eleventy one

What are hackers really like?

Two earthquakes recently hit Melbourne - events so rare in this place that it sent social networking sites buzzing. The first at 9pm, Friday 6th March of maginitude 4.7 on the Richter scale and the second at 4:30pm, Wednesday 18th March measursing 4.5, both with their epicentre 5kms north-west of Korumburra, in South Gippsland.

The quakes shook the online world too. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were immediately flooded with posts about each quake. Confused people questioned if they were feeling an earthquake, others asked if other people felt it, some people reported houses shaking.  Melbourne Earthquake became a trending topic on Twitter with a thousand posts within the hour each time. Reports didn’t appear in the news media online, until several hours later. The seismology research centre reported the events online (www.seis.com.au) and asks users to report an earthquake they have felt on their website.

Victoria is burning. With the hottest days on record, comes some of the worst bushfires on record. For me this hits close to home, because I have family in Gippsland surrounded by thick smoke from the bushfires. Although I’m watching the fires from safety in Melbourne, the images still get to me. For many years the Gippsland campus of Monash University in the town of Churchill, has been my place of study and work - it has been a home to me. The shock of the fires has spread all over my social websites. People are posting images and videos of fires on many sites.

Fires behind Monash Gippsland

I’ve seen the hills above the Churchill alight with bushfires before, but from my safe distance it seems more shocking to me. Last week Monash setup a makeshift headquaters for firefighters and fire refugees. There’s a collection Youtube videos of the Churchill fires, such as this one shows the town surrounded by the fires, there’s this one which is cute, but still shocking and this one with a dodgey soundtrack. I’ve also been listening to the CFA radio stream online, where you hear things like, “we’ve had reports of an eighty year old grandmother, a father and some kids trapped in a house.” Here’s the CFA incident summary. There’s a good online map here showing all the fires in Victoria.

Fires behind Monash Gippsland

Monash Gippsland (from the Herald Sun website)

A friend of mine found this poster on a toilet door, inside a bar on Chapel St, Melbourne. The hilarity of someone finding a possum and thinking it was a cat, kept us laughing all day, even if we knew it was only a joke.  The speech bubble that says “Help me find my owners”, “Small and Shy” and the emphasised “Not House-Trained” with a sad face, are just gold.

I haven’t called Don yet to tell him he’s found my cat. I have searched the internet to see if anyone else has seen the poster and found a few more different variations of the poster around the internet. My investigation into the cat found phenomenon has uncovered a  trail of posters that have appeared in both Australia and the US. The American version has a picture of a very aggressive looking opossum. Here’s what I found…

Posted on Flickr 1st February 2008, by 20after4. Kearney St, in Springfield, Missouri. “Not very friendly, I think he might be scared.” and “Not Housebroken Either”.

A slight variation was posted on a blog called Addicted to Medblogs, on 6th January 2008, located in Franklin Ave, New York. 

Posted in a blog called SnootyPaws on 18th February 2008. Also posted here, and here. Sydney Rd is in Brunswick, Melbourne. The phone number is an alternative number of the Talking Clock.

This was also posted on GiggleSugar on 3 June 2008 with the caption, “Dude, that’s not a cat”. User jess131288 comments: “it’s a baby brushtail possum for those who don’t know (australian animal). this poster was put up in my suburb, saw it in the local paper:P and there is no owner, because they’re natives Laughing out loud it’s definitely a joke because the first google image for brushtail possum is the one on the poster so they obviously knew it wasn’t a cat :D”

Posted on the Livejournal 4chan community on 5th April 2008. Cat found at Sunset Blvd, Los Angelas. This is very similar to the Kearney St one.

This one was also posted on Flickr, on 11th April 2008, by LadyDoodleBug who says: “A friend of mine sent this to me. I do not know where it was taken or who took it. I am assuming that it was taken somewhere in California only because the poster says the ‘cat’ was found on Sunset BLVD. Not sure if this is real or a joke. Either way its too funny to not post on Flickr. ”

Yes, there is a video! Posted on Youtube on 6th April 2008, by wendysity1 who says: “I’m not sure who the guy in L.A. was who posted the fake ‘Cat Found’ poster but I made one of my own and posted it around Chicago, then filmed peoples’ reactions. Please help me find the owner of this cat!!!”

