Exceptionally Cool

Go here and fly. (Use the mouse to control direction.)

More Bloody Brilliance

I saw this for the first time last night, though I'm led to believe it debuted a year ago.

Bloody exceptional!

Catastrophe!

Photoshop stopped working last night. It just won't load. And before I hear any sniggering behind my back, yes, it is a legit copy.

This is going to put the Aug 24 launch in doubt because there's a mountain of graphics that need to be tidied up to make everything look nice. (And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that looking nice is important.)

Frustrating.

UPDATE: It's now 11:30pm. Photoshop's been off line for more than 30 hours. I've been working on this all day, and finally found the solution buried deep in the web. It seems my Photoshop preferences file was corrupted, though how or by what I know not.

I'm exhausted. Tracking down a failure like this is bloody hard work. Damned computers. Today was a timely reminder of an important axiom... "the problem with computers is that they don't work, so as long as you start from that basic preconception, everything you get from there is a bonus".

The upside... Wroof! is back on track (sort of).
The downside... I've decided to take some pressure off and put the launch back a couple of weeks.

Quality Representation

There's no doubting it... a career in politics is attracting quality candidates in Australia.

This is Jason Wood from the opposition Liberal Party and MP for LaTrobe, who, in June this year, was trying to get his head (and tongue) around whatever benefits GM foods will actually bring to the people of Australia.

Thanks, but I'm happy with mine just the way it is.

Nine Days, Sixteen Hours...

So much to do, and so little time. And, of course, it doesn't help that I've decided to make a few changes, just to make life a little more interesting.

Imagine having a blog, just like this one, where your entires are arranged by category on different pages.

And imagine those different pages having different formats... on one page it's your regular blog, on another a photo gallery, while on another, your own private forum.

It's all possible with Wroof! In fact, that barely scratches the surface.

Wroof! is coming. August 24.

Bloody Excellent

I got me one of these.

It truly is an inspired piece of technology, and I have to admit that I didn't understand what all the fuss was about until I got mine home and started playing with it.

Put the iPhone on Chester's "highly recommended" list.

Going To Hell!

Yup. I'm sure, if I believed in that sort of thing, it would be true. I'd be going to hell. Fortunately, I'm Jewish and we don't believe in hell, so I guess I'm safe.

This arrived in by spambox today...

Hello ,
It is a pleasure meeting you at last for I have waited for this golden moment.I am Roger Bird manager in one of the prime bank in united kingdom.Six months ago ,my late customer died in a fatal accident and was buried at the state cemetry.My late customer (Sir mark jones ) has an accountwith a credit balance of twenty million pounds (20,000,000:00),which has beendormant for a very long time.
All efforts to contact the named beneficiary to late Sir jones's estate,with the supplied information proved futile.My good friend ,am contacting you because i want you to claim this money with me. i have the necessary information and documents that would enable us this claim.Please kindly send me your urgent reply to enable me know which other step to take towards the claim of this money.
Regards,
Roger Bird

I hated it. It's poorly written and unconvincing, and I couldn't help myself. I just had to rewrite it so I sent the following back to the scammer...

