Is it just my imagination, or has the term “carrot and stick” suddenly become extremely popular in the last few days. It seems that I can’t go for more than 12 hours without hearing it somewhere, whereas previously I would hear it once every few months.
Is is just me, or are other people noticing this as well?
Samuel
June 22nd, 2010 at 05:22am
Well, considering that my last post before disappearing for quite a while was one about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I could claim that I was kidnapped by the UN and somehow managed to survive their attempts to brainwash me in to believing that:
1) There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
2) Global warming will doom us all
3) The IPCC is not one of the most flawed organisations ever to grace the planet
4) Wasting Spending all that money on UN paychecks programs is really worthwhile.
Thankfully such torture was not used on me…although if it had been, I might be able to explain this sudden urge to support Ban Ki-moon’s campaign to become the first President of his namesake satellite.
So where have I actually been, well for the most part I’ve been working. Work, sleep, eat and procrastinate pretty much sums up the last few weeks, although I did have a day off for Lord Monckton’s Canberra lecture (I didn’t fact-check the CT article did I? Another one for the pile of stuff I really should get around to doing I suppose) in the middle of one of the weeks where I was working more hours than usual.
I’ve also discovered that, since the concussion from my robbery and assault last year, I have needed more sleep than I used to require. It used to be the case that I could still be mostly functional on almost no sleep in a four day period…alas those days appear to be gone and I now struggle if I’m awake for a 24 hour block. The upshot of this is that I am awake less by necessity, and something on my list of commitments therefore had to fall by the wayside. That something, especially when I was working more hours for a few weeks, was this blog.
I’m not satisfied with that though and thoroughly intend on continuing this blog, just probably not as actively as I used to.
As for that announcement which I was going to make…well it ties in with this really. I’m leaving 1WAY FM and this coming Sunday night will be my final shift. I have a few reasons, but the most important one is the fact that I just can’t continue to work on Sunday night, struggle to get to sleep when I get home, and then work again in my “day job” on Monday morning. It does help a bit that my “day job” shifts have been altered so that I no longer work a full day on Mondays, but it doesn’t solve the problem of me working on auto-pilot zombie trance mode and needing to go back to bed after work.
I’ve enjoyed volunteering at 1WAY FM, but I just can’t continue with it…not when it is eventually going to result in me falling asleep at my desk and spilling coffee on equipment. This decision was not easy, as I quite enjoy what I do at 1WAY FM, but it is the right decision.
Where I’ll next pop up in radio land I have absolutely no idea and, at this very moment, I’m not really looking. I do need a bit of a break, although as usual I have some ideas (rarely do I ever run out of ideas) and it will be interesting to see which ones make their way in to reality.
Samuel
2 comments March 2nd, 2010 at 06:12am
Do you know what I think the most annoying aspect of being human is? No? Well I’ll tell you…the need to sleep.
I came to a few realisations last night which have been a long time coming, and I’m rather glad about it because it means that my goals and direction in at least the short to medium term, are now much clearer and more realistic. Alas I can’t explain it here right now because certain formal processes need to be initiated first but I intend on making an announcement on Monday or Tuesday.
Alas between that and my need to sleep, I didn’t actually get any of my three planned tasks (including the promised blog post) done last night…and for the record I’m now existing on about 15 hours of sleep since 8am Tuesday.
I’m working all day today, so I’ll see how I go tonight…assuming that I don’t just crash out after work, that is.
Samuel
1 comment February 5th, 2010 at 09:32am
I thought I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but it looks like I only posted the link on Facebook.
Lord Christopher Monckton is in Canberra today and will be appearing at the National Press Club between 3pm and 5pm, courtesy of the New South Wales Farmers Federation, presenting a lecture entitled “Why a Royal Commission must urgently review climate change science”.
Update: Sorry, it’s sold out. End update
The cost is $20 per head and afternoon tea and light refreshments will be available. I honestly don’t know if there are any spots left, however if there are any left, I expect that they will go quickly. The people to call in order to book are the New South Wales Farmers Federation on 1300 794 000. I’ll give them a call myself after 9am to check if there are any spots left, and update this post accordingly.
I’ll be there, and I’m still trying to arrange a short interview with Lord Monckton. Somewhere along the line there was a communication breakdown regarding this, so I’m making a last ditch effort to arrange this today. Hopefully I can get this off the ground because I would love to interview Lord Monckton; I have some questions to which I would very much like to hear his answers and, above all else, would like to make short audio interviews a more regular feature of this blog…having Lord Monckton as the first would be an honour and a privilege. Update: Not locked in, but a window of opportunity has been provided. Many thanks to the organisers for their prompt reply this morning. End update
Anyhoo, more details about today’s lecture can be found here, and if you’re attending then I look forward to seeing you. Feel free to come up for a chat.
