Lest We Stay Silent

Watch out! Abandoned plush toys have taken over the monument at Supreme Court Gardens in protest at their mistreatment.

Almost equal

Last night the one vote one electoral reforms passed through the Legislative Council. While the reforms aren't perfect and it isn't exactly one vote one value - several isolated country electorates will still have small gerrymanders - it's a start. Well done to all those that took the time and effort to pass these momentous and long overdue reforms. As for those that opposed them, you have only yourselves to blame. You had your chance to be part of it and you chose to close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and hum. A curse on all your houses. You placed your own personal gains over the good of the community.

With noble intentions

Given that now any anti-establishment action is seemingly viewed as an act of terrorism, it seems that the terrorists have finally had a win. In the Geelong County Court. According to this story Ralph Hahnheuser was found not guilty of deliberately setting out to cause economic loss.

Ralph was the guy that finally figured out how to stop live sheep exports to the Middle-East. His solution: just throw some ham into their feed. Sheep eat the feed along with the ham and bingo the sheep are now no longer considered clean. The funky Middle-Easterners won't accept dirty sheep - having worked on a farm let me tell you the idea of a clean sheep is a myth.

Now that Ralph has been found not guilty everyone is free to add a handful or two of ham to the sheep feed. Pretty soon no live sheep export trade. Which is good for the sheep, but bad for the trade balance - if you care about that sort of thing. Okay, maybe it's not so good for the sheep because they still end up dead and miss out on an all-expenses paid cruise, and maybe it's also bad for the farmers (remember them?). So, I guess there's only one thing left to say:

does this roast lamb taste like ham to you?

Gambling just doesn't add up

One from the People who shouldn't be allowed to breed file.

Smile if you did it

Internet Cleanup Day

It's that time again!

As many of you know, each year the Internet must be shut down for 24 hours in order to allow us to clean it. The cleaning process, which eliminates dead email and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites, allows for a better working and faster Internet.

This year, the cleaning process will take place from 12:00 a.m. GMT on May 31 until 11:59 a.m. GMT on June 1 (the time least likely to interfere with ongoing work). During that 24-hour period, five powerful Internet search engines situated around the world will search the Internet and delete any data that they find.

In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you do the following:

1. Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from their Internet connections.


2. Shut down all Internet servers, or disconnect them from the Internet.


3. Disconnect all disks and hard drives from any connections to the Internet.


4. Refrain from connecting any computer to the Internet in any way.

We understand the inconvenience that this may cause some Internet users, and we apologize. However, we are certain that any inconveniences will be more than made up for by the increased speed and efficiency of the Internet, once it has been cleared of electronic flotsam and jetsam.

We thank you for your cooperation.

It's an email that has been circulating for years. Isn't it amazing what some people will believe?

Wanking for fun and profit

From the I-told-you-so-files, a pornstar in Mexico has just launched a new range of moisturising cream. Made from human semen. The actress, Lyn May - who is in her sixties, swears that it erases wrinkles and leaves skin soft (and a little sticky). If proven effective we may see a sudden spurt in the guide dog industry.

You In?

Feeling low? Need a lift? Then you obviously need some ice-cold gomutram. That's cow urine to the rest of us. And no, I'm not taking the piss. It's the latest fad in Hyderabad. Apparently, you can kill the smell by adding some essence while you're consuming it. So start your day with a wee. Drink genuine, pure gomutran. Now available in 44 litre family pack.

What I'd like to know is who's the joker that first tried it.

A door closes. A window...we'll see

I'm sick and tired of jumping through hoops for Access 31. Today I was offered a chance to have Byte Me shown on Foxtel and I went for it. It doesn't mean we'll likely get shown any earlier than July (although June is a possibility) but it does mean our show will go national. Foxtel looks so much better on the resume than Channel 31.

On a similar front, a week ago we were asked to put forward some ideas for a show for one of the Foxtel channels. Lots of emails followed. Today we started putting things into place for the making of a pilot episode for one of those ideas. This doesn't mean the show - or even the pilot for that matter - will ever happen, but it's a start. More if it happens.

