They’ve obviously not been to certain parts of Western Sydney 🙂
From the Atlantic:
The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s McMansions into tomorrow?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s tenements.
(full article here).
Exactly the same thing happening in Australia.
…and not just in Victoria, where it’s snowing in the Alpine Regions in February (usually the hottest month of summer) and I’m currently dressed in winter gear.
All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s?Ǭ†GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here.?Ǭ†?Ǭ†The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the?Ǭ†warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn’t itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Wasn’t it suppose to be getting hot right now? 😉
Mao Ze Rudd is going to make R rated games legal, a good thing, and yet they want to censor the interwebs from sex and anything else that might be offensive on the given day they pass the legislation, and the giveaways they’ll give to Fielding to get it through the Senate.
Don’t get me wrong, I support the gaming move, but you’d think the Government was being run by American Republicans: violence is OK, sex is bad. All that stuff about Ruddy being a bible basher was true, wasn’t it… I can sense the mythical hand of God in Government policy, after all there could be no other rational explanation for their dyslexic censorship regime. Conroy’s probably tacking tips from Huckabee 🙂
PO Box 8164 Camberwell North, VIC 3124
With choice strangely comes scarcity. I started at the Camberwell West LPO because it’s easier to get a car park there (despite being further) but they had no boxes, so I ended up at Camberwell North which is within reasonable walking distance but being on Burke Road is a pain for parking…and clearways as well, so it’s not as though I’ll be able to stop briefly in the morning after taking the boy to school. There’s something like 5 post offices just in Camberwell, all but the main one are LPO’s. We use to complain about LPO’s in the West because they never gave as good a service, but I have to say the local Camberwell North was very plesant, husband and wife running it. V. Small, but just sort of country nice in the middle of the chaos that is Melbourne.
…launches an experimental satellite that will provide internet speeds upto 1.2gb/s (1200mb/s)
Via CNN
Japan launched a rocket Saturday carrying a satellite that will test new technology that promises to deliver “super high-speed Internet” service to homes and businesses around the world.
If the technology proves successful, subscribers with small dishes will connect to the Internet at speeds many times faster than what is now available over residential cable or DSL services.
The Associated Press said the satellite would offer speeds of up to 1.2 gigabytes per second.
The service initially would focus on the Asia-Pacific region close to Japan, a JAXA news release said.
“Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances,” JAXA said.
This is fairly amazing. Next step has to be a meteor or comet you’d think
The news tonight quoted economists saying that the RBA will lift rates 4x this year, and soon Australian’s will be paying double digital interest rates.
The Recession We Had To Have Mk 2 is around the corner.
Consider that when interest rates last peaked, housing was that much more affordable. The place I spent my teen years in Sydney in cost my folks $120,000 in 1987, the sold it for something like $250,000 in 1994. The same house today would be worth something like $1-1.2million
Even if we look at more humble property, average house prices vary from $300k-$600k in the capital cities, most people with mortgages will owe on average 70-80% on that. Recent figures I read suggested that the average mortgage in Australia was now $305,000 or similar. 1 or 2% on top of what they’re now paying is hundreds a month, even 3 figures a week. People will bleed, people will lose.
The solution: not entrenching RBA independence as Rudd has done, the RBA are to blame here. Take it off them. So what if inflation is slightly above 3%, we can sustain 4-5% fairly reasonably. The RBA is going to destroy middle Australia, and as much as the economic conditions are mostly the Howard Governments fault, Rudd is the guy who can fix this, and he’s not going to.
I’ve got till October to earn 510 more status points to qualify for Qantas FF Gold, which means free Qantas Club. I’ll probably (well definitely) miss that target, but I need 110 to retain Silver before October (business class check in, and preference on seats), and that means one return trip to the States.
Here’s a rough travel plan for the next month.?Ǭ†
Move to Melbourne (1 way): 21 February (TBC)
Sydney for Adobe function: 26/27 February
Las Vegas for Microsoft Mix: leave 3 March, return 8 March (landing the 10th).?Ǭ†
I’ve never been to Las Vegas before, and the Venetian as well. I’m looking forward to it, and thanks to Nick for making the trip happen, it’s just sad that he won’t be there as well.
The removalist (BTW that’s a real word, at least in Australia, ppl have asked me about that before) dropped off the boxes today for my move to Melbourne. Instead of coming Thursday they’re now coming Wednesday, which gives me 4 days to pack, lodge my business and personal tax returns with the accountant (March deadline), my December Quarter BAS, and deal with the various utility service providers.
I’m some what saddened by the move. November would have marked my 10th anniversary in Western Australia. I moved across here chasing the love of my life in 98, at the age of 23, despite having only ever visited the state once prior to moving. All my earthly belongings were packed in one big bag and a decent sized box (which meant my then Pentium 200MX PC and monitor). I’ve come an awful long way since. 5 jobs (although one was less than 6 months, so doesn’t really count) and my own business.?Ǭ† I’ve lived in Perth (Burswood and Inglewood), Mandurah (Dudley Park and Halls Head) and Bunbury (Eaton and Australind). We’ve owned 4 houses in that time, and rented 2.
There’s a lot to love about WA. Despite the now relatively expensive house prices, it still offers the ultimate life style amongst serious Australian cities (so not Adelaide, Darwin or Hobart). She who must be obeyed started her new job in Melbourne at the beginning of January, and as well as not coming with a car, it doesn’t come with a car parking space. Her first serious job when I first moved here didn’t come with a car, but despite being in the middle of the Perth CBD it had a car parking space, because in Perth most people still drive to work.
To this day I still marvel at the stars in WA. I grew up in Sydney, and I never knew (even during my 2 years in Queensland) that starts could be so bright, that the Milky Way actually looked milky to the naked eye, because here it is, where it never was over East.
In the last couple of years I’ve made some great friends and acquintances in Perth. People around my age and younger who follow and believe similar things to myself. It may sound a little strange, but it’s a wonderful thing spending time with people like that, particularly when you live in what is basically a country town like I do now. People who actually understand what you do….the amount of creative definitions I’ve come up with to explain it over the years…..
So although I’m probably here for a couple of more weeks (I’m hoping to get to one last Perth Bloggers meet up on the 20th), I bid Western Australia a fond farewell. Despite your flaws (lack of Sunday trading comes to mind), I really grew up here, and I’m a lucky man for the experience.
I was asked to put this together by Brisbane based Chris Saad, head of the Data Portability Work Group. Short story I had to answer some questions and say at the end that I support Data Portability. From what I can gather Chris is asking folks with a reasonable profile to record support videos for data portability.
There’s at least one point where I make absolutely no sense, and the editing was even more fun, the amount of times in the original where I say fuck, I’ve fucked this up, try again…and sometimes worse, even made me smile as I edited it. Might make for a decent bloopers tape one day 🙂
