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New photos on Flickr

Nerriga hall
Originally uploaded by adrian.wiggins.

Go git em.

I've an idea that with my new-found spare time I will start taking photographs again. I've really missed the boat on art photography, so I'll be old school and do landscapes. Only two early studies in the photostream so far.

Jimmy's first protest march - 1999

Jimmy's first protest march
Originally uploaded by adrian.wiggins.

Here are some photos from 1999 added to Flickr. This one see Jimmy protesting about East Timor in his stripy suit at the tender age of 3 months.

Knitting Sculptures

As you may recall from an earlier post, my wife is a mad-keen knitter. Having seen this inspirational site I may stop asking for a beanie, and instead ask for some lobster... Via Boing Boing

In Nursing Home, a Fight Lost to Rising Waters - New York Times

The abject failure of America's preparedness for disaster reveals so much about the nation, the government's self-delusion surpassed only by its over-weening pride, the president's weasel words, the tragic stubbornness of the poor and the abandonment of the infirm. New Orleans now a foetid sump. It beggars belief. In Nursing Home, a Fight Lost to Rising Waters...

Turnbull advocates spamming all Australians

The SMH reports Malcolm Turnbull advocating a government-sponsored email address for every Australian. He reckons this email 'pigeon hole' would solve some endemic problems of the postal mail: "Many of [mail pieces] are lost, many of them are mislaid, many of them, perhaps most of them, are never read." Hmm - hang on - those sound like problems also endemic to email... But how many of us would opt in to be spammed by the government and tracked into the bargain. And who amongst the "e-savvy" would ever use an email address like 'firstname.surname.dateofbirth@australia.org.au', given us on the day we're born. For someone who's done time on the board of an ISP and is a part owner of an IPP, you'd expect something more grounded in reality, and a lot less creepy. Perhaps Malcolm's industry self-interest has overrun his common sense.

Cologne Cathedral

Cologne Cathedral
Originally uploaded by The Rocketeer.

Amazing found photo archive of WWII aerial photography shot by allied planes over Germany.

Petrol Boycott

The second petrol boycott this year will undoubtedly have as little effect as the first. One day we'll look back on $1.40 per litre and say "well that was cheap". In time we'll say the same of petrol when it was twice the price it is now. That will be around the time combustion engines are finally priced out of the market. LP Gas conversions have risen dramatically in the past few weeks, but that will undoubtedly give us limited reprieve. Has anyone said 'peak gas theory' yet. So I advocate two boycotts:

• firstly we must boycott cars and ride our solar-powered sail bikes to work, and
• secondly we must boycott all boycotts. That will show the boycotters that their boycotts have no effect.

Nice - Chewing gum target

Boing Boing carries an interesting idea for capturing all the gobs of gum by providing a target in the path. Urban designers note - this could get a little festy.

This saves the concil (sic) thousands of pounds on pressure washing large areas of the street and subsequent inconvenience to the public.

It's only a matter of time till we see the revival of the spittoon.

Flickr: Photos from adrian.wiggins

I've finally got round to scanning the first selections of what must be some several thousand photos lying around in boxes. They'll be slowly added to Flickr. The usual suspects - wife, kids, mates. No cats though. Cats are off the agenda.

Country's Service Stations Running Out Of Gas | The Huffington Post

Panic is a virus...Link

Sudoku Helper

I don't know whether to rejoice or despair in the Konfabulator Sudoku Helper. It's a point of pride to do the puzzle with only a pen (ok - a four colour pen), but having today failed to complete the kids sudoku in the Herald, I may just install this ready reckoner. Actually a Sudoku widget would be really worrying... (mental note: new del.icio.us category - unproductivity)

Lego 50th Anniversary

Well Lego is finally 50. I always thought it had been around longer than that... but with a 6yo son up to his neck in Bionicles, I can safely say Lego has delivered on its aims set down in 1954: 50th Anniversary:

"GKC [Lego's inventor] first formulated those attributes that he believed the LEGO System of Play should aspire to deliver, 10 principles that today still are used in product and brand experience development:

1) unlimited play potential;

2) for boys, for girls;

3) fun for every age;

4) year-round play;

5) healthy, quiet play;

6) long hours of play;

7) development, imagination, creativity;

8) the more LEGO you have, the greater its play value;

9) extra sets available;

10) quality in every detail."

We've stretched point 8 to the screaming limit, and there's no end in sight...

