Archive for November, 2005
Last week I found out that the Dickson College year 12 formal is on the same day as the New Day Australia Christmas function which I;ve discussed before. I’ve already booked for the New Day function, and I don’t think I would really have enjoyed the formal all that much anyway…especially seeing as I don’t like modern music (with the exclusion of Schnappi) much and it shouldn’t take much to guess what everyone else will want to hear…
The bus back from Sydney leaves at 6PM on that day, so even if I wanted to attend both I wouldn’t be able to…I could do without the $85 expense for the formal followed by extras such as formal hire etc.
I’m very happy with my decision and I’m looking forward to meeting John Kerr at the function.
Samuel
November 10th, 2005 at 05:44pm
It’s official, Kane Bond has left 2CC, Kevin Woolfe (filling in for Mike Jeffreys) revealed it yesterday, and a phone call today confirmed it.
2CC listeners have known he was going for a while, and those of us who subscribe to radioinfo.com.au have suspected it for nearly a month due to an ad for his job.
I must admit that I will miss Kane. He was a very good producer, and nobody could run the Saturday morning show the way he did. He was a friendly voice on the phone who was often happy to have a chat. I didn’t agree with everything he said, although I generally don’t agree with everything anybody says, but he often had a good point and made it very well.
2CC have lost a great talent in Kane, he was one of those people who could make a show go smoother, and he was almost always able to get great interviews lined up for Mike Welsh.
Not everyone liked Kane, there were some things I didn’t like about him, but that’s the same with everyone. There are things I dislike in the people I like the most, and there are things I like in the people I hate. Overall Kane was a very nice person with a lot of skill, although I think he showed it in person more than he did on radio. Kane is somebody I will never forget.
Good luck Kane, whatever you do I wish you all the best…one day I’m sure I will see or hear your name somewhere and be able to say “I remember when Kane was at 2CC”.
Samuel
November 10th, 2005 at 05:01pm
I think the 2CC Transmitter just died. During the 3PM news 2CC just disappeared from all of my radios, leaving static, which indicates a transmitter problem and not a studio fault. I am still able to pick up every other AM station, including 2CC’s sister station the next studio 2CA.
I’ve rung 2CC to inform them, I’m probably not the only one….I am however holding out hope that this is a problem which has only happened in my house…John B1_B5, can you recieve them?
Update: At 3:15 they have fixed it, starting with some music and then cutting to an ad break.
Samuel
November 10th, 2005 at 03:08pm
Last night I had another odd dream, this time I was in class. This class was in a room which looked a lot like my Year 1 classroom, and had a cupboard room attached to it which I recognise but can’t work out where I’ve seen it before.
Anyway, the class ended and I went to collect my schoolbag from the pile of schoolbags…it wasn’t there, so I went into the cupboard room and asked the teacher (who just happened to be my year 11 English teacher) if he had seen it, which he hadn’t.
I walked out into the corridor (for some reason the doorway was one door up from where my year 1 classroom really was) and looked into the classroom when I realised I hadn’t brought my schoolbag with me to school, which didn’t make sense as I had my pen in my hand…
Samuel
November 10th, 2005 at 01:20pm
A few nights ago I decided to install Ubuntu Linux 5.10 on my main computer, so I set about doing it, I downloaded Ubuntu 5.10 via Bittorrent as it provides downloads which are checked for errors as they come in. On previous occasions I have downloaded large things via HTTP (the “normal” way) and then fixed the errors by letting Bittorrent redownload the broken bits.
I decided to give Ubuntu 20GB of the 80GB hard drive, but I noticed that the hard drive was approaching 60GB of used space, so I went and removed a lot of excess clutter, which deleted roughly 20GB of files.
Then I set about running Disk Defragmenter which is always a good idea when repartitioning existing partitions, as it tends to move all the files into one large chunk, which makes the whole partitioning exercise easier.
The rest of the process should have been easy, I inserted the Ubuntu CD and booted from it, ran through the installation wizard, hist the wrong button on the partitioning screen without realising, had a minor panic attack and decided to partition the drive myself. So I whipped out my copy of Partition Magic 8.0 (without realising that it is the version of Partition Magic which creates NTFS partitions which Windows XP can’t recognise) and set about resizing the existing NTFS partition to 60GB which would leave a nice blank space for Ubuntu to deal with as it likes. Partition Magic slowed to a crawl and gave a useless error halfway through making the changes to the hard drive and promptly exited.
