A few minutes ago I was having a conversation, and for some reason in this conversation I mentioned that Nattie had her eyes closed…it then occurred to me that she didn’t have eyes closed, that would be impossible, she in fact had her eye lids closed.
I then started thinking about why we, as a society, talk and sing songs about having our eyes closed, when it is something that we never do, and nobody ever seems to notice the error. Our eyelids open and close, our eyes on the other hand contain a lens which expands and contracts (I’m sure there is a better way to explain that) but it never actually closes.
So now I want to know who came up with this silly notion of closing our eyes, and why did our society accept it?
If this isn’t proof that I’m struggling to get any sleep then I don’t know what is. I seem to enter this phase of pointless logic after I’ve been awake for an extended period of time (usually about 30 hours), in many ways it is one of my better modes of functioning as problems can be solved almost instantly and the entire world is very clear to me, but it is also one of my worst as I unwittingly latch on to pointlessly silly subjects like whether or not eyes close and can’t seem to shake them off, I’m also very easily distracted in this phase.
If, for whatever reason, I am still unable to sleep in about two hours I think I will call Clive Robertson to discuss this eye lid closing issue.
Over the last week or so I’ve added a few features to the website.
First up is a search box which you can find on the sidebar. By default it will search this website, but you can quite easily search the web with it as well. This is something I had on the old site but never bothered to bring across to this site. I finally got around to doing it (and had to mess with the HTML Google provided in order to do it). Incidentally, that text box in the yellow section at the top of the page is also a search of sorts…but it only searches articles and does a pretty poor job of it. The Google search in the sidebar searches the whole website.
Second, each article’s page now contains a “print” link. Not long after setting up this website I did a bit of work to make the printouts a bit nicer as they originally printed out the whole sidebar and a lot of other excess crud, as a result printouts from this website are pretty clean and straightforward. However, the thing that really annoys me about website printouts is that you have no way of knowing where the links point to, and if the URL is a long one it gets chopped off. The “print” link on each article solves this problem by creating a print friendly version of the article which makes a note of the full URL, and where all the links go. I think it makes the printouts a bit better, but it’s entirely up to you which one you use.
Thirdly, I’ve recently had some pretty poor experiences with both YouTube and Google Video, the former managing to lose a video immediately after telling me it had been uploaded successfully, and the latter taking the better part of two hours to “approve” my recent video about the hot air balloon and the AirServices Australia building. As such I have installed a flash video player on this website. My videos are no longer at the mercy of third parties, and hosting them here is much better for archival purposes (such as PANDORA). Here is my new, local version of my most recent rain video.
Recently I have received a few inquiries about the welfare of James Goodwin and Robbie McGregor, so I might as well address them.
James Goodwin is currently working for Macquarie National News (2GB & 2CH) as one of their Parliament House reporters, or to be accurate, their “Federal Parliament reporter”. James has his own profile page on the 2GB website and can occasionally be seen on television news bulletins holding a 2GB microphone at those members’ entrance media scrums. He can also be heard occasionally reading the weekend news for 2CC and 2CA. At this stage James doesn’t host one of 2GB’s prolific podcasts, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets one once the date of the federal election is announced, as he was hired by Macquaire mainly for the purpose of covering the federal election.
For the benefit of Ron who lives in Central Victoria and has seemingly been a fan of James since he worked for Southern Cross News (2UE, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR etc), James sounds much the same as he did back then. Unfortunately it’s not a quick process to find one of his reports on the 2GB webstream as I have no control over what they run in each bulletin, I’ll keep checking for audio periodically, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.
Update 5:51pm February 6th, 2007: Despite James being 2GB’s Federal Parliament reporter, he has spent some time in Sydney as 2GB’s police reporter. This is something I was unaware of until today. End Update
Whilst I was monitoring the 2GB webstream yesterday I stumbled upon an ad voiced by someone else I keep getting asked about, ex-SBS voiceover man Robbie McGregor.
Robbie, these days, is providing voiceovers for just about anything. He can be hired through rmk Voice Productions (he has his own profile page there).