Apple phone rumour...

i-mode blog carries a rumour that Apple will announce an MP3 mobile phone.

iTunes 4.9 ships, podcasting takes off (again)

Notwithstanding the problems of iTunes 4.9 (here covered by James Mc Parlane) it is undoubtedly the breakthrough client for podcasting. I'm not going to abandon iPodder anytime soon for all its advantages over the offering in iTunes, but iTunes brings geometric growth to podcast subs. (It remains to be seen whether the phrase 'exponential growth' is more appropriate. ) Here are some links:

• iTunes Exposure Multiplies KCRW Podcast Downloads 35 Times
• Forecast reports show rapid growth of podcasts - prediction of annual growth of 101% to 2010
• iTunes’ ‘Podcatchers’ Top 1M - 1 million new subs in 3 days (I recall reading elsewhere this was in the UK alone).

More than anything it makes it easy for the geeks amongst us to explain to our tech-savvy (though non-geek) friends just what podcasting is. So I'm re-pestering my hitherto sceptical mates to give podcasting a burl.

Speaking of sceptics - there are yet many in the Australian web dev industry. I reckon there are two good reasons for this, and a possible third (with a heaped topping of speculation on my part):

• Info-geeks are already at the limit on inbound content (feeds, emails, music, whatever) and don't see the value of adding another source to their roster.
• A scepticism founded on the boom-bust hype cycles of the past - you have to wade through a lot of buzz to get to the few decent concepts that you'd hang on to (choose your own examples), so why not wait for the world to do your filtering.
• (Stating the obvious, extending the second point) Sydney is a hemisphere, an ocean and a state of mind away from the San Francisco bay - Australians are unconvinced by US A-list boosting.

Podcasting is less than a year old, but having just added a podcast to one of the sites I produce, and subscribing to 10 feeds since March (that's my limit), I don't feel like I'm doing something new.

Apple has pounced (a fruit like a cat?) and a million subs in three days speaks for itself. What happens next is no longer guesswork, but it's a question of how quickly it grows after the initial burst of interest and also how traditional producers (meaning radio stations) adapt. It's a new kind of game, on a bigger pitch, with different rules.

Thanks, Dave

I'm posting this for my mate Damian who is fond of saying "Dave Winer was there for RSS when RSS didn't have a friend". So thanks Dave.

Iraq War Fatalities animation

Iraq War Fatalities is a flash animation showing deaths in Iraq since the invasion. Linked from Metafilter:

Iraq War Fatalities is a chart of US and coalition military fatalities that have occurred in the War in Iraq since the onset, mapped across the dimensions of time and space. It is an ongoing project that is updated regularly, and will continue to go on as long as the war does. The animation runs at ten frames per second--one frame for each day--and a single black dot indicates the geographic location that a US fatality occurred. Each dot starts as a white flash and a larger red dot that fades to black over the span of 30 frames/days, and then slowly fades to grey over the span of the entire war. Accompanying the visual representation is a soft 'tic' sound for each fatality, the volume of which increases relative to the number of fatalities that occurred simultaneously that day. More deaths in a smaller area produces visually deeper reds and audibly more pronounced 'tics.'

Having watched the animation I am persuaded that much of the geographical area of Iraq is safe and secure. Well done to the nuff-nuffs in Washington.

U.S. Box Office Hits Longest Modern Slump

Wow - the bad news continues for traditional media producers with this AP story: U.S. Box Office Hits Longest Modern Slump. Could be that this year's crop of blockbusters aren't so, um, bustin'. Or it could be people are voting with their bums and prefer to sit, like I am now, in front of their home computer with a nice cup of cocoa and a plate of after-dinner mints. So ya boo sucks to Hollywood. Via Huffington Post.

1.8 million broadband services connected: ACCC

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) reports in its June Snapshot of Broadband Deployment that there are now 1.8 million broadband services connected. Here's the biscuit: it represents "an increase of over 1 million customers, or 122 per cent, over the preceding 12-month period". Meanwhile the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations Publisher’s Statement (reported in B&T) shows Australian newspaper circulation static or falling.

The biggest falls were reported in the Sydney market with News Limited’s The Daily Telegraph Monday to Friday falling 6.60% to 381,998, a noticeable drop from the 412,980 figure in the period ending March 2003.

Also of note is a comparison of Live 8 internet and TV coverage which led one commentator to point to the success of internet streaming over traditional TV coverage.

