I think I’m becoming a political nerd. Is that a sign of old age? I’d like to think it’s just a sign of being wise and educated.

I followed the leadership #spill very closely on Wednesday/Thursday last week. (Look at that, I’ve become so entrenched in twitter that everytime I write ’spill’, I have to preface it with a hash.) I’ll admit that I followed it most closely on Twitter, and that’s where I saw it begin to break. But I stayed up on Wednesday night to watch the late news as TV stations began to air the rumours as quickly as they surfaced on Twitter. And I went to bed on Wednesday night with the feeling that Thursday would be a pretty big day in Australia’s history.

(It’s interesting – I love twitter a lot, but I felt a little frustrated when most of TV’s breaking news bits were just things that had surfaced on Twitter. I kinda felt like, ‘yeah, I know all that, I can get all that news… I was hoping you’d have something more for me…’ But I guess that’s the habit that twitter is breeding – instant information and news.)

Our office has a 40-something cm TV hanging from the ceiling. And on Thursday, it came in handy. I got into the office around 8am, turned the TV onto channel 9 (originally ABC, but the majority wanted channel nine), and on it stayed until everyone got bored with Question Time at 2pm, and it went off. Not a whole lot of work got done on Thursday morning. And it was especially cool to see almost everyone in our office stop (and not a single phone rang either) and watch while KRudd gave his goodbye speech.

I’ll reserve my opinion about the leadership change and Julia. Not because I don’t want to share it… it’s just that I don’t think I can write it down in a succinct way here. But most people that know me know that I am a Labour man, and I did love KRudd.

And my second moment of political nerdiness comes from being very excited about this movie hitting channel 10 next month…

Please don’t get me wrong – Victor Chang was a brilliant man; incredibly intelligent, and has done a great wonder of things to do with the heart, and it sucks that he was killed.

However, it very much seems like Phillip Lim’s parole is being opposed by so many people (according to media, anyway) because of the “gravity” of the crime – the gravity being that his victim was Victor Chang. And even though he’s served his 18 years, behaved in prison, he shouldn’t be elligible for release?

Let’s look at this the opposite way – are we saying that if a human murders another human who is known to only 5 or 10 people in this world, and hasn’t done anything widely known with their life, that they are worth any less than a surgeon who’s saved thousands of lives through incredible procedures? Or are they worth any less than a scientist who created a vaccine saving millions of lives?

Essentially, all the thoughts that I have about this situation have been put to publication in an opinion piece over at smh. And I whole-heartedly agree with every word written in the article.

If you are someone who’s been upset or annoyed by the pending parole release of Phillip Lim, please take the time to read this article, understand all the facts of the case, and then rethink why you’re upset or annoyed - is it because Victor Chang was well known?

Should a criminal pay more for his crime because of the notoriety of the person they murdered or harmed?

Parole for Lim, all bar the shouting – [smh link]

The NSW Police put out a media release yesterday that brought The Daily Telegraph to the ground with a story they published saying that the NSW Police is censoring crime information and pictures in order to make the public feel safer.

I loved this response from the NSW Police:

Unfortunately, not one word of a very detailed response provided to the Daily Telegraph last week on this issue was used in this morning’s article. Censorship in reverse, it could be argued.

Take that!

Each and every day, The Daily Telegraph, or at least one of the news.com.au subsets, gives new meaning, and further proof, the the phrase “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

I am really annoyed by this headline:

“Aussie blokes make the worst husbands: study”

The annoying bit is that the headline pretty much has nothing to do with the story. The article talks about a study across many countries and continents. And actually, it focuses a lot on cultural differences.

But for some loser editor down at the smh, something like, “Cross cultural husband differences” just wasn’t punchy enough. So let’s make it seem like a study has shown that Australian men are the worst at being husbands. Yeah, good idea.

Freaking Today Tonight is taking over the world.

I know there may be multiple answers to that, and without working within the station, we may only be able to guess: to make the songs more “listenable”, to make them fit a certain timeframe… others?

What makes me very annoyed is essentially their arrogance – what right do they think they have to alter an artist’s song just to meet their own criteria?

