Saturday, March 04, 2006

Ten years, web stuff and a new keyboard

Today I got a new keyboard and mouse. My main motivation for doing so was that I wanted a wireless keyboard, so that I can type without having to be right up at my desk. Right now, I'm leaning back in by chair with the keyboard in my lap. It also has lots of extra buttons to do things like close windows, start programs and control media. The media buttons work pretty well with I tunes, so that's good.

Going over the news at wikinews, I noticed that not only has it recently been the tenth anniversary of John Howard becoming PM, it's ten years since Bob Brown got elected to the senate. Bob is a leader within the Green movement, and certainly the preeminent Green in parliament, indeed for the first four years, the only Green. Since his election, the Greens have made gains at each subsequent election, and if they keep things going the way they have, look poised to replace the Democrats as the third party of Australian politics.

I think it's good to have more than just (effectively) two parties in the government. For some time, the Democrats were making an effort to fill that role, but given a rapid turnover of party leaders and other factors, have begun what seems to be a self destruct sequence. Thus, while I don't agree with all of the Greens policies, I look forward to them becoming a more significant factor in politics in the future.

Given my lack of work at the moment, I've been spending more time than usual on the web. For the past few days I've been reading Questionable Content. QC is a web comic about a few people, two of whom live together and seem to be interested in each other, but for various reasons don't act on it. It's a pretty good comic, and has also prompted some introspection. It's also made me think if the friend who showed it to me didn't have some sort of ulterior motive in doing so, as I can see certain parallels between some of the characters and certain facets of my own life.

I've also joined up to listal.com, a service that allows you to list all the media (books, cds, dvds, games) that you own, and lets you see what other people who have the same things you have also have. It also has forums and groups. I was quite disappointed to find out that my bookshelf, that on each shelf has books, then books in front of books, books on top of books and books on top of books in front of books, only actually holds about 230 books. It also allows you to see who your preferred authors, actors, directors, etc are by showing you who you have the most of in those various categories. It also allows you to enter items that you want. My main gripe against listal is that it focuses on the US and England media, so very little of the Australian books, and none of the region 4 dvds were recognized. While this mostly has to do with the fact that it rips most of the data from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, it is a bit frustrating.

End Post
writing time: 1 hour (includes a trip to the shops)
time since last post: 4 days
current media: You by VAST (iTunes on shuffle)

No comments: