Archive for the ‘turtleneck wearing latté sippers’ Category

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Slightly faster broadband

3 Mar 2008

Minister for Broadband Stephen Conroy yesterday delivered the exciting news that the government’s planned $4.7 billion broadband network would deliver speeds “up to 100 times faster than what is currently available”. Sounds great!

It will achieve this by running fibre-optic connections to the telecommunications pillar mushrooms on street corners then using VDSL (very fast digital something something else) to deliver speeds of up to 25Mbps to homes.

Call me a pedant if you must, but that’s not 100 times faster than what’s currently available. I may be decaf soy latte drinking inner city elite, but I get around 19Mbps using ADSL2 and living about a kilometre from my phone exchange. I’m no maths genius, but I’m pretty sure 25Mbps is not 100 times faster than 19Mpbs. In fact I’d say it something closer to 1.3 times faster.

But Senator Conroy’s calculation is based on the claim that “most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second”. Which is

  • A lie - statistics more than a year old show two-thirds of broadband users on faster than 256Kbps and
  • A damning criticism of how Conroy’s predecessors let Telstra and the rest of the internet industry deliberately retard broadband access and make obscene profits.

Seems like when it comes to technology, the new federal government is as pompous and incompetent as the last.

Posted in damned lies and statistics, money, politics, techno-wankery, turtleneck wearing latté sippers | 1 Comment »

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To Lenny Ann Low, SMH reviewer

26 Jul 2007

I am fed up with you following me around and reviewing everywhere I go.

Every time you write up a venue, for weeks afterwards ordinary decent people can’t get a table or a drink for all the throngs of rubbernecking pleb Herald readers trying to be cool.

Piss off and ruin someone else’s life, or I’m getting an AVO.

Posted in Sydney, media, turtleneck wearing latté sippers, violence | 2 Comments »

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Inner-city dilemmas

4 Jun 2007

Having wasted a month interviewing countless freaks, weirdos, persons of dubious financial solvency, persons of dubious hygiene and the occasional very nice person (who, inevitably, would turn the place down), I resolved last week to give up on finding a flatmate for my beloved Newtown terrace and to get a place on my own where I can sit on the couch in my undies and watch ABC and SBS whenever I like.

Of course the big question is, where? Having lived in Newtown or thereabouts for something like seven of the last eight years, the people at the deli, milk bar, pub and a couple of cafés know my name. But I think it’s time for a change. That’s mainly because when you tell people you live in Newtown, they always assume you are gay or a communist. Or a gay communist.

Of course the other areas under consideration have similar baggage. Surry Hills - wanker. Potts Point/Rushcutters Bay/Elizabeth Bay - pervert. Darlinghurst - gay or a drug dealer. Or a gay drug dealer.

So far the places I’ve looked at in Darlinghurst have either been noisy or depressingly run down. And most of the places in Potts Point appear to have micro-kitchens with a tiny bar fridges and no stove or oven. Honestly, who could live like that? It’s inhumane!

It might just be easier to stick with Newtown and let people assume what they will. At least being a gay communist means everyone gets to be equally fabulous.

Posted in Sydney, turtleneck wearing latté sippers | 3 Comments »

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Transcendental, man

6 Mar 2006

Had a total Koyaanisqatsi moment this evening on the way home waiting to cross King St from the station and watching a 747 bumble towards the runway passing the dark grey clouds seared red along the underside by the setting sun. It didn’t hurt that I was actually listening to the Naqoyqatsi soundtrack at the time, of course.

I remember once during a boring university lecture, the morning after having seen Koyaanisqatsi the night before, having first utilised the necessary mood-altering organic substances, having a minor epiphany about the movie.

There are natural shapes, it tells us, and there are human shapes, each instantly recognisable from the micro to the macroscopic. But within the human shapes there are natural shapes: waves of cars slowing down and speeding up in traffic; the busy escalator that resembles a waterfall. But most interestingly, human shapes become natural shapes through the process of destruction: the modernist nightmare Pruitt-Igoe public housing development that turns into a wobbly building-shaped cloud as it collapses; the atomic bomb.

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Posted in music, turtleneck wearing latté sippers | No Comments »