Posts filed under 'Bizarreness'
I usually glance at my spam to see if the spam filter has picked up anything which is normal email, and often I see random text at the top of the email which is placed there to try and trick the spam filter into believing that the email is genuine. Occasionally these bits of random text are interesting and make strange stories, such as this one:
She had died a mostly unexpected death. Snowboarding in 1887 When she came in he heard her singing.
Samuel
March 12th, 2006 at 02:03pm
I had an assignment which I thought was due on Tuesday. I did a lot of work on this assignment, brought it up to and beyond my standard for finished assignments, and brought it with me to the class it was due for on Tuesday evening.
In this class it became apparent that the assignment is due next week…OK no problem, early submission is fine…but wait, the assignment is changing before my eyes, suddenly there are a bunch of new bits and pieces in it, suddenly I have to take my assignment home and rewrite th whole thing, suddenly a heap of my work, time and effort has been wasted. This is an issue, and it becomes an even more serious issue when you consider that I was up all night on the night before “submission” putting the finishing touches on this assignment, so that I wouldn’t have to do so in the afternoon after a very important meeting which would go for an unknown length of time.
Now I have to rearrange my schedule for the coming week, which is already looking busy, in order to rewrite an assignment which was changed with a week to go. It could just be me, but in my opinion all assignments should be properly defined when they are issued, they may have minor changes (eg. corrections) after that, but the entire submission format should not be changed, nor should vital aspects of the assignment.
I’ll admit that the due date error was mine and mine alone, but that doesn’t matter as nobody would mind if I handed in an assignment a week before it was due. What matters is that I spent good time, and put in a lot of effort to produce an assignment which now has to be rewritten and redesigned. I am not impressed, and my level of annoyance has not changed since Tuesday night, when this entire debacle of teaching methodology occured.
You may have noticed that I am being very bereft of specific details here, and there is a reason for that. The teachers involved know that I am not happy about this, various students also know it, however I feel that this was a mistake, I don’t think that the teachers in question set out to change the assignment with a week left. I get the distinct impression that certain details were simply absent from the original assignment sheet and the teachers didn’t notice. I therefore have no reason to “name and shame”. I have provided enough detail for you to understand the story, and for the teachers in question to know who they are. I see no point in naming the teachers, they know who they are and I don’t think it will happen again. The incident is regrettable and annoying, but these things happen, and there is minimal point in dwelling on it.
All I can say is that I am not expecting my second version of the assignment to be up to the same standard as my first version, I just don’t see how that will be possible in the abbreviated amount of time available to work on it.
Samuel
March 9th, 2006 at 06:15am
I was watching Senate Question Time overnight, as I often find it quite amusing the way the various members manage to sidestep questions and provide long convoluted answers to questions which were fairly straight forward. I was most amused by the way almost every question answered by a Liberal senator ended as an attack on the Labor Party.
One question caught my eye (or my ear) in particular, this question (which was one of the planted questions designed to highlight various government “achievements”, and to waste time so that the opposition can’t ask questions) from a Liberal senator to another Libral senator related to the conservation of birds, and the answer was almost entirely an attack on a certain Mark Latham, former leader of the Australian Labor Party.
I have extracted this from the online hansard copy of senate proceedings from yesterday (pages 45-46 of proceedings, pages 59-60 of PDF), but you will need to visualise the standard grandstanding for yourself, as the text doesn’t quite carry the (for lack of a better word) enthusiasm shown by Senator Ian Campbell, and certainly doesn’t include the hysterical laughter from the members of the Senate. I have also made a couple formatting changes to make it easier to read and follow.
Environment: Conservation of Australian Birds
Senator FERRIS (2.48 pm)—My question is to the Minister for Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell. Will the minister inform the Senate how the Howard government is protecting Australia’s rich and varied birdlife for future generations of Australians to enjoy?
Senator IAN CAMPBELL—I thank Senator Ferris for a question that I know is dear to her heart. Over the last 10 years the Australian government has spent over $12 million protecting our unique Australian birds. Only a couple of weeks ago I announced a further $1 million package known as the Wildlife Conservation Plan for Migratory Shorebirds.
