Tasmania

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Goodies

Wow, the NaNoWriMo novel-writing contest is harder than I thought! Yes, I can write 1700 words in a day, but trying to write that amount every day is difficult and I'm already falling behind.

If I could manage to write 2000 words a day all this week I'd just about catch up. But that's a big "if".

It didn't help things that we had a busy weekend.

Saturday I had Kay and Chris visiting in the afternoon. I spent quite a while convincing Kay that she could get out of Jury Duty this month -- she'd been planning to get up at dawn and walk into the city to get there on time. I told her that I was sure she qualified for a medical exemption under the guidelines on the second page of the letter ("Second page? There's a second page?").

She was happier about the rest of the afternoon: an Arthur C. Clarke book she was seeking was unavailable, a local bookshop told her. Nonsense, I said, and brought up Amazon.com on my laptop. In about 15 minutes we had a copy ordered from an American specialist shop.

Sunday morning, after listening to a guest preacher from the Australian Family Association we attended a farewell luncheon for one of our congregation -- she's returning to Mongolia where she works as a missionary and medico. She's being transferred from the capital Ulaan Bator to a town with an even less pronounceable name.

Then it was out to the historic Theatre Royal to see a live show featuring Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor: The Goodies: still live on stage. There were also some filmed inserts featuring the third member of the trio Bill Oddie plus a couple of archive clips from their early work.

I was tickled to see that not only did they mention their work on the 1960s radio series I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again but they brought out an old-fashioned radio microphone and re-enacted a scene from the show, complete with sound effects.

From there, my sister Julie went on to see her friend Sippa who was at a dinner for a classic car club that was holding a rally in Hobart that weekend.

Monday morning I was a wreck. I was so tired that I didn't get out of bed till about two hours later than normal. It was a really hot and sunny afternoon too - the official maximum was only about 26º but the thermometer in my kitchen registered 30º (which is about 86 in the old Fahrenheit scale).

We fed Julie's animals then I took a nap for 20 minutes to give me the energy to go out to the monthly pub quiz night run by the Irish Association at the New Sydney Hotel.

For once we had a full team and our table was completely filled. Leah and her husband pulled their weight when it came to the question about identifying CD covers; I'm a dead loss when it comes to music of the last twenty years.

The scores seemed a little funny and Julie went round to look at the scoreboard. It turned out they'd added 19 to 7 and got 16! They also failed to double the points on the correct round for our bonus round.

But -- and this is a bit but -- in the end our team The Amnesiacs were successful in topping the board in the Gold category. "We win! We win!" "We are the champions...." "Hooray for us!"

The happiest member of the winning team, though, was Jan's little boy Jamie. Julie brought along a small cardboard box from her place and he went home with a young duckling to raise.

The saga of our e-mail problems: part the umpty-eleventh.

If you've been following the long painful story of the church office's problems with Outlook, you know I haven't done too well with downloading updates. The last lot seemed all right, but insisted that I needed XP Small Business disc. I couldn't locate this.

My boss, R1, had a look through all the CD-ROM stuff under the shelf and eventually discovered it misfiled in the Norton Systemworks box. So we inserted it and hit the install button.

The result was that the update registered as installed but Outlook, instead of being just unreliable, now stopped working completely . The good news was that I discovered that we could still send and receive new mail via Outlook Express even if we couldn't access our old messages.

For the moment, I'll settle for that.

SHORT FICTION SHELF:

Robert Reed's short story "Finished" is the first science fiction story I've read in many years that made me want to sit down on the spot and write a fan letter to the author.

The concept, which many writers would have spun out into a full-length novel instead of 13 pages, postulates a world in which there are three stages of life: the living, the dead and the Finished. The third state of being is a unique sort of immortality in which the person cannot change either physically or emotionally -- effectively a high-tech zombie.

This remarkable story appeared in the September 2005 Asimov's Science Fiction, which is issue #356.

Fans of Dionne Warwick will problem want to visit the BBC Radio 2 website and listen to this week's Friday Night is Music Night which is a special episode devoted to her singing. Some great stuff here, folks.

The nation's most famous horse race the Melbourne Cup was run last week. For once the horse I picked came to the front as they neared the winning post, thundered forward into the pack at the lead.... and finished fourth. More like my usual result.

You wouldn't have been surprised if you'd been watching me accompany Julie into the betting shop. I blundered around and obviously had no idea what I was doing or where I should be. But that's an occupation hazard for punters during Melbourne Cup week.

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Wednesday, November 02, 2005

The Complete New Yorker

Just received in the mail last week was a book-and-disc set that I've been eagerly awaiting.

The Complete New Yorker.

Yes, complete. Every word and picture from 4,000 issues of the famous weekly magazine. Every cartoon, every article, even every advertisement.

It comes in a folder that contains a book of highlights and eight DVD discs containing the entire run of the magazine to date.

As I unpacked the parcel, my sister called from the next room "Is everything all right?"

"Yes. Why?"

"That sharp intake of breath usually means there's something wrong."

"No, I'm just ... so happy."

The feeling of euphoria I was experiencing would have been difficult to put into words. In my hands I held something akin to the holy grail of magazine reading. As a teenager I had been a regular reader of The New Yorker and the sadly-missed British weekly Punch from the time I had been old enough to range freely through bookstores and libraries.

It had always been mildly irritating that I had been able to locate only two of the three volumes that collected the short stories from The New Yorker. Now that mattered not at all. Here in my hand I held all the stories that had ever appeared there. Every story, every review, every humour piece ... James Thurber, E.B. White, Dorothy Parker, Garrison Keillor, John O'Hara.... all of them were here.

I almost trembled at the thought of all that reading contained on the discs I now owned. (This was probably the only book in the world that I would have paid $65 postage for!)

The only thing that gave me a qualm -- will I live long enough to read through them all from start to finish. Should I start with my favourite authors and read them first or begin at the start and try and make it through to the present day?

But that decision can be made later. For the present, I feel a warm glow just from looking at the cover of the book on the other side of the room.

Had a glance at a couple of pundits on the Net who had reservations about the set - one expressed concerns about the legal implications of magazines being allowed to sell their collected works, while another moaned about the technical aspects of the set. Yes, maybe so, but I'm still glad it exists.

It's just a shame that with November being National Novel Writing Month I won't have the time to devote to reading that I normally have. Roll on December 1st!

Daylight Saving started on the mainland this week. Tasmania usually puts its clocks forward three weeks ahead of the other states, which is a bit of a nuisance for travellers.

Even staying home it can be a problem. Three weeks is just long enough to get used to national radio programmes and some television shows being an hour later. Then the following week we're suddenly back in line with everyone else again.

The history behind this is that Tasmania adopted Daylight Saving before any of the other states, partly as a reaction to a power shortage caused by a very dry year. When the other states took up the idea, they adopted a shorter period of time.

In fact the further north you go the less enthusiasm there is for Daylight Saving. When you hit the Queensland border, they would prefer less sunshine, not more, and steadfastly refuse to have any truck with the idea at all.

The poultry population at my house has changed slightly. One died and a couple were big enough to go back to my sister's place. Another chick was brought over because of an injured leg.

Julie has been trying to fix his leg, binding it up with tape so that he doesn't flail around helplessly and hurt himself further. I don't know how much use this is -- the last chick with this problem lingered on for a couple of months until it finally died.

Sometimes I surprise myself.

Since I discovered how to record radio programmes directly onto my computer I've been using that to time-shift some of my favourite shows for later listening. This morning we were listening to Sunday night's The Coodabeen Champions and Greg Champion played two songs about Phar Lap and the Melbourne Cup that he'd just recorded.

Julie said she really liked the two songs. Was there any way she could get copies to keep on her computer. I considered.

"Well, I've never actually done it, but I know it can be done. Give me ten minutes."

So I used the Audacity program to open the MP3 file, found the two songs and cut and pasted them into a fresh Audacity file.

Then I saved them as MP3s and transferred them onto the flash drive to hand over to Julie.

It was amusing to think how surprised I would have been a couple of years ago if I could have seen myself doing this!

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Sunday, October 30, 2005

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Church was interesting this Sunday. We had the choir singing, a presentation by a missionary just back from Mongolia, and a sermon that looked at Romans 1 and asked "What is Truth?"

