legend versus fact
Today I visited the Paraguayan Consulate to get a visa for some travel I’m doing. Instead of leaving my precious passport there for 10-15 days, I stayed and chatted to the Consul while he processed my visa.
The reason Australians need a visa for Paraguay, according to legend, is that a long time ago, an Australian Prime Minister insulted the President of Paraguay. Therefore the Paraguayans demand a visa.
This is simply legend. The Consul explained to me that some years ago the Australian government wrote the the Foreign Minister of Paraguay asking that all bearers of Australian Passports be allowed entry without requiring a visa. The Paraguayans agreed that this would make travel easier, and then asked for the same thing- that Paraguayan passport bearers would not need a visa for Australia. The Australian government would not agree to this. So, Paraguayans need a visa for Australia, and Australians need a visa for Paraguay.
While I understand the fairness issue, that a give and take attitude is needed, it is terrible that western countries like the USA and Australia feel somehow superior, that first world trumps third world and gets privileges where third world doesn’t.
The world is becoming a more and more globalised place, and it is important to recognize that all humans and countries are equal, and not that some are more equal than others.
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farewell, ages with teen in them!
At first, I was a newborn, baby, then a toddler, child, celebrating double digits at 10, preteen, teenager… (I’m too old to have been a “tween”)
And now I’m twenty, so now what?
(and the domain/blog is now 2.)
Yesterday was a celebration of me being alive really, and now I’m looking at a year where I’m not sure exactly where I’ll be. People keep telling me “oh that’s young” and that they thought I was older…
But now I’m 20. Sometimes, I was desperate for the title of adult and now I can’t go back. 20. No longer am I squeezed between “child” and “adult” as a “teenager”
Maybe I should go to sleep instead of thinking melancholy thoughts about age.
Maybe I should start looking forward to my 21st?
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please affix stamp
So, after much nagging (thanks Grandma!) and the cruel realization that the Australian Tax office software won’t run on a mac, I walked down to the Post Office and got a tax pack. So I worked my way through that, every pen stroke affirming that I will never be an accountant. Having finished that, I got out the pre printed envelope that came with it, and…
please affix stamp.
You’d think they could do postage paid, eh? Maybe there is a rabid stamp collector at the tax office.
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what to do in a fire
Looking at the terrible wildfires burning their way through California, I wonder if the lessons learnt in Australia are being shared with our friends overseas.
The inspiration for this post came after watching news footage of a fire fighter telling a person to get out, to leave, to quit fighting the fire and defending their house.
There are ads here in Australia, telling us to make our fire plan, which is to either stay and defend, or evacuate. And if you’re going to evacuate, to evacuate early. There is information on what you need to defend your home, and what you need to do to evacuate. The crucial part of this information is that most civilian deaths in fire come when they leave too late, and are overtaken by the fire.
Surely this information needs to be spread where ever there is risk of bushfire? The lives saved would definitely make the cost worth it.
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user friendly for mobiles
I have recently started using Twitter to do some “microblogging”. You can check out my updates at /twitter – I’ve put them there for the moment before I work out how to fit it in to my main website design.
Thanks to Dave (there you go Dave, a plug) I was able to get my mobile working with Twitter. This is great, as I can now get updates and update what I’m doing on the go, which is really fun.
The thing I noticed when trying to enter in the code (it turned out that the area code was a problem, while it’s 613 for Victoria, it’s 614 for mobiles.) is that the letters required to message are always the first ones on the keys, requiring only one tap of the key to enter that letter. This is really user friendly! Another cool thing is that ‘t’ and ‘w’ are also the first letters, handy for navigating to the twitter number in the contacts.
So here here for Twitter and their userfriendliness and fun application.
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this is odd
This face has turned up in my google docs…
Bit funny. Any idea who it is? Is it a glitch on my system only?
oh, and kudos to google docs for auto-saving before you’re finished typing- humorously I now have a document named English Essay – BRAINS (torm) which sounds very zombie ish. BRAINS!
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now I understand…
There is a book of random facts and top ten lists that I enjoyed very much when I was younger, and I can’t remember the the name of it! Anyway, there was a story in there about a lottery in the United States that decided that drawing numbers out of a barrel was a bit twee, and that a computer generated random number would be much more cool and space age.
There was a small issue though- the formulas used to generate these numbers can only generate pseudo-random numbers- after a while the sequence repeats itself- however with a complex enough equation, you can generate numbers in a pretty close to random fashion, and the lottery people didn’t think this would be a problem.
However, there is another problem with pseudo-random formulas- one that was noticed by an astute lottery watcher- a nine was never ever generated in the winning numbers. Going back over the records, they realized that the digit 9 never showed up- causing outrage, obviously. There was a large debacle, with the lottery having to hand out refunds to anyone who had ever picked a nine.
This amusing story confused me a little- surely freakish coincidence doesn’t deserve mass refunds? Then I learnt that with the pseudo-random generators, there is often a bad seed- that is, a number when plugged into the formula will only generate itself- and curiously, will never* be generated by any other seeds. 9 must have been a bad seed-
there, that annoying maths unit was useful for something!
* NB I haven’t seen this proved…
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heh. archive cartoon
I found this old cartoon on my hard drive recently- thought I’d share it. 
Of course, sniffer dogs are really very well behaved!