I don’t think I like the new Doctor :(
10:59 am, January 4th, 2009 |
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Posted in girlthings, internets, roundups, whinging by Liz
Matt Smith has been named as the actor who will take over from David Tennant in Doctor Who - making him the youngest actor to take on the role.
At 26, Smith is three years younger than Peter Davison when he signed up to play the fifth Doctor in 1981.
Smith will first appear on TV screens as the 11th Doctor in 2010.
He looks a bit… emo.
Wtf, Virgin?
8:15 pm, December 20th, 2008 |
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Posted in geekery, girlthings, internets, whinging by Liz
I’d been with Vodafone for what seems like forever. They’ve always treated me nicely, and I’ve never had a problem with them. I even managed to pull Jarod over to them. Then we decided to get new phones, and went out and assessed all the carriers. Virgin came out on top because we could call and sms each other for free. Winner!
I figured I wouldn’t notice any difference, seeing as both Vodafone and Virgin piggyback off the Optus network. And, to begin with, I didn’t.
Then I got an email that said the following:
“Hey, just wondering who is this? I went to gmail on my ph and it logged into ur account.”
At first Jarod and I assumed it was spam or something bizarre like that, but curiosity got the better of me and I replied asking for a few more details. Turns out this guy was legitimate, and he too was on the Virgin network. Alright, I thought, I’ll just keep changing my password every couple of weeks, and change my settings so my Gmail app sends all it’s stuff over a secure network and we’ll be fine. Perhaps the thing that controls the packet data had a hiccup which ended badly.
But then a couple of days later I went to log into facebook for the first time on my phone (sad, I know). To my surprise, it had prepopulated with someone elses email address. Luckily for them, it hadn’t saved their password.
Today, I sent an MMS to Jarod with a photo of Train (sending a test message to see if the MMS was set up on my number). A couple of hours later I got a message from someone saying ‘Who is this?’. Apparently they’d received a photo of a baby from my number. Jarod still hasn’t received anything.
So, wtf Virgin?? If it wasn’t for the fact I don’t particularly want to pay out my contract right now, I’d be switching back to Vodafone. At least they didn’t share my log in details with other people, or send incorrect messages to people I don’t even know. Seriously.
And, no, I have not yet contacted Virgin customer service as I believe it will be a huge waste of time to get through to someone on the frontline who will probably tell me that nothing is wrong. I will probably go into one of their stores during the week and see what they have to say. But yeah, if you’re considering going to Virgin… don’t.
Oh, hello there.
9:49 pm, December 15th, 2008 |
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Posted in girlthings, whinging by Liz
Yeah, yeah, we suck at blogging. To be honest, this was the reason we started the blog together. If we did this on our own, we’d never post often enough to make it interesting. Hell, we barely post often enough to make it interesting here!
And the new Wordpress interface is so shiny and nice, too.
But, I digress. Here are our excuses for not so much posting:
+ Jarod is playing GTA4 in his spare time. (i.e. lots)
+ Liz has been watching Jarod playing GTA4 in her spare time, and occasionally gets to steal big trucks and run over things.
+ Both of us are ridiculously tired and run down
+ Liz isn’t sleeping properly, and when she doesn’t sleep, she doesn’t make sense, and thus should avoid talking on the internet
+ Liz’s sister is coming to stay, um, tomorrow.
+ Christmas is next week.
Make of them what you will.
I don’t really like Christmas. I’ve never been one of those lucky people (*cough*Jarod*cough*) who gets time off because their work closes down. I’ve always had to work through the Christmas ‘break’, and sometimes even on Christmas Day.
When I was a kid, there was never the belief in Santa. My parents told us that he wasn’t real, and the focus of the day was because that kid named Jesus was born. Once I baked him a birthday cake. And then ate lots of it. (I was little, and needed an excuse for cake). We still got presents, but there was never that excitement that everyone seemed to have as a kid at the thought of a fat man with weird animals breaking into your home while you were sleeping.
I’m not a good present giver. I prefer to give useful presents, but can never do so because most people have all the ‘useful’ presents they need. I’m also not a good present receiver either. I don’t like surprises, or being the centre of attention, so it’s not that fun when I’m opening a present and everyone around me is watching to see what’s inside. Especially when I have to look pleased no matter what it is. Although I’ve reached the age where apparently I’m good at pretending I like stuff.
That’s not to say if you’ve given me a present that I hate it, it’s more that I have no space for stuff in our tiny apartment and would much prefer that you donate some money to the Cat Protection Society, or maybe my bank account or something. (Jokes! Not about the Cat Protection Society bit though).
