Emily Perry dies at 101

Humphries pays tribute to 'Madge' | The Daily Telegraph
"Barry Humphries realised immediately Emily Perry was a star."
I loved Madge Allsop - she was the best straight "man" I've ever seen and as Barry says he tried to make her laugh. It seems she was 80 when she first played Madge - amazing.

Recently we saw Barry on the last Michael Parkinson and it was right Dame Edna was there at the last he brought tears to my eyes on many Parkinson - the Gloria Swanson (was Gloria confused about Dame Edna?) - Barry and the Russian Salad in that brown paper bag on the aeroplane.

Ah Madge wasn't on those shows - perhaps she was home laughing - Thanks Emily

Plastic Bags

Plastic bags join endangered list - Environment - smh.com.au
Garrett who can do a tourist trip to Antarctica is now proposing to ban Plastic Bags or impose a levy on using them. Inference is that the article is talking about the ones that supermarkets "give" us with our groceries. years ago stores had a rack with old cardboard boxes and we struggled to find ones to fit our shopping. USA stores always "gave " nice big solid paper bags but here the stores decided plastic was cheap. Presumably these are now costing.

But what is position on the plastic bags we buy in the stores - big bags for the rubbish bin - little bags for freezers etc? Are these different because we pay directly for them?

Currently we use the shopping plastic bags for our rubbish - in future should we place the rotten stuff directly in the Otto and make it more smelly?

Bunnings I would presume stopped plastic bags as a cost saving for themselves. And I must say their prices are much better than the BBC stores that used to be in the same premises.

The supermarkets continue to confuse us on prices - rollback ie buy two - a ridiculous 4c off fuel. Or spend at high prices in the petrol station and get another 2c . Spent over $200 in Woolworths at Carlingford the other day and still got ONE only docket for 4c off. And let's see where are the Woolworths petrol stations - one north of Thornleigh -one down Epping Road - none at Carlingford. 4c off 40 litres - not even a coffee. What does it cost for them to run this ???

And they worry about the cost of plastic bags!!

Watch out Kevin's back

Frankly I was wondering what was happening - all the hype about Work around the clock and then he disappeared and Julia did all the talking. Well SMH has all the news

Get set for Kevin08, Australia: PM's back, best you look busy - National

I was also shocked to see an aircraft land in Antarctica and off step Garrett. Talk about Stunts. perhaps he was there looking after the whales. Now this sending a ship to keep an eye on the Japanese whaling fleet - checking for what? Are the Japanese doing anything that is actually illegal. Is what Greenpeace doing legal?

Is Internet Banking safe - Is Facebook safe - Phishing

I am amazed that I get so much spam that are fake notes from financial institutions. As I use Thunderbird -with text only I immediately see that the links to banks are fake. In HTML these notes would look fair dinkum. I get notes from all manner of "fake" banks - and also PayPal and eBay. None from the company themselves.

Now this excellent article tells me that people do respond to these emails.
Is internet banking safe? - Security - Technology - smh.com.au
Do have a read some helpful stuff re online banking.

Then other ways of getting your VITAL details - at sites like Facebook
BBC NEWS | Technology | Cyber thieves target social sites

And beware pages that want your password in Facebook - check URL is still facebook
Phishing For Facebook

Oh and if a note I trust arrives in TB and I want to see in html I have installed the addon
ShowHTML and one click and all looks good.

SearchWP and Google search

Georges-Etienne Legendre - SearchWP
is a aid to searching from the Firefox search box - it puts your search words available in the search results. They will be listed on the toolbar so you can click to find each word in the pages. Also you can click a highlight button to get them in colour.

Georges-Etienne Legendre - SearchBox Sync
SearchWP only works if you use the Firefox search box - if you use say Google search direct well install Sync.

I did not want google toolbar as it clutters up the browser with features I find hard to see the point of. I do have Google desktop and use the taskbar search box so Sync is most useful.

