Liskula to the left, Rosemary to the right, Google stuck in the middle of you

I'm really quite ashamed to make a post about the 'skank' blogger incident but at the heart of the issue is a confounding prospect. In the name of completeness I guess I better paraphrase the back story in order to kindle any debate.

Put simply it is a little name calling between a pair of young ladies that don't particularly like one another, however the precedents set are far more noteworthy. A professional writer summaries everything here, here and here - but read on for my amateur hour version of events.

Way back in January Liskula sued Google under the guise of alleging defamatory comments after somehow coming across a blog that was bad mouthing her on the popular Blogger service hosted by Google.

Liskula then recently won the right by court order to discover the identity of the anonymous blogger who had allegedly posted derogative remarks on the Google hosted blog titled "Shanks in NYC".

Upon discovering that the blogger was an irrelevant person in her life and not a friend or family member Liskula after a little song and dance with the media, dropped her defamation charges.

Now Rosemary, yeah you guessed it the not so anonymous blogger plans to sue Google for $US15 million for breaching her privacy.

First of all I feel a little sad for anyone who suspected family or friends be behind the negative comments but the real issue is around whether or not we should be allowed to remain anonymous. Personally I think the entire anonymity of the web is its current shortfall.

I've been and are a member of a number of online communities in varying capacities and typically the more you know about the participants the more civil people behave. Xbox Live is a perfect example of an excellent service that suffers a snide underside due to the foolishness of a small percentage protected by an epic blanket of anonymity.

Rosemary had an interesting argument though it does dull her original actions in the first place. She claims that before Liskula took the issue to the courts the number of visitors to the allegedly offending blog was likely to be two people - herself and Liskula. Obviously with world media taking an interest in the case the words 'skank' and 'Liskula' are common matches now.

I'd argue that if you are placing it in the public domain that everyone has access to then you should assume that everyone has viewed it. I guess my bugbear is that while the tiff is essentially between Liskula and Rosemary Google have somehow been blamed for the entire fiasco.

I guess its classic tall poppy syndrome and if you are trying to take over the world one web click ad at a time, you're going to get lots of odd ball challenges ...

Farewell Scotty

I've followed the Essendon FC all my life and really love my footy, however I've only been seriously breathing the red and the black for around a decade now. I guess writing it down it seems like a long time but as a percentage its only a third of my life.

While I know of Essendon greats like Tim Watson, Mark 'Bomber' Thompson, and Gary O'Donnell and even recall some of their playing days, I don't have a long standing supporter/player relationship with them.

Scott Lucas on the other hand has always felt like a pillar that helps support the Essendon FC Club as much as a player that makes up the 22. While I'm not arguing that it isn't time for Scotty to hang up the boots it does feel like a changing of the guard. As a supporter who recently experienced* his first ever change in coach at the ripe old age of 29 its hard not to look back fondly on such a great career.

Maybe its because Scott and I are practically the same age, maybe its because Scott was always such an easy target for opposition supporter to get stuck in to. Whatever the reason I've always had a soft spot for the big left footed number 25. While his greatest strength was also his most notable weakness. It never got old watching him wheel around on to his left side by any means possible, and hoisting a long long goal through the big sticks.

His last quarter in 2007 against a finals bound West Coast Eagles in the Hird/Sheedy farewell match was maybe the most dominate quarter of football from a forward I've ever witnessed. Whilst I believe it took Lucas 10 years of consistently improving football to produce his best, it was simply spectacular. Not many players in our great game can claim a club best and fairest from both Centre Half Back and Centre Half Forward in varying years.

If I had one criticism to aim at the man, it would be simply why does he only have three daughters? You'll have plenty of time on your hands Scotty its time to produce a heir ...

fun-ote 02

"With women, I've learned it's better to beg for forgiveness rather than to ask permission" - Anthony Lapaglia"

This got a snort out of me in a very truthful article by Hollywood success Anthony Lapaglia

fun-ote 01

"Spanning Sync requires Mac OS X. For our Windows friends, we recommend you get a Mac! - http://spanningsync.com"

I came across this gem when searching for a way to synchronise my iCal and Google calendars. It made me laugh

A new idea and an old one amended

It is blatantly obvious that I’m new to blogging and I’d be foolish to think that everything I write is interesting to everyone. I do hope on the odd occasion something I write is appealing to someone.

