I came across a website recently that outline graduation etiquette, and it seems to say that you guys should all be buying me gifts. So, if anyone would like to buy me anything off that list - a popcorn maker, nice new watch, some “internet services” or the good ol’ cash/cheque will do just fine. And, of course, to anyone that does get me any of these items, I’ll happily provide the required thank you note.

Oh, and about the new job - I’m back at Uni, but now they’re paying ME! How times change…

I have just finished my final undergraduate essay ever! Sure, I’ve gotta wait until results come out to make sure I’ve passed everything (I’m sure I have), and then I’ve gotta wait for some official notification that I’ve met the requirements of my degree, but… who cares about all that stuff? The only thing I need to do now is turn up to graduation!

Phew! What a relief.

Why is it that one always manages to find so many interesting distracting sites during one’s exam/essay period? Of course, I use the indefinite third person intentionally, as I’m definitely not talking about myself. But, if one was talking about oneself, perhaps one might have stumbled upon a site like Improv Everywhere, and discovered some funny pranks.

One’s favourites:

• Ben Folds Fake
• McDonalds Bathroom Attendant - I (during a time when it wasn’t an exam period, so it might actually have been me) remember seeing this one a while ago.
• No Pants, 2k6 - Where 8 of them got arrested for …. who knows. Last time I checked it’s not illegal to walk around in much more revealing bathing suits.

I’m still no closer to figuring out what I want to do next semester, short of finding more and more courses that I might be interested in. I’m currently looking at possibly doing one or more of:

• Master of Applied Science (Information Security) @ RMIT
• Graduate Certificate in Digital Forensics @ Melbourne University School of Enterprise

But then again, there’s still heaps more options. I know I want to get into I.T. security, but there seem to be so many specialist areas, and since I’ve only touched on security before (one subject a year or so ago), how am I supposed to know which area to go into?

One other thing that’s happened over the semester, is that I’ve been studying a lot of history and philosophy of science subjects, and I’ve got a taste for that, too. I’ve always enjoyed contemplating the nature of the god and the universe, but some of the philosophy this semester has really got me thinking. As such, I’ve decided to finally start a pet-project that I’ve spent the last few years thinking about, but (like many things), hadn’t quite got around to doing - I now have a blog about religion, science, philosophy and spirituality. I’ve started by re-working and posting an essay I wrote last year at uni about resolving evolution with a belief in god, and I’ve been working on a few more posts which will appear over the next few weeks. While it’s definitely not for everyone, if you’re interested, please take a look over at 20gramSoul.com - and if you’re wondering about the name, check out the about page.

I hope everyone is well, and no doubt I’ll write again soon, as it’s coming up to the end of semester (and we all know that time I should be studying becomes time I write on my website)…

Anyway, a friend of mine sent me an email on Wednesday, inviting me to a “quiet” day at the tennis - little did I know what I was getting myself in for! Ok, so, maybe I made that bit up - I knew exactly what I was getting myself involved with, and I guess that was the point in going!

I’ve put up a whole bunch of photos I took yesterday on Flickr and my website (only my favourite few made it up to Flickr - unless you’re a friend or family, but you can see all of them on my website). We (The Heard) originally planned on being outside supporting Robert Smeets, but due to the weather, we decided to remain indoors instead. I, however, had borrowed my father’s funky new camera and had brought all the equipment assuming I’d be outdoors, so most of the action shots of the sports didn’t work too well. Oh, and there was also the problem of being told I couldn’t use the long lens I brought (75mm-300mm for any photographers out there), because it was deemed to be a “professional” camera, and due to some arrangement with the official photographers, professional cameras could not be used (except by the professionals, of course). Still, I got a few decent shots - even if they’re not quite as close-up as I hoped for!

Oh, and you might have also seen some photos in “The Age” or other papers of a large group of people in yellow straw hats - unfortunately, The Age thought we were “The Fanatics” (despite the fact that almost everyone there had “The Heard” printed on their T-shirts). Just thought I’d clarify that.

