Archive for July, 2007
Good evening Stuart,
I'm hardly surprised by this story about a "sorry song" being part of the New South wales curriculum. Unfortunately this biased politicising of the curriculum, especially around NAIDOC Week, has been going on for a very long time, and is not likely to stop any time soon.
I remember when I was in primary school, when NAIDOC Week came around (and oh how I dreaded that week for the simple reason that my primary school went nuts over it) in 1998 when I was 11 years old, the class I was in had to write our thoughts on saying sorry to the stolen generation. I remember writing "I don't think we should say sorry" and then explaining my reasons, and the teacher forcing me to cross that out and write "We should say sorry to the stolen generation".
Incidentally, yesterday there was a concert somewhere down here in Canberra to celebrate aboriginal culture…oddly enough the concert seemed to mostly contain R&B and rap music…hardly a celebration of aboriginal culture.
Best wishes,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
July 11th, 2007 at 11:28pm
Good evening Stuart,
I was just thinking about Morris Iemma's continuous absences from his role as Premier of New South Wales, and I am starting to wonder what will happen when the next round of politician pay rises occur. I suspect that Mr. Iemma will get a pay rise along with everyone else, but I have to wonder if perhaps some of his pay rise should be given to John Watkins instead as he seems to be spending an awful lot of time as the acting premier.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
July 9th, 2007 at 10:28pm
It has been interesting this afternoon noticing that virtually the entire media has commented that the Live Earth series of continents are being held in seven continents concerts…but, that can’t be right…let’s list the continents.
1. Australia
2. Asia
3. Europe
4. Africa
5. North America
6. South America
7. Antarctica
And the Live Earth concerts are taking place in:
New York (North America)
London (Europe)
Sydney (Australia)
Rio de Janeiro (South America)
Tokyo (Asia)
Shanghai (Asia)
Johannesburg (Africa)
Hamburg (Europe)
Update: Mick has pointed out in the comments below that there will be a pre-recorded concert in Antartica…I stand corrected, but I still think the whole thing is a gigantic waste of time…probably great for the fans of the bands which are playing at the concerts though. End Update
All the continents except for Antarctica…so it’s only happening in six continents. That then brings me to the question of who is the source of this erroneous seven continents figure…with this many media outlets using the line, it almost has to be the publicist, and the Live Earth website confirms it:
Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.
I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised that Al Gore is using inflated figures to promote this series of concerts to promote a questionable cause (and if carbon emissions really are to blame for climate change…how much more than usual is this concert series producing?).
Further Update: Mick also points out that the concerts are apparently carbon neutral. Someone must be making an awful lot of money selling those carbon credits! End Update
I, for one, am enjoying the cold and the rain!
Samuel
July 7th, 2007 at 05:12pm
Yesterday, after a failed shutdown of Windows Vista (eg. it sat there for a couple hours pretending to shut down and I had to pull the battery out of the laptop to cut power to it) I noticed that the sound and network icons had gone missing from the system tray (now called the Notification Area for one reason or another), and what was worse, the options to re-enable them were greyed out.
The solution was relatively simple, but Google doesn’t appear to have picked up a solution for it yet so I’m going to write one here. This solution worked for me, and is actually a modification of a solution to a slightly different problem under Windows XP. I can’t guarantee that it will work for you, and I strongly recommend creating a system restore point before attempting the following fix.
Firstly, if you haven’t checked if you can re-enable the missing system tray icons, right click on a blank space on your taskbar and click “Properties”. Click on the Notification Area tab. If you can tick the checkboxes next to the missing icons, do so and then click the OK button. Otherwise, keep reading.
Click on the Windows icon.
Type “regedit” without the quotes and press enter.
Windows will probably ask for your permission to open Regedit. Click “Continue”.
Press CTRL + F
Type “iconstreams” and click OK
You should see a screen with two registry keys titled “IconStreams” and “PastIconStreams”. Delete both of them and press F3 (which will perform the search again).
Continue deleting the “IconStreams” and “PastIconStreams” keys until you receive the message “Finished searching the registry”.
Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer.
