Brisneyland today

The Courier-Mail has a blog devoted to discussion of the RU-486 debate.
Also, two opinion pieces worth reading in the Courier-Mail today.
One, written by Professor Ross Homel (Griffith University), looks at the announcement made by the Beattie Government last year about the construction of a new super-jail. Homel calls for $1 to be spent on crime preventing early intervention programs for every $10 spent on new jails.
The other calling for leadership to reduce car use in Brisbane and the rapid implementation of policy options set out in the Government's Smart Travel Green Paper. Given the spineless nature of every State Premier at the moment I don't fancy the chances of rational policy in either issue.

What's a Songbird?

Ars Technica has the word on a new open source media player called Songbird that can interface with a wide variety of music stores. Looking a lot like a straight-ahead rip-off of Apple's iTunes music player Songbird is built from the ground up on the Mozilla project programmed in XML User Interface Language (XUL) the same as Firefox's UI. XUL enables programmers to build an application UI using a markup language, stylesheets, and other Webified techniques. Songbird is also a showcase for XULRunner, a small runtime environment that enables XUL-based programs to run on a machine that doesn't have Firefox already installed.

The Unfashionable Argument for Fairness

Mark Peel writes an excellent review of two books about increasing poverty in Australia that argue the unfashionable case for fairness: Peter Saunders', The Poverty Wars: Reconnecting Research with Reality and Hugh Stretton's, Australia Fair (both UNSW Press). A couple of quotes will give you the feel:

These aren’t easy days for advocates of fairness and equity. During the last twenty years, governments have overseen, promoted and sometimes celebrated a significant redistribution of resources, jobs and life chances that has consistently favoured some Australians and penalised others. New investments in middle-class assets and advantages have not been matched by compensating investments in the fortunes of less affluent citizens. Policy-makers and politicians have dismantled some of the most significant architecture promoting public health and public wealth, in the interests of increasing competition and efficiency. They have done so with little sense of long-term consequences, and with a shocking ignorance of history. The architects of these changes will not pay the price of their short-sightedness, though the people of the future will.

Australia is less fair than it was. There’s less money for social mobility, and more for privilege preservation. If you wish to do well in this country, it is more and more important to choose your parents carefully. The poor haven’t got poorer, but they are a lot further behind the rich than they used to be. The schools and hospitals that cater to them are more dilapidated, and their welfare comes with a revitalised suspicion and meanness of spirit. In place of arguments for shared responsibility comes a war on the largely invented problem of ‘welfare fraud’ that should forever shame its instigators and enthusiasts. Citizens are encouraged to believe that governments can’t look after them, that everyone has an agenda, that every argument for change or continuity is just spin and that they must look after themselves and their own.

These failures of imagination and fairness lie nearer the top than the bottom of Australian society. If there’s a crisis, it is not a crisis of welfare dependency or inefficiency or alienation. It’s a crisis of compassion. It’s a crisis of obligation, from the lucky to the unlucky, the old to the young, the insider to the outsider, those rich in confidence and chances to those who despair of either.

News, fries and family

News Corp on its digital strategy - My Space users look out - they're talking about "monetarising" you.
McDonalds admit their fries are fattier than they thought (or maybe they just weren't looking hard ennough).
One family through time. Touching. (Thanks Good Experience)

Slammed

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the Organic Consumers Association presents an entertaining one-minute flash animation called: Slammed. So keep those flowers organic and the chocolate fair trade. A suggested improvement maybe George could step in some of Barney's doggy num nums.

Australia's DPP is a big pussy

The path of least resistance. Apparently, Australia's Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has a clear aversion to taking on white collar crime but can barely contain himself when it comes to some white trash ripping of CentreLink for a few dollars. The SMH suggests that the DPP is more interested in his hit rate in the courts than hitting the big boys ripping off millions. Give a man a target...

Busy Bee with Empire Update

Yeah - long time. Guess I got busy doing other stuff. Where does this other stuff come from anyway. Green Feeder has ceased to exist due to lack of interest on everybody involved with its part. Grassy wants it to be more focussed on city living and more regional in focus - he lives in Australia. So Green Feeder may be re-launched with a different focus when I return from Europe. Yes, that's the other thing - a trip North - Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Florence, Rome. So posting here will decline substantially from October for two months. Edgizmo and Slidehunter will stumble along sporadically until 06 when - fingers crossed - I'll have time to get serious.Martha Lust will keep plugging away says Cherry!

Owen Land and Back in Brisneyland

Back in Brisneyland after two days in Melbourne. Did manage to catch a collection of films by Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow) at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image while I was there. This person seems to know more about it than me. There was only a small crowd at the screening. I think I could safely say I travelled the furtherest to be there.
Today is one of those beautiful Brisbane late winter days. Not a cloud in the sky and a beautiful warm sun that just begs to be lain in. Buffy, my Jack Russell, sun drunk. Doing a few catch up posts onGreenFeeder and Martha Lust.

Exit Blogger Nav Bar

See up the top of this page that Blogger nav bar! Got a Blogger blog and want to get rid of it but don't know how. Then click here., You could follow the four steps or the half dozen other ways described in the comments on this post. Is not showing the nav bar breaking the user agreement?

Shifting Feeds

Spending a bit of time today at work - heading to Melbourne again tomorrow and Tuesday. At the moment I'm just transferring a lot of my feeds over from Bloglines to My Yahoo. I'm still going to keep my Bloglines account and I'll still keep adding feeds to it. The feeds I'm adding to My Yahoo are those I just HAVE to check each day - basically feeds that are related to my blogs. I'm already at Yahoo to check email so having my feeds available in the same space makes sense. I had already done this for feeds I get related to Martha Lust and I like how I can get 5 or so feeds showing in one view on My Yahoo. At Bloglines you can only view one feed at a time.
Of course My Yahoo only lets you see headlines or headlines and a short summary of feeds unlike Bloglines which has several view options including viewing a full post. And I'm not sure about sharing options under My Yahoo. The blogroll function of Bloglines will keep me continuing to subscribe feeds to my bloglines account but I think overall the number of visits I make to site is likely to decline.

