weblog July 7th, 2005
Thank the heavens.
Speaking of money… filling out a tax return using the ATO’s e-tax program, is super-easy, if you’re like me and don’t do anything complicated like getting married, running overseas companies, accruing capital gains, getting old, or joining the defence force. There is one item that makes me think NTGF is due for some tax breaks, but I’m not sure they count as Australian Films for the purposes of the return.
However, they STILL haven’t gotten off their arses and made a Mac version. It’s not a complicated program, it can’t be that hard. I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t rub salt in the wound by always listing under the “system requirements”:
Apple Macintosh… with suitable PC emulation software.
The best thing about tax returns is the surprise Medicare bonus that I always forget about. You’re getting near the end, and you’ve only managed to get back around $250 of your $1250 in tax, and then suddenly it turns out you don’t use medicare and they’ll give you $235. Every year I forget about that, and every year it’s a happy surprise.
Does everyone else (in Australia) do their tax returns online? Or do you still use that crazy paper crap? Has anyone never gotten around to filling one out? Have the ATO come for you and your first born?
Posted by Tom Charman to tax, the curse | 8 Comments »
weblog July 1st, 2005
Some music is beautiful and timeless to me. I love it the first time I hear it (well, more likely the third time but that’s not as poetic) and I love it still.
Some music isn’t. And it sits around on my iPod reminding me that either:
- Love is transitory, or
- I used to have shit taste.
Coldplay are a minor offender in this area. I’ll always like ‘Clocks’, mostly for its first 30 seconds. But the rest of A Rush of Blood to the Head really grates when it comes up in my random playlist, and for a while I banned it from my playlist. And I’ve no desire to buy X&Y — having heard a single from it on the radio, it sounds just like everything I’ve heard before. Perhaps a little more tightly honed.
I get this image of Coldplay sitting around, desperately trying to sound like the platonic ideal of themselves.
But my Coldplay backlash doesn’t even begin to rival my Travis backlash. Every time they pop up on my iPod I have to skip them, even ‘Sing’, which I used to really like. Now, it all sounds like painfully happy treacley ikkiness. I listen to a bit of it and wonder how depressed I must have been to have needed such relentless happiness blasted into my ears.
But then, I may be odd in that I find sad music uplifting and happy music depressing, in much the same way that I like cold blustery days more than shiny sunny ones. I think it’s a contrast thing.
And just to show that my taste now is probably as bad as it’s ever been, the track I’m always hanging out for my iPod to shuffle to is Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’. Now there’s a single that has everything.
Posted by Tom Charman to music | 7 Comments »
weblog June 19th, 2005
Everyone’s getting all political here, so let me fulfil my natural function as the one who talks about irrelevant crap.
I have just boosted my nerdiness somewhere into the geek zone by installing linux on my iPod. Oh yes, you heard right. Linux has cool games. I’m just concerned at the potential battery usage. It’s felt recently that the iPod just isn’t what it used to be, battery wise, and playing tetris is hardly going to help.
But still. GEEK! You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.
Posted by Tom Charman to ipod, linux | Comments Off on Nerd!
weblog June 18th, 2005
Only the Herald Sun could take something which isn’t actually an issue — the existence of fee paying places in our premier state schools — and use it to peddle what seems to be some kind of racist agenda on their front page.
Because, not for the first time, foreigners are taking things from us. They’ve always taken our jobs, but now they are taking our kid’s spot in a good state school.
I’ve been told from an extremely reliable souce that fee-paying spots aren’t at the expense of free ones, making the whole article pointless — but that isn’t the issue I want to talk about.
It’s the Herald Sun’s ridiculous emphasis on the fact most of these places are held be foreigners. This may be true, but it’s also completely irrelevant. Surely the only issue should be that there are fee paying places, not who has decided to buy them. The fact that foreigners have is completely coincidental and barely worth mentioning, let alone in a massive sub heading on the front page of the paper. Although in defence of the journalist who wrote it, they don’t actually get to decide the titles.
In any case, in a society which seems largely xenophobic and always on the search for a scape-goat, it seems wrong and irresponsible of one of our major papers to promote those kinds of attitudes.
People don’t need to be pushed much I find.
Posted by Jackson Kearney to media, politics | 3 Comments »
weblog June 17th, 2005
I have a few friends stuck in painfully boring jobs. I may be joining their ranks soon. Even more people I know don’t know where they’re going in life.
I think we should all start our own business. Submissions on my desk by the end of the year for what exactly we could do.
(Seriousness rating: 6.5, upgradable by solid ideas, downgradable by scorn)
Posted by Tom Charman to work | 3 Comments »
weblog June 15th, 2005
Sorry about the downtime, folks. Well, sorry to those that noticed it.
I’ve been using the time to sit around on my arse vaguely studying. “Vaguely studying” is when you’ve got all the study material in front of you, and occasionally you draw half a concept map, or attempt to summarise some points.
I’d be nervous about the exam but now I’m more anxious about the link between meat-eating and cancer. And I’m insanely excited about the upcoming Doctor Who season finale. And even more excited about the news emerging today concerning the show’s future. Just a quick summary for those who can’t be bothered clicking the link (and a much more reliable way to avoid spoilers:
- Both a second AND a third season have been commissioned. As well as a Christmas special for this year and for the next. That’s 28 new episodes.
