by cameron | May 1, 2007 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Wow. I just had one of those whooooooo moments, when the world spins. I was reading Brook Turner’s article on George Miller from last week’s Australian Financial Review magazine. Anyone who knows me well knows how much I admire George. MAD MAX and MAD MAX II are obviously the greatest Australian films ever made and two of the greatest films ever made full stop. On top of that, I’ve always admired Miller’s auteurness, the way he has avoided the Hollywood system, followed his own vision, done it his way. That appeals to the rebel in me.
So just imagine when I read these paragraphs in the article:
“Miller’s first big eureka moment came when he attended a lecture by the maverick American thinker and polymath Buckminster Fuller at university in the late sixties.”
And then, a few paragraphs later…
“Miller’s second great epiphany came when he heard the American writer Joseph Campbell speak on a rainy night in Santa Monica after he had made MM (Mad Max).”
Again, anyone who knows me well knows that Joseph Campbell has been a major influence on my thinking for 20 years. And recently I have been obsessed with Fuller. So weird. I also know that my friend Peter Ellyard has been heavily influenced by both of them as well. As, I guess, have lots of people. It’s just weird when you find out that someone you’ve admired for a long time has had very similar influences to yourself. If the article had said he was also a fan of Napoleon, I probably would have choked on my cereal.
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Rage Against the Machine reunites! It might have only been for a one-off concert but we can only hope that the boys will put the band back together. God knows we need them now more than ever. I am a HUGE fan of RAtM. I haven’t heard that kind of anger or genuine passion in music since they left us 7 years ago (can it really be that long??). Even Lou and Bruce can only summon a fraction of the heat and intensity of Zack. And now you do what they told ya….
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I said to a friend of mine today “I was watching a great speech by Vint Cerf today”. The friend replied “Should I know who that is?”.
This person is a webmaster for a pretty big company. When I explained that Vint is the co-inventor of the internet, the friend replied “Does that have anything to do with the term “surfing” the internet?”
Which lead me to think…
Vint Cerf has to be (with Bob Kahn) perhaps the most successful inventor in history, certainly if you measure the success of an inventor as ‘adoption of the invention over time’. Since they invented the internet in 1973, it has grown to over one billion customers. Even Microsoft doesn’t have that many customers. If you stop the average person in the middle of any street anywhere in the world and ask them “Have you heard of the internet?”, I think the response rate will be pretty high, even if they aren’t fortunate enough yet to be a ‘user’. However, I wonder – if you ask the same person “Who is Vint Cerf?”, they probably won’t be able to answer you. I wonder how that feels? I should get him onto the show and ask him. I’ve been watching this speech he recently gave to Hungarian “TV University” and he comes across as a nice guy, a regular human being. Can you even begin to imagine the impact he has had on the future of the human race? Bucky Fuller would have loved the internet. Talk about being a future maker!
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The Silverlight demo that Microsoft announced last night at MIX07 is pretty cool. Sean Alexander, the product manager, is coming on the G’Day World this week or maybe next to talk to us about it in more depth.
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I was getting very excited last night about the HUGE increase in audience to my Napoleon podcast during April (400%) until I got the full TPN stats today. It looks like we’ve had a few very naughty people trying to DOS my servers during the month. Fortunately they failed but in the process they completely screwed my stats. Either that or it’s innocent and someone inadvertently tried to download a couple of our shows tens of thousands of times over a couple of days. Either way, it’s ruined my day.
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Marshall Kirkpatrick and the folks at Splashcast today launched their new application which looks like a very cool media player. Unfortunately, they have chosen to brand it “MyPodcastNetwork”. Obviously I have issues with that. So I have sent them an email requesting a discussion immediately. Hopefully we can resolve this in a polite fashion.
