Samuel's Blog

Guilty as charged

It’s 19 past 8, and people from Deniliquin to Wangaratta and beyond now all know that I still watch Humphrey on the television!

Samuel

May 24th, 2009 at 08:21am

Michael Parkinson on 2CC

I note from Mark Parton’s twitter feed that he has retired UK television talk show host Michael Parkinson joining him at some stage this week. I probably won’t be in a position to listen to it live, so I hope they podcast it.

Samuel

May 24th, 2009 at 06:57am

Police press release from the future

The AFP are concerned about the results of a “high visibility operation” which they conducted in the future:

ACT Policing conducted a high-visibility roadside breath-testing operation last night (Friday, June 22) as part of its ongoing efforts to reduce drink-driving in the Territory

The next time we will have a Friday June 22 will be in 2012, so perhaps the following people will need to be reminded closer to the date, they they shouldn’t be driving:

Between 6pm and 3am, 1,770 motorists underwent roadside screening tests, with 12 returning positive results. The highest reading was 0.137 recorded on Parkes Way. This is almost three times the legal limit.

One of the positive tests was returned by a taxi driver on Yarra Glenn, the driver was transporting five passengers when he was stopped. He returned a reading of 0.055. Taxi drivers are restricted to a blood alcohol limit of 0.02.

In addition to the number of drink-drivers apprehended, 12 infringement notices were also issued for various offences including the driving of unregistered/uninsured vehicles, driving with a suspended licence and while not wearing a seatbelt. A further four drivers were issued with defect notices due to various faults identified on the vehicles.

It just occurred to me that I should call the AFP’s media office and check what the lotto numbers will be on Saturday the 23rd of June, 2012…I’ll split the winnings with them…

In all seriousness for a moment though, the following line of the press release concerns me:

[..]despite the fact that we had a large number of police cars with flashing lights conducting these high visibility RBT operations, we still apprehended 12 drivers.” A/Supt Neit said.

I’m sorry your acting superintendentness, but the last time I checked, you don’t like it when people refuse to stop for police cars bearing flashing lights…are you suggesting that you have changed your mind and people should be attempting to avoid the flashing lights now?

Please put your brain in to gear before writing press releases.

Samuel

May 23rd, 2009 at 07:05pm

Who is at fault here?

The poll on the KXNT website has been running for a while and I must say that I find the results interesting. The question:

The [police] officer who was killed in a crash last week was driving 109 mph [175 km/h] with no lights, sirens or seatbelt. The other driver who turned in front of him had been drinking, but was not legally DUI. Who is at fault?

The results at the time of writing:

The Officer. He was totally reckless. ( 57% )
Mostly the officer, but the driver contributed. ( 24% )
Both of them. It was a “perfect storm”. ( 15% )
Mostly the driver, but the officer contributed. ( 2% )
The driver. He was still impaired. ( 2% )

I voted for “The Officer. He was totally reckless” the other day, as I don’t think the other driver’s legal amount of alcohol contributed to the situation, however as any amount of alcohol can impair judgement, I can understand the thinking behind “Mostly the officer, but the driver contributed”, but I can’t comprehend the thinking behind the other answers.

Would anyone like to fill me in?

Samuel

1 comment May 23rd, 2009 at 09:58am

Car for the weekend

I’m going to take tomorrow off from the blog and see about getting stuff ready for Sunday instead. Probably won’t be much, just Aircheck Sunday, Musician(s) Of The Week and maybe one or two other things…I’m pretty tired and looking forward to just taking tomorrow off from everything as on Sunday afternoon I’ve got news and sport for AIR News and then it’s on to the local news for 2QN and Classic Rock bright and early on Monday morning. I’m also on 2QN and 3NE on Sunday morning from 6am until Midday, but that’s all voicetracked.

Anyhoo, seeing as tomorrow is my only real day off, I intend on taking the opportunity to get out of town for a while. Bryan from Classic Rock has lent his car to me for the weekend (he has somebody else’s car…I’m not sure why) so I’ll make use of it tomorrow.

I hope you all have a good weekend. I’ll have 2QN/Classic Rock headlines for you next week.