Cool Hunting: The Knitting Machine

My wife loves nothing better than sitting down to watch some TV (preferably a cold wet detective muddling through some desultory evidence for a grizzly murder) while she knits up a storm on the couch. I thought she had the largest knitting needles I had ever seen (size 15) - until I read about the The Knitting Machine. (at Cool Hunting)

PAL Fashion Colors

One of the moderate extravagances of my life to date has been to buy a great desktop radio. When my wife's old Panasonic packed it in after a weekend in the rain outside I decided to get a new radio for our kitchen. So I tried the new models for all the usual suspects - Sony, Panasonic, some German brand. All had crap sound and shoddy build. Then I discovered the Kloss Model One built by Tivoli Audio. Without exageration this is the best radio I have ever had. Here are the reviews and they're all spot on. And now the portable version of this radio comes in iPod-mini inspired colours... Check them out in the Cool Hunting: PAL Fashion Colors post. Sigh. And if your desktop radio dies, buy a Tivoli radio.

Mozillas and GNUs invade Redmond in Google Mapscapade

Mozilla conquers Redmond. Link (via BoingBoing). Also links through to Google-based games wiki. Street-based multiplayer social gaming extended by Google Maps could be very cool - link.

Two poems in Cordite #22: Editorial Intervention

In 1997 I was a founding editor of Cordite Poetry Review. David Prater, who took over at issue #8 in 2000 and made it the wonder it is today, has put together an issue devoted to poetry editors. And in a fit of productivity I produced two poems for the issue. Have a squizz.

Massive launches BigPond V8 Supercar PanelBeaters podcast

In addition to being streamed, The PanelBeaters show is now being podcast from the V8 Supercar site. Pod on. Link Feed

lifehack.org � How To Deal With Burnout

Wow - wish I'd read this last year. Was feeling very fried.

BrickJournal - the magazine for Adult Fans of LEGO

BrickJournal - the magazine for Adult Fans of LEGO - finally a porn magazine worth subscribing to. Link | Via Boing Boing.

Amazon.com Diamond Search

Amazon.com Diamond Search is a cool search application which exposes the commodity nature of loose diamonds to the mass market. Gemstones can seem a little mystifying to the typical consumer - the various measures of quality confusing and so you'd be happy to leave it to the jeweler so you don't get dudded with a zirconia when you thought you were getting an Argyle pink. In the Amazon search criteria are illustrated clearly, explained with simple help, and, combined with an intuitive slider control easily used to search for diamonds. And if you were really game you might even buy one on the basis of Amazon's high level of trust. And it's built in javascript, XML, http, CSS, XHTML. Jesse James Garret is calling this collection of likely suspects Ajax.

Campbell's soup tins superseded

Sorry - couldn't resist the pun.

Jane Gibian featured on Poetry International

Jane Gibian is featured on Poetry International as a poet of the quarter. Go Jane! Michael Brennan carves up a serve of introduction (no permalink here I suspect so you'd better be quick). Link

Yahoo intentionality in search

A search with a slider. Weeeeeeee.

Saturday night in with Nev's blog and Phil's bike

Well it's another Saturday night in and the TV tonight is dire. An Affleck/Bullock movie - improbable plot, shoddy script, lame dialogue, ham acting - none of these are an apparent set-back in Hollywood. For light relief I've resorted to clicking the adsense links on my mate Nev's blog. Not sure how Nev ends up with ads like Hindu Squats and Build a Thick, Full Chest, but I expect he configured his own keywords. ;) Oh and bidding on my mate Phil's ebay auction.

Australian IT - Telstra puts VoIP on ice (, MAY 27, 2005)

Australian IT - Telstra puts VoIP on ice (, MAY 27, 2005)TELSTRA has scrapped plans to offer its retail customers the ability to make calls over the internet for at least another year.. Even mugs like me are installing Skype. I'm such a late joiner. I wonder what Telstra is thinking though - one year is a long time to wait before asking people to start paying for something they can get for free right now.

Pam Brown, Ken Bolton and Laurie Duggan's new book

I went to the launch of Pam Brown, Ken Bolton and Laurie Duggan's new book Let's Get Lost at the Sydney Poetry Network event held recently at UTS. Sadly I missed most of the daytime sessions, but I managed to make it for the free wine and launch by Alan Wearne. Having read the book at the pool while the kids learnt to duck-dive, I can report it's a beautiful read with a real love on show between the correspondents, an affectionate friendly eye for the world and for each other, and an easy tone and demeanor. And an apparent lack of competitive ambition one expects when writers write together. This is both a strength and a weakness - on the one hand it reads like a slight book without great transformative aims, and with a simple direct language with a low level of play. But it's also a direct book and these established poets are old hands - its ease is its achievement - and so it left me feeling refreshed - as though an old friend had just sent me a postcard from another country. Here is a kind of contemporary poetry that doesn't pose, vogue, or hide from the reader, or make explicit some external tosh about how poems might be written. Launching the book, Alan Wearne was in sharp form, lambasting poets who seek the impramatur of foreign "god-like" critics such as Harold Bloom. Heh - wonder which Australian poet he had in mind... Sadly this title lacked some of the print production finish normally associated with Vagabond press books. I understand this is due it being an author project. Not sure of the wisdom of this for Vagabond - it undercuts some of their excellent achievements in print on show in their Stray Dog series and Rare Object series. This is most likely a hiccup, but I hope it's an isolated moment. Brown, Bolton and Duggan sounds like a lawfim - no it's a poetfirm!

