Handyman

Blogging has been particular slack to start off the New Year, but that’s because I’ve been keeping myself extremely busy – and away from the computer.

That’s not entirely true, I’ve been on the computer, only without internet access at home. The free student dial-up allocation of 150mb never lasts through the month, but I managed to blow it out of the water in a record-breaking three days this time.

Now I almost feel like I’m caught up on everything I need to do! I’ve enrolled in what should be the last five classes of my university life, which I’ll show at the bottom of the post.

I’ve organised our unit so efficiently that everything – except one rogue filing box – has an allocated spot. It’s a whole new world without obstacles, where every room in the house can be traversed effortlessly. Not a hop, skip or a jump to be seen. I was going to say it was an unnatural environment and that I was out of my comfort zone, but I think it may only be the latter of those statements that is false. It is unnatural, but something I’ve found myself disturbingly comfortable with. The organisation may have whet the appetite of an obsessive compulsive personality lurking within.

As part of that cleanup I borrowed my parent’s vacuum cleaner, the merits of which have been discussed before. My brother managed to break it before moving south at Christmas, but a new belt only set me back $9 and a few minutes to fit it. On returning the vacuum cleaner I also managed to fix my parent’s in-sinkerator with the very technical know-how that is the ‘reset’ button. Need a handyman to do those ridiculously simple jobs around the house? I’m your guy.

We signed a new lease in November last year (previously discussed in detail), the terms of which included getting an air-conditioner and replacing the carpet with an as-yet-undecided alternative. Today, only two months later and after much nagging of the real estate agent, the property owner’s cousin came by to measure for the flooring and the air conditioner. I buttered him up with some plunger coffee and a bit of conversation, and we might even have some AC by next week. Bonus!

Next week I’ll start going to rugby training for the first time in almost four years. I haven’t played rugby because I’ve continually decided against committing myself to training twice a week, but I can’t resist any longer. My body is tired after one night back on night-fill at Coles, so it will be interesting to see how I cope with fitness work, but I’m looking forward to getting back into it. It’s probably a result of my complaining for the last three years that I’d rather be playing rugby, but my wife’s Christmas present to me was Queensland Red’s membership for the both of us this year. With their first game in just three weeks, we’ll be there for all the action. Without the injured Chris Latham they’ll have an even harder time winning than they have in the recent past

That looks like a fairly comprehensive run down of what’s been going on, so that just leaves my list of classes for this year.

• History
  • Europe 1200-1800
  • The Radical Right and Fascism in Europe
• Politics
  • European Political Issues
  • Introduction to International Inequality and Development
• Journalism internship (I don’t know where I’m going yet, but these are the preferences I gave)
  1. ABC Online Newsroom
  2. Courier Mail online newsroom
  3. 96.5 FM – Family Radio

2006

Goodbye, 2006.

I entered the year with a 14-day-old marriage, and exit having experienced the joys and trials that come with those most important first 12 months of wedlock.

Some other things happened during the year, including university, the FIFA World Cup, and others, but they were all pretty much woven into those joys and trials already mentioned.

Speaking of trials, Saddam Hussein managed to steal the headlines to memorably finish off 2006 – his face plastered across New Year’s Eve newspapers the world over.

So farewell, 2006.

Some journalism news

These are some articles I thought journalism types would be interested in.

From the American Journalism Review, there’s mainstream media falling in love with blogs.

Get a call centre in Mumbai when you ring for tech support? From the International Herald Tribune, outsourcing has been extended to journalism.

And finally, from Salon, what do you do if you’re a journalism student, but are afraid to ask the hard questions? You don’t have to. Get a job that doesn’t specifically involve the “hard, investigative research utilizing personal interviews with original sources”.

Uni Results

Alright, university results came out today and these are mine. 7 is a top mark.

Dave’s Results – Semester 2, 2006
Course		Grade
COMU1002	Intercultural Communication	6
HIST2400	Medieval Civilisation – The Foundations	4
HIST2401	Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages	6
POLS2510	International Peacekeeping	4
COMU3223	Mass Media and Society	5
GPA (Grade Point Average)		5

As already mentioned, I’m particularly lucky to have passed all five subjects. Now that’s out of the way, it’s time to start thinking about next year.

Outstanding Ash

I suspect they’re putting something in the water at Ashgrove State School. Driving by today, their school notice billboard now reads, “Congrats – Primary video production – 2nd place in Australia”.

It’s either something in the water or their information technology teachers, who provide a weekly computer education lesson for each class, are good. Very good. At least good enough for one of them to receive a Smart Classrooms ICT Teacher award.