"What is Truth?" A famous question that's at the heart of our lives. How do know if a thing is right or wrong? Do we know know what our fundamental beliefs are based on?

The first basis is experience - we know our parents love us because they show it. The simple scientific tests can be proved because they work.

But it becomes more complex as we move into issues of morality and mortality. How can we be sure we're doing the right thing?

The debates nowadays about Intelligent Design are about what is true. The first chapter of Romans addresses this in a straightforward manner, but the question then arises to what extent do we rely on the Bible for answers to questions about our world and beyond.

This is not a new dilemma. Martin Luther involved himself in the debate five centuries ago at the first beginnings of the Reformation.

He realised that Christendom had drifted away from the truth; the traditions and opinions of the church and its leaders were given equal weight with the word of God. But only through the Bible can we understand the mind of the God who created our physical universe.

Today the attitude of many is that Biblical teachings are valuable inside the church and the family but not in the wider community or the world.

Shouldn't God be central to everything we do -- to how we conduct business, educate our children or study the world. The ID debate basically asks "Is there a God?" Biblical Christians believe that there is a Creator, that the views of secular experts do not have priority over His word.

The challenge of the Reformation was to make the Bible central to everything in life. Centuries later that is still a problem we are wrestling with.

I see the BBC7 website is running some Father Brown half-hour mysteries. Andrew Sachs plays the clerical sleuth and sounds very convincing in the role.

G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown has always been one of my favourite detectives but for some reason his adventures haven't been seen much in recent years. It must be nearly a generation since there was a television or movie adaptation.

The books are still freely available, both in print and on-line, so maybe the radio series will inspire some new readers.

A year ago, relatively few people had heard of Photobucket.com. While the upstart Web site is still far from a household name, it has emerged as the most popular online photo destination in recent months, drawing more visitors than established sites from companies like Eastman Kodak Co. and Yahoo Inc.

Photobucket.com Inc., started by a photo buff who wanted a better way to share images with his friends, has seen traffic surge tenfold in the past year. In August, it had 12.2 million unique visitors, compared with 9.6 million at Yahoo Photos and 5.9 million at Kodak EasyShare Gallery, according to research firm Nielsen/NetRatings

---- Wall Street Journal

Tomorrow is the start of November, so I expect to be pretty busy for the next four weeks. November is NaNoWriMo month, you see.

That's National Novel Writing Month, a "fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly."

Maybe I should get up early tomorrow. Tuesday is usually a busy day for me and I'm not sure how easy it will be to fit in 1700 words.

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Saturday, October 29, 2005

Black Comedies

The final production in Hobart Repertory Theatre's 2005 season was the comedy double-bill The Real Inspector Hound and Black Comedy.

Hound was written by Tom Stoppard, who is best known for Rosencrantz and Giulderstern are Dead. It was first performed in 1978 with Ronnie Barker starring as the drama critic Birdboot who gets much too involved in the play he's supposed to be reviewing.

Stoppard lands some telling blows in the dialogue, sending up both the classic whodunit play and the pompous drama critics in its audience.

"I am the real Inspector Hound!" The last line is a classic.

Following interval, the cast of five men and three women returned to perform Black Comedy. Peter Schaffer is best known for such serious dramas as Amadeus and Equus but this play, written in 1965, shows him in a delightfully lighter mood.

I had seen Hound many years ago at the Theatre Royal, but the second play was new to me, and the opening scene initially caused me some bewilderment.

But after a few moments I understood everything. The action takes place in a London flat during a power cut -- the audience can see perfectly but the characters in the play are groping around in what to them is inky darkness. The farcical results had us rocking with laughter.

The humour was both verbal and physical, with the biggest laugh for the actor who unknowingly sits down in a rocking chair and goes head over heels.

Graham Corry directed both plays, with a cast of familiar Rep faces on stage at The Playhouse.

And special thanks to the patient people at the box office after I forgot my tickets for the second time in a row.

Next year we can look forward to The Venetian Twins, The Lion in Winter, And then there were none, Pride and Prejudice, Peter Pan and Outside Edge.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Fined!

None of us are safe from the vigilant eye of the traffic police. At work in the church office on Thursday, one of our leading lights was bemoaning being hit with a $190 fine on the way to work that morning.

Driving past that unattended construction site with the 60kph sign probably wouldn't have mattered except for the unmarked police car that was right behind him. Travelling at 20 kph or more over the speed limit, that's a $190 fine and four demerit points (I think you're only allowed twelve before you lose your licence!).

This was the catalyst for a long series of discussions on traffic offences and speeding fines from all and sundry.

Well, all except me. It would have sounded too goody-two-shoes to admit that the only tickets I've ever had to pay were for forgetting to put money in the parking meter.

The truth is I was too involved in the ongoing battle with the church e-mail system. All sorts of schemes for installing updates and repairing programmes came to naught in the end. A couple of times I thought I'd made some headway, only to have my hopes dashed.

And it didn't help that the system almost choked on a message from some well-meaning contact that enclosed almost 3 MB of photographs taken at a charity function. Ouch! Some netiquette please, sir!

After finishing at the office, my sister suggested we call in for a meal at what used to be the Brisbane Hotel.

Now known as Ye Olde Commodore Inn, it has a spacious dining room, modern but decorated with memorabilia and relics of the old days. The best thing about it is that there is no television and no monitors flashing up the latest numbers drawn in Publotto or whatever it's called nowadays.

The meal was nothing special, but quite adequate. Julie stopped the manager and put the question to him point blank: "Do you ever serve Lamb's Fry here?" The manager cocked his head at the barman and said "If it was up to him we'd have it every day, but.... no, afraid not."

Julie sighed. Ever since the Tasmanian Inn changed hands and went upmarket, she's been looking for somewhere that serves her favourite food. No luck so far.

Julie examines some forget-me-nots in her front garden while her cat Luna plunges off on a private expedition of discovery, objective who-knows-where.

You always know when we're reaching the end of the school year. Normally the school down the street doesn't impact on my life at all, but every so often comes that institution known as Sports Day and the headmaster dusts off his public-address system.

This low-tech but effective sound system (I think it's what the English call a Tannoy) blasts the words of the announcer across the suburb, albeit in somewhat garbled form.

"The next event STATIC STATIC one hundred meters STATIC contestants please STATIC...."

I don't know if being able to hear each word distinctly would be better or worse.

As it is, it gradually turns into a sort of blurred background noise after a couple of hours. But I won't be sorry when the last event of the day is run.

Interested to hear that longstanding 60 Minutes reporter Charles Wooley is quitting TV to host a new national talkback radio show being launched by Macquarie Regional Radioworks.

The new program called "Across Australia" will be broadcast from 9am until noon from Wooley's home base here in Hobart from January next year.

Tim Hughes, executive chairman of Macquarie Media Group, which owns Macquarie Regional Radioworks, said he'd thought for some time there was a market for a national regional radio morning program. "The difficulty has been finding the right presenter."

Wooley, who specialised in quirky Australian stories on 60 Minutes, is an experienced journalist who has travelled the world, but also had a genuine interest in and affection for life in rural and regional Australia.

In a statement Wooley said: "I have always enjoyed covering stories in regional and rural Australia - there is no better medium than radio to continue that work.

"I look forward to sharing the airwaves with the great characters of this country, turning the spotlight on the issues that matter and covering the big events for the people that are the backbone of Australia." Hughes said he was confident Wooley would develop a "very strong rapport" with our large audience across Australia.

Macquarie Regional Radioworks, the largest owner of commercial radio stations in Australia, is the main operational business of the Macquarie Media Group.

It's a brave move - what Sir Humphrey would call "a courgeous decision" - by MRR to remove radio legend John Laws from its country stations and replace him with a television identity who has never presented his own radio show. Experienced radio hands say presenting a live radio program three hours a day, five days a week is a lot different from putting together a 15-minute television story every few weeks.

The man taking on the challenge is the first to agree. "You could say it's a massive leap," he says. "You could also say it's an incredibly stupid thing to do. Brave, foolhardy but, hopefully, fun." Not that Wooley, famous as a spinner of bush yarns, is often short of a word. His Scottish parents used to call him "a bit of a blather".

From January, Wooley - who lives in Hobart - will be heard on 39 MRR stations, including 19 that had taken the Laws morning program. Hobart is still a long way from Roma and Mount Gambier, but on paper it makes more sense for those communities to hear a specialist regional program.

