July 2005

28-Jul-2005 - Big Ad

For those who havent seen it, check out this:

http://www.bigad.com.au

28-Jul-2005 - Train people

Maybe i'm paranoid. Maybe i'm just like everyone else...

But on the train system, everyone is more conscious of how they are behaving. I catch a train on the way to and from work, and go through the 'danger zone' of the city stations. I'm sure that people are much more aware of who's carrying a large backpack and who isnt these days.

I think everyone is a little concerned, and when some guy comes along with a big rucksack, people do a double-take. I wonder myself if people look at me with suspicion since I wear a full backpack on my way to work. Its all very subtle, but i'm certain its all there - the looks, people behaving differently so they are not seen as suspicious...

Its probably bound to happen in Sydney eventually - some type of terrorist attack. We have been pretty lucky so far to escape unharmed. And when it does happen, I think its more than likely to be on the transit system - trains or buses or both. So in the meantime everyone on their way to and from work can keep subtly casting the eye of suspicion on their fellow travellers, while trying to act unsuspiciously themselves.

Well enough paranoia... its time to celebrate my first CounterStrike team victory! Hooray! We played a pretty crap team though, but hey - a win is a win.

I went out Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights to the usual host of venues. And Julian had lots of interesting things happen on Sunday - but I better leave it to him to tell people about the details or I might get in trouble! :-).

Tim came around on Monday, and we went to darling harbour for a bit - he sure likes his Mango Mania drinks :-)

I started sorting out my tax stuff on Monday.. what a nightmare - so much stuff to sort out it takes hours. And thats just getting the required paperwork! I let my accountant do the rest. Man it would suck to be an accountant.

Its almost lunch time and i'm hungry.. have a nice day!

21-Jul-2005 - Another day, another doller

...or $100 as the case was last Thursday when I went to another one of those market research group discussions. Not bad.. free meal, free drinks, free money, and all I had to do was talk about technology in a group for about 2 hours.

They showed us a number of new technologies that they are considering bringing out - a couple of them looked really cool. I probably shouldnt say what they were because I'm probably not meant to, but lets just say they were technologies a big company (that everyone knows) is considering.

Apart from that nothing much at all has happened over the last week - its been the most uninteresting week of the last year!

However, an interesting thing I did discover.. having a look back at what I said on 1st July in this weblog about how finally good news was happening instead of bad news, its ironic that only a week later the London bombings happened. And also since then Mugabe has gone crazy in Zimbabwe again burning and demolishing towns and villages all over the place. We never really got to hear what happened at the G8 summit, since all the bad news stole the headlines. In this world good news doesnt last long.

I have another long weekend coming up - hooray! And in only an hour i'm having Yum-Cha for lunch - hooray again!

I went for another 10km jog last night.. my feet hurt today.. doh! I went from Darling Harbour over Anzac Bridge and over through Balmain up to close to Balmain Wharf, and then back again. On the way back I was racing a bus, and managed to keep up with it for about a kilometre, before it zoomed off. I went earlier than usual because its so damn cold late at night these days, and there were quite a few joggers and cyclists out at that time. Just over 3 weeks until the City to Surf.

At work there is a bunch of developers that go down and get coffee every morning from a coffee stand in our building. I have named them "The Coffee Club" because its always the same little group that goes down - Wilkin, Jenny, Peter and Billy. So I decided its about time to create the "Alternative Coffee Club (ACC)" which goes to the kitchen and gets free coffee (or tea)! Brian, Monzur and Bruce have all joined up! The ACC has been founded, and will soon rule the world! haha... yes, I am a sad case.

Oh and we have a special at the ACC - have 1 coffee, get 1 free - because its all free! Ahem... ok i'm going to go now...

13-Jul-2005 - Updates and the long weekend

I have added some more stuff to the site. There is the new My World area in the photos section, and there is a new obsession page for a complete immersive Ray experience :-).

I had a long weekend again - i'm back to the have-a-long-weekend-every-now-and-then mode. Chase came over friday night and hung out. On saturday I went to pitt st mall with him and then went out with Ben & Julian that night.

Julian had a Long Island Ice Tea from a guy at the bar that I think he knew.. and the guy must have put in extra shots, but anyway it was REALLY strong (I had a sip). By the end of it julian was pretty drunk and ben couldnt stop laughing at him. Some 40 y/o chick tried to pick Ben up (who clearly wasnt interested) and I eventually rescued him from that situation (after laughing with julian for a bit first).

We then drove from the city to Neutral Bay where we went to Helens overseas farewell - and Julian was putting his moves on whoever he could hehe :-). Then it was back to the city where Julian with his overconfidence managed to chat up someone who clearly (to me anyway) wasnt interested at first, but after much persistence from Julian eventually was! So jules got a phone number and he was happy.

So ended the adventures of saturday night. On Sunday Jules came over and we ate noodles, watched War of the Worlds and lazed about in the building's spa. I was very happy that the next day was...