My favourite, however, is a comic which recently appeared in our Herald Sun that summed it all up quite well, discovering that the only politically correct way of wishing someone the best for this “special” time of year was something like “extending acknowledgement of December 25th to you”. Of course, this completely ignores anyone who may choose to use a non-Gregorian calendar.

Anyway, in the spirit of the season, I’ve been nice and slack. I’ve generally tried to write SOMETHING for my website for this time of year, but haven’t quite made it (although, to my/our credit, Kel and I were able to send out a number of christma… I mean… greeting cards to many of our friends).

So, you may be asking (or not) what have I been up to for the last week or so? Well, I spent this Christmas out at Edenhope with Kel’s family, then making a mad dash back to Melbourne for boxing day with my parents. I’ve also had a little bit of fun with other people’s presents (hehehe), as well as taking photos of lots of “pretty” christma… I mean, holiday… lights. New Years (I can say that, right?) isn’t quite planned yet, but it might be a quiet one.

If you’re interested in a bit of a “PC Holiday Fun”, check out some of these links…

• Politically Correct “Holiday” Card
• Politically Correct “The Night Before … (December 25)”
• Is it a Christmas tree? A Yule tree? A Hanukkah Bush? Find out here!

And, for a bit of fun…

• A “holiday” snowglobe
• What happens when Santa’s sleigh breaks down?

Anyway, best wishes for the new year (except those using a non-Gregorian calendar… in which case, happy whatever day January 1st happens to translate to), and all the best! Hope you guys have had some fun over the last few days, and will continue to have more fun over the next Gregorian calendar year!

Merry Late Christmas! (oops)

They also offer suggestions of other things you can protect with your BananaGuard:

• Grapes & any other small soft fruits
• Cherry Tomatoes
• 6 Cream Eggs (Useful for posting to Australia)
• Toothpaste & Toothbrush whilst Trekking

Of course, if you’re thinking of some other “personal” uses of a BananaGuard, make sure you read their BananaGuard FAQ, which states:

Q: “Where do the Batteries go?”
A: The Banana Guard was designed for its intended purpose only as a device to prevent banana trauma during transport. It does have other uses but battery operation is not one of them. No responsibility is accepted for any injury received or inflicted (or self inflicted) owing to the improper use of a Banana Guard.

Consider yourself warned.

So, what’s this post about? Well, partly about a new site that I’ve discovered, called 43things, and how great it is to procrastinate on. On one level, 43things is a “todo” list for your life. Think about all the things you’ve always wanted to do, put them on 43things, then check them off, get reminders, talk to other people who are trying to do the same thing, … it’s great! Of course, the problem with a site like this is it gives you too many ideas of things TO do.

Have a look at my 43things list (which currently only has 8 things), for example - sure, I’ve got some great long term plans like live in a foreign country and finish my degree (hopefully not TOO long-term with the second one). Then, I also have some good short-term goals like go back to the gym and finish my exams (only 1 more to go).

Then, we have the one which sparked both the picture in this post, the post itself, and (with any luck) plenty of time spent doing non-study related things (mostly after my final exam, of course). Anyway, the picture in this post will hopefully be the first of many to come, since I’ve taken on the challenge of taking a photo every day. I can’t guarantee I’ll post a new photo on this site each day, so I might post them up in batches, but I’m definitely going to try to take at least one decent photo each day for the immediate future.

Feel free to check back to my A Photo A Day album if you want to see how well I keep up with my goal.

Oh, and feel free to check out 43 things for yourself, if you’d like there’s:

• 43things to do
• 43places to go
• 43people to meet
• … and a few others

The average British male spends six months of his life ogling women, a new study reveals. The first thing the average bloke will look at is the breasts before working down to the bottom and then the legs.

From ananova.com

Ben also had a guest band in for the night - the Dresden Dolls - they came on and played one of their own songs (”Coin operated boy”), and then helped out with “Stephen’s last night in town”. At the risk of having Ben Folds come round to my house and draw a penis on my bathroom wall, I didn’t quite like the lead singer’s voice. Interesting style of music, but the voice just ruined it. I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and blame the sound guys, cause her voice doesn’t seem AS bad in the songs on the Dresden Dolls website.

