The Musings of Chris Samuel

• #Downfall Hitler learns of the Australian hung parliament http://youtu.be/2pNDLzx9vyU (via @fooishbar) #ausvotes #
• An interesting prediction from my friend Chris Borthwick (I hope he's wrong about 8 years of Abbott) http://bit.ly/bpKh2B #
• Back to my old picture on Twitter, dropped the #nocleanfeed as it seems that it's not likely to come back anytime soon #
• In other news – today we found 2 duck eggs for the first time, confirming that Poppy and Snow are both laying. #
• In unrelated news we now have goldfish in an aquarium upstairs – very nice! #
• The law says that you have to be 18 to be an MP (negating the constitutional limit of 21) http://bit.ly/cI51e9 #ausvotes #
• Hi @skwashd – I can get to vtr.aec.gov.au from my VM in the US – local restrictions ? #ausvotes #
• LNP "How to vote" card masquerading as a @Greens one http://twitpic.com/2goqja (via @abc_investigate @IanWoolf) #ausvotes #
• SLES10/PPC64 is real pain at times, must manually dd CHRP boot partition (FAT16!) as installer can't handle SW RAID1 for it #
• then got to sed /etc/lilo.conf to hardwire boot=/dev/sdb1, run lilo (yaboot), sed it back to /dev/sda1 and run lilo again! #
• Lovely APOD today and almost local: Milky Way + Loch Ard Gorge (down the Great Ocean Road in Victoria) http://bit.ly/cpNnOJ #
• Wow, one hell of a lot of (thankfully small) hail then! #
• Walked home on road encrusted with millions of tiny ice balls and tall gum trees each side during thunderstorm. Eep. #
• UK Gov and Catholic Church colluded+covered up priests likely involvement in 1972 car bomb http://bbc.in/cq80Yo #Ireland #
• RT @VAXHeadroom: Excellent photo doc by CNN on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) http://bit.ly/aEVfzr #
• #ACTA creation, an international treaty likely to have big implications re Internet, continues in secret http://bit.ly/c3Edhc #
• "Fix a theoretical problem in a theoretical script" – don't you just love descriptive SVN change messages #xcat #
• Nice one AutoYAST – it sets up /etc/ldap.conf just fine but neglects to configure PAM.. arghh #
• "If LDAP is activated, NSS and PAM will be configured accordingly to use LDAP for user authentication." Oh no it's not! #
• Dear #AutoYAST what on earth do I have to do to you to get you to configure LDAP as requested ? #lart #suse #sles10 #
• David Rowe releases v0.1 alpha of his open source speech #codec targeting the 2.4 kbits range http://bit.ly/90oQpY #foss #
• Awesome yo-yo work – reminds me more of a tiny diablo than a yoyo! http://bit.ly/bnUtKV (via @fooishbar @thommay) #
• Important: when converting SVN to git and pushing to an external repo any tags won't get pushed – need to git push –tags ! #
• Hey @andybotting, there's a new version of Zimbra out, time for an upgrade ? (ducks) #
• Anyone got a working AutoYAST XML snippet to enable LDAP with PAM/NSS in #SuSE SLES10 ? Example in docs doesn't work. #
• The next plague will be webcast – RT @774melbourne: DPI website to map locust hatchings http://bit.ly/dx02j2 #
• Victorian #DPI "Australian Plague Locust" website with alerts and reporting – http://bit.ly/auZ9w9 #plague #
• A coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim civic groups formed to support NYC Sufi centre – http://bit.ly/aeqGAn #
• OK SuSE SLES10, why do you come up OK the first reboot after install but then not load the ehea 10GigE drives next reboot? #
• Voting for Godot – Clarke and Dawe hit the nail on the head – http://bit.ly/aMygi7 #auswaits #
• 16 cores, vector extensions, 128 GF – RT @insideHPC: Architect talks about China's Godson chip http://bit.ly/dpHKzs #hpc #
• #SC10 student cluster competition – best supercomputer using max 26A current – http://bit.ly/aMwwrh #hpc #
• Sadly the original #TACC post (http://bit.ly/9zqVxC) says "26 amps of energy" not "26 amps of current" or equiv in Joules! #
• "Python-iView is not a tool designed to allow copyright infringement. Python-iView is vigilante interoperability" @jeremyvisser #
• Trip down to botanical gardens in Cranbourne, big walk with Donna, saw 2 wedge-tail eagles plus first ducklings of the year! #

