I had to stop at a servo today to get some milk, and the conversation with the guy behind the till goes like this:

Ya lose a bet?

Gee, haven’t heard that one for a while.

No, your hair’s blue. What’s the occasion?

It’s always blue.

Wow, what does your boss say?

I’m the boss.

[ laughs ] Here ya go mate, have a good day!

…

Of course it depends on the part of town. In Newtown for example, nobody bats an eyelid, and if they do, it’s ’cause they’re thinking…

Geez, all the same colour, why would you bother?

Anyway, if you bump into someone with coloured hair, and you think you have a classic opening line which will cause them to fall to the floor instantly and die in pain from the hilarity of your sharpened wit, think again, because we’ve heard them all before. Here’s the top openers for males:

• You lose a bet?
• What’s the occasion?
• Who are you going for?
• Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!
• How about them blues last night! (insert sporting team here)
• You clean the toilet yesterday?
• Why’d you colour your hair blue?
• Dickhead!

Degrading sure, but most neanderthals tend to leave you alone if you then spit back at them:

Yeah mate, chicks get off on it.

And accordingly, the truth hurts when the top openers for women are:

• Hey, love your hair!
• What a great blue!
• Didn’t you used to have red?
• I wish I could do that!
• Which blue is that?
• Where’d you get that blue?
• Can I come home with you, and have your children?

Well, I made that last one up, but it’s the thought that counts.

Caterina told peterme to…

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

What a great idea. Blogs are in a way about self discovery, and what better way to discover yourself than to ponder over text taken completely out of context. I looked forward to the challenge.

I grabbed the nearest book I could find, and embarassingly Extreme Programming Installed only had three sentences on page 23. Caterina wasn’t too clear on what to do when there’s no fifth sentence, or even no fourth sentence, so I made an educated guess, and decided that books in this category are in fact anomalies and therefore invalid.

However, there was a diagram at the bottom of page 23, of a book with the title User Stories, which was an interesting coincidence, because the next nearest book was the classic Writing Effective Use Cases by Alistair Cockburn. Page 23, sentence 5 is…

Let’s first look at a use case purely in the way it captures interactions between actors with goals.

Uhuh… I was waiting for the penny to drop. Technically, sure, the classic definition of a use case, but I wasn’t picking up any particular personal insight. It seemed all pretty superficial to be honest.

So I figured perhaps the problem was that it was not a complete digression from the original book which didn’t have a 5th sentence, which means that it was, in a relational and perhaps philosphical kind of way, the same book. I tossed aside Cockburn.

At this stage I started to wonder whether relevency, or in fact irrelevancy if you like, was important. I mean the nearest and next nearest books would most likely be related in some way, certainly if they weren’t on the shelf at the time. So, seeking randomness, perhaps somewhat ironically reflecting life, I skipped the next 14 books, and grabbed the 17th nearest, which was actually the first on this particular bookshelf. I figured that this would accurately reflect Caterina’s original intention, and quickly thumbed through to page 23.

Page 23, sentence 5 of the classic Unified Modeling Language User Guide, by Booch, Rumbaugh and Jacobson says… well that’s where I started to have problems. Not only was the first sentence actually the end of a sentence from the previous page, but I wasn’t sure whether bullet lists and headings actually counted as sentences. I decided that this was an extremely rare case, and that I’d be best off ignoring the problem for now, and grabbing the next book instead.

The 18th nearest book, page 23, sentence 5 says…

For more details, see the subsequent chapters that outline the UML semantic views, as well as the detailed reference material in the encyclopedia chapter.

About the only insight that gave me, was that for The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual, Rumbaugh must have done much of the work, because the authors are now listed as Rumbaugh, Jacobson and Booch. Interesting, perhaps even amusing, but not in the least particularly relevant to the metaphorical road to self discovery. I mean, it’s not even a closed off culdesac hidden at the back of the self discovery street directory. It took me a few minutes to realise that my bookshelf was sorted by technology, with a subhierarchy of author surname. Again, a logical ordering would seem to contradict Caterina’s original intention.