Oh, and you can read all about the history of the school, if you like. They could market a t-shirt at their next school fete.

What’s in a name?

Ashgrove State School, mentioned yesterday, is set up for use on polling days for elections. As I happened to be living nearby for a few months when I was 20, I meandered down the street on the Saturday election morning and into the school grounds.

Having run the gauntlet of oppositional volunteers waving how-to-vote pamphlets at me, I approached the second wave of volunteers, this time sitting at desks checking voter registration. My intense concentration on the next hurdle made me feel like I was in slow motion when, clearly a few seconds later, my brain registered that someone had just said my name.

I glanced around, not immediately recognising anyone, before noticing a stationary figure amongst the moving people, his eyes definitely looking at me.

I studied the shaven head and familiar goatee – a small, blonde, triangle that clung to the chin. “Mr Welsh?” I queried.

After a brief conversation, the contents of which I’ve entirely forgotten, I cast my vote and was on my merry way. I was thoroughly impressed that my teacher from the one year at Ashgrove, in Grade 5 when I was 10 years old, recognised me and knew me by name 10 years later.

On a related tangent, something I’d never thought of before writing this post is that the school’s acronym is particularly unfortunate. I don’t remember it ever being an issue when I was in Grade 5, when quite clearly it should have been a running joke for the school’s entire history.

School 2.0

Driving the quiet streets of Brisbane in the last week, two school notice billboards caught my attention.

The first, from Our Lady of the Assumption in Enoggera, told how the Year Fours were almost done with their podcasts. Podcasts! My first thought is simply, “Cool.” Then logic kicks in and I think, “Wait, is that really important? Shouldn’t they be doing grammar or mathematics or something?” And then, finally, I kick logic in the teeth and say, “Learning the skills needed to work in a multimedia environment is probably the most important training those kids can get, and at such a young age, they’re off to a good start!” You’ve got to give credit to the teacher who came up with that project. The Year Four page at the school’s site doesn’t yet show the podcasts, but I’ll be keen to check them out if they do post them.

The second billboard was from the primary school I attended during my only year of primary education in Australia, Ashgrove State School. They took out Primary first place in the best web-based student newspaper category for their Kid’s eZine. It’s fairly basic in design and writing, with most of the stories about 100 words in length, but a great achievement for 6-10 year olds! My only suggestion to them would be to put dates on their stories so people know how current they are. My favourite story was one about Ashgrove sports teams written by four of the boys. In it they ask the question, why do Ashgrove sports teams achieve so much? The answer, they decide, is that “the coaches don’t yell, they encourage their teams with firm but quiet talk.” Great stuff.

This sort of information on school noticeboards is much more interesting than the usual “Congratulations Jack and Jane – State Finals”. Apart from Jack and Jane who may get a sense of pride seeing their name by a main road, the general public haven’t learnt much about any of the school’s (possibly) great programs. These boards actually caught my attention and made me interested in what the kids were achieving, underscored by what’s obviously an interesting and fun program. And what they’re doing is great. As I said before, giving young children practical training in a multimedia environment is setting them up for the future.

UPDATE: The title of the post, School 2.0, refers to the now commonly used term Web 2.0, the “supposed second generation of Internet-based services … that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users” (from Wikipedia).

Last Exam

I’m off to my last exam for the year, an 8am start for International Peacekeeping. I’m not entirely confident, but hopefully I’ll be able to ‘common-sense’ my way through it. At least it’s only five short hours until I’m done for this year!

Lessee

If you’ve been following our lease / housing decisions, this is a final update.

I’ll recap the whole scenario, in excruciating detail, for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about.

We were initially thinking of moving because our landlord was going to put our rent up by $20 per week, which we weren’t too happy about. We asked if they would replace the carpet that is badly stained, or perhaps give us an air conditioner seeing as they were asking for an extra $1,040 out of us for the year, or at least not increase the rent so much as incentive for us to stay. The rental agent said neither of those things were likely to happen, so we looked elsewhere.

A two-bedroom house looked promising, and I went to look at it last Wednesday morning with the owner. It turned out we were both seeing the property inside for the first time since the owner had bought it after seeing it on the internet. Basically on seeing it he considered it unrentable and said, if we were still interested, to make him an offer.

On consideration, we thought this would be an opportunity to save a great deal of money as he would be improving the property, so I called the owner back on Thursday morning. His phone went straight to voicemail and I couldn’t get in touch with him before Friday, when we had to hand in our two weeks notice to leave our current unit. We were trusting that the owner of the house we wanted to move to would get back to us. I knew he was returning from overseas November 14, which would give us three days to move if he agreed to our offer, but few options if he didn’t.

