Swandives

Human rights. It’s a pretty big deal. It’s one of the reasons journalists are always harping on about The Great Firewall of China, which censors internet content and (in)famously marked the moment when Google went against its corporate values and became evil.

And if the Federal Government has its way, Australia will soon have a great firewall of its own.

At the moment ACMA is trialling an ISP-level filtering system which, ostensibly, is aimed at helping parents protect kids from the more unsavoury aspects of the web. I can understand the challenges parents face in this regard - it’s a bit of a minefield if you’re not technically savvy, and kids generally have it all over mum and dad/gran and pop when it comes to Net nous. The worry, however, is the ‘ISP-level filtering’ aspect.

The problem with the plan currently on trial is what starts out as a mild-mannered idea to save the children ends up as internet policing. It’s not so big a jump to go from this level of filtering to filtering for copyright breaches, for example. It’s known in industry parlance as scope creep. Innocuous enough under normal standards. Far from it when we’re talking about our right to access the internet as an essential service. Call me cynical, but I don’t believe it will stop at saving da kiddies.

Filtering would be mandatory in homes and schools and would be based on a blacklist of prohibited content. The arguments can get quite technical but it boils down to expense, slowing everything down and the potential for sites to be incorrectly filtered.

Electronic Frontiers Australia has set up a campaign webpage at http://nocleanfeed.com. I must admit, I’ve signed the petition. And you can follow all the commentary on Twitter if you’re registered - just search for #nocleanfeed.

Found on YouTube: Footage from the Leeds festival of Adam Hills‘ (from Spicks & Specks on the ABC) standup where he sends his prosthetic leg off crowd surfing while he sits on stage and sings Footloose. Very amusing! A mild warning: the language is understandably colourful, but only if you’re very easily offended.

We’ve moved house and don’t have any internet. I am typing this on my mobile. So this is short and sweet. Am loving the new place. Almost unpacked everything. But I miss my internet. Mobile blogging is no fun.

Randy Pausch, whom I didn’t know but admired greatly as a truly inspiring man, has died from complications from pancreatic cancer.

http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml

UPDATE: The Google homepage is displaying a very classy tribute - a text link to his awesome Last Lecture.

Swandives began as a way to understand the lure of the blog, since at the time I didn’t understand the seeming need to ‘dear diary’ to the masses. I began on LiveJournal, then moved to Blogspot (now Blogger) and graduated to the wonderful Wordpress, which is not only a glorious piece of software, but completely blasts every other content mangament system (proprietary, open source, sophisticated or otherwise) out of the water. Under its glorious influence, I came to understand the power of the blog and indeed enjoy blogging - as somebody who used to write regularly for a living in a very structured, traditional environment, I found it extremely cathartic to write for myself rather than somebody else. This blog is, after all, the ultimate exercise in narcissism.

Perhaps I have come full circle, but I think I’d like to retire from the opinionated rhetoric that is the blogosphere. To be honest, I have come to loathe the officious, holier-than-thou banter that in many cases fails to recognise that it’s not OK to personally attack somebody because they have a different opinion and I recognise the hypocrisy in being part of it. In the end, it’s so bloody pointless. With apologies to the late, great Anthony Newley: stop the web, I want to get off.

I seem to be in a bit of a black hole from which I cannot escape. And I’d like to say, ‘move along please, there’s nothing to see here’ and have it go off on its not-so-merry way. I’m being a drama queen, I know. Don’t worry; I’ll get over it and normal operations will continue, I’m sure.

Some days are better than others. Today wasn’t one of the good ones. I found out that my father has cancer in his lung. I don’t know what kind of cancer it is - he goes into hospital for tests on the 23rd. And to be honest, I don’t really know how I feel. In part because I don’t have all the details. Mum wasn’t going to tell me until they knew for sure, except my sister (quite rightly) said she’d want to know if she was me. I spoke to Dad too, but he was a bit short on details.