I left what I effectionately call “the work room”, and went to the lounge bookcase. Although Caterina’s requirements weren’t exactly clear, I grabbed the nearest book to my right hand, assuming that distance would in this particular case be the appropriate objective measure of nearness, and would probably be measured between the two points of contact between me and the book.

Rough Magic, A Biography of Sylvia Plath, while not technically a novel, isn’t exactly a reference book either, so I turned to page 23, and found that old classic sentence breaking across a page again. I knew I should have clarified that the first time, because then I wouldn’t have had to choose between the two classics:

Still, Sylvia cried on the day Aurelia left.

…and…

On April 27, 1935, Aurelia traveled back across the harbor into Boston, checked into Jamaica Plain’s Faulkner Hospital, and, after going into labor, gave birth — again three weeks early — to a boy, whom she and Otto named Warren Joseph.

I put Sylvia back on the shelf, and decided that by sentence, while the technical, and most useful in this context, definition would be a complete sentence with a beginning middle and end, that a spanning sentence is in some way still in fact a sentence. I instead grabbed Dibs: In Search of Self, by Virginia Axline, and turned to page 23. Counting the spanning sentence, which by the fact that it is called a sentence, is still considered a sentence, I read out sentence number 5.

Life, for him, was a grim business.

Indeed.

Due to the fabulous technology available to us in this modern age, I regularly synchronise information between home and work via the habitat that is email (I’d hyperlink link the research paper, but I’ve lost it). I just love trawling through those extra emails I get from myself each day, letting them clog my inbox, and forcing me to disconnect and reconnect my thought patterns while in a completely disparate environment and usage context. Well, I don’t really, but an ex-girlfriend once told me that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit, supposedly paraphrasing Shakespeare, so who am I to deprive her of a degree of satisfaction. Although, I couldn’t find any trace of him ever saying it, and she’s the one with a masters in English lit. It would be ironic if irony weren’t supposedly the highest form of wit, which would of course render her claim rather useless. I prefer witless, but I digress…

So I’m trawling through my emails, and get to this one from a few days ago titled: BITCH ABOUT U.S. ENGLISH IN WORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1. Not sure where the “1” came from, but considering the mood I was in, I probably have a good idea.

OK, so all that just so that I can bitch about U.S. English in Word. Well, U.S. based readers wouldn’t have the problem that we have, in that Australian English is different to U.S. English. Not only is our spelling correct different, like colour, analyse and arsewipe, but so is the use and interpretation of the language.

In Word 2003, at least in the Windows version anyway as the Mac version doesn’t seem to have a problem, any document you write, will have “English (U.S.)” in the status bar. You can click this to change it to the default “English (Aus)” but it typically changes back to U.S. when you least expect it. Sure, you can set it in the Options… dialog, but again, intermittently it will revert back while editing a document. The closest you can get is by selecting all in the current document, and then changing the default to Australian. This will give you at least 15 minutes of writing before Word again starts suggesting U.S. spellings for words.

Now typically we’d write this off as a simple bug, but it has been in every version of Word that I can remember since different language dictionaries were available. You’d think their test team would have picked it up by now.

But not only does Word think that U.S. English is the only English, but I’ve posted here before about how our only Australian dictionary, the Macquarie (which I’m so frustrated with that I refuse to inline hyperlink it), is now pay only.

I guess with Microsoft having analyzed the situation, and the Macquarie sniffing the color of our money, we’re all destined to end up speaking U.S. English. Asswipes.

Updated 17^th June 2004: Due to guilt and high Google traffic, I’ve now provided a solution. Enjoy.

I was speaking with my sister this evening, who wanted to check out my beetroots (yes, we’re a strange family), and she seemed surprised that not only did I have a web site, but putting “kashum zipworld” (my account and ISP names) into Google brought up a whole list of sites, and she wondered how other people could have sites so close to such obscure names. I was flattered she’d even tried to look me up through Google.

