woowoowoo » fun

Hugh Riminton gets upstaged

admin — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:39:28 +0000

One of those “see it but don’t believe it” moments on 6pm with George Negus. Hugh Riminton starts his presentation from Washington when a dog cruises by in the background… on a skateboard!

The rest of the family looked at me like I was crazy, but I wasn’t the only one to see it!

all that water

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:21:07 +0000

When it comes to big events like the recent floods in Queensland and Victoria, it’s information overload. The news organisation love it, broadcasting incessantly and devoting great slabs of print to it. I don’t want to add to that, so this post is just a scrapbook of, for me, the most striking images. These are all aerial photographs from Nearmap, if you click, you’ll go to the ‘wet’ image on nearmap. Incredible stuff.

1. Disappearing house

2. Having a cow of a day

3. There’s a caravan in our tree

4. Rearranging the riverside

5. Backyard salvage by canoe

6. Where did you park the digger?

…and that’s not all

More amazing sights are being found every day by nearmap forum members.

online vs aussie retailers: the final word?

admin — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:55:27 +0000

Trust the folk at NMA World Edition to explain the story in just 90 hilarious seconds!

google maps announce an update

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:19:32 +0000

Wow! so much to post about all of a sudden. Google have just announced an update to their streetmap data, adding new streets in the rapidly expanding areas of our cities. Yay! I mean it is exciting, in fact, I think it’s the first update to the map data since they released it! Well, at least you can no longer say that Open Street Map is more up to date than Google, now that they’ve got all that shiny new data – lets go and have a look!

We can use the wonderful MapCompare to see how the new Google Data compares to Open Street Map in some of the new, outlying suburbs, like: Caroline Springs, oh darn that’s not such a good example – how about Sydenham – that’s better, I’m sure Google will add the cycle paths soon. Let’s try Lalor, oops! What about we try somewhere out east? like Pakenham.

Oh damn it!

Seriously though, I did have to carefully select locations where OSM was clearly better than the new improved Google Maps. They’ve done a great job updating it. Just goes to show though, that a huge company like Google takes years to get around to posting data that in many ways is not as detailed as that sourced from volunteers and offered up for free reuse. I think I’ll go and stick all those shiny new OSM streets on my Garmin GPS – because I definitely can’t do that with Google’s!

unhappy with your interest rate?

admin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 09:56:20 +0000

Try switching browsers!… well, it might work!

I just saw this one from downloadsquad.com in my feed reader and it’s true!!

Visit http://www.capitalone.com/autoloans/ using Google Chrome and you get one rate (that’s it on the left), but use Firefox (on the right) and you get a much more attractive rate!

I have no idea why – maybe they just hate google!

Cycling with wildlife

admin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:34:05 +0000

Just wanted to share a little ‘magic moment’, I encountered on the way home last night.

Riding up Royal Parade with the commuter peloton when, stopped at the lights, I noticed a woman on the footpath poking and peering at her bike. I was about to ask whether she needed a hand, when someone behind me beat me to it. Her reply:

It’s OK, there’s a spider on my bike!

OK, I shouldn’t laugh, because it was obviously a big problem for her to have an eight legged passenger, but all the same, it’s not exactly up there with broken chains and flat tyres, is it?

A short time went by during which she didn’t seem to make any headway with her problem, despite employing the time honoured ‘stick’ method of spider removal – apparently the beast in question was small enough to remain hidden somewhere around the headstem (Perhaps a magnifying glass would have helped!). Anyway, a far kinder person than me did eventually relent and join her on the footpath for a bit of impromptu pest removal.

I hope all survived the experience unscathed!

magpie love

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:19:03 +0000

Yes, it was a great day for the pies and nice to finally stick it to all the detractors, after all, I think these two ardent fans have all their teeth intact!

baby, it’s cold!

admin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:00:54 +0000

Google are having fun again! Releasing StreetView Images of Antarctica is just brilliant. The bit I really love though, is that the little yellow Pegman becomes a penguin. Just too cute!

the mighty magpie

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:06:02 +0000

This is my mate Harry. I meet him on the way home sometimes. Sometimes he surprises me, but tonight I saw him ‘interacting’ with someone ahead of me, so I was ready – even had time to get the iPhone out and ready in movie mode!

I love magpies. The football team and the birds! Magpies are so gutsy – I mean I’m hundreds of times his size, but I’m invading his home and all he’s thinking about is the missus and the kids. You really can’t blame him for doing what the little voices in his head are telling him. Anyone who’s had chooks in their backyard can’t really be afraid of a bird.

… and look at that second effort! he’s probably wearing a number 8

bear’s weedy bastard twin

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:02:14 +0000

Bear Grylls just posted a message to twitter about the trailer to his new season of Man v Wild. I like Bear, the show gets a bit monotonous and I wish he wouldn’t kill animals when he clearly doesn’t need to, but this latest trailer moved him into far more ridiculous territory. As I watched the unconvincing CGI of him commando rolling across an imaginary landscape, I was getting a memory of someone else. When he turned toward the camera in one of the final frames, it clicked! He is the spitting image of Arnold Rimmer!

Even better, he is Arnold Rimmer’s wet dream of how he wishes he could be! I’ll never be able to look at Bear the same way again!