Samuel's Blog

2008 Australian Of The Year Awards

Final list as at 6:52pm.

Australian of the year: Lee Kernaghan – Country music singer

Senior Australian of the year: David Bussau – A micro-finance specialist who works to help poverty-stricken communities around the world.

Young Australian of the year: Casey Stoner – 21 year-old World MotoGP champion

Local Hero of the year: Jonathon Welch – founder and leader of The Choir of Hard Knocks

Samuel

January 25th, 2008 at 06:49pm

The Petrol Companies Don’t Always Win (Shell out of petrol)

A long weekend is usually a pretty good business period for the petrol companies, and a great excuse for them to mark up the prices.

For Shell though, this long weekend is not so good. Courtesy of livenews.com.au:

Shell service stations across the state ran out of certain types of fuel today, just ahead of the Australia Day long weekend.

The unplanned shut-down of two major units at the Clyde refinery caused the shortage.

Shell was forced to close pumps all over Australia as drivers hit the roads for a three-day weekend.

All premium unleaded has run out and only limited supplies of regular unleaded and diesel are still available.

It’s probably going to annoy a handful of motorists who pull in to a Shell service station, only to be forced to drive away without refuelling, but for the vast majority of motorists it’s a nice piece of poetic justice. Let’s just hope that don’t put the prices up after the long weekend to make up for the lost sales.

Samuel

January 25th, 2008 at 05:00pm

Ten plays the wrong soap opera and talkback radio gets inundated

It certainly didn’t happen on 2CC…must just be a Sydney thing.

I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I read Frankster’s piece about Channel Ten playing the wrong episode of The Bold and The Beautiful (or “The Bored and the…oh never mind, where’s the remote?” as I like to call it) yesterday. It seems that at 4:30, Channel Ten started the Wednesday episode of the soap opera, and within moments talkback radio was flooded with callers whinging about it. I’m not sure if this was 2UE’s John Stanley or 2GB’s Phillip Clark, (with 702 ABC Sydney covering the cricket, it can’t have been them) but I’d like to think it was both, simply because of the hilarity factor.

According to Frankster, Ten switched to the correct episode within a few minutes, although there is no word on whether they started the episode at the beginning or a few minutes in.

Incidentally, speaking of hilarity, it would appear that 702 ABC Sydney’s webstream is running repeats of the overnight programming during the cricket. Today from 10am to 2pm it’s a repeat of Nightlife with Tony Delroy, and from 2pm to 6pm it’s a repeat of Overnights with Rod Quinn (the only ABC presenter I have ever spoken to on-air…and he was on 666 ABC Canberra in the afternoon at the time). Whilst the timecalls will work as it’s an exact twelve hour delay between the original broadcast and the replay, the “good evening” and “good morning” greetings and any current temperatures will not.

Would it be so hard to have a live national webstream program to fill the void on the local radio webstreams, or just turn the webstream off temporarily like the commercial stations do when they aren’t able to stream something for licensing reasons? Very very odd.

Samuel

7 comments January 25th, 2008 at 03:05pm

That coffee cup

Yesterday afternoon Tim Webster was talking about clutter, and clutterers, so I wrote him an email about my cluttering which seemed to amuse him.

It was just after I wrote that email that I remembered why I have a disposable coffee cup from 2006 as an ornament…I’ve been meaning to photograph it and post the photo on here since the day I kept it.

Well, here’s a photo of it…and I’m still keeping it as an ornament.

Samuel

January 25th, 2008 at 01:20pm

The Brown Tree Kook

It was interesting to hear ACT Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope on 2CC’s 8am news today. He was talking about a plan to turn the Mulligan’s Flat Nature Reserve in to a nature sanctuary. During the audio grab he was listing a few of the species which could benefit from this, and he stumbled on the name of a bird, accidentally calling it a “Brown Tree Kook”.

I’ve been trying to work out what you would classify a Chief Turnip as for quite some time, and now I know, a Brown Tree Kook.

For what it’s worth, I actually think the idea of a nature sanctuary at Mulligan’s Flat is a good idea. I can’t imagine that it would cost too much to build and maintain a “predator proof fence”, and the initial allocation of $650,000 sounds quite reasonable. At the very least, it’s $650,000 that can’t be spent on another one of those peculiar public artworks or an Al Grasby statue.

I’m also pleased that the Brown Tree Kook has committed to restoring the historic Tharwa bridge. It’s a bit overdue, and I’m a tad suspicious of the timing considering that it is now an election year and, amongst other things, the Gungahlin Drive Extension roadworks are likely to finish a handful of months before the election with the most used part of it, the Glenloch Interchange, finishing last, giving people time to readjust to the old idea of a relatively smooth run through there just in time to vote for the incumbent.

But I digress, it’s good to see some action on the issue, and I made a point of visiting the Tharwa General Store yesterday (quite a distance, especially with the detour in lieu of a bridge) to thank Val Jeffrey for not backing down, and for getting the Stanhope government to actually do something that the community want…a rare feat in this town. Mr. Jeffrey was a bit less optimistic, pointing out that the work hasn’t started yet…but he seemed pleased that there was some progress all-the-same.

One wonders if we will see further niceties heading the way of our historic communities of Hall and Tharwa courtesy of the Brown Tree Kook this year…a reopening of their schools perhaps?

Update: Marcus writes in an email that Bob Brown, federal leader of The Greens, might be a more apt definition of a “brown tree kook”. Thanks Marcus! End Update

Samuel

January 25th, 2008 at 12:17pm

So Jerome, when do I get my cheque for $8 billion?

It almost sounds like a typical piece of spam…”Hello, my name is Jerome, I work for a French bank and I need your help to get $8 billion out of the country”. Well Jerome, if you want to send me a cheque…

It’s being called one of the biggest frauds in history. A junior employee of France’s second largest bank, The Societe General, has been accused of stealing about $8 billion dollars. Thirty-one year old Jerome Kerviel is the suspect, and he seems to have disappeared…or as news.com.au put it, “Mr Kerviel could not be reached for comment”.

The story is a tad confusing, with nobody, it seems, knowing whether Jerome profited personally from the debacle, or exactly how much he apparently defrauded the bank of. It would appear that Jerome has the authorities and the press chasing their tales.

One thing is for sure though, the all-powerful “they” that rule out lives say that money can’t buy you friends, and in the few hours after Jerome’s identity was revealed his list of friends on Facebook dropped from eleven to four. Could just be me, but I’m suspicious of the seven that un-befriended him, I mean that’s a billion dollars a piece if they’re all in it together.

As for me, I’m just waiting for the email from Jerome…

Samuel

January 25th, 2008 at 10:12am