Oh come on 'Roger'. If you're going to run this scam, you have to do better than this. There are too many typing and/or spelling mistakes in your email for this to be real.
Seriously... I thought you scammers were more professional than that.
The email needs to look something like this...
-----------------------------
Hello,
I have been given your email address by a former colleague of yours who has asked not to be identified. He has told me you may be interested in a "special transaction" that will significantly benefit both of us.
First, allow me to introduce myself and give you a little background. My name is Roger Bird and I am an Account Manager at Prime Bank in the UK.
About eighteen months ago, one of my Personal Banking customers, Sir Mark Jones, passed away. He had considerable wealth, and left no will.
Thus far, the bank has gone to much effort to locate next of kin, but it appears Sir Mark left no living relatives. In cases like this, the Bank holds deposited funds for a fixed period of time, usually two years, before passing those funds on to Her Majesty's Government, where they end up in Consolidated Revenue, doubtless to be wasted on useless ideology inspired social engineering or some Ministerial junket.
With all avenues of inquiry now exhausted, the file has arrived back on my desk to be closed, which is a shame, because Sir Mark managed to accumulate some twenty million pounds in his less than reputable business career.
Without a validated claimant, all that money will disappear into some treasury black hole, never to be seen again. I have the necessary paperwork to validate such a claimant, but as a bank employee, I'm unable to approve a claim of my own. That's where you come in...
What I'm proposing is that you claim the money. I'll validate your claim, and we can split the account 50/50. Interested?
Please reply ASAP, because I'm not going to be able to hold this file in my top drawer for too long before someone notices it's not been processed.
Warmest regards
Roger.
-----------------------------
It's written in English, it makes sense, and it doesn't try to hide the fact that there's a big scam going on here, which means anyone who falls for it deserves what they get!
Feel free to use it... just remember where it came from and let me know if you get anyone stupid enough to bite.

Look for it in your spam box soon.

18 Days 9 Hours And A Handful of Minutes.

I've generally tried to keep business and blog separated by a wide gulf. It's better that way. After all, this blog isn't a subtle advertisement for our latest nutritional products... it's just a bear pontificating, pretending he knows more than he probably does.

Today though, and for the rest of August, I'm going to make an exception. I'm going to bombard you with some unashamed self promotion.

About 6 years ago, I started something... a small web programming task that was supposed to take a couple of weeks. Now don't get me wrong. Those of you who know me will quickly point out that I definitely don't have a pocket protector and that I used to find it too easy to pick up girls to be a programmer. No. I was just dabbling, writing something called a "content manager", mostly because I wanted to teach myself something new.

A "content manager" is software that's supposed to make it easy to create and update web sites by storing the content of the site in a database. You know what I mean because Blogger is a content manager.

We were trying to write an on-line magazine for a little side-project I was involved in back then, and creating the content manager seemed easier than coding a brand new web page each time I wanted to add a story. If only I'd known then what I know now, but there's nothing like a retrospectoscope to clarify one's thoughts and I don't have one.

So when that business was stillborn, I kept the code and continued to work on it, and work on it, and work on it, and work on it. (Six years. That's nearly 20% of my adult life. Fuck! What a potentially huge waste of time.)

My simple project's grown a bit since then, and we use it in my other business every day. (If you want to see it at work, go to http://www.rplus.com.au/, though what you're looking at there is the version before the version before last... what I have now is way more powerful and infinitely easier to use.

So for six years, line by line, piece by piece, sometimes by evolution, sometimes by osmosis and sometimes by blind luck, I've been cobbling this thing together. It's probably been harder than it otherwise might have been because I'm not a really great code cutter, but oh my...

... the end result is brilliant. Really, it is. And if you had the slightest inkling of how it actually works, and the pain I suffered to make it work, you'd think so too.

What's so brilliant about it? Oh. I'm glad you asked.

Wroof! (that's what it's called) is the ultimate in content management. You can create a magazine, with stories, forums, blogs, photo galleries, and comments. You can allocate different sections in your magazine to different editors, and then tie magazine stories into products in the built-in shopping cart, which is then linked to an optional built-in multi-store point-of-sale system. Wroof! even comes with an up-to-date currency converter.

You can put different content on different pages, and control who sees what content via an 8 level security system. You can even sell subscriptions to your site, with different subscription levels having access to different content.

And that's just the beginning.

Wroof launches to the world on August 24... 18 days 9 hours and a handful of minutes away.

Want to see for your self? Go to http://www.wroof.com/ and watch the little clock count down.

Care Factor = Zero

The Olympics are coming. Just days away, apparently. TV's full of stories. Presenters sit in the Peking smog inhaling lungfulls of toxic fumes, trying to get us excited about the world's premier drug trial. "The Olympics this". "The Olympics that". Blah Blah fecken blah.

Does anyone care?

My Dog Needs What?