Electric Bike - Blogger Bitch

Treehugger pointed me to this nifty bike website - allowing me to continue my bike related posts. As I was doding that I started thinking too bad I can't link all my bike posts togther simply with a category! This actually brings me to the biggest bitch I have about Blogger. NO CATEGORIES. As simple as that! It's the one big fatal flaw as far as I can see. Makes it very hard to really expect a blog like Greenfeeder to attract a lot of traffic. Categories makes old content useable. If you can't categorise then old content basically become dead. Which leads me to think that you need to think very carefully before starting a blog about the platform you choose. (Free! was a big factor for me coming to Blogger). If its the sort of blog where only recent content has value (gossipy stuff maybe like Martha Lust) then I reckon that Blogger is a fine platform. But if you run something like Greenfeeder then you really need categories. All the past content of Greenfeeder is basicallly invisible. So I'm currently looking at various other options for Greenfeeder. I think BlogHarbour might be the way to go. So I'm setting up some there (they offer a free 30-day trial) and see what happens.

Oh yeah the bike! Avanti sell this great electric bike - with a flick of a switch the Electra changes from a 'standard' bike into an effortless ride with power assisted cycling. Way cool! When power assistance is not in use, the Electra feels as familiar as a standard bike. The lightweight alloy frame ensures a comfortable, enjoyable ride with the suspension fork and suspension seat post easing out any bumps.

Ten Lost Technologies Return

How many of these 10 now defunct technologies do you miss. Manned Sapce Travel? Well I never actually got into space so I guess I can't say I truly miss it. EV1 - never owned one so agian same story. But I did use Napster and I'll always miss free. But hey, picking on Apple's Newton is not cool OK!

Elvis the Woodpecker

"Now Elvis has come along," he said, "and said:'I'm the rock star. Look at me.' " Nice way to end a story about the return of an extinct species. Its been agreed that the ivory-billed woodpecker ain't extinct after all.

Let 31 Million Blogs Bloom?

Blogging in China is predicted to take off. Whilst there are only an estimated 6 million boggers currently in China this report by Reuters claims that Technorati says a new blog is created every second (sounds great but given that means 31 53 6000 a year and Microsoft says it has signed up a bit over 1 million users in China to its "MSN Spaces" service which is operated out of China and was launched three months ago I'm not sure!) Plus how many bloggers would you sign up in the west if you couldn't guarantee your provider wouldn't do the governments bidding and censor your blog. Anyway how do they get away with calling it blogging if its censored!

Pop Up Pioneer Passes on the Pop

Claria, the company that bought you those annoying pop-up ads when you downloaded Kazaa or 1/2 a dozen other pieces of software is abandoning the "pop-up model" (sounds like a toaster). Apart from some interesting data on pop-up penetration the article deserves to be read for this classic quote from a Claria Exec. "There are a lot of people who aren't fans of the pop-up model." Nothing if not perceptive. Explains the salary right!

Owl Pellets Starter Guide

The what, when and why of owl pellets.

Will iPods become obsolete? Yes.

Interesting article in the SMH today asking the question, "Can the iPod survive?"

"It took the iPod four years to sell about 20 million but you look at the growth of mobile phones and it just completely obliterates that. The text message market is bigger than the whole music community globally."

"To some extent, listening to music is about listeners immersing themselves and hopefully not being disturbed. You get a form of control by using an iPod, which mobile phones destroy as soon as someone else wants to phone you. It becomes interruptive..."

Dr Michael Bull, senior lecturer in media and film studies at the University of Sussex, said: "My research shows 25 per cent of iPod users don't like their phones, [often because] they don't always work well," he said. "Phones can play music, but it doesn't mean people will want to listen to music on them.

As one who doesn't own an iPod (I use a crappy little LG MP3 player)I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Can I suggest that history says that iPods will become obsolete, and pretty quickly at that. Vinyl, tape, ipods ... all things come to pass.

Bike mad USA

Bike story No 254. What do Americans buy more of cars and trucks or bicycles? Well, in the US over the last 12 months bikes have outsold cars and trucks by a big margin. And as this article at Planet Ark points out, all without employee discounts or zero-percent financing.

Bike sales and bike equipment is a $5 (billion) to $6 billion business per year," said Tim Blumenthal, industry specialist and executive director of Bikes Belong, a national industry association. "Bicycle sales are near an all-time high (with) 19 million sold last year -- close to the 20 million sold during the oil embargo in the early 1970s.

When you're on a good thing...

My media empire

A few tweaks here and there and away they go - I think both Greenfeeder and Martha Lust are up and displaying ok in IE now. Had some problems with displaying images and setting column width - which IE and Firefox seem to read differently. So if your looking for the latest in gardening products or can't resist a bit of Martha Stewart gossip pop on by - Martha Lust won't shutdown IE now!

My blogs have gone IE mad

Finally got round to having a look at my two little blog projects -- Greenfeeder and Marthalust -- in IE today. What the %$#&^(*%? Marthalust (Your daily glass of Martha Juice) ain't too bad but Greenfeeder (New Stuff for Gardeners) is completely stuffed - so nice in Firefox but an absolute nightmare in IE. Looks like me be busy for a wee bit while I fix that crap up. In my little dream world I had forgotten IE even existed. Oh the harsh lava lamp of reality!