Archive for April, 2006
In yesterday’s Garfield comic, Odie reminds me of Nattie.
The reason Odie reminds me of Nattie is that Nattie used to bark at the birds all the time when she was younger, especially when she was trying to sleep. She would often be sleeping very nearby, sometimes right next to a chair that I was sitting on, and she would always start barking without warning, and at full volume, which had the effect of scaring the living daylights out of me, and anybody else right near her at the time.
Nattie seems to have gotten used to the birds, as she rarely barks at them any more.
Samuel
April 3rd, 2006 at 03:56pm
It looks like there are a few changes on the way at ACTION in the coming months.
Firstly, I have it on good authority that the timetables will be changed in August, which means drivers will be given new shifts (or more correctly, they will choose new shifts), and a new rostering system will be in place. I’ll address these points in a moment.
Secondly, the word from inside ACTION is that CEO Peter Wallace is resigning, I can’t confirm this, but it certainly seems to be the buzz eminating from ACTION insiders at the moment.
Now, back to the timetables, it was mentioned on a bus enthusiast website a few weeks ago that ACTION are going to change the timetables (Comment by Busnerd, 4th from top) to a new system which will “cut travel times to that of a private car”, a feat which is impossible for many reasons. Anyway, I decided to follow up on the story and was told by ACTION insiders that August is the proposed date for the new timetables, apparently this will also mean a change in rostering to help get drivers onto weekends. It is also possible that Flexibus will be scrapped (about time!), and standard route services will return to nights.
All of this is still well and truly up in the air at this stage, and may turn out to be incorrect if ACTION management change their mind, although from what I’m hearing, it seems pretty definite.
Samuel
April 3rd, 2006 at 12:41pm
I don’t know if you spotted The Daily Telegraph on Thursday or not, but the front cover looked like this.
But hang on…zoom in a bit.
What’s that on the rear window of the red car?
Why it’s a sticker with the old 2UE logo on it! Looks like 2UE scored some free advertising on the front cover of a rather popular newspaper. To be fair, I didn’t spot this myself as I don’t usually see The Daily Telegraph, but I did hear Stuart Bocking and Peter FitzSimons talking about it on Thursday morning at around 5am on 2UE and network stations.
I guess it just goes to show that those stickers the radio stations give away are worthwhile after all! Congratulations 2UE!
I just hope they gave the owner of the car, Mark Pataky, some sort of prize, or interviewed him, or both. It wouldn’t have been hard to get in contact with him considering that he is a 2UE listener and they could have simply got one of the announcers to ask him to ring in.
Samuel
April 3rd, 2006 at 09:21am
May 2005 started off with an awful lot of silence, one brief post on May 2, and the next one on May 9. The second one was quite interesting as it outlined some possible career moves, of which one fell apart, one never happened, another happened and is still going, and the other one…well I never heard from the people. I also had a little bit to say about ACTION’s amazing timetable disaster, and a phone call from one of their public relations people. This was followed by a newspaper publishing my recent editorial about ACTION’s changes, and lyrics to a song which I will ensure that you get to hear in one of the Tape Highlights of the future.
I then showed off some of my artwork, a picture I had drawn whilst in class.
There was some fun with Linux printing, and then some true excitement, a 2CC dinner which I was going to attend, more on that later.
May contained a “Friday the 13th”, it didn’t bring me bad luck, just a bunch of lunatics.
A few days later there were some big announcements, firstly the Coffee-Cup-O-Meter came into existence, and then I had to change the way I submitted blog posts. I enjoyed using email blogging, as it seemed much more flexible, quicker and easier than using the blogger.com interface, but that function broke for a while and I was forced on the blogger.com interface, and stayed there for quite some time.
Somebody took exception to my post about the Friday the 13th loonies, and then I set about explaining how the Coffee-Cup-O-Meter works.
ABC local radio decided to waste taxpayers money by advertising on commercial television…and I thought they were always crying poor.
I got hooked on Tux Racer, and then had a very high speed, which made me wonder if penguins can get booked for speeding.
