Randomrants

I’d don’t actually care if my PM is popular, I don’t care if they use hip language and have got to “zip” (what ever that means).

I want them to be competent.  I know this point of view makes me somewhat of a heteroclite in this modern political age.

Late last night in the maelstrom of events I heard comments talking about Gillard’s staffers saying what a great pleasure and professional she was to work with.  Funny thing is, Rudd chewed up and spat out staff at a prodigious rate. Yet, Rudd is more popular, that doesn’t mean he is right, nor is he good for the job.

The ALP have taken a PM that proved her metal in 3 years of minority government with some of the most vitriolic (and yes sexist) attacks against her personally and given the reward to someone that white anted from the day he was deposed.

Congratulations ALP, you have shown that, hard work, dedication to duty and task means nothing. You have rewarded someone that undermined the PM from the day he lost the leadership.

The negative campaigns by the Coalition have been very successful, helped by a minority in the ALP that cared more about getting their man back in than helping their own PM.

Rudd was right when he said Climate Change is the greatest moral challenge of our time, and what happened when push comes to shove, he backflipped and gave up.

In a minority Government, Gillard gave us NDIS, a price on Carbon, saw the NBN start to roll out.  Even in a majority government these reforms alone should have been seen as amazing.  But when the narrative is focused on constant leaking, undermining and pushing for not one, but 3 leadership spills, this is all forgotten.

I disagree with Gillard’s stance on a number of things, asylum seekers being top of mind.  Yet I have seen her face so many questions from journalists, never shying away from hard questions.  Abbott is well known for not fronting up and answering questions, only talking points.

Gillard showed time and time again how fit for the job she was.  Rudd showed time and time again that he just wanted the job, and didn’t care who stood in his way.

As I said on Twitter last night as this all unfolded  “Princess Diana said there were two wives in her relationship… Gillard had two opposition leaders in her term”.

The ALP has sold out to the negativity, a negativity that was coming from within and well as from the outside.

Then it rewarded the source.

Tags: Annoyances // Add Comment »

Of course, it the middle of the night, I picked up my phone, went through 4 different menu settings to change that G+ would stop using wifi and forced it to only upload via 3+

Oh yeah and of course I also in the middle of the night slept walked through to the study and turned off my router as well.

Of course I didn’t.  But that seems to have not stopped G+ going completly and utterly mental 3 days ago.  Prior to the 9th of June G+ never showed up the top 10 of my 3g usage, why because it was set to only upload via Wifi.  I did notice that G+ seemed to have an issue the other day saying backup failed, “retry”.  I suspect it got stuck in a loop, but why it suddenly stopped using Wifi and went to 3g I fail to understand why, esp when the phone was at home most of the weekened anyway did it try and upload via 3g.

As for Vodafone, the fact that you send me a notifiation when my bill is already 8times over normal spend leaves a hell of a lot to be desired, then sending me a message 24 hours later, saying, oh you know that $200 bill we sent you, well we were wrong it is now $400…  ( Update: Thanks to the guys and girls at Vodafone for sorting this issue out, well done for a prompt response via @vodafoneau_help )

Standard Data usage below….

And then Google + goes nuts….

For an app that never showed up on my 3g usage, it goes nuts and uploads everything, despite, not even 1.7gb of data being uploaded to my G+ account anyway.  Oh yeah and that small thing that I certainly didn’t take 1.7gb worth of photos and video on the weekend.

( Update I checked, I took photos on the weekend and a few short videos of the cubs…. total uploaded to G+ less than 350meg!, not even close to 1.7gb )

So if Google could please just sell 1 of their shares to me, I will gladly donate the excess to charity.

Oh yeah and when you have done that, please fix your f’ing app.

—-

( I have posted these screen shots on the Google + help forum as well….

please add comments in regards to fixing the issue there

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!category-topic/google-plus-discuss/fix/Yhm-w8dgFHg )

Tags: Annoyances // Add Comment »

Eat your heart out Riker… this is how to get on a bike.

Tags: cubs, Funny, google, Mobile // Add Comment »

UPDATE UPDATE – 30/5/2013

A second sandwich has been thrown at the PM.

Obviously this is a national security issue, that has got out of hand.  I expect Abbott to announce any moment that all sandwich throwers will be deported to Nauru.  Gillard expected to announce a no advantage system for sandwich throwers as well.

Watch this space for developing details as I make them up.

Great point from @MarioMano Shouldn’t the PM simply visit schools at 2pm? All the sandwiches will be gone by then.