“Oh, this song is about 24 seconds too long… we’ll need to increase the BPM by about 2 or so to make it fit then.”

No! A musician or band has slaved over that song for days, hours, weeks, months! And 2DayFM reckon they know better?! Ultimately, I guess, in the name of more listeners, and thus, more money. People may argue that it’s such a minor speed increase that you don’t notice it (and I’ve heard it said that the speed increases are so minor, and so to most, just subliminal, but make you want to listen more, or something like that).

But it’s still a speed increase. Anyone who has listened to the song a few times as it was intended to be played should be able to notice it. I certainly did this evening when I heard it yet again. (I’ve heard it the very few times I’ve listened to 2DayFM, which worries me that it happens with nearly every second song.)

I guess for 2DayFM being a radio station isn’t about playing music anymore; it’s solely about making money and doing whatever is required to make that happen… no matter what.

You, 2DayFM, are arrogant, heartless, money-hungry scabs.

The only reason I went with Optus when the iPhone came out was because Telstra’s data plans were still ridiculously expensive in my opinion ($29/80MB at the time), and I couldn’t justify spending that much on my personal mobile. And I just thought, ‘well, their coverage can’t be that bad, can it?’ The answer was yes, it can be that bad. The CBD is especially hopeless.

And now that Telstra has better data pricing ($29/300MB or $10 for 150MB), I would be keen to go there with my iPhone, and take advantage of distinctly better coverage.

So I’ve started the process of getting out of my contract. Don’t know how successful I’ll be, but I’m giving it a go based on my amount of complaints about coverage and usability that I’ve got noted on my account in their systems. I spoke to some people at Optus, and the lady was actually really nice and upfront. Basically there was nothing she could do about waiving my contract termination fee, and she just suggested I write to their Customer Relations Group who would look into it. But warned me that it can take up to a month for them to reply.

I was fine with that, wrote them a letter, and have waited. It was mid-April when I wrote.

So now I’ve started to wonder where my reply is. I called Optus today to check, and the lady put me on hold, and then came back and said that her manager said it was actually a minimum of 14 weeks before I should expect a reply.

14 weeks?! They expect people to think it’s reasonable for them to take nearly 4 months to respond to a simple complaint letter? That is utterly ridiculous!

Even more annoying, if you want to escalate something to the Telecommunications Ombudsman, they won’t really be willing to look into your case until you’ve got documented attempts to resolve the complaint within your telecommunications provider… which you have to wait 14 weeks for.

Pathetic.

Let’s be clear: this is all personal opinion and frustration about my mobile provider. And my goodness, they suck on so many levels.

I think there’s two debates to be had here (or I’ve found there’s two debates from conversation with my colleagues this afternoon): Firstly, should the ad have been screened, or was having it as a special webisode a better idea? And secondly, is discrimination against overweight people on the same level as racism etc. I didn’t think the latter was a debate – I agreed with it whole-heartedly – but as it turns out, some people don’t agree.

As I said, personally, I do very much agree with the ad’s point – it is offensive, but with good reason and good motive. But I guess the question has to be asked – is such offense necessary? I also agree that perhaps the shock value is a little too high and that the point it was trying to create may be missed. In the end, the ad as it was made would never be screened on TV anyway. But as a hypothetical ad, it’s done well.

If you want to watch, head to antiprejudicad.net and check it out. Don’t just watch the ad in the first 30 seconds; take the time to listen to the 14 minutes of discussion afterwards – well worth it.

I might add, that I’m confused about how different media outlets work - SMH have published all the quotes from the ad with no censorship, warnings or anything. Whereas the site provides great warning about possible offense before watching the ad. And ABC wouldn’t screen it at all. Can anyone offer some explination?

And lastly, the discussion that followed the ad on The Gruen Transfer did highlight a previous anti-racism ad from the UK that was just plain awesome.

edit: Jenny pointed me to this ad by the UN. Similarly themed as the above.