When the computer restarts, the icons will still be missing, however you should now be able to enable them by right clicking on the taskbar, clicking on Properties and then enable them from the Notification Area tab. If you have multiple user accounts on your computer you may need to enable icons in the other accounts as well.
Samuel
July 7th, 2007 at 02:39am
NRL Round 17
Broncos v Titans
Tigers v Panthers
Rabbitohs v Storm
Eagles v Roosters
Cowboys v Warriors
Dragons v Raiders
Sharks v Bulldogs
Eels v Knights
AFL Round 14
Bombers v Cats
Magpies v Saints
Bulldogs v Power
Eagles v Lions
Crows v Hawks
Swans v Dockers
Blues v Demons
Tigers v Kangaroos
Samuel
July 6th, 2007 at 05:56pm
If you know me then you know that I would never post the following unless I thought it was accurate.
I’ve just heard from a reliable source close to the Zemanek family who has passed on some bad news about Stan Zemanek. It is fairly well known publicly that Stan Zemanek’s battle with cancer has not been going well in the last few weeks, and the latest news is not good. It would appear that Stan has only been given a few days to live.
Last time we heard news like that, it was just the sort of challenge Stan needed to pull through, so I can only hope that the same thing happens this time.
My thoughts and prayers go to Stan and his wife Marcella at this time.
Update: Looks like all the newspapers know as well…I should probably have checked them before posting this story. None the less, the sentiment remains, and although the future does look grim for Stan Zemanek, I do hope he pulls through. End Update
Samuel
July 5th, 2007 at 09:06am
A couple months back I was musing about the difficulty I was having in finding fresh blueberries due to fruit shops not buying them as they were selling for $9 per punnet, and eventually I gave in and bought the somewhat more soggy frozen blueberries.
Well this morning I received a very welcome surprise when 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys announced that he saw the fabled fresh blueberries in IGA Ainslie last night for $11 per punnet…it’s a high price for a small package of blueberries, but they are that rare that I’m willing to pay the price.
It’s good to know that my favourite fruit is being sold somewhere…I might just have to visit IGA Ainslie today before the blueberries vanish again.
Samuel
July 5th, 2007 at 08:33am
The random number generator (with an accuracy rating of 50% so far) is back for another match of State Of Origin. As per usual, 1 for New South wales, 2 for Queensland.
2 – Queensland.
One does have to wonder if it will have an accuracy rating of 66.67% or 33.33% by 10pm tonight.
Samuel
July 4th, 2007 at 04:23pm
It was a marathon effort due to technical hassles and a headache, but I am very pleased to be able to announce that Samuel’s Persiflage episode number fifteen is now online and ready to be downloaded . As usual there is also a low quality version for the bandwidth impaired here.
If you so desire, you can even listen to it online, just click the play button below.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SamuelsPersiflage/persiflage015.mp3]
The editorial this month focuses on Australia Post’s amazing ability to not deliver Express Post on time, but the episode is dedicated to John Laws who announced his impending retirement last week.
Former executive producer of the John Laws Morning Show, Stuart Bocking (aka The Co-Driver) joins us to have a chat about what it’s like to work with someone as legendary and well known as John Laws, and why he became the king of radio.
Frankster from the Frankster Archives Library has dug up some old commercials read by John Laws for us.
The details of the upcoming Skypecast episode are announced (Tuesday May July 17 at 8PM Canberra Time/10AM GMT), and I’ll post more details online a bit closer to the date.
And of course we have the feedback, and I include a thought for the month…and I even play a song for Lawsie (I like it when the copyright expires on music).
All listeners are invited to send in more feedback, both in written and audio format. As per usual feedback can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com (text, MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis), spoken feedback by clicking here or on the button below would be great, or leave a comment below.
You can also send feedback by post
Samuel’s Persiflage
PO Box 1272
Dickson ACT 2602
Australia
The Samuel’s Persiflage #15 file itself is available here, and is 33:50 in length (30.9MB) at 128kbps stereo. The 128kbps format is used so as to provide you with a high quality and good sounding podcast. I do, however, acknowledge that this is just unreasonable for dial-up, so a 16kbps mono file is also available here. The sound quality isn’t as good, but is much better for those on dial-up or with small download limits. The low quality version is 3.87MB
For those of you who are using podcast software to receive your podcasts, the feed can be found here and if you are using iTunes you can subscribe to Samuel’s Persiflage by clicking here.
