lifeasdaddy

lifeasdaddy - slurred elocution by parliamentarian

Last night I was listening to the live radio broadcast of the House of Representatives debate.   Under discussion was a bill about the environment.  One front bencher was displaying slurred speech, unlike that person's normal diction in Parliament.  I've also met that person 3 times, and slurred speech is not their normal characteristic. 

I hope that person gets appropriate treatment for their condition.

lifeasdaddy - Photos of Edward swimming.

Here's some photos of Edward at his swimming lesson today.

Just giving the new camera a bit of a workout.

lifeasdaddy - My new camera

Edward gave me a new camera recently. (Thanks Ed.  Thanks Gabrielle.)  It's a Casio Exilim Zoom EX-760.  Very easy to use.  I'm still testing it for various purposes, so you can expect to see plenty of photos coming up.

With my last camera, a Canon, I had trouble using it in macro mode especially when taking close-up pics of wristwatches.

Here's a photo with the old Canon.

The Canon had trouble deciding whether to focus on the surface of the watch glass, or on the surface of the watch face.  Usually it chose the watch glass, leaving the face out of focus - although this image is OK.

Here's the same subject (Omega Speedmaster Professional) taken with the new Casio camera.

That's the first photo I took, and the Casio worked pretty well in macro.  Perhaps it uses a greater depth of field than the Canon.  I'm not sure. 

More practice is in order.  I'll have to read the instruction manual too.

lifeasdaddy - Who to believe: The Sydney Morning Herald or The Australian Financial Review?

Australian telecommunications behemoth Telstra, majority owned by the government, is currently preparing to publicly float a third tranche of shares.  This float is called T3.

There's been plenty of talk in the media over the past few weeks about the pros and cons of buying shares, and plenty of media hype, and spin.

Here is today's story about T3 in the Sydney Morning Herald by Matt O'Sullivan:

The headline reads, "Wealthy clients lap up T3 but Japanese not too keen".

Here is today's story about T3 in The Australian Financial Review by Tony Boyd:

The headline reads, "Japanese jump on board the T3 wave".

Confusing, no?

Confusing, yes?

Both newspapers are part of the same publishing house, Fairfax Media. 

{Disclosure:  The author holds John Fairfax Holdings Limited shares}

lifeasdaddy - Jim Donald, CEO and President of Starbucks: How he spends his time.

Here's a Fortune article about how Jim Donald spends his time.

[pointer from Rebecca Blood ]

lifeasdaddy - VoIP protocol causing problems for phone taps.

Apparently, Voice over Internet Protocol telephony has been causing some angst to Swiss police trying to tap telephone calls. 

[pointer from Bruce Schneier]

I suppose that VoIP is a problem on the horizon for the NSW Police as its usage increases. 

It will hardly present a problem to the NSA or the DSD given the huge computing power at their disposal. 

lifeasdaddy - Australian War Memorial has a blog

The Australian War Memorial has started a blog about an upcoming exhibition about T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and the Australian Light Horse Regiments in Palestine during World War I.

The blog is here. 

It's got a really good visual and navigational design.  The fascination lies in the window it gives into the curatorial process.  Notice too the usual use of links behind the photographs on the blog.  On most blogs if you click on a photo it brings up a larger version of the photograph.  On this blog, clicking on the photo sometimes links to the AWM catalogue page for the image or topic, thus giving some in-depth background.

As many of you know, I've got a great interest in film, and the movie Lawrence of Arabia, a biopic about T. E. Lawrence is one I recommend.  It's number 30 on the AFI 100 years, 100 cheers list  and it's also on Jim Fleming's list of 101 movies you must see before you die.  Of course, being Hollywood, some historical inaccuracies occur in the film.

My interest in film led me to discover the AWM blog, too. 

I've noticed that a new film directed by Clint Eastwood Flags of Our Fathers was recently released in the USA and has been garnering some good reviews.  At it's core is Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of raising the USA flag over Iwo Jima during  World War II.   

It was on my mind to research a bit further about Iwo Jima.  I wasn't sure if the Australian military had played any part in the battle for Iwo Jima, so I went to the Australian War Memorial  home page to search the collection.  A search on "Iwo Jima" returned only one result; for a propaganda leaflet.  But on the plus side, I did notice the pointer to the new blog!