And then there’s the whole religious thing attached to the holiday (see my Jesus note above). Although brought up a fairly strict Pentecostal/Christian, I’d consider myself atheist these days. I’ve found there’s a lot of stupidity and naivety in the church… especially among the youth. I was once told by a Pastor’s son that when Jesus came back to earth, that he would give everyone a chance to repent. Which meant, it didn’t matter what you did on earth, as long as when the Big Day came, that you said you were sorry. He then went on to impregnate one of the sixteen year old youth leaders. I’m not sure whether that was meant to prove his point or not.
Regardless of how much I dislike the Church (as a whole, I don’t care what denomination you are, you’re all as bad as each other), I still have a hard time believing that there’s some invisible being up there that actually cares about everyone.
I just finished reading a book called Calculating God. It’s one of Jarod’s that he’s been wanting me to read for ages, ever since he successfully got me to read God’s Debris. I should mention at this point that if you ever suggest that I should read/see/hear/eat something because I’d find it interesting/pretty/good sounding/tasty I will avoid it. I like to find things on my own, even if it does mean I miss out on reading/seeing/hearing/eating awesome things that I would probably like. Jarod knows this, but still tries. Really hard. And some times I give in. But not often.
But anyway. I’m not going to get into God’s Debris as that’s another topic all together, but Calculating God is based around the theory that there is scientific proof that there is a God. But not a God in a religious kind of way. You would not pray to him, or worship him. He is imperfect, and he is just a designer. He is there to design, and design alone. And, seeing as my mind is programmed to automatically accept the existence of a God, intelligent design I could believe. Maybe. But it’s about as proven as evolution or christianity, so it’s hardly something rock solid.
And no, just because I’m an athiest doesn’t mean I believe in evolution. To be honest, I don’t really care how we all came to be in the beginning. I might sound a bit stupid when I say this, but: It doesn’t really affect me. All anyone can do is merely speculate, so until someone travels back in time and proves without a shadow of a doubt… I’m not really interested. Sorry.
The book’s ending was quite shit, really. But the arguements proposed in the book were really interesting.
And this, ladies and gentlemen (if you’ve reached the end) is why I don’t blog when I am sleep deprived.
A badly thought out and written discussion with myself on how I dislike Christmas, which turned into something about how I don’t believe in God, which didn’t really end all that well because I’m excited at the thought that I think I might be able to fall asleep.
Sweet dreams, internets.
Back to the safety of Flickr, then.
Dear Kevin Rudd
3:55 pm, December 2nd, 2008 |
3 Comments »
Posted in girlthings, internets, whinging by Liz
Dear Kevin Rudd,
Hows things? Good I hope. From all reports you seem to be pretty busy since being elected. Understandable I guess. Things to do, people to meet, decisions to make.
I don’t mind admitting that I helped vote you in. I mean, really, the choices were you or John Howard, and really, if you hadn’t won I probably would have left the country.
I don’t even blame you for the current financial crisis. Although, just keep an eye out at the next election, that one is going to come back and bite you on the ass — the Liberals are going to be going on about how the told us so, even though they would have been in the same situation had they been in power. Hope your PR team is ready for that one.
But, this isn’t just a letter (blog post, whatever) to see how you are going, there is one huge idiotic thing you guys are planning to implement. And you know, I’ve been watching this all play out thinking ‘Surely, at any moment, he’s going to say it wont work and pull out of it’. But you haven’t. And it worries me that you’re taking the idea seriously.
ISP Filtering.
I mean, sure. Great idea in theory. Protect all the kiddies eyes from porn and violence and the world will be a better place. I didn’t mind so much when there was talk of an opt-out. That gives us choices, and freedom to do what we like. And even the freedom of speech argument has been stupidly turned around as if to say I’m now someone that wants to look at kiddie porn:
“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” [Senator Conroy] said.
“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”
C’mon guys. Now you’re just being silly. Besides, whether you like it or not, child pornography didn’t start with the internet, and you blocking it certainly isn’t going to rid this country of it. If anything, it’ll just make paedophiles harder to track down.
You guys also keep implying that UK, Canada and a bunch of other countries have ISP-level filtering, and that it works over there. But, um, guys? It’s voluntary over there. And in the UK at least, the sole purpose is for preventing accidental access to a small list of identified bad sites. Not even close to what you’re trying to implement here.
Not even the ISPs are on your side:
“The idea that ISPs could somehow or other filter the Internet is one, technically impossible and two, a bad idea anyway,” he says. “If you want to filter the bad guys out of the ‘net, quite apart from the fact that technically you can’t do it, you would need to pass a lot of legislation, a huge packet of legislation, to make that properly carried out, to make it stand up.”
“Various successive governments have seized upon ISPs as being a convenient choke point or gatekeeper point on the ‘net. They would love for ISPs to become judge, jury, policeman, posse, hangman, the whole deal. And I think it’s a very inappropriate thing to do.”
- Justin Milne, group Managing Director for Telstra Bigpond.
My favourite quote is this one:
Michael Malone, managing director iiNet, said he would sign up to be involved in the “ridiculous” trials, which are scheduled to commence by December 24 this year.
