Shot from Melbourne holiday, 2009.

Labels: photo

• Police Say Anti-Piracy Law Makes Catching Criminals Harder | TorrentFreak: While Swedish ISPs clearly felt they had little choice but to protect the privacy of their customers against civil action related to petty file-sharing, it seems that their response to IPRED has generated an unwanted side-effect. Anders Ahlqvist, chief of the National IT crime unit says that due to a lack of customer logging data at ISPs, it is becoming harder for the police to track down criminals carrying out serious crimes. That's one of the problems with treating average people like they're real criminals, I guess.
• The Jalopy Journal � Blog Archive � The Daytona Sands: At some point, you figure some poor old sap would be all, “Hey man… You figure we ought a yellow flag this corner or something before someone gets hurt? Or maybe just move the DNF?” But no…
• That Isn't Art, where overly-sappy crap from Tumblr gets its comeuppance.
• Letters of Note: Come on, George. Loosen up. Swing, man.
• Houdini | Letterheady (now that's some minimalism)
• The Many Faces Of… Alan Rickman: To be a great villain requires more than merely being rotten to the core. The best bad guys are multi-dimensional and unpredictable. With each patronizing grin, disdainful remark and narcissistic fit, Alan Rickman elevates the role of a villain from the plain ol’ bastard to a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling.
• banksimple. A bank with no fees, that only makes money from interchange and interest margin. These guys should run with the slogan "because those other greedy fucks had this coming".

We saw The Cult a couple of weeks ago at Luna Park, on their Love tour. Basically they played Love from start to end, then did an encore of other songs. Unsurprisingly, She Sells Sanctuary was a massive hit with the crowd - although for the most part, the crowd did the usual Sydney thing of acting vaguely bored with the whole thing (in between trips to the bar).

I wonder perhaps is it hard to get the usual gig vibe going when everyone knows which song's coming up next? We even overheard a couple of people bitching that they didn't think they'd play the whole album. Kind of amazing really, since that was the entire advertised point of the gig.

Ignoring the immovable crowd, it was a great gig. Pure, awesome rock and roll. Plenty of guitar horn, windmills and over the top posing. Astbury threw a seemingly endless supply of tambourines to the crowd. At least one cigarette lighter was waved - a real one, not a phone app...

Astbury's crowd interaction was a bit strange at times, couldn't aways understand what he was saying but he was obviously frustrated by the crowd's low energy. Personally, I do blame the crowd. I've given up on the ennui fucks. If you want to be in an appreciative and energetic crowd, go to the Brisbane gig.

No matter what the frustrations, I still enjoyed it immensely - I was buzzing for days. Hearing Love played end to end just highlights how many great songs that album contains. A great gig, reckon we'll see them again next time they're out here (they said it wouldn't be too long, hurrah!).

Labels: gig

Playing with the high-contrast option in FXcam, waiting for the train after The Cult.

Labels: photo

• GigPosters.com - pity about the tiny image size, but still pretty cool.
• How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online? ...and how many units do they need to sell to reach minimum-wage income?
• What will be blocked under the Australian Government's Mandatory ISP Censorship System? (infographic) (remember, the filter's still coming - it's just shelved until after the election, probably to use it as continued leverage for Family First preferences at the ballot)
• Facebook founder called trusting users dumb f*cks • The Register. But hey, there's no way he might still be struggling to understand the concept of privacy these days, right? (bonus link, don't miss: The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook)
• PCC clears Loaded magazine for 'epic boobs girl' pictures taken from internet | guardian.co.uk. Apparently if you've become a meme, you've become public domain.
• Steve Jobs Offers World 'Freedom From Porn' - Apple - Gawker. What the fuck is up with Steve Jobs and porn anyway? Was he always a fucking puritan or is this a recent thing? (and what's he doing arguing the toss with a Gawker guy at 2am on a Friday night?)

This one's been the clear winner on flickr so far, just going by views. Odd, since I thought the other one would get more love:

When I get down to a couple of variations, I have a pretty hit and miss record of predicting which one people will like. Drives me crazy trying to select photos.