Earlier in the piece I announced a regular feature that I titled ‘ponder this’ and committed to weekly contributions that for a fortnight I upheld. Sadly I’ve been short on ponderings lately but rather than scrap the feature I’m going to back down from the weekly commitment opting to instead post them if and when they spring to mind.

In addition to the ‘ponder this’ feature I’ve also decided on another regular segment. It is funny that I refer to it like a column piece or regular portion of a live television show but the term seems fitting so I’m going to continue the analogy.

With the rise in digital communities face to face communication is often emulated among participants with a range of pseudo standard textual abbreviations or expressions. While the most common might be the humble another dominate abbreviation is lol. Expressed in increasingly more forms my latest regular feature wants to play homage to the idea of laughing out loud.

Fun-otes will be random pieces of text I’ve read somewhere during the week that pry an audibly affectionate sound from my stone interior. Obviously the love child of Funny Quotes I hope they spread a little mirth to any who stumble across them ...

Two coffee's in one day

As a Thirties something that has been working as a software developer and IT Consultant for nearly a decade I'm somewhat a freak of nature. I can't put my finger on why and in the end I even took it as a badge of difference, but I never acquired the taste for coffee or tea. Whilst unheard of in my industry it is even more astonishing given the Melbourne Cafe scene.

After a number of situations over the past month or so I've decided that while its a quirky conversation point for 15 seconds it might actually be a professional deficiency. A hot drink with a new acquaintance is the de facto professional ice breaker. A meeting over a coffee allows people to relax and get to the point of the matter rather than skirt around the issue with awkward formalities.

A project I've recently joint also has it as a staple morning tradition. In an organisation where your overall worth is in direct proportion to the strength of your personal network of colleagues its career suicide to neglect attending these informal peer bonding sessions.

It is with this in mind that at the ripe old age of 30 I'm bucking the tread of my brethren and instead of cutting back on my coffee intake I'm planning to ramp it up. I've taken the girls blouse approach with a mocha in the morning, however at a recent company social dinner I even manager a weak caffe latte at the end of the three course meal with my dessert notching my first ever dual cuppa day!

Combining my current aspirations to improve my golf game - a work in progress a blog post or two on there own - with my will to socially and professionally drink coffee, all I need to master now is public speaking and delegation and I've got management written all over my forehead ;-)

A final word or warning to the newer coffee drinkers among us, "If it's gone cold but only a mouthful remains, don't do it, it's not worth it, throw it out!"

All I need to do know is master the lingo a world in itself ...

AFL Ladder OpenSocial Gadget

It has been a week since I finished developing the first version of my AFL Ladder Gadget. A full round of games have been won, lost and drawn and like clock work the ladder is still up to date. I know it may not look like much but its doing a fair bit or work behind the scenes. Parsing an xml document of the ladder and then rearranging the data into the html table you see on the side pane.

It's uses the OpenSocial Gadget API and is hosted on my MobileMe site. Gadgets are written in a module language using XML that wraps HTML and JavaScript. Sites such as iGoogle, orkut and you guessed it blogger are all containers that support OpenSocial gadgets.

I'm yet to decide if I will submit my gadget to Google and need to make a few tweaks here and there before I do regardless.

For anyone who is interested in using it on their own site please get in contact with me and I can provide the existing url or the code base if you'd like to host it yourself.

Go Dons ...

A change in mentality

I’ve had a blogging revelation over the last few days on the back of needing to research and learn a new technology. Traditionally with this blog along with emails that I scribe I try for interesting titles or subject lines. I’ll often take an extra minute to link the subject with the body sometimes utilising a subtle undertone - for example last week I used the Swedish translation of a Willie Nelson song title -though in fairness this is as extreme as I’d go. Another perfect example of this is my review on two of the DigiDNA products in July. I titled my post “Thank-you DigiDNA” where “FileAid \ DiskAid Review” would be more appropriate.

The revelation is around relevance and keyword searches, it is about how we filter the inter web for useful information. If I’m looking to buy a new gizmo or trying to configure a specific product to collaborate with another product my search engine keywords will be very specific to that task. A Google search for “Thank-you DigiDNA” had by blog third in the results list yet on a subsequent search for “FileAid Review” I didn’t even make the first five pages. If I ever want to help a fellow web surfer with any of my brilliant life observations then I need to maximise the likeliness of my blog being offered to them as a relevant search result.

