K-Ruddy handout

For those who missed the news today – K-Rudd is giving something back to the workers of Australia. $950 a pop. The comrades in arms who have contributed to our time of economic prosperity. No doubt we’ll also be told to spend this cash to help stimulate the economy.

So now the question is “what to buy” – I wouldn’t mind spending it all on crappy USB products from Hong Kong… but can I suggest that if you want to make a positive contribution to reducing the abortion rate in Australia that you check out Free Money for New Lives a support service for mums who would otherwise have abortions.

The campaign was put together by a bunch of bible college students in Sydney and is a nice way for Christians to do something about the issue rather than picketing clinics where women are making pretty intense emotional decisions and are often close to psychological breaking point.

The group splits contributions between a couple of organisations. One aims to financially help mothers who want to keep their babies but are worried about the cost, and the other is a think tank – the Womens Forum Australia – that:

“works across the usual political and religious divides, to advocate for life affirming, pro-woman alternatives to abortion which would enhance women’s freedom to have their babies.”

In the end probably a much better cause than spending your money at “Brando” – which is a USB gadget seller based in Hong Kong. Spending your money off shore isn’t going to stimulate the economy at all anyway, so K-Rudd wouldn’t endorse that.

February 3, 2009

My font

nathans-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.

February 3, 2009

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.

February 3, 2009

Stacks of fun

One BILLION DOLLARS. That’s what it looks like people. It’s in $100 notes and is a US billion. Which is different to the rest of the world. So it’s 10 million $100 notes.

The same artist has also stacked up your life* in Rolex hourglass sand.

*81 years.

Via Gizmodo

February 3, 2009

Fontastic

Fonts are fun. I shared a link to this site in the “best bits” post below but it’s worth a post all of its own.

YourFonts will create a font from your handwriting for “FREE” (as in beer). Will upload mine when it’s done.

February 3, 2009

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.

February 3, 2009

The best bits – February 3, 2009

February 3, 2009

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

February 3, 2009

Caffeink

This new printer is going to give caffeine addicts a new quick fix. Struggling through the onset of a caffeine headache? Just eat that document you’ve just printed.

That’s right. This technology uses used coffee grounds as ink. That’s a printer that would be pretty sustainable in our household. Currently we put our coffee grounds in the garden. It’s a labour intensive printing process – but ink is pretty expensive and apparently bad for the environment. 

Found via Slashdot.

February 3, 2009

No smog

You may have heard that the atheists are banding together to advertise. In possibly the weakest advertising campaign ever they’ve booked some bus billboards and are running this ad:

That’s right. The best they could do was “there’s probably no God”. Talk about not being able to stand on their convictions. The call to action – “now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. Over at the solapanel Mark Baddeley has a great post on what’s wrong with this campaign. I’m all for freedom of speech.  And it seems this campaign is making a very secular society consider the question of God’s existence – which can only be a good thing. 

The reason I’m writing this post is there is a most excellent site where you can make your own bus ad. 

Here’s mine:

There's probably no smog. So go outside and breathe deeply

There's probably no smog. So go outside and breathe deeply

Kind of lame – but I started with “there’s probably no dog” and then tried a series of words that rhymed with dog. I’m sure I could do better. But this makes what I believe is an important statement.

So, if you’re a dissatisfied atheist, or a theist with a better idea than a smog slogan, share your slogans in the comments, and go make your own.

February 3, 2009

Shirt of the Day: Caffeine

 

http://www.digitalmilitia.com/caffeine-shirt.php?ref=pdm

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.

February 2, 2009

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).

February 2, 2009

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?

February 2, 2009

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.

February 2, 2009

My head hurts

So I’ve got this headache. It may be because I’m still sick. It may be because I don’t drink enough water. But it could also be a “barometric headache” – a headache due to atmospheric pressure – particularly due to low pressure.

It sounds unbelievable. But also makes  sense. Weather and conditions should have some impact on our health. I do have a scar on my thumb that gets itchy ahead of rain. It’s probably something to do with changing humidity levels or something like that…

But I’ve got to ask – does anybody have any weird weather induced conditions? Pre-rain itches and the like…

February 2, 2009