I lied

QOTD

We saw our President undermined, mocked and emasculated by his own wife on the most public of stages, and at a time when his manliness is already under attack. We saw the leader of the free world seemingly unable to lead his own family. Mr. President, as God's elected represented here on earth, you owe it to every American to live your life as an example to us. And that example extends to the behavior of your wife, Mrs Bush, as well.

-- Coalition for Traditional Values

It's fake btw, but it must be true if FOX is reporting it =).

Elephant Joke

I saw this on rec.humor.funny.reruns and had to share:

Six wise, blind elephants were discussing what humans were like. Failing to agree, they decided to determine what humans were like by direct experience.

The first wise, blind elephant felt the human, and declared, "Humans are flat."

The other wise, blind elephants, after similarly feeling the human, agreed.

Temporally Conventional

And by the way for those of you wanting a review of the Time Travel Convention, all I can say is that I personally found it a major letdown. Within minutes of arriving I got into a huge fight with myself and then had to throw myself out for brawling. Again.

Film music

I spent much of today scouring the net for some music that will eventually be used in a film project that I'm developing. We're not talking pirated stuff here. We're talking about music either released into the public domain or under an appropriate Creative Commons licence. There are lots of versions of the Creative Commons licence that an artist can release their work under. I'm looking for work released under one that will allow me to make derivative commercial works - films - with few strings attached. My preferred choice is the By Attribution Licence.

There are quite a few tracks available under the By Attribution Licence but locating them isn't easy. Soundclick has a good selection but the search process involves visiting every artist's site and looking through their list of music to see if some are released under the licence. Most aren't and many that are aren't appropriate for what I want to use them for or are downright crap. If only Soundclick had a search parameter for searching by licence.

The Creative Commons website itself has a basic search function that provides listings of websites that reputedly have music (and other material) released under Creative Commons. Unfortunately, most of the sites don't have downloadable music, although it does have a link to the website of a brilliant musician named Derek Audette. I used a piece of his music in our film The Audition.

But getting back to the point of this post, and yes it does have one other than babbling on about copyright licences, while I was searching through Soundclick I noticed a familiar pattern amongst its listings. Soundclick has a category called Film Music, that is a sub-genre of Classical. Most of the stuff in there is exactly what I'm after, but unfortunately most isn't released under an appropriate licence. In fact many of the so-called pieces of Film Music are released under a Creative Commons licence that prevents derivative works. Isn't that kind of defeating the point of Film Music?

By the way, if anyone knows of any good repositories of public domain/by attribution music or any budding artists that want to see their work used in film then drop me a line (I'm particularly looking for symphonic pieces). As I said, I spent a sizable portion of today looking and I only found two tracks.

The Real Paris

The wax dummy of Paris Hilton at Madame Tussaud's looks nothing like her. She's clothed. She's standing instead of on her back. Her legs aren't spread. I will admit though that the dummy has much more personality. I mean the wax one btw.

Good Reasons - we're just not telling what they are

Well, we appealed Access 31's decision to not offer a slot for Byte Me before July. And they rejected the appeal very concisely:

With good reason our previous advice regarding this matter remains unchanged and your request is declined.

So what are these good reasons? Apparently they're refusing to tell us. More as it becomes available.

For want of a nail (or a plug-in)

A few months back I mentioned that CTV Perth was checking out Sony's new HDR-FX1 and that because Adobe hadn't finished programming the necessary plug-in for Premiere Pro they had some problems using the High-Definition bit of the High-Definition camera.

Well, I'm happy to say that the plug-in is now available, which is just as well, because I found out today that we're expecting four of the cameras later this month. That doesn't mean we'll get them, but that's when they're due.

To be honest it wouldn't matter if we got them tomorrow because despite the fact that we have the necessary plug-in, the editing machines we use aren't of high enough spec to run it. Upgrades for the computers are also due later this month, but I'm not holding my breath for them either. But, with a lot of luck and many fat wads of Lotterywest cash, by the end of the year - we just might be able to produce a 1080i high-definition television programme. Pity Access31 can't broadcast a HD signal.