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Vacation 1.2.7.1 beta1 is the first beta for the first bug fix only release in the 1.2.7 branch.

It contains only two bug fixes, firstly adding the Auto-Submitted: header as required by RFC 3834 and secondly stopping vacation munging the GECOS information of the user and instead just passing it in a quoted form for the MTA to deal with.

Both of these patches are from Dr Tilmann Bubeck who is the packager of Vacation for the Fedora project. I’m very grateful to him for his time and patience in submitting these!

Please grab this beta release and test it and report any problems!

• First result of migrating to git, found all these changes in the 1.2.7 branch I'd not merged back to trunk, d'oh! #
• OK, pushed all those missed changes back to SourceForge, so master now has all the fixed from 1.2.7 branch, phew! #
• Anyone know if #xCAT can manage #IBM Power6 #LPAR #039;s in absence of an HMC ? (IVM doesn't work with xCAT) #
• Aussie govt just realised games for iPhone, Android, etc, bypass classification laws http://bit.ly/93Otbw (via @markbate) #
• It's the "cyber" word again RT @insideHPC: American-Chinese Cyberinfrastructure and E-Science Workshop http://bit.ly/dw4Wjb #
• Sigh RT @NewtonMark: Conroy: "430 child porn sites." err, no. That's 430 refused classification sites. #openinternet #nocleanfeed #
• "What happens when a car travelling near the speed of light turns on its headlights?" http://bit.ly/bePiji #
• RIP Piper Bill Millin, 1st Special Service Brigade, 1923-2010, who piped commandos ashore on D-Day http://bit.ly/arGlGk #
• "Cross your fingers that this makes the million and a half dependant things happy" – #xCAT SVN commit r7131 #
• #myvote @greens – only they seem to share my desire for a fair society which respects human rights and cares about the long term. #
• Hopefully not too late! RT @Djelibeybi: Happy birthday @kattekrab! #
• I've voted in the @linuxusersvic election, have you ? http://members.luv.asn.au/ #foss #opensource #luvvotes #
• SPARC and Itanic (IA-64) have been dropped from the Ubuntu 10.10 release due to lack of interest. #
• Pretty cool to see my photos being used on the SFD Melbourne site http://bit.ly/a2mOay – Yay for creative commons! #
• "Melbourne’s water storages topped 700 billion litres for the first time in almost three years" – almost 40% full! #
• Top 5 web browsers on my blog in last month – Firefox (52.7%), Chrome (17.4%), IE (16.6%), Safari (6.5%), Opera (3.2%) #
• "(SGE) 6.2 Update 6 release from http://sun.com/sge come with a 90 day time limited eval license only." #hpc http://bit.ly/cjXCnY #
• Found via the comments on this post http://bit.ly/9AuK8x by @sijoe about SGE no longer being open source at Sun / Oracle. #
• More on SGE going 90-day license only (happened some time ago apparently, just nobody noticed) http://bit.ly/cddaMi #
• Glad we're using Torque; long history with many copyright holders (no assignment) means changing the license would be hard #
• (via @fooishbar) RT @kernelslacker: today in audiophile lunacy: http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?p=2479 #
• 1/2) Useful tip, if you are debugging #SuSE SLES #autoyast installs you can pass "usessh=1 nosshkey sshpassword=a" #
• 2/2) It stops before running autoyast and you can SSH in with X forwarding and run yast whilst poking around in the logs #
• The Separation Tree (NSW/VIC split) in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens ringbarked by vandals http://bit.ly/dzUcqz #
• Reserve Bank of Australia in favour of stimulus package, "imminent withdrawal poses risks to growth" – http://bit.ly/9Q8wUb #
