well I posted this

“help twitter… mrs wolfcat is holding my new 2xteleconverter ransom … she won’t release it until more chores are done”

below are the replies…

( The names have been deleted to protect the innocent )

Female: one is free to throw oneself on ones own sword, [howls with laughter :0))]
Male: if she breaks the teleconverter, you’ll have to buy a new, high-res D4 / D800 and crop
Male: 2 options comply or dare, comply you’re done. Dare she’ll break everything you care about until you’re done are we clear yet?
Female: Well do the chores then! #UsGirlsStickTogether
Female: no mercy, dude, no mercy
Male: you’re on your own mate :/
Female: well then, you’d better hurry up and finish up those chores…
Male: Definitely by the short and curlies
Male:  We have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

To be honest the not “not negotiating with terrorists” is about the most useful…

anyway I must get on and back to my chores…  review of the teleconverter will have to wait.

———–

Update – the next morning…

I was finally told the secret hiding location… in typical Mrs Wolfcat fashion it was in plain sight all along..

… Next step the D800…..

SOME REPORTER: Could I read you a letter from yesterday’s Australian? It said ‘Actions of corporate dishonesty and custodial sentencing. Pity the same rules don’t apply to politicians.’ What’s your response?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, I can understand why people feel unhappy about the Government’s decision to introduce a price on carbon. But we took a decision that in the end it was more important to be economically responsible, and more important to maintain the climate in the long term than it was to avoid embarrassing the Prime Minister.

SOME REPORTER: So honesty comes a distant second in this?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter, when I made that statement, in the election campaign, I had not the slightest inkling that there would ever be any intention to change this. But obviously when circumstances change, governments do change their opinions, and that is actually the responsible course of action.

SOME REPORTER: You say you had no inkling it was likely to change, but Scientists knew that there’d been a blow-out, didn’t it?

JULIA GILLARD: Yes. We certainly were aware the costs were increasing, and there was no secrecy about this, Some Reporter. The, the pre-election climate outlook statement revealed that there had been a substantial increase in the cost of the carbon, and obviously since the election the Government has had the opportunity to consider this blow-out — to look not just at the current quadrennium, but to look at the long term — and has made the decision that the price had to be applied.

SOME REPORTER: So it didn’t bother to look at the long term before the election?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, we, we were looking at the long term before the election. But obviously in a budget context you can focus even more directly on the long term, and that’s what we’ve done.

SOME REPORTER: It sounds as though you can’t believe anything anyone says in an election if they follow those rules.

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter…

SOME REPORTER: Unless it coincides with the budget.

JULIA GILLARD: Some reporter, look, I can understand your scorn.

SOME REPORTER: Mm.

JULIA GILLARD: And I can certainly understand the dismay of — of some electors. I can obviously understand that. But there are all sorts of values here. One value is obviously keeping commitments. But another important value is economic responsibility, and another — a third important value is solidarity with the team.

And in the end I think voters expect above all else that governments will be economically responsible, and certainly I think economic responsibility has been the chief hallmark of the Gillard Government.

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter, again let me say that I can understand why people are dismayed by this decision. But in the end governments have to balance a whole lot of objectives. And sometimes you have to choose between a range of difficult, even unpalatable, alternatives.

And we could stick with the pre-election position. And further blow out the cost to the climate. Or we could make a change. And we thought on balance it was best to take the economically responsible position now.

SOME REPORTER: On balance wouldn’t it have been better to be honest before the election? Acknowledge it had blown out to $1.3 billion and make the changes thenJULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter, we did acknowledge in the pre-election financial outlook statement that there had been a very significant blow-out in the cost to the climate. I think the, the first year cost of the climate had blown out by some fifty per cent in the pre-election financial outlook statement, and obviously there had been a commensurate blow-out in the forward estimates.

SOME REPORTER: Now, Wayne Swan also knew the figures were phony, didn’t he? In fact he said the parameters of the Carbon Tax will not change. In other words, he committed himself as much as you did.

And yet he’s led the charge now to break the promise. What do you think of that? This is the bloke who wants to be prime minister.

JULIA GILLARD: Some Reporter, again, I can understand your dwelling on this. But, but sometimes governments have to choose between a range of unpalatable alternatives. Now…

SOME REPORTER: One of the unpalatable alternatives is telling the truth, presumably.

JULIA GILLARD: We set up this Carbon Tax back in March of last year. Thinking that it was going to cost $440 million.

SOME REPORTER: You knew by the election it was $1.3 billion.

JULIA GILLARD: We, we discovered in September-October that it was going to cost a lot more. We made a decision in a budget context that the best thing we could do for the long-term health of the climate, and indeed for the long-term health of the climate, to change the thresholds.?