Samuel

May 22nd, 2009 at 03:07pm

Obama’s statements about ideology and policy

I’ve noticed on the news today some quotes from Barack Obama about how Guantanamo Bay was a bad idea because it was a policy based on ideology rather than a decision based on evidence…this made me wonder what that makes his socialist ideology policies of “government intervention in as much as possible and then some”?

Surely if ideology is a bad basis for policies for one side, it should be bad for the other as well.

Samuel

May 22nd, 2009 at 02:44pm

Parcles and post office boxes

Last week, before I left Canberra, I decided to check my post office box as it would be the last chance that I would have for a week (now two weeks), and I was waiting on some mail.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to visit the post office on Thursday or Friday, so in the early hours of Saturday morning I went for one of my walks, and found a notice in my post office box informing me that “an ordinary article” was awaiting collection from within the post office, something which can only be done during business hours.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this “ordinary article” is the parcel that I was waiting for…a book which I’ve been waiting for. This made me wonder:
1. why there isn’t come sort of secure after-hours parcel collection system at post offices, and
2. why post offices can’t open at all on the weekend…9am-midday on a Saturday wouldn’t be too onerous would it?

The thing which irks me about post office trading hours is that, for anyone who works 9-5, they’re quite useless. Collecting a parcel means either wasting your lunch break in a queue or taking time off work.

In this case I only have myself to blame for not allocating two hours of my Friday to visiting the post office…I’ll just make sure that I visit the post office on the Monday after I get back to Canberra. The box will probably be close to full by then.

Samuel

2 comments May 22nd, 2009 at 06:33am

Fairfax Radio Network

Quick question…how long until Fairfax Syndication implodes completely. The satellite issues are still going on, we’ve been having no end of trouble in Deni (missing pulses, audio glitches, mistimed pulses, news cut off, random wrong programs, Neil Mitchell coming through on both channels instead of just one causing automated recording of pre-feed and rural news to fail…which in turn requires us to download the stuff from Digital Courier and insert it manually, oh and a heap of dead air).

I can almost understand Neil Mitchell coming through on both channels…it could be an acceptable error, but to send Tim Webster (a show which we don’t even take) on the auxiliary channel in place of the 3pm pre-feed news??? It could just be me, but Tim Webster giving away a prize to some woman who has to be fed answers to competition questions is not exactly what I consider to be news.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/2qn3pmNewsMay21.mp3]
Download MP3

And with all the errors that Fairfax are making at the moment, it must make the listeners of the network stations think that the people working at the stations are incompetent twats…I mean what else would a listener, who has no idea about how it all works, think when a fifteen minute old Neil Mitchell rant goes to air instead of the news on an FM station, followed by an ad and the weather? They’d think we’re complete numbskulls.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/ClassicRock10amNews20May2009.mp3]
Download MP3

Around this time last night they managed to send Stuart Bocking in place of 3AW’s Nightline. As much as I like stations to take Stuart, he shouldn’t be force-fed to stations who are taking other programs with completely different break schedules. As I write this they’re managing to send Nightline on both channels rather than just the main channel.

It amazes me that people pay Fairfax Syndication sometimes…surely it can’t be that hard to get things right.

Update late Friday night: Issues seem to be fixed now (at last). Whilst AW programming was still coming through on both channels today, it was only coming through on the primary channel tonight. I dropped in to the 2QN studios to listen to the AFL off the satellite after a Deni Business Chamber event…and drat, Murphy kicked a behind instead of a goal after the siren, so the doggies didn’t win. It was a good game though. End Update

Samuel

May 21st, 2009 at 08:34pm

More music

I’m glad that I stayed back late at the station today because while I was sitting down doing some audio editing I heard a song start playing on the air which I recognised at once as “the Mike Jeffreys cowboy music”, which was also used for a little while for the “Friday yee-hah”.

Blood, sweat and tears’ “When I Die”

By the way, I’m considering breaking with my standard “three month policy” for Aircheck Sunday of only putting airchecks online once they’re three months or more old, and putting a 2QN Breakfast aircheck online for Aircheck Sunday this weekend…if I do, it’ll be breakfast from Wednesday which I have already spent an inordinate amount of time uploading for the reference of certain people.

