In last night's Sunday Night program on Channel 7, they claimed that Rick Philips has not been charged. Today on Adelaide Now they won't accept comments about Rick Philips due to it being before the courts.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK? FILL OUT THE COMMENT BOX BELOW BUT PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT ON THE ALLEGED INCIDENT AT THE NATIONAL WINE CENTRE AS THIS IS BEFORE THE COURTS"

From Adelaide Now, dated 23 November 2009

Question No. 1: How can there be a court case if Rick Philips is not charged?

Question No. 2: Is Rick Philips charged or not?

At the bottom of the Adelaide Now story, they claim that 'charges are pending'.

"AdelaideNow welcomes comments on the issue of the relationship between Mike Rann and Michelle Chantelois but will not accept comment on the alleged incident at the National Wine Centre as criminal charges are pending."

From Adelaide Now, dated 23 November 2009

Question No. 3: Does this mean then that Rick Philips is NOT charged?

Question No. 4: If if means that Rick Philips is not charged, then back to question 1, how can this be before the courts if Rick Philips is not charged?

Anyone have any clue as to whether or not Rick Philips is charged and will undergo court? Does Rick Philips himself even know the answers to these questions!??!

Current temperature: 34°C

In some ways, I am glad that reverancepavane wasn't at the gig last night. It was a touch monty-pythonesque, and if I had looked across at him, I might have giggled!

Perhaps the problem wasn't so much the performance, but me. I had a hard day yesterday at work, and was still wound up when I got to the GCC Alumni evening, with a talk about teams. However, it wasn't so much a talk, as it was an activity. For about 45 minutes I was the treasurer of the SA P!NK Rockstar Fan club and had to convince the judges why our team rocked. I also got a pink glow band. So in the space of 2 hours, my mood did a 180 and I was re-energised and positive and excited!

Then I went to the Sisters of the Craft Gig with Lizzy Rose, Wendy Rule and Spiral Dance. Sadly, since I am actually supposed to get some work done today, I didn't stay to see much of Spiral Dance.

I am at a loss for words to describe the gig last night. No, I do have one good new word from last night: AaarghBlaargh! It's up there in my memories alongisde the scottish cow. Aach moo! If reverancepavane is interested, I'll give him a better run down of the event, in person. Well, through all the giggles, anyway.

The Waymouth Exchange in the city is down. Just so you know why your favourite business or friend is not answering your phone call or seems absolutely phoned out. Apparently, they are working on it.

I'm looking at something fascinating: Road Crashes for 2008 for South Australia, by the Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure.

On page 63 (65 by Adobe Reader's count) starts a series of tables that tell a very interesting story, about where our accidents are happening. I think some numbers are worthy of further investigation.

The top 4 seem to be: inattention, fail to give way, follow too closely, and fail to stand. They account for more than 72% of all the accidents by apparent error of road user responsible.

I think 'inattention' needs to be further examined. How much are mobile phones, music players, passengers, etc, accounting for this number? I think we'd all like to see that. Then we can start to talk about how we minimise external distractions (banning driving and mobile phones). Road user education, perhaps passenger education.

Where and when are we failing to give way and failing to stand? Is it a poorly understood road rule, or a series of system problems?

And why aren't we targeting tailgating (follow too closely) more? I'm convinced people don't really understand that they are tailgating.

Bear economist Steven Keen has posted some jokes about the economy, that he has seen bouncing around the intertubes: The economy: how bad is it?

I am in the current round of Mobile Web Best Practices, and have just now learnt about Opera Mini.

By going to m.opera.com/next on my phone browser, I installed Opera Mini 5 beta on my Nokia E65.

But then I was still stuck with the default phone browser, which seems to have wierd bookmark issues. So it turns out, in 'Menu' > 'Tools' > 'Settings' > 'Phone' > 'Standby Mode', I could change the right top key to load Opera Mini 5 beta.

How cool is that?!

Who knew you could have Happy Browsing on your mobile device?

Norton's Internet Security (NIS) 2010 has been causing me headaches: for some reason, it does not recognise the importance of Mozilla Thunderbird inboxes, out of the box. This means if you have a large inbox with Thunderbird, NIS 2010 will offer to delete it, without a confirmation, and without an undo. Just because in one of the emails from 6 years ago is a dormant virus file. A virus file, that has been ignored by predecessive versions of NIS and Norton's.

If you install NIS 2010, I would very strongly recommend you place the inbox for Thunderbird on its do not scan lists. Before an inbox gets deleted.

With the SSE Composite Index in it's current condition, I expect to see changes in the western world's share markets, very soon now. The SSE Composite Index falls are worrying.

Today I attended ASIC's public seminar on 'Investing between the flags'. There I leant that ASIC receives 14,000 complaints, per month, with a national total employee base of about 1,100, with 80 based here in SA.

I knew I was in the right spot when I noticed that everyone else had grey hair, the speakers were very knowledgable, and not exciting. They don't need to be exciting, as they don't need to make any sales targets.

On a side note, I am reverancepavane's secret stalker. I happen to know that just past 1.30pm today he turned right from P Street onto P Street.

Keep asking yourself, "What is the oppurtunity/challenge right now? What can I do right now?" and then do it, now. The past is, at best, an inaccurate memory. The future is, at best, only a maybe. Living in those times wastes your now and makes you crazy.

Now is all you have.

Those few who live in the now make things happen. They look and sound like the people you want to be with. They attract, and they have extraordinary presence, because they are extraordinarily present.

Homerun Hitters Guide to Fundraising: Happy about Raising Capital without Pitching by Dan Sapp

Check out this article on AdelaideNow about a redevelopment in Bowden, which I think could be the old Clipsal site. Outside of the 1mile square city, they are thinking of building 16-story high buildings.