Optus and Telstra both said they were reviewing the Government’s documentation and would then decide whether to take part.
But Malone’s main purpose was to provide the Government with “hard numbers” demonstrating “how stupid it is” - specifically that the filtering system would not work, would be patently simple to bypass, would not filter peer-to-peer traffic and would significantly degrade network speeds.
“They’re not listening to the experts, they’re not listening to the industry, they’re not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help,” he said.
“Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we’ll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we’ll be publicising it.”
Malone concluded: “This is the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.”
(The Age).
I could go on for a bit, but was really just after a favour.
Could you spare a moment and grab the plans from your Communications Minister, have a read, then sit down and really think about this? I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion that the rest of Australia has. And just remember, it’s okay to change your mind. Sure, the opposition will give you shit about it, but the rest of Australia will thank you. And you’ll gain more street cred with the kids.
Love and kisses,
Liz.
PS For you, and everyone else, there’s a really informative site here if you’d like to have a read.
Liz health update.
8:48 pm, December 1st, 2008 |
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Posted in girlthings, local, whinging by Liz
So, I have this thing called Barry. Barry is a thyroid nodule. But he’s small, so he’s okay. But anyway. I was getting Barry checked out as it had been awhile, and they ran some blood tests on me at the same time. It turns out Barry is quite comfortable and fine and still pretending to be a bit of my thyroid, but I’m quite iron deficient. This is weird, because I like red meat. A lot. It seriously would account for 4 or 5 dinners in a week.
So, now I have to eat more red meat (happy to do so), but also throw in green vegies (not so happy to do so) and the like, and take a tablet a day for three months and then see how I go. And put up with everyone telling me that it’s all in my head and of course I can swallow tablets like everyone else, when really, it’s going to be an interesting process.
But, at the very least it explains my lack of energy and concentration for the past little while. I was just starving my organs of oxygen, that’s all.
(Oh, and no more giving blood for a bit…)
Just thought I should mention…
7:21 pm, November 29th, 2008 |
1 Comment »
Posted in boythings, geekery, girlthings, internets, whinging by Liz
Jarod has become a little obsessed with this game. About a World of Goo. The engineering side of his brain is delighted. So you might not hear from him for a bit.
I did try to play it, but Jarod would lean over and tell me how my structural balance wasn’t right, or something like that. I just wanted to play with goo.
Why 10 speed mountain bike cassettes are a bad thing
2:29 pm, November 20th, 2008 |
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Posted in bikes, boythings, whinging by Jarod
Perhaps I’m a jaded old rider, but I prefer components on my bike a little heavier and a lot more hard wearing. The rumours surrounding 10 speed mtb cassettes don’t appeal to me at all. In fact, I dislike the very thought of it.
On my Gary Fisher I’m often, if not always, shifting two gears at a time. That’s up and down kids. The extra cog which supposedly has the benefit of making the ratios closer together would be wasted on me in a shifting frenzy. I know I should shift more often to regulate my cadence, but that’s just not the way I enjoy riding. It’s the same reason why my single speed is (was) so enjoyable to ride. Just jump on… pedal… and switch your brain off.
The negative point that I can’t get my head around is that adding another cog means that all ten would be thinner, thus they all wouldn’t last nearly as long. Drive trains will wear out quicker and need replacing sooner. And what will your barely ridden, worn out 10 speed drive train with? A new lighter, faster, more expensive 10 speed cassette of course!
Except for the elite I can’t see 10 speed cassettes being needed, but folks will surely upgrade to latest and greatest 10 speed cassettes.. The main reason is that it’ll pack some punch when there’s a pissing contest between mates on the trail. Those with 30 gears will win.
For me, big companies forcing people into an endless upgrade cycle (no pun intended) only solidifies my love of simple, basic technologies. A bicycle’s drive train should fit into the category of ‘chunky and lasts for ages’. The one wide gear and chain on my single speed certainly does that.
Update on the Dead SB600
8:00 pm, October 14th, 2008 |
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Posted in boythings, geekery, photography, whinging by Jarod
Liz dropped it off a week or so back, and the eta for a quote was 3 weeks. Sometimes I think I’m in the wrong industry. Camera repairs always seems to cost a fortune and demand is always high. Hmmmmm.
In other news, I’m obscenely disenchanted with photography at the moment. So much so that I haven’t picked up my camera in a few weeks. It happened about the time that I smooshed the SB600, which I fail to see as a fluke.
Unworry is not a word.
9:56 pm, October 3rd, 2008 |
3 Comments »
Posted in local, whinging by Jarod
Oh NRMA, you paid the advertising agency waaay too much money for your current ‘unworry’ campaign.
The two bones I have to pick with this are that ‘Unworry’ is not a word and that the NRMA is pretending to be on our side.
That is all. I’m off my soap box now.