Thanks to Pete for introducing us to that one.
Category: Consciousness
A much nicer font
This is a much nicer font I made using that very cool YourFonts tool. 
You can have it. For free. Download by right clicking and “saving as”. I don’t really expect anyone to use it. It’s just an example of what you can produce using that site.
I know it’s not in the league of my dad’s fonts. Like Foxjump (zip file).
Which was used by the Tasmanian government in its “love this” campaign.
But I spent way too much time today playing with that site.
My font
I finally waded through the YourFont masses and created a quickly written font of my handwriting (right click and save as). This font was constructed with a stubbed niko, two stubbed nikos actually the first was out of ink.
I think I’ll play with this again later.
600
I passed 600 posts four posts ago. That’s a milestone of sorts. My posting rate growth is probably not sustainable – 346 of these posts came since October 2008. The other 258 were spread over a two and a half year period.
Hot chips
The debate rages. I received a bunch of comments on my Facebook status on the question of the superior brand of chip. Here’s an interesting little bit of chip trivia. There are two main players in the Australian chip producing landscape. Arnotts and Smiths (a Frito Lay distributor).
The Real McCoy produce Kettles, Samboy and Tasty Jacks (as reported April 08 – but not reflected on their website). They also distribute Pringles.
Smiths produce Smiths and Red Rock Deli.
Here I was thinking that Red Rock Deli was a successful little boutique chip start up made good. Oh well. Their sweet chilli and sour cream line still scores highly on my taste-o-metre.
Here’s my top ten “potato chip” varieties – this excludes Twisties, Cheezels, Burger Rings, and Cheese, Doritos, CCs, and Bacon Balls – I do appreciate all of those on their merits.
1. Red Rock Deli – Lime and Black Pepper
2. Red Rock Deli – Sweet Chilli and Sour Cream
3. Tasty Jacks – Chicken
4. Kettles – Crunch Cut BBQ Grill
5. Pringles – Texas BBQ Sauce
6. Red Rock Deli – Morrocan Spiced Chicken and Lemon
7. Smiths – Thinly Cut Thai Sweet Chilli
8. Tasty Jacks – BBQ
9. Kettles – Honey Baked Ham
10. Pringles – Sour Cream and Onion
Honourable Mention – Smiths – Thinly Cut Roast Chicken – for longevity.
The best bits – February 3, 2009
Here’s what has excited me from the blogosphere today.
- RITI Printer Uses Your Coffee Grounds For Eco Ink
- How Ninja Work
- MergePDF Combines PDF Documents For Free
- Google Earth 5.0 Beta Released, Looks Incredible
- YourFonts Turns Your Handwriting Into A Personlised Font
- Making coffee with snow
- Most luxurious USB Flash Drives of all time
- I’m sorry, we’re out of time
- Economic Crisis and The Prosperity Gospel
- Security
- How to Lay Someone Off
- Brew the Best Possible Coffee Without Breaking the Bank [Coffee]
- Leah de Jager – the sun has come out for the first time in days… on the day we were supposed to get a cyclone!
Very cool.
I’m all for splashing out on a quality USB drive. But these are ridiculous.
“No one ever leaves a speech or a eulogy or a presentation saying, “I wish it was longer.” Same goes for sermons.
This XKCD comic is particularly shared for my brother in law’s benefit.
Crocs in the backyard
Stuss has posted a little bit of news that has been circulating on the local radio today. A crocodile – reported to be between 2.5 and 3 metres – was hit on one of Townsville’s main roads at 3am today. You need to remember that most people* in north Queensland are fishermen so that figure should be taken with a grain of salt and some chips.
One of the things that is particularly idiosyncratic to the North Queensland psyche is this “siege mentality”, or something close to that, regarding how the rest of the world sees us. The rest of the world thinks North Queensland starts at Gympie. When as far as we’re concerned North Queensland (the government statistical region) starts at Ayr and extends to Cardwell. Townsville is the capital of this region. Far North Queensland stretches from Cardwell to Cooktown. Townsville is also the capital of that region.
We, in Townsville, don’t like it that people attribute things, like Port Douglas’ population of crocodiles that regularly “interact” with local children and animals, to everyone in “North Queensland”. And we don’t like it when cyclones hit somewhere more than 200km away and we all get tarred with the same brush. The confusion is widespread.
Greater north Queensland is anything from Mackay North – and again, Townsville is the capital of that region. Confused? Well weather producers around the country are too – so much so that I was once asked to draft a letter to send to them pointing out that Townsville is much bigger than Cairns and has a bigger economy. We don’t have the penetration in the national psyche that Cairns does thanks to its position as a tourism destination.
Much of the confusion was initially created by Townsville’s “twin city”, Thuringowa, which robbed us of vital population statistics for many years. That confusion has not yet been eradicated by the council amalgamations. But maybe one day Townsville will receive the recognition it deserves.
This is particularly likely if we continue to experience phenomenal weather events and have crocs wandering the streets at night.
It’s a problem of capitalisation. Townsville sees itself as the “capital” of all the different nominal definitions of north Queensland. We are the largest city in northern Australia. Bigger than Darwin (which also suffers a “split personality”). The other “capitalisation” confusion comes when describing north Queensland – we describe greater north Queensland with a little “n” but specifically refer to our part of north Queensland with a capital N. North Queensland is at the heart of north Queensland. Townsville is at the heart of the heart of north Queensland – so we are rightfully the capital. Confused? Good.
*gross exaggeration
Shirt of the Day: Caffeine
Cool shirt from Digital Militia – a website that offers a range of your favourite products in molecular form. That’s caffeine in the image above.
Bedroom philosophers
I am loathe to post links to sites I haven’t read or explored in depth just in case their content is dodgy and gets me in trouble.
