2 Wray St

2 Wray St

Originally uploaded by Ben JordanRogers

I took the girls for a walk in Batemans Bay – while we were down there on holidays – started in town and over the bridge and then onto the beach in front of Wray st. A beach that I have fond memories of as a kid – My parents moved to the Bay in 1980 or there abouts after selling their farm. We lived for a couple of years (I think) in a flat attached to my Great Grand Mothers house. This house was at 2 Wray St. My favourite memories of the beach were the thousands of soldier crabs that inhabit it… watching them move across in the beach in waves was always fun as a kid. The beach is also home to a jetty used by oyster farmers, and regularly had oyster punts tied up. My brother and I would venture to its end to admire the boats and dream of riding the river in them. As you can tell from the picture the old house is no longer there – instead replaced by a newly built duplex… still with plastic on the windows and fascia. Its fun to show the kids places like this – and melancholic all at the same time.

The PM’s shiny new blog

So the PM of Australia has a shiny new blog and good upon him – its about time the Govt got serious about engaging with the population online.  The PM’s blog came hot on the heals of the annoucement of the Gov2Taskforce which has been recently been busy finalising its issues paper.

I was initially very excited about the release of the PM’s blog and the site in general which seems to capture a lot of information about how to engage with the prime minister and the govt more generally.  I continue to be enthusiastic about the blog, but after reading through the introduction pages and the comments on the first post about climate change – I have some reservations about the way the blog is being run.  I will caveat at this point that I am not expert blogger – but two things struck me as needing some attention from the team behind the PM’s blog.

The first is the lack of committment around what the government will do with any comments added to the site?

Like Community Cabinet, it is a mechanism aimed at supporting the Government’s commitment to a more accessible, open and transparent way of governing

the above is the limited explaination of the purpose of the blog – it makes nodefinitive statements about input into the site – basically, tell us what you have to say and we may or may not listen to it.

The second has been the lack of interaction in the comments from anyone remotely resembling the owners/creators of the blog, or heaven forbid the PM himself.  For me, normal practice would see the blogger engaging in the conversation in the comments, and while this may not be a practical solution for the PM, surely there is someone at PMC that can be empowered to engage with commentors – if only to help direct the conversation, provide links to supporting material etc.  Instead there appears to be a lot of people talking amongst themselves, 600 comments and counting.

While these two things in and of themselves may not be seen as problems by many, it does give me concern about the longevity and quality of the interaction on the site – if people don’t see it as a effective communication method, to get their points of view heard by the Govt and the PM, then regular folks will stop comming, and you will be left with the trolls, out trolling each other.

Seems like something for the new PM site team to consider, and if they need an example of how to do it – they should look no further then their very own Gov2Taskforce.

no front door

this weekend was “hang the new front door” project weekend – it did not start out that way… but about lunch time Saturday it began with the words – “..well if you really want to do something on the house, why don’t you hang the new front door..” which has been sitting in our bedroom for some months.  Easy right? unfortunately at some point in the violent past our house, the then inmates had managed to break the existing door jam.  

For job then is to replace the door jam – which is a whole other blog post on its own.  Needless to say after several trips to Bunnings - and parting with modest sums of cash – the new door jam was in and so was the door.  The point of this post and there is a point is to wonder of the sudden feelings of anxiety I felt when the door was not secured on the first night – we went to bed with the door resting in the jam and a blanket over the whole lot and some braces holding it in place.  Nothing ever happens in our neighbourhood unless you count the old girl over the road dying as “something” and so the likely hood of someone testing our weakened barriers to entry was remote to say the least – but all the same there was and this did genuinely surprise me a feeling of anxiety.

Interesting the barriers that we errect and rely on to feel comfortable. Oh and yes the offending door

 

Shut down facebook in victoria

Just finished watching Laurel Papworth on sunrise – a breakfast tv show in Australia – heres the link to here blog and the youtube video of the focus piece

http://laurelpapworth.com/australia-me-on-channel-7-sunrise-program/comment-page-1/#comment-2917

The background to the piece, was that there was a court order to suppress information about a suspected arsonist from the recent bushfires that have devastated victoria.  Apparently some of the information about the suspect made it to places like Facebook among others.

So Sunrise pulls in a law talking guy and Laurel to try and canvas both sides of the issue – and the comedy begins – it quickly becomes obvious that the lawyer has completely no idea what he is talking about with respect to the internet when he lays in with inflamatory statements like shut Facebook down for victoria so everyone is in compliance with the court order suppressing information about this poor kid.  Apart from the sheer balls it took to say such a thing – the technical impossibility of the request is simply staggering – what does he think the internet is made of? a bunch of tubes with valves – a different tube for each website with junctions and branches at state and country borders? seriously where do they find these guys. It gave me a really hearty laugh

commonwealth bank hell

I was amazed to hear this story of woe from a friend – that banking service can be this miserable in this day an age  - aside from the obvious stuff ups with lodging of requests etc – the fact that the average branch is not able to close and account on the spot without submitting forms that need to be faxed off to some other department, suggests a serious neglect of the banks computing and administrative  system… what say you commonwealth bank.

events as details by friend – he was attempting to close a standard savings account with approx 10K balance.

