Dancing About Architecture

Neighbours from Hell

It is true that you can’t choose your family, but it is equally true that you can’t choose your neighbours. You may find yourself with wonderful neighbours like I am fortunate to have, but you may find yourself living next door to someone like Joan.

Over a beer at the pub a year ago, a friend of mine told us about her neighbour Joan. Within minutes she had has dying with laughter over Joan’s angry little notes and her abuse of a poor delivery man. Now LJ has decided to share her tales with the rest of the world at The Chronicles of Joan. The stories are truly hilarious, but all the time you are reading it you are thankful that you don’t live next door to a Joan, or perhaps you might be unfortunate enough to be.

If you have liked what you have read, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

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Stolen Content?

I was checking out my Technorati rating this morning when I noticed I was being linked to on a site I had never heard of. Curious to see who would be linking to my blog, I headed over to TechFiveSix all interested to see what post of mine they thought interesting enough to mention. Instead of a nice review or a link to a post, I found that all my posts are being feed directly onto this blog. Yes, my name is attached to the posts, so they are not trying to pass off my content as their own, but still I must admit I felt a little violated that my work would appear on a site when I had not given permission for it be there.

Perhaps someone with a better understanding of online copyright law can help me here. Do I have a right to get royally pissed to find my blog posts being directly feed to this site without giving my permission for them to be there? I have commented on a post by who I assume to be the owner of the site asking for all my content to be removed. I have no objections to writing content for an external site - actually that would be beyond cool, but to take my content and repost it without asking me is, in my opinion, really, really rude. Also it is very strange as the site is about gadgets and technology and whilst my blog does occasionally write about these things I also write about my life and lately Australian politics. Therefore all these poor readers are coming to a site expecting to find out about the latest gadgets and instead reading about the Australian Federal election.

Also if my blog is being posted there directly, that means that this post will appear on the site. I got a little shiver of enjoyment over that thought.

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YES!!!!!

Howard has conceded, Rudd has claimed victory and it looks highly likely that Howard will also lose his seat.

I am going to bed one extremely happy vegemite. It has been a long eleven and a half years under the Howard government during which Australia has become a much meaner and selfish society. Maybe, just maybe, we can all work together to change this and go back to the society where you actually speak to your neighbours, you smile at people on the streets and you give a damn about your fellow Australians.

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Voting in the Rain

It is weird drizzly day here in Sydney - cold one moment and humid the next as I joined my neighbours at the local high school around lunchtime to vote. Unlike other years, there was actually a line so we stood sheltering from the drizzle waiting to vote for about 15 minutes. Long enough to take a good look at the election posters and the poor volunteers standing in the weather.
Dom Knight from the SMH has given a really good wrap up of the electioneering styles at an inner city polling booth and my experience closely matched his.
I took great pleasure in numbering all 79 boxes on the Senate voting form. It was really hard deciding who to put last - One Nation, Family First, Liberals or Pauline - but I managed to make my decision.
All that is left to do is to settle down this evening and tune into the ABC’s Election coverage. It is going to be a really tight contest and may well end in a hung parliament.

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A Wrap Up of the Election Campaign

It has been a long six months, but finally we are less than 12 hours away from the polling booths opening. There is now a media blackout on everything campaign related and all Australians can breathe a sigh of relief and get down to the difficult decision of deciding who to vote for tomorrow without the annoyance of those horrible election ads.

Listed below are some tools to help you decide who to vote for;

• If you want to cast your vote for the most amusing election gaff, then check out Annabel Crabb’s Lighter Side of Election 07 on the Sydney Morning Herald where she gives her view on the most humorous antics of this election campaign.

• If you want to vote for the most dirtiest campaigning attempt, then you can’t go past the Jackie Kelly and Karen Chijoff husband’s islamophobic leaflet fiasco. Proving that the Liberal government just can’t run a campaign without resorting to stirring up some racial hatred.

• Related to the above issue is probably the most impressive sting operation carried out by a political party and I think they are definitely worth voting for in terms of who we want running our Federal Law Enforcement agencies. Look out for the movie version of this event hitting the big screen early next year.

• If you are seriously wanting to know what candidate in your electorate feels the same way you do on the big issues, then head over to GetUp’s How Should I Vote website. GetUp sent out a quiz asking for candidates views on all the major issues, this data is matched against how you answer the quiz and a how to vote card is generated that can be downloaded or sent to you mobile on the morning of the election.

Make your decision wisely, vote early to avoid the queues and then join your nearest election party to witness what will no doubt be a very exciting ending to one of Australia’s longest ever campaigns.

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