SOME REPORTER: And con the people through the election.

JULIA GILLARD: Look, we, what we, what we said to people back then was what we honestly believed to be the case. And…

JULIA GILLARD: But, but Some Reporter, the point I make is that there was no deception about the cost blow-out. The cost blow-out was there for all to see in the pre-election financial outlook.

SOME REPORTER: The deception’s about what it meant.

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter, the thing is this: obviously when you have time to reflect and consider these things, as governments obviously do in a budget context, you’ve got to make a decision. And the decision was to be economically responsible.

SOME REPORTER: Now, you opposed that decision. Did you at any point consider resigning?

JULIA GILLARD: Not seriously.

SOME REPORTER: But you considered it?

JULIA GILLARD: Oh, look, when you tell me that I should resign, Some Reporter, on national television, obviously the thought goes through your head. But as I said, there are many important values here. One is keeping commitments. Another is economic responsibility. And a third is solidarity with the team.

And it’s been a very good team. It’s been a very good Government. And in the end I think people don’t have a simple-minded approach to this. They understand that governments have got to balance a range of different objectives, and probably economic responsibility is the most important one.

SOME REPORTER: But your word’s not worth much any more, is it? A Julia Gillard commitment now will rouse horse laughs.

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter, look, these are the risks you run, obviously. And I guess I would simply ask people to appreciate the totality of the circumstances in which governments operate.

SOME REPORTER: The Productivity Commission has suggested that Australians who can afford a price on carbon should be allowed, or even obliged, to opt out of the public electricity network. Is the Government going to do that?

JULIA GILLARD: That’s not something that the Government plans to do.

SOME REPORTER: Is that an iron-clad, rock solid commitment?

JULIA GILLARD: Some Reporter, I, I’m not…

SOME REPORTER: You see the problem you’ve got?

JULIA GILLARD: Yeah, look, I understand that, Some Reporter. But the point I’m making is that when circumstances change, governments change their view. And that’s not mendacity. That’s responsibility.

SOME REPORTER: The circumstances that changed was you won the election.

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Some Reporter, we, we are considering the long term health of our climate in a budget context. And we believed on very full consideration that the best thing we could do to protect and preserve our climate — a climate which The Liberals still pledged to abolish.

SOME REPORTER: You said repeatedly in the election that the Government would not price carbon

Is that a rock solid, iron-clad commitment?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, yes it is.

SOME REPORTER: You see, at this point we cue the horse laughs, don’t we?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, well, Some Reporter, as I said, I can understand your scorn. But I think that the citizenry of Australia know that governments sometimes have to choose between a range of difficult alternatives. And in this case we had to choose between strictly keeping that commitment that I gave, and the long term health of the economy, and the long term health of the Climate.

And we chose the long term health of the economy and the Climate.

SOME REPORTER: Julia Gillard, we thank you.

JULIA GILLARD: Thanks  Some Reporter.

————————————————————————————————————-

ok… I have a confession, I didn’t write this… in fact apart from changing the words in italics and the names “Julia Gillard”, “Some Reporter” and references to Labor, the rest is actually a word for word transcript. I admit I did change the meaning, by swapping Medicare Safety Net for Climate Change.

As for the original, the actual person who broke the election promise, well that was one Tony Abbott.  See this is a transcript of an interview from April 17, 2005.  ( Sunday Programme with Lauri Oakes ) Well after Howard decided that there were “non-core promises” at election time anyway.

Food for thought next time Tony Abbott rants on about broken promises….

But that is not to say I will just give away my work.

In light of a number of recent posts people have done about “free” photography and the real cost of getting some of these shots, I have done some thinking around commercial use of my photography. I have decided in no way related to the announcement last week of the Nikon D4 that the shot below is worth USD $5999 RRP. (for the autographed version ( Limited edition of 1 ))

–  Update –

In NO way related to the announcement of the Nikon D800e today… none what so ever… I have decided that this image is on sale at USD $3300

—-

I could tell you about how much the camera cost, the lens, the tripod, the fuel for the car to get to the location, the time and planning to get the shot, the years of waiting for just the right moment, the software and computer equipment to process the shot.

I could point out how this has a lot more going for it that a shot of a field ( even if that shot is 3meters across ) and is dramatically cheaper.

I could say how people want to just use my shot and give me credit for it in the hope that it gives me more publicity…

I could just tell you about the new Nikon D4 and how cool that camera sounds.