Well, I checked out the first page of results, and aside from one that linked to an old version of my wife’s radio show, they’re all either my sites, or pages that link to me. She was stunned when I explained this, and then just happened to mention that I’ve had a personal web site in one form or another since about 1993. (See Old home pages on the left side of this page, for the ones preserved by the ever wonderful archive.org)

Well, she told our folks, and now they’re all wanting to see my site. It’s not like I actually kept it from them, it’s just that back then nobody cared, so I just never mentioned it. I assumed they would have guessed already, considering the work I do.

But what it did remind me of, was that for the majority of the population, a personal web site is still a pretty big deal, and weblogs even bigger again. Sure, millions have them, but we’re still “deep linked” into the IT world, and much of the mainstream population is oblivious to it. Like, who would want a personal web site, right?

Recently, I talked about RSS vs. Atom on my work weblog, and how the personal publishing revolution is about to begin. But to be honest, that’s a blinkered view when it comes to the person on the street who is not into computers or information technology. The big challenge for the revolution, is to provide the world’s population, especially those not at the bleeding edge, access to all the information (opinion, journalism, humour, fiction etc.) they’re interested in, without having to be a geek, or understand what a computer is. Or more specifically, without their brother having to tell them what is possible.

My sister now tells me she’d like to have a go at weblogging, so stay tuned for the lady who makes FNQ news editors weak at the knees, and who has a rather low tolerance, unfortunately much like me, for ineptitude.

Perhaps my own family revolution is about to begin.

Take a look at three of my little beetroots (photo from my miniDV, because nobody has yet donated me a still camera). The one on the right is three days old, while the other two have been sticking their heads up for about a week now. I’ve been vegetarian for about seven years, but recently switched back to letting corporations kill poor defenseless animals for my food, mainly because I’m too stupid to stick to a proper balanced vegetarian diet. It was either me or the animals, and because I’m only human, of course I chose myself. But once these little babies grow up, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat them either. Sure, plants don’t have a brain that we know of, but they still deserve a life on this beautiful planet. What makes them any different? Don’t forget that while human beings are killers at the top of the food chain, almost every other animal on the way down sits atop it’s own killing food chain. Aside from the few carnivorous or poisonous plants out there, how are the flora of Earth going to stake their claim, especially with so much killing going on? If this world were by design, it’s a pretty flawed design. Something to ponder while munching on beetroot.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the introduction of Wonka chocolates over the past few years, but did you know that the brand is owned by Nestlé? Their domain name was registered way back in 1997, and is a play on the great Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I can’t link to because the site uses badly designed frames. Hollywood made a film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which wasn’t too bad considering, although thankfully only Gene Wilder could have played Wonka.

Anyway, not only have Nestlé registered the Wonka name, but have also registered a whole bunch of the confectionaries from the book and film. If ever there were a finer example of a large corporate commoditising and trivialising one of the world’s great childhood fantasies, then I’m yet to hear it. No longer will Wonka® chocolate and the Everlasting Gobstopper® make the hearts and minds of adults remember back to a better time, and once again corporatism has hammered yet another nail in the coffin of childhood dreams and fantasies.

You know what to do, show them you care, by helping to bring them down from being currently the world’s largest food company. But then it depends upon your definition of food, doesn’t it?

So I’m at the checkout for the local supermarket, emphasis on super, waiting to pay for my apple, and I notice the lady in front with a bunch of turkish delights, the Cadbury kind. So the checkout guy’s swiping all her stuff, and gets to the three delights and the empty turkish delight wrapper, which he throws in the bin under the till, and then keeps on swiping. Turkish delight, $1.20, lady’s face, priceless, checkout guy, clueless.

The ABA have decided to cancel the temporary license for Sydney based community TV station C-31. Community media, such as radio and television, are an important independent and alternative voice to the mainstream media. Think of them as a local mini-ABC or SBS. The ABA have granted the UHF 31 permanent license to TVS (Television Sydney), an organisation of academic institutions, including AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School), who while having extensive television background, have never been involved in community television. Meanwhile, C-31 will be forced off air for 8 months until TVS are up and running. Here’s a SMH story about the cancellation which leans slightly towards C-31, written by UTS journalism student Sunanda Creagh.