Perhaps this points to deliberate ploy by the Government to have the sandwiches thrown.

——

Once again MSM ( Main Stream Media for you newbies ) is missing critical questions.

I am dedicating this blog post to address them.  Sure, I may have my tin foil hat on at the moment, but don’t let the MSM telling you that get in the way.

Sandwich Gate… the sandwich that was thrown at the PM as she visited Marsden High is already showing major signs of a cover up.  In the 2 hours since the event so much information is missing, I don’t have all the answers yet, but I am putting just a few of the questions out in the public domain.  I hope like with other high profile cases social media can find the real answers, the real truth and possibly a sandwich for me as well.

1. Who threw the sandwich, what is their Facebook link and what is the worst photo of them that media can use.
2. Was the sandwich even thrown.  Sure the PM said it was, but where are the photos. Where is the proof.
3. Was the sandwich thrown by a boy or a girl, this goes straight to the heart of the misogyny/#womenofcalibre debate.
4. What was the carbon impact of the sandwich?
5. What was in the sandwich?
6. How could a child afford to throw away a sandwich, did they go hungry, or was it more likely part of deal with the Newman Government to replace school canteens with Clive Palmer Burger stores.
7. Has the media interviewed an expert in culinary ballistics to ascertain where the sandwich was thrown from.
8. Was the sandwich the owners, or was it part of a contra deal for a better tasting sandwich, a deal that went sour.
9. Has Newspoll conducted detailed push polling on sandwich
10. Has Abbott claimed that the sandwich would be better off under a Liberal Government yet.
11. Was the sandwich a distraction from Queensland signing on to the NDIS.
12. How old was the sandwich, was it fresh or had it been in the bottom of the school bag for months, showing this was a premeditated attack with months of planning.
13. This was a false flag operation.  After the success of the Howard Govt Gun Buy Back Scheme, Gillard will just before the election introduce a Sandwich Buy Back Scheme.

And these are just the starters.

I will keep fighting the good fight for you my dedicated readers.

Update…

The Downfall Version of this story…

Tags: General // 4 Comments »

I love when a new shiny device arrives in the mail. For some reason an Aston Martin DB9 doesn’t fit in the mail box, so a new phone will just have to do. This time it was the LG Optimus G, which is the “street name”, whereas LG E975 is the device name.

A beautiful 4.7” 1280×768-pixel resolution (WXGA) screen meets you as open the box. Not quite as black as the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1, still it draws you in, wanting to lift the device and see what secrets it holds inside.

Being the owner of Samsung Galaxy SII, I did the simple thing Android owners do. I plugged it to charge. No worries about new custom power adaptors, just use my existing Micro USB chargers and I am away.

Of course switching from one Android phone to another shouldn’t be that much of a problem, should it. Punch in my Google username and horribly long WIFI key and I am away. At this point I would just back up a whole bunch of my apps to the phones micro SD card, swap the card to the new phone and I am back getting three stars on Angry Birds before you know it. But I can’t. Taking a leaf out of Apples book the back of the phone is bolted down so that user can’t access the battery or add storage. Further from Apples book is the “redesigned” paperclip for accessing the sim card on the side. My #headdesk moments have started and the phone hasn’t really been on for more than a minute.

So off to my computer I go, expecting the phone to have its own software for connecting, isn’t that new, but Android should just drop back to MTP so I can drag and drop from my Win7 machine. But no, the phone taking a leaf out of my old HTC Desire’s connection settings has 4 settings when you plug in USB. Why, for the love of all that is good, why. So I install the drivers as the phone thinks it is a CD drive, once again #headdesk. Now this isn’t that much of a problem at home, because once the drivers are installed the phone works just fine via MTP. But in a corporate environment Win7 locked down with no option to install drivers this becomes a problem. I’ve yet to get my work computer to see this phone via MTP ( works fine via PTP ( Camera Mode ). The corporate environment sees the phone as a portable drive wanting to install the software. This may well prove to be a major issue for a number of people, it is for me.

Now, this isn’t just an LG issue, but a number of Android phones do it, and it is a little thing that just makes me want to cry. Why is the back button swapped with the home button, compared to my SII. Two years of using a phone means muscle memory. This is just plain silly, frustrating and well to put it bluntly, not something Apple would do. Why is scrolling images in the camera different as well. Sure these are little things, but lots of little irksome things start to add up quickly.

