An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
frist!
onya mick!
Bagpipes or accordions — which burns better?
Burn them both! Can’t stand bagpipes at all…
It was a trick question. The correct answer is “bassoon”.
What do you have against bassoons, Mercurius?
Egypt ends the blockade of Gaza: http://www.theage.com.au/world/egypt-to-open-gaza-border-crossing-20110429-1e0qz.html
Burn the ukuleles first. Every single one of these atonal abominations.
Di(NR) — They are more difficult to smash than oboes!
That’s pretty much what everyone was worrying about, Lefty E.
If you want to read something about how it can be back in thereal world, try this article by Nicolas Rothwell:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/living-hard-dying-young-in-the-kimberley/story-fn59niix-1226046773687
Or, if you like, you can shut your eyes and ears ….
Dunno that there’d be a lot in it, Mercurious. If your only tool is a sledge hammer, everything looks like an oboe …
Hey, what’s wrong with oboes?
That’s cool Lefty E. I read this week that Egypt has also brokered a power-sharing deal between Fatah and Hamas. Egypt’s barely out of a dictatorship and it’s already throwing its weight around in the region… very interesting.
Yesterday was the start of a 10 day holiday for me, here in Japan, and my last chance to do a decent spot of computer gaming before my partner visits and I spend 10 days partying. So I fired up Hearts of Iron 2 and, in honour of Anzac Day and the Royal Wedding, declared war on the commonwealth. In one year – 1943 to 1944 – my glorious Japanese empire has extended from Korea to Persia, and I’m about to invade Australia.
After the national holidays, I’m probably going to nuke London. That’ll learn ya, William!
What is it with the poms ? Everything has to include a reference to the War (there is only one), preferably to the ‘Battle of Britain’. I was surprised that Lancaster and the Spitfire didn’t make a left turn yesterday and head over the channel to bomb Germany.
Hannah’s mum gave me a pair of Leica Ultravid HD/BL 8 X 42 binos this morning.
HD.
Nice gift. I’m jealous.
SG – you’re hardcore. Im still playing Red Baron – a few generations back gaming wise, but a cracker!
Is Red Baron the flight simulator game? I think I played that when I was younger too. Hearts of Iron is actually a pretty old game, I think, and graphically very unsophisticated. Like most good computer games, the fun is more in the implementation than the appearance. That’s me, always going for substance over form…
In a desperate attempt to avoid doing any work today, I just watched some of the Chaser’s stuff via the SMH website. It’s not very good, really. I think they’ve lost their touch…
Good news. Have just got back from the doc;s. (for my annual flu shot, nothing bad) and he’s going to try and see if I can at least get to see the eye specialist earlier than August. Will know next Thursday when I go in for my cancer implant. (That’s still in remission too, so everything is looking up healthwise. Touch wood.) Its put me in such a good mood I thought I’d share it with youse.
Banjos are much worse than ukeleles. Which reminds me…
A banjo player parks his car in a bad neighbourhood with his banjo in the back seat. As he leaves he notices a sign that says “DO NOT LEAVE CAR UNATTENDED”. He goes on and when he returns sure enough someone has broken into his car and put in five more banjos.
Good stuff PB, Congrats.
SG, its a WW1 dogfight game, Download it!! Its ace, as it were.
My favourite is still Rogue – which you could play on a 286 waayyyy back in the pre-internet days. Absolute the most fun you can have without colour or a decent RAM.
What’s wrong with banjos?
There’s no such thing as “fun you can have without colour or a decent RAM” Lefty E. The history of civilization has consisted entirely of waiting with bated breath for the invention of the modern graphics card; then, there was Baldur’s Gate 2. People like Paul with their foolish “Books” or Katz with his “sport,” well, they’re just filling time and fooling themselves.
I played a cute flight simulator a few years back that was like a cross between a dogfight game and Quake, with magic. You played in a kind of arena like quake, but it was 3d, and you flew on some kind of magical steed or mount – flying lizards, barrels with wings, that kind of thing. You got points for fragging people just like quake, only you were flying, so it was a dogfight environment. It was really cool, but buggy and it kept crashing. Then my stupid computer died and I lost it (can’t even remember the name now).
I’m waiting with bated breath to you to back this up with a cuniform tablet or inscription establishing how the Magi, or the Sumerian priesthood awaited with bated breath.
I’ll bet they were merely waiting for Space Invaders II.
Robert Bollard, the evidence is obvious. Why do you think the ancients spent all that time philosophizing and building huge, useless things and inventing religions and killing each other and developing ingenious methods for cutting off the flap of skin at the end of their own willies? Why do you think they invented alcohol? Because they were bored, due to lack of access to a WoW Server.
I can’t believe I have to spell this out to you. Haven’t you played Civilization? It’s all in there, if you care to look!
It’s a little known fact that the accordion was invented by a patriotic Frenchman determined to win a drunken bet that there was an instrument worse than the French Horn…
The Sills Bend Baby has arrived!