As I do with most of my ministerial briefs, I read carefully through the list of birds that we are seeking to protect—some 36 new species of birds. Some of their names would be familiar to the opposition, like the little curlew, which I noticed on the list. There is the ruddy turnstone and the broad-billed sandpiper. But, when I got to the next one, the name stood out and
leapt off the page at me. It was nothing other than Latham’s snipe!
I asked my staff to research this unique Australian shorebird and found that Latham’s snipe has a very long bill—and I think it is getting longer with the addition of the Nikon digital camera to it. It has large eyes and it is known to dash wildly around and to fly in a zigzagging motion. Its other attributes, we found, were that it establishes its territory in open spaces like meadows and grassy floodplains by repeating nosediving displays. In spite of its showy display during the mating season, the parent birds accompanying the baby birds tend to stay in clustered grass and can thus hardly be observed. More than half of them—all senators would be upset to know—never fully mature because of various accidents.
Latham’s snipe is in fact designated as a rare species. It is also prone to suffer accidents because of the places where it lives. Not only do cows often trample over its nests located in the pasture but, sadly, motor mowers hurt parent Latham’s snipes earnestly sitting on their eggs in grass-harvesting lands.
Recently we have seen references to Latham’s lemmings also, as Senator Ferris knows. We know that for many members of the Australian Labor Party there is that iconic Australian sound of the two-stroke Victa coming across those grassy plains and attacking the lemmings, or the Latham’s snipes. These are people similar to Gavan O’Connor, who is under threat from the lawnmower being driven by Senator Stephen Conroy. Gavan O’Connor talked about the sound of the mower coming into his ears—just as the Latham’s snipe would cringe at that sound—when he said, ‘The talent in the Labor Party is subject to sleazy deals.’
Another Latham lemming or Latham’s snipe, someone who dares to challenge the Beazley orthodoxy, is Warren Snowdon, who said today, as he heard the mower approaching:
‘I think what it demonstrates is a small number of people—standover merchants, thugs and other sleazebags—undermining the good name of the Labor Party.’
Mr Sercombe, another Latham’s snipe attacked by the lawnmowers of the Labor Party—
The PRESIDENT—Minister, I remind you of relevance.
Senator IAN CAMPBELL—Thank you, Mr President. I appreciate the reminder. Bob Sercombe, regarding himself—as a Latham’s snipe, the bird that was the subject of the question, would—said that there were ‘sleazy internal deals’. You can see that the behaviour of the Australian Labor Party is no better and no worse than someone driving a lawnmower over the habitat of a Latham’s snipe.
The PRESIDENT—Minister, resume your seat.
I am amazed that Senator Ian Campbell wasted money by having his staff investigate a bird, purely so that they could write a derogatory answer about Mark Latham, even more amazing is the amount of time (and effectively senator’s salaries) which was allowed to be wasted on this junk. Admittedly the speaker, Senator Calvert did eventually tell Senator Ian Campbell to sit down, but that was after a rather lengthy spiel about nothing of any value. In fact it was 2:52pm when the next question was asked (although the answer provided to it did not address the topic), a whole four minutes after the bird question was originally asked.
Surely, this would have been better served over afternoon tea, rather than in place of valuable senate time and questions.
Samuel
March 2nd, 2006 at 02:19am
People walking around busy areas asking people for a certain amount of money, supposedly for a bus fare, whilst not looking in the least bit hard pressed for cash are not new nor rare, but they are a problem. In most cases I completely ignore these people, however one such “non-hard-pressed bus fare scammer” caught my attention today.
