It is probably redundant of me to tell you that I had a peculiar dream when pretty much all of my dreams are peculiar.
Yesterday’s dream occurred during a lunch break. I was walking back from lunch to a training conference. This seemed to be along streets in the Woden Town Centre surrounded by buildings which looked like the old concrete Cameron Offices in Belconnen. It turned out that I was walking back to some sort of police training conference, except the police who were being trained were fictional characters from The Bill and Water Rats. I was chatting with actor Steve Bisley on the way back who played Detective Sergeant Jack Christey in Water Rats although it seemed I was actually talking to an amalgam of the actor and the character as he was telling me about some cases he was working on while also talking about the guest appearances he was looking forward to on The Bill as a shonky real estate agent trying to fraudulently sell off bits of Sun Hill.
As Water Rats and The Bill both ended many years ago, I don’t know how any of this seemed plausible to me, but it did, and the Steve Bisley I was talking to was the age he was in Water Rats, not his current age, so I suppose it made sense to some extent.
When we got back to the building where the training was occurring, I left Steve and the rest of the people to go inside as I had to go back to work. I went to some place which looked a bit like my old high school’s front office and was informed of a bomb scare. Everyone there thought it was a hoax and ignored it but I was tasked with investigating it anyway. After a short time I discovered that the bomb was in a newly installed vending machine in the front office and was very powerful because all of the drinks had been replaced with flammable liquids.
I went over to the fire alarm panel and smashed the glass to activate the fire alarm, and then had to reach in further behind the broken glass to push a very small button which turned the general alarm noise into an evacuation tone. After this I determined that there wasn’t enough time to evacuate the building and I would have to defuse the bomb. This turned out to be quite simple as pulling the vending machine’s power cable out of the power outlet shut down the timer.
The next thing I knew I was in a supermarket which seemed to be the old Supabarn as it had appeared in the late 1990s in the old City Markets but with much taller shelves. I had a gun and was searching for explosive jelly beans. The dream ended while I was carrying out this search.
It has been a while since I have had a dream memorable enough and interesting enough to write about here. Yesterday though, one did occur and it was quite remarkable. It was one of those dreams which was vivid enough to feel very real at the time, to the point where it is hard to accept afterwards that it wasn’t real despite the events which occurred in it.
The dream started with everyone in the world being summoned to attend one of the many very large and tall new buildings which had appeared overnight and had apparently been rapidly constructed by aliens. It was required, by law, for all people to be in one of these buildings by 8:30am. Anyone not in one of those buildings by that time would not be allowed in and would be left behind to face the end of the world. The deadline was to be strictly enforced without exception.
I went along, although it seemed the rest of my family did not. The first order of business was to defend the buildings against anybody trying to get in late. Nobody tried. The view from the window, which looked like the window half way up the “going down” staircase of my primary school, showed the streets were mostly deserted. Security radio chatter indicated there was a train delay on the coast (which I somehow knew meant just south of Wollongong) but otherwise all was well.
At 9am the grand announcement occurred that the new society in these buildings would be air conditioned and run by aliens would had in fact been on Earth for many years. Everyone’s past misdeeds would be forgiven and forgotten, but everyone must be on their best behaviour from now on as misbehaviour would not be tolerated. The new society would be based on a number of fundamental principles including privacy and honesty. Earth would come to an end soon and the buildings would leave for a new planet before then. People could still choose to leave the new society that day if they wanted but would not be re-admitted, so leaving meant certain doom as the end of the world would arrive soon.
As the meeting concluded, I looked out a window and noticed a handful of people had left and already been served at a nearby fast food store. I noted with surprise how quickly they were served given how understaffed the store must be, and then walked upstairs. A small commotion was occurring in a room as a person had apparently misbehaved. To make matters worse they were arguing with an “official” about it. Other officials gathered and determined that the misbehaviour was that the person had walked into a room through the wrong doors, against a signposted direction that the doors were only to be used for exiting the room. A senior official decided an immediate “judicial occurrence” was required and ordered the unsealing of this person’s medical records for immediate public examination to see if they had any bearing on their misbehaviour. This, to me, seemed appalling and not at all in-line with the earlier-stated principle of privacy. The examination of the medical records showed the person had a medical condition which was “illegal” and that some sort of punishment was required.