I have a headache.

UPDATE 17/12/08: I feel I should add a postscript to this post as it’s pretty dire and in the end it wasn’t cancer! It’s quite a drawn-out story but that’s the good news. The process did uncover other issues that have since overshadowed this post somewhat. It will no doubt become a much bigger issue with time and when it does I’m sure various details will appear here. What is it they say about life not being meant to be easy?

If you’ve ever spent any time around Neutral Bay in Sydney, chances are you have had a least one drunken late night at the Pickled Possum. There’s often a lot of talk about how Sydney lacks funky little bars and I do agree that in that respect, Melbourne has it in spades. But the Pickled Possum is something special. To begin with, it only opens when …well, it seems when they feel like it. It’s grungy amidst the upper North Shore yuppiness. You drink with the owners. And it’s karaoke for goodness sake! It’s also darned good fun, and if you don’t believe me, check out the reviews on Eatability. Without a doubt the best user-generated content around I reckon. Classic stuff.

UPDATE 30/09/2008: It’s has CLOSED! The Pickled Possum is no more. I went past it the other day and it’s in the process of becoming a Thai restaurant or something equally ubiquitous. What a shame!

UPDATE: 23/10/2008: I went past the other day and it’s still good! Woohoo. Open three nights a week from btw 8-8.30pm till late. Great stuff.

Image via WikipediaCue the Twilight Zone music: something weird is happening. I posted a minor rant about my disappointment with Weight Watchers and it mysteriously disappeared. The WW faeries came and took it away - if only they could do the same for the extra 8 kg of lard that’s hanging around right now. But thank you for all your ideas and comments - they’ve been filed away where I will put them to good use.

Yesterday I ran 4 km and then did a pump class. I was a wee bit weary by the end of it all. But I’ve entered the City to Surf so it’s training, here we come. I wasn’t going to enter because with only a few weeks left, it’s unlikely that I’ll get the 14 km even at my snaily pace, but I had a mini epiphany - I don’t actually have to run the entire way. Hell, most people don’t run the entire way. And all of a sudden, the C2S stopped being this painful chore and started being potentially fun. So that’s the plan, anyway.

Of course, this comes in the first year that C2S offers timing chips, so I’ll know exactly how slow I am. I am very happy about the chips and it’s providing extra incentive to train but why in the very year when I decide to be zen about my time and walking? Oh well. There’s always next year.

… in other news, a truly weird moment watching the news on the tele tonight. Actually, I was listening, not watching. It was all about the wildfires in California, which are pretty dire by the sounds of things. Too many fires, not enough resources to fight them all, forcing fire fighters to pick and choose and leave some to burn. The news coverage switched to the obligatory pollie news grab, and all of a sudden I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a state of emergency and ordering the National Guard to assist in the efforts.

It was a surreal moment because my first reaction was to think, “Why doesn’t Arnie just put the fires out?”. He saved the world countless times - he even saved Mars, for goodness sake! A few fires should be a doddle, right? A few moments later common sense kicked in: “D’uh Swannie, this is real life we’re talking about, not some movie.” Oh yeah. Right. Darn.

Sad but true. Here’s a snapshot from Akismet livestats with, gasp, 22 hours to go for the day!

* 6,375,115,334 spams caught so far
* 551,189 so far today
* 89% of all comments are spam

That’s right - 89% of all comments are spam. How awful is that?! Worse is that spam comments obviously work, else that figure wouldn’t be so high. And what I find so malignant about it all is that it drowns out the real conversations. In that respect, spam really does live up to its namesake, a la the Monty Python skit.

Akismet’s tracking shows exponential growth in spam since it began tracking in 2005 and while stats can always be argued (such as the increases in efficiency of weeding out comments since the service began, the level to which the stats are tied to Wordpress and so on), the trend is hard to ignore. Real comments (which Akismet calls ‘ham’) are also growing, but nowhere near spam levels.