Anyway, other than that, it was a great night. If you’re a Ben fan (and you should be), enjoy the photos. If not, well… that’s your loss.

It’s amazing how much stuff is available online about key-bumping, and I can’t believe it hasn’t been a major problem (or at least, we haven’t heard of it) in Australia yet.

Of course, one of the major problems with this is that it leaves no evidence of a break in - any insurance company you know of that would pay up under these circumstances?

Below are a couple of short videos demonstrating key bumping. Firstly, a quick “howto” guide on key bumping:

And another one (in Dutch - with subtitles) explaining some of the theory and repercussions of this technique, and what the “pros” (professional locksmiths/lock pickers) think of the technique.

anyone else scared?

Anyway, so what’s so interesting about Melway that warrants a post on my website? Melway Edition 1, that’s what! Imagine being able to look back through time and see what life was like before the eastern freeway (when we also had 6 digit phone numbers, and measured things in yards and miles - my god… such times existed?), or to look back to a time when we had 20 drive in theatres (I believe the figure is now 2)!

Oh, and most importantly…

It only cost $2.50.

Phone Plan 1: Optus Pre-Paid

I first got a phone with Optus pre-paid soon after I finished year 12. After a few weeks, I lost the phone. Going well so far? Still - I’ve only myself to blame for that. My major phone company problems came later.

Phone Plan 2: Optus Contract

My experience with Optus was, on the whole, quite good. Partly due to the fact that I was on an excellent plan (it was a $35/month contract, with calls costing only 18c/30sec), I stayed with Optus for a number of years. Sure, there were one or two minor problems - when I went overseas with my mobile, I’d be told that calls I made would come out of my included calls. When I got back, however, I discovered that was not the case. A short phone call to Optus, however, got it all sorted out - they credited my account with the difference. No hassle, no arguing - just good customer service.

Phone Plan 2b: Continued with Optus (out of contract)

I’d done so well with Optus so far, and when my contract expired and it came time to see what else was available, I found no better deals than what I already had with Optus. So, I continued - but bought myself a new handset (outright)! Still, I had no problems with Optus - in fact, they “rewarded” me by giving me an EXTRA $11 of credit per month just for staying with them out of contract.

I still laugh when I think about the poor telemarketers who used to call me trying to get me to change plans (most of them from Optus, funnily enough) - I’d simply tell them I was paying $35/month, and receiving $41 worth of calls at 18c/30sec. They’d soon realise they had no hope of converting me!

Phone Plan 3: Telstra / FoneZone

Of course, that’s when I had to start playing with fire. I took the plunge… into the “big pond” which seemed to have a drain pipe which lead directly to hell. I joined Telstra. I moved to Telstra for one reason: I found a handset I liked that only Telstra sold. Needless to say, Telstra sucked. Right from the start, I got screwed around - I had to visit the store three times just to order my phone (and, interestingly - never actually signed a contract)! And it got worse - rather than signing me up on a $100 plan including data (so I could check my emails, and browse the web from my phone), they signed me up for a $100 phone plan, PLUS a $100 data plan (that $200/month!). After months of arguing (with thanks to the TIO) I managed to cancel my contract, and send the handset back with no further commitment.

Pity about the handset (it was nice), but on the positive side, there was a new model (a 3G phone, called the iMate Jasjar) that came out soon after I managed to “break up” with Telstra (it’s not me, it’s you!).

Phone Plan 4: Virgin

So, I bought the new phone, and temporarily signed up with Virgin. Funnily enough, these guys were actually good (kinda puts a dampener on the whole “idiot phone company” thing), even though I was only with them for a couple of months. Problem was, I just bought a 3G phone, and needed a 3G network to go with it.