Click here for Robbie McGregor voicing an ad for the Rockdale Mattress Factory.
On Saturday morning I must have been sleeping lightly because I had the radio on in the background, and it had an effect on my dreams. Apparently on the 2CC gardening show there was a debate about global warming.
My dream took place at a seminar with two scientists, they had a grand plan to rid the world of global warming…their solution was to build all future buildings out of celery, the only problem was that they couldn’t decide which type of celery to use, and had quite a rowdy argument about it (even if the only argument they were able to come up with was “you can’t do that”).
Whilst I doubt that there is any merit in their plan, the dream did prompt me to find out whether or not there are different types of celery, and apparently there are.
I told John Kerr about this dream on Sunday morning and he seemed amused. He still thinks that I have very peculiar dreams.
Before Google, there were a number of main search engines…everyone had their favourite, and they all painted a very different picture of the Internet. At one stage my favourite search engine was MetaCrawler, which seemed to do a good job of making sense of the all the different results from the different search engines.
Times have changed, and it seems that these days there are three dominant search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN (they accounted for 94.2% of all search engine referrals to this website last year). I rarely use anything but Google now, and whilst I think that overall it is a very good search engine, there are times when it would be nice to have a human with more knowledge than me of the subject I’m searching for, helping me to find what it is that I’m looking for.
This isn’t a new concept, many search engines have tried it. Ask Jeeves was an attempt at automating it…ask a question in plain English and get an answer…well maybe…didn’t quite work. Google Answers took the human approach, ask a question and set a price for an “expert” to answer it, it worked, except for the fact that most people don’t like paying to search and didn’t bother to use it.
Cha Cha is a relatively new search engine which seems to take the best of both worlds, featuring both the standard search engine, and human “guides” for the tougher searches. The standard Cha Cha search engine is pretty good, the interface isn’t as cluttered as some parts of Google have become, and with Web, News, Images, Video and Audio, it has about all you could really ask for. There are two minor things that bother me about Cha Cha’s standard search though, one being that the only way to start a search is with a web search…you can’t instantly access News, Images, Video and Audio, you can only get to them after starting a search. My second gripe is that the image search wastes a heap of space by only showing the thumbnails down the left hand side of the page, it would be much more efficient if it had a page full of thumbnails.
Cha Cha’s guided search is primarily intended for more difficult searches, where you might struggle to find an answer on your own. It’s completely free to search with a guide, and each guide apparently has a set of broad speciality subjects.
I decided to test Cha Cha’s abilities by searching for some obscure information, the information being the name of the bar that John Kerr and listeners attended before having lunch on his recent Terrigal outing. This is information that I did not place on this website in textual form, it was only in this image and its associated thumbnail. Only having it in an image was going to make it a bit harder to find and require a different set of keywords…searching for the bar itself would be hopeless.
So I tried typing my question “What is the name of the bar where John Kerr and listeners had drinks before lunch in Terrigal?” in plain English into Cha Cha’s normal search engine.
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Something about a “John Wesley”, a couple things about Terrigal, and something about listener numbers…so, off to the guide I trotted. After a few moments I was presented with “Jay W.” as a guide.
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After a couple minutes Jay W. presented me with a result. It was a page which contained a lot of references to John Kerr’s Terrigal lunch, and I had to click through to the second page to find the name of the bar (for the record, it was the “Lord Ashley Bar”), but none the less, Jay W. had found the obscure information.
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I was more than happy to rate Jay W. with a “Great” rating.
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I think Cha Cha could very easily be the next big search engine…whether or not it will take top spot from Google is another matter, but I think it will join Google, Yahoo and MSN as a big search engine, and will probably be a favourite amongst students who need a bit of help with their assignments.
Just on this subject of whether or not Peter Debnam resembles Frank Spencer…well I think Mr. Debnam looks a bit like Prince Charles, especially his ears. I’m just happy that I live in Canberra and not New South Wales as I would have a hard time choosing between Morris Iemma and Peter Debnam…the only problem with living here is that I have to wait until next year to vote against Chief Turnip Stanhope!