On Monday, however, our rental agent phoned me and asked if we had found somewhere to move to. Apparently the owner of our unit had been away the week previously, so was unable to respond to our requests. The owner offered to purchase an airconditioner if we paid for installation, new tiles or floorboards to replace the carpet, and to increase the rent by only $5 per week. With no guaranteed accommodation if we left, a fantastic offer to stay, and the fact that we like our apartment, we agreed to renew our lease for 12 months based on those conditions.

This has been a long post, but I was asked in an email, “when/are you moving house? and to where?“

Knowing the asking party reads this blog, there is your answer. We are staying where we are, which is a blessing really, since we own a bunch of crap that neither Kate or I was looking forward to moving!

U2 Vertigo Tour – Brisbane

This morning was my 8am exam on Medieval Civilisation: The Foundations, last night was the long awaited return to Australia of the ageless U2. Hmmm, I don’t think this counts as reselling, using for advertising, promotion, competitions or other commercial purposes without the presenter’s prior written authorisation, plus I’ve watermarked it COPY ONLY – so hopefully this isn’t illegal. My ticket from the first U2 concert on Australian soil in eight years, and my first ever U2 concert.

Yes, the ticket says March 21, but the Australian leg of the tour was postponed until November because of the illness of someone in the family of one of the band members earlier this year.

Kate and I were in row UUU out of VVV, as shown in the ticket, only one row from the furthest back seats. When we first arrived there weren’t many people in the stadium, so we took a rest halfway up the stairs to our seats. We couldn’t quite see the stage from our ‘rest’ seats, so it actually worked out quite well when we got up the top, as the height gave us a better view of the stage than when we had first arrived.

Kanye West opened, and after his first song went off on some tangent about himself in the press. I don’t know which press he’s talking about, but I’m pretty sure 95% of the people there had no idea what he was talking about, given probably about 75% had probably never heard of him. Nonetheless, on and on he went about how we should all keep in mind the press makes a big issue out of little things…. dude, nobody knows or cares.

That said, having listened to Kanye on tripleJ for a long time, it was good hearing Gold Digger, Diamonds are Forever, Jesus Walks, and Touch the Sky.

The gates for the standing only section on the field should have been opened earlier, since after Kanye we had to wait another half hour or more for U2 to start as people were still shuffling through lines to get into the stadium. Some friends were lined up from 5am until the gates opened at 5.30pm to try and get into the standing section that surrounds the stage. I hope they succeeded.

When U2 came on they opened with City of Blinding Lights. Kate was fidgety, wanting to get into the music, but everybody in the stands stayed in their seats. There were about 500 empty seats just next to our section, and we were considering moving to it so we could stand or sit as we pleased when the second song Vertigo, began. Our decision was made, and we took off to express ourselves through interpretive dance as the music thumped across the stadium.

It was pretty amazing, and Bono was surprisingly political. Not that I didn’t expect him to be political but he went for a bit of shock value when, before Sunday Bloody Sunday, he called for David Hicks to be released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Australia for a fair trial. It was hard to judge the crowd’s response, but as Kate said, it definitely seemed to change the mood in the stadium from ‘entertainment’ to something a little more sombre.

The first six Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were also scrolled on the giant screen, with a child’s voiceover reading the last several. At another point, the big screen was turned into a giant pokie machine, once stopping to display three John Howard heads and one of Peter Garrett. For those who didn’t watch the ARIAs two weeks ago, Midnight Oil were inducted into the Hall of Fame – with a video introduction from Bono before Silverchair played Don’t Wanna Be the One. At the end of the performance, and before Midnight Oil came on stage, Silverchair front man Daniel Johns spray painted PG4PM on a stage wall.

Back to the U2 concert last night. Throughout the concert it was amazing that at any one time, only about 20 people were standing in our entire section of the stadium. Apart from the people in the very back row, most of whom felt at ease standing up because there weren’t rows of people behind them refusing to follow suit, everyone looked straitjacketed in their seats. Kate and I broke free, clapping our hands in the air, stomping our feet and dancing with the stick figures on screen.

When the band first left the stage after playing One, people started leaving the stadium without waiting for an encore. That was a big mistake, since the band returned to play another six songs! Strangely, many people didn’t think an encore was worth staying for, walking out while the band played on.

The political aspect of the event was very good. Not because it was
anything I hadn’t heard or thought of before, but because it was all
the things I have heard and have thought of before.
It’s often the simple things we forget about, but more importantly I
think there are people who may never think about political issues, and
this simple nudge might possibly educate. Mind you, we also forget
quickly. During Sunday Bloody Sunday there was also a graphic on screen of Coexist, where the C was the Islamic crescent, the X the Jewish Star of David, and the T a Christian cross.