MSN.co.uk thought crime tosh

What a lot of alarmist bunk over at MSN.co.uk.

Thought Thieves is about people stealing and profiting from your creation or innovation. Think about it: how would you feel if you saw your hard work being passed off as the property of someone else? What would you do?

To be honest I think this highly unlikely in the case of my creative output, so I'm not threatened. Actually I encourage it with a creative commons license, so that it's not theft. Phew what a relief. Now there's some certainty to the terms under which I'm allowing people to use my work.

Rob Muller, one of my workmates, pointed out a further bemusing contradiction on the entry form for this msn.co.uk 'opportunity':

I will formally licence on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so.

So go-on kids - create some anti-property-theft propaganda for Microsoft, then when they exercise their gorilla-in-the-tent option sign over all your commercial rights. Stinky double-think.

Miss V8 Supercar, nee Miss V8 Supergirl

New name for the ladies day, but the action is the same. Round 3 of the V8 Supergirl competition is racing with WA already neck and neck with NZ. Etcetera ahem.

When will pigs be banned?

Dangerous breeds watch out - the NSW government has banned American Pit Bulls after a small boy and an old man were mauled. See 'Dangerous dog' ban met with delight and disgust - National - smh.com.au. Not surprisingly pit bull breaders are underwhelmed. "You've got more chance of getting bitten by a shark than a pitbull terrier,'' said one. But hang on - Boing Boing tells us that "More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks". So when will pigs be banned?

Massive is looking for producers

Massive is hiring developers and producers. Advertised on Seek and here also: http://www.massive.com.au/employment.asp?id=4

Outcry over school 'raids' to detain children - National - www.smh.com.au

The Department of Immigration heavies that rounded up kids from school this week must be a very heartless bunch of government stooges. Two kids were detained from my child's school in 'raids'. The SMH and ABC reports that, in keeping with the disproportion normal to the activities of this department, the children were removed without being allowed to say goodbye to their friends. And for what - the mother was detained for a visa violation. So are these kids going to make a run for it from Stanmore Public if they're allowed to say cheerio to their schoolyard mates. I find the policies and activities of this government out of touch with normal human feeling and somehow John Howard, Phillip Ruddock and Amanda Vanstone imagine this is acceptable behaviour. Can it really true that most Australians agree with them? Somehow I'm in the minority. Hopefully not for much longer.

Googlezon: The future of media | News.blog | CNET News.com

Interesting imagined futurism here. The Googlezon - a merged Google + Amazon megalith and related structures - supplants main-stream media in 2011! Utopia or dystopia?

Channel Ten

I missed Battlestar Galactica last week as my wife wanted to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show on DVD. (Not sure what's going on there.) So I missed my fix of Hollywood-grade sci-fi. And this week Channel 10's feed is on the blink - they played that Raymond show in the BG slot! I don't love it.

Mooloolaba race underway

Well the 2005 Sydney Mooloolaba Yacht Race has had the smoothest start so far of all the yacht races we've done with the CYCA. At the moment the fleet is sitting just above Newcastle. It's one of my favourite sites.

Sounds idyllic - New Zealand

Sounds idyllic - New Zealand - - being alone on a deserted fjord with only nature and New Zealanders around me does sound oddly appealing today. I must be tiring of the natural wonders of my desk.

listen: triple j radio

listen: triple j radio, now listen here. I hope you guys get a wriggle on and put some decent podcasts out soon. I'm just about subbed-up and soon there'll be no room on my 'pod. Seriously though it's heartening to read of the end of commercial radio (as we know it). Podcasting is going to be huge in Australia for the following reasons:

1. It's unregulated
2. It's uncensored
3. There are no barriers to entry
4. It favours diversity
5. It's all the things the linear monoculture of a single radio channel is not.