Samuel
February 3rd, 2010 at 06:11am
The desire to turn simple two word phrases in to convolutions such as this:
I hereby submit to you, with all due consideration being given to the applicable current portion of the generally recognised and accepted uneven segmentation of the present day as it stands in the local area and prevailing local language and culture, having taken in to account the possibility and applicability of laws surrounding any necessary adjustments, be they positive or negative, to the generally measured equal segmentation of the day which is most commonly portrayed outside of military circles in a manner which only allows for half of the available segments, a generally positive and potentially presumptuous communication relating to the perceived state of mutual and personal affairs (bearing in mind that not all factors have necessarily been included in the formulation of the view of the perceived state of the aforementioned affairs) containing an inherent desire to open a mutually convenient and multi-directional dialogue, without inferring any guarantee that, with the benefit of hindsight, such dialogue will necessarily be viewed as having resulted in the overall increase in the knowledge of subjects discussed either personally or as a collective.
Anyhoo, I thought I’d just pop in and say hello. I do plan on writing much more (in a more comprehensible form than what I wrote a few moments ago) before Christmas…but my plans have a habit of remaining as plans and not turning in to actions. We’ll see what happens.
Samuel
December 22nd, 2009 at 02:20pm
Physically I’m here, but I think my brain is elsewhere as I am still very tired. Thank you to Maritz who held the fort for a little bit longer than was arranged, Maritz will be back on Monday with her weekly column if all goes to plan.
That is the first time that I have been completely off the radar for quite some time as I did not take my laptop with me to Melbourne, and I am continuing to live without a mobile phone. I even forgot to take a watch with me, so my sense of time was non-existent. More on that later, as that topic will take a while to to write.
I’m just going to pluck the quickest blog post off my list of things to write, and publish that for you. I’ll be back later today with more items of interest.
Samuel
December 10th, 2009 at 12:35pm
And with that, I’m back. The whole catching up on sleep and getting my energy back thing has been a limited success, but I am now back to being able to put my thoughts in to writing without having to spend a week working out how to word it, so we’ll call it a success.
I’ve got a lot to get through, and seeing as blog posts with multiple short stories in them seem to be the flavour of the trimester on about half the blogs I read, and it’s convenient in this case, I’ll bite and run such a post here.
***
Sleep? Hmmm, well it’s 3:32am as I type this and I last finished sleeping at 8am yesterday. You do the math. That said, in the last few nights I have had dreams where I:
1. Was in a repeat episode of Third Watch. Nobody could be bothered attending to the emergencies as they all knew that the people survived the episode, so why bother risking injury doing the stunts again?
2. I plunged to my death in a taxi, on a wet night where the left half of the road had been washed away. A very vivid and disturbing dream.
3. KXNT’s Alan Stock was elected as Chairman of the Nevada Action Committee, although what this actually achieved is beyond me, because the only thing he was required to do as part of this job was take five minutes out of his show each morning to read the KXNT phone number over and over and over and over and over (we’ll come back to this in five minutes when he’s done with the phone number)
***
Speaking of KXNT, their traffic bed (the music they play under their traffic reports) is one of the bits of music which I managed to get stuck in my head this week. I also managed to get the First Option Mortgage jingle stuck in my head for three excruciating hours, and get it stuck in somebody else’s head simply by mentioning it on Facebook. Apparently it’s called “ear worm”. I also had another song stuck in my head, but I dare not try to remember what it was lest it happen again.
***
Frasier and Seinfeld repeats at 7:30pm and 8pm weeknights respectively on Go! Channel Nine receive my perpetual thanks for this.
***
There was some Bollywood movie on SBS Two the other night. I watched ten minutes of it near the beginning during which time the married couple managed to patch up their differences, and the wife declared that she didn’t really care about her husband’s flaws anyway. How they could drag that about the next three hours is beyond me, and I’m glad that I didn’t stick around to find out. The ten minutes was good for a laugh though.
***
Cisco have calculated (which is probably code for “guessed”) that the average broadband Internet user downloads 11.4 gigabytes per month. I average 20-25GB per month and will probably start doubling that in the not-to-distant future if one of my household projects gets off the ground.