• Just voted in my first ever Australian election. Thanks to the OIC's and all the other volunteers who are makinfg this possible! #
• Listening to The Wonderstuff "Never Lovd Elvis" (1991), kind of Levellers meets Waterboys meets REM #
• Great #ausvotes CGI summary (subtitled) http://j.mp/98GvAK via @markbate @PieterPeach @brainsmatter @PaulDRyan @jonathannen #
• The last public #OpenSolaris commit from #Oracle – http://bit.ly/cMUDBu – no official word from their cone of silence #
• FSM courses Cthulhu some angst on UserFriendly – http://bit.ly/90NH44 #
• Alec is bang on (as usual) RT @alecmuffett: HTML5 as an analogue for the perennial security problem http://bit.ly/c2Y3yD #
• This is your 4 minute warning, voters… #
• That's it, times up voters! Pens down, papers must be handed in. Now for the results.. #ausvotes #
• Great meteor and lighting shot on todays APOD! RT @apod: Perseid Storm: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100821.html #
• Interesting, @abcelections describes our electorate (La Trobe) as a key seat – http://bit.ly/cst2Q9 #
• AEC finds LNP supporters illegally impersonated @Greens workers in Brisbane – http://bit.ly/buybCa #
• Happy Birthday to Miriam Schmierer, 111 today (born before Federation!) http://bit.ly/97IvC2 #
• .@Greens have stormed the seat of Melbourne with 35% of total vote, a swing of 12% primary vote and 7% after preferences #
• Looks like ALP edge out Liberals in La Trobe, @Greens have done well with 12.7% of primary vote, swing of 3.6% #ausvotes #
• I bet @KRuddMP is regretting not taking his double dissolution opportunity earlier in their term #ausvotes #
• First Senate numbers for Victoria, currently 2 ALP, 2 LIB, 1 Nationals, 1 @Greens, no Family First Conroy still in #
• Kerry O'Brien just predicted a swing to the ABC in La Trobe – if only! KOB for PM! #
• Oh crap, it looks like Wendy Francis (Family First) will get a Senate seat in QLD #ausvotes #homophobia #
• Antony Green predicts hung parliament – Labor: 73 seats; Coalition: 72 seats; Greens: 1 seat; Independents: 4 seats #ausvotes #
• Wow, QLD Senate seats have changed markedly after more counting – Wendy Francis gone from list, 3 LIB, 2 ALP, 1 @Greens #
• Moral of the story – it's too early to tell with Senate seats yet! (What a relief) #ausvotes #
• Oh dear, looks like Family First will get a seat in South Australia #ausvotes #
• It looks like we're set for a hung parliament, so I'm off to bed; will catch up in the morning! #ausvotes #
• Puzzled why none of the ABC election website voting figures seem to have been updated for the last 9 hours #ausvotes #
• Good to see we have our first Indigenous MP ever (Ken Wyatt, a Liberal in WA) – *WAY* overdue.. #
• Lunchtime in the Dandenongs http://twitpic.com/2h02kp #

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In Australia voting is compulsory, but often people who can’t be bothered do an “informal” ballot, one which does not meet the criteria for a definite vote. Apparently the former Labour leader Mark Latham was asking people to vote informaly “to send a message” – but that doesn’t make any sense at all. Robert Norris’s post on why he’s voting Green has a nice quote from the Conscience Vote blog:

And when you go to the polls tomorrow, don’t – don’t, I beg you – cast an informal vote. If you can’t stand either of the major parties, put your vote where your heart is – and don’t let anyone tell you that it won’t count. Because you can bet that when the figures finally come in from the Electoral Commission, strategists and analysts from both sides will be going over the fine detail. Every vote that bleeds to the Greens or a minor party is a signal of discontent with the status quo.