I think stations like JJJ can do well since

• they're already close to the community of musicians like some of the most successful music podcasts (Insomnia radio),
• they don't have to apply a business model to podcasts, and they're
• philosophically amenable to the concept of podsafe music (ie not greatest hits)

It's a great opportunity and I hope they can get something compelling together soon.

It's also a great opportunity for a content-oriented ISP like Bigpond who have the following in their favour:

• oodles of bandwidth,
• captive audience,
• incentive galore to steal listeners from the commercials, and
• last mover advantage as a new entry into commercial 'radio' content Which is to say they're not saddled with the same onerous licensing, infrastructure and business models that will hamper the commercial stations maneuvering in this space.

I wonder what they could do. I have already suggested to Nick at www.v8supercars.com.au a podcast of shows like Panelbeaters and driver interviews (still waiting to find out if this is going ahead). This could easily be extended into their other properties. At the moment their attention is on their EPG, but podcasting is going to be very big from hereon in. I'd be surprised if they don't have a play in the pipe by midyear.

I hope BigPond, like JJJ can move soon enough to capture some market.

whereis.com - Search Australian Maps

whereis.com has for the second time this week given me a wrong location for an address. Oops this time I gave my wife directions. I reckon deep in their heart whereis know that these kinds of applications need to be infallible. I think my wife now suspects that I am not infallible. This is a cruel blow. (Hopefully my wife made it to the show - she was running late. )

Boing Boing: Smart cat door keeps cat from bringing dead animals into house

Heh - this is just what we need to help our cat get over its disarticulated bird phase.

Jack Osbourne at Australian MTV awards

Jack's not even a good slacker MC! Marred the whole show. The interstitials were a little stretched out also. Actually the Osbourne circus is a little tired now, and bringing it to Australia does it no favours. And Carmen Electra could learn a thing or two from the talent in the Golden G-String competition at the Oxford Tavern. She wouldn't qualify for the quarter-finals. And that's after adjusting for what's acceptable on late night TV!

The toolbar war begins

Google has announced a new toolbar feature that adds links to content. The soft-sell is that it's improving user's browsing experience by, amongst other things, adding links from ISBNs in websites to books elsewhere. Seems innocent enough, even handy. And from the company who has bought us the amazing search engine and the incredible webmail, it must be good, right? Well the new toolbar development is, as Dave Winer points out, a very questionable step. Here are some problems:

• Other toolbar developers will doubtless add similar features to their own toolbars and may compete in adding links to the same content. When (not if) Yahoo releases an autolink feature, and it attempts to link the same content as the Google toolbar, which one wins? And how?
• The technology could be applied indiscriminately and inappropriately. What's to stop the technology being used to add unwanted links to a poem in Jacket, a story in the Herald, some content in the Cancer Council site.
• Content owners lose control over how their content is linked. Which is what makes the final two points real stinkers:
• Google sets the link destinations.
• Google makes money out of the links. But content owners don't.

So it's easy to see it as a destabilising intervention in browsing, rather than an value-adding aid. It represents a big challenge to the integrity of the browsing experience both for users and content owners. And it opens a new and unfortunate battlefront in the history of browsing - the toolbar war.

Very curiously Cory Doctorow seems to think it's OK, but I suspect he's just being contrarian since his arguments are fairly underwhelming. Robert Scoble agrees with Winer. And adds some ideas to resolve the impending mash-up of links (well the toolbar is out of the bag). And cowbell is on Doctorow's creative commons case.

So how will you feel if your webpage is a morass of links added by the toolbars. Pretty pissed off, no doubt. Hopefully we won't get there - the absurdity makes it seem unlikely - but this absurd unlikelihood is worth bearing in mind when assessing the future promised by this technology.

***

And this is from the company whose mantra is "don't be evil". Well after my IPO I may do unscrupulous things too. Till then my motto is "don't use tricksy toolbars".

Common as Wiggins

Adrian Wiggins :: Writing is now under a Creative Commons license. This may seem a little self-agrand, thinking so highly on one's work that I am prepared to offer a license for its distribution. Well it means I don't need to die wondering under what terms my works are protected and distributed, and that's a relief. Read the license here. This license means that: "You are free: to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work to make derivative works Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must give the original author credit. Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. " So make me famous by making a song out of this.

Massive crew at AIMIAs

James Mc Parlane lifts some stills from that snazzy video.

Christo fraud spoofed

Perhaps one day that wacky one-trick Christo will retire and wrap his mobility aid in Glad. Until that time I guess I'm relieved there are people in New York who are putting up money to keep him well away from the people in Australia. Here's some excellent work inspired by his tired example.