Wednesday, November 25, 2009
UPDATE: I want to see a snake
It was only a couple of days ago that I wrote about wanting to see a snake in the wild, and today I got lucky! As I said early there have been a few sightings at work and today one was seen very near to where we were harvesting barley in the experimental plots. We went over to have a look and saw that it was a juvenile dugite, over a metre long and very fast moving. It was thin enough to be able to move in and out of the bird netting surrounding the plots (an area of about 2 hectares), and was pretty hard to see unless you knew it was there or if it moved. We tried to contact the guy at work whose hobby is to catch snakes, however he was not around so we sent a warning email to everyone and carried on with our harvesting (with one eye on the lookout for the snake). While it was a juvenile and not particularly big it would have been a bad situation if one of us had been bitten, and there are bigger ones around as there is bushland just over the road from work. I will be more watchful of where I put my feet in the plots from now on!
Daylight Saving grumbles
Recently Western Australia voted against adopting Daylight Saving after a 3 year trial.
Arguments against the scheme vary from the plausible: it adverseley affects farmers, as they need to keep cattle on a regular milking cycle and so their daily routine would be offset by an hour...
...to the ridiculous: curtains fade quicker (!!!). There was even an advertisment paid for by the "anti" lobby group claiming that DS contributed to an increase in car accidents.
And my opinion? Well it's probably pretty obvious by now. Twice now I have woken up to the sun beaming in my window, thinking that I had missed my alarm only to realise that it was 5.30am. Who needs daylight that early?! I would much rather have it in the afternoon so that I had more time to do stuff after work.
I really don't understand Western Australians sometimes. They are extremely change averse. As a friend of mine said, WA is short for "Wait Awhile".
Q: How many Western Australians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: What? Change?!
Arguments against the scheme vary from the plausible: it adverseley affects farmers, as they need to keep cattle on a regular milking cycle and so their daily routine would be offset by an hour...
...to the ridiculous: curtains fade quicker (!!!). There was even an advertisment paid for by the "anti" lobby group claiming that DS contributed to an increase in car accidents.
And my opinion? Well it's probably pretty obvious by now. Twice now I have woken up to the sun beaming in my window, thinking that I had missed my alarm only to realise that it was 5.30am. Who needs daylight that early?! I would much rather have it in the afternoon so that I had more time to do stuff after work.
I really don't understand Western Australians sometimes. They are extremely change averse. As a friend of mine said, WA is short for "Wait Awhile".
Q: How many Western Australians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: What? Change?!
Monday, November 23, 2009
I want to see a snake
There have been a couple of sightings of snakes at my work in recent weeks.
This may sounds totally stupid but I hope I see it. I really don't want to leave Australia without seeing a snake in the wild. I'll let you know if I get my wish.
This may sounds totally stupid but I hope I see it. I really don't want to leave Australia without seeing a snake in the wild. I'll let you know if I get my wish.
Friday, November 20, 2009
A bit over the top?
When we went to the basketball the other day we saw this pretty poor effort as far as parking goes, considering there was very little available....
And then we noticed what the note on the windscreen said (I have edited the photo for fairly obvious reasons)....
And then we noticed what the note on the windscreen said (I have edited the photo for fairly obvious reasons)....
I've heard of road rage, but this sort of car park rage is pretty new to me!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Basketball
On Sunday we went to watch the NZ Breakers take on the Perth Wildcats at Challenge Stadium. NZ went into the tournament as favourites to take out 1st spot, and Perth has been playing really well at home lately, so we were hoping for a pretty good game. I had not been to a game of basketball before, so I was looking forward to it, and while it was certainly not on the same scale as US games, it was still pretty exciting. There were the all important cheerleaders, who ran on at every break to do their little dances and wave about their pompoms. There was the remote controlled inflatable advertising blimp and the half time auction for a signed Wildcats top. If Perth reached 88 point (which they did) then everyone there got a free coffee voucher. And being basically on the other side of the world from NZ (well, almost) we seemed to be the only two Kiwis in the place. The mother sitting in front of me scowled every time I gave the Breakers a cheer, because of course the visitor's supporters have no right making any noise.