The next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage will be in a couple weeks.
Enjoy the show!
Samuel
July 4th, 2007 at 07:31am
If you were planning on waiting up for Samuel’s Persiflage (I’m always surprised that there are people who do this), then you will probably appreciate this notice that it won’t be online until about 3 or 4am.
You can stay up if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend breaking your sleeping pattern for it.
Update: Technical difficulties during the recording of an interview, plus my headache didn’t help. It’s nearly there. End Update
Further Update: Final Processing and MP3 Encoding in progress. Upload shortly. ETA 6:30am End Update
Samuel
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:06pm
Long term readers would be well aware that I am a fan of ex-SBS voiceover man Robbie McGregor and was very disappointed when SBS decided to remove Robbie from the network last year. Since then I have been pleased to hear Robbie reading a wide variety of commercials and other voiceovers.
You can therefore imagine that I was even more pleased when I dialled a phone number incorrectly one day, and discovered that Robbie McGregor has recorded the announcements for Internode’s phone network NodePhone. I think these announcements are much better than the rather annoying messages produced by Telstra, and so for comparative purposes (and also to give Robbie a free plug), here is a sample of Robbie on NodePhone.
The following sound file includes two messages read by Robbie, one of the Telstra messages (does anyone know what the quietly muttered letters mean?), and Robbie as the talking clock.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/RobbieMcGregorNodePhone.mp3]
Download
I find the style of Robbie’s announcement to be a bit calmer, and more caring than the ones by Telstra. For some reason Robbie seems to come across as actually caring about the fact that, for one reason or another, the call you attempted wasn’t able to be completed, whereas Telstra’s faster, repeated messages, with seemingly pointless letters thrown in, come across as a case of “we don’t care if you can make this call or not…hang up and stop bothering our equipment”.
Perhaps I just give these things too much consideration.
Samuel
July 3rd, 2007 at 02:22pm
Dear Clive, Abe, and the earlier emailer who thinks I have a thing for Clive,
Do I have a "thing" for Clive? No, but the suggestion did give me a good laugh.
I would like to find out why the earlier emailer thinks I have a thing for Clive…that could be a very interesting story.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
July 3rd, 2007 at 03:00am
For one reason or another the following email didn’t show up here when I sent it at 10:04pm yesterday.
Good evening Stuart,
I’m astonished…I didn’t think they would ever manage to refloat the Pasha Bulker. I think I will need to swallow my words, along with John Kerr and Peter FitzSimons.
Now that the rescue budget has been well and truly exhausted, I wonder what the damage bill will be?
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
July 3rd, 2007 at 02:44am
I haven’t had time to record a promo and put it on the Samuel’s Persiflage feed, so I’m writing this instead.
The next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage is due for release tomorrow night, the main topic being the impending retirement of John Laws…and our guest is someone who worked with Lawsie for a few years.
Also, the full details of the upcoming Skypecast episode, including the date, time, and how you can take part…plus, the response from last episode’s annoying telemarketers…and ad or two from years gone by, read by our main topic, and the listener feedback.
It should be fun!
Samuel
July 2nd, 2007 at 03:07pm
Another lengthy break between polls got me thinking about this question:
Does it annoy you when Samuel doesn’t write something he said he was going to write?
Total Votes: 29
Started: July 2, 2007
It might surprise you to find out that my vote is “yes”, as I get annoyed when I don’t get around to writing things that I have said that I’m going to write.
The previous poll was:
Should the Queen’s Birthday holiday be held on or around the Queen’s actual birthday?
Total Votes: 25
Started: June 11, 2007
I’m glad that the majority of people don’t want the Queen’s Birthday holiday to be on her actual birthday…it would be a logistical nightmare whenever the monarch changed, and it would further erode the balance of holidays throughout the year.
For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.
Samuel
July 2nd, 2007 at 06:50am
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