Monthly Archives: December 2009

Who’s looking out my window?

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Out to the wharfWith a consistent 9 to 10 views a day since I put it up at the beginning of the month, this photo is currently one the most popular on my flickr stream. But who is looking at it?

It is a nice view of the wharf out the window of the KPMG building in Sydney. Taken to see what the area of the proposed water front redevelopment looks like now.

With around 430 views, and all but 2 of them listed as ‘Unknown Source‘ in flickr stats, ie no refers. It has left me wondering who or what is so interested in this photo? What is the big secret?

I presume that the ‘Unknown Source‘ means that it is being referenced to on some intranet page, with the referrer being blocked by a proxy. That or someone keeps reloading the image in a client program.

Any ideas? Are you my mystery photo viewer?

Clouds in sunset over Glebe Point Rd

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Clouds and sunset over Glebe 1Streaks of clouds coloured pink by the sunset over Glebe. Taken looking down at Glebe Point Rd from the Broadway shopping centre car park.

Not sure which is the better photo of these two. The first has better colour and more movement, with the bus, but the second has better balance, with the white building centred. So hard to choose between the two.

I need a mobile phone with a better camera, or a camera that is easy to just carry round in my pocked all the time.
Clouds and sunset over Glebe 2

And the bank said “Go home and procreate”

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Japan’s largest banking group says ‘Go home and procreate’.

Taking the government directive to boost the population seriously, management at Mitsubishi UFJ sent staff an email telling them to go home at 5:10pm rather than the usual 7pm. The idea being this would leave them with more energy at the end of the day, and more time to pursue extra circular activities at home.

It is worth noting though that bank branches close to the public at 3pm. What do all the staff do for the next 4 hours?

Strawberry Ice Cream Soup

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A plate of strawberry ice cream that has been left unattended and mostly melted. Looks like a bowl of pumpkin soup doesn’t it?

Strawberry Ice Cream Soup

Bookmarking in the iTunes store

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Do you ever find things in the iTunes store and think “I don’t want that now, but might be interested later”? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bookmark feature in iTunes?

Well its good to see that I am not the first person to want it. Back in 2003 Chuck Toporek wrote an iTunes store feature wish list, with bookmarking a feature high on the list. And even the idea of a wish list so people could buy you stuff.

Then I came across kirk’s suggestion of dragging out urls to make webloc files. But I really don’t want to have to file the bookmarks somewhere else. A directory of bookmarks it not that easy to manage, of space efficient.

The best idea I saw is from AgingGeek of creating a playlist in iTunes and dragging songs to it from iTunes store. That this should create a list if files you are interested in. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to work in iTunes 9.

So it looks like we are back to the drawing board?

Add to Wish List menu optionNo, not completely. As of iTunes 9 there is a small drop down menu arrow next to the ‘buy’ button for albums and tracks, which has an ‘Add to Wish List‘ option.

So, now there is a wish list. But how do I access its contents? And where did my Shopping Cart go?

The Wish List can be access via a link (hidden) right at the bottom of each iTunes store page.

The Shopping Cart has gone. It is no more. Only 1-click shopping is offered these day in the iTunes store.

From iTunes help:

IMPORTANT:Only 1-click purchasing is available. If you were using Shopping Cart in earlier versions of iTunes, the contents of your Shopping Cart can now be found in your Wish List.

So, Apple have decided that a shopping cart gave you too much of an option to back out of purchases. And moved to only having a 1-click purchase model. Cutting down on the ummers and ahhers.

IMPORTANT:All sales are final. You can’t cancel a purchase after you click Buy or Buy Now.

Some like the new iTunes, and gave it a good review:

And others detest the new iTunes store interface:

Personally, I think hiding the Shopping Cart as a Wish List at the bottom of the page is a not very user friendly.

I still want a way to Bookmark songs or albums. Much like you do in a web browser. That would allow you to categorise and file your bookmarks, not have them all dumped in one list.

As the iTunes store is really just a web site (using iTunes as its browser). I don’t see why this would be hard to implement (I presume that iTunes uses the same web technology as Safari). It just requires some realisation from within for the need to change.

Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Queuing for Christmas

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Mad crowds at Coles Broadway on Christmas eve? Outside it didn’t look that bad. Inside there were lots of people, but the isles were not jammed full.

The checkouts at one end were quite full. You can see even the ‘Self-Scan‘ checkouts (they put in to replace the Express ones) have a queue. Although the checkouts down the other end were not as crowded.

Perhaps this might be rectified be having a staff member noticing and better allocating people to checkouts? No, I suppose they were all too worked off their feet to do customer management.

And, although it was very busy, it didn’t feel overly crowded. Possibly after after experiencing Tokyo trains at peek hour other experiences pale in comparison.

Outside ColesQueuing to serve youselfThe queue before ChristmasThe queue before Christmas

Collection of clouds

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A collection of cloud photos from today.

Clouds from the busClouds down the screetClouds, sunset, chimney

Backed up due to bus strike in Sydney

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Backed up in Wattle St due to Bus strikeWith the bus strike in Sydney the trip home on Friday evening must have been a long and tedious one for many.

Here you can see Wattle Street, one of the main feeder roads for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge, backed up all the way to Broadway.Backed up in Wattle St due to Bus strike

Conroy’s Christmas present, Internet censorship #nocleanfeed

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Stephen Conroy has delivered his Christmas present early, ISP level Internet filter. Tuesday afternoon the government announced that was giving the green light to its controversial censorship plan. And Conroy stated that we can look forward to legislation being introduced next year, ahead of the election.

Yesterday news sites, blogs and twitter erupted in a furore over the plans. Below are some articles on the subject I though were interesting:

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Abbot to de-legalise abortion, then remove no fault divorce?

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I was thinking about Tony Abbott’s recent appointment as leader of the Liberal party. Apart from his dislike of the ETS (we just need dykes like the Netherlands), and the fact Abbott doesn’t know what peak oil is, his policies include a strong desire to make abortion harder.

Without delving into the reasons this could be a bad thing, I wondered what the next step a right wing Catholic PM would take.There must be too many divorces at the moment, for that side of politics. Lets remove no-fault divorce.

Doesn’t no fault divorce just make it easier to split up families?

But looking back I see that this was July’s policy. Abbott talked of moving to an opt in fault divorce [2]. Reversing the no fault divorce legislation passed by the Whitlam government in 1975. An idea that even the private investigation industry though was a stupid.

So, it looks like de-legalising abortion, or at least making it much harder to access, has been chosen as the easier right wing agenda item to push.

But, expect that if this goes through, a modification to the no fault divorce law will be surely follow.