- Piper will be back for ALL the episodes of season two.
- Barrowman will be back for SOME of the episodes of season two, and is willing to get naked again. I wish I could have typed that about Piper.
- Nerd news: the director of The Empty Child and the director of The End of the World and The Unquiet Dead will be returning to direct the first two blocks of filming in season two.
- Nerdier news: the director of The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks will be directing four stories in season two.
- The Cybermen will be returning for season two! I’d say they were replacing those bloody Slitheen but in a way, they’re replacing the Daleks, who won’t be appearing in season two. They’re expensive.
Posted by Tom Charman to Doctor Who, tv, website | 5 Comments »
weblog June 9th, 2005
Only for those in Melbourne, naturally. Back in April, when the Metcards had price adjustments, they changed the way that 10 times 2 hour tickets work. Now, if you validate them a second time in one day, they automatically last you until 2am the next morning. How sweet is that?
Well, it’s pretty good, anyhow.
I got Neverwinter Nights yesterday, having ordered it online the day before. Pretty efficient. My adventuring career is going well. Except, I keep trying to charm animals, and I do, and they’re my friend, but my actual human friend hasn’t noticed and keeps trying to hit it: which makes it angry and distinctly uncharmed. So I keep trying to charm, and he keeps getting hit by my stupid friend, and one of them dies while I desperately try to keep them apart.
And yes, I know Neverwinter Nights is a really old game that you can get for $20 for a PC. But that is the way of Macs and Games.
Posted by Tom Charman to games, public transport | 5 Comments »
weblog June 5th, 2005
Damn that Michael Moore. He’s spoiled my innocence. I used to be able to watch documentaries and think I’d learned something. Now I’m so mistrustful my brain develops layers and layers of “take that with a pinch of salt” that end up feeling like I’ve taken nothing away at all.
Or maybe they just don’t make documentaries that well any more. I’ve just watched the Tony Robinson documentary on The Da Vinci Code which pretty much attempts to discredit every single thing the book says — fair enough I suppose, but it does it without interviews with the Catholic church or any other church. It discusses the idea that Magdalene and Christ were married yet doesn’t talk to any of the prominent Anglicans who have suggested such a thing.
Basically, whenever it talks to anyone on either side of the fence, they’re either engaging in guesswork, or clearly loonies. And there I was, wanting to know THE TRUTH. It’s depressing being an adult. I hope all the cool stuff I used to watch about Egypt was all true. Otherwise I’m very upset.
Posted by Tom Charman to film, politics, tv | Comments Off on Documentary Evidence
weblog June 2nd, 2005
Until now the main take home message for me from the whole Corby saga was that if you are going to be international drug smuggler, make sure you are a good looking Anglo female in your mid-to-late twenties since this seems to be sufficient proof of your innocence to the vast majority of Australians. But this isn’t exactly news as the Tampa incident already demonstrated the inherent racism of the population of this country.
But it turns out we aren’t just racists, we are terrorist sympathisers too. According to Channel Nine’s highly scientific poll, 20% of our fellow countrypeople think its legitimate to carry out biological attacks on foreign nations who have the nerve to find one of our pretty white girls guilty of a crime. The fact that she had an open trial and her defence was largely based on heresay which wouldn’t have even been allowed to be presented in an Aussie court seems irrelevant.
And yet we can’t understand how the populace of Islamic nations would feel sympathy for Al Qaeda when America imprisons Muslims for years without any openness or any trial whatsoever…
Posted by Andrew Coulthurst to australia, politics | 10 Comments »
weblog June 1st, 2005
This has probably been happening to all sorts of TV shows and I haven’t noticed, but I’m observing a peculiar trend in Melbourne’s ‘Green Guide’ when it comes to Doctor Who.
Last week, they got someone to review it who admitted she’s never liked any sort of TV that involves any ‘un-real’ elements. Thus the brilliant ‘The End of the World’ gets a pathetic write up, being criticised presumably for not being about policemen or nurses. And now this week, the reasonably good ‘The Unquiet Dead’, lauded in the UK by one critic for being the best piece of television that year (which was a bit over-the-top, I’ll admit) is called “a bit crap”.
Of all the places to go, the reviewer asks, why a 19th Century morgue? Erm. Why not? I can’t be sure if it’s the morgue bit or the 19th Century she’s not interested in. Did she notice that last week they blew up the Earth? It seems she was hoping for cross-dressing, given Mark Gatiss’ Leage of Gentlemen work.
Most irritatingly, she claims that Doctor Who is one of those things, like Star Wars, that if you didn’t see as a kid you won’t get, and comments that as Eccleston and Piper are both probably leaving, the show is most likely doomed anyway. She couldn’t have fitted in more off-putting TV reviewing language if she’d tried. Neither reviewer even vaguely alluded to whether children — you know, the “target audience” — would enjoy it. And I know I haven’t either, but Grapefruit is a genre site. The Green Guide is a popular TV guide for everyone, but most of the critics seem more interested in proving their wit and turning people against shows which irritate them for spurious reasons.
Ahem. I didn’t expect that to go on so long. Hmmm. Sorry.
Posted by Tom Charman to Doctor Who, tv | 2 Comments »