Sick of people stealing your pen? Me too. I hate it. My pens go missing from my desk at an alarming rate. The worst bit is when you see the aforementioned writing device in someone else’s mouth. get the pen back complete with fresh teeth marks. Your troubles will be a distant memory if you invest the $US1.69 to purchase this pen.
Found here. I can’t believe someone made this – and worse, I can’t believe I posted it… or maybe I can.
These old people are being taught cane-fu. The ultimate in “aged care”. Found here.
“In the two-hour session, participants are taught a sampling of moves to use in different situations. The cane can simply be swung in circles, used to grab a foot or neck, and fashioned into a bat or poker. Advanced techniques even show a senior how to use a cane to ward off someone with a gun or knife.”
“You just don’t realize how much pain you could put on somebody really quick,” said 61-year-old Ed Smoak of Pinellas Park. “Nobody thinks of a cane as being any kind of an impressive weapon but even a person like me — I’m disabled, like I said I don’t move real well — and even me, I could do this.”
Apparently the God’s of Olympus celebrated Easter by chowing down on Ferrero Rocher.
Depending on which camp you come from Easter is either the ultimate Christian holiday or a pagan festival for the Goddess of fertility.
Probably both. Historically at least. In terms of the position in the calendar.
It is regardless of your position, enshrined in the western world’s calendar as a chance to reflect on the death of Christ and celebrate his resurrection.
It is not a celebration of the Greek gods who accidentally dropped some chocolates from the sky.
Interesting article that talks a bit about a proposed “right to privacy”…
And so, extensions for Chrome begin in earnest.
Under the radar. Clearly we lost the first two games of the season on purpose.
Tired of people waffling on about life on the farm* now you can shut up said waffling with an appropriately shaped waffle… mmm, waffle.
Located by Foolish Gadgets – available on Amazon.
*To my wife or inlaws reading this post – no, I’m not. It’s just an intro.
One of the surprises coming out of the reporting of election results from the weekend is the lack of “Pitt the younger” references coming out of the seat of Mulgrave, where Curtis succeeded his dad Warren.
What a shame. That would have been clever. ABC make passing reference in their election coverage, but other than that… nothing.
I received an email today with a media release from Australian Traveller magazine. They’ve named Australia’s 100 best towns. Top of the list is pretty close to my childhood stomping ground of Maclean, Yamba. Awesome. Go the North Coast.
“Residents of Yamba, the sleepy and secret fishing village (population 5600) at the mouth of the Clarence River on NSW’s North Coast, may be upset at being named the Best Town in Australia. Their idyllic secret is out and they may have to share.”
If you’ve never been there you should definitely go. After holidaying in Townsville of course.
Dalby didn’t make the list. A travesty, obviously, but Picnic Bay on Magnetic Island did.
The methodology was pretty scientifically sound:
“A panel of tourism & travel experts decided the 100 Best Towns. The panellists were presented with a shortlist of 300 towns and asked: “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend a friend add one hour to their trip just to visit this town?” The answers were tabulated and the 100 Best Towns revealed.”
The full list will be available on the Australian Traveller website tomorrow.
If you are running a competition in Queensland you are not permitted to offer the following as a prize(PDF)…
Something to think about…
Prohibited Prizes
Prohibited prizes in a promotional game are:
User generated content based competitions are all the rage. They encourage better consumer engagement and produce content and ideas a corporation may not have the budget to produce by itself. But they’re open for abuse. They can be hijacked – particularly if someone with a big enough following turns on you.
I like Stephen Colbert a lot. So I’m hoping NASA goes through with its promise to name a new space module after the most popular response to a recent competition.
“NASA’s mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report” to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.
NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters “the most consideration.””
Let that be a lesson to anybody running user generated popularity contests – it means you have no control over the outcome. And if you do choose to exercise your right to disregard the competition it will be terrible PR. Unless you’re the people who put people into space – your coolarity is already so high that you can get away with just about anything.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a link to garfield minus garfield a few weeks back. It’s a great existential journey through Jon Arbuckle’s head… you should check it out if you didn’t see it then.
This week Garfield has been lost in translation – translated out of English into Japanese and then literally back into English again. With the following effect:
Apparently Senator Conroy is not the Internet killing free speech hating barbarian the Internet community claims.
I’ve been having a lengthy email conversation with the guy who called me a Greens Party Stooge (which still hurts) and he pointed me to this article and these quotes:
Conroy also reiterated that the Government has made clear which content is to be filtered and how.
It will attack RC [refused classification] content, he said, by the same rationale ACMA already classifies content under the existing Broadcasting Services Act for television, radio and print publications.
“There is no political content banned in the existing Broadcasting Services Act,” he said.
“We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth – like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here.”
How it is done “will be guided by the outcome of the trials.”
Most of the assertions otherwise are “patently a scare campaign [against] a policy objective we think is fair and reasonable,” he said.
I have no doubt there is good intention behind this plan. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like child pornography or other illegal stuff being on the internet – including piracy.
But while I think this “policy objective” is fair and reasonable the policy being promoted to achieve it is not. If this is the case – why the secrecy? If this is the case why are there two trials – one of the ACMA blacklist, and one of a smaller list of illegal sites? And why is Whirlpool facing fines for providing a link to the leaked ACMA blacklist – which demonstrated the lack of vetting of content added to the list (eg a dentist’s site).
So, Conroy wants us to “show good faith” – how bout showing the people of Australia some good faith by making the blacklist process as open and transparent as the classification process? The argument that the blacklist based filter will be “opt in” doesn’t hold water if those who don’t opt in don’t know what’s on it.
Personally, given the choice, I’ll sign up to the filtered version. But that should be my decision – and we should know what we can’t access when signing up.
Threadless has extended the $5 sale until the end of March.
Three posts ago I hit 1,000 posts. I’ll do some sort of best of those 1,000 posts to celebrate in the next day or so. To me, every one of them is like a wicket for Glenn McGrath – I remember them all. Maybe.
Speaking of Cricket. Australia has an all rounder. A bowling all rounder. Mitchell Johnson. He’s from Townsville you know.
Here’s Roebuck’s view on Johnson’s all round credentials:
“Several of the batsman had fallen foul of Harris’s Disease, the name nowadays given to batsmen who suddenly play boneheaded shots against apparently innocuous spinners. Hereabouts the main topic on spectators’ tongues concerned the tourists’ ability to take the match into a fifth day.
The next hour was startling as the Australian’s launched a two-pronged attack. Johnson’s innings is etched in the memory. After a quite start, he hurried to 50 in 51 balls whereupon he raised the tempo sufficiently to reach three figures in 86 balls. He did not swipe. He did not depend on luck. Instead he produced a stream of swashbuckling strokes all around the wicket, executed with a free and full swing of the bat.
Some of his strokes stirred the cricketing soul. Johnson took the ball on the rise and dispatched it through extra-cover or he stayed still and smote lifters into the 10th row at deep mid-wicket. Without exception his pulls and hooks went forward of square. Some of them dashed past mid-on. Moving in for the kill, the South Africans tossed the ball to Makhaya Ntini and Dale Steyn. Even Jacques Kallis had a crack and he, too, was swiftly swamped.”
Here’s a clock that’ll keep you alarmed but probably not alert. First of all it sings Amazing Grace to you. Then it will read you a random bible verse.
It’s also tastefully printed with “The Prayer of St Francis”.