Both addons work for other search engines

Assignants

In essence bring back the assignants


A History of Money: From Ad 800 - Google Book Search

The French Revolution

Genetically Modified - help

yesterday on SBS a very frightening doco on Monsanto and GM crops and their attempt to patent pigs. What I understood was Monsanto supply GM feed and this puts certain genes into pigs. If your pigs have these genes then you MUST pay a licence fee. A German farmer was DNA testing pigs in Germany and showing that pigs already naturally had these genes. He was hoping that Monsanto did not have the patent granted.

The program was also making the point that having GM crops on a farm next door could mean that your crops would get contaminated and then you should be paying a license fee.
And then we don't know what effect these GM crops have on us or animals. Farmers were saying their herds had serious fertility drops.

And now the next day in NSW and Victoria

State drops ban on GM canola crop - Environment - smh.com.au

Best I can say is stop using food with Canola present

Final Election Thoughts

A chance to rebuild, after a decade of moral erosion - yes of course an article by Paul Keating.

In which amongst a lot of other nonsense - he says

"He (John Howard) also trod on the reasonable constitutional progression to an Australian republic, even when the proposal I championed had everything about it that the Liberal Party could accept. A president appointed by both houses of Parliament; meaning by both major parties, while leaving the reserve powers with the new head of state as the Liberals had always wanted. The price of Howard conniving in its defeat probably means we will ultimately end up with an elected head of state, completely changing the representative nature of power and of the prime ministership and of the cabinet."

Sorry Paul the people clearly showed that if there was to be a Republic that they wanted to elect the President not leave it to the pollies. That is why the Republic push failed.

-------

Back to Kevin - I really find offensive the Ad - I will stay the Limit - whereas Howard will hand over to Costello - so where is your choice. Well we know the choice - it is Howard followed by Costello - no secret.

In 1991 I went to India for six weeks - when I left Hawke was PM - when I returned Keating had pushed him out.

I had no news in India and I was shocked. What choice did the people have there? I fail to see the issue Kevin! How do we know the ALP won't do it again?

---------

The dumb fake brochure stunt of course is nasty for John. And he has disowned it several times. At the Press Club on TV today I was pleased to hear journalists groaning when yet another "respected" reported asked a question on an issue that had been done to death.

A big thank you to John Howard for being my local MP for so many years and PM since 1996. Looking right back you impressed me when you took such prompt action on personal gun control.

Many Blessings for Saturday


Friday night - I'm watching Bob Carr saying all the things he thinks that John did wrong - and this from the man that gave us the lousy tollways and then walked off the job. Did he tell us he was going to leave the job at the previous election. Did the Labor premiers in Victoria and Queensland give notice at the election that they would retire young. Come on Labor John is saying he will retire so stop the NEGATIVE nonsense.


Why has Kevin shot himself in the foot over the change the constitution to recognise our indigenous people?

Nous sommes tous des assassins

Many years ago I saw Nous sommes tous des assassins (1952)
which was about the horror of using the portable guillotine

And in England a man was hung because an accomplice in a crime shot someone but as he was underage he lived.

Capital punishment is not good

HTML editors - some thoughts on WYSIWYG tools

Research in Feb 2007

I am thinking of future and whether I will go Linux/Ubuntu etc or MacBook

Currently my web sites are written with Frontpage 2000

Sorry purists I want WYSIWYG

This is very sophisticated - I will use to check my html - HTML-Kit - http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

This is helpful
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_WYSIWYG_HTML_editors>

some of these look quite powerful but Html only

AceHTML, a Free HTML Editor
http://software.visicommedia.com/en/products/acehtmlfreeware/?id=51

openbexi - very much Beta - strange looking colours - maybe if they
release a working version

http://geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/WebEditors
well worth exploring - lists many editors I have not checked yet

http://www.openwebware.com/products/openwysiwyg/
- hard to install meant for experts in CMS and Java

And I am bookmarking these for future thoughts
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/bugs.php
http://aptana.com/
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/documentation.php