And you’re not “sending a message”, regardless of what Mark Latham tells you. You’re just lumped in with every ballot paper that was incorrectly filled in, illegible or just plain doodled on. If you want to send a message, do it with a valid vote.

Every single vote matters.

So no matter who you want to vote for, go do it, and do it properly.

This coming Saturday, 21st August 2010 will be my first opportunity to participate in Australian democracy. My citizenship came through a few months after the last election, had I’d been able to vote then I’d have cast my vote for Labour and against John Howard.

However, with the Australian Labour Party (ALP) lurching to the right on a number of issues such as immigration, continuing the failed intervention in the Northern Territory, failing to legitimise same-gender marriage, and their crazy idea of mandatory Internet censorship combined with a new do-nothing strategy on climate change (“let’s hold a citizens assembly to tell us what to do, just like we did in 2008!”) means my conscience does not permit me to give them my first preference. They at least have some vision with the NBN, but that’s about it.

As for the Coalition, well they’re just laughable. A leader who doesn’t understand science or technology, policies that promise to deliver half the current speeds of ADSL2+, obscene exaggeration and fear-mongering about refugees coming in by boat (here’s some much needed facts on the matter), wanting to make bible classes compulsory in schools (I suspect aimed at the even more right wing Family First to whom they are directing preferences) and even worse policies on climate change and greenhouse gases. Even more FAIL than Labour.

So, I’m voting Green because:

• They want to enshrine basic human rights in law (Australia is the only western democracy without legal protection of freedom of speech)
• They’re against the mandatory Internet censorship scheme
• They take the science of climate change seriously, and the challenges it poses
• They believe that people who love each other should be able to get married, irrespective of orientation
• They wish to treat refugees as people, not some mythical threat
• They understand free, open source software and use it themselves

Most importantly I’m voting Green because THEY WANT YOU TO THINK! Not just about their policies, or other parties policies, but to think about how you direct your preferences. Sure they have preference deals, but what most impressed me was when they were announced Bob Brown said:

I don’t like back room preference negotiations with other parties. In fact I’m sick of it. And I think that we should be very well aware here that voters can get misled into believing that they should put their preferences where the Labor party or the Liberal party or the Nation party or the Greens or somebody else says. No that’s not true. People have a right to put, and I think an obligation to think about it, and put their preferences where they want to. That’s what’s important.

Watch the video on that ABC news article to hear that, it’s sadly not in the text of the report. They also have the best election advert that never was – The Gruen Transfer has been getting two advertising agencies a week to do an advert each for a political party and this one won the week they did The Greens.

Now I’m not under any illusions that they’ll form the next government, but voting for them will send a signal that I’m not happy with either of the major parties, and they should (hopefully) get the balance of power in the Senate.

After a long hiatus I’ve restarted work on Vacation and have kicked off proceedings by migrating from SVN to Git (which SourceForge started offering about 18 months ago)¹. This means you can now clone the Git repo to do work with and have the complete history of the project available to you, even if you’re not connected to the Internet at the time.

You can find more information on using Git with SVN here: https://sourceforge.net/scm/?type=git&group_id=3852

I’ve realised from this that a lot of the bug fixes that had been done on the 1.2.7 branch had not been merged back into trunk whilst working in SVN, so I’ve now made those changes to the ‘master’ (what Git calls SVN’s trunk) and pushed those back to SourceForge.

I’m hoping to roll a 1.2.7.1 release in the near future to pick up a few changes on the 1.2.7 branch that should really be out there.

