Archive for June, 2005
As mentioned in post “Movements at the station?”, Stuart Bocking, producer of the John Laws morning show, co-driver & presenter of Saturday Night Live is said to be leaving the show.
The Daily Telegrpah seem pretty sure that Stuart is taking over the New Day Australia program from John Kerr who is currently on holidays…I don’t know if John Kerr know’s about any of this though as he is overseas. The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday that:
2UE Drive Presenter Steve Price had a go at former John Laws producer Stuart Bocking (the man set to replace John Kerr on the midnight-to-dawn shift) after news broke Kerr would be punted from his job, despite being overseas while the decision is made. A 2UE source says the two had an argument in front of other staff, with Price getting stuck into him for taking the new job before Kerr even returned from overseas. Price yesterday denied the incident. “I’ve never said a bad word to him in my life,” he said.
I continue to hope that this is all just flying rumors, but I don’t think I can hold my breath on that any more, especially now that radioinfo.com.au have picked up the story.
Daily Telegraph Story here
Samuel
June 13th, 2005 at 08:28pm
This photo appeared on the ActewAGL webcams at 11:10am 8th May 2004, it appears to be a giant fish attacking the National Museum.
OK, well maybe it wasn’t a fish…the picture from 10 minutes beforehand shows that it was just a flag….but I like the fish tale.
Samuel
June 13th, 2005 at 07:33pm
As the fate of the official audio is still unclear, I decided to contact some experts to see if anything could be done to revive my audio…unfortunately it is beyond repair
I’m afraid there is little that we can do about the unintelligble part, it’s too badly garbled
Not to worry, I’ll press on with the video and get the official audio when it is released.
Samuel
June 13th, 2005 at 07:27pm
A Study in Japan has found that drinking one or more cups of coffee per day can decrease the chances of contracting liver cancer by 40%
See http://professional.cancerconsultants.com/oncology_main_news.aspx?id=34234 for more details.
Samuel
June 12th, 2005 at 12:25am
Today’s number does seem a bit high, but I can probably put that down to a lot of bus rattle
Steps: 13592
Distance: 9.1746 KM (approx)
Samuel
June 10th, 2005 at 06:10pm
I received the following description of what is happening at 2CC (and partially, 2UE) this week.
Mike is doing Mike’s job while Mike is doing Mike’s job and Tim is doing Johns job while John is off with a bad back but John is still doing his job in the afternoon.
It is quite correct as the person who sent it points out:
I’m sure the only people the station’s know are named John and Mike
By the way, did I inform you that on top of all of this, George is filling in for John who is on holiday.
Samuel
June 10th, 2005 at 12:51pm
Ah yes, a very busy day indeed.
I got to Dickson College just after 9am and had Maths, at 10am I started on the organisational stuff I had to do for the open night, then went and fixed up the screensaver script on a Linux computer in the library.
The Linux computer runs a screensaver which receives text input from an application (in this case a simple echoing script) and displays it on the screen with effects. The script it runs is called screensaver.sh and contains a number of messages about the library and the college. It was considered to be a good idea to have a special set of messages running on open night, so I made a backup copy of screensaver.sh which I named screensaver_old.sh
I then went and wrote a set of open night messages and named it screensaver_open_night.sh
I also needed a screensaver script that didn’t advertise the open night, which would become the script after the open night, this was named screensaver_normal.sh
A cron job was then used to automatically copy screensaver_open_night.sh to screensaver.sh at 6pm (This made the open night script the active screensaver script) and another line in the crontab file copied screensaver_new.sh to screensaver.sh at 9:30pm so that the new normal screensaver would be back in operation when people come in tommorow. I still have to clean off the excess files by hand, but I felt it was better to leave them all there just in case something went wrong…which it didn’t.
Having all of this automated not only impressed and excited the library staff, it also meant that I didn’t have to change scripts before and after the open night.
After this I went and checked in with my boss to remind him that I was busy with open night preparations, he understood and spent a few minutes outlining the work he wants us to do over the next few weeks.
I then went to find one of the deputy principals to confirm what time he wanted the laptop and projector setup in the hall…he was however on class at the time, so I went back down to the library where I was informed that the screensaver was spitting out “Unexpected EOF” messages…It then occured to me that I forgot to fix the missing quotation marks I had spotted earlier, five minutes later it was fixed.
I then went around to media to arrange a time to set all their wallpaper to the same one (preferably a custom made Dickson College Media wallpaper), we arranged to do that after I had finished in the hall with setting up and having a practice run of the speeches.
Then I had class for an hour and then went and saw one of the deputy principals and arranged to do the hall setup and practice after Lunch. After this I was about to have lunch when an occasional colleague showed up, this took up half an hour after which I was able to have Lunch.
At 2pm it was time to setup the hall, a laptop, a projector, and couple extension leads and…whoops, another extension lead to make the required length, then some audio problems and finally the pratice run of the speeches.
By the time this was over it was close to 4pm and I felt that it was a good idea to have my afternoon tea, and then have an early dinner as I wouldn’t have time later…so I sat down outside with my thermos, my mug and my radio and had afternoon tea, and then walked to Dickson and had an early dinner.
By this stage I felt like calling 2CC’s Mike Frame and voicing my objections to this new arboretum that is planned for Canberra (see www.the-riotact.com for more details…or stay tuned, I’ll have more details in a future post), rather than wasting mobile credit, I fed a pay phone and found that Telstra have made it possible to send text messages from them, not that I cared, I just wanted to make a call, which I did.
After this I went back to the college (It was around 5pm) and found a job I could do…I sat down and answered the numerous phone calls regarding what time the open night begins, one of these callers seemed to recognise me, perhaps as a 2CC caller, or perhaps from here…I don’t know, it is a mystery. I also had other receptionist duties during this time.
