Tomorrow is Australia Day, the day when we celebrate the arrival of Europeans on the Australian continent, in a flotilla of eleven rickety boats now forever known as the First Fleet. This fleet is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, on a voyage of 252 days, in 1788, only forty-eight people died on the journey*, thus making the first crop of euro-australians some of the hardest, sturdiest bastards ever to cross an ocean in chains. Think about it. You wouldn't survive that long in an 18th century dinghy now, would you? So anyway, this being...

... what I'm going to say about this. A diver gets chomped, then spat out by a 3m White Pointer Shark (aka Great White Shark, aka fucking JAWS). Eric Nerhus, a 41 year old abalone diver, was happily swimming along when the shark, apparently mistaking him for a seal, grabbed him by the head and attempted to munch on down. Luckily Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw happened to be passing by in their boat the 'Orca' and rescued the man with the help of an air tank and a Lee Enfield rifle... No wait, that's wrong. Nerhus stabbed the shark with...

Humanity is increasingly besieged. Stingrays, Sharks, Octopodes* and now Jellyfish are all making a play for your sweet sweet humanflesh. Twice as many people were stung by jellyfish in 2006 as in the previous year. It's all part of a growing trend among things which live in water, who are increasingly trying to kill us in new and horrifying ways. For more information on venomous marine creatures, see Marine Medic, paying particular attention to the excellent clinical descriptions of Chironex envenomation, and stay out of the water, you fools! And in other news, the Steve Irwin Deathumentary is screening here in Aus...

Yes, I'm totally over procrastinating, and with my usual sensible, measured response to everything I'm starting a crash diet. It's not something I've found online, been advised about or had pushed through the door on a leaflet. It's a slightly mad idea of my own choosing. For the next few weeks, my weekdays will be dominated by fruit-juice, water and Miso Soup, and my weekends will consist of pretty much normal eating. To this end, I've stockpiled instant Miso and juice and I'm attempting to steel myself for the coming famine. I'll adjust the parameters if necessary, but the theme is detox...

My good friend Kirk just sent me this, and while it's passed by my desk before, and it's approaching a year old, I hadn't made time to digest it, let alone blog it, but I'm glad I finally did as the video really crystallises the touch-input game for me. Let me just gear you up for this. Once you watch this video, your perception of computer interfaces will change. Nothing is utterly brand new in the hardware - we have this technology right now. What is different is the non-tangible aspect - the WAY the interface, as Jeff Han says in the video, disappears...

My girlfriend, Esther, works for a little ticketing company here in Sydney called Moshtix. It's a great company, for whom I've done a little work myself. Well, Moshtix has recently been acquired, and the announcement has broken today. It's now coming under the auspices of News Ltd's interactive arm, News Digital Media. Mr Murdoch, I've had some bad things to say about you in the past, but let me just say, now that your company is helping to pay part of my mortgage, well... Nothing has changed. I'm still not going to read the bloody Telegraph. But if there's a staff discount on Foxtel,...

I reinstalled my audio driver the other day and (re)discovered a little gotcha which may catch some people out. Allow me to explain below. My laptop has a Sigmatel C-Major Audio device and runs Windows Vista Business. Out of the box, audio works fine though the speakers. Plug headphones in though, and you may notice no sound coming through, as I did. Why is this? Well, for some reason yet to be discovered, the default state of the driver leaves the headphones option muted in the advanced sound properties dialog. To switch it on, go to control panel, and open the 'sound' applet. In...

I have come to a conclusion, as I often do, which may surprise readers (all three of you). You may be aware of the Toyota Prius, which aside from being the World's Ugliest Car also lays claim to saving-the-world-one-puff-of-CO2-at-a-time super efficiency. Friends, I shall prove to you that this is a myth. My theory is built upon the observation that Prius drivers potter along like they're your bloody granddad. For instance, I personally was stuck in a queue of traffic on a single-lane, no-overtaking, 60kph-limit road for about 4km at 30kph, just a day or two ago. In my car (heavy, diesel-powered 4WD) that meant...

Dear SMH, News Ltd, and other Australian 'news outlets' Can anyone explain to me, please, why every time I go to your websites looking for news, I'm confronted with no-value famewhore spoilt party slut and general waste of oxygen Paris Hilton? What, exactly, has she EVER done that's newsworthy? Anyone? Can anyone answer me? Now, here's what I want. I want your websites to have a little checkbox at the top, which I can click, and which will allow me to immediately and easily filter out ANY mention of rich blonde attention whores and their oh-so-piss-boring lives. If I wanted that shit I'd...

That is, reasons to stay out of the bloody ocean. Today's SMH reports on a 3m+ Crocodile, yes Crocodile, which attacked an of-duty policeman in Torres Strait. And then there's this asshole:  Really, guys, if it lives in water, and it's not already dead and ready to eat, leave it the hell alone.

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has graced the interwebs with his top ten astronomy pictures of 2006. They are phenomenal, as is to be expected from this eye-popping science, and Phil's descriptions, if anything, are just as spectacular. My particular favourite sits at number five in the list - a shot from the earth's surface of the ISS and the Space Shuttle Atlantis passing in front of the sun. The photographer's site explains more, but also makes it abundantly clear I shouldn't post the image here. Snippet of choice: The shot was taken at a shutter speed of 1/8000th of a...

[found via Pharyngula] Yes, that's a 4.5m Pacific Giant Octopus. A phenomenal sight to behold I have no doubt, But I can't help thinking of It Came From Beneath the Sea. Nature is a wonderful thing but if it lives in the sea and is big enough/poisonous enough/dangerous enough to do me some serious harm, you can keep it. Really. In other news: Stingray! Stingray! (tadada dada!)

I've mentioned at least once before on this site that MySpace, in my considered opinion, is little more than a massive clusterfuck of window licking illiterates attempting to pat each others' backs while getting their own backs thoroughly scratched. Well, this article takes me some way towards a feeling of satisfaction, to know that MySpace's jabbering masses were so comprehensively fucked over. The only downer to the story is that the mouthbreathers still haven't figured out how it happened, and, seemingly, neither have their enablers. Good old News Corp, displaying Goatse for the edification of millions. Gives one a warm feeling inside. The...

I managed to score tickets to the first day of the Sydney test yesterday, and despite a wet start to the day we got a full day of cricket and some reasonable pictures. We were quite a way back in the cheap seats, so a long lens (40-150mm) was needed for much of it and there were quite a few obstructions. Still, the ashes gallery shows that I got some decent ones, the plum being the shot above of Bell's fall of wicket from way back at the rear of the stand. It cropped down fairly well considering, though the fast ISO...