ANZ free wifi
The ANZ-sponsored free wifi at Southern Cross Station is a nice idea, and would be quite useful… if it worked.
I tried for several minutes one day the other week to get it working, and couldn’t. My mobile could detect both an ANZ Wifi and a “Free public Wifi” network, but neither seemed to actually do anything.
Apparently it runs until the end of September, as well as (for some of this period) some cafes in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Sydney Manly ferries.
I also spotted a tram the other day that allegedly has free wifi on board. Who knows if it actually works though.
Tags: ANZ, wifi
5 comments
It was twenty years ago today
Exactly twenty years ago today, on the 12th of August 1990, I posted my first online writing — under the distinctly odd title the Toxic Custard Workshop Files. Being well before the Web, it went to a handful of people at uni via email.
As I later wrote (in 1997):
Well, back in them days of ’90, I was in the second year of my course, a Bachelor of Pretending Cobol Is Structured, failing Photocopying 215, and me and me mates had just discovered the Internet. We suddenly realised that there was more to computer networks than just using Phone and Talk to annoy people in the next room, or sending Mail to tell people to meet you for lunch and Tetris at the corner shop.
I was messing around with my mate Bw.. err Brian Smith. Hi Brian, if you’re reading. And another pal of ours, Ray Chan, who was in an Electronics, Robotics And Other High-Tech Stuff course, came up with an idea for an electronic magazine, called “The Serial Saga”. Hi Ray, if you’re reading. We thought this was great, and immediately mugged him in the corridor and stole his idea. Ray never actually wrote anything, but did manage to create a monster robot which went berserk the next semester, and killed 5 lecturers due to a faulty diode in its corduroy detection circuits.
Ray actually vanished completely, at least from where I’m sitting. I’m still in regular contact with Brian, though he went crazy and emigrated to the USA about ten years ago.
The wacky title dated back to my last year of high school in 1988, when Mark Bainbridge and David Holicek and I planned to do an amateur comic sketch video show. It never actually happened.
My early writing drew on inspirations from uni, as well as some recycled material from high school, with a good dose absurdist Pythonesque influence. Some of it was fairly juvenile. As was I.
The Internet as we know it today — an unparalleled worldwide high-technology time-wasting device — was in its infancy. I recall frequently having to explain to people the concept of this new-fangled “email”.
Over the years my writing slowly matured and moved from the surreal into the real world, the humour that was deliberately infused into everything was gradually toned-down, and now the blog has taken over just about completely.
I dabbled in a lot of technologies as they came along — never the first, but often early: the web site came along in April 1995, and shortly after that the first diary/blog entries. Tried what is now known as podcasting in 1997. Blogged the 1996 election. Issued an official screensaver in 1998. Online video? 1999… originally in RealVideo format, which probably nobody can play anymore, so here it is on YouTube:
Most (all in fact, I think) of my old pre-blog absurdist writing is still online.
And even now, I occasionally meet people who tell me they used to read the Toxic Custard list, or Usenet posts, back in the 90s.
Some of my favourite Toxic Custard highlights:
- Shakespeare — kicked off with Romeo and Juliet in October 1990, which made it into rec.humor.funny, the best postings from Usenet group rec.humor
- History of the World — based on a condensed world history I found in a 50s era compendium, from June 1994
- Ron and Jeff — inspired by Bottom, from March 1994. I still chuckle at my Red Shield Appeal gag.
- Doctor Who: Revenge of the Unrealistatrons — my Doctor Who spoof from May 1993, based heavily on the 1984 DW story Warriors of the Deep.
- The Year 2031 — an attempted sci-fi story, from January 1998.
- VCR destruction — in August 2001, Josh, Cathy and I went and systematically destroyed a troublesome old Sharp VCR of mine, by putting food and detergent into it, letting kids use it as a skateboard, smashing it with hammers, dipping it into a lake, attacking it with an axe and a crowbar, running over it with a car, and finally blowing it up. And yes, there is video.
And also:
- Your taxes are paying for this: This blog, archived at the National Library — “World Wide Web diary/weblog of: Daniel Bowen, a computer programmer in Melbourne. His web diary is a straightforward account of his daily life. The website includes numerous photographs, information about the author and links to his home page and to the weblogs of other diarists. It also includes an archive of the diary from its inception in 1994. Recent entries feature the comments of readers.”
- An early Usenet post (TCWF 6, 5th September 1990. The man referred to at the start, Ewen G MacPerson, was based on a lecturer, Ewen D McPherson.)
- Debate over whether Toxic Custard should have its own newsgroup (January 1991)
The twenty-year-old email list still exists, by the way, mostly as a weekly compilation of my blog posts here and at geekrant.org.
So, happy birthday, Toxic Custard.
Why I prefer Twitter to Facebook
Twitter and Facebook have some similarities. Both offer a micro-blogging feature via status updates.
Of the two, I think I prefer Twitter.
Why Twitter’s better
Twitter’s public. You don’t need a logon to see my Twitter feed. (It can also be made private, if one prefers.)