Phone Plan 5: Vodafone

At the time, “3″ and Telstra were the only 3G networks, but both refused to connect any phone they didn’t sell to their network. Soon afterwards, Vodafone launched their 3G network, so… I connected to them. Of course, finding out if I could sign up with Vodafone was a bit of a task. I have a whole transcript of an email conversation with Vodafone when I tried to work out what their policy was on non-Vodafone supplied phones. They seemed to have a problem with answering “yes/no” questions with a straight answer. Is it possible that Vodafone’s service could be worse than Telstra’s? Of course, it didn’t end there. Two TIO complaints later, I’m almost free of them (I believe I still owe them about 20c).

Complaint 1 with Vodafone involved a series of premium SMS’ being charged to my account which I’d never requested. Now, surely a simple issue like this could be easily resolved by simply calling Vodafone and explaining, right? Wrong. After a number of failed attempts (including various people telling me that I still had to pay, or that I must have requested the “services”), I resorted to contacting the TIO again. Strangely, as soon as I’d talked to the TIO, Vodafone were more receptive, and immediately cancelled the charges.

Not long after that (actually, the problem already existed, but I only became aware of it later), I started receiving massive amounts of data charges on my bill. Now, Vodafone’s default way of charging for data usage is by charging you in 5 minute (or part thereof) blocks. So, a single internet connection costs you $1/5mins - even if you don’t download much. This in itself was not a problem - but when I started examining my bills, and discovered that these data charges were occurring every time my phone downloaded an MMS (which, funnily enough, should not be charged!), I started to get a little suspicious. 5 Months (that is, after I complained), and $304 worth of data charges later, they finally admit they made a mistake. Oh, but not before I had to go through the TIO again…

Phone Plan 6: “3″

I discovered recently that 3 had changed their policy about allowing non-3 (but 3G compatible, like my Jasjar) handsets on their network. Of course, in typical phone company style, this information was not easy to come by. I had fun one day in the city (where there seems to be a 3 store on every corner) dropping in to various stores, and asking them about this policy - I think I managed to visit 4 different stores before I got the same answer from 2 of them - of course, this answer was wrong anyway! I finally managed to find a store just a few weeks ago which actually thought it might be worth reading their contract’s conditions before answering a question they didn’t know the answer to.

Still, with the problems I’d been having with Vodafone, and given 3’s excellent cap plans ($29/month, with $20 minimum spend!), I couldn’t resist. The prospect of another idiot phone company was bearable, as long as I wasn’t paying a premium rate for the privilege.

So, one afternoon I prepared myself for the worst, and went down to my local 3 store (in Westfield Doncaster) to port my number over, and get a new SIM card. Less than 30 minutes later, I was on my way home - with a bag of information (including a signed contract - something Telstra never gave me!) and a SIM card. They had made it clear that they couldn’t guarantee that my handset would be compatible, and I knew that there’d be certain features (such as MMS) that I couldn’t use on their network, but I walked out a happy man. It was, by far, the easiest transition I’ve made between phone companies - and if you haven’t gathered by now, I’ve had my fair share! I’m still amazed at 3’s customer service (well, actually, it was Chris’ customer service. My previous experiences with other 3 stores left me with a different impression. Thanks, Chris!). While the service wasn’t anything spectacular, it was far from the treatment I’d received elsewhere. I actually felt like a valued customer, not just someone who’s come into the store to ruin my break.

Sure, I have yet to receive my first bill from 3, and I’m continually surprised that nothing’s gone terribly wrong so far, but (knock on wood), it seems that I’ve found a phone company I could be happy with - until next time, anyway…

On the geotagging note, I’ve also decided to try out a new photo sharing site, called Zooomr (with 3 O’s). While they’re not quite as advanced as Flickr in terms of features and usability (yet!), they’re definitely taking online photo sharing to a new level. On the surface, Zooomr looks a lot like Flickr. It does, however, have some interesting additions - such as the ability to geotag photos directly on the site, and the ability to add audio comments to photos. I’m still trying to figure out how to USE some of the features (it’s not well documented, and some of the features don’t seem to be particularly intuitive), but on the whole, it looks like an interesting product! I was going to try and include a geotagged Zooomr photo as a demo, but for some reason, I can’t seem to get it working just yet - when I uploaded my photos, Zooomr seemed to strip out all the data (EXIF/IPTC) I’d already included with the pictures! Oops! In the mean time, enjoy this photo I took in Europe in 2003.

