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  • Australia’s Cheapest Lego

    lego But I should add to the post title that it took 30 minutes including me arguing with a Big-W Bunbury floor manager to get this price.

    1 big box of lego, advertised (so I found out at the checkout) for $28.88 on special (I’m guessing its usually $40-$50), the floor price as the photo shows:  $8.88. The checkout chick and door person were great, they had to check which is their jobs, but they were good about it. The bitch who met me on the floor on the other hand wasn’t on the same planet: get this, her line was that the lego I was trying to buy was “accidentally” placed on the shelf by a customer and therefore not valid at the price. I asked her repeatedly whether she actually understood what she was saying, given there were 10 other boxes of the EXACT same lego on the shelf how it could be an accident?…indeed the entire display consisted only of the same lego products. It’s only when I started taking pictures and threatening the Trade Practices Act that something was done, by the time I was back at the checkout it was all sorted. Still 30 bloody minutes though. God, I wish we had Wal-Mart in Australia, nothing could be as retarded as anything owned by Coles or Woolworths in comparison…and this is just today’s story, if I blogged every issue I have at one of these stores there would be at least 4 posts a week…like the mole at Coles who bit my head off when I asked where a product was, telling me there was a perfectly good store guide at the end of the isle, or the moldy bread products that were 2 weeks past their use buy date at Woolworths…. 🙂

  • Podcast Coming Soon

    For all 5 people who will probably listen, I’m another step forward to a podcast again, after a couple of previously failed attempts at the Blog Herald, then a TPN podcast that never got off the ground as I got caught up running a previous company.

    I’ve got the Mic, I’ve got Garage Band and I’ve now got Audio Hijack Pro working + registered. Great program BTW, audio quality recording from Skype was quite remarkable.

    It has a running title, but I’m waiting on Cam Reilly to sign off on it and get me set up. Format will be plain old talk, I’ll have a guest on and talk about them and general things. In some ways I might end up being the mini-Cam; GDay World without pissing off and offending quite so many people, but expect the swearing to be occasionally at a similar level.

    If you’d like to be a guest, let me know. If you don’t want to be I’ll probably contact some of you and insist anyway. Subject matter is fully open; this won’t be a tech podcast as such although it will probably end up having a strong focus in that direction, Id like for example to highlight some Australian tech success stories.  

    More soon. 🙂 

  • Windows Vista Speech Recognition

    This is hilarious (via FSJ)

  • J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield

    Apparently it’s a NY based monster flick. What ever it is, the trailer is pretty damn cool.

  • Google Blog Maximises The Cringe

    Bloggin’ down under: the official Google Blog.

    OMFG. This post followed the Postini announcement. Could the cliche’s be any thicker and the content more curdling. It’s hard enough having Americans tell you how much they love your accent and thinking that you’ve got a bloody great big knife in your pocket without having the worlds biggest search engine add to the stereotypes.

    As for it being NAIDOC week on Google Australia, I didn’t notice because I’m too busy using Google.com. Google.com.au still hasn’t been updated to include the latest UI changes, the ones that allow an easy switch to other Google search services such as Google Blogs. Perhaps the Google Australia team should spend less time with the logos and dicky posts, and more time with the UI. And BTW, Google Maps may have started in Australia, but the imagery still sucks and is in many cases years out of date, my house is still a vacant block despite the pad going down 3 years ago October, and if I use the mapping feature to get out of the estate I’d run straight into a mound of dirt. Please explain! 🙂

  • The Simpsons Do World of Warcraft

    (via CrunchGear)

  • Internet Access: Intercontinental Burswood

    I should probably start recording these for my own future reference.
    Internet Access: Intercontinental Burswood (Perth)
    55c / minute, Max $29 per day.

  • Design Challenge

    I’ve long since known that the template I’m running here at duncanriley.com isn’t up to scratch, I’ve tried implementing another template but that lasted about 2 days; it was simply an abject failure.

    I need a new template. One that is fairly unique. I want a 3 column setup with a very unique header and room to run, in at least one sidebar stuff like my Flickr photos and other widgets, say TechCrunch posts, Facebook stuff, Twitter posts etc.

    The offer is open. I could probably go on to Scriptlance and get this done but I’d rather open it to readers. I’m willing to pay for a new and unique template; having been a judge of the WA Web Awards, I really think that with a good template I should be a candidate myself next year. Naturally the designer will get a post + permanent links for X time, essentially as long as I use the template.

    Email me: nichenet @ gmail. com if you’re interested. Max $1k US please, I don’t wont to be tight but on the same token this site makes less than $100US a month, so it needs to be fair to that. I’m happy to provide sample sites that I like for inspiration.

  • I’m Getting Old

    Silicon User on the History of the Compact Disc

    I’m old enough to remember LP’s being on sale but I never owned a record player. At that time LP’s were half a music store, the other half were cassettes.  

    My first Hi-Fi/ Music system was a twin cassette tape system that allowed recording from one tape to the other as well as recording from radio. No comment on what I used that functionality for 🙂

    I can remember some years later plugging a Discman portable device into the box, suffice to say the experience wasn’t great. 

    I never knew the CD dated back to the late 70’s, early 80s. I can remember specifically my Uncle in Newcastle recording music on a Hi-Fi VHS tape, apparently the quality of those recordings was far superior than tape or LP. I can even remember when Laser Discs sort of became popular (I don’t know how big they were, but they were really, really big). I say sort of because they never really took off, but some video stores did have a rack of Laser Discs, at least in the late 80s, early 90s.

    Of course the next generation probably wont even know what a CD is. The next gen will only know digital downloads. In 30 years time I’ll be the old fogey reminiscing about what once was, and was never again.

    One part of me still wishes I was born earlier: I would still have loved to be a Spitfire Pilot, but the other half of me wouldn’t change it for the world, because Gen X will be remembered in 100 years time as the generation that changed the world.

  • Parallels Is Very Cool

    I was preparing to write a negative piece about Parallels, but for some reason it fixed itself this morning with a fresh boot. Confluence is a treat and it’s dead easy to use. The screen shot says it all (click for bigger version).

    parallels

    Proudly posted from a Mac with Windows Live Writer 🙂