But this site – Squashed Philosophers – seems safe, insomuch as it is a site full of condensed synopses of philosophical thinking throughout human history. Obviously that means it’s littered with wrong thinking – but it’s wrong thinking that might explain a lot.
Anyway, interesting reading – each philosopher is condensed into a “half hour read” – and this is just a glorified bookmark so I can find it later.
Perfect for a bit of pre-sleep reading.
Incidentally the name of this post is a reference to the artist behind what I think is the best novelty song ever written… I’m so postmodern (lyrics).
The chips are down
I have made passing reference to the fact that I engage in a series of emailed conversations with my friends Ben, Paul and James. These conversations keep me sane. James was the guy who looked like the guy who eats scorpions – although if like me your workplace blocks Facebook there’s only one photo in that post so you’ll just have to picture him as that guy with the scorpions. Ben has been written about so many times that his name appears as one of the most used tags on this site. Paul, well, you don’t want to see a photo of Paul or have me talk much about him. Lets just call him a man of mystery.
Anyway, today’s discussions rest on potato chips – well that and the infinitely more painful subject of how cool iPhones are. That’s painful for me. I don’t have one. More specifically we’re discussing the superior brand and variety of potato chip.
Based solely on brand and not taking flavour into account my list is as follows*:
1. Pringles
2. Tasty Jacks
3. Red Rock Deli
4. Kettles
5. Smiths crinkle cut
*Potato chips only – doritos and CCs are a different category entirely.
Any advances on this list? Favourite flavours that I should consider in expanding the list to include finer details?
Life in the Tropics
“Life in the Tropics” is our tagline for tourism and relocation promotion here in the ‘ville. It’s one of those suitably generic lines that is meant to be partly aspirational and partly functional. I don’t like it. I do like life in the tropics. We have water, sunshine and temperate winters. And air conditioning. Suffer in your jocks Melbournians (literally).
There are plenty of bad things that come along with the good. When I moved here an ex-Townsvillian friend from Brisbane warned me of several of them. Lets just call her Donna. That’s her real name. She told me that if the crocodiles, stingers, tropical diseases, cyclones, or sunshine didn’t kill me – I’d probably die due to lack of water. She said “it never rains in Townsville”…
For two many years Townsville was known as Brownsville. See what I did there. Two instead of too. I did that on purpose. Townsville started receiving pretty regular rain, and looking green all round, for a couple of years before the rest of the world caught on. Townsville is actually nice. And we have secured water supply. More than four times the size of Sydney Harbour.
What we no longer have is the 300 days of sunshine we claim in our marketing material. There is no way that’s true. Well, it might be, depending on your definition of “sunshine”… I think it rained on about 90 days in my first full year here. And it has rained pretty regularly since.
But I digress. I can put up with that sort of hyperbolic description of tropical life from a jaded ex-resident trying to scare me. But when the same sort of thing comes from a Channel Ten reporter bundling all of those together in the name of “news” I get upset. It creates work for me for one, and number two – it’s shoddy reporting.
So reporters of the world – you can’t have it both ways. Townsville can’t be “brownsville” on one hand and a flooding tropical metropolis on the other.
I don’t even know why I wrote this post. But it was cathartic.
The best bits – February 2, 2009
Here’s what has excited me from the blogosphere today.
- Carly Laird feels that ol’ Ellie has been a little anti-climatic thus far….
- it’s late
- Carly Laird just heard that there is a cyclone coming and REALLY should have listened to Lyle and got her kit together….
- Robyn Campbell ‘s husband just roasted a fresh bag of coffee. Now she feels totally prepared for the cyclone.
- Marge, Marge, the Cyclone’s here…
- I’m okay
- André de Jager asks “cyclone? what cyclone?”
- Robotic Infrared Motion Sensing…Mousetrap Coffee Table?!
- Showing Off Your Insides: The X-Ray Lamp
- Charts: 3
- Charts: 4
- Texas Family Sad That The Buyer Of All Their Possessions On eBay Will Pay But Not Take Their Stuff [Confusing]
- Firefox Snap Links Got Finally Updated
- Marge, Marge, the Cyclone’s here…
- The 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language
- The Review :: Viral Twitter, Law-Breaking Names, and Antisocial Gamers
- Trade Books, CDs & Video Games For Free With SwapTree
- Top 10 Driving and Travel Tips [Lifehacker Top 10]
- Twitteree Recommendations Wanted
Cool firefox add on that lets you highlight a batch of links and open them all in tabs. Brilliant.
Leah on the cyclone.
Cool idea, only available in the US currently but it’s nice to see the social aspect of the internet harnessed this way.
Technology grand master Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired magazine) has the same problems with Twitter that I do. He doesn’t really get it. Me neither. Although I’m trying. The difference – he made one post and has 888 followers, I’ve made about 8 and have 6.
Superman drowned by novelty phone booth
Picture this. There’s a baby hanging from the window of a burning building. Clark Kent is looking for a phone booth to whip out his inner superhero. And all that’s left on the streets of Metropolis are novelty phone booths like the above. Superheroes everywhere are scratching their heads.
Courtesy of Dvice.
The perfect storm name
One last cyclone post. I don’t understand why the weather bureau picks such innocuous names for storms – is it to create an undue sense of ease? Who gets scared by the impending arrival of Larry, Norbert, Katrina or Ellie?
If the Bureau of Meteorology really wanted us to respond accordingly to their warnings they should rebrand cyclones as something to be feared.
I know cyclones are named in alphabetical order and in alternate genders – but the list needs refining.
They should be called Jezebel, Genghis, Adolf, Josef, Saddam and Julius – intimidating names that inspire pictures of destruction.