Oh, and with the site re-design, you might noticed some new photos in the top banner - the funky coloured ones (my favourites!) were taken in a “luminarium” which graced our shores during the Commonwealth Games.

http://alex.halavais.net/?p=1427

With such useful tips like “dont rite to good”, and “borrow from someone who writes as badly as you do”, it’s full of plagiarism gold!

Anyway, the main purpose of this post was to show you some photos I took while the Commonwealth Games were in Melbourne. Sure, so I didn’t see any of the sporting events, but there were some very funky things happening for the festival. I’ve got some photos of the “luminarium” which was on St Kilda beach (made by the “Architects of Air“, and of the city at night, including the “Fish” which lined the Yarra while the games were on. All these photos are in the commonwealth games 2006 album. Enjoy!

Anyway, why am I writing about this? Because I just stumbled across an amusing rant about them and I thought it was worth the read. Have a read of “funkwit’s take on RAS”.

Well, enough procrastinating for me - I’ve got an essay to finish (although, I suppose I could be forgiven for writing a post about English usage while I’m supposed to be writing an essay, right? … RIGHT??)

I am Superman

Superman 65% Spider-Man 65% The Flash 60% Green Lantern 60% Iron Man 55% Supergirl 50% Hulk 50% Wonder Woman 45% Batman 45% Robin 42% Catwoman 25%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Anyway, I just came accross this video and thought others might be interested in it too. Hopefully you should be able to view this directly on this page, if not try visiting YouTube, where the video is hosted.

Google’s Zeitgeist for 2005 shows up some interesting trends. According to Google “It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires.”

So, what has it shown this year? Well, “The Force” has overpowered “The Dark Side”, Yoda defeats Skywalker, Middle Earth is in steady decline, but Hogwarts is on the up. Also, searches for Wikipedia has been steadily increasing all year.

Link to Google’s Zeitgeist for 2005

Anyway, I’m writing this because I wanted to share with you some of the sites that I’ve been using recently. Check them out, and have a play!

del.icio.us

• del.icio.us’s Homepage: http://del.icio.us
• My del.icio.us Links: http://del.icio.us/sobriquet

Yes, it’s a strange address for a website - where’s the www? where’s the .com? Well, for now, you’ll just have to trust that http://del.icio.us is actually a valid web address. Or, if you really want to know more, see an analysis of del.icio.us’s domain name.

This has to be one of the websites I can’t live without (excluding Fastmail, my main email provider, and Google). del.icio.us is a “social” bookmarking site. While traditionally, you stored your bookmarks on your home computer, and sorted them into folders, del.icio.us takes a different approach.

With del.icio.us, you instead of putting your bookmarks in folders, you “tag” them. By linking words to each of the websites you bookmark, you can place them in as many categories as you want, and find them easily later. There’s also plenty of tools to help you use and access your del.icio.us bookmarks once you’ve starting using it. If you can think of a way to use tagged bookmarks, chances are someone’s already written a tool to help you do it with del.icio.us!

Flickr

• Flickr’s Homepage: http://www.flickr.com
• My Flickr Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/sobriquet/

Flicker is a photo sharing service which uses a similar tagging system to del.icio.us. You can upload all your photos to flickr, and share them with family, friends, and other people you’ve never met! There heaps of social groups, and fun groups which people can submit photos which follow a theme. The Flickr community are often amateur or professional photographers, so there’s plenty of good photos to look at, but there’s nothing stopping anyone using the service!

Searching photos on Flickr is easy, because of the tagging system - you can search for things like beach, party, Melbourne, or almost any word!

One other great thing about Flickr is the fact that you have unlimited storage space for your photos. There’s limits to how many photos you can upload in a month, but once they’re there, there’s no limit to how many you can post!

