Monthly Archives: January 2008

Aussies lead the world in Firefox uptake

Posted on by

Go Aussies!  More evidence of how smart a country we are …. Australia has one of the highest rates in the world for Firefox usage.  Good to see 31% of us have ditched Internet Explorer and moved to a far superior browser.

Oceania (Australia and NZ basically) leads the world with 31%, followed by Europe 28%, North America 21% and the rest further behind.

Here is a map showing the levels of Firefox penetration by continent.

Firefox in December / XiTi

So whats with the 69% of Australians still using Internet Explorer …. get with the program people and change over to Firefox.  You won’t look back.  Do yourself a favour and download it.

Closer to God

Posted on by

An Air Canada flight from Toronto to London had to make an emergency landing in Ireland after a medical emergency … apparently the co-pilot suffered a breakdown, and had to be removed from the cockpit and restrained by other crew members.

According to a passenger:

“He was very, very distraught. He was yelling loudly at times,”

“He was swearing and asking for God and very distressed. He basically said he wanted to talk to God.”

I suppose  for someone wanting to talk to God, he was in the right place – well, 10,000 metres or so closer than if he’d been on the ground.

Seriously though, wouldn’t you shit yourself as a passenger had you seen this happen on your own flight?

Smackdown

Posted on by

How’s this for a big smackdown?  Victorian premier John Brumby, talking about the importance of the controversial Port Phillip Bay dredging project, said:

“If you want Melbourne to be a backwater, if you want Melbourne eventually to be an Adelaide – as someone described it the other day – well, don’t do this project, and Melbourne will just die a slow death.”

Naturally enough, South Australian premier Mike Rann didn’t appreciate this putdown.  He said:

“The Victorians are becoming more defensive because the centre of gravity for Australia’s economic future is now firmly based in states like West Australia, Queensland and South Australia.”

Hmmm, I think throwing in South Australia as a boom state like Western Australia and Queensland is overstating things a tad.

One thing Adelaide will always have though is its crown as serial killer capital of Australia!

You know Canberra is the porn capital of Australia when …

Posted on by

…. you start seeing things like “Mould a Willy” kits in a gift shop in the middle of Westfield Belconnen Mall.  Not exactly hidden away either, it was on display in the front of the store, so no, I did not have to go purposefully looking for it down the back of the store.  And it wasn’t the first thing that attracted my attention as I walked past the shop.  Not really the sort of things I’d expect to see outside the porn emporiums of Fyshwick.

NSFW warning

To see what a “Mould a Willy” kit entails, go here.

Smiley Saturday

Posted on by

Lightening has a thing on her blog called Smiley Saturday.   It is something just to lighten up the day and talk about something that makes you smile.  So I had a funny story, which we’d been having fun with today, so I thought I’d put it under the Smiley Saturday banner.

My (18 year old) daughter’s bedroom window at the front of our house had some shrubs in front of it.  She liked the fact that it gave her privacy, but didn’t like that it was blocking most of the light getting into her room.  So she decided today was the day to do some gardening.

Of course, smutty humour lovers that we are, that led to a day of puns about her “trimming her bush”, and whether the garden shears were suitable for that task.

Yep, pubes, sex, toilets, farts and all those things are hilarious to my family.  (To be honest its me and two teenagers … my wife is usually above the level of crassness some of us engage in.)

Australia Day – a special place

Posted on by

Today is Australia Day, the anniversary of the day the first white settlers from England landed in Sydney in 1788.

Inspired by this post in Aussie Bloggers  …. here is a photo of what I think is one of the most amazing places in Australia, Purnululu National Park in the Kimberly region of Western Australia.  Also known as the Bungle Bungles, this area was only really discovered by non-indigenous Australians around 30 or so years ago.

I was there in 2000.  Eight years ago.  I mean to go again some time.  It is truly an amazingly beautiful and spectacular place.

Had I not been so slack in scanning some of my pre digital camera photos, I would have got my act together and submitted something like this to the Aussie Bloggers post.

Time to bring back the stocks

Posted on by

Two teenagers, 16-year-old and 14-year-old have been remanded in custody after being charged with numerous offences including break and enter, for looting houses that had been evacuated in the Queensland town of Emerald during the recent floods.

The police say the teenagers will be flown out of Emerald tonight because of widespread anger in the community.  Inspector Lyle Mitchell said:

“We will be taking measures and certainly one of those measures will be remanding in custody for their own personal safety to ensure their safety.”

“That might sound a bit soft but certainly there’s an obligation there to make sure that no harm comes to them.”

Yep, soft.  Chaining them to a lamp post in the main street for a few days would have been more appropriate.  With the flooding I’m sure there’s plenty of spoiled food around town, so plenty of rotten tomatoes and stuff to chuck at the little bastards.

Technorati tags: , , , ,

OH&S – for suicide bombers

Posted on by

Let this be a lesson to all suicide bombers.  Be careful where you tread – slips and trips are a hazard in the suicide bomber business, and workplace accidents can have deadly consequences.

A would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.

I can see the merits in using the local village idiot as a suicide bomber.  No point wasting more skilful and valuable resources on such missions.  However, evidently there is an intelligence threshhold below which the idiocy endangers the mission’s objectives.

Clearly the Taliban need to do some OH&S training for their insurgents.  After all, they don’t want their suicide bombers to die stupid accidental and pointless deaths.  (No, they want deliberate and pointless deaths).

Cloverfield

Posted on by

We saw “Cloverfield” last night.   I liked it – even if I felt queasy in the stomach almost all the way through it.  And thats nothing to do with gore or violence or anything like that.  The gimmick of this movie is that its shot to look like a home movie shot on a home video camera.  The jerkiness and sudden cuts between scenes take some getting used to, and it feels like a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

Well worth seeing.

Technorati tags: ,

Flying a kite for Kim

Posted on by

A bit of kite flying going on in the papers today, I think.  Some Labor Party figures, including cabinet Secretary John Faulkner, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith and Treasurer Wayne Swan, have been pushing for former leader Kim Beazley to be appointed Australia’s next
Governor-General.

Bad idea!  Appointing someone like Beazley (who, by the way , seems a decent and inoffensive man) justs shouts out loudly that the politics of patronage, of jobs for the boys, are alive and well in the new federal government.  Dumb move!  They need to make a clean break from the sort of low standards that the previous government set with political appointments to positions such as this (and diplomatic postings, etc).  These jobs should not be seen as rewards for good service to the party, or extra superannuation for long and faithful service.  They should be filled by the best person for the role.

Anyway, the idea didn’t last long in the public arena.  PM Kevin Rudd, has already ruled it out.

“When we turn our minds to this, the next Governor-General of Australia will not be a former or serving politician, conservative or Labor,” :

“And the reason being is I believe it’s an office which is often best discharged by someone from the broader community.”

Now I’m sure the government never really had any intention of appointing Kim as GG …. seems like someone’s been running the flag up the pole to see if who salutes.

I expect  the government would really want to appoint a woman Governor-General … a first for Australia, and a stamp on our history that I’m sure many in government would like to be responsible for.  Any ideas who the strongest candidates might be?

.