I just saw an advertisement for the Transborder Express bus service on WIN Television advertising a bus service they run between here and the snow fields. Normally such an advertisement wouldn’t be of much interest to me as I’m not particularly fond of visiting places which are colder than Canberra, however on this occasion it was quite interesting as the background music they were using was the same as one of the pieces 2CC use to return from ad breaks.
A short time later, at the conclusion of WIN News, Nine News was due to start, however instead of the start of Nine News, WIN’s Canberra viewers were treated to the middle of an antique show. The problem was corrected a few seconds later, but not before viewers had missed an one of the headlines.
As a non-Victorian resident, I had hoped that a change in premier might bring some sense to the Victorian government over the Murray Darling basin takeover. Sadly, it would appear that John Brumby also suffers from the delusion that Victoria owns the water and is just as willing as Steve Bracks to waste a heap of taxpayers money on a high court challenge.
It is unfortunate that a bunch of stubborn politicians can’t see past their state border, and see that handing control of the Murray Darling basin to the federal government is in the interests of all Australians.
2UE’s John Kerr is now on holidays for four weeks, which will include a week (or thereabouts) broadcasting from a boat off the coast of Harwich, as part of the 40th anniversary of the criminalisation of British subjects being involved in pirate radio.
During John’s absence Clive Robertson will be broadcasting on weekdays, with 2UE’s News Director Clinton Maynard running the weekend show.
I rang John this morning to wish him “bon voyage”:
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/JKPirateFarewell20070730.mp3] Download MP3
BBC Pirate Essex will have a webstream and will apparently be accepting emails, so I’ll give you more details when the time comes.
It’s now official, Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday in Canberra, and has been named “Family and Community Day”.
Needless to say I am bitterly disappointed by this, and will be writing a letter to the MLA responsible for this travesty, Andrew Barr, to express my disappointment.
I’m not going to repeat my reasons for being disappointed about this right now, but I made them very clear in an editorial I wrote in April.
As fas as I’m concerned, the answer is yes, the water does not belong to Victoria, it belongs to everyone, and the only authority with the power to create laws to affect national property is the federal government. Apart from that, there is a precedent in place which will allow the federal government to take over control anyway, so all Victoria are doing by mounting a high court challenge is wasting an awful lot of taxpayers’ money.
That being said, I’m only one voice in many, so I look forward to your responses.
The last poll I ran had the following results:
Does it annoy you when Samuel doesn’t write something he said he was going to write?
This week the award goes to The Pretenders, and the feature song is Don’t Get Me Wrong.
Don’t get me wrong
If I’m looking kind of dazzled
I see neon lights
Whenever you walk by
Don’t get me wrong
If you say hello and I take a ride
Upon a sea where the mystic moon
Is playing havoc with the tide
Don’t get me wrong
Don’t get me wrong
If I’m acting so distracted
I’m thinking about the fireworks
That go off when you smile
Don’t get me wrong
If I split like light refracted
I’m only off to wander
Across a moonlit mile
Once in awhile
Two people meet
Seemingly for no reason
They just pass on the street
Suddenly thunder
Showers everywhere
Who can explain the thunder and rain
But there’s something in the air
Don’t get me wrong
If I come and go like fashion
I might be great tomorrow
But hopeless yesterday
Don’t get me wrong
If I fall in the mode of passion
It might be unbelievable
But lets not say so long
It might just be fantastic
Don’t get me wrong
There appears to be some rather large and interesting storm activity around the Canberra region at the moment. The weather radar indicates that there is plenty of storm activity heading towards Canberra with some rather heavy rain to accompany it.
The storms also appear to have somewhat more powerful lightning strikes than usual, as they are completely disrupting AM radio signals rather than merely adding some crackle to them.
Update: Apparently the vast majority of the storm affected areas from Gungahlin through to Goulburn (and probably west towards Tumut). The Gungahlin Weather Centre has some interesting photos of the hail at http://www.gungahlinweather.com/photos/photography.htm End Update
I think the reasons for Steve Bracks' resignation are fairly obvious. The Victorian government's opposition and apparent high court challenge over the federal government's plan to take control of the Murray Darling river system is ridiculous, there is a precedent which will allow the federal government to forcefully take control of the river system, and the high court challenge will only delay the inevitable, waste a whole heap of taxpayers money, and make Bracks look like a goose when Victoria loses the challenge.