The problem is that people in places such as Wagga Wagga and Port Macquarie have grown up listening to the Laws program over the past 20 years. Station managers are not looking forward to fielding listener complaints as Wooley finds his feet. "I don't know what they hope to achieve by sending it out of Hobart," Laws says. "I really don't understand it. I'm just very sad for the listeners."

With 85 stations in 44 markets, MRR is Australia's largest owner of commercial radio stations.
Laws's influence, however, is fading. Ten years ago he was No. 1 in the 2UE morning slot, networked to about 80 stations and claiming an audience of 2 million. He is now third in the Sydney market, reduced to 43 stations from next January, with the audience closer to 1 million.

Bendigo will be a test. For some reason, the Laws program is heard on two stations there, so from next year Bendigo residents will be able to pick up both programs and send a clear message about which presenter they prefer.

I look forward to hearing the programme. Back in the days when Charles was working for the ABC in Hobart, he interviewed me for a segment about science-fiction fan clubs. From there he went on to fame and fortune -- I particularly enjoyed his quirky reports for Sunday morning television during the 1980s.

There are a couple of advertisements in the trade press for journalists and researchers to work on the programme. If I was a decade younger, I might have been tempted to try out for it myself.

Speaking of radio, I've been impressed by the number of old radio shows available for free download at OTR fan. Most of the emphasis is on crime and mystery drama, but there are a few other types of show.

The quality seems OK and it doesn't take that long to download a 30-minute episode.

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Saturday, October 22, 2005

Ring 4??

"I notice that one of the television stations is airing two of the Lord of the Rings movies this week", commented Kay.

"Yes, that's right" I agreed.

"Does that mean there's a new movie coming out?" she said artlessly. "It's usually something like that when they do this sort of thing."

I paused before answering; I always forget that Kay knows absolutely nothing about Tolkien. (She tried to read The Hobbit once and couldn't even get halfway.)

"No," I said "I can guarantee that there is not a new Lord of the Rings movie being released. In fact I'm almost certain there will never be a fourth movie in the series!"

Away in dreamland this morning, making it very difficult to re-enter the real world.

I had to get up early this morning and while it was a bit earlier than I had planned to get up, it was too late to go back to bed and fall asleep again -- that always makes me feel dreadful.

So I compromised by sitting in the recliner out in the back of the house and pulling a blanket over me. While I was resting, I nodded off for a few minutes and had a series of short nbut incredibly vivid dreams. It was one of those dream states where everything was so sharp and clear, so much more colourful and vibrant than anything else.

When I opened my eyes a few minutes later I was exhausted rather than refreshed, and spent about half an hour just sitting there gathering my strength to get out of the chair.

So much for the modern theory of the "power nap".

Princess Mary's safe delivery of a little prince in Denmark was the occasion for wide-spread rejoicing here in her home state. Celebrations at the Hobart waterfront this week included a bonfire and a fireworks display plus entertainment by the Derwent Valley Concert Band who had travelled to Copenhagen for the royal wedding.

"God bless them" is all I can add.

I stumbled across yet another Old Time Radio website where you can download old programmes in MP3 format.

OTR Fan is free but they welcome donations.

Well worth a look to see what programmes are up this week. This afternoon I listened to an 1948 episode of Let George Do It, a private eye show I hadn't previously heard.

USA TODAY reports that "the movie version of 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' won't be out until Dec. 9, but dozens of books already are spilling out of the cupboard."

"Sales since the Wardrobe movie trailer was released in May are three to four times more than last year at this time," says Beth Bingham of Borders bookstores. She expects the movie's release date to drive holiday sales even more.

Borders and other stores across America are prominently displaying the books. Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have set up special Narnia stores on their sites.

Wardrobe, written by theologian C.S. Lewis and first published in 1950, is part of the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series and tells the story of four children who help the lion Aslan release the frozen, other-worldly land of Narnia from the White Witch's spell. Aslan is regarded by many readers as the allegorical Christ — but bookstores, for the most part, are sidestepping the question.

Joe Monti, a book buyer for Barnes & Noble, agrees that Chronicles "has this whole Christian level to it." But, he adds, "the fantasy elements resonate on so many different levels. Who doesn't want to step into another world?"

HarperCollins, which is the exclusive English-language publisher of Lewis' works worldwide, says it is not targeting Christian buyers.

"Our position has been and always has been to publish Chronicles to the broadest possible market and leave any interpretation to the reader," says Toni Markiet of HarperCollins.

And the market certainly appears broad. HarperCollins Children's Books has 25 movie tie-in products, including books, audiobooks and coloring and activity books. HarperCollins publishes 170 titles by or about Lewis; 140 are on or about Narnia. Other publishers are hoping to take advantage of Lewis' growing popularity by releasing biographies, guides and analytical works. One of the new entries: 'Jack's Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis, written by his stepson, Douglas Gresham.

Lewis published about 50 books, including such theological mainstays as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. But it was The Chronicles of Narnia that made him famous — just as The Lord of the Rings brought renown to his friend and contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Certain movies, like Lord of the Rings, do send people back to the books," says Charlotte Abbott of Publishers Weekly "For a lot of people, this is a touchstone for a generation. I imagine many people in their 30s will buy the books, especially box sets, as gifts for their children."

I guess we'll get tired of the non-stop merchandising of the Wardrobe movie/book/whatever when it hits here, but I suppose we should be glad that new readers will discover the books, even though the cause is the crass commercialisation of Hollywood businessmen.

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Ring 4??

"I notice that one of the television stations is airing two of the Lord of the Rings movies this week", commented Kay.

"Yes, that's right" I agreed.

"Does that mean there's a new movie coming out?" she said artlessly. "It's usually something like that when they do this sort of thing."

I paused before answering; I always forget that Kay knows absolutely nothing about Tolkien. (She tried to read The Hobbit once and couldn't even get halfway.) "No," I said "I can guarantee that there is not a new Lord of the Rings movie being released. In fact I'm almost certain there will never be a fourth movie in the series!"

USA TODAY reports that "the movie version of 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' won't be out until Dec. 9, but dozens of books already are spilling out of the cupboard."

"Sales since the Wardrobe movie trailer was released in May are three to four times more than last year at this time," says Beth Bingham of Borders bookstores. She expects the movie's release date to drive holiday sales even more.

Borders and other stores across America are prominently displaying the books. Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have set up special Narnia stores on their sites.

Wardrobe, written by theologian C.S. Lewis and first published in 1950, is part of the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series and tells the story of four children who help the lion Aslan release the frozen, other-worldly land of Narnia from the White Witch's spell. Aslan is regarded by many readers as the allegorical Christ — but bookstores, for the most part, are sidestepping the question.

Joe Monti, a book buyer for Barnes & Noble, agrees that Chronicles "has this whole Christian level to it." But, he adds, "the fantasy elements resonate on so many different levels. Who doesn't want to step into another world?"

HarperCollins, which is the exclusive English-language publisher of Lewis' works worldwide, says it is not targeting Christian buyers.

"Our position has been and always has been to publish Chronicles to the broadest possible market and leave any interpretation to the reader," says Toni Markiet of HarperCollins.

And the market certainly appears broad. HarperCollins Children's Books has 25 movie tie-in products, including books, audiobooks and coloring and activity books. HarperCollins publishes 170 titles by or about Lewis; 140 are on or about Narnia. Other publishers are hoping to take advantage of Lewis' growing popularity by releasing biographies, guides and analytical works. One of the new entries: 'Jack's Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis, written by his stepson, Douglas Gresham.

Lewis published about 50 books, including such theological mainstays as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. But it was The Chronicles of Narnia that made him famous — just as The Lord of the Rings brought renown to his friend and contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Certain movies, like Lord of the Rings, do send people back to the books," says Charlotte Abbott of Publishers Weekly "For a lot of people, this is a touchstone for a generation. I imagine many people in their 30s will buy the books, especially box sets, as gifts for their children."

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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Love One Another!

LOVE EACH OTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU [John 15:12]

Jesus knew the most vital relationship we can have is with God through his teachings.

Sitting in the pews on Sunday morning, we heard Rob musing that all too often the church is in danger not from external enemies but from internal strife.