Regular readers will know how much I love our K9 friends, but even for me, this might be a little over the top. Or maybe not.

Apparently, there are dog opthalmologists in the USA who can determine, from the shape of Rover's eyes, whether he needs glasses or not. Yes. You read that right. Glasses. For your dog. Apparently, the dog opthalmologist prepares a prescription which is then sent to Doggles, better known for their stylish, high quality dog sunglasses and protective eyewear. (The dogs involves in the WTC rescue/recovery mission wore these, so they must be ok.)

I have just one question... no... that's not right... I have a long list of questions, but I'll start with this one... how do I convince Zac to keep the glasses on?

YouTube With Neurones

I came across the most wonderful website today. It's called TED, and you can find it at www.ted.com.

Refreshing, energising, stimulating, expanding, thought provoking, captivating, mind blowing. I'm sure there are more superlatives but it's after 11 and I'm tired, mostly from spending much of the evening stimulating my brain.

You see, TED's tagline should give you a hint. "Ideas Worth Spreading."

I'd like to think of it as a YouTube for people with a 3 digit IQ. I can guarantee you that you won't find anything that remotely resembles "Funniest Home Videos", "Big Brother" or even "Cops". What you'll find is a collection of great minds sharing great thoughts.

Go to TED. Spend a few hours. Expand your brain, your horizons, and your outlook on life. I did, and I've just scratched the surface.

I just love this ad...

It just makes me smile every time I see it... and for hour, I walk around the house singing "Boomdeeyahdah boomdeeyahdah" in my head.

Invading The Land of the Long White Shroud

Of course, the easiest part about invading New Zealand is that most of them are already here, in Bondi, so one strategically placed low yeild tactical nuke would go a significant way towards getting the job done (and leave some prime beachfront land cleared and ready for redevelopment).

Woo Hoo! I Won! I Won!

I'm SOOO excited. This came to my inbox this evening...

Microsoft Promotion Award
20 Craven Park, Harlesden London NW10,
United Kingdom.
Ref No: BTD/976/06
Batch No: 401978G
Dear Lucky Winner
WINNING NOTIFICATION-------Ref No:BTD/976/06---Batch:401978G The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organized a Sweepstakes,we rolled out over 100,000, 000.00 e-ticket for our Monthly Draws.The selection was made through a computer draw system attaching personalized email addresses to ticket numbers.
Your email address as indicated was drawn and attached to ticket numbers 008995727495 with serial numbers SBTD/9080648302/06 and drew the lucky numbers 14-21-25-40-40-47(21) which subsequently won you (£500,000.00)(Five Hundred Thousand Great Britain Pounds)as one of the jackpot winners in this draw.
To begin the claim processing of your prize you are to send the below informations to your Claims/Fiduciary Agent.
NAME:.....................
SEX:.....................
AGE:.....................
DIRECT PHONE NUMBER..............
ADDRESS:..................
OCCUPATION:...............
NATIONALITY:..............
COUNTRY.................
CHOOSE MEANS OF RECEIVING YOUR WINNINGS.
1.COURIER DELIVERY
2.BANK WIRING
File your winnings by sending the above informations to our Claims/Fiduciary Agent by Email for the processing of your winnings.
MR DONALD GRAY,
Email : remitclaims_dept@live.com
CALL :+44-704-574-0889
***Reply to this email only***
Mrs.Gloria Bent
(Microsoft Award Coordinator).

Wowee zowee! I didn't even know I'd entered...

...seriously people... does anyone believe this crap? [If answer 'YES' then they deserve whatever's coming to them.]

Second Amendment

It's sometimes difficult for those of us born and raised outside the United States to understand the American love affair with firearms.

Especially when we read stories like these two, pulled from the Fox News website this morning.