At this stage panic sunk in, I rebooted the computer (which was about all the computer would let me do) and watched Windows try to start itself. This was somewhat spectacular, before the XP logo screen could appear, I saw half of a stop error (AKA Blue Screen Of Death) and the computer restarted so it could do it again…needless to say, I was not impressed, and having not backed up the important data on the now useless partition I was very concerned.
I came to the conclusion that Microsoft own the file system, so they should fix it. So I got out my XP CD and booted off that and entered the recovery console…this proved how bad things really were, it didn’t even ask me for the administrator password, which is it’s way of saying “Well, I can’t find any reason to authenticate you…looks like that’s a hard drive…you fix it!”
I tried to get a directory listing, but it gave me some error along the lines of “failed to enumerate directory structure”, so I ran the recovery console version of CHKDSK, it told me the partition had errors (wow…it must be bright), so I let it loose with the /r switch in full force telling it to repair. During the hour or so that it spent showing me a percentage of completion, I frantically searched for my notes on the recovery console, which I appear to have placed in an unknown location.
Somehow, during this ordeal, I ended up deciding that this was exciting, so I greeted the completion of CHKDSK with some relief and joy…I restarted the computer and to my surprise Windows XP booted perfectly…all my data was still intact, and I was pleased.
Undeterred I set out on Installing Ubuntu again, and this time, having hit the right buttons, it went flawlessly, it resized my NTFS partition, created some new partitions, installed itself, configured the bootloader, and just plain worked…imagine how much time and angst I would have saved if I had hit the right buttons in the first place.
Samuel
November 9th, 2005 at 02:57pm
As you may be aware, I recently announced that I was not going to post on a particular website any more, but I am seriously reconsidering that decision. The website in question is The RiotACT (not the loony website I commented about earlier today). As much as some of the people who post there are either deranged or somewhat deluded, I must hand it to them that they do provide a local news service that no other website seems to be able to manage. Recently it has attracted the attention of Simon Corbell, the ACT planning minister, who has been replying there personally, so one does have to wonder who else reads it.
Some of the regulars, even the ones I disagree with, do seem mostly logical (there are also some utterly insane people) and are capable of logical debate.
Two things today have made me reconsider my announcement, the first one being that they have discussed two topics which are somewhat important to me today, one indeed was something I have discussed here previously.
The other thing was that I recieved a letter in the mail today from somebody who had been reading my comments on The RiotACT and has heard me on 2CC…they asked me to join their trivia team for an upcoming trivia night.
Also, it is hard to deny that RiotACT does deliver a lot of people to this site, and stopping posting there would severely hamper the efforts of this website. Apart from that, some of the owners of RiotACT are fairly decent people…I can’t say I necessarily agree with their choice of friends (which for some of them includes the evil pompous loony woman Caz who I’m convinced was released by accident from a lunatic asylum), but friends of friends aren’t necessarily my friends, and that policy does to some extent apply to my online activities as well.
I know that some of my regular readers and commenters dislike The RiotACT, and that is your choice, which I respect. I’m often in split minds about it myself, but it is strangely addictive, and I can’t give up on it cold turkey.
I guess this means I’m going back…I usually skip the uninteresting stories anyway.
I sincerely hope this doesn’t affect any of the online friendships that I have with some of the readers of this site.
Samuel
November 8th, 2005 at 09:42pm
What happens when you let all the people in the lunatic asylums out into society? You end up with websites like The Spin Starts Here (I wasn’t going to link to it, but I feel obliged).
My attention was drawn to that site a while back whilst searching for something, which I can no longer remember. What I do remember however is that it got a giant black mark in my books and was deemed “not to be visited”.
Recently my attention was drawn to that site again via another search, on this occasion I noticed that they were violating the Google Adsense terms and conditions, which they have since corrected.
My latest encounter with them started last night when a Google Alert for “Dickson College” landed in my inbox, the extract Google provided was
He’s from Dickson College and can write? That used to be enough to get you …
But then I got to this bit: “Yesterday around midday Dickson College had the …
The first bit was odd and caught my attention, but the second bit appeared to have a direct quote from this site, so I clicked on the link and saw the article in question. It was one of their inane discussions about Australian Idol. In the ensuing discussion somebody calling themselves rudyzarsov made a comment which included
I’m sick of looking at the bland c**p that Tssh has become and I feel that it’s only fair that I express my opinion.
