You are a unique and beautiful snowflake – just like everyone else.

This is either a joke or the most biased reporting I’ve ever come across. If it’s a joke it’s not funny and if it’s biased reporting it’s so overly biased as to be obvious and thus much less effective. Not that I don’t think Blair’s labour party deserve to be voted out but comparing them to Hilter’s Nazi party is way over the top. For the record, the article appeared on the front page of Google News.

Firmly in the “what were they thinking?” category: two menu were arrested and charged with animal cruelty. What did they do? Kill a live mouse (each) by chewing it. The management of the Exchange Hotel where the incident occurred as part of an organized promotion claim “they knew nothing about it”. I’m the sure the expense claim for a holiday weekend on the Gold Coast (which was to be the prize) wouldn’t require any explanation….

David Starkoff points out this case regarding the provision of adult entertainment on Good Friday. David points out how “ironic (apt, perhaps?)” it is that the Common Prayer Book is pivotal in the final decision. However interesting it may be that:

the Almanac annexed to the Common Prayer Book has been regarded as part of the common law, and in consequence would have been received into Australia as part of the common law (Halsbury, 3rd Edition Vol 15 para 611 and Vol 37 para 133) from my exclusively non-lawyer stand point I would have to pick the following excerpt as the highlight of the document:

Apple has a bug tracking tool called radar and they let any ADC member log bugs into it which they may or may not get around to fixing. They don’t however let anyone outside of Apple view the current bugs in the system. This causes great amounts of flamage on Apple’s java-dev list (and I imagine many of Apple’s other lists as well) about whether or not the list should be open. Every few weeks someone just has to come along and ask how they search the open issues and it starts again. Last time it came up some actual progress was made on the issue. Someone suggested creating a publicly accessible, unofficial bug listing that people could log bugs in, in addition to logging them with Apple, and those bugs would be publicly accessible so that people could find any work arounds that might be available. Of course there are three draw backs to this: 1. People may log the bug just with Apple and not in the 3rd party bug reporter. 2. People may log the bug in the 3rd party reporter and not with Apple. 3. People may see that the bug is already logged in the 3rd party bug reporter and not log it with Apple. Problem 1 is a non-issue. It just means that that particular bug report isn’t publicly available. Too bad, so sad. Problem 2 is a major issue because it means that Apple will never know about the bug and thus never fix it. (Nothing gets done at Apple without a radar issue being created according to the Engineers who’ve commented on the matter) Problem 3 is also a major issue because Apple prioritizes bugs based on how many duplicate reports they get. If people see the bug has already been reported they won’t report it again and Apple will think it’s not important and fix it whenever they get around to it. Obviously the combination of problems 2 and 3 is particularly disastrous. So the question then becomes, how do you create a system that lets people easily log bugs and search for existing bugs while still getting most people to log the bug with Apple? The ideal solution would be to have any bug logged in the public system automatically logged in Apple’s system as well. Existing bugs could have a button that allowed users to log a duplicate bug complete with a reference to the original issue with one click. The trouble with that approach obviously is that it requires access to Apple’s system which I don’t have. I’m not sure they’d appreciate having an automated system screen scraping their bug reporter to log bugs. It also doesn’t encourage people to specifically log their own case and thus can deprive the Apple engineers of that one subtle bit of information that suddenly makes the bug simple to reproduce. It’s probably possible to make the form look just like Apple’s so that it’s a simple matter of copy and paste to log the bug in both systems. A big red notice about how Apple wants to get duplicate bug reports might help alleviate problem 3 but it definitely wouldn’t solve it. All up, I’m just not sure if a publicly available, 3rd party bug database would help or hinder the situation. It would definitely be useful to have a place to go to search for existing work arounds though.

The musical I’ve been writing has now reached “beta” stage. All the scenes are written, pretty much all the lines are written and it really just needs to be reviewed and cleaned up. Like developing software it’s hard to know exactly when to called it finished. I also have the feeling that I get at the end of most software projects: I know it’s not finished yet and I know things need to be improved, but I can’t quite put my finger on what to work on and how to improve it. Essentially, I don’t feel that the script is ready for prime time and while there are some things that I know still need work there’s a lot of stuff that I just feel that I want to improve but don’t know exactly how to go about it. Part of that feeling is actually not knowing exactly how to move from writing the script into actually starting production. Hopefully the same approach I take with software will work with musicals too: do everything that you can work out needs to be done, write done each new thing you find needs to be done as you find it and when you can’t think of anything left to be done, release it. In terms of starting production I think just arranging some auditions would be a good start – finding a venue is another task I know needs to be dealt with and will likely be difficult. I’m sure it will all fall into place.

It looks like I’ll be moving house at the start of July. Just went to check out the new place and it’s a big 5 bedroom house on top of a hill in Mt Gravatt. Almost 270 degree views out over the suburbs (the missing quarter is the city view) and the place is currently being renovated. Still no lease signed but the owner is apparently a friend of one of the guys I’ll be moving in with. The only real concern is that I haven’t actually met this guy, but he comes on the recommendation of my current house mate and that’s proved reliable in the past. Besides, I’m really sick of living in this tiny little unit with two cars and one garage.

