Hi have a friend, she’s Taiwanese.

She gets “ta” and “ta-ta” confused but I don’t have the heart to tell her the difference.

So given that, I say to you dear reader: ta.

I’m off to Vietnam for a month, see you when I get back (if you’re really lucky I’ll post a picture while I’m away).

Well it wasn’t long before the Ruddster became Jerk of the week, and what better reason than Climate Change. This line in Monday’s Crikey says it all:

The surrender is virtually complete. Our biggest polluters have won, and the rest of us will be paying for it under a joke of an emissions trading scheme that encompasses a significant transfer of wealth to our largest polluters.

Rudd was elected in no small part for his committment to climate change. A 5% reduction is about as pathetic as it gets. And to make matters worst the big polluting industries all get exemptions or subsidies, so what’s the point. The idea is to create an economic incentive to reduce your carbon emissions, this trading scheme doesn’t even come close.

Last week, when watching the 7:30 Report I was surprised to hear Rudd refer to “environmental extremists”. I thought at the time “there goes any chance of a half decent ETS”. Looks like I was right and he’s already had a good swipe at a pretty large group of people who see this for what is it: a pretty half arsed Emissions Trading Scheme.

And for that, you Mr Rudd, are Jerk of the week.

Really, he should have been first cab off the rank. For wanting to censor the internet, Mr Conroy, you are Jerk of the week!

Thankfully, according to this article:

And the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has written to critics saying that the so-called “live” trials would be “a closed network test and will not involve actual customers”. Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said this was a sign the Government was slowly backing away from the heavily criticised policy.

It was never going to work, it was a bad idea in the first place and should have been dropped as soon as it became apparent that the technology to do this just didn’t exist.

So the Melbourne City Council Elections are a bit of a fraud really. Residents get one vote, businesses in the City of Melbourne get 2… and that’s how failed State Liberal Leader became the Mayor of the City of Melbourne.

Fortunately I no longer live in the City of Melbourne, but the idea of putting cars back on Swanston st is about the dubest idea there is. So is creating cheap parking on the outskirts of the CBD. He thinks that too much city traffic is generate from people circling to find a park. What a joke, even the RACV, the most pro-car organisation there is, thinks it’s a bad idea.

So for being a right-wing, closed minded Mayor-elect, you are JERK OF THE WEEK!

An honourary mention goes to co-councillor Carl Jetter who was reelected on Doyle’s ticket who said the problem was cyclists, not cars on Swanston St:

“I am sick of being run down by cyclists again and again,’’ he said, calling for bicycles to use Russell Street instead.

* Yes I know it started off as Tool of the week but it’s my blog and I’ve decided to make it Jerk of the week.

At the end of October, with a little bit of excitement, I attempted to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibis - or was that the last one.. or next one).

Anyway, half way through something went wrong. It stalled on something. I left it for about 2 hours but nothing had shifted. So I did the unthinkable, Ctrl + c. I canceled the installation.

Note to self - never cancel the installation.

So I was left with a laptop that had a lot of packages uninstalled or not working and when I tried to run the upgrade again it told me there was a failed upgrade and I could not proceed.

God damn it, this meant backing up my entire computer, doing a clean install, the copying all the files back. To make matters worse, I STILL don’t have internet at home. In fact I don’t even have a dial tone. Haven’t had one since 22 Oct (but only reported the fault on 5 Nov). That’s a story for another time and involves sheer incompetence on behalf of Telstra and iiNet, apparently I’m being compensated but all I want is an internet connection.

On Saturday I went over to Mum’s and went to town on her internet connection. Included in this was downloading the Ubuntu CD image, mounting it, then running the upgrade form the CD.

What do you know, works like a dream.

I sympathise with Alastair:

In many ways Ubuntu Intrepid is a little bit of a let down. Probably like many Ubuntu fans I remember the heady days of early Ubuntu releases when each one was so noticeably better than the previous. Each new release was like opening a pile of new birthday presents with no idea of what to expect.