Story #1
Man Accidentally Kills Pregnant Wife While Cleaning Gun
Associated Press
ORLANDO, Fla. — A pregnant woman and her unborn child have died in central Florida after being accidentally shot by the woman's husband, authorities said.
Yailen Abreu, 23, and the fetus died Tuesday at Orlando Regional Medical Center.
Orange County sheriff's officials said Abreu was hit in the stomach while her husband was cleaning his gun late Monday at their Orlando-area home. She was six months pregnant.
The bullet struck 39-year-old Enio Abreu in the hand before hitting in his wife, authorities said.

Seriously tragic.

Story #2
Woman Shoots Herself While Trying to Kill Mice
Associated Press
POTTER VALLEY, Calif. — A Mendocino County woman who was trying to kill mice in her trailer with a gun ended up shooting herself and another person.
The 43-year-old woman pulled out her .44-caliber Magnum revolver after she saw the mice scurrying across the floor of her trailer on Highway 20 in Potter Valley, sheriff's officials said.
But she accidentally dropped the gun, which went off as it struck the floor. The bullet went through the woman's kneecap, bounced off the keys sitting on the belt loop of a 42-year-old man in the trailer and grazed the man's groin before ending up in his coin pocket.
Authorities did not release the shooting victims' names.
The mice escaped the shooting unharmed.

I'm somehow comforted that the mice escaped unharmed.

How Big?

Regular readers will know how much I enjoy the occasional trawl through my spam folder, and today's catch nearly made me blush.

I'm not sure there's any need to explain what this is about...

What you can expect
First month you will notice an increase in size of up to 1/2 inch, you will also notice an increase in sexual desire, stronger erections and more enjoyable sex.
Second month you will notice an increase in size of up to 1 inches, plus an increase in Girth (Width) of 5%, plus all the benefits of the first month.
Third/Forth month you will notice an increase in size of up to 3 inches, plus an increase in Girth (Width) of 10%, plus all the benefits of the first month.
Fifth/Sixth month you will notice an increase in size of up to 4 inches, plus a increase in Girth (Width) of 20%, plus all the benefits of the first month.

Now I'll tell you that wasn't one of the guys standing around in the school change room with a ruler, so I have no point of reference other than my own, but an EXTRA four inches seems like a mighty uncomfortable size for any purpose. Ah well. Maybe if you're going to get sucked in by this spam, it's very very small to start with.

Owen And Emzee

Very occasionally, stuff arrives in my email inbox that's worth sharing. Today, an email with these pics arrived.

Accompanying the email was a story credited to AFP...

NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa, officials said.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

'It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother',' ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP.

'After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together,' the ecologist added. 'The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother,' Kahumbu added.

'The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years,' he explained.

I suggested to Dr J that we could adopt the little fella, but she quite rightly pointed out that with two cats and a dog already vying for the available free space on the bed, there probably isn't room.

Beans

There's a man in those beans somewhere. Really. I kid you not, and once you find him, you'll wonder why you ddin't see him instantly.

I don't know where this came from, but the story in the email (thanks Robin) suggested that if you find the man in the coffee beans in 3 seconds, the right half of your brain is better developed than most people. If you find the man between 3 seconds and 1 minute, the right half of the brain is developed normally, and if you find the man between 1 minute and 3 minutes, then the right half of your brain is functioning slowly and you need to eat more protein. If you have not found the man after 3 minutes, the advice is to look for more of this type of exercise to make that part of the brain stronger.

It took me a little while. I was too busy looking at the Predator (from the movie of the same name).

Are We Going Mad?

"Young people today have no respect!"

I used to hear my father say it, and his father before him. My great grandfather probably said it in some foreign Eastern European language, and I suspect there's probably a well worn Latin or Ancient Greek version.

It seems each successive generation looks at those who come after with disbelief, fearful for the future of society and the world. Despite those fears, each successive generation seems to muddle through, and the world our forefathers have built is a pretty good one.

That's changing because I believe that world is about to come crashing down.

Young people today really do have no respect. They don't respect the law. They don't respect those around them. They don't respect standards of common decency.

Why? Because our generation of stupid bleeding hearts has removed punishment as a sanction. If you're under 16 these days, you can do pretty much anything you like knowing that the worst that's likely to happen is you'll get a session of "counselling" during which some limp do-gooder will tell you in their softest, most unthreatening voice, that what you might have done may not have been appropriate.