Kaboodle

• Kaboodle’s Homepage: http://www.kaboodle.com/
• My Kaboodle Pages: http://www.kaboodle.com/rarosalion

Ever find yourself shopping for something online, and wishing there was an easy way to collate all your options in one place so you could compare them? Want to create a “wishlist” to share with your friends, but feel limited by sites like Amazon which don’t let you add things from other websites? Kaboodle does all this and more.

I was having fun recently going through Amazon’s website and adding things to my wishlist in the hope that people would buy me some of it for Christmas. I then started to think about things I wanted which weren’t available from Amazon, or that would be easier and/or cheaper to purchase in Australia rather than through an online store based in the USA. I then found Kaboodle.

With Kaboodle, once you’ve installed the buttons in your browser, when you’re looking at a page which lists something you want to add to your personal Kaboodle page (wishlist, giftlist, or whatever), you click the button, and Kaboodle does all the work for you - 90% of the time it will pick out the photo of the object, the description and price without you having to do any more work. If Kaboodle gets it wrong, or you wanted to add your own information, that’s easy too!

Google Reader

• Google Reader: http://reader.google.com

Now, I mentioned earlier that most of these sites supported content syndication. If you looked at those words earlier, and thought “what the hell is that?”, then, Google Reader might be a great way to find out. Of course, if you read those words, thought “what the hell is that, I’m not going to understand this post”, then you’re probably not reading this anyway. Bugger.

Anyway, if you find any site that has an “RSS” or “Atom” feed and you can subscribe to it’s content directly in Google Reader. That means you can read all your news, discover new del.icio.us links, view Flickr photos, etc. all in the one place! (Oh, did I mention you can subscribe to this site as well?)

Last.FM

• Last.FM’s Homepage: http://www.last.fm/
• My Last.FM Music: http://www.last.fm/user/rarosalion/

A site I’ve only discovered today, but which looks very promising is last.fm. Last.fm is an online radio station which suggests music, and creates custom radio stations for you based on the songs you like to listen to. Personally, I love hearing new music, but I’m not about to go out and buy CDs for Artists I don’t know well - I figure something like Last.FM can help here!

By installing some software on my computer, Last.FM can be notified when I’m playing music on my PC, and can then build up an idea of what I like listening to based on what other users enjoyed. Again, it’s a community-based website, using other people’s recommendations and tags to help make recommendations to you.

You can see what I’ve been listening to if you want!

Yes, it’s true. The 5-year-old record, previously held by a group in Kuala Lumpur has been broken. The world’s largest beer can pyramid was constructed last night by members of the Student Union Activities Collective, and was on display today at Melbourne Uni.

I’ve posted some photos up on my site, along with a cheep and dirty “time lapse” video of the pyramid’s construction.

There’s also a direct link to time lapse video, if you want to download it. You’ll need a DivX codec to play it.

So far, there was an article in mX (a free newspaper given out at train stations in Melbourne) about it, with a photo of one of our activities officers. Hopefully, we’ll see some more publicty soon!

view more images from this album

Oh, and, if you’re interested… it’s for sale on eBay (that is, it WAS on sale at eBay - it got sold for something like $15 to some guys from a university in Adelaide, who used it as a Christmas tree, and then took it back to their uni for O-Week)

You may also notice the hidden message (not so hidden, once you know it’s there!) - so, if you’re wondering what “NO VSU” means, it’s all here in one of my previous posts.

I arranged to meet people on Lygon street, thinking we’d easily be able to find somewhere to go out to dinner. Well, not so easy. So, we ended up just going to the pub for dinner, but it was nice anyway! (I had a nice Irish stew - how fitting for an Irish pub!)

Anyway, check out the album.

view more images from this album

Anyway, if you want to just look at photos - see them here. If you want to read a nice long rant from me about what VSU is, and why it sucks, read on.

view more images from this album For the uninitiated (anyone who hasn’t read the papers in Australia for a very long time) - VSU = Voluntary Student Unionism. The government is trying to push through some new laws relating to student unions, and funnily enough the students are trying to stop them.