Steve Bracks, after the opposition he has put up to the plan, can't really back down and give the river to the federal government, but he knows the fallout from losing the court case will be disastrous for him. Much like Bob Carr did to Morris Iemma, Steve Bracks is getting out while he's on top, and leaving the mess to his successor.
I was in Queanbeyan today and walked past a rather amusing incident. A parking inspector was writing a parking ticket for a car, and noticed that the driver of the car behind this one was about to get in to his car.
The parking inspector called out “You’ll be getting one of these in the mail” to which the driver replied “Why, what did I do wrong?”. The parking inspector pointed at a bus zone sign and said “It’s a bus stop” to which the driver quite remarkably replied “Oh, but I only read the green sign”.
The tone of the message indicated that the driver thought he was innocent because he only read one sign (it was a shared zone, a red sign indicated the times that it is a bus stop, and the green sign indicated the times that it’s a car park). Putting the fact that the green sign indicated that the spot was not a car park at the time of the incident to one side, the logic behind this statement is quite astounding.
Based on this driver’s logic, if you walk in to a store and want to purchase a $1000 television for example, you could claim that when you read the price tag it said “$100”, and the store would be required to sell the television to you for $100.
The parking inspector had the final word before producing the parking ticket when he informed the driver that “you have to read all the signs”.
The whole incident, and especially the final line from the parking inspector, amused me immensely, although I would have to admit that the notion of that man driving a car on a public road does concern me.
Today is prime minister John Howard’s 68th birthday. One does have to wonder if it will be his last birthday as prime minister…the polls certainly seem to indicate that it will be.
Following on from my comments yesterday about spammers claiming to be female whilst using male names, I have finally picked out one of these strange people to try and work out what the point of this spam is.
As far as I can tell there doesn’t seem to be any logic to this spam as I can’t see any way that it would be of any benefit to the spammer. Surely a Nigerian money scam would be much more profitable?
Anyway, I’m going to find out, and attempt to keep you up to date on the progress of this project. Here is the email I have chosen to reply to.
From: Simon Schafer <a-a.sesa@a-b-c-plus.com>
To: podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com
Date: Jul 25, 2007 12:35 AM
Subject: Re: Pics
Hello! I am tired tonight. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at abent@imailmessage.info only, because I am writing not from my personal email. I want to show you some pictures.
And my reply:
From: Samuel Gordon-Stewart
To: abent@imailmessage.info
Date: Jul 26, 2007 3:57 AM
Subject: Hello Simon
Hello Simon,
I am sorry to hear that you are bored and I hope that I will be able to make you feel better.
I look forward to chatting with you…and it is rather interesting that you mention that you would like to show me some pictures, because I have some pictures that I would like to show to you. Isn’t that amazing? I think that coincidence proves that we are going to have a great conversation.
I eagerly look forward to your reply!
Best wishes,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Does anyone else think that Simon will be surprised when he finds out that the pictures I have for him are of construction sites in Civic?
I have noticed a rather peculiar Google Ad recently:
Will you be reincarnated?
Are you coming back as a bug? Find out why you were born.
Naturally the prospect of having someone tell me if I am going to be reincarnated as a bug was too good to pass up, so I followed the link and ended up with this PDF file. It is very long and does its best to explain why everything is as it is, however it does not at any time make any mention of bugs or reincarnation.
I followed that link hoping to find some crackpot who was willing to tell me whether or not I will be reincarnated as a bug, and so far I haven’t been even remotely enlightened. If today was Sunday I might have considered ringing Psychic Sharyn about it, but as today is not Sunday, and I don’t really want to know whether or not I will come back as a bug, I don’t think I’ll bother.
Of course if one of you knows the answer and wants to let me know, feel free to leave a comment.
Well Skype may have temporarily scuttled my plans for a live interactive podcast last week, but it can’t stop Frankster from running a live podcast, mainly because he won’t be using Skype for it. Frankster won’t be taking calls like I was planning on doing, but he will be running a live version of his podcast tonight at 8:30pm GMT+10 (10:30am GMT).
For those of you who enjoy taking a stroll back through our broadcasting heritage, the Frankster Podcast is for you…the show should be a lot of fun.
Click here for the live stream (compatible with Winamp, iTunes, XMMS and possibly some other media players.)
Update: For the first time in a few days, today I had more than four hours sleep…and wouldn’t you know it, I managed to sleep through Frankster’s podcast. Thankfully he does have an MP3 of the whole thing online for people who, like me, missed it (and possibly also for those who just want to hear it again). Apparently the live show was a success, and the stream worked in RealPlayer. End Update