jamezpolley.com

James: heh

James: I think i need to leave work

James: I tried to compile a word document

James: using the C# compiler when I had finished editing it

(no, not *this* James, a different one)

It’s always astonishing when you realise something you’d taken for granted as being the way the world works is actually a cultually-biased assumption.

Take for instance this blog post, which I just read:

Oh my gawd…I just found out how easy it is for people to track you down here in Australia. Call came in from TNT Singapore. Parcel to be delivered to me (from whom I do not know), but apparently sender did not leave any of my contact details. So TNT Australia got their counterparts in Singapore to get hold of me. And how do they do that? WHITE PAGES!!!! This is damn freaky! Your surname, initial, phone number and address’ all listed there. FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE. Where the hell’s my privacy??

Umm. Really? My mind still goes into shock every time I try to understand how anyone could consider the white pages to be a violation of privacy. Obviously this is because it’s something I’ve grown up with..

Wow.

St.Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

Originally uploaded by ZaksterNT.

wow.

I *think* it’s an HDR, but whether it is or not, it’s damn impressive.

is Big Bash

That is all. This line is only added to bring me over my 10-word minimum.

So, dmiessler apparently tagged me – although, if it wasn’t for google’s blog alerts + the cache, I wouldn’t know. Right now, dmiessler.com is taking me to reddit…

So, I have to pick 5 favorite feeds? Hrm… Let’s see what gReader says:

From your 221 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 5,875 items, starred 10 items, and shared 114 items.

Guess when I was on holiday….

Hrm.

In no particular order, I’m going to tag:

• gayety.net -
• The Bartlett Diaries – Andrew has to be one of Australia’s best politicians. I don’t always agree with him, but his openness and accessibility is fantastic. He’s one of… no, he’s the only Australian politician I know of who actually does what I’d like all politicians to do.
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life – rapidly replacing Scoble as MS’s chief blogger (at least, in my gReader he’s #1).
• Fag On FOSS – I deny all accusations of nepotism and bias.
• Stilgherrian

  (Yes, I’m still a bit behind – give me another week or two and I might have caught up with the feeds again…)

A long time ago, I was reading a book containing (amongst other things) synopses of ST:DS9 episodes. The author made an observation at one point that the series never made much sense to ver until ve realised that ST:DS9 is in fact two completely seperate series, with common characters and storylines marketed under a single name. The author refers to the episodes which focus on Starfleet and their issues as ST:DS9, as distinct from the episodes that focus on the Bajorans and their issues, which are called Star Trek:Terok Nor.

I’ve lately come to a similar conclusion about Dare Obasanjo and his blog. I used to get confused about the quality of his posts; some are interesting, informative, and useful – for instance, his most recent post, or a post from my birthday about OpenID.

Others, though, are dreck. In posts like these, he goes off in long tirades, completely abandons common sense, and instead parrots the MS company like a good little market-droid.

I’m not confused any more though; I’ve come to the same acceptance of Dare as that author (note to self: must find name of that author) came to with ST:DS9. I now think in terms of the blog having two completely distinct authors, who happen to share some interests and co-brand their posts. The former are written by Dare the blogger, the latter are written by Dare the Voice of Microsoft.

(The pointless wikipedia tirades, in which he tirelessly restates basic facts about Wikipedia as though they were damning criticisms – I’m not sure of they’re written by D:tVoM, or if they come from a third contributor).

Apparently.

A couple of days ago, I found out (via an SMS from Twitter, while I was relaxing in a hot tub) that NIN are encouraging fans to remix one of their songs.

Now I just ran across this article[1] about a viral marketing campaign they’ve been running – and it sounds like not only where they very marketing-savvy, but there were careful to do it in a way that doesn’t cause problems for other people as well.

I’m officially a fan.

Now all I have to do is go find out if they’re music is any good…

[1] Yes, I know I’m about a week late. I’ve been on holiday. I have more fun things to do on holiday than stay current with feeds.