Let's put the people smugglers out of business

Clive Palmer has a knack for making statements that get him loads of publicity. This time around he's said something really sensible. ABC reports:
"If a family wishes to fly to Australia and they don't have a visa and can safely fly, the Australian government should instruct airlines to allow them to board," he said in a statement.

I say we take this even further and put them out of business by undercutting them. Allow anyone, no matter what passport they hold, to fly to Australia on payment of a $5,000 bond. If they're issued with a visa on arrival, they get their money back. Otherwise, profit!

Depressing to be an Australian at the moment

via anonymouslefty.wordpress.com

Our heartlessness has sunk to new lows. It makes me ashamed to be Australian.

And Labor, what a bunch of political halfwits. If they think adopting the Opposition's position is going to win votes, they are even dumber than I thought. Anyone who supports this is likely already voting Liberal and probably believes the Carbon Tax Ate My Baby stories the Tory media keeps running.

Wilkie and Bandt, I salute you.

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In which our garden gets sorted out

When we first moved in, I built some garden beds with sleepers lying at the back of the garden. I also made the rather stupid decision to have one of the beds jutting out into the yard. That dramatically reduced the usable space we had, though it did give us a good amount of growing beds for veggies.

With the sale of my rumble.net domain, we took the plunge on professionals to sort it out. Properly built garden beds. A little patch of grass. Flat and level paving. It's brilliant and feels like a whole new garden. Looking forward to Summer when we can enjoy it. This weekend: planting out!

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Communiction

Learning outcome 6: using spell check.

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How Sydney got non-cyclists on two wheels

Fiona Campbell, Sydney council's manager of cycling strategy, spent many years as an independent cycling campaigner before joining the administration. In the UK to share Sydney's vision at the Building Cycling Cultures conference in Leicester, she admits to having been disappointed after the Games:

"Little infrastructure was actually delivered and we ended up with some sporting venues missing basic bike parking facilities. The Olympics were an opportunity to make substantial improvements and to get a shift to more sustainable transport. Sydney, unfortunately, did not take full advantage."
via guardian.co.uk

Fiona gets some love in the Grauniad.

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Macquarie Lighthouse

We just did the tour at Macquarie Lighthouse in Vaucluse. Brilliant view and gorgeous day for it.

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Google, you do support so badly

The problem with a company of rock stars is that nobody wants to do the boring stuff. Integration, exceptions and handling edge cases is boring and glamorous, so it just doesn't get done well.

Here's an email from Google with the subject line We're here to help. Note the help "do-not-reply" email address. Why thanks.

Click on the "support team" link and I get:

Awesome support. Glad you're here to help guys.

This is caused by there being no viable mechanism to migrate Google Apps accounts, and no way to change the primary domain name. When I sold my rumble.net domain, I needed to set up a new Google Apps account with the new domain. Now I get this. Wonderful work guys.
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