I guess you just feel a little less like a frontier pioneer these days. But this is a good thing and a sign that Ubuntu has really come of age. To demonstrate this, I was particularly happy with two things:

• Audio worked perfectly “out-of-the-box”. Every other time I’ve upgrade I’ve had to look back to this post (which, oddly enough is the most commonly viewed post on this blog).
• s-Video also worked “out-of-the-box”. I’ve never been able to get this to work before and am just over the moon about it.

The only thing left is bluetooth and the SD card reader, although I haven’t checked the card reader yet. However I did notice that suspention and hibernation are both pretty slick now.

Update: SD Card reader now works!!! Pretty stoked. The other one I have to test is the microphone - I’ve manged to get it to work before but it’s always been a bid dodgy.

In an attempt to reinvigorate this blog, I was thinking about a new section: “tool of the week”.

It’s a section where every week I nominate the biggest tool that has been in the press. I thought I’d start off with Stephen Conroy for his internet filter idea. Then I came across the following in Crikey:

Marsh and Williams seem to have rather peculiar views on some male health issues. Worse than peculiar, actually. Downright evil is a term that springs to mind. Because they appear to have a problem with gay men. Marsh’s group has a website where it has brought together people “who believe in the natural biological family. The best way to protect children is for children to be brought up by a loving mother and father who are married.” On the site, you’ll find a quite loathsome document called “21 Reasons Why Gender Matters”.

This 23-page screed is mostly notable merely for promulgating tediously stereotypical views of people and their relationships. For example, did you know that about male and female complementarity that “in the marital embrace, it is experienced in the way that the men, being physically oriented to giving himself, at the same time receives the woman, while the woman, being physically oriented to receiving the man, at the same time gives herself to him.”

I never heard it called that before.

But the document also contains a long list of disgusting statements about homos-xuality, suggesting it is unnatural, a “preventable and treatable” illness, representative of immaturity, and associated with psychiatric disorders and drug addiction. “Gender disorientation pathology”, as the document calls homos-xuality, “will lead to increased levels of drug abuse and partner violence.” In particular, the document strongly associates homos-xuality with sexual abuse. “Gender disorientation pathology encourages the s-xual and psychological exploitation of children,” it says. On and on it goes, page after page, “supported” by nonsensical and misinterpreted studies, ranting against gays and lesbians.

Warwick Marsh and Barry Williams are listed as “authors and contributors” to this vile, bigoted garbage. These men should have nothing to do with any cause associated with men’s health, when they’re linked to a document that promotes the view that gay men are predisposed toward pa-dophilia, violence, drug use and psychological illness. The sort of view that encourages violence toward gays and lesbians.

So with that, I give you tool of the week:

Warwick Marsh
…and…

Barry Williams

Tools!

A friend of mine is involved in a fantastic project called Just Change. It’s well worth checking out.

The aim is to try and improve the energy efficiency of rental properties for low income households.

They’re thinkers alright.

Gentle people, I have moved house and now live with the cool kids in Brunswick (Melbourne, Australia should there be any internationals out there reading). Some try and bring the cool to their suburb, I just go to the cool.

Once upon a time all I had to do was a blog post to this effect and all my friends would suddenly know that I have moved and should contact me for my new detailss. But I suspect those days are well and truly behind us.

Never mind.

If you do know me personally, I’d love you to pop over and see the new place so just contact me to get my new address.

Also, having moved, I don’t have the internerds at home (woe is me!). And to make things really strange, it would seem the whole house has network plugs but no actual phone line. This sucks a fairly monumental amount and I suspect will mean that it will be some time before I have a connection at home… and just when I finally get my own study.

I was down at Philip Island for the motorbikes on Saturday so I missed this important tid bit. It was 17 years ago that Linus first posted to Usenet.

So happy birthday Linux! I’m certainly happy to have you in my life.

(Via Slash dot)

Well, I was born a Hawks supporter. Therefore Saturday’s grand final was a pretty sweet thing.

It was a far fough contest and in the end, in my humble opinion, it all just came down to heart - and that’s something our Hawks have always had plenty of!

For me, the tears welled up most for the handsomest and longest suffering man in the AFL, Shane Crawford.

To quote the Angry Ant (Clarkson): “We are a happy team at Hawthorn!”