Overall, as my first ever U2 concert, I was thoroughly impressed. Despite being the furthest back from the stage we could possibly be, I wasn’t at all disappointed by that. I’m really glad we left our seats and stood up the back because, despite the fantastic music, I would have been disappointed if I had been seated for the entire concert. Not too mention incredibly uncomfortable. Weren’t those people bored, and wishing they could jump up and down?!

You can see a lot more information about the concert, including the full set list, at u2-vertigo-tour.com.

Last night one of my brothers and one of my sisters went to the Brisbane concert as well. My oldest brother has tickets for one of the Sydney concerts over this weekend, but at last report has lost them. I sincerely hope he finds them before the show!

Crazyness

While studying for this morning’s exam, I printed out my assignment for the subject and read it for the first time to get a refresher on the topic. Yes, that’s correct, read it for the first time. I noticed I had re-stated the introduction three times, including in the second last paragraph (“this essay will argue”), referenced a mere 13 things in footnotes but forgot to go back and clean up those footnotes, and forgot to put in the dynastic family tree I’d painstakingly created to show the line of kings

It’s a crazy, mixed up world, I tell you. Seriously, who would have thought you could possibly get 20/40 on an assignment that’s handed in 24 days late, 1,070 words short of the word count and has, as one of the many pencilled-in comments,

?? has argued that ?? – You seem to have only copied the text of the intro.

Touché, sir.

Now I have International Peacekeeping and Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle Ages to study for next week before I’m done for the year. And, amazingly, it looks like I might pass all 5 subjects. That is currently pending the return of a Journalism essay that was also particularly bad, but I’ll find out tomorrow and make an announcement then. Also, of course, pending exam outcomes, but I’m assuming I’ll do well enough on those.

Stuff and Nonsense

Advertisements have returned to the Earley Edition. My opinion is this: if there really is money to be made, make it. If you have an opinion, voice it in the comments.

I was fortunate enough in another one of my returned essays to lose only half the marks I should have for late submission, leaving me with 19/40 rather than 9/40. The topic there was, Are Transitional Administrations a form of new imperialism? What did I say? Yes, I think…

I have an 8am exam the Wednesday morning after the U2 concert, and it is the most important exam of all three. And so, since today is a study day, I will away.

Don’t forget to vote for President of the United States of America – 2008! Here or in the sidebar on the right.

ONE SLEEP TO U2 CONCERT!

Will you do my exam for me?

No, I actually wouldn’t trust any of you to do my exam for me, but I just received an email from the Acting Academic Registrar. Not too long ago there was a lot of media coverage about students outsourcing their assignments to other students. I think it was mainly international students with poor English who couldn’t write university level essays, some of whom also paid their ‘tutor’ to sit their exam for them. The university is just now getting serious about making sure you don’t have your buddy writing your exam at 8am while you sleep in.

Please be advised of a change to University Rules in relation to student ID in examinations.

You must bring your current student ID to examinations.

If you do not have a current student ID card for display at an examination you will only be permitted to sit the exam if you have an alternate, acceptable form of photographic ID with you. You may also be required to have your photograph taken before sitting the examination for later verification against the University’s records. If you are permitted to sit an examination using alternate photographic ID, your work will not be assessed unless, within 48 hrs of the exam, you present to the student centre with your student ID.

Please be aware that, if you come to an examination without an acceptable form of photographic ID, you will not be permitted to sit the examination and you will not be entitled to apply for a special examination.

Mind you, the old biddys who check IDs probably wouldn’t notice if you were sitting for someone else anyway.

Haka

I’ve mentioned YouTube a couple of times, and have just uploaded my first video to see how easy it is to share video. Having handed in my assignment on the Merovingians at about 5.30 this afternoon, I’m sitting back and just trying to relax and forget about

1. how horrific the tripe I wrote was, and
2. how I’m not looking forward to getting it back.

But enough of that, I just wanted to put together a really short video to put it online quickly. It still took a long time to upload on my dialup even though it’s only 44 seconds long.

It’s the duelling hakas from the 2003 World Cup. New Zealand haka vs Samoan haka.

Do it. Do it. Yo, do it.

If you’re a Ben Stiller fan, you may have enjoyed one of his more ridiculous moments in Starsky and Hutch when he impersonates a mob boss. Then again, you might not like anything Ben Stiller does – but this is all beyond the point. I was trying to think of something other than the Nike catchphrase to express what needs to happen today.

Damn it, man! Write something, anything, and hand it in!

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