About 11:30 this morning I was walking to the bus stop opposite the Legislative Assembly building to catch a bus to Tuggeranong, and on the way passed one of “the regulars”, the people who seem to spend half their life wandering around asking for a bus fare and never catch a bus, this particular regular was probably the most regular, being blonde, of slim build, about 25-35 years old and about 175-180CM tall. As per usual he was asking for 40 cents for a bus fair (seemingly oblivious to the fact that a concession bus fare is $1.30 minimum in Canberra, as would be most Civic office workers who probably don’t catch a bus to or from work anyway) and bothering many many people. I avoided him and continued on my way, not paying any further attention to him or his activities.
I went to Tuggeranong, had lunch with my bus driver friend, came back into Civic and had a coffee at the previously reviewed Coffee @ Helen’s. While I was in there enjoying a flat white, the previously sighted regular bus fare scammer walked in and asked the staff if they could change some coins into a $10 note, they agreed and he spent the better half of the next minute unloading his scammed booty of 20c, 10c and 5c coins, which was then counted by the staff and exchanged for a $10 note. The bus fare scammer then walked back home, which as I know is up at the top end of Ainslie Avenue in a set of apartment blocks I seem to have forgotten the name of.
I don’t know if there is anything legally wrong with this situation, but there is certainly something morally and ethically wrong with it. I spent some of the afternoon pondering the question of whether I should have intervened and pointed out that he had scammed at least 25 people to gain the amazing quantity of silver coins. Maybe I should have, but I tend to see, or at least pass this person once or twice a week, and would be in fear of my own safety if I had taken that course of action. Of course, it would have been nice to, at that moment, have been a Today Tonight reporter who had been following the scammers activities all day, and then pounced when he tried to convert his illgotten mini-fotune into a plastic note. There would have been an element of satisfaction in catching him red-handed, alas it was not to be, and I am left pindering the legal, moral and ethical ramifications of the situation.
I suppose I should summarise this by advising you not to give 40c “bus money” to someone in Civic who is blonde, of slim build, about 25-35 years old and about 175-180CM tall. That’s probably the best advice I can give you.
Samuel
February 28th, 2006 at 11:15pm
You may recall that in the Blog View Stats for January I noted that a website called Syndicate Motor Sports were the 2nd top referrer for the month, delivering 295 page views. I also mentioned them about a week ago, when one of their readers recognised me.
During a recent check of the referring sites for this month, I noticed an unusual spike in the number of people coming here from that site, and decided to take a look and see what was bringing them here, as it turned out, they had managed to confuse themselves over the details of their reader’s encounter with me.
For one reason or another, despite everything I had written, some of them were convinced that I was talking about someone yelling out of a car window. First, take a look at what I wrote.
Today, as I went to have lunch at Coffee @ Helen’s, one of the staff recognised me.
I went on to say
upon walking into Coffee @ Helen’s, I was greeted by this person with “You’re the infamous Samuel Gordon-Stewart”.
Now, let’s have a look at what Syndicate Motor Sports member “DRAG DIS” said
Hahahahah that was me who spotted him. I was with a mate who screamed out summernats.
I think though he may have a small brain, and might be quite unintelligent.
Because:
1. I do not work at coffe @ helens. The only male that does works behind the counter (not buying food) and is Of Asian appearance, and I am of caucasian appearance. I do not know how this point can be confused.
2. He also mentioned he had not seen me working their before. Thats because i have never worked their. This guy is delirious.
2. I am unsure why he did not mention the summernats roar my friend made , and his disgusted look. He neglected to mention that.
What a tripper
I don’t know who this “DRAG DIS” is, although for someone judging the brain size of others he certainly has a lot of talent when it comes to spelling and numbering lists. There are two possibilities here, either I imagined having lunch and meeting a Syndicate Motor Sports reader, or they are referring to the wrong incident. As you probably guessed, it is the latter.
The person who recognised me was working for Coffee @ Helen’s, he was the person who served me and many other customers and, contrary to the assertions of “DRAG DIS”, Coffee @ Helen’s have more than one staff member.