The power of the 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor is something that is simply stunning. Seamlessly shuffling a 2gb bluray rip I made on the 1280×768 screen is amazing. Then adding LG’s zoom mode to this video as it is playing is a show off trick to amaze most people. Zooming in to and shuffling a video file that is 2gb in size on a device that fits in one hand is still in this day amazing.

The camera is very good for a mobile phone sensor. I carry a DSLR with me at all times, and the phone is just a backup. In going for the more megapixels are better theory, a 13megapixel shooter is onboard. Interesting to note however was that on first use the camera is only in 8megapixel mode. Outdoor shots are sharp, crisp and with a good richness of colour. Indoor shots get very noisy very quickly. Once again, megapixels don’t make up for sensor size. Leaving the camera on 8megapixel mode also seems to make autofocus faster. I found trying to get shots of children on playground equipment ( daylight and shade ) a bit hit and miss at times, with more blurry than sharp shots. The ability to grab still shots whilst taking HD Video is very nice, and is a feature I do use myself a lot, especially with my children.

I have found the battery life very good, especially when you take into account the power of the device. My old SII battery was dying and in need of replacing, something you can’t do with this device though. However, if you were to buy this phone, you would be replacing it within a year anyway.

If this phone was released in Australia at the same time it hit Korea ( August 2012 ), not April 2013, it would be easy to say, despite its faults, buy it. However it is no longer August 2012, with the HTC One X, Sony Xperia Z and of course the Samsung Galaxy S4, this phone isn’t the breakthrough device it once was. LG have shown they can make good hardware, their software needs a lot more TLC. The next iteration of this device I will at least give more than a passing look at.

I’m not the buy a phone and use it as is kind of audience. I am looking forward to stripping LG out of the phone, putting on a custom launcher at least, if not rooting it and going native Android, just to fix some of the issues I have. It is a stunning phone and for those on a budget looking for a 4G phone put it in your look at list, but check the price of the competition, you might regret not spending that little bit more.

( This post originally appeared on Neerav’s Blog )

Tags: General, Mobile // Add Comment »

And thus one of the #wolfcatcubs proves my point in under 13 seconds.

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There is an old axiom in programming… “Garbage in, Garbage out”

A combination of hubris from certain members of the Labor party, and desperate trawling for a spill story since the media missed the last Labor leadership spill, ( no point in mention the last 2 first term Liberal leaders getting rolled, that seems to be a non story ) all combined into an unholy mess today. Garbage in, Garbage out.

Now, this is not to discount that certain members of the Labor party really did want Kevin Rudd back in the top job.  The desire to put Kevin in the top job, was seemingly defined as “at any cost”.  The real cost here is the chance of a two to three term Abbott Govt.  such is the damage they have inflicted on the Labor brand.  They wanted Rudd, and were going to leak and spoil till they got it.

Couple this with a media hungry for a leadership spill, once again, we ignore the two first term ( one not even in the country at the time ) spills that the state Libs have had.  Over 81 stories about the spill being any time soon have been written since 2011. All declaring the Gillard is toast, Gillard is dead, too late for Gillard, Rudd will save the day.

Now the media took any titbit of info leaked from Labor, gave it massive prominence and ran with it.  Creating nothing more than and old fashioned feedback loop.  Media run story, Rudd leakers sensing blood, leak info, Media run story, spill about to happen. Add in some old fashioned “Polling Data” around “who would you vote for if the election was held today” questions and you have the makings of today’s shit storm.

The media so desperate for this to become true finally got its story.  The Spill was on, called, history may well show based on a media fiction, wrapped in a poll enigma, bundled in hubris. Yet when it came down to it, the truth, which the media seemed to ignore, so proud they had finally predicted the spill ( just don’t mention all the times they got it wrong ) is the Kevin never had the numbers.

There is no point in even going into the media reporting everything the Liberals said about the lead up to today as true.  All those, Gillard gone tomorrow, Gillard is toast, special Cabinet meeting, #spill, #itison, “a taxi driver told me Gillard is gone” shit that the media printed lock stock and barrel. ( Note to media, if an Opposition say something, check their agenda first you IDIOTS )

Poor Kevin, or his supporters, they ended up believing their own hype.  A hype that the media cycle, wanted, needed, demanded, created and when push came to shove since 2011, just bloody made up turned out to be just that. Hype.

Even the bookies ran with the media perception of the event.  At around 2pm the odds were $6.00 Gillard to 1.10 Rudd.  The bookies often held up to be such an accurate reflection of real world events got done over because they fell for the hype.