What are the government trying to do? Well, they’re trying to remove the ability of the Universities to charge compulsory fees for non-academic things (such as what Melbourne Uni currently calls a “Services and Amenities” fee). You may say, “How can this possibly be a bad thing? I mean, students don’t like paying for things, do they?”. Well, that’s half true. You’d be right in thinking that students often don’t have a lot of money, and therefore rely on free or subsidised services offered exclusively to students, but you’d be wrong if you thought that by removing the compulsory annual fee that students would somehow be better off.

To put it simply: No compulsory student union fee = No student union services.

OK, so that’s possibly going a little far. I have no doubts that the student unions will continue to operate, and continue to offer some services. I do, however, believe that by removing such a major source of income, the services offered by these student unions will be significantly reduced.

“But don’t student union’s just give students free beer and support activities like naked water skiing?” may be another question you might ask. And, very simply, the answer is “No!”. Just checking out Melbourne University’s Student Union Website, you can see they they offer:

• student advisory services,
• a computing center,
• employment and legal services,
• research support,
• a dental service,
• support for the arts,
• queer and women’s support,
• equipment hire,

and the list goes on.

Although clubs and societies at Melbourne Uni do get funding from the University, I have been told by various student Representatives at Melbourne Uni (but I am willing to be corrected) that the services and amenities funding (which VSU legislation threatens) does NOT go to clubs and societies.

So, why should students who don’t use these services have to pay for them? Well, my first question to any uni student that can honestly say they’ve NEVER benefited from their student union is - “Why the hell not? Why don’t you take advantage of their services?”. But, failing that (and, assuming that they somehow manage to come up with a decent reply), I’d say - well, for exactly the same reason that all tax-payers support the sick, elderly, mentally ill and unemployed. And what is that reason? “For the greater good” - To support those who cannot support themselves, and to offer services for those in need. If every student contributes their bit to help support the Student Unions, then the Student Union’s can do their best to support ALL students.

I’m not saying for a minute that I agree that all current Student Union services should be supported by all students (for instance, I believe that general computing facilities should be provided by the relevant faculties, or the university as a whole), there could definitely be some restructuring there. But, if you didn’t agree on your taxes supporting, say, legal aid for those charged with drug-related offenses (just a random example), would you suggest abolishing the entire idea of taxes? I doubt it. Taxes exists for a reason (even if the system does need some shaking up), but I doubt anyone could seriously argue for their abolishment.

“Mmmm…. Chilled Creamy Brains” (Made up quote from Homer Simpson).

You know the world is different when;

• The best rapper is a white guy,
• The best golfer is a black guy,
• The tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese,
• The Swiss hold the America’s Cup,
• France is accusing the US of arrogance,
• Germany doesn’t want to go to war,
• The 3 most powerful men in America are named ‘Bush’ ‘Dick’ and ‘Colon ‘ and
• The Prime Minister of Australia is flanked by two senior ministers whose names are Abbott and Costello!

http://kevan.org/extispicious

And, also… one that grabs random images from Yahoo!’s image search related to my tags.

Well, I thought they were exciting!

For those of you who didn’t read my “Links and Stuff” post a while back when I first discovered del.icio.us (shame on you!), del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager, blah blah blah…. (read the post, or check it out.

Ok, ok… so it was a few days ago, but I’ve only just got off my bum to put the photos up from my chaotic family lunch on the day (still haven’t celebrated with most of my friends yet - that’s still to come!)

Anyway, the photos from my birthday are up! Check them out.

view more images from this album

Feel free to send me belated birthday messages. I like feeling loved.

(hell, my best friend got it a day late - but then again, he IS on the other side of the world, so I suppose he can kinda be forgiven).

Brad seems to have made all the changes that I had (including linking directly to the coppermine page, rather than a popup window) and has added a number of other new features!

You can check out Brad’s update to this plugin at 55 Rue Plumet. So, until I find something that needs tweaking in Brad’s version, I think I’ll be quite happy to continue using his!