I do vaguely recall the incident referred to by “DRAG DIS”, although it could be any of a number of similar incidents. I think “DRAG DIS” is referring to an incident which occured somewhere around the Civic Bus Interchange where somebody in a moving car made a loud noise, whether this was them yelling something or just making a noise I do not know. I doubt that they understand the fact that simply because they know what they are yelling does not neccessarily mean that anybody else does, especially when they are on the other side of the road in a noisy area yelling out of a moving vehicle.
In related news, as I was taking Nattie for a walk today and waiting to cross Ainslie Avenue, somebody driving a white commodore which had just taken a left turn onto Ainslie Avenue from Limestone Avenue moved into the right hand lane without indicating, put their right arm out the window and started making unusual arm shaking gestures towards me, which they ceased shortly after passing me. It is a pity that I didn’t have a video camera to record the incident and hand the tape into the police so that they could penalise the driver for not indicating when changing lane.
Samuel
February 25th, 2006 at 10:28pm
OK, I just worked it out (I Hope!). When I disabled the nedstat/webstats4u code by “commenting it out” in the footer template, the popups disappeared in my browser. Unfortunately, it would appear that Internet Explorer doesn’t understand HTML comments and tries to render them instead. It finally occured to me when I saw “–>” appearing next to the webstats4u icon in IE, that I had been so excited about getting rid of the popups that I only commented out that section of code, and forgot to remove it.
This appears to be a rendering bug (or feature) of Internet Explorer, that the standard “< --" and "-->” comment code is not treated as a comment, and instead treated as renderable code, which is why the popups continued to appear in Internet Explorer.
It should now be fixed (although a hard refresh using CTRL-F5 of the samuelgordonstewart.com homepage should force it). Again sorry about the inconvenience, I just never counted on that basic staple of usefulness being ignored by a browser.
Hopefully Internet Explorer will understand comments in version 7, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Samuel
February 24th, 2006 at 11:44pm
One does have to wonder what ASIO or the FBI would make of this nonsensical conversation I had with a contact earlier in the evening.
10:24 PM A: the banana flies by evening star
B: and the apple floats on the doctor express
10:25 PM B: ASIO are now trying to work that out
A: the king’s men are rubber chickens. they will be meatball.
10:26 PM B: supermarket chicken be rubber it does not, and the fish
10:27 PM A: I have flown like the fish. do you swim like the chicken?
10:29 PM B: Yes, but only with the roast turnip
10:31 PM A: I prefer my turnip boiled and mashed, it reverses the goat money.
10:32 PM B: fluff bites hard, on the great fledgling goat
A: yes
10:33 PM B: the danger threatening from the unknown consultant, had intended to catch blue shift. Waving it like a banner, she flew out the window. And the waltz
10:34 PM B: confirm?
A: foxtrot the king’s birds, and the kings men. we shall waltz
10:35 PM B: ascend to the throne of the duck munchkin, the waltz will be attended to by the hammer
10:36 PM A: we will continue this discussion later. the kings men hear music, and suspect a waltz
B: you be safe of big bang goes pop weasel
Samuel
February 24th, 2006 at 10:43pm
If the number of people landing here by searching for information about the Bigpond Gmail block, and the number of other websites discussing it is anything to go by, Bigpond’s Gmail block has been quite an ordeal throughout the week.
It turns out that Bigpond use somewhat overzealous third party server blocklists that attempt to automatically work out which SMTP servers are open for third party use, and effectively spamming. Technically this should put just about every ISP mail server on the planet on some blocklist by virtue of the fact that you don’t have to be connected to your ISP to utilise their mail servers.
The basic fact of the matter is that this is an outdated method of blocking mail servers, as most spam originates from “botnets” created on home PCs by malware. These botnets are sold to spammers, “malicious users”, etc by malware programmers for a profit, this is fairly effective as it allows standard PCs, which look pretty innocent, to sporadically start sending spam and other useless junk all over the place.
Unfortunately, one of Gmail’s servers was incorrectly picked up by one of these blocklists late last week, and Bigpond then picked it up in their semi-daily or thereabouts update. Gmail’s server was removed from the list sometime this week, and Bigpond worked that out today at about 11am Canberra Time (Midnight GMT).
