A week ago I was at the Carnarvon Yacht Club for our going away.   Tonight I am sitting in an empty, freezing cold house in Mount Tarcoola, looking out the back window at nothing much at all really.  Its dark you see, and except for one house there is little more than bushland behind our house.

It has been raining a lot this year, and the surrounding countryside is nice and green.  Haven't seen that in four years.  Haven't seen a lot of verticality either.  The landscape has actual features here!

There is a huge range of foods, from boring takeaway to interesting restaurants.   My favourite fastish food at the moment is a noodle place.  The only thing wrong with them is they believe seafood extender comes from real seafood.  Other than that they do an alright laksa.

Work has been all go this week.  Already introducing some (hopefully good) changes.  Made a good impression on the visiting Renal Physician.  Set the hounds of hell (aka Pop Health) onto a GP that should really know better.  Attacked the paper piles that greeted me with energy and gusto.


Been missing my girls this week,  Sarah and Rhiannon are back in Carnarvon finishing packing.  I am also regretting no packing at least one mirage drive for the kayak - the wind and waves dropped off and the water was very inviting this afternoon.  Then again I may have my rods, but I don't have my reels or any other fishing gear either.

It is going to be an interesting weekend.  Don't really have anything planned, so it could go either way - boring and bad or interesting and good.  I am slightly inclined to go in and do some work, but I really need to stop working for free.  If work time isn't documented, then why should management in Perth believe how busy we are? 

If you haven't heard the news, well that is probably because Senator Conroy has censored it.

But try the link.  I think the Sydney Morning Herald hasn't had its door kicked down by the AFP for being a raging bunch of pinko leftist scum bags yet. (Wait, don't we have a Labor government?)

Basically Senator Conroy is not happy to try and simply block sites (won't somebody think of the children???) that promote kiddy porn, or euthanasia or whatever the government deems inappropriate for the unwashed masses.  Now they want to block any unrated games.  Unrated in Australia that is. 

So not only are they going to try and block sites that sell said games (good luck with that.  I suspect we will see a spike in P2P file sharing.  I just hope the companies getting ripped off sue the Australian Government and not the people denied legal access to these games by their idiotic elected representatives), but they are going to block online unrated games.  You know, like Second Life.  And a whole slew of MMOs.  And Flash games on sites like Kongregate.

The Australian Federal Government.  Obviously forgetting that a people without entertainment get feisty.  The Roman Empire understood this and created Circus (NOTE: not the clowns and lion tamer circus.  More the Christians and hungry lions circus).  Senator Conroy may not like what he unleashes.

This is almost enough to make me go back to Windows. Except for the whole MMO hing sucking my life away.

But seriously, this video is better than all of the Star Wars prequels put together.

Do you ever wonder about people that you just can't find on the internets, no matter how hard you look?  Do you wonder if they are alive or dead, or what became of them in between?

I do.

Well I got the job as Scientist in Charge at Geraldton.  Did I mention that already?


Tomorrow I am off to Melbourne to get training on the Coulter LH 500, which is their haem machine.  Slightly larger than the little AcT5 we use at Carnarvon!  Currently sitting in a feral little motel called Hotel Formule 1 in Perth somewhere.  The rooms are tiny, with about half a meter all the way around the queen bed, and a single bunk jammed above it so they can get away with calling it a twin share.  And the whole place smells... odd.  Yes I work for the government, but couldn't they have got somewhere that doesn't charge by the hour???

Rhiannon is running through the house chanting PO-TTY, PO-TTY, PO-TTY like a jock from a teen movie.

Listen up boys and girls...

This is our chance to ask Senator Conroy to explain his plans to censor the internet.

The architect of the Government's net censorship plans, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, has refused interviews on the topic for months. But at 9.30pm this Thursday night we have an opportunity to put him on the spot.

On Thursday night the Senator will appear on Q&A on ABC TV - a program that allows viewers rather than journalists to ask the tough questions.

Click here to submit your question.

It's time to hold Senator Conroy to account for his censorship plan, which will slow down the internet, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block a range of perfectly legitimate sites.

Record your question for Stephen Conroy today:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/QandA

Thanks for being part of this,

The GetUp Team

P.S. Let's challenge Senator Conroy to justify his internet censorship plan when he appears on Q&A at 9.30pm on Thursday night. Click here to submit your question.

__________________________

I just downloaded the Resident Evil 5 Demo on the PS3 and played it.  To be honest it was kind of boring.  The storyline was dull, the controls were clunky and frankly I am annoyed that I just wasted 1 gig of our download limit for the month.

The graphics were pretty, but... so what?  Pretty pictures are not that high up on the list for me.  Being able to shoot and back up while the zombie with the chainsaw tries to remove my head?  Much further up on the list. 

Now you know, with practice the gameplay might get a little better and the character may get easier to control.  But it shouldn't have to.  If you can't grab me with the demo, then I'm not going to hand over cash and buy the thing, so that practice I mentioned before?  It's never going to happen.

www.splitreason.com/product/634

Now that is funny.

Stupid Australian dollar.  All I want is a couple of t-shirts!

And others... won't.

Nuff said really.

Imagine a government proposing an internet censorship system that went further than any other democracy - one that made the internet up to 87% slower, more expensive, accidentally blocked up to one in 12 legitimate sites, and missed the vast majority of inappropriate content.

This is not China, Saudi Arabia or Iran - this is the vision of Senator Stephen Conroy for Australia. Testing has already begun. The community must now move to stop this plan. Click here to save the net:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet

The system that Senator Conroy wants is a mandatory filter of all internet traffic, with the government of the day able to add any unwanted site to a secret blacklist. Already, the wrangling has begun for the inclusion of material relating to anorexia, euthanasia and gambling. It isn't difficult to see the scheme is open to abuse.

Even when it comes to preventing child p-rnography, the filter will not prevent peer-to-peer sharing and is very simple to sidestep. The protection of our children is vitally important - that's why we can't afford to waste funds on this deeply flawed system. We should be concentrating on solutions that are more effective and won't undermine our digital economy or our democratic freedoms.

This must rank as one of the most ill-thought decisions of the Rudd Government's first year in power. We need to act now to tell big brother the mandatory internet filter is incompatible with the principles of a modern democracy and modern economy:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet

Our government should be doing all in its power to take Australia into the 21st century economy, and to protect our children. This proposed internet censorship does neither. Take action to save the net today.

Thanks for being a part of the solution,
The GetUp team

PS - The proposed scheme will pass all internet traffic through a government filter - it's like asking Australia Post to filter every letter sent in Australia. Click here to save the net.

Some bastard has tried to poison one of my dogs.  Well, they probably tried for both, but Tara ate all the baits.

I am extremely pissed off at the moment.  Tara is currently at the vet's with a drip in.  She has had an emetic, a general anaesthetic and charcoal lavage, some diazepam and an all round rough time.  I went to work this morning and she seemed a little off.  I came home at lunch to find her in tremors, having vomited green crap from the baits, listless, and peeing herself. 

I hope the SOB that did this comes back and tries breaking in now.  I hope Lachie tears his bloody throat out.

Lite Sweetened Condensed Skim Milk

I mean, what's the point?  It's like fat free bacon!

What I don't understand:

1. US banks and other assorted financial types screw up and put the US economy into a downward spiral.
2. The Australian dollar drops from 90c in the USD to 63c.

Why does their screw up mean our dollar drops?  MADNESS!!!

Hehe

World of Goo...

This guy is possibly the most passionate journalist I have ever come across.  He makes Susannah Carr look like a three year old playing dress ups.