This freaky looking avatar isn't getting anywhere near me!

In the Age, finally, someone says nice things about Australia (it's been a while). Of course, he is comparing Australia to Singapore, but it's a start."

Salman said Australia was not the evil country portrayed here and overseas over its handling of asylum seekers because Nurul Nasihah's freedom to wear her scarf showed that Australia was leading the way in human rights.

"To be accepted into Australia is a great thing for religious tolerance," he said.

"Australia should be proud that it is leading the world because there is more tolerance here than any other country.""

The cabbie on the way home the other night overheard us saying that Big Ben is disappointingly small, when it comes down to it. He took offence, and asked if we knew of a bigger clock, telling us (repeatedly) that it's over nine metres wide. Things were a little tense until I tentatively suggested that maybe if it was called 'really quite big Ben in a not-so big tower', people's expectations might be more realistic, and he agreed.

Monday is no more. It isn't known if PricewaterhouseCoopers finally realised how much everyone hates Mondays or if it was just a dud spin-off.

Mmmm, Michelle Yeoh. Beautiful, kick-arse, and smart.

Age on 100 years of New Idea features a picture of the first cover with the best tagline ever: "Men! Buy this Issue for Your Wives."

From the BBC, "It was the one I was missing and coming out of the last hundred there was no chance I was missing the bronze medal today."

Ahh, those British - they know where to aim their hopes and dreams. Don't go for first! Go for third place.

Passenger sues over sex toy, "saying she was publicly humiliated". I can't imagine that dealing with comments by some guys you'll never see again could be more publically humiliating than the whole world knowing about it because you're sueing.

Every time anyone googles "Renee Koutsouradis" they're going to get the whole story, is she going to sue the court reporters for publishing the case?

Pupils 'not allowed to play tag': " Children have been banned from playing tag, making daisy-chains and doing hand-stands in school playgrounds over fears of safety, research suggests."

A prehistoric treasure trove of extinct marsupial lions, giant kangaroos and a wombat the size of a small car has been unearthed in caves on Western Australia's Nullarbor Plain.

[Australian] Govt defends torture stance

"Australian prisons obviously did not engage in torture and it was against the law, Mr Downer said. "

...

" "We think UN officials should seek the agreement of the federal, as well as in this case the state governments, to have access to our prisons, not just get off the plane at Melbourne airport and get a cab to Pentridge and walk into the prison," he said.

"We probably wouldn't have any objection to somebody coming and having a look, but we would want them to seek our agreement to do so."

Australia joined countries such as China, Cuba, Libya and Nigeria in voting against the proposal, which was eventually accepted by a large majority in the UN's economic and social committee. "

news.bbc.co.uk front page now confronts you with a choice:"I am in the UK" yes/no. They say it's so they can give you more relevant news and sports, and you don't miss out on any information, but I'm still not sure it's a good or necessary thing. I think I'm probably better at deciding what's relevant to me.

Fat Americans sue fast food firms

"McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken misled customers by enticing them with greasy, salty and sugary food. " ... ""I always thought it was good for you. I never thought there was anything wrong with it," he said. "

Today I saw a job ad for a "sales specilaist" with "ASP models, Java, J2EE, Webspere, XML and general Internet technologies" and "Ideally with Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French & German".

Evil bear vs evil food.

Australia the fifth best country to live in, via the BBC. 'Course, Iceland is the seventh, so I guess they're not basing it on the weather!

Flippancy aside, it's pretty shocking to look at the bottom 15 countries of the table. Life expectancy less than 40 years old, 172 dead babies for every 1,000 live births.

E$$O parody logo competition

China blasts US withdrawal of population funds " The US is the only country to deny funding to the agency for non-budgetary reasons."

Remember the insults of Paul Keating?

Worker dies in chocolate vat

Australian using fake passport as ID for US bars arrested as terrorist, news.com.au.

Bicycle ambulances launched

Why New Zealand is better than Australia: "Mr Goff said New Zealand would not follow Canberra's lead in pledging support for the Bush administration.

"New Zealand would not send forces into Iraq unless there was clear evidence of links between the regime and terrorism. Despite the best intelligence work, no link has been drawn." (via the Age).

The Age: "Former Labor frontbencher Cheryl Kernot has lodged a complaint with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) over the leaking of personal emails confirming her affair with Gareth Evans. "

I think I need a big line of coke before calling recruiters.

"Hi! I'm great! You're probably great too, but I'm really great!"

Traditional English menus (the kind you see outside cheap cafs and in the country) read like a list of crimes against food. Boiled bacon?

