Laser-focused Stupidity

Heads up, lackwits. Shine a laser on an aircraft and go directly to jail. Get it?

Yes, I’m talking to you, bozo-in-the-northern-suburbs-of-Melbourne, who tried to disrupt the landing of my flight last Sunday night. Tool.

It’s astonishing how dumb this practice is. Not only is it dangerous – you can cause a serious accident by distracting a pilot travelling over your own house, but – and I don’t know if you understand this – but they can see you, too. You think you’re anonymous? I could probably give you the precise address of the person mentioned in paragraph two. You’re putting a dirty great ‘google maps’ pointer over your own house. Not anonymous, not clever.

This is one of those ‘Darwin Award‘ crimes. Hopefully it’ll go the way of the dodo.

Ballroomage

Ballroomage
Caleb and Kirsty take to the floor today together for the first time at the Embassy Ballroom. Choreography ensues.
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UPDATE: great results:

  • Juvenile Level 1 New Vogue 1st
  • Juvenile Level 2 New Vogue 3rd
  • Juvenile Level 1 Standard 1st
  • Juvenile Level 2 Standard 2nd
  • Juvenile Level 2 Latin 1st
  • Juvenile Open Latin 3rd

Perth's Getting All Techy

Perth seems to want to shake its image as a ‘career limiting destination‘ (and the ‘unhappiest place on earth‘). A couple of announcements in the recent press have my techie-sense all tingly:

  • Perth is the first Australian city to hook up Google Transit to the bus and rail timetables. We may not have the best or busiest public transport infrastructure on the planet, but it’s pretty easy to exactly how crap it is at any given point. I like having the ability to map out driving directions between two locations, and clicking a button to see how long the same trip would take by bus and rail.
    To be honest, though, the Transperth Journey Planner, on which the Google engine is based, is one of my favourite ‘where-you-live’ internet applications, along with good old TrafficCam, PerthCam, and the Perth Rain Radar (seldom used these days).
  • They’re trying to brand Bentley as ‘Australia’s Silicon Valley‘ because someone installed some fat pipes to the internet (or, at least, promised to). Sounds like a good move, and I’m glad Fran Logan got to announce it – he shouted Ainslie and me Lunch at Parliament House a while back. Still, I don’t know that Perth is ready for it: we are still somewhere between 2 hours/4 hours/2 weeks behind the eastern seaboard at any given point. OK for miners, not so good for bitjockeys. And, to steal a comment from Anonymous:

    Silicon Valley has 6 universities, consists of some 15 odd towns and is home to thousands of ITC companies – large and small.Comparing it to Tech Park (42 hectares + 1 average university) is highly amusing.

Qantas: "Sorry For Sending You To Adelaide"

A nice epilogue to the whole ‘Qantas Broken Window’ drama – I received mail from Qantas today to apologise for the inconvenience of grounding the weekend flight, with a not-insignificant contribution toward future flying.

Although it was a big inconvenience, I thought they had handled the situation well – even before they decided to ‘make good’. Well done, Qantas.

Ready, Set, Embark

Our connecting flight is cutting it a little fine – the airline has us lining up at the gate before the plane is even at the gate.
Seems there is some issue with a curfew at Sydney Airport at 11. The baggage handlers are limbering up on the tarmac like sprinters.
Looks like it’s going to be the airline equivalent of diving through the window of the General Lee while one of the Duke Boys ‘steps on the gas’.
Shame. The last plane was already halfway to having an open window ready for us to leap through.