This prompted a comment from “Blah Blah” who had this to say
Hey Rudy, here’s what you should do. Look up https://samuelgordonstewart.com. It’s the worst blog you’ll ever find.
Blah Blah then went on to say that The Spin Starts Here is much better etc etc.
That did bring some visitors here, and not surprisingly the visitors from TSSH weren’t impressed by a website which actually makes sense.
Anyway, it turned nasty, “eat my shorts” went on to say
Alright Blah Blah, I thought I had Samuel figured out. I thought maybe he was a retiree who used to work at 2CC and was now stalking them (as you do with previous employers). But then I got to this bit: “Yesterday around midday Dickson College had the annual year 12 photo taken. This would have been enjoyable if it wasn’t for the fact that it took about 20 photos until the photographer was satisfied.”
Excuse long quote, but for f***’s sake, is the dude serious?? So he’s in Year 12, or, as well as being a retiree stalking 2CC, he’s a retiree stalking Dickson College’s Year 12’s?? Freaky.
To which the evil pompous loony woman who seems to run the site, Caz, said this
eat my shorts, he’s a genuine bona fide school kiddy who is often spruiking 2CC in the comments over at johnboy’s site. He also doesn’t like strong language or People Who Need To Be Glassed.
Johnboy’s site being The RiotACT, where I stopped citing 2CC as a source because people started accusing me of being sponsored by or working for 2CC…which I don’t. As for strong language, well it has its place, but I generally choose not to use it. People Who Need To Be Glassed is a site of similar ilk to TSSH.
Then the Dickson College part of the Google Alert appeared in the form of a comment from “roobar”
He’s from Dickson College and can write? That used to be enough to get you put in hospital, but listening to 2CC as well. F***, standards have dropped from the old Hackett Boys days.
And of course Blah Blah just had to continue making an idiot of himself/herself
My apologies Extra Dollop, I didn’t know quite how to warn you for that blog. The whole thing actually leaves me a bit speechless, because I just can’t believe that anyone normal would love 2CC as much as this dude does.
Anyway, I felt like antagonising these idiots by replying, the upshot of which is they all proved their stupidity and Caz managed to make an idiot of herself by stating that she worked for 2CC for five years, she continues to claim that 2CC is the worst radio station on the planet, but it can’t bet that bad if she worked there for a full five years.
Showing the type of people that they truly are, they went on to pretty much try and convince me that the entire world revolves around sex, and nothing else is important…what strange individulas they must be.
I’m not going to continue quoting the utter idiots at The Spin Starts Here, but if you want to see the completely moronic conversation that I had the misfortune of being part of last night (although it was fun antagonising them) then click here to be taken to the article in question on the worthless waste of bandwidth which is, The Spin Starts Here. (Note: Comments sorted in reverse order…scroll down and read upwards)
For the record, I believe that 2CC provides quality radio, and that some people just aren’t bright enough to realise it.
Samuel
November 8th, 2005 at 03:47pm
Over the weekend the ACT Government sent out a booklet to each and every household titled Emergencies And The National Capital: A Residents Guide.
Whilst it is an interesting effort by the government, it is unlikely that you will find anything of use in their quickly, instead you are told objectives, colours and the acts that “underpin” your evacuation.
The guide is clearly written by a public servant as it does lack clarity and plain english, favouring government speak and responsibility briefings. Among my favourite parts of the book are:
The ACT Evacuation Strategy is underpinned by the ACT Emergencies Act 2004 which allows Emergency Services to restrict movement to an area, or direct to people to leave an area due to unacceptable risks to life, property and the environment. The Strategy provides a flexible and adaptable approach to the management of evacuations that is not possible through the development of fixed plans. To achieve this the Strategy has the following components:
- The ACT Community Safety – Evacuation Policy;
- The ACT All Hazards Warning System; and
- A public information plan.
Oh goody, that clears that up!
Apparently part of our emergency planning is acknowleging that emergency services may not be able to immediately meet all individual and community needs.
Looks like the chief turnip won’t need to worry about being responsible next bushfire then!