There is still a bit of a delay as the queued mail gets delivered, but services appear to be back to normal. Incidentally, another ISP, iinet if my memory serves me correctly, fell fowl of these blocklists a couple weeks ago, and have just recently been fixed.
The bottom line is, Bigpond are now accepting emails from Gmail, and probably blocking someone else instead. I have some advice for Bigpond, forget blocklists, use some proper anti-spam technology to run checks on incoming mail, there’s some pretty good open source software that does precisely that, and it will do a much better job than overzealous blocklists.
Samuel
February 24th, 2006 at 03:04pm
Well, this is just fantastic, Telstra Bigpond are now blocking emails from Gmail, which means that a lot of the people I regularly communicate with are now out of reach by email. I tried contacting Bigpond via their online question form, but you have to be a bigpond member to do that, so I’m just going to have to make up some information and send it that way. They claim to try and respond to emails in one working day, so they can have 24 hours to answer my question, and if they don’t, they can get a phone call instead.
I would really love to know why they have blocked emails from Gmail, I wonder if they’ve done the same to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail…maybe to Yahoo Mail, but Telstra love Microsoft so they would be unlikely to block Hotmail.
Anyway, the email I have sent to Bigpond via their online form
Hi,
I’m not a Bigpond customer, but I can only send you feedback with this form if I tell it that I am.
I use Gmail for my email, and have recently started having issues sending emails to people using Bigpond. It would appear that your email servers are setup to block email originating from the Gmail servers. All the emails are bouncing with the following error:
TEMP_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 8): 451 Mail from this IP address blocked due to DNS block list.
Is there any reason why Gmail’s servers are not allowed to send email to bigpond users? This has really stifled communications with a number of my regular contacts.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Will they reply? Only time will tell, but I suspect that they won’t.
For those of you who use Bigpond and have been expecting emails from me, sorry but I just can’t send them at the moment, the Gmail servers will keep attempting to send them on my behalf for a couple days. As far as I can tell this does not affect email coming directly from samuelgordonstewart.com, so registration emails shouldn’t be a problem, but all of my email forwards to Gmail as I prefer Gmail over other webmail services, so don’t expect a reply if you’re using Bigpond and you send me an email.
Samuel
February 22nd, 2006 at 01:39am
Sometimes I enjoy reading some of the spam I receive (On average, about one per hour). Gmail does a pretty good job of filtering it, in fact I’ve only had two spam emails slip into my inbox in the last couple months.
Anyway, this gem was filtered by Gmail today, addressed to the podcast email address (before you ask, all of my email addresses are directed to my gmail account, and placed under specific labels upon arrival).
This one comes from rfumonoraaafaaa
上海锦程航空近期机票惊喜特价.并推出累计积分活动
购买机票额达到以下数，均有相应礼品赠送。（可累计）
2000 精美太阳伞，树脂闹钟……
6000 手机充值卡（50），精美相册……
10000 手机充值卡（100），电吹风，网球拍……
15000 充值交通卡（130），等等
国内特价：
北京570 成都810 重庆750 长沙 620
福州470 贵阳960 桂林650 广州 770
海口500 济南530 晋江460 大连 530
南宁830 南昌430 青岛440 沈阳 650
汕头590 深圳700 太原840 天津 820
温州350 武汉730 武夷山660 西安 630
厦门480 烟台430 郑州560 哈尔滨880