—————-

23 Jan – submitted 100% withdrawl request at Manuka Branch 
3 Feb – phoned financial service – replied with no record of withdrawl request 
3 Feb – re-faxed withdrawl request 
3 Feb – re-faxed withdrawl request to alternate number to be sure it got there 
3 Feb – phoned to find out if request was now in system – replied with system down 
3 Feb – phone call from financial services with ref number 1WIN15112087 
3 Feb – phoned to find out if request was now in system – replied with system down 
4 Feb – phoned to find out if request was now in system – quoted ref number – told request denied because signature had changed…to be expected after 10 years – WTF!

Now I have to drag my sorry ass off to the branch with 100 point of ID… 
they got me good… 

———-

remind me never to open an account with one of Australias largest banks

workplant jungle – refuge of the bears

 

I was looking at the shelving that holds my books and folders etc – it was loosely packed with lots of gaps, and my poor spider plant (every offices diehard friend) squished up one end .   I condensed all the other materials and gave the plant some pride of place.  I could tell that the little jungle friends (a couple of ceramic bears) were also happy with the move.  Finally the workplant jungle was getting some recognition and being allowed room to grow and provide better shelter to its tiny inhabitants.

I kinda feel like that plant sometimes – squished on one end of the shelf, making space for a lot of loosely packed material.  There is no one really to blame except myself – sometimes I like it like that – obscurity can be a blessing, but for me in the end recognition is a good thing – and its an even better thing for those that live in my jungle, that live under my canopy – they also benefit when the workplant is given room to grow, and some recognition.  So go on make some room – grow a little

Twitter tales

A couple of brief reflections about twitter – the first is dinner party etiquette.  Let me set the stage for you – We go as a family to another families home (kids go to same school) for dinner.  We are entertained by her while he cooks the dinner and pops in and out the conversation as cooking allows.  During the pre-dinner drinking and conversation, I update twitter and check recent history in the timeline.  It is immediately brought to my attention that I might be doing something rude and could I please stop.

Now rather then seeking validation at this point – I merely wanted to use this situation as an example to explore what changes are coming with respect to social etiquetter surrounding devices that enable access to networks like twitter.  

In some small recess of my brain I did feel like I was perhaps being rude updating twitter during the dinner conversation, but another part and probably the larger part feels that as things like twitter become more mainstream, that people will be or are more willing, depending on their exposure to twitter and the internet in general.

Then again perhaps it has nothing really to do with the exposure to things like twitter and more to do with social etiquette in general – is updating twitter akin to reading paper or magazine while sitting amongst others? Is it on a par with taking a phone call? 

A couple of casual google searches did not return a whole lot of relevant articles or discussions around this topic and I will have to expand it to more general terms to see what I get back.

For those of us that participate regularly (I have only attended a few) social gatherings of people that actively engaged on twitter (call TUB’s) can sometimes involve groups of people getting together just so they can all tweet together – preferring to interact in the medium rather then in real life – this has not been my experience overall, but updating your timeline while in tweeps comany is certainly OK. 

Will updating twitter in polite company ever be ok?

drawings

Up until recently I have not had much time for drawing – a few life changes later, have seen me wanting to take up the pen and pencil in an endeavour for expression that I was not feeling elsewhere… drawing just felt right for some reason.  Its also a great way to bond with my kids – they probably spend an hour a day doing “artwork”, and they seem quite pleased that dad has also taken up the pencil.  

To that end we all now have visual diaries – or sketch books by any other name.  A3, black plastic cover on front and cardboard on back – with sheets and sheets and sheets waiting to be filled with imagination of all different colors.  I bought mine from big W and it is the Derwent or Acco brand - the girls sketchbooks, I bought about a week later, after it was became clear they thought that could make better use of such material then ol’ Dad.  Theirs are Esselte – of which, it is apparently quite difficult to find a direct link to a simple html page with a picture and details etc.    

The paper from the acco is more fibrous to the touch and “feels” thicker while the Esselte paper has more gloss, I can’t say which I prefer if any.

 

chalk work

the picture above is of some chalk drawings Chloe and I did on the front step one lazy sunday morning.  It was about 10:00am in the morning – the sun was out but there was a coolish breeze blowing as is the want of early January in the Canberra region.  Chloe and I used the chalk and watched the world go by – there was something very pieceful about it all.

I can’t say what the drawing will bring – or if it will even continue, for right now it feels like a gentle outlet – time to sit in quiet and contemplate nothing but the pencil in your hand, the feel of the eraser removing errant lines, the scraping of the sharpener – making the lead ready once more, and the complient feeling of the paper as the pencil inscribes my streams of consciousness.  A feeling of peace.

whats in a name? babbagussi

Driving into Canberra the other day – on my way to work that the lovely John Gorton Building I thought of the word babbagussi – after googlin’ it and finding nothing of significance linked to it I decidede that it would make an excellent name for a blog.  After all blogs are all about expressing ourselves in ways which are necessarily unique to ourselves… so why not? I like to say the word as you would  motoguzzi –  except with more of an s sound – kinda like Stussy - well you get the idea anyway.

Welcome and heres hoping I can continue adding value here amongst all the noise of the internet.