Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

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February 21st, 2008 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life

help very annoying

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Gaming giant lacks scruples

February 14th, 2008 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life

Are you sitting down?

Chair

The Australian gaming giant Tattersalls, the firm behind the Lotto, has been accused of lacking scruples.

A former Tattersalls corporate affairs manager has accused the company of colluding with the competition to maximise profits, hiding documents from the regulator and shutting down a problem gambling tracking system because it feared costly legal action.

Even worse, the company is accused of wanting to ’screw’ its most profitable and reliable customers (or addicts) (also known as compulsive gamblers or somewhat confusingly problem gamblers).

Truly shocking stuff

What next?

Tobacca companies exploiting people’s health and better judgement?

Banks raking in huge profits while they lend money to people that can’t afford to pay it back?

Never!

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Wildlife Photographer

February 9th, 2008 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Blogging, Life

I snapped this at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney.

White fox

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Murdoch controlling what we read and think

February 1st, 2008 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life, Politics, Social media

No! Not this Murdoch – you crazy fool!

The A-team’s Murdoch

This one:

Murdoch Media Baron

Apparently, GodsPlace, I mean MySpace, has deleted the Atheist and Agnostic group from its pages under pressure from religious intolerants. There is no allegation of a violation of terms. The group had 35,000 members, has won awards for not believing stuff and claims to be the largest collection of atheists in the world.

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A timely letter to the editor

January 26th, 2008 by Daniel Young | 3 Comments | Filed in Life, Politics

I loved this letter to the editor in today’s (16 Jan) Australian Financial Review (I would link to the AFR website but the content is only available to subscribers).

The letter was submitted by David Beattie of Mont Albert, Victoria:

A great little club

As a small investor, I’d like to wish all the Australian finance insiders – the fund managers, executives, merchant bankers and lawyers – a great year. Although I could never aspire to your earnings, it’s great that my investment funds let me assist your wealth by voting for ever rising executive pay and allowing more and more bonuses and payments to high-priced bankers and lawyers. That fact that you guys are all friends – and therefore know how to reward each other with my money – makes it even better.

Surely, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the subsequent credit exposure for the banks is a result of the cosy relationships that exist in the finance sector – a small community of wealthy people lining their pockets at the expense of the common man.

Unlike Enron, this fraudulent activity is endemic to an entire industry, which makes it hard to point the finger and provides Government with no option but to bail the banks out with our money!

Error message what?

January 9th, 2008 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life, Music, Technology

For the last two weeks, I haven’t been able to buy anything in the Apple iTunes Store. Every attempt generated an error message number 5002. No further explanation of what I needed to do in order to resolve this issue within the error message and complete gobbledygook within the Apple Support pages. Its been a very frustrating experience and problem and one that has effected many people based on the number of entries on various message boards. Eventually, I found that by changing my password I could solve the problem. It seems odd that Apple iTunes is still issuing error notes in code language – the error message should tell the user exactly what they need to do or refer them to a page, which explains what steps they should take. It seems odd that Apple hasn’t got to this stage yet especially when you consider that iTunes is updated every five minutes. 

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Hong Kong Return Leg

January 6th, 2008 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life

I am writing from Hong Kong. Half way back to Sydney. I got upgraded to Premium Economy – what a result! I gave the check-in girl a Nigella Lawson cookbook because my baggage was over the 27kg allowance but had no idea until I got to my seat. Had a great trip back to Europe, including 4 days in Andalucia, Spain. It was great to see the family and spend time with friends. Back to Summer in Sydney and work!

Reading a book called the House of Bush and the House of Saud. It is making me angry… 

Hong Kong

December 18th, 2007 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life

I am writing from Hong Kong as I wait for my flight back to London. Going home to see the family for Christmas and looking forward to it. Feeling very festive, having spent four nights in HK where Christmas caroles have been piped into every public space that I visited, where Hotel staff opened and closed every conversation with ‘Seasons Greetings’ and where I have seen Christmas displays that would rival anything in London. I also visited Macau on this trip, which took the Christmas theme a step further again. We flew by helicopter from Hong Kong. I am now waiting at Gate 36 with free wifi courtesy of PCCW. Hong Kong is a great place but I was struck by its thirst for energy – lights everywhere, everything automated, air conditioning set to ‘frosty’, busy busy business everywhere.

The last few weeks have been hectic at work, spent a lot of time on work or personal social dos when not in the office. So no time to blog. Will hopefully find some more over the holidays but there’s no guarantee. I never got around to blog about the Social Networking and Business Collaboration event that I attended in Sydney.

Seasons Greetings  – one of my New Year’s resolutions will be to become a serious blogger.

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A pragmatic future

November 26th, 2007 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life, Politics

I am not a religious person but it’s good to see religious leaders use their position to raise important issues that affect us all. The Archbishop of Canterbury came out and said what most people already think about the Americans and their imperialist agenda. He has also provided his view on what the Americans (and the West, in general) need to do to regain the moral high ground and I agree with him.

It amazes me that in these apparently transparent times with almost immediate access to information and breaking news our leaders can carelessly throw their weight around while wrapping the whole exercise up as some sort of freedom march.

With Blair, Howard out and Bush on his way out, perhaps we can look forward to a period of pragmatism over dogmatism… I’m convinced that it doesn’t have to be this difficult.

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New look and feel

November 25th, 2007 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life, Music

I didn’t mean to but I just spent three hours messing around with templates and CSS. I am happy with the final outcome, its a big improvement on the basic Wordpress template. It was an equal mix of luck and judgement – at one stage everything was on top of everything else.

Right…I am supposed to be doing chores. My neighbour hung up my washing for me, which was nice of her. Now going to Bondi to do some shopping and to drop off a couple of Sufjan Stevens CDs to my mate Alex.

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