Tonight I spent maybe 90 minutes walking around the Melbourne CBD. I’m actually a fairly frequent visitor to Melbourne, at one stage I was probably here 3-4 times a year, in more recent years the visits have been less frequent, but todays visit is my second in 6 months.

It was 8pm local time when I left my hotel. I wandered from the Windsor opposite the Victorian Parliament down to the Burke Street Mall, across to Flinders Street Station, Federation Square then back again. Every where I walked there were masses of people and activity. Shops were opened, there were countless small bars and restaurants, and seven elevens are like rabbits, every 4th shop. It’s not New York, there’s no where on the planet that can compare to the Big Apple, but it goes close. I felt safe at all times and I had a smorgasbord of choice.

Melbourne is a true international grade city, complete withcrappy weather, but you cant win everything.

Which takes me to the poor mans excuse for a city: Perth.

I lived in Perth for maybe 18 months when I first moved to WA, and I then spent years working there. Even after moving to “the country” I spent countless weeks in hotels for work functions and training sessions. Although I may no longer live there I believe I’m qualified enough to comment on it.

Perth at night is dead. It’s only marginally better during the day. The difference is that at least during the day Perth is safe. At night it’s not. And it’s not because it’s complete dead, there are people about, at 8pm in the centre of Perth youth gangs brawl in the Murray Street Mall. OK, that’s not entirely fair, because they usually start at 6:15pm.

Melbourne and Perth share a similar history. Both are results of mineral booms. The difference is in the thinking. Where as Melbourne embraces the free market with deregulated trading hours resulting in a living city, Perth continues to embrace the notion of 19th century nanny state thinking. OMG, it’s the end of the earth if shops open past 6pm or worse still, open on a Sunday. The notion that the market, and by nature consumers know best is foreign. But wait, WA had a referendum on this, and the “majority” is opposed to deregulated trading hours. Whilst that is true, around 40% supported the notion. That 40% is enough to make Perth a true international city. Majority rule is absurd when it comes to trading hours: if the majority is opposed they simply don’t have to shop after 6pm. Economics will dictate opening hours, if there are not enough people interested in shopping after 6pm then shops won’t open, and it does not affect those opposed to the notion.

It would be easy to just simply bag Perth, many people from outside the state already do, but Perth has a lot going for it. It’s one of the most scenic cities in the world, it literally competes with Sydney and in many ways the controlled development of Perth has delivered a better outlook; there’s no Blues Point Tower in Perth for example. Western Australia needs a Government with the leadership to take Perth to the next level, the 21st century level that Melbourne currently delivers. Sadly, the Labor Party is better equipped to deliver this, the party of free enterprise (aka The Liberal Pary) has a long history of opposing deregulated trading hours, and it’s one of a couple of key issues that drove me to resign from the Liberal Party in 2005.

WA already knows how hard employment has become, a regular State unemployment rate under 3% is beyond what many economists would agree is a rate of full employment. WA competes with the Eastern States for employees: simply the State needs to a deliver a world class environment to attract internal and external immigration, Perth as it currently stands is nothing really more than a glorified country town. Having said that, I can shop in the country on a Sunday and after 6pm, yet aside from 12-6pm Sunday in the CBD and Fremantle you can’t in Perth, so it’s an insult to some country towns. Lets just hope that one day the States leaders will have gumption to act for the greater good and the future of our State.

I think I’ve mentioned this site before: tornadovideos.net. If you’re like me and you liked Twister and the whole concept of Tornado chasing, it’s a great site. The latest video below.

Touch wood in some respects, given I live in Australia’s “Tornado Alley”, I’m just hoping we don’t get one this year, last year a Tornado devastated Leschenault, literally less than 1km away from my house, and the year before was Bunbury. I was working in town (Bunbury) at that stage and I’ll never forget the devastation, my office at the time was outside of the destruction zone by no more than 2 houses or under 300 metres. I drove that morning to the Bunbury post office around fallen trees and buildings strewn across the road. I didn’t have a camera with me. Today my mobile has one and it will never leave my side.

Now here’s a pleasant change, free WiFi in Western Australia! WiFi is now free in the Qantas Domestic terminal at Perth Airpoirt…least I’ve connected to it for free. Download speed is around 500kps, not super fast but usable. The start of a bigger trend perhaps? We can only hope. I’m looking forward to getting online tonight at the Windsor in Melbourne and seeing how much a 5 star hotel gouges my wallet for internet access; free WiFi at hotels is still a foreign, or as the case may be American concept for the Australian hotel industry. Back to dreaming now….looking at hundreds of people queue for the flight and preparing myself for over 4 hours offline 🙂

Apples Safari browser is now available on Windows.  

I’m under whelmed so far.