1. I ended up using the svn2git Ruby Gem to do this as the usual “git svn clone” didn’t seem to work that well. [back]

• OK, all final photos from @sfd_melb photo shoot uploaded and licensed CC-BY – #Digikam rocks! http://bit.ly/chca4K #
• AEC website re senate voting "However, if the elector completes both sections formally, the below the line section takes precedence." #
• Premier John Brumby launching #VLSCI IBM BlueGene/P http://twitpic.com/2d9rlw #
• USGS reports magnitude 7.5 #earthquake 24 miles from Port Vila #
• Oh. My. Ghod – the Coalition are preferencing Family First before any other party in Victoria. Very scary. #ausvotes #
• For reference – Family First have candidates who have espoused homophobic violence and generally seem anti-human rights. #
• It was One Nation's Victorian president John Groves to Family First's Wendy Francis on violence – http://bit.ly/9zzQfQ #
• University of Melbourne #VLSCI #IBM Blue Gene/P press release from today's launch by @vicpremier http://bit.ly/bSEGPx #hpc #
• Need just +17 ppl to get to 1,000 on open letter to Kim Carr to request end of software patents in AU http://bit.ly/9rLHva #
• Yay! Just heard from @donna_williams that we have our first duck egg from our Muscovy ducks, Snow and Poppy! #
• I wonder why @TonyAbbottMHR won't give Riz the refugee the surfing lesson that @GetUp ppl paid for ? http://is.gd/ec9FJ #
• Except he's now avoiding it – RT @TonyAbbottMHR I’m looking forward to Getting Up on the surfboard with my successful auction bidders. #
• Our first duck egg! http://twitpic.com/2dnb6c #
• Sigh, another 2 false positives caught by the UniMelb anti-spam system this morning.. #
• Dear SuSE autoyast GUI, when I ask you to remove a pre/post script please do so – and please make your LDAP config work. #
• Dear @TonyAbbottMHR, as you claim you don't understand technology then it's best not comment on it, especially the #NBN #
• Another day, another duck egg.. #
• So why aren't we hearing from Indigenous Australians on population and sustainability in Australia on #QandA ? #
• Very effective ad for the @Greens done as part of a regular section on The Gruen Transfer – http://youtu.be/BzoI-OQy-jw #
• Stephen Hawking's COSMOS group order an SGI Ultraviolet UV1000 http://bit.ly/cyrdLw (via @InsideHPC) #
• Ben Chociej has posted patches to make mkfs.btrfs and btrfsctl understand+use proposed "data temperature" ioctls for #btrfs #
• Ben Chociej also posted updated data temperature patches; includes ioctls so btrfsctl can relocate hot files to SSD's #btrfs #
• Reporters Sans Frontieres (@RSF_RWB) vs. @Wikileaks http://bit.ly/auPBLh http://bit.ly/a9ChVI (via @abc_investigate) #
• Anyone got any pointers to documentation for #xCAT and #IBM #039;s IVM ? #
• (as in – getting #xCAT to talk to an #IBM IVM system and build LPAR's there) #
• Yes! Another duck egg! Omlette time. #
• HPCWire make convincing argument #Oracle abandoning #HPC http://bit.ly/cLyliG (via @HPC_Guru), bad news for BoM and ANU! #
• What makes it likely: #Oracle is not at #SC10 despite me being told by #Sun ppl at #SC09 that #Oracle would have a stand #
• Lovely Muscovy duck egg omlette, had heard rumours they had a stronger taste than other duck eggs but didn't seem to. #
• With Oracle going after Google over Java patents I wonder what the implications are for IBM's Java implementation ? #
• "Supercomputer to rival Google headed for Perth" "a staggering 9600 cores " http://bit.ly/ctg0Jy #journalism #fail #hpc #
• #OpenSolaris experiment is dead from an #Oracle POV – http://bit.ly/9QONYW (via @sijoe's blog http://bit.ly/daPmqv) #
• Fantastic view of the radiant of the shower: RT @apod: Night of the Perseids: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100814.html #
• One of the few big #biodiversity collections threatened by bulldozers http://bit.ly/bCxHOG (via @alecmuffett) #science #
• Bah, Symbian only, not for #N900 RT @ptua: Metlink has launched a beta application for Nokia smartphones http://j.mp/97lYV6 #
• Afraid of Oracle vs Google happening in Australia? Haven't signed the open letter on software #patents http://bit.ly/9rLHva #
• There's something particularly spooky about these abandoned amusement parks – http://bit.ly/a4460i #
• Muscovy duck egg #5 http://twitpic.com/2etbd2 #
• How #archaeology uses supercomputers in a BBC article on #HPC in the UK http://j.mp/cDYe8F (via @hpc_guru @grahampullan) #
• Currently doing a git svn clone of my Vacation project SVN repo on SourceForge, aiming to migrate to their Git system. #
• Hmm, git clone -s $REPO sort of works, but when I checkout an earlier branch none of the files change to match it. #
• Hmm, something odd is up with http://appeal.kde.org/ (via http://blog.jasondonenfeld.com/364) #KDE #
• I had no idea there was a scale model of the solar system in #Melbourne http://bit.ly/ac30O3 #astronomy #
• I wasn't going mad, the reason #xCAT doesn't work with #IBM #039;s IVM is bit-rot in the code – it's broken. #
• OK, having another shot at converting the SVN repo, this time with the ruby gem "svn2git", let's see what it makes of it.. #
• Aha, looks like svn2git has made a better fist of it than git-svn, at least branches work correctly now, though tags don't. #
• My bad, tags are working too! #
• Yay, git push back to sourceforge has worked! Can't believe I hadn't touched vacation for all of 2009.. #

