Today is fathers day in Australia, and my thoughtful 4 year old gave me a gift I’m sure to get many hours of enjoyment out of, Absolute Power Series 1. Although it was made in 2003, the ABC has only recently showed the series here and I only managed to catch a few episodes, but what I saw was bloody brilliant stuff, and I’m looking forward to sitting down and watching the entire first series.

(if you’re in Australia you can get it from the ABC Shop here, it doesn’t seem to be available in the US, but you can get it from Amazon UK.)

Tags: Absolute Power, Stephen Fry

I was having a look around the Australian Media Centre Community Boards this evening and I found this: EPG Stream, a free, working, integrated MCE EPG for Australia…and when I say integrated I mean it, unlike some of the other half arsed efforts out their by people to deliver Australian program guides into MCE via command line and some other awful ways, you just install it and it works within MCE via remote control….and they even support WIN in Western Australia (which is particularly good as WIN here is actually bits from both Channel 9 and 10). No GWN unfortunately, but given the programming is 98% identical to 7 no problems at all. No support for ABC 2 either…but you can’t have everything, and missing 1 channel out of the 8 FTA Channels isn’t bad. After nearly 2 years of MCE computing I’ve finally got a working, 14 day EPG guide that updates itself and just works….suffice to say I’m very, very pleased. Now if only I could sort out the MCE Mame integration… 🙂

Tags: Windows XP MCE, Australian EPG

Just noticed this post over on Southern ByWays (a b5media blog) on a recipe for “sweet tea…southern style” which made me think: I don’t get cold tea. It seems to be a big American thing, and whilst you can still buy cans of “Lipton Ice” at supermarkets in Australia, they don’t sell a lot of it…and they don’t taste awfully nice either. Why drink tea cold when you can drink it properly? ie hot. But then again it could just be me, I buy my Twinings English Breakfast tea bags in the 100 bag box, and I’ve always got a sealed jar of Twinings English Breakfast tea leaf in the cupboard for when I’m not feeling lazy…and I’ve never acquired a taste for coffee 🙂

I think it’s probably raining to much for there to be a tornado today, but I’ve got the camera ready just in case…and certainly on my drive into town today the Preston and Collie Rivers looked like they were pretty close to bursting…so maybe I can get some flooding shots 🙂

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING
For people in the Lower West District as well as adjacent parts of the SouthWest District, including Perth, Mandurah and Bunbury.
Issued at 9:30 am on Tuesday 22 August 2006

A deep low pressure system near the southwest Capes is producing squally showers and thunderstorms over the southwest of the state. Locally damaging winds gusts to 100 kilometres per hour are possible and could result in damage to property. Conditions are expected to ease early this afternoon as the low moves southeast.

At 08:58 am a gust to 94 kilometres per hour was recorded at Rottnest Island. The FESA – State Emergency Service advises that people should secure loose items and stay indoors when strong winds develop. Boat owners should ensure that small craft are securely moored. Driving conditions will be hazardous.

I looked at my Telstra bill during the week, and I’m seriously considering dumping my Telstra landline…nearly half the bill is made up of Telstra charges: I pay extra to have my number not listed, I pay extra to have call number display…it’s stupid and given I’ve got a 2mb Cable connection I don’t need a landline for DSL.

Wondering if anyone out there has any experience or can recommend a decent Australian VOIP carrier?

I’ve taken a look at Engin, as much as I’d have to get a new number, at least I can get a Bunbury Area (0897) number and the rates look ok, I make a fair few calls to mobiles and 27 cents a minute isn’t bad..although annoyingly they aren’t included in the “free” calls you get as part of the monthly service fee.

For people outside of Australia, Skype really is not an option: I can’t get a local number and to be honest the call quality isn’t always that flash when you call landlines on it.

The fun part for me: all the phone points in the house a wired using Cat 5, so to change a phone point to a data point is as difficult as me changing plugs/ points in the service box, and chuck the VOIP adapter in there as well 🙂

Is it just me or does David Tench Tonight completely and utterly suck? One can’t help than think that Channel Ten has outdone itself in the crap stakes…I thought Jasmins Getting Married was bad, this has got to be the single worst television show I have ever watched on TV in Australia. I lasted maybe 4-5 minutes into the program…the puppet/ computer animation, what ever the f*ck David Tench is suppose to be, chuckling away at his own lame jokes in his interview with Pat Rafter was Cringe TV with a Capital C. It really says something for my liking really that I actually found Australian Celebrity Survivor a far better watch last night than David Tench…but maybe it’s just me.

Tags: David Tench

Attention all 5 country WA Bloggers!

I’m on GWN News tonight at 5:30pm (AWST) commenting on the building boom/ land shortage issue…you should see me mumble something and then walking to my front door for all of about 5-10 seconds during the piece…I think our house and my RAV 4 gets a better shot than me, but oh well …YouTube video to follow 🙂

And why…well apparently I’m an average resident…or as the case was the only resident who works from home on my entire estate that the Estate Agents were familiar with 🙂

Mozilla sucks! I feel better now.

Why? well isn’t open source suppose to be about being open, flexible and giving users a choice? Then why is it that it’s near on IMPOSSIBLE to take email from Thunderbird and use it in another program…but before ppl jump up and down, saying thats the fault of other program makers, it isn’t, because Thunderbird doesn’t have an export facility for email, whilst oddly enough nearly every single other email client (including Microsoft products) out there does! I think since yesterday, when I finally threw my hands up in the air at the continual problems I have been having with Thunderbird, I’ve wasted something like 6-8 hours trying to get my email out of Thunderbird and into Outlook. During this time I’ve downloaded 3 other email clients, 4 so-called conversion programs, and managed to pick up some nice computer viruses (or should that be virii) along the way…grrrr. I’m sticking with Firefox, but Thunderbird be damned!

It’s census time again…has it really been 5 years, and god bless the ABS, I can do it online using Firefox.

Some interesting questions:

I thought about adding Mongolian…but you know. Interesting short list though. Spanish doesn’t get a look in here.

OK, I didn’t actually submit this exact response….. 🙂

I need help getting out of bed sometimes, does this count?

They don’t want to know where my son works…hmmm…

Tags: census

Exciting…sort of, but not for the people who were worst affected, bloody strong winds though….there’s a bizarre buckle in my brushwood fence, and sand everywhere…but nothing else is damaged. The Tornado struck just over the river from where I am….too close for comfort.

Tags: Australind Tornado