At 6:30pm (after having a cup of Milo) I went around to the Hall and turned on the projector and laptop, I then started the first slideshow, which was a looping set of various pictures of the college and it’s events. I then went back to the front office and continued my phone answering and receptionist duties.
At 7pm I went back to the hall and took my seat at the table with the laptop and projector (I also unofficially declared myself to be the “Technical Producer” of the speeches). I spent the next 10 minutes looking through the script for the main speech, and pretending to cross reference it with the other papers I had, which I thought made me look much more busy and important. At about 7:10 I was quite annoyed with the loud music from the Jazz band playing in my ear, they were good, but they were far to close to me, so I pretended to find a note on the desk, busily and frantically checked other papers, got up, took some paper with me and escaped the hall for a couple minutes and then came back in and continued to examine the papers.
By this stage I was doing plenty of watch checks as we were supposed to start the speeches at 7:15pm, and eventually got the nod from one of the deputy principals and changed to the main overhead presentation, which I ran as the speeches went on.
After the speeches (and a public thankyou from one of the deputy prinicpals) I packed up the laptop and projector and took them back to their locations, I also moved a TV & DVD on a trolley which were playing some footage from a dance class into the main congregation area. I spent the rest of the night assisting in various places (and confirming that my screensaver scripts were behaving…which they were…It’s Linux, it just works). I then got a lift home with a teacher who lives near me (hooray, no Action FlexiChaos), checked my email, got a cup of coffee, sat down and watched Stargate Atlantis.
Unfortunately, Steppy the pedometer is slightly clunky and I really didn’t have time or space to take him with me today, and as such, there is no stepometer for today….it would have been right off the scale anyway, their was barely any time when I wasn’t walking today.
Samuel
June 9th, 2005 at 11:38pm
The “Grapevine through Transact” using lunatic who left comments here and here has acheived two things:
1. Made a complete idiot out of themself by posting rubbish that contradicts fact.
2. Prompted me to lock down comments, you now have to be a registered user of blogger.com, if you aren’t you can sign up here. I really didn’t want to force people to sign up to blogger.com just to comment, but anonymous loonies are good at forcing it.
The blog stats don’t keep exact IPs, they either show ISP or partial IP, in this case it was partial IP, 203.129.37.x, I could find out the full IP by looking at the logs for the site where the images are hosted, but I couldn’t be bothered, and don’t want to post a dynamic IP anyway.
Samuel
June 8th, 2005 at 06:43pm
Well, today was interesting…I had to be on the move a bit more than yesterday and managed:
Steps: 8262
Distance: 5.57685 KM (approx)
Samuel
June 8th, 2005 at 06:13pm
I am now also registered with Firefly, an australian based VOIP service.
Firefly: 88854854 (Which has an official wording of “Double eight, eight five four, eight five four”)…I can think of one person who is going to be unhappy that I took that particular number, but it is nice and easy to remember and I like it!)
Skype: smoothwallsamuel
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 09:46pm
If you have some amazing desire to meet me, then by all means come along to the Dickson College open night, 7PM Thursday (9th June 2005)…I’ll be there, not quite sure where though.
I do know that I will start off in the hall with everybody else, but as the night goes on I may be at the VET (Vocational Education and Training) stand in the canteen, or I might be up in the IT corridor, or perhaps down in the library…if you want to come and need help recognising me, print a copy of my photo on my blogger.com profile
Anyway, it should be a great night, whether you are deciding on a college, seeing what this college thing is all about or just want to meet me…
For a tiny bit more detail about the open night see http://www.dicksonc.act.edu.au/events.html
For a map of where the college is (and directions from your location to the college) see http://www.whereis.com/whereis/mapping/geocodeAddress.do?advertiserId=&streetNumber=&streetName=Phillip&poiType=&suburb=Dickson&state=Australian+Capital+Territory&x=27&y=10
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 05:08pm
Well, according to the latest crazy person I have heard from (they were babbling and I was nearby) it is quite possible to feed yourself in India for $4 per week.
I don’t know what this miracle food is or where to buy it, but it could be the answer to world hunger….so the challenge is on, invent the miracle “$4 per week” food.
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 05:05pm
Yes, you guessed it, I have named the pedometer “Steppy”.
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 04:55pm
Ahhh yes, the stepometer, which has been made possible by the pedometer that fell out of a coco pops box earlier this year…it is kinda cheap and rattles, but under enough layers of clothing you can’t really hear or notice it.
Anyway, on with the stats:
Steps: 6927
Distance: 4.675725 KM (approx)
The steps are probably slightly out because the bus I catch has a few bumps which may artificially increase the step count, and the distance has been worked out based on my average stride of 67.5cm per step.
Also note that this is from the portion of the day that I spend away from home, the pedometer comes off at home because it drives me insane with that rattle unless I wear a coat…which isn’t always comfortable in a heated room.
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 04:46pm
I am hearing rumors of a shake up at 2UE, according to these rumors the producer of the John Laws Morning Show, co-driver Stuart Bocking may be leaving the Lawsie show and his own Saturday Night Live program to take up the New Day Australia program…it is unclear what would happen to John Kerr, but if he did have to move, it would be nice for him to be able to take Saturday Night Live, although I’m not sure it would suit him….better then being forced out of the station though.
Personally I like things the way they are, I want Stuart to keep doing what he is doing, I want John Kerr to continue to host New Day Australia, it works nicely, and besides, how would Lawsie explain the absence of the co-driver?
I don’t think Stuart is a suitable choice for overnight radio, and I don’t think John Kerr is a suitable choice for Saturday Night Live, they are both great presenters, but they fit their current roles quite nicely.
Samuel
June 6th, 2005 at 11:37pm
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