I ran upstairs to see if there was anyone who could do anything about this and I found an office with Mr. Wood in it. Mr. Wood was not my Year 4 teacher but he did teach the class next door. Occasionally classes would swap teacher for an hour or two as the various teachers had specialty subjects which they would teach. Mr. Wood struck me as the sort of person who should have been a judge as he had a mind for fairness, but he wouldn’t have enjoyed being a judge as it would have required him to strictly enforce laws rather than applying his own fair-mindedness to each situation. So I was pleased to see him, although somewhat confused that he was one of the officials in this new alien society. I tried to explain the situation to him but he was too busy. It turned out he was a very senior official (and one of the aliens who had been on Earth for many years) tasked with creating punishments. He informed me that everyone in the new society is tracked and monitored at all times and privacy ceases to apply if a person is accused of misbehaviour, and then he rushed off to punish someone somewhere.
I left the building in a hurry, and along the way received evidence that the world was not coming to an end, but the aliens simply wanted to take all of the compliant people with them and leave everyone else behind, and they knew that the obedient ones would simply accept and follow a directive telling them to go to certain buildings to avoid the end of the world.
Going home seemed like a good idea so I started to walk home through a shopping centre where I noticed the concierge desk staff trying to work out how to staff all of the stores now that so many people had left. I continued to walk towards home and got about half way up the block next to my home when I noticed a group of cows having a large argument in the street near my home. The argument was generating some sort of nuclear radiation so I decicded to take shelter in an abandoned car. The wind was blowing the radiation in my direction so I rolled the windows up. However the radiation kept getting worse and I realised that the wind wasn’t the issue, but rather my shift was attracting the radiation as it had a tracking device embedded from the new society…so I changed my shirt. By this stage though the radiation levels were becoming quite concerning and I realised I had to leave the area and wait for the cows to finish their argument and stop producing radiation. It was too dangerous to open the doors of the car and get out so I would have to drive it. The car had the same idea and took off before I could start it! I eventually got it started anyway and drove to the other side of my suburb and parked in a carpark in the middle of a cafe.
I left the car there and started to make my way back towards home, but then realised my backpck was still in the car. I negotiated with the cafe owner to go back to the car but then realised I was already wearing my backpack and didn’t need to go back after all. As I was walking back towards home I became slightly concerned that the abandoned car would probably now be considered stolen and my fingerprints would be all over it, but then realised driving it a short distance to escape a radiation storm caused by arguing cows would be a perfectly reasonable excuse, so it was all OK.
I walked through the shopping centre again and realised that all of the surveillance agencies of government would have gone to the new society, and felt a sense of relief that spies would no longer by spying on people on Earth. As I walked through the shopping centre I noticed a jewellery shop owned by my friend Maritz with a very long sign out the front showing her very long full name. I then walked past the concierge desk where they were now trying to figure out where their abandoned car had gone. I kept walking.
Everything seemed pleasant and wonderful as I walked towards home. And then abruptly the dream ended and I was jolted awake, knowing without even looking at the clock that it was time to go to work.
The dream seemed so real and the unusual jolt awake despite everything being good in the dream at that stage (normally a jolt awake would occur at a perilous moment), combined with the correct but unexplainable certain knowledge that it was time for work, left the distinct impression that the dream was more than just a dream. Perhaps I had been visiting a parallel universe and whoever or whatever arranged my visit realised I had stayed a bit too long and quickly sent me back, leaving me with the knowledge that I had to be elsewhere imminently.
Who knows? Regardless, it was a very interesting and intriguing dream full of interesting themes which are well-worth further thought.
In today’s video I answer a series of questions which have been asked about Hard N Soft Staking since its launch, covering topics such as how it works and various ways to use it.
And exciting news, and an answer to a question asked many times – a preview of a much-requested addition which will open up many new possibilities for the use of Hard N Soft Staking. Yes, a bot is coming!
I look forward to bringing you more news of the bot in the near future.
P.S. I thought this would be a quick video to produce. It wasn’t. Compiling all of those screenshots and demonstrative videos and getting the graphics firing at the right times. I’ve spent much more time on this than I expected but it has come out well so it was time well spent I think.
Apparently we’re coming into the year of the snake. Well, I don’t know about that, but whenever people start talking about the year of (insert animal here) my mind tends to go to Al Stewart and The Year Of The Cat.
Although I’m not entirely sure that my dogs are fond of the year of the cat. They probably like the year of the rabbit as they’re much more fun to chase!
In the next video I will be answering some of the questions which have been asked about Hard ‘N’ Soft Staking. Many I have already answered here on in the YouTube comments or by email, but I think it would be good to compile a bunch of them into an FAQ video. If there are more questions between now and then, I’ll certainly consider adding them to the video.
Introducing Hard ‘N’ Soft Staking – a staking plan I designed to turbocharge your profits during winning runs and protect your bankroll in losing runs.