While C-31 have done a fair job holding the frequency for these past however many years, perhaps it is time we started to take community television seriously. I’m not saying that an AFTRS affiliated group is the best way to go, but it must be a step forward from C-31 whose web site was last updated in 1995, or you can go to their non-existent…

much more official-looking CTS home page

There is also a transitional 1996 CAT TV web site, which points you to the correct non-existent web site.

In a 4 September 2003 response to the ABA, C-31 explained their lack of minutes for the past 4 years (Q2.2), no clear program approval policy (Q2.3/Q2.10), and inequality in voting rights (Q2.4), amongst others. I’m not sure who to blame, but the members should be up in arms about not just failing to get a license, but their board failing to meet a number of minimum requirements for the existence of a community based group.

Community television in Australia has had a long history, but until now, the ABA haven’t assigned or taken seriously, the need for a permanent and professional looking community television station. OptusVision came close, when as part of their cable license, Optus were required to fund a community cable station, which was run in-house. Unfortunately it went under with Optus cable.

In Melbourne, in what has seemed to be a succession of channel 31 groups over the last two decades, there is Channel 31, who have a fucked up frames and tables based web site, minimum fixed width 740 pixels, some weird gif animation wasting 70% of their screen real estate, and it gets worse when you try to click on something. Sure, it’s a community group, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be a little more professional about it.

In August 2002, FACTS (Federation of Australian Commericial Television Stations), now called CTVA (Commercial Television Australia), complained to the ABA, about C-31 in Sydney and Melbourne selling airtime to RTV (Renaissance TV), community television for the 50+ age group. The ABA replied that community television didn’t come under the commercial regulations violated by the complaint, but at least the commercial stations are taking notice.

For more information, check out the ABA’s Community licenses page, or you can view the actual license applications on their Sydney community TV applications page.

Community radio and television. You don’t have to listen to it, but it is important for your right to freedom of expression that you at least support it.

In mid-2003, U.S. company Deckers started selling australian ugg boots, under the name UGG Australia. The boots are supplied through a company of the same name, whose domain name is owned by Teva Sandals, another U.S. company.

The ugg boots themselves are apparently being made in China, as are those sold locally (here in Australia) by Myer (don’t get me started on their stupid name change from Grace Bros.). The problem is the 30 odd Australia businesses which have been hand making and selling ugg boots for the last 60 years, and are now selling them on the Internet. Deckers are suing companies using the name “ugg”, when you can’t even get “UGG Australia” boots in Australia (Deckers don’t exist here).

This Sydney Morning Herald article covers the full story, including how local manufacturers are being thrown off eBay because Deckers sees it as trademark infringement.

Ugg is a generic term that Australians and Australian businesses have been using for decades. When a U.S. company with no presence in Australia, trademarks our own language and forceably damages our local industry, something must be done.

To quote the Deckers web site:

UGG is a line of authentic sheepskin footwear, popularized in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. These sheepskin boots, slippers and other footwear styles have high-grade sheepskin linings which act as a natural insulator, keeping feet warm and comfortable.

“…and can no longer be sold or promoted in Australia, because it affects our bottom line.”

Think global, act local. Buy our local product, and tell Deckers what you think about their bottom line. (We have three pairs of boots in our house, proudly Australian made)

Note: As of January 2006, the term has been finally removed again from the Australian Trademark Registry. For more information on why, and the dodgey and deceptive marketing practices of U.S. companies Deckers and Ugg Australia, please see the Wikipedia entry for ugg boots under the section Trademark controversy.

Also please note that I think some of the negative comments below are from competitors trying to trash other retailers. There are a LOT of ugg boots sellers in Australia, and it’s a competitive market, so don’t use this blog as a recommendation for or against any particular retailer.

Since 1981, the Macquarie Dictionary has been the definitive dictionary of Australia English. Since early 2003, they no longer provide a free web based interface, meaning that everyone I know who used this great Australian dictionary, now uses the American English based www.dictionary.com. Good to see the Macquarie folks not just throwing away their support of everyday Australian English in favour of purely academic pursuits, which is of course their right, but by defaulting on a free public service, they are actively forcing the rapid decline, and perhaps ultimate death, of Australian English. It takes smart academics indeed, to do themselves out of jobs.