Otoh, I bought some fish from a fish and chip shop the other day, and noticed that the bag claimed, 'Fish and Chips - the healthiest meal for all the family". I'm not sure what their basis of comparison is - battered lard, perhaps?

A on asylum seekers in Australia claims that John Howard's "hard-line policy" on intercepting boats "has been a huge political success for Prime Minister John Howard, delivering him a third consecutive election victory late last year". Surely Beazley's decision to align the Opposition with that policy (thus causing usual Labour voters to split their vote between the parties that had better policies on immigration) was a factor that can't be ignored.

Yahoo admits mangling e-mail. I wonder if there's anyone who didn't get a job interview because of a mangled resume who could sue.

Walmart are selling Linux computers! Actually, they're running Lindows.

The Age on the new Little Lonsdale St digs. See also the Museum Victoria Little Lonsdale site (horribly out-of-date but if you cut funding to museums, this is what happens).

There's a tube strike today. I walked for an hour to try and get the laptop online at a Starbucks, but they don't do that here. Still, I got to get in a Goodies reference by walking past Lords.

Caught a bus into town. The conductor was having the time of his life, telling people they could or couldn't get on, shooing them upstairs and down.

According to the NY Times (registration required), "In a letter that attacks what it says is the Bush administration's failure to address the looming crisis of global warming, the attorneys general of 11 states have written to the president pressing for strong federal measures to limit emissions of so-called greenhouse gases."

From the BBC, "American fighter jets have escorted a commercial domestic flight into a New York airport after a passenger complained that several passengers - all Indian - were acting suspiciously."

Would this have happened if they were white Europeans or Americans?

Amazon web services: "We at Amazon.com want to see Web services work. We believe they are important to the future of the Internet. To help stimulate Web service innovation, we now offer software developers the opportunity to integrate Amazon.com features and content directly into other web sites using either SOAP or XML over HTTP. Partner with the leader in e-commerce and join the Web services revolution today! "

Last night I met up with Mads for a drink, we ended up at the Foundry, where Masse were playing 'live chill-out'. It was pretty good, I'd go see them again.

An American girl on the Tube shrieked, "I can't believe this, we saw *Slayer*! For next to *nothing*! On our second night in *London*!". Bless.

Tim Fischer's 'gay continental types' comments, including "Life is too short not to talk straight" and the don't-quote-this-out-of-context "There are certainly some outstanding German hotel managers who have come to mind who have worked very hard in their positions" led Fraser to say this:

"What I like about Tim Fischer is that he seems like a pretty nice guy who's just a bit retarded, and we need more politicians like that, because they're clearly useless for doing anything other than making me laugh."

which made me laugh every time I read it.

Someone found minke.com with the search term "open directory - breasts, yay, free".

Well, I have a phone now.

Everytime my old phone was turned on, it would pick up a different network. It started with O2, then it got Vodaphone, and finally One 2 One.

Have Viagra. Need woman.

I never would have thought Bollywood movies would seem risque, with their vocabulary of chaste euphemisms, but according to this article in the Age, they're shocking some of the elders of Kandahar.

Bugger! I can't get a pre-paid sim for my phone because it's locked to the original network. Unlocking it will cost between £15 - 35, and take up to seven days, so it looks like I'll have to buy a pre-paid phone.

I'm reading _Me Talk Pretty One Day_ (when I'm not coming home too drunk to read), and there's a fabulous line on Americans in Paris, "Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns".

http://www.tntmagazine.com/uk/gettingstarted/

I think I'm about to embark on the horrible series of Catch-22's that is moving to another country. To get a phone, I need a UK bank account. To get a bank account, I need to present my name on a utility bill or lease. To get a lease, I need a job. To get a job, I need a phone. Can you see where this is leading? Insanity, that's where.

From the Age, "An Australia Post call centre worker in Melbourne has received a $3,000 pay cut for having too many personal items on her desk.".

I should read this article on EMOTION & DESIGN: ATTRACTIVE THINGS WORK BETTER when I get time.

Nice reviews of UK mobile phone sites.

Well, I'm here in London. I arrived on Saturday night, in time to have lunch with Chi on Sunday before she left for home.

I had strange culture shock on Saturday night. I was thrilled to be in an English speaking country again, but the cars were going the wrong way, and the beers seemed flat! After dreaming about beers that didn't have a head half the size of the glass, it was a shock to realise how used to them I'd become.

Did you know that if you search for "John Howard" and "garden gnome" at google, you get this site first?

Pay attention to your mac users!
"Nielsen/NetRatings said that 70.2 percent of Mac users online have a
college degree, compared with 54.2 percent of all Web surfers. That,
combined with their longer surfing histories and their greater willingness
to buy products via the Web, makes Mac consumers a prime catch for
marketers, Kelly said."