And on the subject of 2QN breakfast, it has been a fun week so far, and I’m looking forward to another busy morning tomorrow. I must say a big thank you to 2GB’s Jason Morrison, a thoroughly decent bloke, as he has agreed to come on the show tomorrow morning to have a bit of a chinwag about the issues (serious or otherwise) of the week. Jason has been very supportive of me while I have tried to build a career in the radio industry, and I doubt that I can express how much I appreciate his support and advice, and his willingness to volunteer his time tomorrow morning.

Anyhoo, back to dinner for me. I should try to get some sleep at some stage I suppose.

Samuel

6 comments May 21st, 2009 at 07:08pm

For once I’ve actually used my phone credit

It has been ages and ages and ages since the last time I managed to use up all of my mobile phone credit before it expired…usually I only manage to use about half of it by the time it expires.

So as strange as it may be to be happy about having to fork out money to a phone company, I’m pleased that I managed to chew through $150 of phone credit in 20 days, and now I get to fork out $29 for another $150 of credit which expires in 30 days (I’ll leave my rant about the cuckoo pricing schemes of phone companies another time).

Samuel

May 20th, 2009 at 06:24pm

Another day, another song

Not a request this time, just one that happened to be in the log this morning. Leon Russell’s “Roll Away The Stone”.

Mike Jeffreys used to use the first few seconds of this song as a sting, and I’m sure that I heard Rush Limbaugh use it as some stage last week. It’s the thing which irritates me about stings extracted from songs…there is almost no way to identify the song if you don’t already know the song. That said, I vaguely recall hearing about an iPhone app (of which I assume there are non-iPhone clones) which can identify songs if you give it a sample of the song…I should try that on a few stings if I can find such a service, which would require me to actually look for a service.

In the meantime, I love the 2QN playlist as it seems to be chock full of songs I like, and songs to which I have been trying to put a name and artist for a while.

Samuel

May 19th, 2009 at 09:11pm

For defence, it’s all a war zone

I was browsing Mark Parton’s blog today and was amused by Mark’s spot-on take on the kangaroo cull in Majura:

The problem with Defence, with all respect to them, is that they always seem to believe they’re in a war. They love their cloak and dagger stuff.
[..]
I don’t actually find it difficult to believe that Mike Kelly wasn’t told by his own department that the roo cull at Majura had already begun. The shooting started on May 5….they didn’t bother to tell Mike, who is the Federal Parliamentry Defence Secretary till the following day.

They were probably doing another security check on him at the time…..because he might be a spy.

There’s a story which I would love to share with you about Defence’s cloak-and-dagger approach to even the simplest things, but alas, a non-disclosure agreement prevents me from doing so. Instead, I’ll just recommend that you click on the link above and read the rest of Mark’s article.

Samuel

2 comments May 19th, 2009 at 07:15pm

Just a tad late

I received an email this morning from the folks at McAfee anti-virus with the subject line “Your Dell PC Protection Expired 14/09/2008”. Looking back through my emails I can see that they did warn me about the impending expiry on the 7th of September last year, but this is their first “warning warning warning: your anti-virus subscription has expired” emails.

It’s good to see that those courier pigeons are as quick as ever.

I should point out that one of the first things I did after purchasing my laptop in June 2007 was remove McAfee from it. I am quite happily using Kaspersky anti-virus, which I believe to be a far superior product.

Samuel

May 19th, 2009 at 05:08pm

GrodsCorp turns five

A belated happy fifth birthday to GrodsCorp, which turned five on Sunday.

GrodsCorp is one of those blogs that I don’t always agree with, but usually find quite amusing. I’m proud to be able to say that I have been a part of their five years on the Internet, as one of their subjects on a few occasions.

Incidentally, this blog isn’t far behind, as it will be celebrating its fifth birthday in April of next year, and I will be sure to make a big deal of it, just like I did for the blog’s first birthday.

Happy birthday to Scott and the team at GrodsCorp!

Samuel

1 comment May 19th, 2009 at 02:46pm

Staying an extra week

My stay in Deniliquin has been extended by a week. I will be on news duties for 2QN and Classic Rock next week, and will continue to do breakfast on 2QN this week.

Samuel

May 19th, 2009 at 02:08pm