Twitter’s open. You don’t need to log onto a web site to use it. Thanks to a published API, Twitter has lots of different applications that can post to it, and you can also post via text message.
Twitter displays things in strict time order. Facebook’s News Feed does some weird crap with what it shows you, sometimes sometimes (and often annoyingly) showing you stuff from days ago, and seemingly hiding other updates until it feels like showing them. Which leads me into…
Twitter keeps its history, and it’s very visible. You can link straight back to that killer post. Facebook… well, I’m not sure I trust it to keep everything, because I can’t easily find it. (But given there’s always an inherent risk with keeping your data with external companies, I keep copies of significant posts myself.)
No offence to my Facebook friends, but Twitter has cooler people on it, publicly tweeting. In most cases you don’t need to go through the rigmarole of getting permission to watch their Tweets, so it’s easier to find and follow who you want. In fact it’s helped get me interested in Federal politics again.
Twitter doesn’t try to integrate every bloody app, and keep asking you for permissions to use them. Nor does it have overt advertising or keep making suggestions about things that will just waste your time.
Why Facebook’s better
Facebook has the advantage of including easier methods for posting pictures and video. Twitter gets these via addon sites such as Twitpic, or via separate services such as Flickr or Youtube.
You never see this in Facebook:
You can’t play Scrabble in Twitter. Mind you, those new adverts are pretty annoying.
How others see you
Facebook has the Like button. Twitter has a way to make a Tweet your favourite, though that’s not really an equivalent to Like.
But Twitter also has Retweets, allowing people to pass on your comments to their followers, should they wish. Facebook doesn’t really have an equivalent to that.
And Twitter has Lists, which I find interesting.
How do others categorise me? Checking the lists, I show up as:
- everythingaussie
- random-goings-on
- state
- melbourne (x 7)
- aunewsnotsportnottech
- people
- railpage
- irl
- news (x 2)
- faves
- openstreetmap
- people-of-interest
- real-people
- local-news-sport
- favs
- melbourne1
- auspolitics
- geeky
Hmm.
So anyway, I’m more likely to post on Twitter than FB. Follow my Twitter feed if you want to.
(I should add that although I dip into Facebook every so often, I am pretty strict there about only “friending” people I actually know in real life.)
Which do you prefer?
Tags: Facebook, Twitter
9 comments
Do not like (or dislike)
Have disabled the “Like” comments feature, after previously trying it with Like/Dislike, then disabling Dislike. Few were using it; bit of a waste of time for a site like this I suspect.
Like or dislike a comment? Leave an actual response instead!
Tags: blog
7 comments
Ancient political history
Trivia for you: Back in prehistoric times, when most of you had never heard of the Internet and barely anybody used the Web, and way before Twitter and Facebook, I blogged the 1996 Federal election campaign.
Several times a week I’d add something new, including a spoof leader debate transcript, a Hippy Party manifesto, Ron And Jeff on voting, and advice on what to tell How To Vote hander-outers when you don’t want one.
It went almost-unnoticed because so few people were online at the time, but it did get a write-up in The West Australian (sorry it’s fuzzy; I’ll try to find a better scan):
Rating comments
A day off today. Rather clear out junk from the house, I’ve tried installing a comments rating system.
If you like a comment, you can click the green Thumbs Up; if you dislike it, you can click the red Thumbs Down.
Looks like it won’t let you vote on a comment posted from the same IP address you’re at.
Feedback welcome.
(For more about comments on this blog, see the comment rules)
Update 23/7/2010: It didn’t really work out.
Tags: blog, comments
12 comments
Hold that thought
Working on the server. If you have a comment, hold that thought.
Update 3:40pm. OK, that was easy. WordPress upgraded, and switched to a different server. Re-delegating now… if you can see this message, it’s worked.
Tags:
1 comment
Reference works part 2
In 2007, a week or so after Kevin Rudd became PM, I took a look at a bunch of online reference works, some free, some corporate, to see how many had updated their articles on Australia.
The score was 2/5 getting it right, with Wikipedia and Britannica having been updated, and Citizendium, Encyclopedia.com and CIA World Fact Book having not been.
It’s been a week since Julia Gillard became PM. How do they stack up this time?
- CIA World Factbook — head of government: Prime Minister Kevin RUDD (since 3 December 2007); Deputy Prime Minister Julia GILLARD (since 3 December 2007)
- Citizendium — Australia’s head of government is Prime Minister Julia Gillard of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
- Wikipedia — Following a partyroom leadership challenge, Julia Gillard became the first female Prime Minister in June 2010.
- Britannica — You have to scroll down a long way to find the Prime Ministers list, but: Julia Gillard 2010-
- Encyclopedia.com — The default result is from the Columbia Encyclopedia, 2008, and it’s not clear if it’s been edited since then. Parliamentary elections in Nov., 2007, brought the Labor party into office; party leader Kevin Rudd , a former diplomat, became prime minister.
So a better result this time around, with 3/5 correct, and Britannica Citizendium coming into the fold of having updated their information relatively quickly.
And as always, rather than relying solely on any of these, one should always seek a secondary source for important information.
