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I've had an upset stomach the last few days, even had yesterday off work. Not very pleasant, and I missed the Melbourne Cup festivities. To help recover, I've been eating quite bland food, without spices or dairy products. Last night that meant some tomatoey broad beans on toast, which went down fine.
Today, back at work and hunting for a bland lunch, I discovered On Ramen on Hay Street, Haymarket. Ramen entered my repertoire of comfort foods on a cold Winter day in Tokyo. One of my colleagues took us down the road from the Spike offices to a tiny ramen joint. The place had about six bar stools and you sat slurping at the bar while the owner cooked up your simple, but delicious, noodles. There were also gyoza on offer.
Behind the owner, a boiling pot of stock looked like it'd been going since the post-war reconstruction, with the occasional onion or pig thrown in and the water topped up each day. The owner would take some parboiled noodles, dunk them in for another boil, then serve them up covered in the amazing stock and whatever meat you'd selected. Even for this simple meal, the presentation was brilliant.
So does On Ramen, Shop 4, 181 - 187 Hay St, Haymarket match up? I think so! Tasty noodles and soup. My pork belly and miso ramen was pretty good, though the pork was probably a bit sweet for my tastes. The salty, rich broth is exactly what my recovering body needs. If chicken soup is Jewish Penicillin, surely ramen is the Japanese version?
Note to Americans: Ramen does not mean instant noodles.
05 Nov 2008 13:18 [category: /food] #
It's US presidential election time again, and the big story as always in America is long queues at polling places. I don't get it. They have the simplest voting system going, where all you get to do is tick a box for your preferred candidate. Yet it takes ages, despite (or is it because of) the use of the latest voting technology.
Australian elections use a relatively complex system of tabulating votes, yet a clear winner is almost always known within a few hours of voting closing. The most I've had to queue to vote (outside of voting at Australia House in London, which often has queues around the block) in an Australian election is about two minutes.
So what is it that makes the voting process so slow in American elections? Why are there over 30 minute queues as standard?
So without even going into the serious problems with voting machines, it seems they don't actually solve any actual problems, and I suspect cost a lot more to operate than having a bunch of casual vote counting staff on the evening of the vote. In Australian elections I've been involved in (as a party volunteer) the same staff who operate the polling place all day stay back for the vote count in the evening.
The big question is, given this is likely to be the first election of a non-Republican since Bush stole the vote from Gore in 2000 (assuming they don't pull the same trick again), will the Democrats look at reforming the voting systems to prevent these state-based tricks?
05 Nov 2008 11:10 [category: /geek] #
Today's Crikey carries a letter that reminds us that Family First, currently causing problems for the ALP in the Senate, are a creation of... the ALP.
Andrew Burke writes: Every time Stephen Fielding casts his vote to defeat a government Bill, as he has with the luxury car tax, let's remember who's responsible for his election -- the Victorian ALP. If their preferences in 2004 had gone to the Greens rather than Fielding then there would have been one more Green vote and the Bill would have passed, with the Greens' sensible amendment to exempt efficient cars. Over the next couple of years it may prove to be a very painful mistake indeed.
05 Sep 2008 14:36 [category: /politix] #
For those wanting to follow Australian politics, it's critical to understand the factional structure of the Australian Labor Party and the influence this has on events. For example, the Left has traditionally been given the Deputy Premiership of NSW, while the Premier has always (until this afternoon) been from the Right.
The problem for outsiders like me, trying to understand the internal machinations of the ALP, is to know which MP is aligned to which faction, never mind all the myriad sub-factions. Factions inside the ALP often hate each other more than they even hate members of other parties, and political bastardry is common within the ALP.
So what I'd like to know is this: is there a resource somewhere that lists all the ALP's MPs and the factions to which they're aligned? Is this perhaps something that should be attached to WikiProject Australian politics or similar? A category attached to each MP's Wikipedia page would be a good place to start.
Oh, and bye Morris, bye Costa. You won't be missed.
05 Sep 2008 13:52 [category: /politix] #
In my recent post about online advertising, I mentioned that I use Adblock Plus and Filterset.G. Ares writes in to say that Filterset.G is is deprecated and probably unmaintained, with the last update in March. Didn't know that!
Ares recommends EastList+EasyElement from this list, which I've switched to now. We'll see how it goes.
05 Jun 2008 10:29 [category: /geek] #
No, not Club Kooky but Marcus Westbury at the Logies. Hilarious description of a surreal event.
Red carpet arrival. A spotter peers in limo window to see who of any interest is in the limo. "No one!" they call back to red carpet show director crew.
05 May 2008 17:25 [category: /art] #
I thought I'd try out Firefox 3 for a bit. Part of my job is to stay up to date with the latest and greatest, and I was hoping the much-touted memory management enhancements would be a nice plus.
So far, I'm well impressed. AJAX- and JavaScript-heavy sites are vastly faster, so for example Gmail snaps open, Google Reader zips along. The CMS I use all day every day also flies. Most importantly, they really do seem to have plugged the memory leaks. By this time of day, I'd expect Firefox to be around 200 megs, having used a few AJAX sites quite heavily. Instead, it's around 115 megs with four tabs and two CMS windows open. It also seems to go down when you close tabs and windows, which is something that didn't happen before. It also remains quite zippy.
Haven't noticed any bugs or rendering weirdness yet, which is a good sign. Only problem so far is that Firebug isn't yet available. There's a version of it for Firefox 3, but it apparently has some issues. If I decide Firefox 3 is stable enough to use all the time, I'll try out the upgraded Firebug. Life without Firebug would be a much reduced life...
05 May 2008 11:29 [category: /geek] #
Those of you who know my views on religion, and organized religion in particular, might be surprised to learn one of my idols is a Catholic priest. Father Jack Hackett has always been a role model for me, someone whose virtues present something of an inspiration. His religious teachings ("that would be an ecumenical matter") are both profound and point us to the unknowable.
In this vein, I would have loved to join the throngs of Teds, Dougals, Jacks, Mrs Doyles and Lovely Lovely Girls at Ted Fest on Craggy Island recently. What a fantastic idea!
In the same vein, I'd love to go to Lebowski Fest at some point, although I'm not too keen on visiting the US these days given the rudeness of their security apparatus.
05 Mar 2008 11:06 [category: /weird] #
I've banked with St George for many many years, and they've long been pretty ahead of the pack with technology in Australia. I got a letter the other day indicating that they were bringing in some new "Secure Code" system, which sounded like two factor authentication to me.
Looking at their site, it seems they are indeed bringing in such a system. For risky transactions (and I'm sure they can raise and lower the bar at will) they'll send a code to your mobile or landline phone, which you need to type into the application to complete the transaction.
It's interesting to see financial companies finally getting onto the two factor authentication bandwagon. The point is that you need to present something you know and something you have without massively inconveniencing your customers. The mobile or landline seems to me like a pretty good balance between security and convenience.
I notice that Paypal now uses some kind of security token that looks a lot like the RSA tokens people carry around for VPN access in a lot of companies. I wonder how long it'll be before we're all carrying around a clutch of these things?
Now I'm thinking about implementing an sms-based two factor system on my own server. Wonder if there's any software for doing that?
05 Mar 2008 09:16 [category: /geek] #
We're in this little fruit and veg co-op with a bunch of mates. Our turn to head out early in the morning to Flemington came up, and here's all the veg divided up. It's a great time for produce, with a huge variety in peak condition at really cheap prices. We didn't manage to spend all the $30 per household budget before filling the little car.