There was a question on Eddie McGuire’s 1 Vs 100 tonight about the mobile phone keypad.
Q: On a standard mobile phone keypad, on which button does the first letter appear?
The possible answers were “0”, “1” and “2”.
The correct answer was “2” which, on a standard mobile phone keypad, features the letters “abc”. I incorrectly answered “1”, as up until recently most phones sold in Australia used a keypad which had the letters “qz” on the “1” button. Unfortunately we seem to have switched to the US keypad where “q” is added to the “7” button, and “z” is added to the “9” button.
The vast majority of the people answering the question also got it wrong, I wonder how many of them have landline phones where “qz” is on the “1” button?
This week the award goes to Bill Haley and His Comets (aka Bill Haley and The Comets).
I nearly made “See You Later, Alligator” the feature song, but ended up choosing the blatantly obvious song, “Rock Around The Clock”.
For those who are wondering why this has taken so long to appear, I wrote it last night and accidentally clicked “Save” instead of “Publish”. Better late than never!
One, Two, Three O’clock, Four O’clock rock,
Five, Six, Seven O’clock, Eight O’clock rock.
Nine, Ten, Eleven O’clock, Twelve O’clock rock,
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.
Put your glad rags on and join me hon’,
We’ll have some fun when the clock strikes one.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock, ’till broad daylight,
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.
When the clock strikes two, three and four,
If the band slows down we’ll yell for more.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock, ’till broad daylight,
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.
When the chimes ring five, six, and seven,
We’ll be right in seventh heaven.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock, ’till broad daylight,
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.
When it’s eight, nine, ten, eleven too,
I’ll be goin’ strong and so will you.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock, ’till broad daylight,
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.
When the clock stikes twelve we’ll cool off then,
Start rockin’ ’round the clock again.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock, ’till broad daylight,
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.
Over the last couple episode of Samuel’s Persiflage I have received a few emails and comments from people who aren’t fans of the Persiflage Puzzle, so I’ll attempt to gauge the general consensus on the issue.
Feel free to discuss the poll subject in the comments below. You need to be a registered member of Samuel’s Blog to comment, but anyone can vote. The system will attempt to prevent you from voting more than once, and whilst it might not always be able to do that, I request that you only vote once.
Disclaimer: This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you’re using these numbers to do anything important, you’re insane. That being said, I do try to keep the results fair and accurate, and I try to prevent abuse by unscrupulous voters, but I can’t make any guarantees.
Now for the results from last week’s poll.
Are consumers being treated fairly by the petroleum industry?
I was expecting the “no” vote to win, obviously plenty of people think the petrol industry is acting fairly…why I’ll never know…but that was the result of the poll.
WordPress, the software which runs this site, has now been updated to version 2.1. I have been battling the upgrade for a couple days, and this evening I finally gave up when “Fantastico” the automated installer/upgrader starting spitting new errors at me.
Those who know me will know that I can be incredibly stubborn when it comes to solving computer problems…refusing to take a secondary approach until I have exhausted all possible explanations for the primary approach to fail.
If I had wanted to, I could have gone for the manual upgrade, and that was my secondary approach, however I didn’t want to have any more downtime than absolutely necessary…and if an automated system is supposed to be able to upgrade WordPress with little-to-no downtime, why should I accept minutes of downtime, not to mention the fact that a manual upgrade would force me to use manual upgrades forever?
Before going for the manual upgrade, I decided to check with BlueHost Support to see if there was any reason why it wouldn’t be working that they were aware of.
Kevin from BlueHost support was the person who helped me on the live chat, and after a bit of work at his end, WordPress was upgraded to 2.1
It would appear that disk space was the issue. BlueHost don’t automatically upgrade people’s webspace allowance when they change the package, mainly due to most people not even coming close to their allowance…however I had virtually hit the roof of the allowance prescribed by the previous version of my hosting package. Apparently getting it upgraded to the current 200GB webspace and 2TB/month bandwidth solved the problem.
So, thank you to kevin from Bluehost Support for his assistance.
Right now I’ve got a few minor formatting issues to fix which have come about as a result of the upgrade.