Just a few hours to go before I leave Amsterdam. Maybe I'll never get to say, "I live here" again.

Malaysia Bans Kylie Minogue Music Video

I can't work out if I'm being too precious in thinking this is an unnecessarily sexist ad for the clustering sourceforge foundry. I saw it on slashdot, where else?

30 days to a more accessible weblog.

PHP vs Perl

I'm not a joiner, ok? But I thought this was cute.

cvs on a mac running OS X has it's own set of challenges. Before you start, create a file called '.cvsignore' in the root of your cvs directory. Add these lines to it:
.DS_Store
.FBCIndex
.FBCLockFolder

I guess it's one of the things Apple haven't yet sorted out - cvs doesn't yet know that these files should be viewed as invisible parts of the OS, and users don't yet know that they have to be 'cvs remove'd along with everything else if they want to remove a directory.

Also, if your cvs repository is going to include any binary files such as images or multimedia, add a file called 'cvswrapper' to your cvs root. Example below.

Try this Google mirror.

Not long after we first arrived, Fraser and I both made notes about 'Charles Clark' on June 23, 2002. Now, of course, we have no idea why. My reminder was an appointment in the phone, that because of limited space, just says 'ChazClarkPress++'. I don't know if I meant 'increment by one' or what. It bothers me that we can't remember what it's for, because it was apparently important enough to bother remembering.

Went out to a few old locals with friends tonight, for my second last night in Amsterdam. We copped *major* ongezellig attitude in Harry's Bar, one of the bar staff actually grabbed my friend by the arm to stop her leaving because he thought we weren't going to pay. I could put their bad attitude down to wannabe trendiness but there's no excuse for manhandling customers. Avoid at all costs.

Make your own genetically mutated fish and then write to the FDA to ask them to reject an application to commercialise genetically engineers salmon.

I wrote to Kofi Annan today. You can too. Australia's trying to play sleazy at the Earth Summit, so I added this to my letter:

"As an Australian living overseas, I particularly urge you to represent my
concerns to the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard."

From the BBC: A man has been killed in the western Russian enclave of Kaliningrad while trying to remove a booby-trapped sign with obscene writing.

Passenger who made comment about pilots' sobriety escorted off plane

Fraser said, "it's the famous 'somebody fucking a llama' scene".

http://www.gapingmaw.com/ comes up trumps with the "The Big Book of Sign Language".

Nicest internet jargon dictionary I came across while looking for examples of kinds of content that get slashdotted.

A rare Michelangelo drawing worth more than $10m has been discovered in the back room of a museum in New York.

Google have just updated their interface. I mistyped looiersgracht as 'looirsgracht', and it gave me the 'did you mean x' response, along with no results. Normally, it stops here, but it redirected me to a results page for the search I might have meant.

I'm not sure if this creeps me out or not.

Tonight is 'pissfart around with cvs' night, though it should really be 'pack' or 'finish php apps' night. Anyway, I corrupted some of my image files because I imported before I remembered vague whispers about cvs and binaries. If you're using cvs for web files, consider creating a file called cvswrappers in your cvs root and adding lines like
*.gif -k 'b'
*.png -k 'b'
*.jpg -k 'b'
*.zip -k 'b
*.swf -k 'b'
*.dcr -k 'b'
*.psd -k 'b'
(plus whatever else you need, plus any upper-case variations) to it.

All this and more at http://www.kegel.com/cvsadmin.html.

In the interests of accuracy, I should admit that I also spent a chunk of the evening reading Neighbours plot lines.

Little Bogan Lost: exploring media coverage of the Jaidyn Leskie murder case: read the article summary or about the author.

Let's Talk to Jesus

While looking up the spelling of Bilynda Murphy's name, I came across this:

"I would also like to dedicate a small part of this page to Jaidyn Leskie
to a little 18 month baby boy whom was murded and his killer / killers are
still unknown today. I was also inspired to call my own son after JAIDYN
because I was pregnant at the time Jaidyn Leskie went missing and came
across his name & the abduction through a newspaper at the time .... May
his little body rest in peace..... "

In case you've forgotten some of the juicy details, this article from the 'Sidney Morning Herald' runs through them while telling *us* off for laughing at the white trash.

From AOL, "President Bush denounced criticism of his past business practices as old style politics on Tuesday, and said 'sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures.'"