石家庄990 珠海840 三亚950 乌鲁木齐1200
兰州900 长春1280 昆明1140 银川900
国际特价：
航程 单程/往返 航程 单程/往返
香港（东航） 1490/1920 名古屋（国航） 1880/3270
澳门（上航） 1320/2320 福冈（国航） 1550/2240
台北（上航+复兴） 1790/3260 新加坡（东航） 2190/2240
东京（美西北） 1890/2980 曼谷（东航） 1590/2250
大阪（国航） 1620/2590 吉隆坡（东航） 2080/2350
汉城（上航） 1420/2750 法兰克福（国航） 3690/4980
釜山（东航） 1290/2490 悉尼（东航） 4380/4980
巴黎（东航） 3490/4480 伦敦（英航/东航） 2680/3390
米兰（国航） 3590/4690 旧金山 (美西北) 3150/4350
洛杉机（东航/美西北） 2650/4290 温哥华 (东航) 2540/3990
华盛顿（全日空） 3680/5390 纽约 (国航/美西北) 3480/5210
巴黎（公务舱） 14880/21600 赫尔辛基 (芬航) 4200/5390
市区提供免费送票服务。
以上国内机票均为不含机场建设费，燃油附加费。
国际均为净价不含税金 & 战争保险 & 燃油附加费&机场建设费。
表格中没有的或复杂的行程请来电或传真查询。
航空机票价格时有变动，以上价格为参考，具体请来电查询。
本公司代订酒店业务，欢迎垂询！
联系电话：021-52242591 62248189
传 真：021-62248189
This seemed oddly interesting, so I grabbed the Google Translator and guessed that this might be Chinese, Google gave me the following translation:
The Shanghai brocade regulation aviation in the near future the airplane ticket will be pleasantly surprised 特价. And promotes the accumulation integral activity purchase machine face value achieves below counts, all has the corresponding present bestows. (May accumulate) 2000 fine umbrellas, the resin alarm clock… 6000 handsets sufficient values card (50), fine photo album… 10000 handsets sufficient values card (100), electric drier, tennis racket… 15000 sufficient values traffics card (130), and so on domestic 特价: Beijing 570 Chengdu 810 Chongqing 750 Changsha 620 Fuzhou 470 Guiyang 960 Guilin 650 Guangzhou 770 seaports 500 Jinan 530 Jinjiang 460 Dalian 530 Nanning 830 Nanchang 430 Qingdao 440 Shenyang 650 Shantou 590 Shenzhen 700 Taiyuan 840 Tianjin 820 Wenzhou 350 Wuhan 730 Mount Wuyi 660 Xi’an 630 Amoy 480 Yantai 430 Zhengzhou 560 Harbin 880 Shijiazhuang 990 Zhuhai 8403 Asia 950 Urumqi 1200 Lanzhou 900 Changchun 1280 Kunming 1140 Yinchuan 900 international 特价: The range one-way / round-trip range one-way / goes and returns Hong Kong (东航) 1490/1920 Nagoya (country navigation) 1880/3270 Aomen (above navigation) 1320/2320 Fukuoka (country navigation) 1550/2240 Taibei (above navigation + revival) 1790/3260 Singapore (东航) 2190/2240 Tokyo (beautiful northwest) 1890/2980 Bangkok (东航) 1590/2250 Osaka (country navigation) 1620/2590 Kuala Lumpur (东航) 2080/2350 Seoul (above navigation) 1420/2750 Frankfurt (country navigation) 3690/4980 Pusan (东航) 1290/2490 Sydney (东航) 4380/4980 Paris (东航) 3490/4480 London (the English navigation / 东航) 2680/3390 Milan (country navigation) 3590/4690 San Francisco (beautiful northwest) 3150/4350 Luo river cedar machine (东航 / is beautiful Northwest) 2650/4290 Vancouver (东航) 2540/3990 Washington (entire date spatial) 3680/5390 New York (country navigation / is beautiful northwest) 3480/5210 Paris (official business cabin) 14880/21600 Helsinki (profuse navigation) 4200/5390 urban district provides free delivers the ticket service. Above the domestic airplane ticket all for does not contain the airport construction cost, the fuel oil extra charge. International all does not contain the tax money & war for only the price insures & the fuel oil extra charge & airport construction cost. In the form no either the complex travelling schedule please comes the electricity or the facsimile inquiry. When aviation airplane ticket price has the change, above price is the reference, concrete please comes the electricity inquiry. This company generation subscribes the hotel service, the welcome deigns to inquire! Telephone: 021-52242591 62248189 facsimiles: 021-62248189
This poses a question, do I really want 2000 fine umbrellas, or an electricity inquiry about concrete? I think not…
Ahhh, that was fun!