( Excuse me whilst I wipe drool up from my keyboard )

Completely unrelated to the last statement I promise….. this shot is now worth the same as the Nikon D4….

and all the details on when and how this shot was taken are in my Missing from the EXIF blog post

or you can buy it Redbubble but that version is unsigned…

The $5999 version will be signed. Perhaps it is my signature that is worth the most money after all.

–

Update:

ok.. really the just confirmed D800 is best suited to my style of photography…  36megapixel FX with 15.5megapixel DX for my DX lenses…  drool…..

–

The video from the trip up suffered from the usual technical problems ( this time a blown power inverter half way up ).. but with a new inverter onboard I finally got a clean video run for the trip home.

This shows the trip from Edgeworth ( Newcastle ) to Melbourne down the F3, around Sydney and down the Hume, stopping overnight in Jugiong then on to Melbourne. ( Approx 1100km in distance )
The video is also availble in 720p HD as well, just watch it on youtube

( and yes that is me at 2:09 taking photos )

(as far as the map is concerned, please ignore the error that Google Maps has that refuses to let you drive down the Hume near Holbrook )

View Larger Map

The car in reflection of a truck hub on the trip home.

The destruction of a wind turbine in a North Ayrshire wind farm.

From my “limited” knowledge, I would say that the brake on the Turbine failed in the extreme conditions, resulting in the prop being free to spin.  In the incredibly high winds, the turbine would have got so hot and fast the engine caught fire.

Whilst the blade could handle the speed of the wind, the small fact of physics that heat gets generated as the turbine spins electromagnets means that in extreme winds they always have to shut turbines down.

A major set back for wind energy…..  um no.

Lets compare a wind turbine where “Fire engines attended the blaze which died out after a matter of minutes at the wind farm situated above Ardrossan” and the clean up cost, would be the replacement cost of the Turbine and some grass seed….to say…

this…

the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster where reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced full meltdown. Unlike the Turbine fire “As of August 2011, the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is still leaking low levels of radiation and areas surrounding it could remain uninhabitable for decades due to high radiation”.  The clean up cost could be over 100billion dollars in the next few years.

Yep, lets all get up in arms because one wind turbine had a failure….

Poor Barnaby really didn’t do well in science did he.

I guess, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon, Methane, LPG ( that is the gas that we have built a large chunk of the economy on, one that we add the smell to ) don’t count. Oh and every other gas as well….

Perhaps he would be happy to sit in a room full of Radon for example.

But Barnaby isn’t alone in this…  eg.. Abbott earlier this year.

Allowing politicians to make such statements is not just indulgent it is culpable.

As an aside, but within the same context of nut job statements.  If you stand up in the Gallery at Parliament and scream out Democracy is dead and A: Don’t Get Shot even entering the building, B: Don’t realise that Parliament is sitting as scheduled, and C: Don’t remember you will get a chance to vote in the next two years, you are an idiot.

My children are going to be the benefactors from this legislation. No it won’t reduce the temperature in the the short or even medium term. It is designed to halt the rise that is already coming.

– Update –

Dec 7 2011 Via Twitter: @Barnaby_Joyce Carbon tax working already coldest start to summer in years. See just talking changes the weather.

This tweet would be funny, or ironic even, but in light of what he has said before, I fear he actually thinks this!

Whilst I thought iphones were evil, it was because they were overpriced and under featured.

But it turns out they are <grandpa simpson voice>evil.. I tell you, evil evil iphones</grandpa simpson voice>… so evil that the man that “invented” them must be punished.

Surely if you are going to protest at the funeral of this person you are going straight to hell as well for using his device..

What next, eating shellfish or cloth of two different fabrics, it will be the ruin of us all..

]]> http://www.wolfcat.com.au/randomrants/2011/10/postid-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.wolfcat.com.au/randomrants/2011/10/postid-2004/ http://www.wolfcat.com.au/randomrants/2011/10/postid-2004/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:10:05 +0000 Wolf http://www.wolfcat.com.au/randomrants/?p=2004 Now, I don’t want to harp on or anything… but hey Fairfax…

“Fairfax’s Metropolitan Media division is to abandon its controversial autoplay policy from September ahead of a major expansion of its online video offering.” ( AdNews 21 April 2011 )

Perhaps you are using a different calendar to the rest of Australia. Or perhaps because you did not specify a particular year, you meant 2015?

Perhaps you thought, hey lets make a date so far in the “internet” future no one will remember.

But it is now October 2011, your autoplay ads ensure that if I come across a story I never finish reading it, I just go elsewhere. ( Update: Nov 3 – nope Autoplay videos are still there!)

Oh and while your at it, don’t have video stories when it is just a radio interview and all the content is covered in the text anyway.