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by cameron | May 1, 2007 | TPN
I just noticed that in April TPN served up over 12 terabytes. I remember back in December 2004 when our first hosting provider in WA fell over because we did a few gig or something craahahazy like that. I still think it’s a shame that we aren’t being hosted out of Australia though. A few local companies have tried to help out over the years – WebCentral, AAPT, OzHosting, to name a few – but none of them could even begin to match the prices I am getting out of Texas. Texas has to be good for something other than making and killing Presidents, right?
by cameron | Apr 30, 2007 | Christianity, climate change, energy debate, environment, media 2.0, movies
While I was working out today I watched “Land Of The Dead“, George Romero’s 2005 4th zombie flick, starring Aussie actor Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento and John Leguizamo. What a great way to pass a couple of hours of otherwise-boring exercise.
Two things I loved in particular with the “Making Of” doco.
1. Romero talking about how Hopper decided he wanted to play the part of the bad guy, Kaufman, as Donald Rumsfeld and the way Romero yells “Exactly! This is about the Bush administration!” Too many directors are oh-so-politically correct (even now!), but not George, oh no. He tells it like it is!
2. The other thing I loved was George’s glasses:
When I saw the Ocean’s 13 trailer, with Elliott Gould wearing the same glasses, George Burns glasses, I said “I’ve got to have some!”
Anyone know where I can get some? Without real lenses of course. I have 20/20 vision (not like the rest of you geeks out there… how come I’ve read more books than the rest of you put together, I sit in front of a PC all day, and I *still* have 20/20?).
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Kevin Rudd is pitching himself at the ALP conference as “Mr 21st Century”. Yet, at the same time, he is content to wear his Anglican Christianity on his sleeve. I find it impossible to take anyone seriously who tries to position themselves as 21st century yet clings openly to a 2000 year-old mythology about a miracle worker who could fly.
That said, I admire his cojones in commissioning an Australian version of the Stern report. Do we really *need* another Stern report though? Isn’t one Stern enough Stern? Let’s face it – we call know not doing anything about climate change will be BAD. REALLY BAD. And those that continue to dispute that issue, aren’t going to be convinced by one more report, any more that Rudd will drop his Christianity by one more book pointing out that there is no evidence to support his mystery faith. It’s a waste of money.
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I see Dom Carosa’s been busy launching yet ANOTHER new site – NICE SHORTS. I stumbled on this (yes, using Stumble Upon) last night and watched a great clip by up-and-coming Aussie filmmaker Gabriel Dowrick.
His short film, “The Lord Is My Shotgun” is very impressive. I’ve got Gabe coming on G’Day World later in the week for a chat. I think he’s about 21 and has made something like 20 short films as well as a recent straight-to-dvd zombie slasher horror feature called “Nailed”.
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Did TWO – count ’em – TWO workouts today. 45 minutes on the xtrainer at 9am and then another 30 minutes at 5pm. Don’t want to be a fatblogger. I cannot for the life of me get interested in working out at 6am, so I tend to wake up, do email for a few hours, take the kids to school, and THEN get on the machine. And watch zombie flicks. I can pretend I’m running away from the flesh-eating zombies. SPEAKING of which… am I the only person who is surprised that with those rotten teeth they all seem to have, the zombies still manage to rip huge chunks of flesh, tendon and bone out of their victims? Shouldn’t their teeth just fall out when they try? Now there’s an idea for a postmodern zombie flick – the zombie’s attack, their teeth fall out, and everyone falls over laughing while the zombies spend the rest of the film trying to gum people to death….
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by cameron | Apr 29, 2007 | Iraq, Uncategorized
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom said today:
“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place,” he said.
“He [Bush] lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies.”
According to Wikipedia, Odom is “a former U.S. Army 3-star general, and was Director of the NSA under President Ronald Reagan” and has called the illegal invasion of Iraq “the worst strategic blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy”.
I just thought these are a good couple of quotes for folks like Mike who seem to still have this idea of the USA being Mr All-White-Guy John Wayne on a white horse wearing a white hat protecting the nice white lady from the terrible injuns.
Even at least one US 3-star general thinks is was a really, REALLY bad idea.
by cameron | Apr 29, 2007 | Australian media
Scienta makes a good point that I hadn’t considered: should we hold 2GB responsible for keep Alan Jones on the air or should the companies that continue to support his show with their advertising dollars be held just as responsible?