~The world admires the fruits but often ignores the vine that supports it all.
~The world is full of people who will say "I love Jesus" but for the true believer this is not a vague platitude but a dynamic and continuing process.
~We're long on singing that Jesus is our friend but what does it mean to be Jesus' friend - what can we do for him?
~The life of Christians is the window the world has onto heaven - a confronting thought!
~We are to love all those in God's family, not just those we agree with.
~Again and again Jesus tells us that we can't love him if we hate each other.
~"Love draws outsiders in", someone once wrote, "lack of love drives insiders out."

Spring solstice is tomorrow I think. Which probably explains the vibrant hue of the banksia roses in my driveway this month. You should see them by moonlight (I don't think it would come out in a photo though).

Sunday night Julie arrived back from her trip to Victoria. She was tired from travelling all day and footsore from walking all over central Melbourne. Her visit to the Caulfield Cup had been exciting if not profitable.

Recommended eatery: E Gusto at South Bank.

Least favourite part of the trip: sharing a room with someone who watches breakfast television every morning.

Went in early to work on Tuesday after someone phoned in sick. I had been hoping that the extra time in the office would allow me to finally fix the problems with the e-mail -- this month we could almost have Microsoft Online Crash Analysis as our home page.

The diagnosis said that downloading the Service Pack 2 update for Office would solve the problems. That sounds all right, but on a dial-up connection it's a three-hour download; I made four attempts and every time the connection failed before we passed the three-quarter mark. *Sigh*

I tried one of the Microsoft forums but the only productive suggestion was to get a friend with broadband to download it for us and burn it onto a CD.

Rob is getting impatient about these problems with the e-mail. What good is a computer that doesn't work, he glowered. But then he is a Mac man so he's always willing to believe the worst of a PC.

Gave Kay a lift to the supermarket Tuesday evening. Last week she bought 30 blank video tapes. The week before she bought 50.

How many did she get this week? "I'll have twelve," she said. That's twelve five-packs, meaning 60 tapes.

No wonder her video recorders keep breaking down. They run almost non-stop day and night.

Speaking of television, I was interested to see that an American has published a book about how to be a reality TV contestant. As part of his research he interviewed a lot of people who'd been on various programmes in the genre.

Nearly everybody who'd taken part in reality television now regretted it, saying that it had messed up their lives. The one exception was The Amazing Race -- nearly all the competitors on that show said they'd thoroughly enjoyed their time on the show.

I'm not surprised. The urge to appear on such programmes is almost a guarantee that the person in question has something awry in their brain.

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Sunday, October 16, 2005

To CDR or not CDR?

I was just opening a can of something for dinner on Saturday night when I received a text message from Julie in Melbourne. She's spent the day at the Caulfield Cup and was now dining at Young & Jackson's. Hmmm, I thought, all right for some!

Oh, and you remember I said I put new batteries in the flashlight this week? The following night the bulb burned out! Murphy's Law in action again, I guess.

The longevity and robustness of optical discs - CDs and DVDs - has again come into question as the rush to digitize all sorts of material and transfer it to DVD and CD gathers momentum.

In 2004, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) looked at CDs and DVDs to see how long digital information recorded on to them would survive. They concluded that most CDs and DVDs will last 30 years under ideal conditions, but many things can make them unreadable. Direct exposure to sunlight can do it; so can heat.

Discs last longest when stored in plastic cases in a cool, dark, dry environment. Because gravity can gradually bend the disc, storing it upright like a book is best. The study also found that fingerprints and smudges frequently do more damage than scratches, and recommends handling discs by the outer edge or the center hole. (from www.science.gogo.com)

Writing on the Diversity website, Nigel Deacon said:

There are no easy answers, but if you must put sound or photograph files on CD for future use, I suggest:
1. Don't throw away your originals (tapes, cassettes, reels, black and white original prints, etc).
2. Inspect regularly, and re-burn valuable items (or if you can't bear to do this, make multiple copies on different brands of CD and keep them in different locations; for example, give them to your friends).
3. Regard CDs as a temporary "transfer" medium only. You might consider storing files on high capacity hard-drives, suitably backed-up. But whatever you do, don't buy cheap unbranded CDs - they're trouble.

Rather worrying to consider, thinking on the number of CDRs I've made since I first got a CD burner.

The King Features website has made some big changes, which will not please casual web browsing fans of comic strips:

The kingfeatures.com comics archives will no longer be available in the format of showing four weeks of archives, beginning two weeks after their first appearance in newspapers. The displayed comics will be changed once a month at the beginning of the month and show just the first week of strips from the previous month. It will no longer be possible to view complete sequences of comics on kingfeatures.com.

As part of our continuing efforts to provide comic fans with an ever-richer comics experience, King Features has created DailyINK a new subscription service which improves upon the online model you have been familiar with at kingfeatures.com. For $15.00 a year, you can now get password access to all 70+ actively syndicated comic strips, updated daily on their first day of release.

In addition, the archives of past strips has been expanded. DailyINK displays a full year's worth of each comic. Some new features include: (1) serialized runs of select vintage comics from yesteryear, (2) an especially useful magnifying glass tool that enables you to enlarge the comics for easier viewing and (3) customizable viewing options.

While kingfeatures.com will continue to exist as a source of valuable information about the comics, columns, puzzles and services King Features offers, DailyINK provides the next step for interested comic readers. Thank you for your shared enthusiasm for comics. King Features looks forward to working with you to help foster another hundred years of this magnificent art form.

Not unexpected -- it quite often happens this way, that after a few years of free access, a company will change to a "pay" format and ask for money if you want to continue using it. They do give you good service for a couple of dollars a month: even without the magnifying-glass option, the strips are about 40% bigger than the ones on the normal KFS site. This is a pleasant change since most newspapers around the world are printing their comics smaller and smaller every year.

US$15 may be a lot to some people. But, as I said in another context the other day, it depends on what your priorities are.

Since the football season has (finally) finished, the Coodabeen Champions' Saturday night spin-off The Idlers is back on air again on the 60 stations of ABC's Local Radio network.

This year they're doing something a little different. They're taking a virtual tour of Australia, starting in Darwin in episode 1 and heading anti-clockwise. By the third show [this week] they've reached the Kimberleys. They had a long chat to the manager of the Cununurra [sp?] Visitors Centre; it would be an understatement to call him voluble but I guess that's an asset in his line of work.

Speaking of radio, I've often mentioned the valuable work of the First Generation Radio Archives, who for the last five years have been restoring old radio programmes for CD release.

Their latest newsletter mentions that for newcomers to Old Time Radio they're now releasing a five-CD sampler -- six hours of fully restored classic radio entertainment - shows like "Little Orphan Annie," "The Great Gildersleeve," "Lum & Abner," "The Cisco Kid," "Richard Diamond, Private Detective," "Crime Classics," "The Cinnamon Bear," and "The Planet Man," as well as programs staring Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Lew Ayers, Dinah Shore, Fibber McGee and Molly, and many, many others.

(Not clips or excerpts -- these are complete fifteen-minute and half-hour shows, chosen to demonstrate the wide range of great sounding radio entertainment.)

The set costs US$9-95. At that price I might get a couple and use them for Christmas presents!

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Saturday, October 15, 2005

goosed again!

The saga of the feeding of the five thousand continues. OK, that's a slight exaggeration -- there aren't quite five thousand animals on my sister's property.

I put new batteries in my light so I can find my way around the property after dark, but this is a mixed blessing at times. Coming back from feeding the horse last night, I didn't notice that one of the geese had wandered into the driveway. Only at the last minute did I realise that it was cornered between me and the gates.

We gaped at each other for a moment when the beam fell on him, then he drew himself up and spread his wings. I knew that he was going to take off and I stooped down and put my hand up over my face.

There was a thrumming of wings and the goose flapped over me with only a couple of inches to spare. I could almost swear that I felt one of his webbed feet tap me on my shoulder as he passed over me.

I straightened up in time to see the goose land and hurry off down the driveway, honking to himself indignantly as he vanished into the night.

Memo to self: watch out for large waterfowl of a nervous disposition.

Meanwhile at my house Zelda the goose continues her dedicated but vain project to hatch those two (infertile) eggs. I'm wondering how long this will go on.

A couple of months ago I commented on how much weight she had put on. I didn't realise this was nature in action. Since then she's been more or less living on her body fat. A couple of times a day I manage to coax her off the nest for a few mouthfuls of food and a drink of water, then she toddles back and settles down again.