Samuel
February 7th, 2006 at 01:55pm
Some of you may be aware of (or in some cases be an editor of) a website called The RiotACT. For those of you that aren’t, I will provide a brief description.
The RiotACT is a Canberra based news and opinion website which often looks at ACT politics and ACT events. In much the same way as Slashdot, readers are able to submit articles, and after review by an editor, the article may be published.
I first became aware of The RiotACT in April, when one of the editors, Johnboy, posted a review of Linux.conf.au 2005, I did much the same as a comment. After becoming aware of the main subject matter of the site, I decided to stick around, and became a regular commenter, and occasional article submitter. This went on for quite some time, and I found the debates to be quite interesting.
After a long while though, it became apparent that certain people either didn’t like me, or didn’t like my opinions, and took it upon themselves to take minute sections of my comments out of context, make a huge deal of it, and let everyone else tag along for the ride. The personal attacks didn’t bother me too much, you learn to deal with it after a while online, the constant being taken out of context didn’t overly bother me either as I would try and correct what was said. What bothered me was the way anything which was taken out of context became the subject of debate, and treated like some bigoted statement, which in turn resulted in constant “Samuel is an idiot” type posts.
After a while, it got worse, and became more consistent, with people starting to skip the “take Samuel out of context” stage, and just go straight to “Samuel is an idiot, yell at him”. This made it impossible for me to get my point across, and really hindered the ability of the site to remain on topic.
There were also some fundamental differences in opinion between myself and certain people, including an insistence that I live my life in a way which makes my opinions invalid. Apparently drinking to excess, getting into pointless fights or doing other things which I’m not interested in would turn me into a psuedo-fountain-of-wisdom. (Interestingly, there were some assumptions in the linked comment that I haven’t done certain things that I actually have done, which is why I linked to that comment. There are plenty of similar examples of pointless comments directed at me to be found if you browse through the archives of The RiotACT. There are also some interesting and factually incorrect generalisations about commercial talk radio in the linked comment.)
It was these fundamental differences and the inability of decent discussion whenever I made my views clear, which made me make the decision to leave The RiotACT. I have checked in on it a couple of times since taking that decision, and it seems to be functioning in a normal manner without me. On topic discussions seem to have returned, and the site seems to have some value again.
To summarise this, I made the decision to leave for two reasons:
- There was no point wasting my time making my opinions known on The RiotACT if people were going to take them out of context and spend their time telling me how worthless my opinions are. I have no problem with people telling me my opinions are wrong (if they have a good reason), but telling me that they are worthless is just fundamentally stupid.
- As long as I stayed there, The RiotACT was losing credibility due to constant flaming of me. The solution was simple, leave and focus on other things, it seems to have worked, RiotACT is better off without me and the pointless flaming directed at me.
The RiotACT has very noble intentions, and is a very interesting and useful website, it is just a pity that people felt a need to rubbish me, not because of my opinions, but because I am who I am. I wish The RiotACT success, and I didn’t want them to lose visitors because of constant junk. The people who run the site have worked hard to build it up over more than five years, I respect that, and felt that it was best for them if I left as it is the ultimate cure for the garbage directed at me, which ultimately lowered the standard of the website.
So there we go, for those who were wondering, that is why I left The RiotACT.
February 6th, 2006 at 11:05am
I spotted this rather unusual Google Ad on another website a short time ago.
Clicking on it took me to eBay Australia’s homepage where there was a picture of a Toyota Landcruiser. Hopefully eBay aren’t stealing cars just to take photos of them, and if they are then I can’t imagine why they would be advertising it.
Unfortunately, this is one of the pitfalls of whatever automated service they are using to generate the ads, hopefully it will be corrected before somebody really takes it the wrong way.