Not long after this, I discovered that I would not be able to attend the 2CC dinner, due to insurance issues. The insurer needed everybody to be at least 18 years old, and the dinner was one week before my birthday, this left me wondering why I was allowed to enter the competition in the first place, and what would have happened if I was a winner and not just a winner’s guest.
Tim Webster proved that he is a great choice as a fill-in for John Laws.
Shortly thereafter, I had food poisoning for nearly a week, and learned a valuable lesson from it.
Friday the 13th’s Idiot Number Three struck again, but I had a cure for him.
And then, as May drew to a close, I started the countdown to my 18th birthday, and dropped a few hints about some interesting changes and new additions to Samuel’s Blog. What were these changes and additions? All will be revealed when we look back on June 2005, tomorrow morning, right here on Samuel’s Blog Year In Review.
Samuel
April 3rd, 2006 at 07:00am
And now, as we head in to the birthday of Samuel’s Blog, the return of Samuel’s Coffee-Cup-O-Meter
Sunday:
6 x Standard Mug (1 Point Each) = 6 Points
Total = 6 Points
Samuel
April 3rd, 2006 at 12:07am
This week the award goes to Kamahl (Kandian Hamalesvaran), a man with an extraoridinary voice, and a rather interesting biography.
He also does an extremely good cover of “The love she found in me”, the song I have chosen as this week’s feature song.
She looked into a heart so sad
And saw what no one ever had
Beneath the snow she saw the spring
She finds good in everything
Give her thorns and she’ll find roses
Give her sand and she’ll find sea
Give her rain and she’ll find rainbows
Just see the love she found in me
Just see the love she found in me
She looks beneath each tear that’s cried
And somehow sees the sunny side
And even on the darkest night
She knows where to find the light
Give her thorns and she’ll find roses
Give her sand and she’ll find sea
Give her rain and she’ll find rainbows
Just see the love she found in me
Just see the love she found in me
And when the world starts closing in
She gives me strength to smile again
Give her thorns and she’ll find roses
Give her sand and she’ll find sea
Give her rain and she’ll find rainbows
Just see the love she found in me
Just see the love she found in me
Samuel
April 2nd, 2006 at 06:59pm
Time for episode five of this second series of Samuel In Dolgnwot, and this week Samuel is walking around Dolgnwot with his gold detector and his gold map printout.
This episode was drawn on Saturday morning at about 4am whilst listening to John Kerr on the wireless. It is also the first episode to use a mechanical random number generator to decide the number of horizontal and vertical lines. In this case it went for 9 vertical lines and 8 horizontal lines. The random number generator I am using is a mini roulette wheel (standard type, not the american version which adds a 38th spot containing “00”), and instead of using a ball on the wheel, I use a marker at the top of the wheel holder to decide the number. I then use the last digit of the number, and take “0” as “10”. The number on the wheel used for the vertical lines (which are drawn first) cannot be reused for the horizontal lines, however it is possible to have the same amount of horizontal and vertical lines as many numbers on the wheel share the same last digit.
For example, if I spin up “25”, I would then have five vertical lines, and the next spin might be “30” which would give me 10 horizontal lines. The only number which would not be permitted as the second number in this case would be “25”, as it is already the first number.
Samuel
April 2nd, 2006 at 06:47pm
I’ve now corrected the GMT offset setting in wordpress to take into account the change back to Eastern Standard Time (GMT+10). I remember having to change it to GMT+11 when Daylight Saving started in October.
It was actually Monday, October 31 when I noticed that I hadn’t fixed the setting, as I went to manually alter the timestamp of my Happy 30th Birthday 2CC post to 7am before hitting the Publish button right on 7am. I then went to the front page of the blog and was shocked to find that my post had disappeared, it was showing up in the admin interface but not on the public side. The timestamp was correct, everything was correct, so what could have caused my perfectly timed post to not appear at the right time, 7am, to coincide with the anniversary 2CC’s first moments on-air (7am, 31 October 1975).
I then started thinking about Daylight Saving, which had come into effect the previous day, and realised that I hadn’t changed the timezone of the blog to be in line with Daylight Saving. I quickly rectified that, and my post magically appeared…albeit at one minute past the hour of seven o’clock.