JavaScript is one of those odd languages that noone really appreciates the full power of. Mostly that’s because it’s also an awful language that’s hard to get the full power out of, particularly when working with multiple browsers. Still, my work often calls for large amounts of JavaScript hacking.

Some interesting things I’ve learnt lately:

In Safari, if you use window.open(‘file:///Users/aj/file.html’, …) it will either not open the file at all or refuse to execute any JavaScript in the file in the first time the page is loaded (reloading the page causes the javascript to execute). However, if you use window.open(”, …) and then window.location = “file:///Users/aj/file.html”; it works perfectly. Go figure.

Hey, I’ve hit the number one spot on Google again. Ha! In your face Adrian Sutton!

That’s right, I need an instant family – give me the wife and 3 kids special thanks. Why you ask? I’m sick of paying crap loads of taxes so that the government can provide handouts to families. Having a baby? Here have $3000 as well. That’s in addition to the tax cuts. And the extra medicare cover. Now you might argue that families are an expensive proposition and battling families need all the help they can get. I’d agree. However, I’d disagree that the really rich families need a helping hand too – but they get one all the same. Besides, whatever happened to living within your means? I’m all for helping people who wind up in hard times because of things they couldn’t control or at least couldn’t be reasonably expected to control. I really hate being expected to feel sorry for the teenage Mum with a kid and how tough her life is trying to bring up the child alone. Yes it’s tough, yes I know a lot of single teenage mothers, yes they deserve a lot of respect and admiration and yes they deserve and get my help where I can. Yes it is also their fault that they’re in that situation. Unbelievably thousands of men and women, young and old manage to avoid starting a family before they can afford it – why should they be forced to support those people who failed to consider the implications of their actions? For all those people out there who have wound up in a tough situation because the plans you’d made didn’t work out or for those who are in a tough situation and aren’t winging for a government handout or are working to get out of the tough situation themselves: my hats off to you. I have a great deal of respect for that and wish you the best of luck in the future.

I went out to the Cleveland District State High School production of “Back To The 80s” tonight and absolutely loved it. The jokes are bad, the songs are bad, the story-line’s corny, the acting is hammed up and the costumes make every member of the cast look hideously unattractive. What more can you want in a musical about the 80s? I was invited along by Rochelle Wheater who played “Tiffany” the female lead and was particularly interested to see her performance as she’s interested in auditioning for a part in my upcoming musical. She certainly didn’t disappoint though I’d like to hear her sing songs that were better suited to her range, and definitely with a better sound engineer – for most of the musical she came across as a fairly weak voice, however in the final scenes of the musical they managed to find the volume knob and her voice shone through quite impressively. The show however was well and truly stolen by Ross Lambley in the role of “Feargal McFerrin III” – the school geek. Brilliant, just brilliant. The character plays a very minor role in the story line but Lambley’s dynamics and expressionism brought cheers from the audience in response to his every line. Particularly impressive was his bass voice (particularly in the second act). It was used to great affect in Video Killed the Radio Star and that number in particular kick started the audience in non-stop laughter. Other stand outs were the voices of Melissa Copson (“Cyndi”) and Tegan McErlain (unnamed singer number 2). Both girls have wonderful strong voices and really got into the spirit of the songs well. A big commendation must also go to Blake Miles (unnamed singer number 1) who sung very well despite being given songs with a range well beyond what should be expected of an adolescent male (Jitterbug in particular). It’s worth noting that he actually managed to hit the high notes quite accurately but was a little weak on them until the final verse of Jitterbug where he absolutely nailed “that high”. As is often the case in musicals the star of the show “Corey Palmer Jr” (played by Liam Flenady) doesn’t get much of a chance to really excel and is instead relegated to the thankless job of holding the story line together. Flenady did this extremely well and took what few opportunities he had to shine and produced enthusiastic responses from the audience. He was in fact the only actor who managed to actually elicit a groan from the audience at one of the particularly corny lines. You have to see it to see how brilliantly the audience was played. It would definitely be remiss of me not to mention how good the band sounded. It was fantastic to hear a full stage band again and they were extremely tight and sounded great. Overall, it’s one of the best nights out I’ve had in a long time. It is an amateur production, some notes are miss-pitched and at times the acting can seem a little stilted, but that all fits so well into the story line and general feel of the musical that I’d be willing to believe it was deliberate. You do tend to find yourself in shock for the first five or ten minutes as you get used to the style of the musical though but once you’re in the 80s groove and are prepared for the corny jokes, you’ll absolutely love this musical. Of course if you don’t like 80s music or corny jokes, this musical is your worst nightmare. Personally I’m a huge fan of both 80s music and corny jokes so I give it a big two thumbs up. Tomorrow night (Saturday 29 May) is the final performance, tickets are only $10 and are available at the door. If you’re anywhere near Brisbane “do yourself a favor” (to quote a legend of the 80s) and go see it. Heck, give me a yell and I’ll go with you.

Tonights news headlines includes “Terrorist Suspect Granted Bail”. I have no idea about the merits of the case or even what the guy is actually charged with, but I think it’s relieving that people charged with being a terrorist are still eligible for bail in Australia. They don’t seem to be in the US anymore.