Andrew's Inner Sanctum

Last Friday morning at 7am, I left Brisbane headed for Sydney to meet the best talkback radio host in the country – The Spoonman! He used to host a late night talkback show on FM station Triple M in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. This was the only show of it’s kind in Australia (because it was on the FM band) and therefore it was a very special show. The show’s motto was “No Topic Taboo, Everything Is Utterly Fair Game” and that’s exactly what it was – The Spoonman would deal with just about any topic in detail, everything from politics to what’s your favourite band of all time? In 2008 Pikelet and Myself started a fan club on MySpace, Bebo and Facebook and then KG joined us a few weeks after we started and took over Pikelet’s role because of other more important things that came up in Pikelet’s life. At the end of 2008 there was a plan to consolidate the three groups on MySpace, Bebo and Facebook into one central website, but sadly due to the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, the show was axed on 27th November 2008. So the fan club turned into a tribute site and a place to download all the existing podcast material from the 3 years of the show (because they got removed from the Triple M website when the show was axed). The Spoonman returned on August 24th reading the workday news and adding editorials to the end of the news bulletins on Sydney’s Triple M only.

So after a few years of listening and setting up a fan club (www.spoonmanfanclub.co.cc) I finally got my opportunity to meet the man behind the Microphone. If you purely listened to the show, you’ll probably form one of two opinions of him. The opinion will either be “this guy knows what he’s talking about, he shuts up the idiots and comes up with sometimes radical, but logically thought through ideas” OR you’ll think “what an arrogant bastard, always hanging up on and abusing callers he doesn’t agree with him”. Well when I met him, he is the nicest guy. I met him the day after the Labor leadership spill and the week had been a big one for the Spoonman with all the coverage and analysis that was needed and therefore he was tired, but he still spent 2 and a bit hours with my family and I taking us on a tour of the station, having a drink with us and just a good conversation about everything from radio to politics to just life in general. So that was probably my highlight of the year so far .

The next day I met up with my mate KG, who I only see if I go to Sydney OR if he comes up to Brisbane. He took showed me where he worked (Nova 96.9 Sydney) and we had a good chat and some lunch too. That was also pretty awesome and it’s always good to meet up with KG when I go to Sydney! The following day my family and I then travelled up the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway to Newcastle for Lunch and then up the Pacific Highway and The Lakes Way to visit Deanna at her house about 30 minutes outside of Forster/Tuncurry. It was lovely to see Deanna again and to see that she’s quite happy and doing well in Year 11. Finally after an overnight in Tuncurry it was time to drive back down the Pacific Highway to Newcastle and then Williamstown Airport to fly home! I will probably be posting a blog soon about the state of the Pacific Highway because roads interest me like that.

So that was my awesome four day holiday and it was probably one of the best holidays I’ve ever been on

Haven’t posted here for a few days and thought I’d better update the thoughts from my inner sanctum to you all. I’ve got a mini cold, one of those which is slightly more than my normal sinuses but not enough to stop me doing anything. It’s just annoying, but thankfully I’ve got the long weekend to make sure I come back to school ready for what will be a 4 day week, but one hell of a 4 day week.

I have a normal day Tuesday, followed by 2 exams on Wednesday followed by 2 days of QCS Test practice. I really really hate QCS and personally think it’s a band aid to a very broken system of senior assessment in Queensland. Then it’s holidays for 3 whole weeks before 17 weeks left of school :O – wow this year has gone fast (yet this term has gone slowly…).

This holiday will mainly involve me staying up late and co-hosting the Endeavour Online Afternoon Show with Daniel – so if you’re up late and want to listen to me just chat with Daniel and play some pretty good music, then check out www.endeavouronline.net. I’m also going on a mini holiday for a few days to visit the legend of Sydney FM radio: The Spoonman! If you’ve never heard of the Spoonman before, then he used to be a Sydney based radio talkback announcer who hosted a late night national FM talkback and rock music program. He was more edgy than the AM talkback and had radical opinions sometimes, but hosted the best show on radio at the time and usually nailed the issue he was discussing even if it disagreed with mainstream views. I’m also going to visit my friend Deanna who moved away from Brisbane in 2008 and so that will be awesome to see her again for a day

I have also spent a bit of time on YouTube and came across this awesome (but extremely random song) called Chicken Monkey Duck, so I thought I’d share this with you all!

Lastly, I have an urge for something, but I don’t actually know what it is – don’t you hate it when that happens, you want something, but you don’t know what it is you actually want?

Have a good night and thank you Queen for giving us a free holiday, I think you’ve contributed nothing else to Australia and bring on the republic, but I do thank you for a free holiday

OMG today was a busy day for technology news (which is why I get frustrated when I’m stuck at school because one I cannot stay up late (2-4am) to watch the keynotes and presentations live, but also because at school I’m away from Twitter where the breaking news occurs).

