Tweeting Brisbane City Council Meetings

by | May 21, 2009 | Brisbane, Podcast

Based on this month’s idea from SaveTheWorld.tv (and thanks to @fddlgrl for the link!), I’m going to attend one of the Brisbane City Council meetings each month and will blog/podcast/tweet from there. I think it’s a great idea for all of us to start to get more involved in local politics, even if it’s just by attending council meetings and reporting what’s happening.

Apparently Brisbane City Council have seven committees that meet, so I’m looking for six other Brisbanites to attend the other meetings and report.

According to "the rules", you aren’t allowed to record a City Council meeting. I find that a bit strange.

Here’s the clever bit – the meetings are held weekly and DURING THE DAY (here’s the schedule). That’s going to make it difficult for your average wage slave to attend.

I’m going to attend the Infrastructure Committee meeting once a month.

Anybody else want to sign up to cover the others?

Haul 17″ Macbook sleeve

by | May 6, 2009 | Uncategorized

I was looking for a sleeve for my 17″ Macbook Pro – something that isnt as bulky as a whole bag / backpack for when I go to meetings – and the folks at Haul sent me one of theirs. Haul are pretty cool – all of their sleeves and bags are made from recycled billboards! Mine is apparently an old AMEX billboard. They make other things as well from truck inner-tubes, number plates, printing blankets and aluminium cans.

And you can chat with them on Twitter.

If You Aren’t A Celebrity On Twitter, You Don’t Exist

by | May 4, 2009 | Uncategorized

I’m amused and bemused this morning by the reports all of the Aussie news services are running about how much twitter bashing Gretel Killeen copped while hosting the Logies last night. BTW, The Logies, for international readers, is a totally lame annual Australian television industry awards ceremony. Personally, I would rather eat my own underwear than watch it. But apparently some Aussies did and they expressed their disappointment in the show, not by turning it off and reading a frakking book, but by bashing the hostess on Twitter. However the news services running that story this morning (most of whom seem to have just republished the AAP story – hey, who needs journalists when you can use AAP?) seem to be reluctant to mention that names of the people bashing Gretel and just refer to them as “one user said” – unless, of course, the Twitterer was a celebrity, such as Wil Anderson or the Chaser guys. Then they get name checked, but no link to their tweets.

What do you think this means? If you’re an ordinary citizen, it’s alright to quote you but not to mention who you are? Or link to your tweets? Is it because the news services think writing something like

@khushee said: “Gretel mentions Twitter – if only she knew what was being said!”

or

@amileegrant said “Bedtime. I’m over this sad attempt at an awards show. Yawn. Hope gretel gets drunk and falls over and her dress rips off on stage.”

would be too confusing to the non-Twittering public? Or just because they news services don’t think it matters who the non-celebrity Twitterers are?

Celebrity culture – I frakking hate it.

Jesus Banned By Twitter?

by | Apr 30, 2009 | Uncategorized

Someone today pointed out to me that the username “Jesus” hadn’t been taken on Twitter – when you go to twitter.com/jesus it’s blank – and suggested I take the username. I was sure someone would have already grabbed, so I went to check out what would happen if I tried to register it. Sure enough, Twitter says the username is already taken:

Although this is obviously not true.

My question is – what if Jesus comes back, tries to reach his followers via Twitter and finds out it’s already taken?! Is this religious discrimination by Twitter?