Looking for: omens

About 200 metres from The Lodge (official but generally unused residence of the Prime Miniature of Australia) there is a stench that will "outlast religion" (thanks to Kenny for that one)

It's the smell of death - in particular a road-killed kangaroo that's been there for a few weeks now - and even though it's a rancid thing to ride past every day at my 15 or 16kmh (it's on a slope), I've been able to spin the experience by taking it as a sign of the last days of the Howard government.

So okay, we've got the smell of death between John Howard's house and Parliament but beyond that, isn't it a bit of a stretch? Well maybe but hear me out.

A couple of years ago, in a bid to make sure that noone ever made the mistake of not knowing where every last little porkbarrelled government service came from, our Johnny rebadged (at no small expense) every government department with the very prominent Australian coat of arms featuring an emu and a kangaroo.

Interestingly the kangaroo appears on the left of the coat of arms and in a last ditch bid to make himself appealing to "all Australians" (a.k.a the people he promised to govern for in 1996), Howard has been trying to drag his tired old frame to the left - discovering a magic new support for Aboriginal reconciliation, embracing the socialised health system Medicare that he'd previously pledged to "sink the knife into and destroy it for once and for all" and promising to dole out welfare payments (to the middle-class and rich at least) like there's no tomorrow.

Now let me draw a slightly longer bow here just to enhance my point - John Howard is a self-described cricket tragic and you get the feeling that given the chance, he'd probably jump the decaying bones of former Australian cricket captain Don Bradman. Captain is also sometimes known as the skipper and Skippy was a popular 1960's tv show about - you guessed it - a kangaroo.



Given that Howard has managed to drag Labor leader Kevin Rudd to the right, presumably that makes him the emu (if this whole thing is going to work.)

Spooky huh?

(I really have a lot of time to think about crap on my morning bike ride :)

Exploring: My bookcase (Part 3)

It's been a little while between drinks but here's the latest installment of exploring my bookcase. (Ta daaaa)

Talking about drinks, Last Drinks is a cracker of a read from one of Oz's most interesting authors of recent years, Andrew McGahan. He kicked off with Praise, the epitome of northern slackerdom, in 1992 which was made into a beautifully bleak film in 2000 with a soundtrack by Dirty 3. Moved on to an equally impressive followup in 1995 with the book 1988, a tale of two lads manning an isolated weather station in the Top End.

He's also written a historical saga type thing set on a crumbling Queensland farm (White Earth) and a crackingly funny and biting action satire of Australia in The War Against Terror in Underground. (Download a sample chapter here - it's well worth it)


Last Drinks is in another category again - much more the old-school crime/detective type novel. This is the cover blurb

It's a decade since the infamous Inquiry into corruption tore the state of Queensland apart. But for George Verney, disgraced journalist and bit-player in the great scandals of his day, the Inquiry has never quite finished. After ten years of self-imposed exile, drawn by the terrible death of a man who was his friend, he reluctantly returns to Brisbane, the city of his downfall. In a town he no longer recognises and through an underworld that has forgotten him, George must seek out the other hidden survivors of his times, to confront the truth about their common past, and to find a way to let the dead rest in peace.

There's not really much to say about this book - I really enjoyed it - I enjoyed it's use of language, the vibe it set, learning more about the sleazier parts of Brisbane and just generally getting drawn in to a cracking story.





The next two books, I have to admit, I haven't gotten around to reading yet. I'm not even 100% sure where they came from - probably borrowed though I have a recollection of gathering up a few books from a pile left on a nature strip in one of the "nice" suburbs of Sydney which is where I think the Kate Grenville might have come from.

I haven't read anything by these authors either, though I did see a half-decent stalker/relationship movie based on an Ian McEwan book (Enduring Love) which was interesting enough.

The next four books are parts 3-6 of the Harry Potter series (septilogy?). You may have heard of these books, I'm not sure - they're about a boy wizard, his wand and his relationship with his gay headmaster. :)



On top of these books is the manual for my Samsung Z140 mobile phone - a very generous gift from my friend Buj - who preferred to keep her current phone when she changed plans and they threw in a freeby upgrade.

I like a good manual when I get a new toy - uh, device. I'll go through it cover to cover and play with every feature and function and then promptly forget about 90% of them.



To the right of this is the travel scrabble - I love a good word game, particularly one with tiny tiny pieces that stick together magnetically

Finally, we have the badminton shuttlecocks. Badminton is a great game (generally a bit crap outside if there's more than a skerrick of wind) - it's fast, requires a certain finesse and involves things flying about.

