Ad for a zoo. Cute.

Have just spent Christmas day with Kathy's Mum & Dad as well as sister and brother in law, not to mention Bosun, the family Cairn terrier. One of the nicest Christmas days I've had since I-can't-remember-when; they well and truly made me feel like part of the family, which, by the end of April in the coming year I will be. Thank you clan Fraser, I'm honoured.

Regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas or not (I prefer to think of it as simply a day to step back and appreciate family and friends), I do hope you've had a special day today too.

Seen at Brisbane domestic airport yesterday. Question is, are they advertising Windows XP or Vista?

Ahem.

	I received 100 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
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There are many, many renditions of this H.G. Wells classic, including a controversy created in 1938 when Orson Welles performed a mischievous radio broadcast that incited widespread alarm as people thought Earth really was being invaded. I think, aside from the book itself, my favourite version is Jeff Wayne's musical version from 1978. You cannot do better than Richard Burton as a narrator with that deep gravely voice, David Essex and the Moody Blues' Justin Hayward also do themselves proud. It originally came out in a double 12" album and featured a book insert with artwork of a quality not often seen before or since. I used to have this as a teenager but gave it away to a friend before moving to Oz. Thankfully Kathy still has both the CD version and the original 12" album with the artwork. She's cool like that. You can see small versions here.

Incidentally, while looking for a scan of the cover I happened upon a nifty site called FreeCovers which looks like an excellent source for these if say you want cover art on your iTunes tracks etc.

Tags: AotW

Up until now, I've been able to have wildcard addressing active on my domain (ie. anything you like before the @) which is handy because you can tag companies so that you know if they sell the address, e.g. microsoftsoldthisaddressthebastards [at] mydomain. Anyways, thanks to email gateway admins like yours truly (for better or worse) starting to rely on sender address verification, spammers are resorting to finding such domains and joe-jobbing them with random sender addresses. Repeatedly. Close on 1000 backscatter emails in the last two days alone. It's ironic in an Alanis Morissette kinda way.

Sigh.

So it looks like I'll need to think about shutting down wildcard addressing and resort to just a handful of addresses. If that happens and you can't figure out my address (hint, it uses my first name before the @ sign) I'll probably put a contact form somewhere here.

Spammers, there is a special circle of hell waiting just for you.

Tags: spammers, diaf

There is no better rally cry than Commander Adama yelling same. So listen up: here and (thanks to Boing Boing) here.

Incidentally if you're a fan, you may want to keep an eye on Beyond the Red Line. Not done much more than kick the tyres on this one (or skids as the case may be) but it's a pretty awesome effort so far.

Well done on Kevin Rudd doing on his first day in office what John Howard never had the nads to do by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, committing Australia to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% by 2050.

Quick question: does this mean our uni is going to have to shed 60% of its academics?

Another icon (overused term as it is), this is the first record (remember kids they're like CDs only bigger!) I ever bought. Actually first-equal with Making Movies by Dire Straits. This album also recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. No, not feeling old at all... The first track, Great Southern Land is often thought of as a shortlist candidate for a real national anthem along with Ganga Jang's Sounds of Then, and Men at Work's Down Under.

Great Southern Land (the track, not the album which is different again) was given a majestic makeover by Iva Davies for the 1999/2000 New Year Eve celebrations on Sydney Harbour. You've never heard taiko drums, a string section, and an electric guitar sound so good together. The studio version was released in 1999, and it's goosebump inducing. Bonus points, much of Ghost of Time forms the soundtrack to Master and Commander.

Tags: AotW

This is a really good overview of The Church's discography. I've linked you to Blurred Crusade here since Almost Yesterday isn't on iTMS and several tracks from this one are on it.

Tags: AotW

This one's interesting. Yes, as the title suggests it's one of those loungie/cafe-ie type collections but there's some really good stuff on this. Most of the tracks are instrumentals or very vocally sparse versions. Which can be a good thing. About the only place I could find so much as a track listing is here. It's worth tracking down though.

Tags: AotW

I liked this phase of their stuff. Tusk, not so much...

Tags: AotW

Yep, been a slack bastard again. Think I owe you four, so here they are all fast'n'furious-like.

Tags: AotW