Category: General

…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.

From DailyTech:

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? 😉

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.

iMovie 08 was widely derided as a downgrade from iMovie 06, but given my previous video editing experience had consisted of once using Sony Vegas, I didn’t have a lot of preconcieved ideas.

There’s a lot to like about iMovie 08. Editing is insanely simple, and it supports direct uploading to YouTube, a feature I’ve found myself using already. It lacks some features, like inline text shots, and not having a timeline and marking is a little annoying, but for most of the video I’m going to cut that’s not a big issue.

My big issue is HD. My new Canon HG10 records in 1080p (or i…but 1080 something) so it’s “Full HD.” Importing isn’t particularly fast because the biggest flaw in the Camera is a USB2 connection instead of Firewire…I should have checked that pre-purchase, but it’s minor, it still takes amazing pictures. iMovie 08 imports the AVCHD file format (apparently earlier editions didn’t) and its just like editing any other video. The problem is then exporting to HD. iMovie doesn’t, at least it doesn’t for me. I can export it to a Quicktime .mov or mp4/ mv4 in HD, but I cant simply export it to a DVD, either directly or even via iDVD. I tried the mp4 export in HD and the quality was shite, .mov export sat for 30 minutes and hadn’t moved past 10%, so I gave up, which left me to export the file in SD to iDVD. It shouldn’t be this hard, and with HD camcorders soon to become the default in the market over the next few years (mine was the amazing cheap $850 US, with 40gb HD built in), you’d think Appple, which prides itself on ease of use for consumers, would cater to that.

On a bright note though, once I got the now SD file into iDVD, the rest was plain sailing. God iDVD is a good program. The DVD intro I made in seconds was kick ass, and the burning wasn’t super quick on the MacPro superdrive, but it was reasonable enough. End result was great, SD instead of HD aside.

Apple, please fix!

This video was released a couple of days back, but in case you missed it

My politics, if I were American, is probably soft Republican with a strong Libertarian bent, and yet every time I see Obama speak I’m overawed. I heard a Republican today on News Radio’s stream of NPR’s Super Tuesday coverage and he said that although he was Republican, he’d vote for Obama because the guy is just awe inspiring. I agree. America needs a change, if not for its own sake, but for that of the world. Although the many American readers of this blog my rightfully suggest that I have no place providing punditry on US politics, I’d remind you that when America sneezes, the whole world gets a cold. America needs new, fiscally responsible leadership so that the whole world can prosper, because when America is prosperous itself, we all benefit, no matter where we live. Pulling US troops out of Iraq and plowing the savings back into the US budget would be a great first step, and Obama promises this. It also helps that Obama is the most tech friendly of the presidential candidates as well. Make a change, and consider making history, you could do far worse, and indeed you have already done so in the last 7 years.

I nearly bought tickets for Spamalot when I was in New York in late 2006, but I never did, and I’d regretted it ever since. Today I had the opportunity to see the local production in Melbourne.

First, like all shows these days tickets weren’t cheap at $117.50 for A Reserve tickets, which actually ended up being Row Q at Her Majesty’s in Melbourne. I’d never been to Her Majesty’s before and it’s probably half the size of the Princess Theatre where most big shows end up in Melbourne. We were under the overhang, but only to the point where we could just see everything…one row back and we would have been screwed.

The show itself was everything I expected. The absurdness of the original Monty Python genius is captured in a stage play that combines some classic Monty Phython movies, skits and songs with new material. The Australian cast are relatively unknowns (well B list in terms of leads anyway), but together they were first rate. The imagery combined with some clever visual gags had the audience in stitches. There were a few parts that may have pushed the boundaries a little bit; a whole number related to needing Jews in a Broadway play, complete with ethnic dancing and a huge Star of David may have been a witty take on a truth, or borderline anti-Semitic. The humor relating to gay coupling also pushed the edge, and although done in light spirit, could possibly offend the gay community at times, but certainly a lot less than any hard core God loving homophobes who hate any representation of gay coupling. All up it is perhaps PG rated, we took our 5 year old and he had a great time, but the language may make it unsuitable for some parents who don’t want their kids exposed to that…god botherers mostly.

All up it was a splendid two and a half hours of laughter, music, visual serendipity and Monty Python stupidity. If you like Monty Python, or love a good comedy musical, you’ll enjoy Spamalot.

I made this short video of the San Francisco BART for my son who still loves his trains. If you’ve got kiddies they might find it interesting, other than that paint drying may provide a more interesting alternative 🙂

I’ve been tossing up this week how I should post about this result. To simply go out and boast about the result would simply make me out to be a complete and utter wanker, and I know some of you think that, but lets spend at least 30 minutes together and correct that perception.

I am truly humbled that my peers would see it fit to vote for me as Australia’s top web celeb. If I was to be fair, I could probably argue about the distribution of the voting, and I’m sure I could find a way to dispute the results as well, indeed I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t find that angle. But having said that I hope that those who did vote for me knew that, that ultimately my word and honesty is hopefully my strongest qualities.

I don’t always get it right, and in my 9 odd months at TechCrunch I’ve had my fair share of wrongens as well as hits. Like anything it’s a numbers game where you hope that you get it right more times than you get it wrong, but I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always get it right, be it at TechCrunch, or even in my past endevours. If I ever start forgetting that fact I’d only hope that someone will track me down and beat me around the head with a wet fish. The person who thinks they are always right is a flawed human being, ultimately we are all human and all humans make mistakes. What differentiates one person from another is that some make less mistakes than others. I hope that at 32 years of age (so compared with many in the industry, old) that wisdom is slightly the right/ wrong equation in my favour.

I know that attention can go to ones head…put me in a crowd at a TechCrunch event where everyone wants to be your friend because you might be able to deliver for them with a post is a bloody good example. This is my 3rd trip to SFO and the Valley since I started writing for TechCrunch and it’s still thick with people doing just that. To be fair there are positives to the hardcore “networking” experience. I’ve had the opportunity to meet some amazing people, and no I’m not name dropping here because often its the relatively unknown folks that make the biggest impressions. I even enjoy my interactions with the PR ppl as well, but only on some levels because my background was in some form or another was nearly always PR and marketing related. Call me a voyeur but I love watching some of them work, its fascinating, and at the same time its borderline worlds best as well.

My thanks to those who voted for me, and if I can ever return the favor, karma dictates that I should. I may be godless in my belief system but I still solidly believe that something in the universe balances out good and bad, that karma is in play. I’ve seen those who have wronged me, or more particularly my family in the past get their just deserts with time which is why ultimately I believe that what goes around, comes around. I only hope that despite my flaws and weaknesses that I can manage to put the balance in my favor in the future.