The most recent post on Flickr, on 15th November 2008, by DiscoWeasel.

It is Sunday tomorrow and I know, through the great art of prescience, that you are not doing anything productive so you may as well come down to this new little market in Brunswick.

There will be laughter, frivolity, vegeburgers and I will be doing a stall there also selling my newest wares…and the regular array of body jewellery.  the address is (at the rear of) 290 Albert St, Brunswick

It will be held every 1st and 3rd sunday of the month and tomorrow is kick off…

Heres the map.

And now for some blatant advertising. Check out my new range of tatto style jewellery. i will be selling it all tomorrow. it is all under $30. It can also all be purchase from my website www.jubly-umph.com

See ya there, xo Tasha xo

“Wow!” sums up the exciting blur of fun I had at this year’s Big Day Out - the bands, the people, fun times!

My friends managed to get old of bed up early enough for fresh slap of wake-me-up music from Sparkadia, under the banner of their Aslan-like lion banner. It was only midday when I heard the band that made my day worth every penny - it was boppy Australian band The Grates and their great performer Patience Hodgson.

It felt like the entire crowd migrated to the Green Stage to see newborn stars the Ting Tings. I loved them even though I was so far back I couldn’t hear a thing and still don’t know her name. It was so crowded that people lined the grassy knoll edge of the stage towards the train tracks. Some entertainment was provided by a bogan dressed in a blue wig and an Australian flag, who straddled and humped the audio-mixer tent, encouraged people to throw bottles of water at him, caught a sunscreen bottle and pretended to drink it. Security eventually caught him.

One thing I do regret missing is the Silent Disco. People are given headphones in one particular tent and dance around to the music they hear. Watching from the outside is hilarious because it looks like they’re dancing to nothing.

I missed The Living End, but have seen them at every Big Day Out. Instead I heard the memorable electro-rock sounds of Cut Copy – a total chillax to the max. Then there was the English band Arctic Monkeys, who had the crowd moving crazy to great indie rock. Prodigy finished the night up by calling out to their Melbourne warriors to Smack my bitch up and become a Firestarter.

I’m an old hack when it comes to this music festival, but to me it was better this year. My last adventure at Flemmington was Big Day Out 2005, when I danced my socks off to The Chemical Brothers and System of a Down. This year it was different, because the entire layout of the stages had changed. The redevelopment of the Flemmington Racecourse has opened the area right up with large grassy areas. No longer did I have to squeeze between a tiny gate with hundreds of other people to get from old stadium to the main stages. No longer did we have stinky concrete toilets with huge queues, but instead had clean portables. No longer are the drinking areas located in old no-room-to-move concrete structures, but are in huge outdoor tents – and facing the stage! There were now huge non-drinking tents for people to relax and hide from the sun. There were also huge tents around the eating areas. It’s like they actually care that we don’t want to get sunburnt. They also didn’t want us to die from dehydration – at the main stages they watered the crowd down occasionally with a hose.

All the new prettiness came with a price. It cost $139.50 to get your hands on a ticket this year. This was perhaps because of the over-crowding problems last year. The Big Day Out didn’t even sell out this year, with only 40,000 people instead of the usual fifty thou’. The cost probably cased one of the biggest changes I have seen – the total lack of crazy mohawked punks, emo kids and goths sweating in the shade from black clothing in extreme temperatures. This year the usual attire was Australian flags and bogan wear, because it was Australia Day. Melbourne doesn’t usually get Big Day Out on Australia Day – Sydney usually keeps that day for themselves. For these reasons I’m itching to say what everyone says every year, but now I really mean it – Big Day Out has finally sold out and gone commercial, and perhaps even for the better – oh yes I did!