There’s nothing wrong with any musical instrument when it’s played right with decent music. I have yet to hear anyone play the bagpipes right and that instrument has murdered much decent music. Sorry Mum, and others, I know you love the bagpipes.
Billy Connelly plays the banjo. Many other rock and pop groups use the banjo from time to time. What about Issy with his ukulele and Over the Rainbow?
There’s an accordian in ‘nothing ever happens, by del amitri’, among thousands of others. Here’s Boz Scaggs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc98dz8Zibs
Please don’t anyone come back at me with ‘mullokintire’ as an example of good bagpipe use.
Yes, if you like, you can shut your eyes and ears ….
Barenaked ladies, everything had changed, banjo and accordian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGNFfkv0b6s&feature=related
and don’t forget mumford and son.
Salient Green, when it comes to playing bagpipes well; attitude counts heaps.
Billy doesn’t play the banjo… Steve Martin plays the banjo..
One for sg.
Tokyo digeridoo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfRPC5MvLAE Van Morrison nearly does it for me with bagpipes.
Billy Connolly started his career playing the banjo and one night he stopped playing to explain to the audience, in his own way, the meaning of the lyrics. The audience loved it and so began his standup career which has always included parts for the banjo.
Salient Green, thank you for that wonderful Billy Connolly clip. And of course there’s always this band here, one of the many wonderful products of Adelaide.
I love banjos and accordions. Jimmy Webb c. 1970.
I managed to get banned from a Tamborine hotel yesterday, when I was still in the car and on the other side of the road. I never knew that the Traffic Act states that it is illegal to park and block a driveway unless that driveway happens to be the entranceway to the carpark of the hotel that you own.
The distant beloved is now the adjacent beloved, and will remain so until next weekend when she and her juvenile attendants return to Japan.
Thanks Old Yobbo at # 12.
That is another punch in the solar plexus for this here inner city Melburnian. I’ve given up even going near the smarminess of The Weekend Oz if possible, but I do miss reading Rothwell and Pearson regularly. They often remind me that no matter if I find my house in order from time to time, there’s a reality out beyond the city life that would make my spine tingle.
The downward spiral is in no doubt. What can a person do?
I like your pre- and post-graphics card schema, SG.
One day, when religion is dead, we’ll use such terms instead of BC and AD.
I’ve lost track of gaming entirely since Doom in 1998. Tell me, if I had to download just one, to re-engage my interest, what would you (or others) suggest?
My favourite game is Dune. You are Paul Atreides and your aim is to green the planet Arrakis.
Lefty E, I would suggest Portal. If you are patient sometimes Valve drops the price to a couple of dollars or even free from time to time.
Old Yobbo @11
The article by Nicolas Rothwell about the alcoholic devastation in the Kimberley is yet another salutary wakeup call. I had been discussing it with a visitor from overseas and she was dismayed that such apparent self destruction among remote indigenous people would be tolerated in 21 century Australia. Trying to rationalize this situation in her own mind,she posed the question that we all pass on: ‘where do they get the money for this ruinous lifestyle’. She stared at me in disbelief when I told her that it is funded by the Australian government who put the money into their bank accounts each fortnight.
Oops….that’s if you had a 3D card. No 3D card I’d recommend Civilisation. There’s a free version called FreeCiv knocking about the place. The latest info can be found here. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Beware…it’s horribly addictive.
Oh dear, I think we need to organise a little meeting in the hall of a local Uniting church…
Here’s how you start the meeting:
“My name is __________ and I’m a Gamer…”
Hey LP mods/posters, has one of you got a Sideshow/Lindsay Tanner post in the works? Hope so.
Hey sg, I’ve got Hearts of iron sitting on my shelf, unplayed. Looks right up my alley, but I never quite got beyond the tutorials.
Just bought my first graphics card in a long long while, can’t wait to attempt to install it and to shor t out the motherboard (something I’ve managed more than once). Gonna download portal 2 ASAP. Good Game gave it 10 rubber chickens.
Via Collins @ 39:
Thanks for having the decency to think of your fellow Australians. What can we do ?
The short answer is:
* provide effective pre-school for Aboriginal kids,
* make sure kids go to school,
* make sure they get a genuine education,
* make sure they are literate and numerate by the time they are nine or ten,
* make sure they are well-prepared before they enrol at secondary school,
* provide highly competent and dedicated teachers (see Noel Pearson’s article about John Hattie),
* provide career advice as early as possible, around Grade/Class Five or Six (don’t leave it until they are already sixteen), make it interesting and exciting, full of possibilities,
* provide them with information about careers and how to get into them, make sure they get right through to Year 12,
* make sure they go onto either trades or university,
* make sure that when they qualify or graduate, there are plenty of employment paths for them.
The longer answer involves parents, communities, control of grog, incarceration of offenders (‘do the crime, you do the time’: I have no worries about that), provision of basic education and further training (including in ‘soft-skills’) for young people and women, men too if they are inclined. And agencies like TAFE should be providing basic skills, encouraging people to be willing – like migrants to any country – to do some of the crummier jobs, in order for their kids to have role models and get some idea of the work ethic.