I’m very pleased to have been able to collaborate with Steve and Michael to take my idea for the staking plan, which I was calculating manually, and transform it into a highly usable and attractive staking plan available as both a cloud version and an Excel version at https://hardnsoftstaking.com
In this video I cover What Hard ’N’ Soft Staking is, show it in action in both good periods and bad periods, demonstrating its ability to make profit under various conditions while protecting your bank balance along the way. In the next video I intend to go into a more detailed explanation of the inner workings of the staking plan and some of the thought process behind it.
I hope you enjoy this and it brings you an extra edge in your betting.
Well, thank you for your patience in waiting for this one. I had hoped to have this video ready for you a couple weeks ago but my mother went back into hospital on Christmas Day which threw quite the spanner in the works. Thankfully Mum is back home and recovering well, having finally had the operation she originally went to the hospital for back in April.
In today’s video, an update on the AI stats powered soccer strategy I demonstrated a couple months ago, now with updated settings to improve performance. Also two new strategies which are both showing good results, also using the AI-powered stats and predictions of SPM Bot.
Samuel provides an update and revision on an ANZ Bot strategy to use stats to find winners and turn a profit on Australia and New Zealand horse racing, getting the ANZ Bot to find runners which have a good performance rating and a good jockey/trainer combo, but a poor Sky rating.
Samuel also explains why the revisions were made and a tip on filtering the Sky ratings in the ANZ Bot for better results.
Clive Robertson didn’t play a lot of music on his overnight show on 2UE, but there were a few songs which he would play more often than others. Many of these were quite sad and poignant songs, but one in particular was a very upbeat tune which seemed to have a message about the news and world events which mirrored Clive’s own observations. Something particularly notable about this song is it was released many years after one would have expected Clive to pay all that much attention to new music, and yet it clearly was a song of which he was quite fond.
The 1997 hit for Propellerheads, featuring vocals by Shirley Bassey, History Repeating
Clive took quite an interest in how things work, and I recall him once noting a couple videos available on YouTube about the workings of The Talking Clock. Hence, I’m sure he would have found this video about the making of the video clip of History Repeating to be quite interesting.
The rather sad news came through yesterday that broadcaster Clive Robertson had died at the age of 78 after a battle with cancer.
People who have been around this blog for a very very long time would be aware of my fondness and appreciation for Clive’s broadcasts. He was of course well known for his television work on Newsworld and similar shows, however I am most fond of his radio work. The period of time he spent in 2007 and 2008 hosting 2UE’s New Day Australia program is a particularly cherished memory as I often worked overnight during this period in a job which often had a distinct lack of work needing to be done during the overnight hours, interspersed with moments of frantic activity, and listening to Clive made the night much more enjoyable.
Clive had the incredible ability to just talk…about anything really, and be interesting, entertaining, funny, informative, and follow a stream of consciousness without losing sight of the original subject, and do this for hour after hour after hour without it ever getting old. Clive was perfectly capable of taking a routine weather report and detouring into a raft of stories while still providing a weather forecast and taking up most of the hour doing it.
Clive was equally able to converse with any caller about pretty much any subject and make it riveting radio for the listeners. Well, almost any caller. There was that woman whose name escapes me who would usually call in around 4am to have a very loud rant about Zion and Israel. She would always start off quietly and escalate into a full-on rant and rave at a level short of yelling, and then abruptly, sometimes mid-sentence, exclaim “thank you!” and slam the phone down. Clive tried to converse with her one night but it was not possible to interrupt her.
And then there was the time he took an inebriated lady’s call who had been on hold waiting to speak to Stuart Bocking on the show preceding Clive’s. She wanted to speak to “Stuart Bottles” and seemed rather put out to have been answered by “Dr. Cliff”. Clive seemed quite chuffed at his newfound doctorate.
I chatted with Clive about many things, including some of my peculiar dreams. Clive seemed to be entertained by them, but was disappointed to appear in my dreams considering I am male and he preferred to appear in the dreams of females. He cooked rice in the microwave of my kitchen while Bruce McAvaney and Dennis Cometti commentated in one dream, and somewhat crankily drove a bus in another. Clive also thought this website was very strange and I should see a physician about it. I was most entertained when Clive, aficionado of all things trains, took the time to explain why my dream about carriages of a City Rail train disconnecting from each other and then later reconnecting was impossible.
Here is the audio of Clive explaining to me the issues with the train dream, among other issues I apparently have.
Always great fun talking to Clive.
Clive also, one night, after a conversation with me about something-or-other probably quite mundane as usual, played Huey Lewis & The News’ Hip To Be Square in my honour.
Clive came and went from radio a number of times. One of his more recent outings on the airwaves was alongside Mike Jeffreys at 2UE. Those two make a fantastic duo and it was great radio. I had hoped that in Mike’s current role at 2GB, Clive might make a cameo appearance but alas it wasn’t to be.