No criminal conviction is recorded. You're not sent away to some child correctional facility, and no-one is allowed to give you a swift kick in the backside (literally, not metaphorically).

So that there's no mistaking the point I'm trying to make, let me state it clearly. I believe the success of Western Civilisation has been built on mutual respect and a sense of community. At every level of society, our forefathers acted (mostly) for the common good. Yes, they had a degree of individual freedom, and yes, that freedom allowed them to do much as they pleased, but there was an understanding that expression of that freedom came with a responsibility to use it to preserve common values and build a better future.

Today, young people are raised to believe it's everyone for themselves. We pander to the excesses of youth with plattitudes... "oh... they just need better guidance", or "they're just expressing their individuality".

We don't even draw proper boundaries. Last week, the government here in New South Wales was forced by public outcry to withdraw a brochure advising teenagers of how they should experiment with drugs "responsibly". They called it "harm minimisation", and all the bleeding hearts were shouting "but kids will take drugs, so we have to give them the right information".

Crap. It's the wrong signal. It says "look... we know these drugs are illegal, but we also know you're going to take them and that's ok." No. It's NOT ok, and to say it sends very mixed signals indeed.

Take the case yesterday in Canada, where the Quebec Superior Court overturned a father's decision to ground his 12 year old daughter as punishment for disobeying his direction not to visit websites he deemed "innapropriate". (She had disobeyed him by going to a friends house to post improper photographs of herself on some "social networking" site.)

Are they serious? First, what is a 12 year old girl doing taking her parents to court so she's not grounded. Second, why is the state funding this stupidity, and third, what was the judge thinking?

I don't know what it's like in Canada, the UK, the USA, or any of the other places my readers live. I just know what it's like here in Australia. Children are an undisciplined rabble, subject to minimal parental cotrol, prone to binge drinking, antisocial behaviour and an utter disregard for theose around them. They seem born to accept that the world owes them, and that there are no sanctions for ill manners, or even criminal activity. They get into their 20s unemployable, with a sense of entitlement that they have not yet earned.

Enough is enough. It's time we wrested control back from the social engineers and began applying and enforcing standards of decency and behaviour. If we don't, Western Civilisation will continue to teeter towards the edge of a precipice.

No Substitute For Stupidity

These are pictures of the wreck of a brand spanking new Etihad Airbus A340-600. Etihad, as my well traveled readers will know, is the National Airline of the United Arab Emirates and sprukes itself as the "world's best new airline".

In November 2007, an Etihad flight crew was given the responsibility of moving their still unfinished aircraft out of the hangar to the aircraft run-up area. We're really talking "unfinished". The 'plane was an empty shell... no seats, no carpet, no overhead lockers, no entertainment system, no catering equipment, nothing. Just a very light empty aluminium tube with wings, a cockpit, a tail and a few engines.

The Airbus supervisor, in an oversight that I suspect will never be repeated, decided he didn't need to accompany or supervise his Arab friends, so they were left to figure it out on their own.

For reasons I'm not sure anyone will fully understand, the Etihad crew took all four engines to takeoff power. Maybe boys were just being boys, or maybe the gene pool needs thinning a little (or both), because they had no clue just how light of an empty Airbus really is. No chocks were set (not that it would have mattered at that power setting), and the brakes weren't going to hold the 'plane back at full power.

The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because the computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not yet been fully configured. Somehow, it didn't occur to these guys to simply throttle back... or maybe that wouldn't have been as much fun. They decided instead, in what can only be described as a stroke of pure genius, to pull the 'Ground Sense' circuit breaker to silence the alarms.

Big mistake! All they did was fool the aircraft's computers into thinking they were in the air. As soon as they did that, the computers automatically released all the brakes and set the A340-600 rocketing forward. The poor bastards had no idea that this is a Safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on.

The result is pictured. [*sigh*].