The guide also outlines the colour coded “emergency event” system, namely “Blue: Possible Threat”, “Yellow: Likely Impact”, “Orange: Certain Impact” & “Red: Immediate Impact”. Only Orange and Red will attract an emergency siren being broadcast through local media outlets, and therefore only Orange and Red are going to wake up the usually automated radio and TV stations. This is interesting because the book does say that some people should evactuate during Yellow…but if our radio and TV stations are automated we aren’t going to know about Yellow…so much for advance warning.
Anyway, if you would like to read this rather odd publication for yourself, take a look at http://www.esb.act.gov.au/Emergencies_and_the_National_Capital_-_A_residents_guide.pdf but be careful, those government papragraphs may make your eyes glaze over.
Samuel
November 8th, 2005 at 03:17pm
These dreams are somewhat odd, and they both happened last night.
Dinosaurs:
I was in my bedroom as were a few other people and there was a tranquilised dinosaur on my bed, from memory it was one of those rather hungy velociraptors which appeared in the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park. The dinosaur started to wake up and I went downstairs to get the dinosaur expert who was chatting with someone. After this the dinosaur ran around the house a few times before running out the front door.
Lunch Discussions:
It was lunchtime and I was in my high school canteen’s lunch order queue. For one reason or another the Campbell High School canteen has appeared in a few of my dreams, but the Dickson College one hasn’t, this is quite possibly because the high school canteen is a much more “open” space and I spent a lot more time there than I have at the Dickson College canteen.
Anyway, I got to the front of the queue and the canteen staff got out my lunch order paper bag and started telling me how wonderful they thought my lunch would be, they then shuffled about 10 different items on and off the counter until they worked out which one I had ordered.
The next thing that happened was that I was talking with the two teachers on playgorund duty who were having a discussion about John Mangos, I told them that he had been the celebrity gardener on the weekend and they seemed very disappointed that they had missed it.
Well, it could just be my imagination, but I think Glen Wheeler is trying to get inside my head with these dreams…sorry Glen, you can visit the dreams if you want, but I can’t pay you for it…see my agent!
Samuel
November 8th, 2005 at 02:56pm
Usually I would have done this closer to the beginning of the month, but there were so many big stories that it slipped my mind. But here it is, in a “better late than never” sense.
The number of visitors was 818, up from 556 in September, the page views however went down to 2571, from 2807 in September.
The front page measured a total of 1056 page views, comprising 875 to https://samuelgordonstewart.com, 133 to https://www.samuelgordonstewart.com, 45 to https://samuelgordonstewart.com/index.php & 3 to https://www.samuelgordonstewart.com/index.php. In total, the front page made up 41.07% of the monthly page views.
The most popular category was Linux.Conf.Au and the most popular article was Chief Turnip Acts Like Goose.
Google remained the most popular search engine, with it’s Australian incarnation delivering 47.26% of search visits alone.
Searches for John B1_B5 accounted for just over 20% of the searches for the month. Others of note include quite a few various searches for me, 2UE Stuart Bocking (who has now been removed from weekend nights on 2UE), 2CC Reunion, 2CC Birthday, Mike Jeffreys, Jingles For Daylight Savings (huh? Anybody want to help me understand why anybody would be searching for that), and the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
Internet Explorer delivered most of the people here, 66.82% in fact. Firefox was next with 30.61%. I suppose, now that this blog is being visited by more people, it is quite understandable that Internet Explorer is featuring more prominently. I still think Firefox is better though.
Windows was the operating system of choice, with 92.07% of visitors using it. Linux and Macintosh were the other two recorded.
81.15% of visitors were from Australia, with the US, New Zealand, Great Britain, France and Germany rounding out the countries above 1%.
Top referrer for the month was The RiotACT with 61 referrals, although I expect the number to drop over the next month as I have decided to stop posting there. Next up was Margo Kingston’s Webdiary’s list of links to articles on anti-terrorism laws with 18 and Loadedog.com’s links to Canberra blogs and bands was the third of the top three with 8.
The video of the horrid amount of noise ACTION’s green buses make was the most requested file, it was requested 18 times. One of the old 2CC Music Radio jingles was next with 12 requests, and the MP4 version of the video of Rob Fulton winning a million dollars on Who Wants To Be A Millionare with 11 requests rounds out the top three files of the month.
The full list of stats (excluding files and referrers) can be viewed at https://www.samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/blogstats/2005/october/
Samuel
November 7th, 2005 at 11:04pm
The last few nights have brought about some very odd dreams.
