Entries from December 2007

How To Build A Campus Culture With Urban Planning. Town planners may be able to take a cue or two from the design of university campuses. Let me take you back to the days of Ancient Rome, where the ideal city was planned around a central town square. The most important institutions of city life were located around the square, and around them were the various buildings and dwellings that ... Read full entry

Visual Studio 2008 Review. A review by Ian Muir at the SitePoint blogs. Overall, it's a solid improvement over 2005. The guys at Microsoft have made some good changes that actually improved the development experience rather than just adding a bunch of fluff. Unlike 2005, you're not required to upgrade to the newest framework to use it, so you don't have to upgrade to .NET 3.5 just yet. The ... Read full entry

The Joshua Tree: 20th Anniversary Box Set. It's been 20 years since U2 unleashed this Rock/Pop classic upon us. Virtually every track, from the building grandeur of Where The Streets Have No Name and the muscular gospel of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For to the hoarse latitudes of Red Hill Mining Town and the "see, we're very very sombre" Mothers Of The Disappeared, would be immediately familiar ... Read full entry

How Many People Listen To Podcasts. Not to put any budding podcasters off, but if you are considering partaking this post by Richard Giles may be worth a read first. Just over a month ago I ran a quick analysis over Scouta's data, and found that a small sample showed that possibly only 10% of downloaded podcasts are consumed to any degree, and only 50% of those are ... Read full entry

Almost $1b spent on unwanted Xmas gifts. Not to spoil the fun in anyway, but one billion dollars? A Galaxy survey commissioned by online auction website eBay has found two-thirds of Australians have received at least one unwanted gift. The survey estimates $985 million was spent on unwanted Christmas gifts, up $35 million on last year. And guess where a lot that stuff ends up? Ebay said Boxing Day was one of the most ... Read full entry

The Little Tramp A photo series at Time Magazine. We celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the death of Charlie Chaplin (13th April 1889 - 25th December 1977) I saw some more of Chaplin's vintage silent movies a few months ago. In the absence of any audio the actors really have to make a picture speak a thousand words. Sure there were little "insert cards", slides with text on them weaved into the ... Read full entry

Benazir Bhutto assassinated This is shocking. The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in the city of Rawalpindi yesterday, plunging the nuclear-armed country into one of the worst crises in its 60-year history. I really hate to think what might happen next.

Bots and Bloggers Don't Get Holiday Time Off. In my opinion "pro" blogging is a little like running your own business, or being a sole proprietor. And when it comes to taking holidays the (grim) reality is things are going to slow down at your place of business for the duration. After all they don't call them holidays for nothing. My access to the net has been restricted for the ... Read full entry

Just home in time to catch a snap of the extreme tail end of the 1:45pm Mount Gay Rum Maiden Handicap at Randwick. Good to see the horses back racing after the recent Equine Influenza outbreak.

It was about a year ago I noticed the first painting on the wall at Cafe 105, and last Saturday a new mural was "added" to the ongoing series. I will add some wider view shots to the 105 Flickr set in a day or two.