Well, of course he would. The Age says that John Howard said, "in their regulatory responses to the Enron and WorldCom collapses, governments should draw a distinction between criminal behaviour and the restraint of legitimately robust business activity". He's right - they should draw a big distinction, and say, 'you crossed it and behaved criminally'.

I've finally gotten around to adding a 'send this page to a friend' script. And it's already been used! Check this out:

Dear Cheryl,

I think you'll love this page: http://www.minke.com/plays/server.html

Love always, Gareth

Dear Tony,

I don't know how they know about our secret, but I thought you should see
this page: http://www.minke.com/plays/advice.html.

Btw, I hope you don't mind too much about the George Michael video, I
don't know where he got the bit about you running on all fours.

*smoochies* Dubya-what-luvsya.

When editorial metaphors go bad. The screenshot is from The Age. I'm guessing they changed one of the headlines when they saw them together.

Well, der. From the Age, "The new unemployed were increasingly likely to be highly skilled professionals, a human resources expert said today." Where did they think the thousands of people who worked at failed start-ups went?

""It is a much tougher economic environment than we are led to believe, and every time a newspaper states how healthy the economy is, it twists a knife into professional people who simply can't find jobs because volumes are down in their industry," he said."

Maybe I'm just traumatised after watching "Start up.com" last night.

Mez followed up my dismal Nicole Kidman/BMX Bandits efforts with a link to Who Weekly's Nicole Kidman movie poster gallery, including a BMX Bandits poster.

Encouraged, I stopped being fancy-schmancy with google's search terms, and found a whole bunch of stills from BMX Bandits at a German site, BMX-Bandits.

Bonus Neighbours-era pictures of Natalie Imbruglia, Guy Pearce and Craig McLachlan. Linking to Kylie with all that hair just seems cruel, but she's in there.

Nintendo=Masturbation Aid for teenage girls and America declares war on the Netherlands. (thanks Faye!)

If you combined the two headlines, America would have declared war on masturbation, which I guess the current administration wouldn't mind doing. Though it'd probably save on those teen pregnancies...

IBM on Ease of Use Design

Apparently Google can't find any images of Nicole Kidman in BMX Bandits.

According to the Tour de France website, "Lance ARMSTRONG worn by Laurent JALABERT".

The world's flags given letter grades (Australia got a C for 'colonial nonsense' and 'too many stars'.)

From the Age, "Peter Falconio, the British tourist presumed murdered almost a year ago in an outback ambush, may have faked his own death".

The other day Fraser and I went to one of the local pub/coffeeshops, and ended up playing a few games of table soccer. The table being right near the kitchen, I spotted the real source of those millions of websites: the Webomatic. The photo I took didn't work out, so here are some someone else prepared earlier: the Webomatic, and a closeup of a probable control panel:

If I was the kind of person to read other people's personal emails, I don't know that I'd do a Laurie Oakes and broadcast to the world that I'm that kind of person

If Britney Spears was a geek, would she have sung, 'diff me baby, one more time'?

It's funny how traditions fossilise when a community that follows them moves away from the rest of the community. As an example, neon Kermis in the Netherlands vs quaint Kermis in the USA.

I saw this in someone's .sig: "One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination
of their C programs.
-- Robert Firth "

Then with lips and teeth, he claimed each realm for Gondor. The fascinating world of Aragorn/Boromir slash.

http://www.vintagelabels.org/ is a cool browse for a rainy Amsterdam summer day.

Via AOL, "As a Texas oilman, President Bush engaged in some of the same kinds of business practices he's now promising to clean up in response to a wave of corporate scandals."

Sodami and other Engrish. (Thanks Karen!)

Web design 'causes confusion' is interesting but fails to mention that sometimes it's the users you have to worry about. I was in an internet cafe yesterday, and a guy next to me asked me to help him get to hotmail. Apparently he didn't know he could type a url into the location bar.

I missed this at the time, read more about the Aurora Australis at the BBC.

Tonight I found out that vicnet have changed their formmail setup. I haven't tested the forms since at least March, so I hate to think how much hate mail I've missed out on. Bugger.

Anyway, I've fixed it now and you can send me hate mail again! Or love letters, if you really must. I've still got to fix up the address that appears on the rest of the site.

http://www.508compliant.com/tools.htm are three bookmarklets that help test your site for accessibility by turning off stylesheets, making the page greyscale or showing images without alt tags.

My L'Espion is still playing up. Maybe I should have got this StyleCam instead, except that it doesn't have support for Macs or Linux.

The evils of job agents... vs the joys of char kway teow.

According to the Age, Americans paid "$US22 million in the last quarter of last year" in the Nigerian scam. I can't believe anyone would fall for that, let alone so many people for so much money.