***
Facebook have decided to preserve the accounts of deceased members, minus status updates and other “sensitive data”. This intrigues me as I have often thought about what would happen to this site and my other online data if I were to cease existing for whatever reason. I would like to keep it all online permanently, but am yet to find a viable solution. The National Library’s PANDORA project archives the essence of this site, but seems to have a lot of broken links and missing data, which is hardly surprising given the sheer size of this site (6.97GB and growing). Preserving this site is a work in progress…I suppose I’ll just have to stick around for long enough to ensure that it happens.
Anyway, if and when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m happy for my Facebook account to be preserved as some sort of shrine, but I don’t want anything to be removed from it. How does one go about sharing this wish with Facebook. One’s will?
***
Speaking of the dead, Yahoo have finally killed off Geocities. I’m glad that I was reminded of this imminent death the other day, as I had one page on there which I needed to save. I’ll republish it on here at some stage.
***
Monash Drive has been removed the ACT “National Capital Plan”. The proposed road had been slated to run along the foot of Mount Ainslie behind Hackett, Ainslie and Campbell, roughly in-line with the already cleared sections which the high voltage power lines use. Politically, the road was never going to happen, which is a pity because it could have reduced a lot of congestion, especially in the years ahead.
***
We’ve been following Barack Obama’s approval ratings here for some months now using the figures from Rasmussen, who had the polling figures closest to the outcome of last year’s election. That said, the other polls are interesting as well, especially when you consider that in the Gallup poll, Obama has recorded the worst third quarter of an elected president in recorded history. A nine point drop in his approval rating in the space of three months.
***
The White House have declared war on FOX News, claiming that they’re not a news organisation. The White House clearly can’t tell the difference between news programming and opinion programming, even when it’s pointed out to them. Funnily enough though, the other networks have defended FOX. Late last week, White House officials tried to ban FOX from a White House Press Pool interview session, but the other networks wouldn’t have a bar of it, quite clearly telling the White House that “if Fox can’t be a part of this, then none of us will interview your chap”. It worked, and the White House backed down, for now.
Here’s the point. FOX out-rate every other cable news network consistently, partially because of their news programming, and partially because of their opinion programming. People want to watch it. The White House don’t like the opinion programming as it is often critical of the Obama administration, unlike others such as MSNBC whose opinion programming often favours the Obama administration. The other networks know that if they let the White House exclude FOX, then they are all trapped in an unwritten “do as we say, or we cut your access” agreement. It is an attack not only on FOX, but on every other network, on freedom of the press, and on freedom of speech.
Glenn Beck, on one of FOX’s opinion shows, put together a rather amusing piece on the War On FOX which had me in hysterics when I first watched it.
One wonders if people would have voted for Obama’s “new era of bi-partisanship” if they had known that “bi-partisan” is defined as “the other side will do as we say, therefore we all agree”.
***
The ANZ Bank have a new logo, and a TV ad which looks strangely familiar…I’ve seen the whole “life juggled above head, but we can make it easier” ad before, I just can’t remember where. Anyway, the logo, is it just me, or does it look like somebody chucking a tantrum after being kept in line for an hour?
***
Channel Seven have announced their new digital channel, to be called “7TWO”, on (you guessed it) channel 72. I’m not in the least bit surprised that regional affiliate Prime aren’t putting it to air straight away, I mean Prime own the “6″ channels in digital TV land, and it would look rather silly have 7TWO on channel 62. I suspect that Prime are working on their own branding of the new station…PRIMExtra perhaps?
***
RIP Don Lane, one of the great entertainers, who passed away at the age of 75.
***
Remember when the Large Hadron Collider was about to be turned on for the first time and people were afraid the world was going to end? It amazed me how many people who believed that, were subsequently placated when it was turned on, broke down, and the world didn’t end. The whole cause for concern was for when it would finally reach the actual colliding stage, which it never did.
Well, without wanting to alarm you, the LHC boffins are ready to start it up again. Perhaps now would be a good time to book a flight on NASA’s newly-tested-to-be-successful space vehicle.
***
733-KXNT, 733-5968, 733-KXNT, 733-5968 (Alan’s still going…)
***
Clive Robertson filled in for Tim Webster on 2UE and 2CC’s afternoon show yesterday. What a relief! Tim Webster, as much as like him personally, has bored me to death of late…I can not listen to his show any more, I just can’t. Tim is much better suited to a news-based show than the lifestyle-amalgam show that he is now presenting. Clive, however, suits the format perfectly, and is brilliant afternoon entertainment.
Memo to 2UE for next year’s lineup: Breakfast with Mike Jeffreys, Mornings with Stuart Bocking, Afternoons with Clive Robertson, Drive with John Stanley, Nights with The Two Murrays, Overnights with Jim Ball.
