currently 11:20pm Sunday 11th May, 2008 (NYC, New York)
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anzac day 2008
Friday 25 April, 2008 at 12:46PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (2) In 1915, Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of an Allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula, under a plan by Winston Churchill to open the way to the Black Sea for the Allied navies. The objective was to capture Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire and an ally of Germany. The ANZAC force landed at Gallipoli on 25th April, meeting fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders. What had been planned as a bold strike to knock Turkey out of the war quickly became a stale-mate, and the campaign dragged on for eight months. At the end of 1915, the Allied forces were evacuated after both sides had suffered heavy casualties and endured great hardships. Over 8,000 Australian and 2,700 New Zealand soldiers died. News of the landing at Gallipoli made a profound impact on Australians and New Zealanders at home, and 25th April quickly became the day on which they remembered the sacrifice of those who had died in war. Though the Gallipoli campaign failed in its military objectives of capturing Istanbul and knocking Turkey out of the war, the Australian and New Zealand troops' actions during the campaign bequeathed an intangible but powerful legacy. The creation of what became known as "the ANZAC legend" became an important part of the national identity in both countries, as well as with the English who dubbed them "The Knights of Gallipoli". After the First World War, returned soldiers sought the comradeship they felt in those quiet, peaceful moments before dawn. With symbolic links to the dawn landing at Gallipoli, a dawn stand-to or dawn ceremony became a common form of ANZAC Day remembrance during the 1920s, and today the "Dawn Service" has become an integral part of the ANZAC Day commemorations for New Zealanders and Australians, both at home and around the world. Anzac Day is also officially celebrated in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga. "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is a song written by Eric Bogle in 1972, describing the futility, gruesome reality and the destruction of war (here's the youtube link - not quite sure why the vid has Canadian soldiers near the end though. I removed the embedded video - found it was sucking down CPU resources. There's also another version of the song sung by Liam Clancy). The song is a vivid account of the memories of a young Australian man who, in 1915, had been recruited into the ANZACs and sent to Gallipoli, who "for ten weary weeks" kept himself alive as "around me the corpses piled higher". He recalls "that terrible day" ... "in the hell that they called Suvla Bay we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter" ... "in that mad world of blood, death and fire". In its clear and stark retelling of the events of the battle and its aftermath, it is a passionate indictment of war in general, and notes the passing of other veterans with time, as younger generations become apathetic to the veterans and their cause. The song incorporates the melody and a few lines of "Waltzing Matilda's" lyrics at its conclusion, and is often praised for its haunting imagery of the devastation at Gallipoli, and although it apparently was written as a criticism of war, it has since become a strong symbol of the sacrifice made by the ANZAC soldiers who died on the beaches of Gallipoli. bandwidth theft
Saturday 9 February, 2008 at 6:28PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0) Was just sifting through some older files and had a giggle when I came across this image:
I made it years ago when I was on another host and found a heap of my images were being hotlinked from other websites (and therefore using the bandwidth I was paying for), so I added an .htaccess file and had this image served up whenever another site was hotlinking an image.. was pretty amusing at the time ..and effective. sweet machine
Friday 11 January, 2008 at 12:39AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (2)
General Motors executives have long said that their Hummer line needs a new model. Soon, it will be adding a pick-up. Beyond that, the only direction left to go is smaller. And that means going head to head with the Jeep Wrangler. With its HX concept car, to be shown at the Detroit Auto Show next week, Hummer has taken every feature Wrangler fans love about their favorite off-roader and brought it into a more modern looking Hummer motif. The Hummer HX is about as convertible as a convertible can get. Not only do the roof panels lift off and the doors come off their hinges, but the HX's fenders come off with a quick turn of a screw. The rear quarter windows lift out as well. In case you get into real trouble, it's equipped with a set of specially designed tools including a rechargeable flashlight, collapsible shovel and fire extinguisher.
The HX seats four. The rear seats fold down and can be removed for added cargo space - their thin-backed shape was inspired by lightweight aircraft seats. Much of the interior is covered in bare metal. A three-element gauge cluster changes automatically to show either a tachometer for normal driving or a wheel angle indicator for off-road driving. The Hummer HX concept will be powered by a 3.6-liter V6 engine that can run on gasoline or an ethanol blend. It will have a six-speed automatic transmission and full-time all-wheel-drive. The front suspension has a stabilizer bar that can be automatically disconnected for extreme off-road situations GM claims that it can wade through two feet of water. Yes please. netscape grinds to a halt
Sunday 30 December, 2007 at 1:38PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)
Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. Netscape's usage dwindled with Microsoft Corp.'s entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox. "While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer," Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday. In recent years, Netscape has been little more than a repackaged version of the more popular Firefox, which commands about 10 percent of the Web browser market, with almost all of the rest going to Internet Explorer. People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on Feb. 1. Drapeau recommended that the small pool of Netscape users download Firefox instead. A separate Netscape Web portal, which has had several incarnations in recent years, will continue to operate. The World Wide Web was but a few years old when in April 1993 a team at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications released Mosaic, the first Web browser to integrate images and sound with words. Before Mosaic, access to the Internet and the Web was largely limited to text, with any graphics displayed in separate windows. Marc Andreessen and many of his university colleagues soon left to form a company tasked with commercializing the browser. The first version of Netscape came out in late 1994. Netscape fed the gold-rush atmosphere with a landmark initial public offering of stock in August 1995. Netscape's stock carried a then-steep IPO price of $28 per share, a price that doubled on opening day to give the startup a $2 billion market value even though it had only $20 million in sales. But Netscape's success also drew the attention of Microsoft, which quickly won market share by giving away its Internet Explorer browser for free with its flagship Windows operating system. The bundling prompted a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit and later a settlement with Microsoft. Netscape eventually dropped fees for the software, but it was too late. Undone by IE, Netscape sold itself to AOL in a $10 billion deal completed in early 1999. Netscape spawned an open-source project called Mozilla, in which developers from around the world freely contribute to writing and testing the software. Mozilla released its standalone browser, Firefox, and Netscape was never able to regain its former footing. Source: associated press. On a personal note, I was an avid user of Netscape for years, then moved on to Firefox, which I continue to use to this day - I only use MS Internet Explorer when forced to at work. An end of an era for sure, although it's been in the cards for a while now. Buh-bye Nutscrape. state of the union