I’m quite pleased to be able to announce a new section on Samuel’s Blog, Letters To The Editor.
This is your chance to set the agenda on Samuel’s Blog, all you have to do is send an email to letters@samuelgordonstewart.com. Your letter can be about almost anything, and it can be from any part of the opinion spectrum, as long as there is some point to your letter. I don’t have to agree with your letter, but I am moderating, so the usual no defamation etc rules apply.
The letters could be your opinion on something in the news, something happening here on Samuel’s Blog, or something completely different…it doesn’t matter because as I said, it’s your chance to set the agenda.
A few little rules.
1. Only emails sent to letters@samuelgordonstewart.com will be considered for inclusion
2. You must provide either your real name, your username on this blog, or a verifiable screen name you use elsewhere (you may need to point me to an example). That being said, you can tell me which name (it can be completely different, within reason) you would prefer to be published. A location would also be nice, because then I can refer to you in a logical manner (eg. Sandra from Perth).
3. I reserve the right to decide whether or not to publish your email. I also reserve the right to remove any content that I think would offend a large section of the audience (hopefully that will only mean obscuring parts of obscenities).
4. Please try to keep your emails under 500 words. I may publish them if they are longer, but don’t count on it.
I’m looking forward to receiving some interesting letters.
I haven’t decided how often I will publish the letters, it will depend on how many I receive and how much else I have ready to appear. Ultimately though, I think it’s a case of “The more the merrier!”
For those of you, like me, who are in the Canberra region and are trying to work out where all the thunder is coming from, it’s coming from a sever thunderstorm north of Gourburn and stretching across the majority of the Central Tablelands, and parts of the western Illawarra.
A late shower or thunderstorm is expected in Canberra, however no warnings are current.
Update about three minutes later: It’s now raining here, and the thunder is sounding a lot closer…looks like the Canberra storms have come too! End Update
Direct from the Bureau of Meteorology…and if the thunderstorm hovering over my area outside the warning zone is anything to go by, follow the advice if you’re in the warning zone.
NSW/ACT SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
for LARGE HAILSTONES, DAMAGING WIND, VERY HEAVY RAINFALL and FLASH FLOODING
For people in parts of the
Southern Tablelands Forecast District to the northeast of the ACT.
Issued at 6:13 PM Friday, 2 February 2007.
Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce large hailstones, damaging winds, very heavy rainfall and flash flooding in the warning area over the next several hours.
Major locations within the warning area include Goulburn.
The State Emergency Service advises that people should:
* Move your car under cover or away from trees.
* Secure or put away loose items around your house, yard and balcony.
* Keep clear of fallen power lines.
* Keep clear of creeks and storm drains.
* Don’t walk, ride your bike or drive through flood water.
* Unplug computers and appliances.
* Avoid using the phone during the storm.
* Stay indoors away from windows, and keep children and pets indoors as well.
* For emergency help in floods and storms, ring your local SES Unit on 13 2500.
* In the ACT, ring the ACT Emergency Service on 6207 8455
The next warning is due to be issued by 9:05 PM.
This warning is also available through TV and Radio broadcasts, the Bureau’s website at www.bom.gov.au or call 1300 659 218. The Bureau and State Emergency Service would appreciate this warning being broadcast regularly.
2UE’s Stuart Bocking has emailed me to assure me that the majority of my article about him and the 2UE night show is wrong…interesting but wrong.
I won’t quote him because I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t want me to, but the gist of his message is that no host has been confirmed for 2UE’s night show, Stuart does like the overnight (midnight to dawn) hours, and he expects to return to that show when a host is confirmed.
The majority of my sources are still adamant that Stuart is the new night show host, however I do, in some selfish way, hope that Stuart’s email is accurate, as I don’t get to hear much of the night show, but get to hear a fair chunk of the overnight show, and I don’t want to lose Stuart from the overnight show. I also hope that Stuart gets whatever shift he chooses because in my view, he deserves it.
If it does turn out that I and my sources are wrong, then I will be more than happy to take the blame and provide a full apology, but until the official announcement, I will continue to quote my sources.