The autoplay video is even MORE annoying, who thought that would be possible? When you have one of your “Live Updating” pages.  Not only do you have to hit stop once, you have to do it every 90 seconds. Oh wait no I don’t I can just go to another website.

(Oh and one more think, for the love of god, please fix your pages so that when I click “Show More Comments” please just show me more comments, don’t push me back to the top of the page and make me scroll.  Please look up the Anchor Tag in any HTML guide and use that. )

In this headlong rush to the next great thing, it pays to stop, catch a breath and reflect on some seriously awesome stuff that I and a lot of you have.

Saturday 24/09/2011 was that moment of pause for me.  At 2:45pm I jumped in my car (2000 model AWD Subaru) to head down to on a winning lotto kind of chance to get a photo.  The photo I was prepared to take was of the UARS satellite as it came crashing back down to earth. A Satellite launched via the Space Shuttle ( Retired 2011 )

It got me thinking on the 15 min drive to what kind of tech was I using. It started with the IVF #wolfcatcubs  (1980 for Australia )I had left with mrs wolfcat at home. Amazing tech and science right there before I had even left the house. Now sure IVF had been around prior to the launch of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in 1991, but it has taken leaps and bounds since then.

So I listened to my 80’s mixed CD in the car. Sure, CD’s were around before 1991, but the recordable CD had only been around since 1990. As for the fact I was listening to a collection of MP3 format songs, well they didn’t come out until around 1993. At least all my music was pre UARS launch.

I get to my location which is my fav place to shoot from at the end of North Road, and grab my camera gear out of the car.  A Nikon D7000 ( Sept 2010), a 16.3mega-pixel DSLR (with full HD video), drop on my 150-500mm OS Sigma lens (2008) and turn on my Solemta Geotagger Pro GPS (2009) for my camera. So in under a minute I have turned on and got ready a swag of technology, most of which people in 1991 wouldn’t have even dreamed off.

I have two GPS devices on me at this point, one for the camera the other built into my phone, HTC Incredible S (2011). Note that GPS didn’t become fully operational until 1994 and it wasn’t until 2000 that GPS ‘Selective Availability’ was removed.  That is the little thing that saw GPS move from 50 meters of accuracy down to a few meters for you and me.

Being at a location where I am “the mayor” I of course used my 3g phone  (2003 in Australia) to check in on Foursquare ( 2009 ) to my location.  Then I fired up Twitter (2006) to follow in near real time the @UARS_Reentry account to get the info I need. Info I was able to get in near real time with no wires as it were.  But then I did check on the WWW (1990) on my home computer using ADSL 1 (8mbits) (2006) to get the info I needed before I left.

I fired up Google Skymap (2009) on my phone to check compass headings and location on the interactive realtime star map just to make sure I was looking at the right bit of sky and waited. I also checked real time weather satellites to check that the cloud cover would remain clear in my location for the time frame I was after.

Of course like all long odds, I didn’t succeed.  But I knew where to look when UARS had passed overhead and that it was time to go home.

Stop and think about just how much cool tech you have you right now…

I am still waiting for NASA to work out where it crashed of course, but it wasn’t over me, but I was thanks to the tech in my pocket prepared for it.

Dear Mr Crean

Now I know that we don’t live in Western Sydney and that your seat is about as safe as it gets in our current parliamentary system, so my letter and more so my vote is not of major concern.  However the actions of the Labor party in the last few weeks have seen me increasingly outraged.

I am referring to the issue of “Off-Shore Processing” for refugees.  Having seen the draft legislation that was announced today I must say that even if the Liberals had introduced this legislation I would have been as outraged.

Not specifying minimum rules for a country and then announcing  “in the national interest” will ensure that this legislation will ensure that people, those that are some of the most down trodden are treated even worse.  If the outrage over onshore processing is already at this point, what it to stop “national interest” being twisted to see valid refugees sent to places like Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, or Burma.

Any legislation that contains “The rules of natural justice do not apply” is inherently flawed. Australia not only has international obligations, we have the ability to be a world leader when it comes to showing how to be a good and moral country.

Why the Labor party feels that is not only O.k, but reasonable to waste billions of dollars on offshore processing, when countless studies have shown that onshore processing is cheaper, more cost effective and has the same result on people smuggling.  That is those that are not refugees are sent back, those that are stay.

It is a sad day for me, when Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison can claim the moral highground compared to Labor.

Labor is looking at this legislation for what could be less than 7,000 people per-annum.  This number means that it would take over 14 years to fill the MCG. This is not a flood of refugees, nor is it the major “moral issue” of our time.

I implore you as my local member to lobby internally with Labor to ensure that Australia does not go down this path.

Yours deeply concerned

( Please feel free to copy this letter and send it to your local member )