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/
I tried- bit lost as why it has email etc when Mozilla has TB and FP
Now I worked out NVU is a development from it so I am uninstalling

Xstandard - the free lite version does not enough features - the Pro for
example has Split Table Cell - but why buy

Dynamic HTML Editor
http://www.dynamic-html-editor.com/en_download.asp#dhefree
I tried the 1.9 version - appears to be rubbish
would not open an Html file appears to want some file of its invention
to me that is Goodbye

Tried trial version of Adobe Contribute - it appears to have a special
group network purpose and restrictions such as Template comes from
Dreamweaver - you might as well pay the extra for Dreamweaver

This is for MAC - so if I go MacBook I will have iWeb but if not quite
for my major webs - I might try this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidWeaver

So I'll keep looking at NVU - no recent release but seems to work.
Kompozer is supposed to be NVU with some bug fixes

Does allow Template - but I have to learn how to use - currently I use
include page in FP

Does not have image mapping tool for hotspots like FP but does allow
insert of the code - and in image properties has a Image Map remove
button - strange way to do things.
So I need Image mapping - Gimp is supposed to do it - Xnview has a help
page but nothing clear on how to do

November 2007 Some new stuff I will look at
Writing this away from home so not yet downloading

http://www.aptana.com/products/studio_community.php sounds very functional - except HTML editor only not WYSIWYG

http://www.sitestudio.tk/ - no longer developed but write up sounds good and there are downloads - however no help to explain - nothing intuitive about it - Don't bother with it

http://www.karelia.com/ SANDVOX - has try it

http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/
iWeb is not a major tool - its really just Apple's interface to .MAC .
You could use it to create another web site but you cannot import already created web pages.
and you need to backup the Domain file else if you move machines etc you will not be able to use iWeb to edit the old pages.
This is an excellent summary Practicalmadness by David Demaree | Regarding iWeb

http://www.softpress.com they have a Freeway XLE free to try and discounts - I got a Serial number for XLE but where is download - so I set a note asking - and it looks like it is a fresh web site - you cannot import - well I have asked that too

http://www.panic.com/coda/ I think there is a free trial - HTML editor only

http://www.virtualmechanics.com/downloads/index.html

Pakistan and What is a Terrorist

Imran Khan faces terror charges after Islamist rivals halt protest

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2872356.ece

The news from Pakistan is most disturbing. USA ally can't find Osama BUT can flood the streets with baton wielding police.

Musharraf was speaking about people "trying to upset govenment" - well of course when its someone desparately hanging on to power. And now the great cricketter is arrested.

I have not been to Pakistan but I have been to Bangladesh and the Pakistan generals tried everything to keep control there until India said LEAVE. Who is going to tell Musharraf to leave. Come on George.

CNET.com.au has FREE music

I subscribe to Cnet through Bloglines - very good for Aussie reviews of technical stuff

and today they start FREE Mp3 downloads

and it is all sorts of music including Classical with Opera and Hip Hop

Get free MP3s in our Music Centre - News - Music Software

Watch your download usage numbers - I am on peak period with Optus so 12 midnite to 12 noon

Curse of the Golden Flower

Curse of the Golden Flower - in Chinese
Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia (2006)

is an interesting film.
I watched a few minutes of a daft martial arts the other day. The monks had a fighting sticks and managed to get the bad ones to bite the sticks so hard their teeth were stuck in the stick. Yuk!

Anyhow I saw Golden Flower on library shelf and was passing by but it looked different and it is. This is more like real history. The plot is not  actual rulers but as maker Ziang Yimou says it tries to show what feudal China was like. The plot is a combination of King Lear and Hamlet as described by Chow Yun-Fa who plays the Emperor

Ziang mentions a proverb "Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside." So the film is very opulent - lots of gold and bright colours. Yet very dark deeds going on in the background. The Palace is presented magnificently just as I imagine the Forbidden City might have been like at the heights of its splendour. Although the film is set before it was built. I remember looking into the great hall and my amazement that it would have been filled with all these women and their own sleeping "area". Golden Flower is full of scenes showing how all these people might have operated. The

The battle scenes are not utterly realistic  although they say they were trying to be .  The weapons do kill though and  you can see they are not using those silly flying routines. There is something like a Roman Turtle - a group of men surrounded with shields.