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• Good review of the #iPad on both its good and bad points; don't expect it to replace a laptop – http://bit.ly/9GJagl #
• He also "bought The Australian's $4.99 app but soon reverted back to using its website [..], which is far richer and free" #
• Just noticed that the 2.6.35 #Linux kernel is out #
• RT @bulletford: #Microsoft crippled IE8 security so as to allow easy web user tracking: http://tinyurl.com/2f4r7pq #
• RT @jsquyres: If you could add 1 new function to #MPI what would it be? #hpc #
• Remember that filter is *NOT* about anything illegal according to Conroy, therefore it can only about censorship #ausvotes #
• RT @BreakingNews: The UAE's telecom regulator says BlackBerry services will be blocked for foreign visitors too – AP #
• Very interesting! RT @sijoe: New blog post: Interesting SSD results with a late model kernel http://scalability.org/?p=2457 #
• New release of OSC mpiexec (formerly by Pete Wyckoff, now Doug Johnson) 0.84 – http://www.osc.edu/~djohnson/mpiexec/ #
• RT @alecmuffett: When you visit uk.alpha.org … the survey says: http://twitpic.com/2b24hk #
• "Australia is the only western nation without an express guarantee to free speech" – Aaron Magner UNSW http://scr.bi/cSbmmd #
• AEC have told me that if you vote both above *and* below the line in the Senate it will be discarded as informal #ausvotes #
• Free software group awarded triple damages against company for wilful copyright infringement under #GPL http://bit.ly/bGw6U8 #
• #VLSCI got a mention in dispatches from the acting VC of the University of Melbourne last Friday. #
• .@AntonyGreenABC responded on my blog, citing why voting above+below line is OK; am trying to get clarification from AEC #
• RT @BreakingNews: Barnes & Noble considering sale of company http://bit.ly/bSnP3p #
• SIgh, you've got to worry when you've got people citing the Predator movie as part of their conspiracy theory about 2012.. #
• "Images of the 5th dimension may not be viewable in your region" http://bit.ly/aMaG3M #
• AppArmor has finally been merged into the mainline #Linux kernel for 2.6.36 #
• So the coalition have said they will oppose the filter; amazed they have one policy I can agree with! #
• Rumours that #Oracle has laid off lots of #Sun #HPC people – RT @regvulture Oracle chops Sun HPC jobs http://reg.cx/1K98 #
• Big congrats to @GetUp on a great win in court. Sad that it has to be activists and not politicians safeguarding democracy. #
• RT @jons68: This election reminds me of the Dr. Who episode in which all Five Doctors are present at the same time. #ausvotes #
• Flickr photo: Cybersource – We Do Linux – grafitti ad for local IT company visible from Burnley station http://bit.ly/9P4lHB #
• Been invited to take publicity photos tomorrow for upcoming Software Freedom Day in Melbourne (@sfd_melb) – wish me luck! #
• .@TonyAbbottMHR: Leadership is about where you stand // Please donate and give women a voice in this @GetUp ad http://ow.ly/2k9nO #
• Interesting slide set on hacking memcache – http://bit.ly/drrANQ – why on earth do people leave that port open? via @jdub #
• Seeing reports of potential big performance regressions in #btrfs in 2.6.35; Chris Mason is on the case. #
• On my way into State Library of Victoria to do promo photo shoot for the Melbourne Software Freedom Day group @sfd_melb #
• At SLV waiting for it to open, and for @kattekrab and Ben to appear #
• SLV @sfd_melb photo shoot http://twitpic.com/2c9is3 #
• SLV @sfd_melb photo shoot http://twitpic.com/2c9izl #
• Software Freedom Day Melbourne (@sfd_melb) meeting in progress http://twitpic.com/2c9tcu #
• Just back from Melbourne after @sfd_melb photo shoot with about 200 photos on the camera, heaps of sorting to do! #
• Melbourne tower block, Swanston St http://twitpic.com/2ccckd #
• Just finished the first pass going through 198 photos from the @sfd_melb photo shoot at @Library_Vic, will do more tomorrow! #
• Spot on! RT @kattekrab: New Blog: http://kattekrab.net/elections-1 #ausvotes #election #policy #politics #
• "This election has officially jumped the shark" – James Purser – +1 – both parties and media have FAIL written all over them #
• Just finished going through all the pics from the @sfd_melb photo shoot at SLV, now to upload the 26 finals to Flickr! #