***
And now at 6:18 it’s time for KXNT’s traffic and weather together on the eights, here’s Tate South (finally, Alan’s morning Chairman task is finished, which means that I can wrap up this blog post).
***
There was an ad on TV last night for that boat from Victoria to Tasmania and back, in which they advertised the rate for taking your car with you as being an “each way” rate (eg. “x dollars each way”). Sorry, but does that mean it’s the return rate (you can travel each way for this amount) or the one way rate (each way costs x dollars)?
***
Congratulations to Chris Matlock, KXNT’s Radiostar competition winner for this year. I listened to the entries of the 20 finalists when I was last in Deniliquin, and Chris was my favourite from the start, so I was very pleased to see him win. Chris will have his own show soon, apparently, and will start off co-hosting with Ciara Turns on “Sundays with Ciara” on Sunday, November 8 between 10am and 1pm. That will either be 4am-7am or 5am-8am Monday, November 9 in Canberra, depending on whether daylight saving has ended in the US by then.
***
And finally, Lord Christopher Monckton spent much of the latter part of last week and the start of this week outlining the issues with the proposed Copenhagen climate change treaty which, don’t forget, is designed to stop a warming which hasn’t happened in about the last decade. The main points:
1. The setting up of a world government, with binding power over all countries.
2. Some peculiar scheme to send all the money from the western countries to the developing countries, to pay for some supposed “climate debt”.
Glenn Beck interviewed his lordship last week, which makes for very interesting and enlightening listening.
Part one:
Part two:
(thanks to Padders for the link to those videos)
If you ever needed proof that the whole global warming thing has everything to do with social change, and nothing to do with climate change, you now have it.
Samuel
3 comments October 29th, 2009 at 04:47am
I’ll be back in a few days. Right now, despite having a growing list of things that I would like to write about, I just can’t manage to get started, so I’m not going to try for a few days. Columns from contributors are also suspended until further notice.
Samuel
October 26th, 2009 at 02:36am
If my life were a television soap opera, the title of this episode would be “a bit out of it”. I’ve lost count of how many times I have said that today.
The doctor proclaimed that I’m fine after looking at me in one of his trademark five-second colsultations, but I’m not convinced that he took the possibility of concussion in to account. I am still “out of it”, I’m struggling to concentrate, my sentence structure is fairly horrendous and my ability to type letters in the correct order is not all that it should be. I’ll give it some time, but if this keeps up, I will be seeking a second opinion.
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to passing to the police on to the details of the calls made from my phone after it was stolen. Yes, these thieves were of the thick variety. Some sleep would also be nice, but is proving to be elusive.
Samuel
October 19th, 2009 at 09:33pm
If so, did you see a group of people, three of whom had bicycles? Can you describe any of the people on bicycles?
If the answer is yes, please contact ACT Police. The three bicycled aboriginal thugs attacked me and stole $50, plus my phone and iPod.
It’s unlikely that I’ll see any of the stolen stuff again, but it would be nice if the police were able to catch up with the three thugs at some stage.
If you’re wondering, I’ll be OK. I was punched in the nose, but the bleeding stopped after a short time. It still hurts, and I will see a doctor about it…but on the whole, I’m just lucky that they didn’t have (or at least produce) any weapons.
It is now fair to say that this year is not in the running for “my favourite year of all time”.
Update: The police media unit has been rather busy today with a number of press releases, so I’m rather pleased that my press release has not only gone out to the media, but is online.
Police seek witnesses to Barton robbery
Monday, 19 October 2009
ACT Policing is seeking witnesses to an aggravated robbery of a 22-year-old Reid man which occurred near the Kings Avenue Bridge, Barton, last night (October 18).
The victim left work around 11.20pm and began to walk home. When he reached the south-end of the Kings Avenue Bridge he was approached by three males on push bikes.
The three males demanded money and the victim handed over $50. They also stole his iPod and mobile telephone. During the robbery the victim was punched once in the nose by the youngest offender, causing it to bleed.
All three offenders were described as being of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander appearance. Two were described as being around 18 years old and the third around 14 years old.
Once the offenders left the victim hailed down a taxi and was dropped at City Police Station. Woden Patrols searched the area a short time later but were unable to locate any persons of interest.
Police would urge anyone who may have seen suspicious behaviour in the Kings Avenue Bridge area overnight to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, or report it via the Crime Stoppers website at www.act.crimestoppers.com.au.