The main courtyard is covered with chrysanthemum as that festival is taking place. Just see what happens to the flowers in the battle and then afterwards.

The Acting is very good.  None of those silly looks of the  martial arts films - these people are real. Well worth seeing

The Apocalypse of Ahmadinejad

This is further to my post: Iran - Ahmadinejad - Nukes

The Apocalypse of Ahmadinejad Book

He stands only five foot four and smiles incessantly. But behind that charismatic persona beats the heart of a genocidal terrorist. In his provocative, well-researched expose' of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prophecy expert Mark Hitchcock unveils the insidious agenda behind this radical Shiite's regime: Ahmadinejad plans to hasten the return of the Islamic messiah by ushering in his vision of the apocalypse.
His ultimate goal is to bring the Mahdi, or Twelfth Imam, out of hiding. And he plans to do so by arming his country with nuclear weapons, then exporting the Iranian revolution to the world by destroying Israel and the United States.
But there's a bizarre twist to Ahmadinejad's nightmarish intentions: This ardent zealot may well be part of God's plan to set the stage for a scenario prophesied more than 2,500 years ago.
Mark Hitchcock presents compelling evidence that Ahmadinejad's actions, including his alliances with Russia and many of Iran's neighbors, have placed his nation -- and the world -- on a collision course toward the war of Gog and Magog. (208 pages)

I just love the "well researched" - REALLY - more like a lot of imagination at play from that synopsis.
I did know that Shia belief included the return of the Iman and that Ahmadinejad appeared to believe in this also
from Shi'a: The Hidden Imam

Imam Mahdi will return at the head of the forces of righteousness and do battle with the forces of evil in one, final, apocalyptic battle. When evil has been defeated once and for all, the Imam Mahdi will rule the world for several years under a perfect government and bring about a perfect spirituality among the peoples of the world. After the Imam Mahdi has reigned for several years, Jesus Christ will return (raj'a ), as will Husayn and others. It is the return of the dead that falls under the Doctrine of Return; the Mahdi will only appear to humanity.

Note Jesus is included in this - but this is the Jesus of Islam - not to be confused with the expectations that Christians have for the Jesus of the Holy Bible. Why does Shia belief so correspond to Christian Second Coming of Jesus?

I do not think that Iran is part of the Bible's End Times prophecies. This whole book smacks of Nostradamus who was supposed to had a remarkable vision that there would be "trouble in Persia". There has always been trouble in Persia - it is placed at such a crossroad in the Middle East.

By the way that book is AUD$16.95 at WORD Bookstore Australia - I will not be buying

George Orwell - (Eric Blair) 1903-1950

Neil has just blogged on: George Orwell exposed!
Mainly that conservtives often quote Eric and how he changed from being a communist whereas he may have rejected dictators like Stalin but he did remain a Socialist and supporter of the Labour Party.

Do read George Orwell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am pleased to say I own at least one first edition of something and it is:
George Orwell: The English People. Publisher: 'Collins'. GB, London. 1947
A wonderful short essay on the English as he saw them.

A quote follows

during the Jubilee (George V) the rather servile slogan "Poor but Loyal." Other
slogans, however, coupled loyalty to the King with hostility to the landlord,
such as "Long Live the King. Down With the Landlord," or more often,
"No Landlords Wanted" or "Landlords Keep Away." It is too early to say
whether royalist sentiment was killed outright by the Abdication (1936) , but
unquestionably the Abdication dealt it a serious blow. Over the past four
hundred years it has waxed or waned according to circumstances. Queen
Victoria, for instance, was decidedly unpopular during part of her reign,
and in the first quarter of the nineteenth century public interest in the
Royal Family was not nearly as strong as it was a hundred years later. At
this moment the mass of the English people are probably mildly republican.
But it may well be that another long reign, similar to that of George V,
would revive royalist feeling and make it-as it was between roughly 1880
and 1936-an appreciable factor in politics

George wrote that in 1943 I suppose as surely by 1947 it was clear that George VI had revived royalist feeling with his two lovely daughters and the way the family behaved in WW2. And here we are 60 years after the book with a Queen who has reigned 54 years. I wonder what George would say now about republican position in England.

