”
She said “Love, Lord above,
now you’re tryin’ to trick me in love”All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right nowI said, don’t you know
Oh yeah
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
All right now
Baby, it’s all right now
Samuel
Add comment June 29th, 2008 at 08:08pm
Explosives were found in a home in Jess Place, Hughes yesterday causing police to evacuate residents while they attempted to safely remove the explosives. It is believed that the deceased resident of the house may have been collecting explosives for a number of years.
Residents were evacuated and handed this press release to explain the situation, while an ACT Government Evacuation Centre was setup in the Hughes Community Hall.
I spoke to one of the evacuated residents this morning:
Download MP3
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the area, here’s an overview map that I created:
The interviewed Hughes resident, who does not wish to be named, has also kindly provided me with a map of the affected area:
(Click image to enlarge)
Red is the confirmed initial roadblocks I saw at 3.30pm, with the one on Brand street to stop people walking into the area through the nature strip rather than a traffic road block.
Blue were the roadblocks when i returned at 7.
Orange was the staging area, I assume will be the same place today. Kent St was covered in emergency service vehicles there yesterday so it’s hard to miss.
Yellow is the house someone said they strongly believed was the house in question, however when I passed last night on my way home I don’t recall many officers at that particular house, it may have been the one above it.
The house shaded in yellow is number 4 Jess Place, and the one above it is number 6 Jess Place. I will endeavour to bring you an exact address. Update: Address detailed below End Update
Residents are expected to be evacuated again today as the police and the army work on removing the explosives. Further updates as they come to hand.
Update 2:55pmThe activity has certainly died down in the area and only a handful of police and explosives experts remain on the scene. Marked police vehicles are intermittently in the area however it is two unmarked vans which seem to be the resident official vehicles of the operation.
I can now confirm that the house is number 2 Jess Place, Hughes, shown on this map in yellow:
(Click image to enlarge)
The scene is very quiet and the word is that any evacuations this afternoon are likely to be confined to Jess Place and neighbouring houses.
The police talk to a neighbour about the situation.
Number 2 Jess Place, with the explosive-laden garage visible between the vans
The scene from Birdwood Street
It’s a pity that I don’t have a time machine as the scene was apparently much more interesting last night, with many emergency service vehicles on the scene and a staging area which was being used rather than being completely cleaned up as was the case this afternoon. End Update
Further Update 10:21PM: No wonder it was quiet when I was in the suburb between 1pm and 2:30pm. The Australian Federal Police have issued a press release declaring the area safe:
Conclusion of Hughes incident
Saturday, 28 June 2008ACT Policing has completed the search of a Hughes home for commercial explosives and military ordnance.
The search was completed about 2.30pm today (June 28) and all suspicious items have been removed from the area.
The items included a quantity of gelignite and a World War II era hand-grenade.
No evacuations of Hughes residents were required today.
Superintendent Matt Varley praised the Hughes residents saying, “We are grateful to all the residents of Hughes who were affected by this incident, for their patience and cooperation. This was a difficult situation which had to be dealt with in a slow and safe manner.
“This incident highlights the seriousness of collecting dangerous ‘souvenirs’ which put police and other members of the public at risk. The disposal of these items causes significant disruption to the community.
“If people are in possession of explosives in any form, they should contact police to discuss their safe disposal.
“I highly commend the officers involved in this operation for their hard work under trying circumstances,” Superintendent Varley said.
The explosives will now be disposed of at an undisclosed location by the AFP Bomb Response Team.
And so, without taking away from the seriousness of the matter, one of Canberra’s more interesting news stories this year, draws to a close. End Update
Samuel
Add comment June 28th, 2008 at 11:18am