Category: General

Not many Australians would have been following this, but I’ve been watching for a while now, for those who have missed it, Fred Thompson, best known to Australians as the District Attorney Arthur Branch on Channel Tens Law and Order franchise, who also just happens to be a former Governor of Tennessee, is considering putting his hat in the ring to be the Republican candidate for US President in 2008. The latest here at Politico. From an outsiders perspective (ie non-American) there’s something somewhat appealing about him running, his character on Law and Order is said to be based on his actual persona, a number of the profile pieces and interviews I’ve read seem to suggest he’s a straight talker, although having said that he’s on the right in terms of the Republican Party, saying really stupid things such as the VT Massacre would have been avoided had Virginia allowed people to carry guns on campus (more guns is the solution? WTF?), and yet as a character he holds the promise of a Regan Presidency, one of substance and decisive measure. One to watch.

This speaks for itself:

The United States?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ leading hurricane forecaster said Friday that global ocean currents, not human-produced carbon dioxide, are responsible for global warming, and the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.

William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher best known for his annual forecasts of hurricanes along the U.S. Atlantic coast, also said increasing levels of carbon dioxide will not produce more or stronger hurricanes.

He said that over the past 40 years the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined compared with the previous 40 years, even though carbon dioxide levels have risen.

Gray, speaking to a group of Republican state lawmakers, had harsh words for researchers and politicians who say man-made greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìThey?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re blaming it all on humans, which is crazy,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù he said. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWe?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re not the cause of it.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

More at HotAir.

I’m just waiting for someone to blame man kind for the Global Warming on Mars, I really am 🙂

Looks like the chaps behind E-Gold are in a spot of bother:

“Three owners of online payment processor E-Gold and an affiliated company have been indicted for money laundering and related crimes for allegedly allowing sellers of child pornography, operators of investment scams and other types of criminals to send and receive payments related to their misdeeds.”

I think I had an E-Gold account briefly either in the late 90s or early 2000ish, never used it, always thought it was a bit dodgy, and just as well I never used it.

Having said that I’m not opposed to alternative forms of paying online, just that the promises of it all being “backed by gold” always sounded like a scam to me, and the transaction fees for converting E-Gold to cash make the exhorbitant currency interchange and transaction fees PayPal charge look like a walk in the park.

Apologies for the work in progress, trying to be modern and testing it all locally with my WAMP install didn’t work, so I’ve reverted back to the old fashioned way: installing a template by tweaking it live.

It was time for a new template. The old template, live for maybe 5 months, as much as it was smart at times, other times it just didn’t work for me.

The new template goes back to basics, complements of the brilliant WordPress theme generator. It’s basic, core stuff, but it works.

Forgive me for a couple of days if things aren’t overly pretty, but I needed that extra column space and I intend on making good use of it.

Update: switched back to the old template for now. The new one just wasn’t doing what I wanted it to. Might be time to bite the bullet and get one designed.

In the cool I want category, the Keyport, via NotCot:

“KeyPort – an all in one key fob?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ just get specialized blanks cut to match your car, house, boat, locker, etc keys and the slot right in. In the press kit it says that it is ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcreated to complement your personal style and organize those jagged objects you can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t live without.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù And currently under development are RFID for remote keyless entry, Alarm Remote and Flashlight”

Must. Have.

The irony of this blog remains every day that it was only ever an after thought to my main projects, The Blog Herald, then Weblog Empire, the other blog network, and probably soon the next big thing or two, and yet somehow appearing in Top lists sort of creates this guilt that personally I should feel obliged to actually try a little harder, actually take this whole site a bit more seriously, and yet trying too much would make it not fun anymore….this from istartedsomething, clipped from The Age:

From the official Crowded House email list:

On 2nd July Crowded House release ‘Time On Earth’, their first studio album since 1993, with a line-up featuring founder members Neil Finn and Nick Seymour, former member Mark Hart and new drummer Matt Sherrod

‘Time On Earth’ tracklisting:

1. Nobody Wants To
2. Don’t Stop Now
3. She Called Up
4. Say That Again
5. Pour Le Monde
6. Even A Child
7. Heaven That I’m Making
8. Silent House
9. English Trees
10. Walked Her Way Down
11. Transit lounge
12. You Are The One to Make Me Cry
13. A Sigh
14. People Are Like Suns

You ripper!

Iconic Australian newspapers the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (The Smage collectively) are downsizing, not only jobs but print size as well, shriking to the tall sheet size I blogged about noticing in North America last November. It’s been 10 years since I read a print version on the SMH regularly, and I remember it being a particular pain (indeed near on impossible) on Sydney trains, so the new size can only help.

Interesting though that it’s a lead story on news.com.au, but only rates a mention way down the page in Business @ smh.com.au 🙂

Good news from el Reg: “U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s press office has confirmed that Thursday at 10am Frank will introduce legislation to repeal the controversial Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA)”

Now if only we could someone in Australia to overturn our ridiculous laws 🙂

Thanks to Lifehacker (once again) for a very handy tip. If you’re like me, you use the search box in FireFox regularly, and in doing so I usually open a new tab for the results, this hack sets search results to automatically open in a new tab:

Type about:config into the address bar, and then put the following into the filter box: browser.search.openintab. Double-click the value to change it to true.

Simple, yet totally useful.