The crowd also behaved themselves this year, even when half of them were drunk or wasted on drugs. The police didn’t really try hard by putting sniffer dogs in front of the lesser used entrance to catch 17 people. People weren’t even that angry that the Big Day Out only sold Tooheys New beer. The only annoyances were on the trains going out. There were train delays due to vandalised signals. I witnessed a train fight at Flinders and train travellers forced one of the offenders out of the train, but he then smashed a window to try to get at the other guy. After fifteen minutes Connex security showed up and grabbed the guy, but he somehow showed up at Parliament and train travellers forced him away again.

This broken window on an otherwise fine day was counteracted by awesness of fun we had during the day. I’ll always remember the game of fetch we created, by attempting to throw a hat onto heads in the crowd from the beer tent, then when it fell on the ground, people walking past would bring it right back to us with a quizical look on their face, “is this your hat?”

Ok I have a story for you.. It happened a few days ago as i was walking home through St Kilda. I had had a couple of drinks, i will admit to that, and had acquired a violent form of hiccups which, despite being unpleasant was keeping my boyfriends thoroughly amused.

So we stop for an ice cream. The milk bar was dark and dim after the bright glare of the summer evening and we picked our flavours and proceeded to the counter.

Hiccuping violently I got out money to pay for our ice creams. The old greek man behind the counter looked me in the eye.

Without battering an eyelid he said to me.

“You took something out of the fridge”

“yeah” I said “I took an ice cream.”

“No,” he said back to me. “you took something else.”

Have you ever felt that you know you haven’t done anything wrong and yet you still question if you did.

“No, I didn’t take anything else” I said getting panicky. “We just got the ice creams.”

“No” he said, “I saw you. You took something out of the fridge”.

I was upset at this stage. I was drunk, well I had had a few drinks, so I wasn’t thinking as clearly as usual. I began to open my bag to prove my innocence when he murmured “See I cured your hiccups”

My mouth dropped like a cartoon character. I was dumbfounded. The old man’s wife was hollering with laughter as we paid and left.

I was torn between the injustice of the joke and the fact that it did actually cure my hiccups. All I could do was shake my head…

It’s the time of the year when we look back at the year that was. Here is the list of the important people who have died in 2008, who have really touched the lives of us all. Things not listed here include the global economy, which is actually still dying and not yet pronounced dead.

Momofuku Ando (5 March 1910 – 5 January 2007) was the Taiwanese-Japanese founder of Nissin Food Products and invented the world’s first instant noodles and cup noodles. He was dubbed Mr Noodle and The Noodle Papa. Without this man our lives without instant noodles would surely be different. Mi goreng instant noodles are listed in Safeway-Woolworths top ten items bought this year in Melbourne.

Ernest Gary Gygax (27 July 1938 – 4 March 2008) co-created the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson. Gygax’ contribution to nerd life can never be forgotten. After his death hackers at MIT paid tribute to Gynax with a giant 20-sided die.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick brought the film to the screen and after 160 mins, those who have managed to stay awake (or have taken LSD) have said that it is one of the greatest films ever made.

Edward Norton Lorenz (23 May 1917 - 16 April 2008) was an American mathematician who was the father of chaos theory and coined the often misunderstood term ‘butterfly effect’. The flap of the butterfly wing can cause a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events, so if the butterfly didn’t flap it’s wings then we would never realise how freaky Jeff Goldblum could be in Jurassic Park.

Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 – 29 April 2008) was a Swiss scientist who invented the psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). He realised the psychedelic effects of LSD on the mind after accidentally ingesting the drug, then later testing it in larger quantities on himself.

Morgan Sparks (6 July 1916 – 3 May 2008) was the aptly named American engineer who helped invent the microwatt bipolar junction transistor in 1951, a critical step in making transistors usable for every-day electronics. Without transistors there would be none of these new-fangled dvds, computers, blogs or atari consoles.

John Michael Crichton, MD (23 October 1942 – 4 November 2008) was an American author best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. He is most famous as the author of Jurassic Park and its unfortunate sequels.