Samuel
February 2nd, 2006 at 04:18pm
Isn’t this just fantastic, CIT spend a week bombarding television advertising space (and possibly FM radio advertising space, but I wouldn’t know about that) with a message about CIT direct enrolment information being available in the Saturday 21 January edition of the Canberra Times.
This was important to me as I needed this information about times and dates for enrolment, so on Saturday I rearranged my busy morning schedule so that I could go down to the newsagent (which was closed, ended up going to the supermarket) to buy the Saturday Canberra Times. To my horror I discovered that I had to pay $2 for this overabundance of classifieds and commentary on the social goings-ons of groups that don’t interest me (coupled with the occasional news story). Considering that Sydney’s Sunday newspapers cost about the same price here in Canberra as the Saturday Canberra Times, I would consider the Saturday Canberra Times a ripoff.
I wouldn’t have minded paying this fee and rearranging my schedule if this was the only way to get the information, as the CIT seemed to imply in their advertisements. However, today as I look at the CIT website, what do I find but a freely downloadable 1.1 MB PDF version of the miniscule direct enrolment guidebook.
Was it really too hard for the CIT to say “Check this Saturday’s Canberra Times or see our website”? Considering that many students work on weekends, surely this would have made life easier for a vast majority of those who are seeking enrolment in CIT courses.
I do hope the Canberra Times gave CIT a percentage of the sales revenue for this, as the number of papers sold would surely have been above average thanks to CIT’s advertising…who knows, maybe this theoretical payment helped cover the cost of the advertising…or did I just unwittingly donate $2 to Rural Press? If so, can I claim that back on tax? No!…Hmmm, funny that…
Samuel
January 23rd, 2006 at 02:32pm
The ACT Government has announced an additional 22 mobile speed camera locations. Whilst I’m glad they are monitoring more areas, I don’t approve of the publication of camera locations.
The ACT government have this strange theory that publicising speed camera locations will slow people down, ultimately though, all it does is give motorists a chance to slow down near a speed camera and speed up again once they pass it.
This thread on Canberra Cruises proves this theory, as it clearly shows that people there might slow down around the cameras, but they won’t slow down elsewhere. So what to do?
Well I was chatting with 2CC’s Mike Frame today just after he interviewed an ACT government spokeperson about the new cameras, during this interview Mike seemed to agree with the idea of notifying motorists of speed cameras. I said to Mike that I think we should do away with the conspicuous white vans for speed cameras, and should just have random vehicles in random locations with the speed cameras. This would have much more effect on motorists’ speeds as they would need to avoid speeding altogether in order to avoid fines, demerit points and other punishments. By the end of the conversation Mike seemed to agree that I had a good point.
I really think that the idea of speed cameras being pure revenue raisers is nonsense…if people obeyed the road rules there would be no revenue from speed cameras.
Another thing which I think would help make the roads safer is a licence fee system based on the number of demerit points the licence holder has attracted (I use the word “attratced” because I can’t work out whether one gains or loses demerit points). For example, 0 points = free licence, 1 point = $100 licence, 2 points = $200, 3 points = $400, 4 points = $800, 5 points = $1600, etc.
Of course, an increased covert and marked police presence would help. Covert speed cameras would help keep speed down, whilst covert police cars would help keep other road rules in an unbroken state as you would never know when the police might catch you. Marked police vehicles and foot/bicycle patrols would help keep general law and order in check. It’s pretty simple, but I suppose it just requires funding…
Samuel
January 21st, 2006 at 07:30pm
Robbie McGregor, the voice behind SBS since 1989 has been axed, and will no longer be reading the SBS promos. I guess it had to happen at some stage, but SBS won’t sound the same without him.
I often sit through the five minutes of ads after a show on SBS as I feel like I’m supporting the station by doing so, it also provides me with an opportunity to see what’s coming up on SBS in the near future, which is helpful as program names are often deceptive. SBS will be hard pressed to find another voice of Robbie’s calibre, and will struggle to retain me during ad breaks.
This would appear to be yet another step in the gradual degradation of SBS.
Samuel
January 14th, 2006 at 06:32pm
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