Sore thumbs, anyone?

Seriously, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

A local ponzi scheme that has collapsed was offering up to 35% return, per month. And I thought per quarter was pretty good!

Littlest Sister was talking about the Central Markets, and called them the Gouger markets. I misheard, and thought she said the Google Markets. I thought that was fantastic, as you can find whatever you want, you just need to search!

I believe I have good reason to believe that lindra wants to go to AVCon. However, it seems a trifle unfair that I have to fork out the money for a ticket and not be able to go myself. However, I would be willing to take lindra with me, if she wanted to go. Do you think she would find that acceptable?

This link is for freyaw, Planet Bouncer is a small crap game that is utterly addictive.

Professor Steven Keen's blog: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
Professor Steven Keen is the guy who publicly has predicted house prices to fall 40%.

The latest blog is just amazing, though long and somewhat complicated.

On Sunday I noticed that the West Lakes Shopping Centre now has a Dymocks. I have no idea how long they have been there for; I know they were talking about it, I didn't know they had actually done it. Anyway, whilst perusing the stock, I came across a book written by Sally Couper and Barbara Convery, Real Estate Adventures with Sally Couper. I happen to have met Barbara while the book writing was going on, and I was so excited to see her book on the bookshelves at Dymocks. So naturally of course I had to buy and read the book. The book itself isn't very big and is perhaps a bit light in some areas. Nonetheless, it is fantastic to see local women doing great things!

I did , "hmmmm" a little bit at one of the statements, that real estate goes up by 8-10% each year. So I wrote an email to the authors asking for clarification: does that 8-10% per annum increase take inflation or CPI into account? And, how realistic is that figure anyway? Consider that property has been bought and sold since at least the 16th century in Europe, if they followed that 8-10% per annum increase, surely the house values now would be astronomical?

The lovely ladies replied that they are quite sure of their sources for the 8-10%, even though it didn't take inflation or CPI into account, and on the second question, told me to look it up. So I did. I used the 1855 value for the Herengracht Index at 6,850 guilders.
If it had increased at 10% pa, it should now have a price tag of 11 billion guilders, or 5 billion euros, which is nowhere near its value in 2006 of 1 - 3 million euros.

I just don't buy this story that property increases 8-10% each year.

I got the data about this house from a story about the Herengracht index from the New York Times. I heartily recommend the reading the link, it is an amazing story!

I'm going to make a prediction about the economy. You can pay me out for life if you like, but predictions usually hold very little water unless you can show you predicted it early. We will see how I go.

I predict that the latest downturn will very shortly be followed by a rally taking the stock market a little bit higher than the June 2009 high, but in about three months time (give or take a fortnight or two) there will be a decline, a 'correction' which will be followed by a rally. The rally will not reach the previous high. That rally will end in some large falls (in terms of relative percentage). I expect all of this before December 2009. I make this prediction because that's pretty much what the 1929 depression did. Oh, and just before the next rally is finished, someone famous and important will make a statement about how the whole thing is finished.

Things in the general economy will start to feel painful about the time of those large falls.

That's my prediction :)

I will be honest: I am a bit of a luddite. The other day, I was so happy to plug in a network switch and it worked. There was a distinct possibility it wouldn't because the cable from the switch to my device is a bit ratty and I don't know anything about switches so I was worried I was connecting it with the wrong cable. So I was so happy that at first I succeeded. I didn't hide my astonishment.

However, this post is about another type of technology. When I first heard of Apple Remote, I asked myself, why? Then, I realised that my house is all wired up with sound (not that we have figured that out yet, but how hard can that be?) and that I could connect my computer to it, and sit anywhere in the house, and control the playlist. Even in the toilet. That would be kewl. Perhaps even guests to my house could be given access and have voting rights. So I figured I needed to play with it. So I downloaded the app but couldn't make it work.

I am running Windows XP SP3 with Norton's Internet Security 2008.

First I tried to configure Norton's Smart Firewall by allowing anything that looked like iTunes or Remote might need (iTunes, Remote, Bonjour) by changing from 'Auto' to 'Allow'. No change.
Then I tried to turn off the firewall. No change.

Then I tried to change the configurations of Windows Firewall, checking that everything that this process might need is checked under 'Exceptions'. No change.
Then I also turned off this Firewall. No change.

Then I got frustrated. No change.

Then I started sneaking around in the settings and found a sneaky setting that needed to be changed:


Control Panel > Security Center > Windows Firewall > Advanced > Network Connection Settings > (checked and selected) Local Area Connection > Settings > (checked) Remote Desktop

Bingo!

(checked) means make sure it is checked
(selected) means make sure it has been selected/highlighted
(checked and selected) means make sure it has been checked and is selected/highlighted.




Turning Windows Firewall back on - no problem.

Turning Norton's Internet Security Firewall back on - no problem. Unfortunately I am unable to go back from 'Allow' to 'Auto' to test if the Smart Firewall changes had any effect.


So now I have my firewalls back on, I am controlling my iTunes desktop software with my iPod Touch :)

I do wonder though, is this a possible future security risk? Could devices posing as as iPod start doing things they shouldn't?

"An author who allegedly invented a Harry Potter-style character years before JK Rowling but died penniless has launched a billion-dollar lawsuit against the boy wizard from beyond the grave."

JK Rowling 'copied Willy the Wizard', news.com.au, viewed 12.20pm 16 June 2009

For those who have skimmed this and missed the point, how does someone who has died penniless launch a billion-dollar lawsuit? The answer is that the estate of the dead penniless-author launched the lawsuit.