On the net I saw an advertisement from a firm that makes fences to keep geese out of your waterways. "Researchers have discovered that geese require easy access to food and a drink of water every 30 minutes," says the caption.

Ha! Not all geese at all times.

(Mind you, the rest of the advertisement is a little worrying -- "Did you know a goose produces 1200 pounds of droppings every year? If your lawn has become a gathering place for geese, here's your answer. Goose D-Fence is a new solution to help rid your property of unwanted guests...")

And with Julie away I can suit myself around the house. Last night I left the television set switched off all night while I listened to a couple of radio programmes from the BBC Radio website.

It was most enjoyable. I heard Eric Sykes reminiscing about his career on his 80th birthday, then while I was browsing the bulletin boards I spotted a comment that reminded me I hadn't heard last week's Radio 4 Saturday Play The Franchise Affair, a 90-minute play based on the novel by Josephine Tey.

I just had time to listen to all of it before I switched on the radio to catch the late show with Tony Delroy on ABC.

Digital television? Who needs it.

SHORT FICTION SHELF:

This month is the centenary of the birth of Fredric Dannay, one half of the team who wrote as "Ellery Queen". Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has been celebrating the year with a series of special issues.

The October issue features a new story, headlined on the cover as "Ellery Queen is back in a story by Edward D. Hoch." And who better to pick up the EQ pen than Hoch, who has the distinction of appearing in every issue of the magazine in living memory.

The story in question, "The Wrightsville Carnival", returns Ellery to the small town where so many of his mysteries were unravelled. However, this is no period piece -- the editor of the local paper has a digital camera, and the vital clue in solving the crime involves the way the killer uses his mobile phone!

This issue also carries an article surveying the history of EQ parodies and pastiches (yes, there is a difference). There haven't actually been a large number of EQ pastiches, so this one is a nice novelty.

Unlike, for instance, the Great Detective of 221B Baker Street. I realised some years ago that there were more Sherlock Holmes stories in print that hadn't been written by Conan Doyle than ones that had been.

I notice a recent reference on the Blogs4God website to "naval gazing." This would I guess be similar to train-spotting; you get yourself a good seat overlooking the waterfront and note down the numbers of every warship that goes past. The winner is the one who spots the most naval vessels without getting picked up by the security police.

What? Oh, navel gazing! Why didn't you say so in the first place....

Remember these words of Leo Rosten: The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.

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Thursday, October 13, 2005

inglorious mud

The weather has been a little better. For that I am profoundly thankful, since while my sister is away I am in charge of her farmyard and the animals. A wet day means a sticky expanse of mud between the gate and the hen-house.

I don't mind feeding the cats or walking the dogs, but looking after the poultry takes about two hours a day.

The geese are mostly wandering about the property somewhere but usually appear as soon as dinner is in the offing. The ducks and hens are around the back of the house and rush up as soon as someone appears with the feed.

But my sister has constructed an elaborate complex of outbuildings to contain the roosters (because of complaints from a neighbour), the pullets and the invalids who aren't ready to stand on their own two feet yet. I weaved in and out of the sheds and cages, doling out the prescribed amounts of feed and locking or unlocking gates as instructed.

Julie had pointed out the spots to watch and to my surprise I gathered up ten eggs on the first day.

The final stop was to wade the creek and take the horse food over to the shed on the far side of the property. Shadow, a massive ex-racehorse, is waiting for me nearby; if I take too long, he gives an impatient whinny.

Saj the mastiff follows me across the creek and up the hill, patiently waiting for a chance to steal one of Shadow's carrots.

I dish out his feed then while he eats I walk around him, looking for cuts, scrapes or wounds of any kind. It's not a good idea to get too close, since if he is startled and puts his head up without warning he could easily knock me down.

After completing this, I make my way back to the house. The cats wander about mewing at me while I extract my feet from the gumboots before feeding the dogs.

When some people go away for a weekend, they ask you to feed their canary or their goldfish. Julie left that stage behind a long time ago.

Two of Julie's five cats live at my house. Normally that's not a difficulty: there are two bedrooms and two cats, no problem.

The first night Julie was away, Paco came into my bedroom and saw Jezebel curled up on my bed; he turned around and left. A few minutes later Jezebel jumped off. So instead of one cat or two cats I had none. I shrugged and went to sleep.

The second night Jezebel stayed on my bed and Paco joined us during the night. I woke up and they were both curled up on the bed with me. Jezebel was unhappy when I got up during the night -- she is accustomed to Julie staying absolutely still while asleep so as not to disturb her. That part is beyond me, I'm afraid.

The skies were so clear last month that I did more stargazing than I can remember.

Venus and Jupiter were bright and clear near the moon and low on the horizon I could easily pick out Mars. I don't know why they call it the red planet, it looks like a very pale orange to me.

Saturn was visible that week, but it didn't rise till almost dawn. I wasn't getting up at that time of the morning just so I could say I'd seen four planets on the same day.

I even saw several shooting stars, the first ones I've seen in quite a while.

There were some advantage to that spell of windy weather - at least it blew the clouds away.

I gave Kay a lift to the supermarket the other day and when she got to the check-out it cost a little more than she expected.

It wasn't likely but I gave it a try: "You bought 50 blank video tapes in the sale last week, do you really need another 30? If you put one five-pack of them back, you'd be in the clear."

She looked at me as though I was speaking a foreign tongue and started digging through her pockets for small change.

I guess it all depends where your priorities lie.

I'm girding my loins as the end of October approaches, because November brings with it NaNoWriMo.

"What??" you ask.

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Many meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and -- when the thing is done -- the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2004, we had over 42,000 participants. Nearly 6000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago, but I wasn't game to try it last year. After having twelve months to nerve myself up, I figured I might give it a try this year.

I know I can write 1700 words in a day. Whether I can do it every day for a month... well, that will be interesting to try.

At the very least it will give me discipline, something I've never been very good at.

Ask me again in a couple of months and I'll let you know.

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Cyber Security

Microsoft has teamed up with the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA). Microsoft's website says they want to help increase Internet security through a month-long awareness-raising campaign that provides information and sponsored events for consumers, small businesses, educators, and families. This year, the National Cyber Security Awareness Month campaign began October 1, 2005.

The NCSA is a non-profit organization with sponsors in education, the United States government, professional organizations, and private corporations like Microsoft. It provides information and access to resources and tools to enable individuals and small businesses to better protect their computers and their personal information from online threats.

Events for this year's campaign include conferences and workshops in several cities across the U.S. For more information and a list of events, visit the NCSA Web site at http://www.staysafeonline.info.

Six tips for staying safer online
1.
Beef up your computer's defenses and keep them up to date.
Use a firewall and install antivirus software. Keep Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office programs up to date with security updates. Detect, remove, and block spyware with Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware. Download and install it from: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

2.
Use strong passwords, protect them, and change them regularly.
Strong passwords have at least eight characters. Include letters, numbers, and symbols that are easy for you to remember but tough for others to guess. See Creating stronger passwords for more information.

3.
Think first. Click later.
Even if you know the sender, consider carefully whether you really want to an open e-mail or instant message attachment. Be wary of clicking links in e-mail, instant messages, or pop-ups.

4.
Be protective of your personal information.
Never provide sensitive personal information in an e-mail, instant message, or pop-up window. Treat your Social Security number with special care. Only share your primary e-mail address with those you know.

5.
Make sure Web sites protect your personal information.
Read the privacy statement before you give out any personal information or download software. Check for signs that the Web site protects sensitive data. Look for https in the Web address and for a padlock or an unbroken key in the lower right corner of the Web page. Double-click the padlock or key to ensure that the "Issued by" name on the security certificate matches the name in the address bar.

6.
Take extra steps to help keep kids safe online.
Pay attention to what kids do and whom they meet online. Consider a rule that no child reveals personal information (including photos) without permission. Warn kids never to meet Internet "friends" in person.

Nothing can guarantee complete safety in cyberspace, but much can be done to minimize your exposure to risk. We make available a range of resources to help you protect your businesses, your computers, and your personal information. Instructions, advice, tools, and videos are available from Microsoft.com and MSN Online Safety & Security. Both Web sites provide prescriptive guidance to help protect children online, combat online fraud, reduce spam, avoid phishing scams, and preserve privacy.