Saturday 22 December, 2007 at 4:46PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (1) At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about “The Fall of The Athenian Republic” some 2,000 years prior. “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.” “The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From Bondage to spiritual faith; Source: commenter on MichelleMalkin.com. internship complete
Friday 14 December, 2007 at 12:11AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0) I officially completed my 600 hour internship on Tuesday, with just three days to spare until finals start. Nice timing finishing when I did - I really did not want to be working through finals week. Technically I completed the 600 hours last Friday, but I came back on Tuesday for a 'certificate of appreciation' to be presented (which is basically an official acknowledgment / confirmation that the person named did indeed successfully complete the 600 hour internship program), and then the director took me out to lunch. Yay me! The internship provided a lot of worthwhile practical experience in auditing which should serve me well in the future, and as a bonus, my performance was at a high enough level that the director wrote a glowing personal reference along with the certificate of appreciation - something they do not usually do apparently (I believe it's usually limited to the certificate only). So.. onwards and upwards. Now I need to find another internship for the new year. final exams
Wednesday 12 December, 2007 at 11:44PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)
yay amber
Wednesday 5 December, 2007 at 12:49AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0) Happy birthday Amber! Just talked to you on the phone which was awesome. Haha woah good luck losing that creepy infatuated emo dude, seriously - set him up with someone you don't like, such a good idea imho. Hope the Xmas party is fun, wish I was there with you. Send photos of your hair! Love you. xoxo first snow
Sunday 2 December, 2007 at 10:23PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)
Final exams coming up in a couple of weeks (eek!), and I'm also coming to the end of my 600 hour auditing internship and it looks like I'll finish it just a couple of days before my first exam, which is well timed - didn't really want to be working through the finals. Been a hectic semester and we're certainly looking forward to a couple of days with no work or study between Christmas and the new year! Amber's birthday coming up in a few days - missing her heaps as always, but it's worst at this time of year. saudi justice
Thursday 15 November, 2007 at 5:55PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (1) This is a stunning development. You may recall a story that received a lot of media attention about 18 months ago regarding a 19-year-old woman from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, gang-raped 14 times after being found talking with an unrelated man in his car. Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years. What made headlines around the world was that along with the seven men, the victim was also punished - for violating Saudi Arabia's laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was sentenced to 90 lashes for being in an unrelated man's car (as if being gang-raped 14 times wasn't enough 'punishment' already). The latest news is the result of an appeal by the victim. The appeal court in Saudi Arabia concluded that the punishment should not be reduced, but increased to 200 lashes, and a six-month prison sentence added! The Arab News quoted an official as saying the judges had decided to punish the girl further for trying to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media. Seriously. In a situation like this I would expect there to be media attention, with or without any efforts by the victim - what attracted that attention was not the victim but the seemingly bizarre decision made by the Saudi judicial system in the first place. I realize that I find it shocking because I live in a different culture where woman are not treated as little more than slaves, but this appeal ruling sounds suspiciously like the judges just didn't like having the initial judiciary decision questioned, particularly by a woman. The rapists also had their prison terms doubled, but the sentences are still low considering they could have faced the death penalty. To add insult to injury, the victim's lawyer was suspended from the case, has had his license to work confiscated, and faces a disciplinary session for appealing the case. Yup, nothing personal at all... source: BBC world news, article by Frances Harrison. |
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Yeah it might be a bit of a gas guzzler, but what a sweet machine. It's the Hummer HX concept, General Motors' answer to the Jeep Wrangler, and wow what an answer. Article from 
Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser and the launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support on 1st February, 2008, after a 13-year run.
Yes it's that time of year again - final exams start this Friday and continue through to the following Friday. Gaaah. With just a week to go until the final, one of my professors assigned a minimum eight page essay worth 30% of the overall final grade. It's political science. I don't mind writing essays at all, and usually I would find something like this a big bonus as it's worth so much of my overall grade, however I tend to spend a lot of time writing draft after draft for an essay, basically polishing until I get something that will almost certainly earn an A, but in this case I wont really have the time to do so because I have other classes I need to study for. To make matters worse, this particular professor has a reputation of being a very tough grader when it comes to essays, so a 'good attempt' will not be sufficient. Despite how it may sound, he's actually a really good guy, and the class was awesome, but still.. blah. Wish me luck - I'll most likely be needing it!
Woke up this morning, looked out the window, and it was snowing! There was a few inches of snow accumulated on the ground already by that stage, and more was falling - pretty early for snow really, and there's more predicted later in the week. I like it when it snows here - New York loses that look of perpetual grime that it seems to have, and starts looking kind of clean for a change, at least while the snow is still fresh and the air is crisp and well below freezing.