Well, I can tell you that by half time I had toned down my cheering significantly, as the Wildcats led by almost 20 points, and the entire second half was somewhat tiresome as they almost increased the margin to 30 points and it was obvious that NZ was not going to get close to winning. We couldn't land a 3-pointer to save ourselves, their defense was all over us like a bad rash, and at the other end our defense left huge gaps that allowed them to score point after point (or rather 3-points after 3-points). Perth ended up winning by 20, and I have to say that New Zealand didn't look in it from the start. I was pretty disappointed as I was hoping for a good close game, but I guess that's just the way of it sometimes. Don't think I'd fork out another $30 to see them over here. I am hoping for more luck when Wellington Phoenix play Perth Glory in the footie early next year though...
Check out some photos here
Well, I can tell you that by half time I had toned down my cheering significantly, as the Wildcats led by almost 20 points, and the entire second half was somewhat tiresome as they almost increased the margin to 30 points and it was obvious that NZ was not going to get close to winning. We couldn't land a 3-pointer to save ourselves, their defense was all over us like a bad rash, and at the other end our defense left huge gaps that allowed them to score point after point (or rather 3-points after 3-points). Perth ended up winning by 20, and I have to say that New Zealand didn't look in it from the start. I was pretty disappointed as I was hoping for a good close game, but I guess that's just the way of it sometimes. Don't think I'd fork out another $30 to see them over here. I am hoping for more luck when Wellington Phoenix play Perth Glory in the footie early next year though...Check out some photos here
Overcharging
I'm sick of people overcharging for goods and services simply because they know they can get away with it.
Our apartment block that we recently moved into has a shared laundry. There are two washing machines and a dryer (which we don't use, things dry in half an hour on a line in Perth). While I think it is a bit cheeky to be charging tenants to use the washing machines, I think it is down right criminal to charge $3 a wash. That's $6 a week right there just to do our clothes, and then there's towel washes and bedding to be done. Over our 6 month lease I figure that it will add up to more than $200. I don't even know who the money goes to!
The other recent example of overcharging that I have is from the basketball game that we went to yesterday. Our tickets were $30 each, not bad for our vantage point. It was the parking that we really got ripped off with. As Challenge Stadium isn't really near anything, and because most people would of course drive to the game, the venue obviously felt that they could get away with charging $7 per car for parking. To me this is far too high, but of course they knew they could make a killing from it, and they also know that they could get away with it. I think it is bad form to charge such exorbitant parking fees for a planned event that consisted mostly of families out to support their local team.
My point? Enough with the overcharging! Just because you can make a tidy profit of something does not necessarily mean that you should.
Our apartment block that we recently moved into has a shared laundry. There are two washing machines and a dryer (which we don't use, things dry in half an hour on a line in Perth). While I think it is a bit cheeky to be charging tenants to use the washing machines, I think it is down right criminal to charge $3 a wash. That's $6 a week right there just to do our clothes, and then there's towel washes and bedding to be done. Over our 6 month lease I figure that it will add up to more than $200. I don't even know who the money goes to!
The other recent example of overcharging that I have is from the basketball game that we went to yesterday. Our tickets were $30 each, not bad for our vantage point. It was the parking that we really got ripped off with. As Challenge Stadium isn't really near anything, and because most people would of course drive to the game, the venue obviously felt that they could get away with charging $7 per car for parking. To me this is far too high, but of course they knew they could make a killing from it, and they also know that they could get away with it. I think it is bad form to charge such exorbitant parking fees for a planned event that consisted mostly of families out to support their local team.
My point? Enough with the overcharging! Just because you can make a tidy profit of something does not necessarily mean that you should.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
It's not what you know... (Part 2)
...but perhaps what you don't know, or maybe even what you don't know that others know about you...