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you should be commited

'WHY WE'RE TURNING AWAY FROM RELIGION - see page 2"

That was the headline on my morning paper on Tuesday.

Obviously God is still big enough news to warrant a story on page 2 with a big blazing banner across the top of page 1 just beneath the masthead.

The article reported a speech by Sydney's Anglican archbishop Dr Peter Jensen, who told the annual meting of the Sydney Diocese Synod that society had become resistant to the gospel. Laying out a list of factors, he cited such things as ever-busier lives, boring church services and horror stories about child abuse.

However I was struck by his comment that Australians, particularly those in their 20s or younger, showed a "deep, deep unwillingness to commit. For them, accepting Christ would mean a totally unacceptable restriction on their moral freedom - unacceptable and unimaginable."

People, even older ones, were only prepared to accept spiritual beliefs that catered to their individuality and made no moral demands. Contributing to this is a distrust of any authoritative institution.

Reading over his words, I admit that Dr Jensen has a point. The well known Australian tendency to resist authority doesn't help any instiution.

But I believe the biggest problem is what he calls the unwillingness to commit. The modern lifestyle is predicated on a belief that nobody has the right to tell you what to do. The concept of obeying a set of rules which are literally set in stone makes the eyes widen and the heart sink.

Church membership makes demands, observes Dr Jensen. Indeed, a commitment to Christ is putting oneself in the hands of one who makes the greatest demand possible.

At my church, it's always encouraged me to see so many young people in the congregation. Not just children brought along by their zealous parents, but young adults whose commitment to their faith is obvious and marked.

The greatest example would be Noel and Catharine. Catharine is expecting her first child this month, but instead of their whole world revolving around the newborn, they are planning to pack up in six weeks and move to Arnhem Land.

There, Noel will finish clocking up the hours he needs in the air so that they can head for New Guinea and fly with a missionary organisation.

I am in awe of the faith and commitment that these young people show.

But then it has been ever thus - those who are called to the mission field are a special breed and I wish them well.

Meanwhile the UN has found a new way to get their message across.

It's just another smurfy day in Smurf Village. The perpertually perky blue beings frolic around the fire, holding hands and singing that "tra-la-la-la-la-la" tune as bluebirds flutter by and rabbits hop around.

A regular Smurftopia.

But then the bombs come.

Hundreds of them raining down from warplanes in the sky, wiping out the mushroom-shaped abodes. Amid the fiery explosions, Smurfette is killed. Papa Smurf disappears. As the smoke clears, only an orphaned Baby Smurf remains, sobbing among the corpses.

No, this is not some pipe dream of Gargamel. The Smurfocide was instead perpetuated by the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF.

UNICEF's Belgian office is using the Smurfs as the centerpiece of a new fundraising initiative to shock viewers into donating money to help children in war-torn regions. The agency also hopes to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Burundi.

"The idea of using familiar, reassuring childhood icons in a decidedly dangerous context was intended to bring home to the public the horrendous nature of this theft of children's rights," says UNICEF's Gaelle Buasson.

"We could have shown real-live images of children wounded in Iraq, Palestine or other places. But we refused this option because they would not respect the dignity and rights of the depicted children...So we decided to use 'fictive' cartoon images."

Dubbed the first adults-only version of The Smurfs, UNICEF's 30-second 'toon ends with the tagline: "Don't let war affect the lives of children."

After coming up with the idea for the Smurfogeddon, UNICEF obtained permission to create the short from IMPS, which took over control of the critters after the death of their creator, the Belgian cartoonist Peyo. The clip was previewed on Belgian TV last week during evening newscasts.

According to London's Daily Telegraph, the spot evoked mixed emotions from viewers--including shock from children who accidentally caught the spot.

But the clip received a thumbs up from the official Smurf fan club. "I think it will wake up some people. It is so un-Smurf-like, it might get people to think," a spokesman told the Telegraph.

Julie Lamoureux, account director for Publicis, the ad agency that created the campaign, says the original concept included even more graphic imagery of weapons of mass Smurfstruction.

"We wanted something that was real war--Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head--but they said no," she told the Telegraph.

The clip will begin airing regularly next week in Belgium, but only after 9 p.m., and run through April. UNICEF says response has been so strong that the short could soon be seen in Europe, Latin America and Australia with the stipulations that it must air after 7 p.m. local time, it can only be aired with information explaining the clip, and it cannot be put on the Internet. There are no current plans to broadcast the clip in the U.S.

For Stateside fans, and those who prefer their Smurfs intact, a 3-D, CGI-animated Smurfs feature film will bow in theaters in 2008. The extravaganza from Paramount's Nickelodeon Movies will be the first in a planned trilogy. {Aaaaagh!}

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Sunday, October 09, 2005

Sunday Outlook

At church this morning Rob was preaching on John 15 under the title "Living in Christ."

God, by definition, is beyond human comprehension -- but the Bible tells us we must "know God" How do we resolve this contradiction?

In this part of the New Testament, Jesus is plainly preparing the disciples for life without his physical presence. He talks about the relationships they are to have with him, with each other and with the world.

And why does he use the metaphor of the grapevine? Every Israelite would have been familiar with the vines adorning the temple in Jerusalem, and would have been struck by Jesus' claim to be "the true vine".

Being a Christian means keeping in close contact with God - if we lose touch with the vine we certainly won't bear fruit. Verse 6 doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to hell if that happens; we are repeatedly told that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Pruning a grapevine is a skilled job; knowing exactly where to cut is essential. Our Christian lives also need pruning: just as the dead wood needs to be removed and the living wood pruned to make it able to bear fruit, anything we're preoccupied with to the exclusion of God needs to be cut back.

If your conscience doesn't trouble you that could be a bad sign. Being able to do selfish things without being troubled is a sign that you need pruning!

God wants us to be fruitful. If there's no spiritual fruit from your life, are you really a Christian? In this busy world we can easily prioritise things to leave prayer and studying the Bible to "some other time"... no way to keep a relationship going. God should be #1 on our "To Do" lists.

Following church, many of us attended a BBQ across the river at Rod's place in Mount Rumney. Up into the hills, through the gum trees and past the signs warning of kangaroos crossing the road.

I let Julie do the driving. I'm such a city child that I am actually frightened by the prospect of facing those narrow, twisty unmade roads. I much prefer to stick to the bitumen.

Rod must have had a hectic day. In the morning he was preaching at one of the churches in the suburbs, then in the afternoon he manned the barbecue to feed the multitudes before preparing to conduct the evening service at our church. Better him than me.

Julie brought along a rooster -- not for the pot, but to add to Rod & Sandra's hen house. The hens looked a bit surprised at the new arrival, but they seemed to be settling in together by the time that we left.

Less pleasant was the discovery that the e-mail at the church office is down again.

In the past I've had problems with the connection being unreliable or messages simply not downloading. This time it was a little different.

To the puzzlement of everyone who looked at it, the Send/Receive button simply disappeared from the Outlook desktop. People who were experienced computer users would do a double-take and say "I've never seen it do that before!"

This was bemusing. We had no trouble connecting to the internet, or seeing old messages or even writing new ones. What was impossible was to send them out or get new ones in.

In the end I turned to my trusted advisor Mr Google. A search for vanishing Send/Receive buttons turned up a myriad of references, including a long piece from the "Bleeding Edge" website [the IT column in the Melbourne newspaper The Age].

Looking through this, it seemed that what I needed to do was create a new Profile so that the Outlook programme could connect to us. After some tinkering I eventually found that you got to this not through Control Panel but through the options menu in Outlook itself.

I got about halfway through the setting up process, but came to a halt when I was asked to provide the POP3 and STMP codes. I went home and meditated on this.

It seemed to me that I'd been in this situation before. The more I thought about it the clearer the memory became. I remembered the relevant details written on a sheet of paper which I had filed away prudently in 2001 in case they were needed again.

That day had come and (wonder of wonders) I even remembered exactly where that piece of paper was! The human mind is an amazing thing.

Monday afternoon I drove in to the office and extracted the manila folder in question from its storage place. I plowed through it, deciding that 90% of the contents could go straight into the circular file [the waste paper basket]. But there, almost at the bottom of the pile, was the four-year-old message with the STMP details.

I started up the computer and entered the necessary settings. With some trepidation I closed Outlook and then opened it again.