So with a little remorse though strengthened with the knowledge that it is for the greater good. I’ll be reverting to the more common practice of clear distinct post names, under the illusion that at some point in the future I’ll write something that is useful to a complete stranger ...

That last day in August

It might be a full month before the regular football fans gets to enjoy finals fever but for footy tragics like myself tonight is the eve the real finals series.

Thats right folks thousand of fantasy football leagues all over the country are gearing up for there first week of finals. Masses of coaches brooding over team selections and tormenting themselves over those last few vital trades.

This year I managed a 66% success rate entering three different types of Fantasy Footy competitions and managing finals in two out of three, even picking up a minor premiership in my Dreamteam league much to my cousins dismay.

Decimated by injuries in both leagues I've patched up the holes as much as I can and need a win in Dreamteam to earn the week off and a win in FootyHero to aviod elimination.

Go those mighty Wolves ...

Today I lost my Vista-inity

As a software developer and gadget lover I typically try and keep myself electronically up to date. It is second nature to periodically check for software upgrades and driver enhancements, and with one exception I feel I do a pretty good job of being across the relevant latest and greatest.

My one exception is no more, as today I lost my Vista-inity!

I’m not sure if it was all the bad press during release, the decision to migrate to Mac OS X at home, or maybe the absence of a compelling reason to switch to Microsoft’s Vista operating system but until today I’d only really observed it from afar.

As I’ve noted before I’m new to my company and have been hired as a Software Consultant. I’m currently working on an internal engagement helping one of the larger project administration teams with some in-house systems. As the role is really only a couple of days I’ve been floating between workstations and today just happen to land on a box with Vista Professional.

I can honestly say after 8 hours experience I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Granted I didn’t have to install the software. Sure a companywide user policy might have set some of the more annoying defaults to manageable settings but all in all my productivity wasn’t affected at all.

I quite liked the Vista Score section under the equivalent to the ‘My Computer’ properties and must confess that the machine I was using wasn’t exactly a slouch scoring pretty reasonably in most categories. I did turn Windows Aero off as I didn’t see a need for the desktop to be that graphically enhanced.

Ironically after I’d finished all my customisations it looked almost like Windows XP ...

Aussie Rules

Just a small post today but one to lay the foundations for many more to come. I'm an Australian and more importantly a Victorian and this implies an inherit language when I talk sport. I won't mention it again but it needed to be said once.

Footy is and always will refer to the great game that is Australian Rules Football. On the odd occasion that I need to talk about other codes I'll call them Rugby, Soccer or Gridiron ...

Adventure to Lake Mountain well everywhere but

I learnt two invaluable lessons yesterday. The first one is that you need snow to ski. The second is you make your own fun.

A group of eight of us decided midweek that a trip to Lake Mountain was worthwhile. Lake Mountain is a popular cross country skiing resort around 90km from Melbourne. For the knowledge curious there is no lake at Lake Mountain, but rather the area was named after ‘George Lake’

It seems yesterday a lake wasn’t the only thing missing as the last solid snow coverage landed a week ago. Conditions had deteriorated to poor tobogganing and snow play and reduced visibility which negated sightseeing. I’d like to thank the honesty of the ski hire attendant at Marysville who winced as he explained to eight potential customers than it wasn’t worth our while.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, we hopped in our rides and headed to a neighbouring town also devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires. The other reason for heading to Lake Mountain was to support the rebuilding communities affected by the fires. Having had breakfast in Marysville, heading to Kinglake was the obvious choice.

It is the second time I’ve headed to the affected area and not having experienced the fires but remembering the weather conditions on the day it is almost impossible to imagine what it would have been like. Kilometres and kilometres of flora and Australian bush show signs of burning but now six months on a plethora of new life has also sprouted everywhere.

Arriving at Kinglake we completed the obligatory stroll down the main drag and settled ourselves in the local wood-fire heated pub. After a couple of quiet frothies, a few games of pool and a hearty lunch we decided it was time to hit up the wineries, so back in a convey formation we rolled out. One boutique and one commercial goliath of a winery with grand views and its own helicopter later we were back in the car heading to Warburton to - you guessed it - the pub for dinner.

So a day of cross country skiing and exercise turned into to a marathon of eating drinking and being merry. At the end of the day, the same amount of fun was had ...

ponder this 02

If your soap is dirty how to you clean it?