Richard Peach (1949 - 30 November 2008) was a former ABC news anchor, and the voice of the Australian speaking clock. You can still hear him talking beyond the grave by calling the phone number 1194, “At the third stroke it will be…”

Box Hill was either named after a hill where old boxes were dumped, or a towering construction of boxes which in colonial times became so large that it looked like a hill, but such an unanswerable question matters not (to those who can’t be bothered doing actual research). Box Hill is an Eastern suburb of Melbourne typified by is Asian-ness, because this is what makes this place unique, aside from the more Asian Springvale, but let’s not dwell on that one and keep focus here kids. The population includes a large proportion of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Australians. The Chinese call this suburb ‘bo shi shan’ (博士山) in Mandarin, which unfortunately is not literally a hill of boxes, but is the pronunciation of ‘box’ Chinese-ified, then attached to the word for ‘hill’. This literally translates to something like ‘extensive scholar hill,’ which actually refers to the fine students of Box Hill Tafe.

Inside Centro

The Centro shopping mall is a box-shaped architectural wonder and the focus of what some people might call the multicultural melting pot of Box Hill. Surrounded by the usual generic franchises we see in every other Australian shopping mall are the strange little Chinese shops. There’s the take away food outlets selling pancakes, dumplings, noodles and odd little buns containing custard. There are shops and stalls selling Chinese language books and magazines, as well as Chinese DVDs which are unusually wrapped in plastic instead of professional case – you wouldn’t download a car. There are also some cute two dollar shops such as Everything’s a Goodbuy which is the most hilarious nonsensical pun for a shop name ever.

Korean Oreos

The Asian supermarkets are a major highlight to any visit in this fine mall and make the trip to the eastern suburbs worthwhile, especially for any starving student or backpacker. There’s fresh fruit and vegetables which are actually much cheaper than your major duopoly-supermarkets. Most starving students know that Mi goreng can provide a diet that is not only filling (and lacking any nutrient value), but also very cheap. These supermarkets stock every flavour of Indomie Mi goreng and sell them in boxes for bulk savings. These are of course cheaper than major duopoly-supermarket prices, as are the many, many sauces and packets of flavour-bases. They have a million types of soy sauce and chilli sauce. Whole aisles contain weird dried foods and not even the Chinese know what these dried foods are, until they’re chucked into a hotpot. Some weird Asian products like Wasabi Peas can become very addictive. The best aisle has to be the Asian candy shelves full of funny weird things like Hello Panda, or the delicious Pocky which are savoury sticks covered in chocolate or strawberry, and sometimes even melon, coconut or green tea. Pocky has a knock-off rival called Peppero, but can’t be trumped by Men’s Pocky flavour. A mainstay of Asian candy is the chewy, creamy White Rabbits, but since products containing the toxic melamine have been removed from shelves, it might not reappear for some time.

The Box Hill train station is located under the mall. The train can get to the city in almost twenty minutes if you’re lucky. To find real authentic Chinese dinner go to a Box Hill restaurant outside the mall. The best restaurant can be identified as the one packed full with Chinese people, showing that this is the place to go for good food. Another important sign is the shinny, glazed duck hanging in the window. One last significant product of Box Hill is the bazillion types of international phone cards, which are quite noticeable because their advertising enshrouds entire shop windows, but are probably only really useful when prank-calling the Whitehouse pretending to be the funny supermarket woman – ‘You want bok-choy? I know you want bok choy. Here, now you have bok choy.’

While sitting at home doing nothing, I ask myself the question, ‘Why not create a multi-author blog?’ and a few hours later a blog is born. The tagline explains it all, ‘A blog about books, food, trams and life in suburban Melbourne.’ The title hints to a subtle geekery. Now let us begin our blog with a tale from long ago.

When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Each year the Bagginses had given very lively combined birthday-parties at Bag End; but now it was understood that something quite exceptional was being planned for that autumn. Bilbo was going to be eleventy-one, 111, a rather curious number, and a very respectible age for a hobbit.