Success! The Send/Receive buttons were back in their usual place. Order was restored to the universe.

While I downloaded the last few days of e-mail, the system flagged that Outlook needed an update. Download time would be about three hours. I decided to postpone that to Some Other Time.

For the moment I was content with my small victory.

Sad to hear that British comedian Ronnie Barker has died. His partnership with Ronnie Corbett in The Two Ronnies made him famous but he had already had a career as an actor and writer before that.

In fact he wrote a lot of his own material under pen-names like Gerald Wiley or Jonathan Cobbald. Some of his fans would also be surprised to see him playing small parts in 1960s shows The Saint and The Avengers.

Although he retired from acting to run an antique shop years ago, I was surprised to see him pop up in the 2003 movie My House in Umbria.

We shall all miss him.

"Any scientist who thinks this issue is settled has been settled has been looking through his telescope too long"

"It would be wise to count the number of assumptions utilised to reach the conclusions listed as scientific fact"

a couple of quotes from a book on science Julie has been reading.

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Sunday, October 02, 2005

clock-a-doodle Sunday

As usually happens, the Sunday that daylight saving begins (meaning we get an hour less sleep that day) was also chock-a-block with things that we had to do and places we had to go.

It didn't help that I reset the time on my alarm clock but forgot to switch on the alarm. It took a while for the clock radio to wake me on Sunday morning, but we did get to church on time.

R1 was back from his month away, and gave as his first sermon "The Transforming Power of God". He examined some of the miracles in the New Testament and emphasised that we shouldn't expect miraculous things to happen on request, no matter what some over-zealous preachers might promise in their descriptions of worship.

A miracle is not just an event we can't explain by reason or logic - biblical miracles are extraordinary events designed to strike us as a demonstration of God's redemptive love.

Miracles, I understood from his sermon, are like punctuation marks in a paragraph. God uses them to draw our attention to the important parts of what he is saying to us.

People who pursue miracles as an end in themselves are missing the point. The vital thing about a biblical miracle is not the healing but the healer. What would have worried the establishment at the time was that these miracles were being performed in the name of Jesus Christ.

We can pray to God about our aches and pains, but the reason Jesus came was not to improve our everyday lives but to lead us to eternal life. Focus not on the miracle, we are told, but on the miracle-worker!

[further reading: see John 20:30 and Acts 3:1-10]

My sister and I had planned to have a quick lunch of coffee and sandwiches before taking off, but we stumbled over a group of Elders and their wives having a meal in the church hall before attending a meeting. So to our surprise we ended up having a full sit-down meal before feeding Julie's livestock.

Then on to Linmor Hall at the Collegiate School in the city to the annual Wurlitzer concert for Seniors Week, courtesy of the Theatre Organ Society. The organ was in fine form, and a variety of players took their seat at the console to regale us with a selection of show tunes and light classical.

(This is the sort of occasion where if somebody says "Here's something a bit more modern" it means they're going to play something from the last 40 years.)

After a quick stop for petrol, I let Julie take the wheel and we drove up into the hills under Mount Wellington to Jan's house at Ridgeway, high above the city and suburbs. Our mission there was to pick up a rooster who was otherwise going to end up on the chopping block.

Jan, who was suffering from a head cold, had tried to catch the hyper-active fowl, but he had easily fluttered past the piece of plastic with which she was trying to corral him. Julie being more clear-headed and much more experienced in the ways of the farmyard had a try and cornered him in the shed where she collared him without difficulty.

We popped him into a feed sack and I kept a tight grip on it all the way down to Julie's house. She released him into the fenced-in area we call the Poultry Plaza, where he was greeted without much enthusiasm by the other roosters.

I think it might be because he was fully grown that they saw him as a threat to the status quo. Mostly a new rooster takes a comparatively short period of time to find his place in the pecking order, but the arrival of this new boy definitely put their backs up. Julie spent quite a while supervising the barnyard, hoping they'd settle down eventually.

By the time we finished there, the sun was beginning to go down even with daylight saving! We drove back to my place and it was nearly 7:30 by the time we made a cup of tea and sat down. It seemed quite a while since we had left that morning.

"I've finished my book." Words to disturb any brother with an avid reader in the house. That means that I need to dig out another book from the thousands in the house for her delectation.

Any of you that have seen my home will think that is probably not a tall order, given the piles of reading matter in every room.

But I have to select something that suits her guidelines.

These ran something like this...

~no cruelty to animals
~no blasphemy
~moderation in bad language
~not too much violence
~fewer rather than more sex scenes
~absolutely no unhappy endings
~preferably a strongly plotted story

With these restrictions I usually end up giving her a vintage English whodunit or an old Robert Heinlein novel. She loves Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace but will settle for Georgette Heyer or Dorothy L. Sayers.

I try to keep a few books stockpiled but it isn't always easy to keep ahead of someone who has been known to read a paperback in a single sitting.

Friday, September 30, 2005

my model life

Would you have your photograph taken in exchange for a free meal?

That was the proposal put to us by Helene, a friend of Julie's – a photographer who was working on a photo spread advertising a new outlet of the chain King Buffet.

We turned up at 5 p.m., when the restaurant was almost empty. There were about eight of us but in the photographs that will probably be enough to make the place look packed with diners.

They let us fill our plates with food, but eating wasn't encouraged. We were only allowed to actually put food into our mouths while Helene was changing the settings on her camera. The rest of the time we sat there looking as though we were either just about to eat or had just eaten.

Finally Helene took Guy downstairs to film some shots of him sitting in a wheelchair in the elevator (he doesn't use a wheelchair, but they wanted to show how user-friendly the establishment is). The rest of us were then able to circle the dessert table and eat our sweet course in peace and quiet.

It was an interesting experience but I don't know I'd care for the life of an extra.

Speaking of food, we went into town at the start of the week to attend Dorothy's funeral. As usual, the ladies of the church provided refreshments and I wandered around talking to people in between sandwiches, cakes, scones and other titbits.

"It will be interesting to see your Blood Glucose Level tomorrow," muttered my sister and I winced slightly.

But as it turned out, I needn't have worried. My BGL reading was about 6.2, the best it's been in weeks.

So the solution is obvious - what's missing from my diet is cakes, scones and canapes.

I wonder if I can get a prescription for that?

SHORT STORY SHELF:

Yesterday I read Algernon Blackwood's "The Insanity of Jones" which appeared in his collection The Listener and Other Stories in 1907.

They say that a good story is timeless, and Blackwood's short story certainly resonates with the modern reader - though for uncomfortable reasons.

Jones, the protagonist, is an unremarkable clerk whose only unusual feature is his belief that his soul wanders in and out of otherworldly realms. A belief in reincarnation is usually a harmless enough eccentricity; but Jones comes to believe that his employer is the man who wronged him cruelly in a previous life, leading to bloody revenge.

The story is well written, and Blackwood carefully does nothing to suggest whether Jones' belief is true or not. Jones is a man who isn't bothered that his subjective and objective worlds conflict; he follows his heart rather than his brain.

In today's world we see many such men. They are assassins, suicide bombers and such. Blackwood might recognize them as familiar types.

Some things never change.

A recent issue of Book & Magazine Collector looked at the famous names of science fiction in Britain. The latest issue features a long letter from SF expert John Clute objecting to the use of the term "sci fi" in the article.

I remember similar complaints being made thirty or forty years ago. In fact, when I was interviewed by Gideon Haigh for one of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers The Australian some years ago I made the observation that people who used the expression "sci fi" usually knew little about the genre.

That didn't make me really popular at my local science fiction bookshop, where a younger generation of fans didn't share my prejudices.

And a note on the death of Don Addams, forever known as the bumbling Agent 86 in the famous comedy Get Smart.

You couldn't even look at a picture of Maxwell Smart without wanting to smile. What better epitath can anyone have?

I love the ABC television show Spicks and Specks and their final scene for this week was one of their most memorable.

Jade McRae was a guest on the programme and over the end credits she sang the novelty song "Funky Gibbon" which her father had written for the old comedy show The Goodies. A memorable moment indeed.

A quiet evening listening to the radio gave the audience a shock on Wednesday night.

Tony Delroy was broadcasting from Perth in Western Australia, and he said we'll be back after the midnight news with our quiz segment The Challenge.

