Kookaburra

100 Funniest Jokes of All Time

Time for some levity

From 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time (GQ magazine)

Two old ladies are in a restaurant. One complains, "You know, the food here is just terrible." The other shakes her head and adds, "And such small portions." (Woody Allen)

A lawyer dies and goes to Heaven. "There must be some mistake," the lawyer argues. "I’m too young to die. I’m only fifty five." "Fifty five?" says Saint Peter. "No, according to out calculations, you’re eighty two." "How’s you get that?" the lawyer asks. Answers St. Peter: "We added up your time sheets."

I went to the psychiatrist, and he says "You're crazy " I tell him I want a second opinion. He says, ‘Okay, you're ugly too!" (Rodney Dangerfield)

GBS on the unreasonable man

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw

The quote is worth dwelling on, as is this site. www.unreasonableman.net

Procrastination, thief of... ooh! wanna watch a movie?: Corante > Strange Attractor >

I have been putting off <grin> outing myself as a procrastinator but I can only defer the truth for so long.

This article - Procrastination, thief of... ooh! wanna watch a movie? - by Suw @ Corante, provides excellent insight into this disease.

Procrastination. It's a killer. It's the bane of my life, and probably yours too. I've been working for myself for the best part of eight years and, although I am more self-disciplined now than I was when I started working as a journalist, being stuck in a small room 24 hours a day and having no clear delineator between work and leisure hours does mean one can slip a bit too easily into the 'all waking hours are for working' mentality. That, in turn, results in parts of your brain rebelling and then procrastination sets in and I'll finish this post when I've updated my iPod...

BlogPulse: 2004 Year in Review

Intelliseek's BlogPulse: 2004 Year in Review: What was hot in the blogosphere in 2004? BlogPulse scoured a year's worth of blog posts, links and trends to create a section chockful of year-in-review statistics, charts, finds and surprises.

NationMaster.com: Nifty statistics and mapping site...

NationMaster.com: Nifty statistics and mapping site for international comparisons (eg, total crimes per capita, or CO2 emissions per $ GDP). [source: Ken Novak's Weblog]

Tsunami awareness and aid

A key to helping the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami will be the provision of appropriate aid fast - before disease and lack of clean food and water delivers more devastation. It has to be a global initiative and will require citizens and governments alike to contribute. For the first time in a long time I am proud of the Australian government and its efforts to help with money and resources. Australia is rising to a new challenge of being a major supporter and benefactor to our Asian neighbours. Australian citizens are also rising to the challenge with record donations to major charities. More is undoubtedly needed.

It's very encouraging to see the web home pages of Amazon, Yahoo, Apple and Google contributing to raising the awareness of this humanitarian crisis and encouraging donations. I am not aware if these companies have donated any other resources but it's good to see they are doing their bit to remind global citizens of the magnitude of this crisis and showing simple ways people can help - send money to internationally recognised aid agencies.

My net surfing was not extensive but I note these companies make no mention of the crisis on their web home pages - IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle. A special brickbat for Sun who still have a media release on their front page which says "Rogue Wave Supports Solaris 10" - though I hasten to add that 'Rogue Wave' is an unfortunately named software company (link).

C'mon guys - what will it cost you to dedicate some space on your home page for a week? Apple are really showing the way here - apple.com, apple.com.au, apple.com/uk for example.

From the Microsoft perspective, according to the Seattle Post the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $3 million and Microsoft is encouraging employee donations for which the company makes a matching contribution. Good work but almost as important is some space on your home page to heighten worldwide awareness of this disaster. Apart from a mention from Microsoft Geek Blogger - Robert Scoble - there doesn't seem to be any efforts from Microsoft to contribute to maintaining awareness of this disaster.

Update 31-Dec: Microsoft now have a link on their home page providing links to aid agencies. (Tipped off by a posting from Microsoft Geek Blogger - Robert Scoble ).

Changes in webonomics

We're now well past the hype of the dot.com bust. We now have the realities of some excellent communications infrastucture which continues to gradually change the way business is done, sometimes in quite surprising ways.

At the recent Blogosphere, Stowe Boyd, captured an interesting anecdote:

A great quip from Brendon Wilson (brendonwilson.com) underscored the elephant in the room: there is a world outside the blogospheric core of idealistic early adopters who cling to some sort of money-free purity, and that's where true economic value will be determined. Wilson pointed out that he is an author, and for each $35 sale of his book at Amazon, he receives like $1.50 in royalties. However, as an Amazon affiliate he receives $3.50 per sale coming through his website.

Listening to: Comfortably Numb (Live) by Pink Floyd

The Media Revolt Manifesto

Orcinus offers us The Media Revolt Manifesto. A long but worthwhile read. It casts the 'net' as a strong alternative to today's mainstream media which Orcinus asserts has become corrupt.

The challenge of creating an alternative and effective media is immense but I will lightly comment on some aspects.

Signal/Noise ratio: 'news' on the net suffers from a fervent mix of fact and opinion. It is often hard or time consuming to determine what the 'truth' is.

Quantity : We're all suffering from information overload.

Education: How qualified are today's citizens consumers to understand 'the news'? I am not particularly qualified but I am trying.

Motivation: Unless it's happening in your backyard and affecting your quality of life most people simply can't be bothered understanding what's happening in the world. Those that do they are often labelled derogatively -- 'chardonnay drinking socialists', 'elites' are personal favourites.

I saw the famous now retired US news reader, Walter Cronkite, once interviewed on TV. When asked to comment on what's changed with news coverage today he said (my paraphrasing from memory) "Used to be that the News told you want you needed to know. Nowadays the News tells you want to hear."

Says it all really.

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.5

A plug for NetNewsWire -- the best Mac OS RSS aggregator. Do yourself a favour and buy the Pro version -- great for weblog editing. The details below point to firstly the newly released free version (Lite) and details on the differences between the two editions.

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.5 is now in synch with the full version. It uses Web Kit for HTML rendering, supports gzip compression, and more. See the change notes for the full scoop.

To make it clear which features are in both Lite and full versions and which aren’t, we’ve put up a comparison chart. [inessential.com]

Leg update

I try to stick to topics of general interest here. Normally my leg is not that interesting. However once I mentioned that it was broken I received some emails seeking updates. So here you go ...

It's a week since I got out of plaster (well fibreglass actually). I am walking without crutches for short distances on level ground. The big test today was the 100 metre return journey to the café (downstairs at work) and back. I did it twice. The caffeine helped :-) Fortunately while the café is 'downstairs' we do have a lift (elevator).

Still need to spend too much time with my leg raised above my heart (to drain fluids - urk!) so this limits my browsing and posting. Ripping through Harry Potter. And contemplating theJaguar Mark II. An amazing car which I have overlooked all of these years. A favourite of bank robbers in the sixties. Maybe I can find a September-64 model, just like me :-) Hopefully its suspension won't break as easily as mine did :-(

(Note to self: Repeat 10 times daily. "A classic car is an indulgence, not an investment".)

In the meantime go see Woody's blog, Ecleticism. He is cranking out some great material.