According to Scienta’s research, the following companies buy advertising on 2GB:
Addbuild Additions, Blue Haven Pools, Dedes Restaurant, Doors Plus, Dyldam, Flying Fish, Health & Image, MBT Centre, Heart Check Medical Clinic, L.J. Hooker, Nature Bee, Nick’s Seafood Restaurant, Nimbo Fork Luxury Fly Fishing Lodge, Officespace Australia Wide, P&O Cruises, Park Trent Properties Group, Premier Cabs Pty Limited, Sam the Paving Man, Switzer Financial Services, The Eye Institute, The Gazebo and Woolooware Shores Lifestyle Village.
I wonder if any of these companies considered pulling their advertising support from 2GB in the wake of ACMA’s finding that Jones and 2GB breached the Commercial Radio Code of Practice in 2006, with their broadcasts on the Cronulla riots.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to contact each of these companies and ask them? There are only 22 companies listed and their phone numbers are all here on 2GB’s website. I guess we could call them and ask? Who wants to lend a hand?
by cameron | Apr 28, 2007 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
I had a rare fatherly moment today and realized that as my sons are growing up in Melbourne I should take them to the footy, just once, so they can realize why they will never want to go again. So I jumped onto Ticketmaster to see how much tickets are. $33 for an adult! $5.30 for a kid! Add train tickets or parking into the equation, and it’s a $60 day out, not including beer and hotdogs (for them, I would never touch the stuff).
I’m not spending $60 taking my kids to something I’d never go to myself. Ridiculous. $60 to watch a bunch of men in tight shorts run around chasing a little leather ball for two hours? I could buy the kids a new DS game for that. They’ll get MUCH more entertainment out of that than two hours.
And they won’t get drunk or have to cuss at an umpire to boot.
by cameron | Apr 27, 2007 | Uncategorized
I’ve got some serious virus action happening on Vista. Last night I noticed I couldn’t run Task Manager. It had been greyed out. I also don’t have Shutdown, Restart, Run, Hibernate – they are all missing from the ORB. I’ve spent a bit of time today investigating and it seems to be either virus or scumware related. So I’ve run a bunch of things today – Windows Defender, AVG AV, Lavasoft AdAware – and they found a bunch of crap which I deleted, so at least I got Task Manager back – but still no ShutDown etc.
So I don’t know what to do from here. Bloody annoying.
Oh and the first person who says “Buy A Mac” gets slapped with a fish.
by cameron | Apr 27, 2007 | Podcast
Once upon a time, in an internet far, far away, a young boy had a dream, that one day the internet would deliver a state of perfect information which would provide the basis for perfect competition. That is, assuming that all agents are rational and have perfect information, they will choose the best products, and the market will reward those who make the best products with higher sales. Perfect information would practically mean that all consumers know all things, about all products, at all times, and therefore always make the best decision regarding purchase. In competitive markets, unlike game-theoretic models, perfect competition does not require that agents have complete knowledge about the actions of others; all relevant information is reflected in prices.
That boy was Chris Hitchen, CEO of GetPrice, a shopping comparison tool. He joins me today to share his dream for a perfect world and to explain why CPA is the thing smart marketers worry about, not CPC.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Apr 27, 2007 | Uncategorized
Here are the top ten search terms used to find G’Day World in April 2007:
joost invite
alltunes
britney sex tape
joost invites
cameron reilly
dopod 838 pro
get a joost invite
grindhouse opening
dopod 810 review
how to get a joost invite
I guess I know what my next show is going to be about.
“How to watch Britney Spears and Cameron Reilly doing the Grindhouse in their sex tape on Joost or on your Dopod 838pro.”
Hell, I’d tune it to watch that myself…
by cameron | Apr 26, 2007 | Melbourne, Podcast
My guest today is Campbell Sallabank, CEO of LinkMe, a Melbourne-based social networking site that allows you to upload your resume and market yourself to thousands of recruiters and employers who are looking for staff.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