Unfortunately somebody somewhere threw the wrong switch, and after the news we were suddenly and unexpectedly plunged into the late show on the so-called Youth Network Triple-J. They were playing the loudest heavy metal music I've ever heard in my life, with the vocalist's microphone turned up as high as possible to maximise the distortion.

I'm surprised there wasn't an earth tremor as people all over the country jumped out of their chairs, reaching for the volume knob. I suspect the overlap between Tony Delroy's audience and the Triple-J listeners is vanishingly small.

Ten minutes later we returned to normal programming, but it was a ten minute period that few listeners would ever forget.

Come home, Tony -- things like that rarely happen at home base in Sydney.

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Sunday, September 25, 2005

Pullet out

Friday morning we dragged in the cage that Julie bought the day before. It's actually designed for rabbits, but it's roomy enough to take the five pullets that are in one of the plastic crates in my front hall.

Hey, anything that reduces the amount of poultry she's keeping inside the house is a good thing, right? The chickens looked a little startled at finding themselves in a nice new cage outside the back door, but we're hoping they will settle in.

It will be interesting to see if they are noisier or less noisy in their new habitat. The one rooster of these five has only just begun to find his voice; up till a few days ago his tentative crowing sounded more like a gurgle than cock-a-doodle-doo.

Friday night there was another one of those musical smorgasbords at the Polish Club in North Hobart. Hot guitar picking, gypsy jazz and vocal antics were promised. About 60 people turned up to sit and quietly sip their drinks while listening attentively.

The trio Czardas have been round for a few years and have a polished blend of violin, guitar and vocal — though maybe the offbeat ballads in the middle of the bracket of fast-paced string numbers aren't a completely good idea.

I've seen The Fabulous Spondooli Brothers before with their distinctive brand of music and humour. The acoustic guitar duo alternate between high-energy original music and mock-gypsy patter that allows them to indulge in what they call their "mild propensity for nonsense."

I hadn't seen the third group Swing Wizard before; that may have been because it was the first public performance by the quartet. The guitarist from Czardas joined three young musicians for a long bracket of music that ranged from swing to bluegrass.

Someone thanked the audience for being there and providing a forum for the performance of live original music, stuff that doesn't come out of a machine. Amen to that.

"Intuition is reason in a hurry"

-- anonymous

I was packing up yet another box of magazines that I haven't worked around to reading. I started musing on the subject of "catching up on your reading".

If I read one short story a day, that would get through 365 a year. Reading two a day would make 730 in a year.

Even if I took Sundays off, I could read 312 in a year.

When I was 16 I could have done it. I used to get through four or five novels a week, no problems. Not as good as Arthur C. Clarke of course – in one of his autobiographical pieces he recalls reading ten books a week in his teenage days.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. Knock over a few of the backlog of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Analog, Asimov's, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Not to mention all those back issues of Argosy in the attic.

And that's not even taking into account the non-fiction periodicals littering the house. Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Air & Space, The Smithsonian....

[Bruce Gillespie wrote in one of his fanzines that he stopped buying the science fiction magazines when he worked out that he wouldn't live long enough to read all the books he already had in the house. I won't go that far. I'd like to cut back on some of the stuff that I buy but I don't have the heart to pick out the ones to cull.]

So I started reading tonight. The first story was Ray Bradbury's "Getting Through Sunday Somehow" - it's in his old collection Long After Midnight. In typical Bradbury style he tells the story of a walk through Dublin in the peace of an old-fashioned sabbath, and what came to his mind.

There are 96 days left in the year. If I double up on a couple of days I reckon I could break the hundred.

We shall see.

Listened to a couple of 1940s radio shows on CD from the FGRA. "Death is a Twin" is a pleasant enough locked-room mystery from Mystery Is My Hobby [an Ellery Queen clone], while "Those Who Walk in Darkness" is a piece of grand guignol from Creeps By Night, not great but worth it to hear Peter Lorre introducing Boris Karloff.

Looking at the BBC Radio website it's amazing how much radio drama they still do in Britain. Plays, serials, soaps.... I think in this country we only produce 30 minutes a week on ABC Radio National.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Bothwell

Another bus trip organized by my local church took us out into the countryside for some genteel sight-seeing. We went up over Collinsvale and down to New Norfolk before stopping at Glen Clyde House in Hamilton; we checked out the craft shop and gardens of this 19th century coaching inn.

Then on to Bothwell for lunch at the Castle Hotel. One of our group complimented the manager on the apple pie. Yes, he said with a smile, the deep freeze broke down yesterday and we had all this pastry so we started making apple pies at a great rate of knots.

The weather was fine and sunny, which was curious since we could still see traces of snow up on the mountains. If we had more time, the bus driver told us, we'd drive up to Collins Cap and you could see the snow up close. Maybe next time.

I don't actually remember a lot of the trip home through Campania and Risdon. Between the big lunch and the warmth of the Spring sun, I kept nodding off every few minutes. A sign of things to come as we enter the Australian summer.

One of the unchanging things about this world is the way sadness strikes us unexpectedly.

One of the old ladies who finds it hard to get to church lives near me and once or twice a month it's my turn to give her a ride in to the Sunday morning service. Dorothy is a frail little thing, but her mind is very sharp and alert.

Sunday evening I received a phone call which gave me a shock. Dorothy had apparently suffered a stroke at home, fallen and hit her head. She was in hospital unconscious. The prognosis.... well, you can probably guess the rest.

It rocked me. Just that morning we had driven in to church together and had been discussing her favourite Agatha Christie novels. She had seemed perfectly fine. Who would have expected it?

I had already been a little sorrowful because this week will mark the anniversary of my mother's death. Now I was confronted with an all-too-fresh reminder of how transient and impermanent a thing our lives are.

No man knoweth the hour.

(Dorothy died in hospital two days later; we shall miss her.)

Lovers of old radio shows should be aware that the website OTRCAT is offering free downloads of old programmes from their site. Worth a look.

An interfaith group released a new textbook Thursday aimed at teaching public high school students about the Bible while avoiding legal and religious disputes, reports Richard Ostling of Associated Press.

The nonprofit Bible Literacy Project of Fairfax, Va., spent five years and $2 million developing "The Bible and Its Influence." The textbook, introduced at a Washington news conference, won initial endorsements from experts in literature, religion and church-state law.

American Jewish Congress attorney Marc Stern, an adviser on the effort, said despite concern over growing tensions among U.S. religious groups, "this book is proof that the despair is premature, that it is possible to acknowledge and respect deep religious differences and yet still find common ground."

The colorful $50 book and forthcoming teacher's guide, covering both Old and New Testaments, are planned for semester-long or full-year courses starting next year. 41 contributors included prominent evangelical, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and secular experts.

Religious lobbies and federal courts have long struggled over Bible course content. To avoid problems, Bible Literacy's editors accommodated Jewish sensitivities about the New Testament, attributed reports about miracles to the source rather than simply calling them historical facts and generally downplayed scholarly theories — about authorship and dates, for example — that offend conservatives.

Educators know biblical knowledge is valuable — 60 percent of allusions in one English Advanced Placement prep course came from the Bible — and that polls show teens don't know much about Scripture. Yet few public schools offer such coursework, partly due to demands for other elective classes, partly over legal worries. (The U.S. Supreme Court's 1963 decision barring schoolroom Bible recitations dud say that "the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities" if "presented objectively as part of a secular program of education.")

The textbook follows detailed principles in a 1999 accord, "The Bible and Public Schools," brokered by Bible Literacy and the First Amendment Center, a nonpartisan program of the Freedom Forum devoted to constitutional liberties. That accord is endorsed by seven major educational organizations and Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups. Haynes says the only previous textbook, decades old, was inadequate because it treated the Bible only as literature, slighting its religious significance.

Tasmania

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Goodies

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

The Complete New Yorker

Sunday, October 30, 2005

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Black Comedies

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Fined!

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Ring 4??

Ring 4??

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Love One Another!

Sunday, October 16, 2005

To CDR or not CDR?

Saturday, October 15, 2005

goosed again!

Thursday, October 13, 2005

inglorious mud

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Cyber Security

you should be commited

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Sunday Outlook

Sunday, October 02, 2005

clock-a-doodle Sunday

Friday, September 30, 2005

my model life

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Pullet out

Friday, September 23, 2005

Bothwell

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