Oh Man. Twenty Years. Where The Hell Did That Go?

It has come to my attention that the third Manics album, The Holy Bible, was released twenty years ago today, on the 29th of August 1994. I have a clear memory of catching the bus into Southport, as a spotty 16 year old, to go and buy it from Our Price. It was the first CD that I ever bought with my own money. Of course I’d bought records before — so, so many embarrassing…

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I Am So Angry I Made A Sign

We heard them before we saw them. We were cutting through Parliament Gardens on our way to the city when we heard the muffled sound of a loudspeaker. “Is that the Grand Prix?” I wondered aloud to Sal. A reasonable assumption I thought, given that the bee swarm like buzz of the cars whizzing around Albert Park had been clearly audible across much of inner Melbourne for the last few days. But as we turned…

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Oh FFS, Not Again: The Economist Worldwide Cost of Living Index is Not a Cost of Living Index

So every six months it seems The Age re-runs what is essentially the same story as the latest incarnation of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Worldwide Cost of Living Index is released. In the most recent of these, they lead with a typically startling claim: It’s cheaper to live in Copenhagen, Hong Kong or New York City than it is to reside in Sydney or Melbourne, according to the Worldwide Cost of Living Index compiled by…

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Modern Life Is Not Rubbish

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural…

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China Eastern Airlines Passenger Eats For Free For A Year? I Call Bullsh…

So there’s this story doing the rounds. It tells of an enterprising guy in China who supposedly managed to eat for free for the best part of a year, purely by purchasing a first class ticket, which he then used to access the airline lounge. Once he’d finished eating for free in the lounge, he simply cancelled and rebooked his fully refundable ticket for the following day, and then repeated the exercise 299 times. When…

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Sloppy Data Journalism

Flicking through The Age as I chewed on my lunchtime sandwich yesterday, this article, about car thefts in Victoria, caught my eye: It’s more interesting for what it doesn’t say than for what it does. It quickly skips right over what to me would be the most interesting part of the story: While total thefts hit a 10-year low of 9624 in the 2012-13 financial year, the number of cars fewer than five years old…

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9 Things That Annoy Me About My iPhone

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of my iPhone and iPad. As anyone who knows me will tell you, one or other of these devices is rarely far from my hands. Who could have imagined even ten years ago that we’d soon be carrying round massively-powerful, pocket-sized, portable computers with access to all the world’s information. But in the spirit of first world problems that doesn’t mean I think they’re perfect. For…

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