Thursday night is Scrubs night. Channel 7 have been showing season 8 (only a couple of months behind the US!) on Thursday evenings for the past few weeks. I usually record it so I don’t have to stay up til 11:30. So last Friday morning, I sit down with my bowl of cereal to watch the previous night’s episode… and a few short seconds into the episode, I realise it’s a repeat! No worries… maybe the second episode is the new one. Nope. Both repeats. So I jump onto Channel 7’s website to check out the tv guide for next week and see what’s doing – this Thursday’s two episodes are both repeats as well!!

What the hell? So we’re about 5 or 6 episodes (out of 22 or 23) into season 8, and they just stop playing it, with no warning, and we have absolutely no idea on when the rest will be played.

That’s grrrr #1.

#2 resides with the ever-changing 24. I won’t even go into how frustrating it was when the season started back in Feburary – the time slot changed (according to Ch 7’s website and according to the EPG) multiple times each week for the first couple of weeks! But what was frustrating was last night.

24 has been on at 10:30pm Sunday night consistently for weeks now. But last night, Ch 7 clearly decided that was getting boring, and they put some random British murder mystery doco thing on for half an hour before 24! No reason at all; no special broadcast; it wasn’t some premiere thing… it was just crap on for half an hour that pushed back 24 half an hour.

Thankfully, I had learnt from earlier in the year, and I actually record about a 3 hour block on Sunday night to make sure I capture all the shows I want, and to compensate for Channel 7’s idiocy.

I’m well and truly over channel 7. They seemingly do not care about their viewers at all.

My challenge now comes with how do I make my frustration effective – I can’t really stop watching, cos that would defeat the purpose. And I’m pretty confident that writing a letter would be just as effective as throwing said letter in the recycling bin.

I remember reading on a forum earlier in the year (when chasing the earlier 24 frustrations) that a good idea was to get in touch with the advertisers during that time slot and let them know of your frustrations and that what Channel 7 is doing is likely costing them viewers and loyalty, and thus, advertising for them.

Might be worth a try.

edit: maybe my blog post worked. Scrubs is back… now on Monday nights at 8pm. Although the advertised episode at the moment is one that played 2 weeks ago, but it’s still progress.

A lady from Thornleigh, Jan Retford, was being Domestic Blitz-ed, so we all watched it after church on Sunday evening. Jan is an amazing woman who’s been through a whole lot of stuff in her life; divorce, horrible car accident, two forms of cancer… And yet she has stayed solid and steadfast in her faith in God, and remained her true self, caring more about others than herself. So you can imagine that this just exudes warm fuzzy feelings and makes you smile, especially when a TV producer packages it up for the small screen.

But as we were watching it, I was left a bit confused by the use of background music to go with the show as they were building and making-over the house. Two songs that stood out were Fall Out Boy’s I Don’t Care and The All-American Rejects’ Gives You Hell. Let me quote some of the lyrics to better explain why I’m confused. These are from the chorus of each song, and it’s the chorus of each that went to air…

Fall Out Boy – I Don’t Care:

I don’t care what you think as long as it’s about me, 
The rest of us can find happiness in misery. 

The All-American Rejects – Gives You Hell:

When you see my face,
Hope it gives you hell.
When you walk my way,
Hope it gives you hell, hope it gives you hell. 

Seriously, is the producer on the show not paying attention to the music that goes to air… or do they just pluck any current top 50 song and not even consider the lyrics and the meaning of the songs? And if they’re keen to use current top 50 hits, I’m pretty confident that I could find way better songs in the current top 50 to be used in Domestic Blitz than the above two.

Telstra is likely to deploy its own fibre network into metropolitan areas, although Senator Conroy would not rule out legislation against such a move…
[australianit]

So just to make sure I understand this clearly… no one wants Telstra to be a “monopoly”, least of all, Stephen Conroy (who I’m loving just about as much as Helen Coonan, by the way). But when Telstra suggest plans to build their own FTTN network in competition with the one the government wants to roll out, in order to stimulate price and access and give greater broadband access to most of Australia, Stephen Conroy wants to put legistlation in to stop that? So that he can have the monopoly?

Surely there’s something I’m missing there about the sheer hypocrisy of that. Surely.

How awesome would it be if we had two FTTN networks in Australia! Why would you want to stop that?!