Finally! 🙂
Category Archives: News
Red Cross Appeal for Victims of the 2009 Victoria Bushfires
The Red Cross has set up an appeal for victims of the 2009 bushfires here in Victoria. You can donate online or you can call 1800 811 700. Please dig deep.
The Red Cross are also running a hotline for people who are trying to track down friends and relatives as they have the responsibility for keeping a register of people being evacuated, that number is 1800 727 077.
Bushfires (updated)
Pretty scary listening to ABC 774:
- At least 181
166135842514people have been killed according to police, with fears that it might be as many as 20010040 - Over 700
80homes lost around the state - According to the ABC the town of Marysville (where we used to have a house) has been wiped out with as many as 50-100 fatalities according to some sources. (video)
only one building is left standing. - 7 acute patients were evactuated from Beechworth hospital, but the power issue has now been solved.
Beechworth hospital may need to be evacuated as the power is now off there, they’re trying to get generators on - Concerns for the communications tower on Mt Stanley
Unconfirmed fatalities reported by CFA and the ambulance service, Victoria Police are apparently about to do a press release
“ABC Aerial photo of what’s left of Marysville
Useful links:
- Red Cross appeal for victims of the 2009 bushfires
- Google Australia mashup of CFA incident reports (all types, not just bushfires)
- DSE major incident summary
- VicRoads Bushfire road closures
- ABC bushfire info blog
- CFA major incident updates
- CFA incident summary
View of bushfires from Doncaster in the north of Melbourne, submitted by Chris Mulherin
Melbournes Hottest Day On Record (Updated x 2)
Wow, what a day, according to the Melbourne Uni graph of the temperatures reported by the Bureau of Met we broke the record of 45.6C set in 1939 on Black Friday by almost another degree, peaking at 46.4C (so far). At least there is a cool change on the way and thankfully no lives lost in the fires (so far).
Max to now: 46.4°C @ 15:04 | Min to now: 24.0°C @ 6:55
If you think that’s bad Avalon got to 47.9C before then!
Update: The cool change just arrived – the new graph above shows a drop of 15C in 10 minutes!
Update 2: There are now unconfirmed reports of casualties from the CFA, according to a CFA officer on ABC 774. They are trying to verify those reports. The cool change has caused them problems and loss of properties.
Taxing Questions for Liechtenstein
I was listening to the BBC From Our Own Correspondent Podcast which had a great piece by John Sweeney about murky going ons in Liechtenstein. Part of it made me think that they’ve been going to the same school as Microsoft:
The next morning we heard that there was a banking seminar at the university on openness. This being Liechtenstein, the openness meeting was closed, at least to us.
John also has a wicked sense of humour..
Imagine my disappointment on discovering that Liechtenstein was, in fact, the most boring place on earth. I’m used to boredom – I work for the BBC, for heaven’s sake – but Liechtenstein was as dull as ditchwater, no duller. They bank behind closed doors. They create fuzzy trusts behind close doors. They make false teeth. And then they go to bed. The person who most looked like a ruthless killer was Howard, and he was the BBC producer.
KDE 4.2 released
Here’s some good news, KDE 4.2 has just been released! I’ve been running the 4.2 beta’s and release candidate on Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 for a while and it’s streets ahead of 4.1 (which is a great relief). Upgrading now as signed packages for Intrepid are in the PPA..
btrfs for 2.6.29
This news from Chris Mason on the linux-btrfs mailing list:
Hello everyone,
Just a quick note that Linus merged the btrfs unstable repository into the mainline kernel. I’ll cut a new stable release of btrfs-progs on Monday to go with it (for now the unstable repo is the best choice).
I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to the code, tested, reviewed, documented, helped organize and otherwise helped Btrfs get as far as it has. It wouldn’t have been possible without you.
There is a lot of work to do before we can really declare Btrfs finished, but this is a huge step forward.
Yay! Congratulations Chris.. 🙂
For those who want to know more about btrfs, please check out its wiki page..
Extreme Ironing
You’ve heard of lots of extreme sports by now and probably the Extreme Games, but you’ve probably not heard of Extreme Ironing..
The sport that is ‘extreme ironing’ is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an ‘extreme’ sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt. It involves taking an iron and board to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. Our Guinness World Record attempt will be for the most number of divers underwater ironing at the same time.
It’s being done to raise money for the UK’s lifeboat organisation (and registered charity) the RNLI and is on the 10th January 2009 at the UK National Diving & Activity Centre near Chepstow.
Propaganda and Gaza
There’s an interesting article by a BBC correspondent on the BBC website talking about “Propaganda war: trusting what we see?” that raises doubts about the veracity of a YouTube video put out by the Israeli government claiming to show a rocket attack on a lorry being loaded with Grad missiles.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem though disputes this story, itself claiming that it was a mistaken attack on a lorry being loaded with oxygen cylinders by Ahmed Sanur, his family and workers – at which point the Israeli’s changed their tune:
The Israeli response was that the “materiel” was being taken from a site that had stored weapons.
Sadly the Israelis are deliberately making it hard for people to confirm or refute their claims:
Israel has bolstered its approach by banning foreign correspondents from Gaza, despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court.
which immediately makes you wonder what they’re trying to hide.
Unfortunately as the reporter is being critical of Israels policy of denying foreign correspondents access he gets accused by readers on that article of trying to side with Hamas (same strategy as accusing those being against the stupid useless mandatory content filtering proposal here in Australia as being pro child porn), which obviously gets his goat, his response to that is:
I do not believe anyone’s “propaganda.” We seek to verify all claims, from whatever source. One of the main claims in Gaza at the moment is the serious situation for the population. Having reported from Gaza many times over the years, I know how crowded parts of it are and how dependent the people are on food aid from the UN. This means they have no other source of supply but equally, if the system is working, they should be getting enough to get by on. The problem is that foreign correspondents cannot get in to establish the exact situation for themselves.
Before I get accused of similar pro-Hamas leanings I’d just say that I consider all violence by both sides to be wrong, unjustified and completely counter-productive. As Ghandi said “An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind”. I have my doubts that there will ever be a lasting peace in that area. 🙁
Sir pTerry :-)
Congratulations to Terry Pratchett for getting a knighthood!
Here’s a timely User Friendly cartoon on the subject..
