Archive for February, 2009

Month and a half redux

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

Has been a while since the last update

  • The liberation of a beer fridge from the roadside
  • The bottling of 150ish bottles of beer.
  • Attempts to drink the same are progressing
  • Played Wasabi, and Pandemic, much fun!
  • New tyres on the battlewagon
  • Battlewagon got panelbeated after the necessary parts finally arrived
  • Watched “The Italian Job” (the original)
  • Arsonists destroyed my folks palm trees (and some other people’s cars!). This was before others of their ilk destroyed big chunks of Victoria, so barely seemed worth mentioning
  • Interment of the cat. RIP. Some new plants planted which might barely survive the summer.
  • Start of semester
  • Pancakes
  • Summer colds, blecch
  • Puggle can pretty much officially read
  • Bilby is having a language explosion and putting together longer sentences
  • Munumanup! Watching The Muppet Show with them. Do Do De Do Do.
  • Cygnet can get up on all fours, and smiles a lot
  • Finished the Adventures of Doctor Dolittle
  • Our 10 year anniversary of getting together (including 8.5 total parent years or so :)

Insurers encourage safer smart car drivers

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

It seems that insurers NRMA Insurance, SGIO and SGIC are taking an important step in encouraging the uptake of smarter vehicles by offering insurance discounts to people driving the Volvo XC60, which features “City Safety” technology. City Safety actively monitors traffic in front of the vehicle and stops the vehicle if it detects imminent collisions at relative speeds up to 30km/h, which should cover about 75% of fender bender accidents (and thus dramatically reduce insurance claims for such).

Now if only it wasn’t an SUV. Presumably Volvo will be rolling the technology into the rest of their vehicles as part of their 2020 Zero Crash initiative.

News.com.au explicitly naming people in headlines…

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Has anyone else noticed that news.com.au online headlines (not constrained by printed column spacing on dead-tree pages) are now including people’s names in them? Rather than “Man mauled by eggbeater” it’s now explicitly stated as “Joe Bloggs mauled by eggbeater”. Are they just trying to attract more hits from the ego-surfers? Or just hoping to make it easier to follow court case celebrities you can Google for?

Science for kids

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

I’m looking for 4 x 1 hour science activities to do with about 8 kids aged 4-7. Preferably focussed on one particular area of science with some hands on activities. Any suggestions?

Star Trek corset

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Commbadge not included. via boingboing.

Qantas Frequent Flyer kids fly free

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Until 20th February Qantas are giving away some free under-12 kids fares when an adult fare is booked on some routes.

World Economic Crisis, take 1

Friday, February 6th, 2009

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” -Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

“Under the Federal Reserve Act, panics are scientifically created. The present panic is the first scientifically created one, worked out as we figure a mathematical equation.” –Charles Lindbergh

Sorry, been watching too much Zeitgeist

Bankwest sucks

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Dear Bankwest,

Thankyou for honouring my $4.70 overdraft and only charging me the standard administration fee of $45.

Personally I think you’re a band of thieves.

An annoyed customer.

WoWcession

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

When times get tough the tough play WoW.

Eclectic Gypsy: Doctor Who biographer on The Space Show

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

It seems that unofficial Doctor Who biographer Dave Thompson will be a guest on The Space Show this Sunday February 8th from 12-1:30pm Pacific time. His book is “Eclectic Gypsy: An Unauthorized Biography of Dr. Who”. Readers can pose questions by phone, e-mail or AOL/ICQ/CompuServe chat (see link for details).