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Update: Antony has kindly clarified his reasoning in a comment on this article, and so I have now sent a follow up query to the AEC based on this.

Update 2: After much too-ing and fro-ing (see the comments) with Antony Green and the AEC it appears that the AEC would rather obfuscate on the whole issue than bring clarity to it, and Antony makes a very convincing case about why it is valid to do both. What I’d love to see is a comment from someone involved in the voting process with one of the OIC guides to confirm that it says that those votes are handled as Antony says. I somehow doubt anyone would dare though.. After that enlightening discussion with Antony I’ve changed the title of this article from “Do Not Vote Both Above and Below the Line in the Senate! (Updated)” to “AEC Obfuscates on Voting Rules” as that seems to be fairer to both Antony and the AEC.

Update 3: Just found this on the AEC website describing how voting works:

However, if the elector completes both sections formally, the below the line section takes precedence.

So it is really valid, despite what the AEC have been telling me! Thanks to “GetUp!” for providing the link to that AEC page on their voting page.

(more…)

Making Meaning is an exhibition of figurative, abstract and photographic works by my lovely wife Donna Williams and myself, Chris Samuel. We spent about 4 hours today at The Bakery, part of the 1812 Theatre in Upper Ferntree Gully in Melbourne setting it up whilst the crew of the 1812 finished off creating a set for their next production and distracting me with coffee and cake.

Our exhibition runs from the 5th August to the 4th September on theatre time, which is (as our flyer says):

Wed-Sat: 8.30–11pm,
Sun: 4–6.30pm then 8.30-11pm (except 22nd Aug)

As a sneak preview here is the layout of my photography:

and the layout of Donna’s paintings:

Thanks again to the 1812 crew for making us feel welcome and at home and even feeding us lunch!