Just looking back on that post about 2CC’s birthday, and John Kerr appears in it wishing 2CC a happy birthday!
Samuel
April 2nd, 2006 at 04:23pm
April 2005 was a funny month, as I just decided to utilise my blogger.com account for journaling my time at Linux.Conf.Au 2005. April 17 was the first day, and it was the first, of many, time that I would manage to become lost.
It also saw me keeping track of the progress of my seminar, including a practice which went for too long, a backup plan, printer problems, a need for coffee after speaking, and even the realisation that the audio on my recording of my speech was not in the least bit clear.
Del was the first ever person other than Samuel to leave a comment. There was also some controversy about this website being a news source.
After Linux.Conf.Au I decided that I enjoyed blogging so much that I kept going, and in the few days left in the month the topics included ACTION messing up the bus network, and 2CA broadcasting AFL, a topic which prompted John B1_B5’s first comment.
Pictorial Highlights
The first photo to ever be on Samuel’s Blog, me and my conference bag
Tux visits Linux.Conf.Au 2005
Coming up tommorow on Samuel’s Blog Year In Review, the month of May 2005.
Samuel
April 2nd, 2006 at 07:00am
Daylight Saving does some funny things at times, including giving John Kerr an extra hour for his show. That means that New Day Australia will go for seven glorious hours from Midnight-3am Eastern Daylight Saving Time and from 2am to 6am Eastern Standard Time.
So…on with the (long) John Kerr show!
Samuel
April 1st, 2006 at 11:26pm
On Thursday afternoon at about 5:55 (GMT+11) Optus Satellite Control lost communications with the aging Optus Satellite B1 during routine orbital positional adjustment. This caused ABC relay stations, Macquarie Regional Radioworks stations, Southern Cross Syndication services, and New Zealand’s main Pay TV service, Sky Television, to stop broadcasting, along with a handful of other Australian TV stations.
Apparently Optus B1 is getting a bit long in the tooth, and has had previous failures, including a complete failure of the main guidance system, which means it is now operating on the backup system, it is also being used well in excess of its original specifications. It was supposed to be replaced by the new Optus D1 satellite late last year, but this has been postponed until at least the middle of this year…assuming B1 lasts that long.
Thankfully Optus regained control of B1, but when they did it was broadcasting in the wrong direction, and they had to wait for it to recharge after the northern hemisphere solar exclipse before they could do anything about it. B1 was back online for its users at 7:17am Friday (GMT+11).
I don’t know what 2CC did about it before midnight as I wasn’t listening, but I would like to congratulate them on not giving up and playing automated music, and instead using the 2UE webstream with a panel operator playing local ads and promos. It did sound a bit rough around the edges, but overall they did a fantastic job under the conditions. I gather that a number of other stations around the nation did similar things with panel operators and webstreams, although there were a few who just went into automated music mode, or played a webstream with the streamer’s ads and all.
Also congratulations to the ABC for replacing some of their C1 services with the lost B1 services so that relays could be back on-air by 2am (GMT+11).
For those interested, the good people over at Usenet Aus.Radio.Broadcast have a good summary of what happened, and what affected stations did.
Heres hoping that D1 is up there soon to relieve the aging and slowly failing B1, as the longer B1 is left up there in its semi working state, the more of these outages we are going to experience, and eventually, we might have a complete failure.
Samuel
April 1st, 2006 at 07:51am
It’s April, and that means that we are into the birthday month of Samuel’s Blog. April 17 will mark one year since the start of Samuel’s Blog.
This is actually a point of controversy as the first post was actually on the 12th of March 2004, but I don’t count that as the birthday as it was just a post to mark me opening my blogger.com account. I didn’t actually use the account for anything until April 17, 2005, and as such, I count that as the birthday.
Over the next couple of weeks leading up to the birthday, I will be running a “Year In Review” series which will look at some of the things which have happened on this blog over the last year.
Samuel
April 1st, 2006 at 07:10am
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