Anyway I knew all about the new iPhone, because it made top news this morning (more on it in a sec) but what I didn’t know was that the Windows Live Wave 4 Web Services have begun to roll out today, that was until I got home.

First I’ll address the new iPhone, I’m just not interested! Steve Jobs is a marketing genius who can sell people anything, especially things they’re never going to use or things that already exist or things that will actually be annoying. The big one seems to be the front facing Camera. Most smart phones (I know my HTC Touch Diamond does) already have a front facing camera, and guess what – I’ve never used mine and I don’t know many people who have used theirs either. The fact is, in Australia it’s too damm expensive to video call so what would you bother? If you’re going to video call iPhone to iPhone via Wi-Fi, then why not just use Skype on a laptop, which is the world leader for video chatting (or use Windows Live Messenger). Multitasking is actually good, looks well implemented, got to give Apple credit there, but iAds, oh hang on a sec… you’re trying to tell me, having pop up fully interactive ads in your apps is a good thing? I don’t want ads in my apps, I just want to use them. Every modern web browser comes with a pop up blocker, because we generally don’t like pop ups, so why would we want them clogging up our phones? One other good point, for the first time it seems that iPod Touch users will be allowed to upgrade to version 4.0 software (now called iOS 4) on their 3rd generation (and 2nd gen but missing features) iPod Touch for Free instead of having to fork out $20 or so. Apple peoples can download iOS 4 later this month and buy an iPhone 4 in July.

Moving on now to the news which I’m much more excited about, and the news which will probably gain an article on my main website once it’s all finished, Windows Live Wave 4 web services! The rollout has begun. I know most of you aren’t going to notice this yet, because currently Windows Live Hotmail and Contacts have not been updated (and most people I know only use Hotmail on the web, not the other wonderful services available), but everything else has. The new header means that you will be able to see at a glance on any page you’re on how many unread emails you have and how many of your friends are online and even start a conversation with them in the browser. The big thing for me though is that in Wave 3, Facebook, MySpace etc were all integrated into Windows Live, but they didn’t do much – this time, all the news feed updates from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and many many other services can be integrated into one feed that appears throughout Windows Live and (when the Essentials beta comes out) inside Windows Live Messenger). You’ll also be able to link up all your Facebook contacts with your Windows Live Messenger contacts (removing duplicates) and then chat to people through Facebook chat via Windows Live Messenger (which is awesome because I hate Facebook chat).

The other big one, is Windows Live Skydrive now has Windows Live Office – which means, Office Web Apps are here – WOOOO! Now these certainly aren’t fully featured (they’re a bit lacking actually), but when coupled with Hotmail when it gets updated soon hopefully, I see this as a massive time saver! Imagine getting an email with a Word Document attachment and editing and sending it back to the person without leaving Hotmail! It’s going to become a reality very very soon!

Anyway – I’ll leave it there, there will be a lot more in my article very soon, but I’m hoping you’ll all check out what’s currently available and realise there’s much more coming! Hotmail is NOT updated yet, so you’ll have to go to http://home.live.com/ if you want to see the changes!

I’ve been doing some assignments lately, where my parents have proofread it to make sure it makes sense and also to make sure I’ve spelt everything correctly (which hasn’t been a problem, since I’m a pretty good speller and also the computer does help a lot). The problem has been that apparently I don’t use big enough words and that I’m going to need to increase my vocabulary when I become an adult.

I cannot see why this matters. As long as you use the jargon and terminology specific to the subject you’re writing about, then why do you need to use fancier words than necessary. Here’s an example: I was writing about the apartheid era in South Africa and wrote this (not a complete sentence), “…realised that they didn’t have enough people to work…”. I was told to write this instead, “…realised that they didn’t have an adequately sized workforce…”. To me, they both mean the same thing, one just uses fancier words than the other. So why can’t I use the one I choose and get the same mark?

To me, the point of communication is to get your message across from one person to the other in a way that you can both understand that message. Both of those sentences achieve that goal, my sentence even gets across to more people than the so called “improved” sentence. Why do we have multiple words that mean exactly the same thing, that doesn’t improve communication, that handicaps it because everyone has to know all the different words that mean that one thing.

The other problem I have is that, in traditional English (the UK one that we use in Australia) we still have silent letters in words. WHY on earth would you want to have letters in a word which are silent and therefore are useless? e.g is Colour: the US removed the u because it was not needed, same with programme: they removed the extra me because it was not needed. Nobody has moved yet to remove the g from gnome so that it’s just nome. Spelling would improve if we spelt words exactly the way they sounded.

Anyway – there’s my rant about the English language. I have plenty to rant about, so hopefully I can find some time to write about it here!