Good God, how bourgeois ! Yes, opportunities should be available for Aboriginal people, just like they are for most readers of this thread. And the means to tap into these opportunities should be equally available –
unless, of course, we fall back on the 1920s racist notion that Aboriginal people are so different, such a different species, that they shouldn’t be entitled to the same benefits and rights as other Australians. In fact, they shouldn’t be Australians, they should have their ‘own’ country. Am I right ?
How come – this is appalling – the Left has cottoned on to where the Right was eighty and ninety years ago, in relation to Aboriginal people ? Next, we’ll here about how to set up an Aboriginal State, just like Colonel Genders campaigned for here in Adelaide in the twenties. A racist, right-wing, reactionary agenda.
Funny world, Via
‘hear’, not ‘here’.
sg
Personally I think civilisation has been waiting for the fifth age of man, otherwise known as “The Age of Skyrim” beginning 11/11/11:
http://au.ign.com/videos/2011/02/24/skyrim-gameplay-trailer?objectid=14267318
Oh well, goodbye folks. I guess I tried. But life’s too short.
You see, Old Yobbo, while you scream from the side-lines — in my town, at our school, we’re already doing all the things you recommend.
And we even manage to do it without the insufferable air of paternalism you project.
And you’ll find it’s like that at quite a lot of little towns dotted around the map.
So quit yer lefter-than-thou bellyachin’ shite already — it’s really boring.
Obama roasts Trump …
Games need downloading now?
Try Closure (a puzzle game)
Grey (a game about propaganda)
Figure8 (a game about annoying bicycles)
Loved (a psychological game)
Katamari hack (not really a game – turns any webpage into Katamari)
Agree with everything you say OLD YOBBO but there are even more hurdles for these kids once they have achieved a basic education. In this area many of them are coming from the Cape York communities to Cairns and being schooled at places like the Djarrigun College and doing specially facilitated TAFE courses only to get their certification in any number of subejects (retail, food and beverage management, tourism etc) and then they return to their communities where there is no work and very little prospect of real work in the forseeable future; and you can’t tell people where to live.
Pavlovs Cat, very much enjoyed Banjo and Violin, 3 times, and there was an accordion in there too, a luscious little piece. Also Enjoyed the the old geezers playing the 12th street rag, linked from the right of the page. They brought a smile to my face. Thanks.
sg,
What year do you count as being year zero, though? I remember buying my first dedicated graphics card and it allowed me to play Doom – all of 512k of naked graphics power. From memory it was one of the early PCI ones in about 1994.
Perhaps the release of the dedicated AGP bus in 1997 should be the year, making this Year 14.
If you want a game, though, it is difficult to beat playing against actual humans.
ETQW, please.
Better new. My appointment with the eye doctor has been moved up to 1 June. So I might be able to see properly (or better) by the end of that month.
CNN is reporting that President Obama is shortly to hold a press conference reporting Osama Bin Laden is dead and they have the body.
???
ABC 24 is too
waiting on the Prez
If this is true, this is a massive psychological victory, apart from anything else, for America. And particularly for Obama. It came under his presidency.
Osama killed in a mansion outside Islamabad Pakistan with family members. More breaking news.
ABC 24 is streaming Al Jazeera
Killed in Pakistan. What will this do to US/Pakistan relations? Scary.
Killed by a U.S. military asset. Could anyone please interpret what that means?
prob a drone
That is what Al J is saying, but who knows
Have put up a new thread for the Bin Laden news.
Have just been the attempted victim of a phone scam which I didn’t fall for, but as its going round, I thought I better put it up in case anybody else gets rung.
A company originating in I think India rings up claiming they’re from Microsoft. They tell you your computer is going slow, and offer an update for $300 something. They’re very convincing but at this point I hung up on them. I rang NSW Consumer affairs who told me this was a scam that had been going round for a while. So if it happens to any of you, tell ‘em to piss off.
Now to check out about this Bin Laden.
The OZ just gave me a chance to do the budget — hey presto — we are $20bn in surplus …
http://www.news.com.au/money/federal-budget/help-can-you-get-us-back-into-surplus/story-fn84fgcm-1226046178866
OMFG…
The TREASURER is wearing a top with a prominent corporate logo (commonwealth bank). I remember JWH used to have a corporate logo on his but then I would expect it of him.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/wayne-swans-commonwealth-bank-jersey-insults-storm-financial-victims/story-e6freqmx-1226050042641
Even if you don’t take into account the Storm financial disaster, I think it’s simply unacceptable for a political representative, and a treasurer at that, to display the logo of one of the private companies that’s supposed to be competing in their country. Not to mention the fact that it was probably a free gift. That’s really on the nose, Wayne.
Went to see this last night:
http://www.theatreworks.org.au/news/
Melburnians, you have to see this.
Inotrope Productions “The Tempest”
It’s a riot. Go!