Simon Rumble’s blog

I've been hunting for decent lentils since returning to Australia. In London I used to buy the lovely Puy Lentils (lentilles vertes du Puy) which are amazing green lentils. The key is that, unlike other varieties of lentil, they don't fall apart when cooked but actually manage to keep their texture. I use them a lot in stews and the like.

Today I discovered my local deli in Marrickville Metro has this type of lentil. They're a little more expensive than most lentils, $5/kg, but well worth it. Yummy!

Currently in the oven is a casserole of Italian sausages, onion, carrot, garlic and green lentils. We're gonna eat well tonight.

Some obscure accounting software company called 2Clix is suing Whirlpool for comments made in its forums. I suspect their problem is that a search for 2Clix gets lots of threads Statement of Claim, I'm even more convinced this company has taken exactly the wrong approach. Reading between the lines they're claiming that the supposedly false statements in the threads were made by a malicious third party, like a competitior or disgruntled ex-employee. If they really want to make this claim, they're going after the wrong person. What they should have done is attempted to find the identity of the posters, filing a subpoena against Whirlpool to get IP addresses and the like. But it sounds like they're either stupid or very badly advised.

Some obscure accounting software company called 2Clix is suing Whirlpool for comments made in its forums. I suspect their problem is that a search for 2Clix gets lots of threads Statement of Claim, I'm even more convinced this company has taken exactly the wrong approach. Reading between the lines they're claiming that the supposedly false statements in the threads were made by a malicious third party, like a competitior or disgruntled ex-employee. If they really want to make this claim, they're going after the wrong person. What they should have done is attempted to find the identity of the posters, filing a subpoena against Whirlpool to get IP addresses and the like. But it sounds like they're either stupid or very badly advised.

There's recently been a bit of talk about Firefox and Adblock Plus, with wild claims about it being immoral to block ads.

For those of you who haven't worked it out, the web doesn't have to be a place filled with popping up, flashing, zinging, annoying advertising getting in the way of the content. By simply installing a more secure, better browser with an ad blocking extension, the web becomes blissfully ad-free. No more trying to read text while a neighbouring advertisement competes for your eye.

Now there's even a campaign to block Firefox itself, adblock or no, which is pretty hilarious. I have to say I haven't found any sites that have redirected me to this, which probably says something about the types of sites that might block Firefox.

The argument they make is that advertising pays for the content, so it's wrong to use the content without the ads. Here's a tip guys: find another way to make money. By this logic, making a cup of tea during the ad breaks on television is also morally wrong.

They also say it's wrong to use the site's bandwidth without looking at the ads. So do they also block search engines and the like, which have no human being to watch the ads?

Want to know why I've blocked ads for many many years? Punch the monkey to find out.

Senator Coonan spent the weekend signing contracts with the Opel consortium for rural broadband. This despite pending legal action, and no real need for hurry.

Could the haste be a sign there's an election coming very very soon? When the writs are served for the election, traditionally the government goes into caretaker mode and can't make any major decisions.

I was at an outdoor rave party in 1995 where cops did exactly that and got away with it, despite photos of cops smashing heads and multiple witness statements. The photographer wouldn't come forward to identify the time and location of the photos as he was a visa overstayer, and of course the cops denied everything and had collaborated on their statements.

The cops claimed they remove their badges because the pin could be used as a weapon, yet at the time of the investigation the badges were being redesigned. Did they move to a safer fastener, like velcro or press studs? Course not!

I'll be very interested to see where the latest cases go, though I won't be holding my breath.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: NSW Police are all either bent or have covered up for bent coppers, which means they're also bent. Nothing I've ever experienced has changed that view.

Lawyer for the police says "a full-scale riot was probable because in a crowd a mob mentality easily takes over." I couldn't agree more, and considering there will be more coppers than protesters, we should ban the biggest mob as they're the most likely to succumb to a mob mentality.

I wonder if the judge has asked for evidence about this "mob mentality" or if it's just because the police say so?

It's not like cops would be encouraging violence or anything. Oh no.

Fortunately the judge in this case has called bullshit on the coppers a few times already.

I'm also curious about the bail conditions given to protesters arrested yesterday that ban them from being within 200 metres of an APEC declared area. I think this bears challenging as I think it could well be unconstitutional under our implied right to political speech.

Update: so much for judicial sanity.

Has the time come to bitchslap this vacuous, self obssessed ditz of a city and say, "Grow up, princess. It's not all about you."

Birmo hits the mark, as usual.

Hunting through Google Analytics, one of the stats reported is screen colours. It seems there's been a number of hits using 1-bit browsers. That must be a pretty poor experience. The two hits with a 520-bit display must see something pretty impressive! You'd need more new primary colours than just squant to make that worthwhile!

So all that noise last night wasn't a trial run of the motorcades for next week's visit by monkey man. This would've been just up the road, and we had the windows open last night, so that would explain why it seemed every cop car in Sydney was driving around our area. I was pretty sure I heard a gunshot, but I guess that could have been the smash.

PS: A good example of the value of the geographical tags and the RSS feeds available in the redesigned ABC news site.