Also I’ll be chatting with Mike Welsh about the robbery on 2CC this afternoon. I’m heading off to the doctor so we’re pre-recording the interview, and I therefore don’t know what time it will go to air. Between 3pm and 6pm on 2CC anyway.
End Update
Samuel
October 19th, 2009 at 02:49am
It’s bizarre but true…I stop writing, and I get more visitors. Work that one out.
Anyway, the intermission has now finished. I decided to postpone the Musician(s) Of The Week award on Sunday as I took a nap on Sunday afternoon and then had to go to 1WAY FM, which takes longer at the moment while I am car-less (I found my stolen car on my way to 1WAY FM in an undrivable state which was interesting…and Firefox spell check wants me to say that it was in an undrinkable state, which is also correct). I then caught up on sleep on Monday and was busy with work, errands and further sleep yesterday.
The Musician(s) Of The Week is coming up tonight, and I’ll publish Maritz’s column at some stage today. I have a few other things for you as well.
Incidentally, it looks like I’m back from my two-day break on the same day that Andrew Bolt is back from his month-and-a-bit break. It’s funny how these things work out.
Samuel
October 7th, 2009 at 05:39am
I made a couple predictions about the NRL Grand Final a couple weeks back, and in the spirit of seeing if I am able to maintain my 49% accuracy rating, it’s time to review them.
it’ll be Dogs V Broncos
Wrong! It was Storm V Eels.
Next (from same link):
there will be at least 46 points scored.
Wrong! The full time score was 23 to 16. 23 + 16 = 39
Then:
I reckon the Broncos will be premiers
Wrong! The Broncos didn’t make it to the grand final.
Finally (from the same link):
if it’s Eels V Storm [..] then it’ll be an Eels premiership
Wrong! The Storm defeated the Eels 23 to 16.
Four predictions. No correct predictions. 0% accuracy.
When I’m cold, I’m contributing to the ongoing increase of polar ice levels.
Samuel
October 4th, 2009 at 08:46pm
And so it begins again, Daylight Saving starts at 2am and will be with us until the other end of April…a whole seven months of adjusted clocks. Personally I don’t see why we can’t just have Daylight Saving for the whole year rather than slowly increasing the number of months we have it for.
Amusingly the ABC have managed to push their digital television electronic programme guides in to daylight saving time early, although it’s not amusing for me as I relied on their programme guide to schedule a recording of The Bill. My recording started an hour late at 9:30pm (10:30am GMT +11) instead of 8:30pm (10:30am GMT +10), meaning that I will have to wait for somebody at the ABC to upload The Bill to iView.
This may interest you, but it’s more for my reference. The updated KXNT schedule for programs of interest in Canberra’s daylight saving time.
Sunday
4am-7am: Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd weekend edition
Monday
4am-7am: Sundays with Ciara
11pm-Midnight: The Morning Source with Alan Stock
Tuesday to Saturday
Midnight-3am: The Morning Source with Alan Stock
3am-6am: Rush Limbaugh
6am-9am: Sean Hannity
9am-11am: Mark Levin
11am-1pm: Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd (includes Jerk Of The Week at 12:09pm Friday)
During the night I will have the fun job of setting all of the clocks in my house to daylight saving time, which doubles as my twice-yearly “make sure every clock is in sync” session. I can’t stand having clocks that have the wrong time, especially when they’re out by a minute or two. It drives me nuts.
So happy daylight saving to you. If your sleep cycle is similar to mine, you will welcome the extra hour of darkness in the morning. It will make getting to sleep at 5:30am much easier.
Samuel
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:50pm
A quick hello to the listeners of 99.3FM in Sydney. With any luck today’s segment will become a regular or semi-regular thing…we’ll see how it goes.
Also a thank you to Oly Peterson for having me on the show this afternoon.
Samuel
September 8th, 2009 at 07:47pm
I just had a most unusual fault occur during my mobile phone conversation with a friend.
Mid-conversation, the call cut out, which isn’t all that unusual on its own, however at my end I received the Telstra disconnected signal (the one similar to the engaged signal, but with one tone quieter than the other), followed by the Telstra ringing signal, and then one side of another person’s phone call in which they continued to converse with the other party to their call, but seemed oblivious to my “hello? are you still there?”. It seemed that this mystery person was informing the other party to their call that somebody would be leaving at 6pm.
After about fifteen seconds of hearing one side of their call, the connection dropped completely, with my phone registering the end of the call.
Apparently, the person at the other end of my call did not hear any of this…I suspect that my phone registered the termination of the the call after the other party to my call hung up after hearing nothing for a little while.
Samuel
September 3rd, 2009 at 06:00pm
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