Archive for July 29th, 2009

Once and for all, the answer is “no”!

I have a general policy that I do not reveal confidential sources, and do not engage in discussions and speculation as to the identity of said sources, however I feel that I need to make an exception on this one occasion, simply to clear the name of an innocent party.

I am losing count of the number of people who think that I have a confidential source within the Pyrmont Bunker (aka 2GB) with the initials MT. Let me state quite clearly that I do not have such a source…I know an MT, but they are not a source.

Comprende?

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 06:38pm

I live in an intersection

Scarily enough, Google knows where I live…well almost. It’s placed me in an intersection which borders the block on which I live. Apparently it worked this out based by gathering “information about nearby wireless access points and your computer’s IP address”.

Ah well, at least I know that if ASIO ever want to make me disappear and forget to check the electoral roll, they can ask Google where I live and only need to knock down the doors of a dozen or so houses before they find me.

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 04:06pm

Dream of Las Vegas

This dream just struck me as being peculiar and odd. It, for whatever reason, takes place at the studios of KXNT is Las Vegas which, in the dream at least, consist of a series of cupboards.

The 8 o’clock traffic and weather was just about to finish, so I played the 8 o’clock flip intro and turned up Alan Stock’s microphone…but Alan just stood there in his cupboard, not saying anything, at which point I realised that I needed to take the telephone (an ancient black rotary dial phone with a speaker attached) in to Alan’s cupboard so that he could answer the calls.

I took the phone in, turned up the speaker, and Alan started taking calls…however the wires were crossed, and so all we could hear was Wayne singing. Eventually I figured out that if I hit the phone with a hammer, we could hear the callers flipping off Wayne’s singing…but there was no way to stop Wayne’s singing from getting to air.

Odd and peculiar.

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 02:37pm

Oh how I loved this ID as a kid

My favourite television station ID from my childhood. The upbeat version of Prime’s “this is where we live” campaign. This is the Newcastle version.

Samuel

1 comment July 29th, 2009 at 12:25pm

Sotomayor one step closer to confirmation

Unfortunate, but completely expected.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to approve Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice.

The committee voted 13-6 Tuesday morning to send Sotomayor’s nomination to the full Senate, where she’s expected to be confirmed easily next week.

Just one Republican, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, joined Democrats in voting for President Barack Obama’s first high court nominee. The panel’s chairman, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, called Sotomayor a restrained, fair and impartial judge who has not favored any one group of people over another. But the top Republican, Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, said her speeches and some rulings revealed beliefs that conflict with the idea of blind justice and fidelity to the law.

You mean quotes like “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”?

The 2010 mid-term elections can’t come soon enough.

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 10:56am

Buy now, nothing to pay for 7000 months until you get to the counter

“Go Harvey Go!”

WA Today (from a few days ago) reports that Harvey Norman, king of the interest-free, nothing-to-pay-until-calendars-are-extinct deal, is getting rid of the deals, in order to get a “more stable income stream”.

RETAILER Harvey Norman has begun weaning itself off its popular no-deposit, interest-free deals offered through GE Money as the company seeks more stable income streams and consumers shun excessive debt.

Executive chairman Gerry Harvey said his stores, which have a 25-year relationship with GE, had already started to pull back on promotional activity surrounding the incentives, which can sometimes stretch out to as long as four years before customers have to pay for their purchases.

“We have actually reduced our interest-free offers over the last 12 months, because we are just trying to survive without everything being on interest-free,” Mr Harvey told BusinessDay.

“I’d love to do business with no interest-free [deals] but that’s not possible.”

The relationship has been a huge success to date for Harvey Norman and American financial giant General Electric, which owns GE Money. Since 2004, GE Money has furnished 1.5 million Harvey Norman customers with $3.8 billion worth of interest-free packages.

No word on whether Mr. Harvey’s wife’s competing business, Domayne, which offers similar-to-identical deals and sales, will sever ties with GE Money as well.

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 08:44am

Prue Macsween to have a show on 2GB evenings shortly

Further to the recent story about changes to the 2GB evening lineup, word reaches me that Prue Macsween is about to get her own show on 2GB, weekdays between 7pm and 8pm.

Apparently Prue has bought the timeslot, and will on-sell it to the clients of her media agency. This would explain Prue’s appearance on the presenters list on 2GB’s website a few years ago. MediaSpy are running the story as speculation, saying that she will be running a “small business show”. They’re calling it speculation…I have reason to believe that my source knows that the story is fact.

This also means that Luke Bona’s 7pm-8pm show which was recently halved to make room for an Alan Jones and Ray Hadley highlights show (see linked story above) will now get the axe.

Now, moving on to speculation, based on the Pyrmont bunker rumour mill. Brian Wilshire’s show to be extended to 1am, making it a 9pm-1am show. Andrew Moore’s show to start at 3am instead of 3:30am, making it a 3am-5am show, and the David Oldfield show to be dumped…presumably to be replaced by more highlights shows, as mooted in newspapers earlier in the year (I think it was the Daily Telegraph which came up with that one, can’t be sure though).

Samuel

2 comments July 29th, 2009 at 05:28am

The new version of The Bill

The first episode of the revamped 9pm, once-per-week version of The Bill has aired in the UK. Here’s the first two minutes or so of the first episode.

I watched the new opening titles on their own before I saw this video, and I wasn’t keen on the new titles or theme music at all, but after seeing it in context, I think it works well, on the proviso that they keep the new formula of putting a scene before the titles.

As for the background music…not really sure. It seems to work in the background, but it’s one of those elements that you have to keep once you put it there, otherwise it sounds like something is missing. I think the background music will work as long as it stays in the background as it has, and doesn’t take over like it does in some episode of Rush.

Without a doubt though, I will miss the old (current here in Australia) theme.

According to calculations on MediaSpy, Australia should see the new episodes in late October or early November.

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 02:54am

Increasing the frequency of Windows’ automatic time updates

My laptop has a chronically slow system clock, so it is forever showing the wrong time, and with my obsessive compulsive requirement of all of my clocks to be correct to the second, this is a very annoying trait. Windows can automatically synchronise the system clock with an internet time server on a weekly basis, but this isn’t much help for me as by the time a week goes by, my computer clock is 56 seconds behind (it loses a second every three hours). It also doesn’t help that the default time server “time.windows.com” is notorious for often not responding to requests.

It’s a simple enough job to change the timeserver which your computer uses (right click on the clock in the system tray, choose “adjust date/time”, click the “Internet Time” tab, if necessary click on the “change settings” button, and choose a different timesever from the list”) however there is no option to change the frequency of these updates. Thankfully though, it is possible, and merely requires a simple registry edit.

Click the start button or the Windows icon, depending on your version of Windows.
(Versions prior to Vista: click run)
Type “regedit” (vista: click the “regedit” icon) (earlier versions: click “OK”)
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
Double click on “SpecialPollInterval”
The figure is the number of seconds between updates. By default it is 604800 (one week). I set mine to 43200 (twelve hours).
Click OK.

After the next scheduled time update (or manually forced update), the newly selected update schedule will kick in.

A word of warning though. Some timeservers will block you if you update your time too regularly. Setting your update schedule to a very low number is not recommended.

Samuel

July 29th, 2009 at 01:17am


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