On Saturday night I had a dream that the roof outside my bedroom window (which doesn’t actually exist in real life) suddenly burst into flames, this prompted an evacuation. The roof outside my bedroom window was surprisingly unharmed by this sudden and unusual fire.
Last night I had a few dreams, firstly I had a dream where a fire broke out in a house which didn’t look like my house, but was my house. The fire, which did not produce smoke, was limited to one room. Anyway, I was at the top of the street and guided the fire brigade to the window to the room with the fire, they used their ladder and a hose to put out the fire. The only damage caused was the melting of a cordless phone antenna, the phone still worked perfectly though.
Next up was a dream where I spotted John B1_B5’s bicycle and chased the person riding it, despite the fact that it had very very small wheels in the dream, the cyclist involved managed to outrun me as I was on foot.
After this there was a dream where it was pouring rain, and I was sharing a bicycle with a friend, this friend is someone who I have never met before. Anyway, half way to wherever we were going we stopped off at some place which was either Holt or the ANU, and the person I was sharing the bike with went inside for some food. The food room was the middle room of a small building, and there was another room around the outer portions of the building which was a shop. The shop was closed, but they left the doors open and had signs up on the freezer saying “Don’t take the icecream”. I walked the bike through the shop before entering the food room to inform the friend that it was time to leave. When we went outside we started talking to someone, and then the dream ended.
I blame Glen Wheeler for the Bike related dreams…I have never heard anybody go on and on and on and on and on about how evil cyclists are the way he managed to yesterday afternoon during the time I was listening to him. As for the fire dreams….I wouldn’t have a clue!
Samuel
November 7th, 2005 at 02:08pm
Once again today was another odd day on 2CC. Weekend Magazine vanished into thin air, and listeners were subjected to the 2UE Sydney centric gardening show. Glen Wheeler seemed a bit more comfortable today but he still isn’t as entertaining as George Moore & Paul B. Kidd. Yesterday I started to think he had good taste in music, but he pulled a song right out of left field this afternoon that forced me to turn off the radio for a few minutes to avoid “sqealing and screeching with musical acompaniment”. If I wanted to hear that I would turn on an FM music station.
I am still very disappointed at the changes 2UE made to the schedule, and I’m not overly impressed with the absence of local programming between midday & 2pm which forced a Sydney gardening show through the Canberra airwaves. It is possible that Mike Frame had other commitments, but that gardening show was nowhere near as interesting as David Young’s Garden is.
Samuel
November 6th, 2005 at 09:24pm
From the son last week to the father this week, the musician of the week award goes to Woody Guthrie, and the feature song is Ain’t It Hard.
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard
To love one who never did love you
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard great god
To love one that never would be true
It was late last night when my true love came home
He was a-knockin’ on my door
I got up in a fit of jealousy and I said
True love, don’t come here anymore
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard
To love one who never did love you
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard great god
To love one that never would be true
The first time I seen my true love
He was a-knockin’ at my door
The last time I seen his hard-hearted smile
He was lyin’ dead on the floor
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard
To love one who never did love you
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard great god
To love one that never would be true
Don’t go to drinkin’ and gamblin’
Don’t go there your sorrows to drown
This hard liquor place is a low-down disgrace
It’s the meanest bad place in this town
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard
To love one who never did love you
Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard great god
To love one that never would be true
Samuel
November 6th, 2005 at 09:16pm
This week Schnappi is down to 25 on the ARIA singles chart.
Samuel
November 6th, 2005 at 08:58pm
Regular reader and commenter John B1_B5 informs me that somebody has stolen his bicycle.
A Reward of $100 is offered to anybody who can supply information regarding the person who stole this 1974 Raleigh Twenty bicycle from a garage in Wanniassa on Friday , November 4 , 2005.
UPDATE:John B1_B5 has provided some more information. This bike stands out from others because it’s smaller than a normal size bike, and has 20 inch wheels instead of the usual 26 inch wheels.
END UPDATE
Email your info to JOHN33805@HOTMAIL.COM
OR CALL 0402201643
If you have ANY information whatsoever, even if it turns out to be unhelpful, I urge you to contact John B1_B5 using the contact details above, even the smallest bit of information can help.
John, I hope you get the bike back soon.
Samuel
November 5th, 2005 at 03:44pm
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