Firstly, I must say that I am going to remember yesterday as a defining moment of my life. Obama’s victory in the US Election is something that I never thought would happen. For once the smart guy has come out on top. His victory speech is one of the best speeches I have ever heard in my life. It is the “dream speech” for my generation.
But I couldn’t help myself with this… A little mashup between footage from ID4 one of my fav movies and the Obama Speech.
Enjoy.
<rant>
Ah the joys of being a tenant. We just had our six monthly inspection to make sure the house hadn’t been converted in an Asian brothel and meth house. (That should bring up some interesting Google Ad-Words 
)
But it got me thinking. Now we are tenants and have to put up with what feels like a parental inspection to make sure our room is tidy. Now last time I checked I was a grown up (yes my wife and a number of my friends my strongly disagree) and yet we have to put up with this.
Now the financial income to the landlord/lady on our property is around a low mortgage repayment. So of course the landlord/lady has a vested interest in the property being maintained.
Now consider this… image if we had a 105% loan on this house and the bank was owed a shit load of $$$ with the risk that we are trashing the place and dramatically reducing its value. At this point the bank could be seriously out of pocket and with the credit crunch that is happening you’d think they might give a flying toss as to what is happening. But no.
Banks go “here is your mortgage please pay on time we need never speak to you again”. For me there in lies the rub. We are going to put less money into the house, for all we know it is being negatively geared what ever that means, than the landlord is. Yet we have to put up with having our bathroom checked for mould.
Now our Agent was all very nice and was in and out in 5 min and took notes on something that we would like fixed, but what is the bank that lends 105% doing about their investment… nothing. This is one of the reasons that tenants feel like second class citizens.
</rant>
One of Eye Corps’s wizbang signs (the portrait plamsa tv’s) at Southlands had a modem failure 
It was even more ironic given that the add was for a mobile phone. of course it was for my mobile phone, so that adds to the whole circular nature of the experience, an Nokia taken a photo of a Nokia kind of thing.. all very deep and profound I am sure.
I always suspected that these adds were basically simple flash animations just running on a windows box. And the windows error message just proves it. Seriously what a waste of computer just to show some simple animations, but I guess some one is a paying a lot for these adverts that cost nothing to build and nothing to run.
Yep, I am definitely in the wrong business.
When Google Street View Australia went live, there were of course some images that made it through…
This is one of them
12 Patonga Dr, Patonga, NSW Of course they removed it.. but not before the screen dump appeared…
and the SMH has some more mistakes as well.
Oh where to start… there have been oh so many dumb comments about the iphone in the last week. Most of which have made me go from various shades of slightly grumpy to totally incredulous.
But I thought I would put two of my favs up now (I may come back and edit this page later )
http://digg.com/apple/First_iPhone_Hands_On?t=15971646
How many HTC Touch versions of ANY websites are there? None
How many cars offer full integration with your Samsung Instinct? None
Oh my god didily dang…
two little observations about these points….
All websites can work with HTC touch if they are coded correctly(that is they are properly compliant to web standards and have a mobile css) and oh yeah the play flash as well!
and the second point… firstly any phone that offers bluetooth can be integrated and oh yes in stereo as well. This person seriously thinks about spending say 1k on an Iphone which is what it will cost at least, and then bases say a 30k car on this. The phone will be obsolete come next year (if not earlier) and the car? I can just see the car for sale adds in the future.
Good car, low km’s (sorry doesn’t support Iphone2.2, ready for quick sale)
People it is a phone, it is obsolete before it lefts the shop, you will drop it loose and scratch it. That happens. Get used to it and stop thinking that it is the best thing since sliced bread. The best thing since sliced bread was spreadable butter, that way your bread did not get mangled. (and whilst bread and butter both have a used by date, they are not obsolete!)
edit– this sums it up the best
“Apple Is to Geeks What Breasts Are to Men”
contains such great lines as
“It’s like watching a group of teenage boys who have never seen a pair of breasts lining up to get a peek at their first Playboy.”
and
“At the end of the day, as much as I love breasts, I won’t pay money for them and I certainly won’t wait in line for them.”
go and read it….
This video is just to cute to ignore and not share.
I drove out of my way on the way to work to get this photo (ok it was at the end of a street that I drive past, so not that dramatically out of my way) I saw it on Saturday and was still having a giggle about it 2 days later. One of the more clever things I have seen in a long time. (Or perhaps I just need to get out more)
A great use of a Stencil and whilst I am sure it has been done before I don’t think I have seen it done so well.
This is on the Corner of Stanley Street and Orrong Road Elsternwick.
Look at the bigger version to see everything clearly. (but I might stop passed on another occasion and get a better photo)
Oh yeah and try and get the song out of your head now!
Not sure if this is a term… but it is now T-Stalked/T-Stalking is the art/act of stalking someone via twitter.
As requested by a follower on Twitter here are 5 ways to tell if you are worthy of being t-stalked.
Please add more via the comments and I will edit this to include the best if people ever actually comment on my blog.
)and of course the not worthy list as well….
(I put in the number 7 comment)
Chris Dunn and Pam Jensen, who are believed to be among the first couples to meet on the internet, have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Here are the 10 most appropriate ways for an internet couple to mark the occasion.
10. A bunch of virtual roses, a virtual drink on Facebook and listening to the same online radio station while living half a world away, while pretending to dance with a person that doesn’t exist.
9. 25 years … time for a reboot.
8. Arrange a private party, have the invitations intercepted and broadcast on Facebook then deal with the 500 gate-crashers.
7. Put down the acoustic coupler and get out and meet some other people.
6. They should retire to the bedroom, open their gateways, synchronise their DNSs and create some subdomains.
5. They log on to Second Life and renew their vows.
4. Changing from serial monogamy to broadband.
3. Fire up two old IBM PCjrs, set the modems to 240K, and have a reaaaaaaally slow conversation.
2. He hacks Interflora and fills the house with flowers; she hacks P&O and gives him two cruise tickets.
1. They could meet in real life for the first time.
Try phoning a Domino’s store out of hours… and this what you get.
Thanks for calling Domino’s Pizza
Unfortunately our store is closed
Please call again and ask our staff for our opening and closing times.
When do I call again???? and how do I get the opening hours with out calling you to get the message… I may spend the rest of the day hitting redial just to get the opening and closing hours….
The reason for the call was to cancel an order which I tried placing on the internet at 11 last night. When the order finally went through I admit I did not see the little AM text instead of the PM text, which left me thinking the pizza would arrive at 11:45pm (ie in 45 min), so when the system had the nice icon saying your pizza is being made, it wasn’t! The store was closed, the ovens were turned off, the staff at home tucked up in bed and the pizza was not going to be made for 12 friking hours.
Seriously that is bad design. You don’t stick a big icon saying your pizza is being made, when it is not.
Do they really think that if someone tried to order a pizza that if it is going to take more than say 1 hour to get to you a warning box would come up saying hey that food you want is not going to be ready till sometime tomorrow!
How hard can that be….
Update…
I did manage to get through on the phone to cancel the order, had to wait until 11am before the phone their phone was working. The poor man at the end of the line had no idea how to cancel the order and give me a refund. Now what is with that! Yikes, looks like training is an issue for the 16y/olds as well.
Will let you know if the refund ever comes through, but am not holding out much hope given how bad the experience has been so far.
I sent a complaint via through the feedback form last night.. still nothing… but at least I am now getting their junk mail as of this afternoon.