It's just a little unfortunate that the equipment has such an odd name (which appeals to my slightly juvenile side). Wikipedia (I suspect I came across it in between better edits) doesn't really help here -

The name shuttlecock is frequently shortened to shuttle. The abbreviation cock is rarely used except in a jocular sense, due to its vulgar connotations. The "shuttle" part of the name was probably derived from its back-and-forth motion during the game, resembling the shuttle of a loom; the "cock" part of the name was probably derived from the resemblance of the feathers to a bird's cock.

Listening: Muyngarnbi - Songs from Walking with Spirits

My friend Jerry put me on to this fairly unusual cd when he came back from one of his many trips to the top end a couple of weeks back - it's a kind of fusion thing featuring "western" instrumentals with Aboriginal singing.

The blurb on the Skinnyfish music website (where you can also listen to one of the tracks) has this to say:

Producers Tom E. Lewis and Michael Hohnen have brought together the songs senior songmen in a ground breaking stylistic development, in which the songmen have relinquished their didjeridu to work with gypsy, rhumba, jazz and rock influences that provide a dynamic contemporary platform for traditional formats.

I'm not sure exactly what the relationship is but it appears to have something to do with the Walking with Spirits arts festival, which is held in June up at the Mulkgulumbu (Beswick) Falls






Looks like a pretty cool event.

As for the music, I have to say that it's some of the most intriguing stuff I've ever heard. The vocals have a kind of alien (yet familiar), primal quality that's a little hypnotic at times. Sometimes it meshes perfectly with the more familiar instrumental sounds, sometimes it completely overwhelms it - and can be hard to take in. There's a wide range of instrumental styles on the album - my knowledge of the vocal styles is a little more scant but these seem to shift from track to track as well.

Definitely a grower - but engaging right from the beginning.

If you're in Canberra, I'll play a fair few tracks on Lost Highway (2XXfm - 98.3) on Thursday night (9.30 to 11pm)

Considering: fake news comedy for the radio show

The routine of doing the radio show has been getting to me a little of late - play a few tracks, read a few community announcements, play the same promo packages week in & out, do the weather , cross to the BBC world news and so on - it's all a little same same to be honest.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking about packing it in, I've just been getting a little stale.

So last night I tossed in my own news story at the end of the news break - it didn't come out exactly as well as I'd planned it in my head and so I backtracked almost as soon as I'd finished (according to the PC), basically saying that it hadn't gone as well as I'd meant (which really is something that I need to stop doing - people can make up their own minds as to how good something like that is).

It went something like this:

And turning to local news, Prime Minister John Howard today announced that if re-elected, he will give every little girl in Australia a pony.

Just a little throwaway line for amusement's sake but I'm thinking that this could be a good way to bring a little more fun to the show - maybe one of these or a fake community announcement (always read deadpan) in each talking break.

I had been thinking that I'd like to get a serialised radio play going but that's a much bigger endeavour.

Anyways, if there's anyone out there who fancies their wit, feel free to leave any suggestions for "stories" in here and I'll read it out. (legal stuff allowing, of course)

Considering: learning to type Dvorak

Dvorak is a layout for keyboard keys that was devised in the 1930s by Dr Augustus Dvorak as an alternative to the traditional Qwerty layout. (Look at your keyboard now, see how the top row spells out qwerty)



I came across this really nifty webcomic the other day at dvzine.org that tells the whole story of the Dvorak layout and how the original Qwerty one came about and all the good reasons for making the switch. (Unfortunately, the dvzine site appears to have exceeded their bandwidth allowance for the moment after being mentioned in Boing Boing but I'm sure if you check in a little while it'll be back up)

Anyway, in essence, the Dvorak layout came about as a more efficient way of typing.
(Apparently the top row of the Qwerty layout was designed to have all the letters of the word "typewriter" to make life easier for typewriter salesmen in the 19th century)

These are just a few of the advantages (thanks Wikipedia):

* Letters should be typed by alternating between hands.
* For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers.
* The least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.
* The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.
* digraphs should not be typed with adjacent fingers.
* Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that, for many people, when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.

Evidently as it makes your typing more efficient, you can become faster and cut down on RSI as well. Still, it's a whole new system to learn, so I'm a little undecided right now.

There are settings in Windows, Mac OS and Linux that allow you to change the keyboard layout (which, come to think of it would just be a good prank generally - if you were of such a mischievous nature) but you'd still want to do something about the physical letters on the keyboard if you aren't a super touch-typist.

Maybe I'll see how easy it is to swap the keys around and what kind of online tutorials are available.