Category: General

Who ever thought that Qantas might become a world-leading airline? OK, so I’m typing this from the Qantas Domestic Terminal at Perth Airport on free WiFi, but as Engadget reports, starting next year Qantas is going to offer Wifi + Power on A380’s and refitted 747s. Touchwood it’s the entire 747 fleet given about half of Qantas’ flights to the Eastern States out of Perth are on 747’s. Still got a book for today though, but I cant wait for next year 🙂

An important question though: I wonder how much Qantas will charge for data? This is Qantas after all, I just cant see it being cheap, but hey, if it’s $50 or $100 on a long flight it would be well worth it.

A fair bit of feedback on some recent posts. It reminded me that going on a puritanical save the world by highlighting wrongs binge isn’t always a good thing, people in glass houses etc…

Matt Mullenweg

I found an email from Matt Mullenweg in my spam box re the post on WordPress and the crackdown on sponsored templates.

Matt is pissed, and probably rightly so. The post in retrospect was unnecessarily personal and it wasn’t called for; she who must be obeyed asked me a very good question: would I like to have that written about me? One should never mess with she who must be obeyed, she is all wise and always right. So sorry Matt, it went too far.

However without taking away from the personal apology, I still believe you’re wrong. Your email stated that people were abusing sponsored templates by stuffing them with spam, but here’s the beef: in Australia Aboriginal people commit crimes at a higher rate than non-indigenous Australian’s, for memory the crime rate amongst African American’s is probably similar as a percetage of the population as well: would the solution therefore be to lock all black people up? You see Matt, you’re punishing a pile of good people for the actions of a small number of bad people; blanket solutions are rarely ever the right answer.

The link thing is still silly as well: you can’t ask people to not include links on their templates then stuff your own links on every install of WordPress, no matter how justified you think you are in doing so; it’s an all or nothing thing, and not practicing what you preach to others does make you look like a hypocrite, but in a nice, non-personal attack way 🙂

Ars Technica

Got an email from Ars re my post on their linking policies. They point out that the case I highlighted was an oversight, and that they regularly link out (and provided examples). I still see a lot of Ars stuff without sources, indeed I’ve seen stories on stuff I’ve written at TechCrunch appear as a stand alone story on Ars two days later without links. However on the basis of the email I’m willing to accept that on the whole they are at least trying. Perhaps they could try harder, as indeed we all could, and there are times where you get a tip from a reader which doesn’t come sourced, meaning that you don’t know that it’s come from elsewhere; even I’ve been in that situation a couple of times.

So apologies to Ars. If it’s any help, I only noticed because it’s one of my regular reads, and a bloody good read most of the time at that.

Happy

OK, my lets right the wrongs of the world purge is over for now. Promises that I”ll be good again 🙂

News.com.au reports that Optus is joining Telstra in adding uploads to monthly cap limits, and that others may also start counting uploads.

As much as I despise the Australian ISP industry for having caps to start with, when in the US ISP’s are mostly all you can eat concerns, it does make sense that if we’re essentially paying for downloads, ISP’s should count uploads as well.

But here’s the problem: upload speeds from Australian ISP’s suck.

Take my provider for example. I get a 2mps download but only a 256kps upload speed, roughly 10 times the difference. Telstra Bigpong plans are similar, most only provide a 256kps upload speed, although for memory some may be as low as 128kps.

If I’m going to have to pay indirectly for uploading stuff to the web, the same money I’m proportionately paying for downloads, then simply I demand the same upload speed as I have for downloads. That would be the only fair and equitable solution, particularly when companies are quick to advertise their download speeds, but you’ve got to find the upload speeds in the fine print. Given that I’m a fairly regular uploader it would also make my life a whole lot easier as well.

This is hilarious (via FSJ)

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

(via CrunchGear)

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

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.

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.

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).

Proudly posted from a Mac with Windows Live Writer 🙂