A genuinely nice, interesting and gentle man, misunderstood by many, cherished by many more. Vale Clive.
It has been many years since I’ve been able to greet you from Deniliquin.
Long-time readers would remember that I spent some time working at 1521 2QN in 2008 and 2009 and often posted stories about things happening in Deni and sometimes stories of my time at 2QN as well.
Well, it’s 2QN which brings me back to town again. Not to work, but rather because the station is 90 years old this year. Local historian Ian Lea has written a book about the history of 2QN and a launch is being held for the book at 2QN’s studios tomorrow afternoon, followed by an afternoon tea and a tour of the studios. It will be interesting to see if ACE Radio have painted the studios since I worked there…it was painted once in my time there.
The weather forecast looked acceptable so I decided to take the bike. It was very warm for most of the trip and I was practically melting when I got to the takeaway in Urana, but all of this changed closer to Jerilderie where a little bit of rain appeared. After Jerilderie a storm front approached and I encountered very strong crosswinds which made riding quite challenging, and then the rain. The heaviest of the rain was south of me but it was heavy enough anyway. I actually found the rain had got in and made my indicators somewhat erratic when I got to Deni. This was all sorted once I stopped undercover briefly at the motel to check in. Just enough time to dry out I suppose.
It was an enjoyable ride anyway, despite the end of the ride being more challenging than I expected.
In today’s video I have a look at the poor strike rate of the top pick in Sky Racing’s rating system, and how the ANZ Bot can be set to profitably lay these selections by using the ANZ Ratings.
Given Nice Mr. Donald’s victory this week (I’ll analyse my prediction tomorrow now that it looks like the final states have been decided at last) I thought I’d go back to 2016 and something quite perplexing at the time.
Hugh Hewitt for those of you who don’t know (and I wouldn’t blame you at all for not knowing) is possibly the most boring presenter in all of talk radio…actually no I take that back, there’s a bloke who used to fill in for someone who was much more boring but I can’t remember his name. Hugh is actually quite a nice person, it’s just that he puts together a complete snorefest of a show across the Salem Radio Network.
Hugh worked in the Reagan administration and found his way into talk radio at some stage after that. He is a perplexing character in some ways as he seems to personally be a quite conservative person but suffers from the same affliction as many traditional Republican politicians in that he advocates for conservative ideals until he hits any resistance from the other side and then wants to compromise. This is largely what led to Republican voters embracing Trump in 2016 as he advocated for a lot of their positions and didn’t seem to care about backlash.
Anyway, like most traditional Republicans in 2016, Hugh wasn’t much of a fan of Donald Trump. Every day after Trump secured the nomination it seemed that Hugh changed his mind on whether to support him or not. I considered him to be a good barometer on the support Trump could expect from rusted-on Republican voters as they always had the option to just not vote. Eventually Hugh got behind Trump finally and permanently based on Trump’s list of people he would consider appointing to the Supreme Court as Hugh recognised the Supreme Court and the many Federal Court positions Trump would fill would be of great benefit for conservative politicians for decades to come even if the achieved absolutely nothing else in office.
After Trump won the election and prior to him taking office, Hugh started playing a song every single day as a message to Trump. For a very very boring show, it was extremely surprising, not only because Hugh’s enthusiasm for the song was out of step with the general tenor of his show, but because the song isn’t one you’d expect to find anywhere on the AM dial under any circumstances.
Hugh’s advice to Trump from the song was the “drive it [the presidency] like you stole it”. In other words, just go at getting as much done as possible because you only have a very limited amount of time to do it. While, in 2024, given what happened in 2020, we probably don’t want to offer a president-elect advice about treating the presidency as if it was stolen, I expect Hugh’s sentiment is the same today as it was back then, and Trump’s sentiment certainly appears to be that way. It should be noted Hugh was very pleased by Trump’s efforts to get things done in his first terms and how he seemed to get a lot more done than most Republicans do, so Hugh is firmly behind Trump this time around without any hesitation.
Back to the song. It’s a catchy tune and one worth sharing. I was certainly reminded of it this week.
It’s election day in the US, or what I hope will be a very happy Orange Man Day!
To that end, my Electoral College prediction map (created via Real Clear Politics’ map generator) and I have decided to change the Republican red to Trump Orange.
I’m hoping that tomorrow’s predicted showers in Canberra jump forward just a tad into this evening. Back in 2016, Donald Trump gave his speech at around 7:30pm (about 3:30am in New York) and as soon as he finished, Canberra’s sky turned orange and it started to rain. It’s said that a shower is a sign of a blessing so I took it as a sign that the orange man was a blessing on the world. One certainly hopes for a great bigly orange blessing for the world today!