Change the channel. It's a repeat.

Now, if I was a cynic, and I am, I'd suggest that the surest way for the Howard-Costello Government to remove all the bad headlines that have been flooding the airwaves and filling the papers over the last few weeks would be to regurgitate that old favourite: leadership speculation. 'A slip of the tongue,' Howard claims, 'I was misquoted.' And he calls Costello to explain. While Costello just happens to be having dinner with a bunch of journalists from The Age. Come on, I've seen this on The West Wing. It worked there too, because the media is nothing if not predictable when it comes to leadership speculation. Someone give these hacks a clue.

Nobody to blame but themselves

You know, I'm not prone to bigotry or racism, but every now and then I'm tempted. Particularly when people make comments like this:

A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world

Now I was tempted to just include it as a Quote of the Day (yes, that is what QOTD stands for if you hadn't worked it out), just put it down to a slip of the tongue or the ramblings of an ex-boxer that took one-hundred too many to the head, but I just couldn't let it pass without comment. Stupidity needs to be confronted, ridiculed and eradicated and this, folks is rampant stupidity at its worst.

Now, if I was a bigot I would say that despite Arabic and Islamic community protests to the contrary, Sheik Faiz Mohamad's views about women are more than a mere anomalous view held by a handful. No, they're a widely-held view in the Islamic-Arab community. Think Taliban. Think Sudan. Think Saudi-Arabia. If I was a bigot I would say that.

I would also say, that this attitude is the justification for the hajib or burka: to hide women from all but their husbands in the belief that men can't control their sexual lustings when confronted with a constant barrage of bareskin. That Islamic-Arab men are too weak to control themselves and need to subjucate their womenfolk so as to not cause themselves unnecessary embarrassments.

I would then go on to say that any man that believes that because a woman is raped she must have been asking for it, must be so out of control of his own sexual behaviour that he is a serious risk to the community. That he needs to be incarcerated, undergoing constant psychological exams and work programs until he is able to control his desires.

And then I would say to the Sheik that equivalent of saying that rape victims have nobody to blame but themselves would be to say that if someone were to shoot a sheik for making a ludicrously stupid comment, then that shiek he would have nobody to blame but himself. That is what I would say if I was a bigot.

Fortunately I'm not, but sometimes I'm mighty tempted. Stop making it so easy for the bigots.

Update

Firstly, for those of you wondering (all one of you) why we've been so silent over the last few weeks it is because of high work loads followed by a week of bed-ridden sickness. Both of us.

We've been attempting to finish the final few episodes for our television series Byte Me. Byte Me is all about computers and the people that use them. We've covered a broad variety of topics including: blogging; encryption; how to choose a good password; OpenSource WA; an interview with Cray Inc's CTO, Steve Scott; and the IBM computer museum. It's something we've been working on for a little over a year now and we're bloody proud of it. It's not just aimed at geeks, either. We've managed to create a programme that anyone with even the barest fascination with computers or access to the internet will find interesting.

The original plan was to show it on Access 31. We submitted it to them months ago and we've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a response. Today we got one. They love it, but can't show it until the first week of July.

Now, let me point out (for the non-locals and those that have been living under a Lesmurdie rock for the last 10 years) that Access31 is a community television station. Its sole purpose is to broadcast community-based television shows - ie local content. And yet, instead of Perth-based shows we get hours of Deutsch-Welles (German tv), Voice of America, pre-WW2 films and old BBC serials (Coronation Street). You'd think that they'd be scrambling to grab and promote a Perth show, but there's no room because the schedule is too full of overseas crap that can't get a run on a commercial station. And by the way, before you suggest their schedules are made up months in advance, they're not. It's a political decision. There's no advertising money in new, unproven Perth-based community shows. Even great ones. If we were a paying sponsored programme they would have found a slot for us months ago. We're appealing the decision, so stay-tuned.

On another matter, our post Bad Headline Day made it into rec.humor.funny One Liner digest. Woohoo!