Yes it’s quick, but it doesn’t support Aero in Vista. And then there is the font rendering. WTF? Chris Pirillo tells me on Flickr that it’s something to do with settings so I’ll have to play with it some more but the first impression Windows users are going to get is terrible: fuzzy, hard to read fonts.

The real question is what is Apple trying to achieve with this? Steve Jobs did announce that Safari was the key to 3rd party support on the Jesus Phone so maybe that’s why, but if it’s a tool for people to see what running a Mac is like…well, suffice to say it may well be a hindrance than a help.

On the Mac front I’m about 50/50 moving towards 60% for on switching. Price is still my sticking point, but with tax time coming up at the end of the month the company might need to spend so money and given my monitors and other bits and pieces will work with a Mac it’s just a question of making the dive and buying a box. Time will tell I guess, it’s a lot of money and she who must be obeyed isn’t in favour if, and that’s the biggest hurdle of them all 🙂

Czech President Vaclav Klaus:

The environmentalist paradigm of thinking is absolutely static. They neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change, that there is and has been no ideal state of the world as regards natural conditions, climate, distribution of species on earth, etc.

They neglect the fact that the climate has been changing fundamentally throughout the existence of our planet and that there are proofs of substantial climate fluctuations even in known and documented history.

Their reasoning is based on historically short and incomplete observations and data series which cannot justify the catastrophic conclusions they draw.

They neglect the complexity of factors that determine the evolution of the climate and blame contemporary mankind and the whole industrial civilization for being the decisive factors responsible for climate change and other environmental risks.

Why can’t Howard come out and say something like this? It’s right on so many levels.

For every person I’ve argued  this with, not one has been able to explain global warming prior to now, best represented to me by the Romans growing grapes and producing wine in Britain 2000 years ago. That things are getting warmer I think isn’t in doubt, what is in serious doubt is the cause and result.

via Tim Blair

This YouTube clip has over 1million views, I’ll let it speak for itself 🙂

Picked up a copy of APC Magazine on the weekend. I very rarely buy computer magazines, after all why would anyone want to pay to read news that is 2 months old?… but I am rather impartial to the DVD’s.

I met a few of the folks from APC Magazine at a conference last year. Short form, lots of attitude and they basically turned there noses down at me as nothing more than a worthless blogger and basically wouldn’t even speak to me. Of course ironically I’m currently writing for an audience elsewhere that is a thousands of times bigger than their little magazine, but this isn’t the point of this post 🙂

So I’m playing with the DVD and they’ve included Yahoo To Go, Yahoo’s PVR software. Immediate thought: great, it’s finally available for Australians, when Yahoo had originally released it about 18 months ago it was US only, and painfully you only found this out by installing it then trying to run it (it geo-blocks based on IP). So I install Yahoo To Go and what do you know, it is still limited to the US only. Basically the folks a APC didn’t even try testing the software they are advertising on their DVD. And these folks turn their noses down at me? Tell you what, a blogger would be a far lot more thorough than these guys any day.

Why are Macs so expensive in Australia

This is extremely good news:

TiVo, the time-shifting digital video recorder that became a household name in the US, will come to Australia in 2008.

For a small subscription fee plus the price of the hardware, Australians will be able to pause live high definition TV, fast-forward ads, record shows and series from any of the free-to-air digital TV channels, and access broadband content such as video-on-demand.

The company today announced a partnership with the Seven Network, which will build the digital platform behind the service.

Seven CEO David Leckie said the move would “vastly extend” the overall viewing experience of television viewing.

I unplugged my MCE box and substituted it for a Zensonic High Def Media player/ DVD player when I bought my Sony Bravia 40″ X Series but I miss the functionality of being able to record TV…and obviously having an proper, working Australian EPG will make TiVo a killer app.

The SMH reports on a Choice survey of Australian flyers that rated Qantas as the worst international airline flying out of Australia and 3rd out of 4 domestic airlines, the Qantas owned Jetstar coming 4th.

According to radio reports Australians fly Qantas out of habit, and the frequent flyer program and safety record also help.

The real shocking thing is that Qantas is acting all surprised and quoting other surveys to belittle these survey results. Memo to Qantas: you’ve been crap for years. You’ve never listened to your customers before so there’s no great surprise that you’d ignore them now.

I only fly Qantas domestically myself due to the full in-flight service and frequent flyers, yet if there was another Ansett in terms of choice I’d never fly Qantas again (and indeed, when there was Ansett I never flew Qantas then). I also try to avoid Qantas on overseas flights as well. Where do I start? Rude staff, never, ever on-time, crap in-flight seating and service…fly Cathay Pacific and you’ll see the difference and what a decent airline can deliver.

It’s also why I never got the whole populous outrage thing that went on when Qantas was subject to an overseas takeover offer. Good old fashioned xenophobia at work when we all know Qantas needs a serious kick up the arse, and certainly new owners couldn’t do any worse.