Month: March 2009

This year, we will not be getting an Anzac Day long weekend.

Due to the fact that Anzac Day for 2009 falls on a Saturday, the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) believes that it would be inappropriate to move the public holiday to the following Monday because it might encourage people to leave town for a break, instead of participating in the Anzac tribute ceremonies.

Is it un-Australian not to go to the ceremonies? Anzac Day is important for remembrance, though I have never been to a ceremony. At least, not since I moved out of home. Does that make me un-Australian? I still care about the sacrifice that the Anzacs made for our freedom and safety. I still think about it and thank God for it, but apparently I can’t do that were I to travel across and appreciate the country that they fought to protect (lets face it, you’re probably not going to go overseas for a three-day long weekend).

The RSL has also lobbied to move the Salamanca Market from the Saturday to the Sunday for similar reasons. Not only does this potentially financially damage the stall holders, but tourists (who probably don’t read local newspapers) will be wondering where our market went when they arrive on the Saturday morning. Not to mention the tour organisers, cafes and other businesses that rely on the custom generated by the foot traffic that the market brings to Salamanca.

Moving the market: Unfair.
Taking away our public holiday: Un-Australian.

As the more observant of you would have noticed, I’ve recently started using Twitter. On Japh‘s recommendation I signed up for an account and followed a few people I knew were using it.

Then I waited for the awesome.
The awesome didn’t come.

Initially, I was quite confused – “What is the point of this? I only know of a few people who use this service and subsequently the stream of information is very very slow. Less of a twitter, more of a dribble. Isn’t this just Facebook with less functionality?”
I stuck with it though. I looked through the list of people followed by friends of mine and slowly my own list grew. I was adding more and more people I knew, thought were interesting or who were famous.

I wasn’t sold on the service until this morning. I checked Twitter and found a ‘Tweet’ from Mike Krahulik (aka Gabe of Penny Arcade fame) letting his followers know that he was broadcasting live on UStream. I followed his link and was able to watch him drawing the upcoming comic live while he responded to our sidebar chat questions by handwriting answers in the whitespace, then erasing them. He followed all of this up with a Q&A session which entailed us asking questions, while he typed his answers into a blank Word document.

The thing that Twitter affords is a connectedness to people who you previously considered unapproachable. I assume this won’t last – you used to be able to do the same thing with email. Perhaps it will? I don’t know.

If you care (unlikely), you can follow my updates by signing up for a Twitter account yourself, or by checking my sidepanel right here on my blog. If you’re a feed reader and haven’t seen the sidepanel, you can even sign up to Twitter RSS feeds on a per-account basis by viewing the desired person‘s profile.

I’m not 100% sold on it, but I’ll give it more time. Impress me, Twitter.

I went to see Birds of Tokyo with Jolly, Matt, Simon, Jim, Dave and Drunk-Girl on Friday night.

Well, I say Drunk-Girl, but I guess Baked-Girl, Stoned-Girl or Bored-Girl would have been better descriptions. I have no idea what she was on. Matt made the mistake of leaving our prime position on the single piece of seating in the Tas Unibar to go and get a drink. His spot was unashamedly taken by Drunk-Girl who summarily fell asleep on Dave’s shoulder. When asked if she was ok, she slurringly told us that she was just tired and really bored. At a rock concert. Watching one of the best (and loudest) bands ever to grace the stage at the Unibar. I call shenanigans.

The band rocked and also rolled, as they are wont to do.
At certain points, the singing of the crowd drowned out the band. The vibe was fantastic – the band responded to it as well, they appeared to be having a great time. I guess the fact that this is their second gig in little ol’ Hobart in three months says a lot.

This is the first gig that I’ve attended carrying good earplugs. These things are well worth the purchase. I paid $30 for a pair of Hearos Hi-Fidelity earplugs, which meant that I was able to hear the concert without sacrificing sound quality too much. The mean attenuation across the frequency spectrum is quite flat. The only disadvantage was that I needed to take them out of my head whenever anyone wanted to talk to me. Including morons offering drugs.

This is the first time I’ve come across this in Hobart – a guy was wandering about offering people small white pills from a folded up piece of paper in his pocket. We told him to piss off, but I can only assume that he got to Drunk-Girl before he got to us.

At the end of the gig, we offered to call a cab for Drunk-Girl. She said “NO. My ticket was free anyway.” Then stormed off.
If you happen to be reading Drunk-Girl (if you can read that is), I wasn’t offering to pay for your taxi ride, only to summon it for you. Perhaps next time you should just enjoy the concert rather than getting baked on whatever crap is being handed out.

Next time, sit on someone else’s ledge.

The transformation is complete!

From this:

To This:

It isn’t too late to give some dosh to a great cause. I imagine that Mr T pities fools that don’t give money to charity.

At this stage Bice has raised seventeen hundred wing-wangs. Lets keep it up!

Gillette have officially jumped the shark.

Their grooming products might still be great, but their marketing department must have suffered some serious cutbacks thanks to the global financial crisis. I imagine that it is staffed solely by a guy named Leroy who was just promoted from custodial services.

They have recently released their Fusion Gamer series of shaving vendibles.
(Unnecessary-amounts-of-flash-based-crap warning)

Razors for gamers.

I visited their horrid site today.
My first (and last) port of call was their FAQs section. If it truly was a list of frequently asked questions, then shouldn’t the first question on the list have been “WTF”?

Penny Arcade weigh in.
(language warning)