His great book was Nineteen Eighty-Four which in many ways was set in the dismal England of 1948 under rationing and with a Labour government . Recently we had a discussion on Movies and Neil and I both set Brazil (film) high on our lists. Made by Terry Gilliam in 1985 and obviously based on Eric's 1984 even though Terry says he never read the book. The office computers are modeled on 1948 Television sets and even show black and white cowboy films. An enormous romp of a film. See it. And perhaps first read the book and the Richard Burton film of

I got to the book through television the 1954 TV programme in which Peter Cushing was brilliant as Winston Smith - alas then Peter went on to a career as vampire killer.

The other well known book from George is Animal Farm- well worth reading - don't bother with the cartoon film. In this parody of Stalin and what happened to the Russian revolution Eric shows what changed his attitude to politics.

Of course Eric died at age 46 - at that age I myself was still supporting the ALP - if he had lived would Eric have changed?

On Neil's comment "The Road to Wigan Pier" is mentioned that and other books are on line from that link

On-the-spot fines for minor offences

From Keeping a Watch on the NSW Government

Minor Offences ? We ain't talking jay walking.

Poll shows only 70% of Germans are sane

Just as Neil was discussing at One Salient Oversight: Hitler was not an Atheist
up comes this terrible poll
Nazis not all bad, 25% of Germans say - World - smh.com.au
"Those who grew up directly after World War II, now aged 45 to 59, were the least enthusiastic about the Nazi era, with only 15 per cent responding "yes"." But that's still 1 in 6.!!!

It seems it all started because some "a popular talk show host was sacked for praising Nazi Germany's attitude towards motherhood."
That is unless she was Jewish or a Gypsy or a Slav or anyone else the Nazi hated.
Hitler decided to show high regard for "traditional" values so people could say stupid things like "but he loves motherhood".

Don't young Germans understand what happened back then.
A year ago just to remind myself of what it must have been like. I read
The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 - Richard Evans - Penguin UK

'Do you know what fear is?' an elderly worker asked an interviewer some years after it was all over: 'No. The Third Reich was fear.' Yet terrorism was only one of the Third Reich's techniques of rule. For the Nazis did not just seek to batter the population into passive, sullen acquiescence. They also wanted to rouse it into positive, enthusiastic endorsement of their ideals and their policies, to change people's minds and spirits and to create a new German culture that would reflect their values alone.

It seems many people are still deluded.

ImgBurn - burn CDs and DVD

The Official ImgBurn Website

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!

They are not joking

ImgBurn supports all the Windows OS's - Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (including all the 64-bit versions). If you use Wine, it should also run on Linux and other x86-based Unixes.

Who needs Spies anyway

Desktop naval gazers know a sub when they see one

Mind boggling what Google can do

I remember Hugh Trevor Roper (he was one of guys duped by Kim Philby) saying "you don't need spies just read their newspapers". Of course as well as being wrong about Philby he also authenticated the Fake Hitler Diaries but I think he had something about reading what the other side puts into print. Mind you an SIS officer in that part of the organisation penetrated by communists has to be a worry - they were always shoving him on TV as an expert. The whole affair just astounded me. Ian Richardson made a good Anthony Blunt. It showed what a mess "security" was. Didn't they know that the earlier runaways had these guys as friends.

Just amazing google even knows where I live

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Israel and scripture

Israel And Scripture In Correct Context « Matthew Manchester