I recently joined Google Analytics. Analytics is a very interesting and useful tool - if you control the code for a website then you can use Analytics to monitor how many people visit your site. In my case, I can use it to see how many people visit my blog in any given time period.
This is Analytics at its most basic. It gets much, much deeper, and I am still only scratching at the surface. It can show me whether each visitor is new or returning (using their IP address I guess). It can show me, on a map, where my visitors come from in the world, not just countries but cities too. This data can be displayed on tables that also show the amount of time spent on any given page (or the site) and the number of pages viewed per visit. I can see how many people are referred through another site (i.e. by clicking on a link on someone else's blog), or direct (they typed in the URL) or through a search engine. I can even see what search term they entered to find my blog. Analytics can tell me what internet browsers people are using, and what sort of connection they are using (cable, dial up, DSL etc). By the time you have read this it is too late, the data is in Analytics. The only thing you can do is close the browser to change your "average time on site".
Of course, I cannot see individual's IP addresses, or identify visitors in any way other than by processes of deduction (someone visits the blog directly from Wellington, I figure it is someone I know and not someone who has just stumbled across me. But this program has raised some questions in my mind over the last few days. It is very basic, simple, user friendly and, possibly above all, free to use. All you need is an account with Google. This prompts me to ask, if I can access something so basic to monitor all this information (and it has the potential to show me a lot more) then what sort of information is accessible/gathered by, for instance, my ISP, or my email provider, or companies that advertise on sites I visit? There is so much personal and potentially sensitive data out there, and for the most part none of us actually have a clue who can access this information. I think this goes beyond the standard concern about viruses, trojans, malware and etcetera that we install software to protect ourselves from. We voluntarily enter so much about ourselves on websites for banking, networking, emailing, or whatever, that we can not possibly know where it all goes and who has access to it.
I guess what I am really just asking myself (and others) to think about is: what do we actually know about the technology that we use, or more to the point, what don't we know.
I recently joined Google Analytics. Analytics is a very interesting and useful tool - if you control the code for a website then you can use Analytics to monitor how many people visit your site. In my case, I can use it to see how many people visit my blog in any given time period.
This is Analytics at its most basic. It gets much, much deeper, and I am still only scratching at the surface. It can show me whether each visitor is new or returning (using their IP address I guess). It can show me, on a map, where my visitors come from in the world, not just countries but cities too. This data can be displayed on tables that also show the amount of time spent on any given page (or the site) and the number of pages viewed per visit. I can see how many people are referred through another site (i.e. by clicking on a link on someone else's blog), or direct (they typed in the URL) or through a search engine. I can even see what search term they entered to find my blog. Analytics can tell me what internet browsers people are using, and what sort of connection they are using (cable, dial up, DSL etc). By the time you have read this it is too late, the data is in Analytics. The only thing you can do is close the browser to change your "average time on site".
Of course, I cannot see individual's IP addresses, or identify visitors in any way other than by processes of deduction (someone visits the blog directly from Wellington, I figure it is someone I know and not someone who has just stumbled across me. But this program has raised some questions in my mind over the last few days. It is very basic, simple, user friendly and, possibly above all, free to use. All you need is an account with Google. This prompts me to ask, if I can access something so basic to monitor all this information (and it has the potential to show me a lot more) then what sort of information is accessible/gathered by, for instance, my ISP, or my email provider, or companies that advertise on sites I visit? There is so much personal and potentially sensitive data out there, and for the most part none of us actually have a clue who can access this information. I think this goes beyond the standard concern about viruses, trojans, malware and etcetera that we install software to protect ourselves from. We voluntarily enter so much about ourselves on websites for banking, networking, emailing, or whatever, that we can not possibly know where it all goes and who has access to it.
I guess what I am really just asking myself (and others) to think about is: what do we actually know about the technology that we use, or more to the point, what don't we know.
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