Category: General

Day 2 as a Mac user and there is nothing much more to report. Thanks to those who left comments on the last post, particularly pointing to the Logitech Cam Drivers, the Cam is now working.

Everything is working fine. Perhaps the only odd thing is getting use to having so many Windows open, on the PC I’d always keep open applications to a minimum to limit memory and OS issues, on the Mac it doesn’t seem to matter how many are open.

I did try the Mac keyboard out today. That lasted no more than about 5 minutes. Mac’s might be a wonderful machine, but I see they still haven’t managed to get keyboard right in 25 years, and I’m not even game to try the mouse. My Logitech keyboard might not have a Apple Command Key but the Alt key works well in its place, that and the keys are spaced nicely (the Mac Keyboard felt bunched up, I literally struggled to type on it) and most importantly I’ve got somewhere to rest the bottom of my hands on the Logitech…yes, I don’t touch type correctly but thats just me and I feel no reason to change after 20 odd years of doing it the same way 🙂

I gave Mac.Mail a shot: OMG, people say Outlook Express is bad! Now using Thunderbird.

iCal is awesome. Widgets are splendid, and I managed to work out how to keep them on my desktop and there is an ABC Radio widget, ABC Classic FM and Dig Radio and I’m set.

Just downloading Parallels as I type this, so I’ll see how that goes. I’m typing this post on Mars Edit….like Ecto it comes no where close to Windows Live Writer, so I’m keen to have access to at least one Windows program.

Happily that is all. It’s funny that I’ve got to drag up small insignificant things to complain about this pure work of art, thats how good I’m finding it. More later in the week 🙂

I heard a women by the name of Stephanie, a single mother on welfare on ABC 720am Perth this morning. Her complaint was that she was being screwed over by the Government because she is being forced to find 15 hours of paid work. Stephanie is a single mother with 3 teenage children who apparently volunteers and worse still (and god forbid) has an aged parent in a nursing home. The indignation from Stephanie was so thick you could carve it; Stephanie believes that its her god given right to stay at home and continue to receive welfare, and that she is (I kid you not on this) “too busy” to take a paid job.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all sit at home and raise our kids on welfare! Note we aren’t talking about a mother with a young child looking after their kids here who perhaps in dire circumstances deserves government, Stephanie’s kids are all at school and she has plenty of time to volunteer.

Here’s my issue: she who must be obeyed and I work full time to put meals on our table. We pay taxes, and although things are going well now they haven’t always been. We’ve struggled in the past, but we’ve always worked hard to improve our lot. Why should I pay taxes for some woman in Perth to not work when she is fully capable of working?

And then there is the ABC.

Geoff Hutchison gave Stephanie the complete soft treatment. Some goose from Centrelink came on to provide the counter argument and totally stuffed it up with Government new speak that never got close to the issue. The show then read out email after email favoring Stephanie, and talk back callers were the same, little to no counter argument was presented. Interestingly it warped into some sort of discussion about the Government not valuing volunteering, Stephanies only real claim to fame. Here’s the thing: volunteering is giving your own time when you are able, after work if you of a working age. This was my email to the show, that unless I missed it was never read out (note that it was in bite sized chunks on purpose to suit the medium)

Geoff

I?m appalled at your soft treatment of Stephanie. No one likes working, but we all have to do it. We shouldn?t have to pay taxes to sustain Stephanies lifestyle choice. If she is capable of doing volunteer work then she is capable of doing paid work. My wife and I both work, we don?t get a cent from the government; the hand out mentality of people like Stephanie sickens me. My only message to Stephanie: get a job and stop expecting the taxpayer to support you, life?s hard in the real world; get use to it, the rest of us have.

It will probably never see the light of day on the ABC. I’ve always known from my Government days that the ABC is biased, but locally I’ve never really seen it before. The one sided support of Stephanie in her anti-Government rant (and most of it was how the Government was out to get her) seems to prove that at least in Western Australia the ABC has no interest at all in being anything other than biased against the Federal Government. I’d switch to 882 6PR but simply we don’t get the coverage in the Bunbury area and there are no decent local alternatives. In future I might just stick to ABC Classic FM or News Radio on the occasions the reception is good enough.

Wow, wow and wow! Now if only it came in 3G, but wow anyway.  

Apple – iPhone – A Guided Tour – Medium

It’s times like this I’m immensely proud to be Australian:

Aussies Repelled 5 gunboats (smh.com.au)

The Australian Defence Force says up to five Iranian gunboats tried to capture Australian sailors in the Persian Gulf in December 2004…

The BBC reported earlier today that Iranian naval forces tried to capture the boarding team, but were repelled in the face of machine guns and “highly colourful language”.

Quoting a “military source”, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner reported Iranian forces made a concerted attempt to seize a boarding party from the Royal Australian Navy and that the Australians “were having none of it”.

You can imagine it now, a bunch on RAN personnel are surrounded by Iranians with guns and the simple response to the Iranian’s is that they can get f*cked and f*ck off…and it worked!

Aye-curumba!

Big Brother says sorry to Mexico | NEWS.com.au 

Ditching muck at the Mexican flag was pretty bad, I can remember commenting on it while watching Friday Night Games last week.  It’s not nearly as bad though as Andrew suggesting that the “Aussies” in the house should be saved from eviction in response to the all male eviction round, that was just down-right racist given the fact that every housemate is Australian despite their diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Great news for those in Perth: the resources sector has launched a free WiFi network in the Perth CBD. More details in my post at Perthnorg. I know where my hotel will be located next time I’m up 🙂

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