.. another day off! Monday Tim H came round and we grabbed a digitial camera and went around darling harbour and pyrmont and took photos for fun (you can see some of them in the My World section of the photos page). He eventually went off to meet up with the other Tim after work. Later on that night I went and met Tom C in the city.. we had coffee and hung around and bought too much snack food from the asian supermarket (gotta love those places!). There is so many strange packets of stuff I have never heard of - and all so cheap! I cant help myself in those places and ended up buying more and more junk.

I dropped it all back at my place, gave Tom the grand tour and headed back to Town Hall so he could catch his train back. The whole Monday was very sunny and nice.. a great day to take off (unlike the last monday i took off which was rainy and miserable!).

Last night (tuesday) I went and did a gameschool class for counterstrike source, where we learnt lots of hiding spots and some tips and tricks on de_cbble. And yeah thats whats been happening.

And as you can see I have been busy updating stuff for my website - another advantage of the long weekend! Even made the past logs page look a bit better.

11-Jul-2005 - Photo update

I've added some more photos to the site. Check them out here. There are a few more in the current photo section, and there is a new friends section.

Its almost midnight now, and I have to work tomorrow so no blogging tonight :-). Bye!

8-Jul-2005 - Attacks on London

"Right now, we are all Londoners"

Mayor Bertrand Delanoe of Olympic rival Paris, after returning home from the 2012 bid decision.

7-Jul-2005 - Out with the old...

I have finally given up on Hotmail. After years and years of persisting with them, the final straw came from their new "Sender ID" system. This makes sure that the host of the sender's email is the same as the host the mail comes from. What this means is that redirected emails may get blocked completely through Hotmail. Idiots!

So now i'm with Gmail. This means I now have 4 email accounts to deal with <sigh> (for now.. until I slowly decommission the others). But the transition was made much easier due to most of my email being sent to the raymonscott.com domain. Hooray!

Went rollerblading last night.. was lots of fun, havent done it for ages. I wore my alien flashing tshirt - and had the usual amazed and fascinated looks from passers by. John W and Zakalwe-Mark were there too which made things fun.

And thats all I can be bothered writing today!

1-Jul-2005 - Make Poverty History

Happy new financial year!

Yes its that exciting time of year again when we all eagerly wait in anticipation, like little puppies about to get fed, for our PAYG Payment Summaries (previously known as Group Certificates). Aren't you excited?

Well as nothing interesting seems to be happening in my life at the moment, once again I will provide you with some rantings about things that are happening elsewhere! And since we are on the topic of money and wealth, lets look at the other side of the coin.

After years and years of bad news around the world (Sep 11, War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq, Conflict over China/Taiwan, Unrest in Zimbabwe, Massacres in Sudan, George W Bush acting like a religous extremist cowboy, African Aids epidemic, Tsunamis... the list goes on...) finally there is some good news to talk about.

Recently nearly $40bn of poor countries debt has been cancelled in the biggest single debt cancellation that I have heard of. That was 18 countries (14 of which were in africa). This hasnt received much media attention - the bad news tends to receive nearly all the attention, but the good news doesnt.

However there are a number of things to note about this. Many of the cancelled debts were already 'written off' by the world bank. Also debt cancellation does not necessarily mean alleviating poverty. And there are over 40 other countries which are in poverty but have not had debt relief.

Also in the last few years, the number of people being treated for AIDS in africa has tripled. This is probably the single worst humanitarian disaster in the world at the moment, however it gets far less news coverage than other things such as the Iraq war. The funny thing is, there is more news coverage on people running around naked in Big Brother than there is on millions of people dying of starvation and disease in a distant country. If it was happening in Europe or the US it would be a different story.

 

A huge campaign is underway this year called Make Poverty History. This is a campaign organised by a coalition of almost all major humanitarian organisations which is pushing to get the issue of poverty alleviation back in the spotlight. Its D-Day next week for this campaign, as the G8 summit commences. This is a meeting of the worlds richest nations, and amongst other things they will be discussing poverty and the solutions available.

The Live8 concert series will be coinciding with the summit to provide much needed media attention and public support to the issue of world poverty.

To many people's surprise, solving poverty is not a simple issue. Simply throwing money at poor countries will not make poverty disappear.

Poverty has many causes - one of the main ones is corruption. Corrupt governments mean that the money and the essential services do not get to the people who need it. It means that government official's self interests are the highest priority. And corruption is not an easy issue to deal with - it becomes an endemic disease within the community.

Also the type of government is very important. Money should not go to a dictatorial government which will not spend it on the people and instead spend it on military, palaces, or some other extravagance.

So although we need to make sure that good countries receive debt relief, aid, and the removal of trade barriers, we must also make sure that countries with bad governments, political instability, or endemic corruption have their problems dealt with first - or else we may only be exacerbating their problems.

So do you want to do something about it yourself? Support the Make Poverty History campaign by buying a White Armband, or instead consider Sponsoring a Child. Lets hope the G8 summit will come up with some good outcomes next week.