Of course, nothing changed today.  That doesn’t fit the narrative.  Kevin didn’t run, why would he, he didn’t have the numbers. But his supporters given the last 1000 days of a Gillard Government, will keep leaking.  The media, having tasted blood in the water will keep circling.  The cycle begins anew.

Let us just not mention, Ashby,  Torbay, Wall punching Mr Teflon, the we lied about getting our policies Audited, or just for the fun of it, let’s sack 25,000 public servants to start with, that sounds like a good policy.  No, most of those things require research, not just relying on leaks from vested interests from Rudd supporters and Liberal Party members who still feel pissed the Julia out negotiated them hands down to form government.

Come Monday, the cycle starts again, you have been warned.

Tags: General // Add Comment »

The similarities are just so close…. and I am not just talking about how they look they same.

Tags: Funny // Add Comment »

Poor The Age, the printed version went Tabloid, just like the Web…

So The Age has a poll in regards to the just slightly changing weather in Melbourne.  By slightly changing I mean, 157 years of records have never produced more than 6 days in a row over 32c, we just had 9 of them.

March days in a row over 30c was previously 7, yep, just had 9 of them.  The longest run of days over 30c was 8 in any month, we just had 9. Hottest March night on record and most nights over 20c in March as well.  So it is not like we haven’t broken a whole pile more “Climate Records” as well.

Of course, this is just the end of the 123 extreme weather records (+) broken during Australia’s “angry summer”.  Long term records for everything from hottest day ever in Australia, to rainfall rates and flood levels.

My beef isn’t with the weather though; I am just annoyed at The Age.

Poll: Has the current heatwave changed your opinion of climate change? (Yes/No)

Now, how do I answer a question like this.

Unlike most of the Liberal and National Parties and mining magnates, I don’t think Climate change is a global conspiracy to put scientists into fast sports cars with expense accounts.  I do think Climate Change is real, based on something called evidence. So do I answer this question NO, because that is the logical answer, or do I answer YES.  If I answer No, am I not seen as supporting a fundamentally flawed argument that extreme weather is not part of climate change, or belonging to the “we have had hot weather before” brigade. If I answer “YES”, then oh suddenly I am on-board with Climate Change being real, which isn’t the case either.

What about a different option for the question “Do you think the current heatwave is due to climate change”, see not that hard, please where do I send the bill.

Tags: Annoyances // Add Comment »

Wow, I finally got the lightning shot I’ve been hunting.  By finally, I mean after 5 years of owning a Digital SLR.

This of shot of course was not without a bucket load of luck.  Luck in the form of the following, lightning at the right time, not raining at the time, not windy at the time, the #wolfcatcubs down and asleep, and that is just for starters.

Taken at my favourite location at the end of North Road, I was chasing a certain storm cell I had seen on radar 30 min before. A cell that hit Ballart hard with hail and severe winds causing a lot of damage as well.

Setting up in my fav location, phone in hand with WeatherzonePro+hooked up to my Weatherzone Pro account I could track the storm cells and lightning as well.  The first batch of photos were shots chasing the cell which passed near Geelong.  Whilst I managed to get a few strikes on camera they just weren’t that “photogenic“.

Checking the radar told me to wait a bit longer, whilst a few drops of rain had fallen, I knew it wasn’t going to rain hard for a while yet.

I repositioned the camera to focus on a potential cell over the city.  Whilst visible on radar, it wasn’t to the naked eye. I had the intervalometer mode enabled on the D7000, shooting an 8second exposure every 9 seconds.  At which point a lot of luck came into play.  A lightning strike lasts for less than a second, so I had the camera shooting for exposures which would have been to dark for ordinary use, but to compensate for the bright flash that lightning would produce.

I had joked with some people at the location, what I was after was a couple of bolts dropping just over the CBD, for that magic shot.  My joke came true. As you can see in the radar capture from the time, my location was in a hook in the rain, even more luck.

I took over 100 shots that night at one location.  But this shot is a one shot wonder, all of these strikes are as you see in one shot.  Often people merge multiple lightning strikes into one image, this is an in camera image, which is how I prefer to shoot.

The corrections in lightroom were a small crop, lens correction and a slight push to black levels, nothing more. Whilst I could have corrected the white balance, the blue cast adds to the image in my opinion.

I hope you enjoy this shot as much as I did.

Please support my camera habit by buying this image by click on it below.

The EXIF Info:

Tags: D7000, gps, Missing from the Exif, Redbubble // Add Comment »