I love google Maps. And Earth too. Their app that is. Plus I’m a fan of the planet Earth too.

But sometime Maps doesn’t work so well. To wit, this pic.

Disregard the route taking me up onto the gutter and through someone’s garden via a power pole (they have’t been called telegraph poles for about 50 years when the PMG (Post Master General and the forerunner to Telecom and now Telstra) took their cables off the poles and put them under ground).

Quite clearly there are two fairly significant traffic laws I would be breaking by following this route; making a left turn contrary to signage and proceeding along a one way street in the opposite direction. I’m estimating about $500 in fines and at least 6 points of my unblemished license. Of course when approaching this intersection I would have proceeded straight ahead and found an alternate route.

But google Maps is free and in a market economy one get’s what one pays for so as my mother would say; ‘caveat emptor’. Then I would laugh and remember the Monty Python reference in ‘Life of Brian’ where the centurion, John Cleese, lectures Brian on his poor grammar after painting graffiti all over a significant public building. Hil-airy-ass!

Thing is, reporting these errors to google is almost impossible. One would have thought the cleverest guys around would have some sort of automatic feedback function which could be updated by someone in Mumbai. It’s not like you’re trying to fix the past participle of a proper noun. Is it?

The world’s largest and probably most prestigious short film festival, Tropfest is on Sunday 21st February.

As the end of summer approaches The Domain in Sydney is overtaken by thousands and thousands of short film makers, their friends, family and fans for this amazing annual event.

I was lucky enough to be asked to shoot stills for one of this years entries which has already been accepted into the Top 60. The director and producer are now waiting to hear if they made the Top 16 – these are the ones screened on the night.

It’s a spectacular event and typically very, very funny. If you haven’t been before, or haven’t been for a while, this is the year to go!

You may be surprised to learn I’m not a fan a pedophiles. Honestly, I hope you aren’t surprised. But an interesting benefit has emerged from the saga that is; where do pedophiles who have done their time live when released from the big house?

To date, Dennis Ferguson has been relocated no less than three times since being released from prison for doing the evil that he does. (As he was convicted by a court I have no hesitation reporting Mr Ferguson as guilty).

In his most recent digs the local community, as with the situation at his other addresses, discovered a convicted pedophile was living in their area and alerted the press who of course made it impossible for him to remain living their by shinning their spot lights upon him which fanned the flames of the tinder box mentality within the mob which quickly forming and gained momentum.

All mobs have a leader. This person is not elected or really even decided upon by the rank and file of the mob in any formal manner. S/he is usually the loudest and most opinionated, ie, the biggest dick head.

So this turn of events as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald is fascinating as it would seem that the pathetic little excuse for a human known as Dennis Ferguson won an AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) against the mob leader – some Aryan style  media man-whore who would have joined the Hitler youth as soon as the recruiting officers visited his school and probably turned his mother and father into his Nazi superiors.

This means that the mob leader can’t approach (legally) the pedophile. Although one may well ask; why would you want to?

It could be that the in some strange reversal of fortune that the law while protecting the lowest of low human forms may be protecting us all from the dimwitted mentality of the mob.

If you ever watched an episode of Two and Half Men (and thanks to Channel 9, who hasn’t) or The Big Bang Theory or CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or Dharma & Greg or Cybill or a bunch of other Emmy Award Winning TV shows you’ve seen the work of Chuck Lorre Productions.

But thanks to the deplorable way in which stations cut from the final scene of a TV show or movie and play promos for other programs, rarely do we see the credits as produced and originally aired. For example, over the credits of 30 Rock (produced by Lorne Michaels, not by Chuck Lorre) there is usually another gag or two – that we never get to see. Actually I do see them because I download 30 Rock because I hate watching FTA so much.

You also won’t see what is becoming one of the funniest ‘in jokes’ in TV; Chuck Lorre’s Laws. Firstly a ‘Vanity Card’ are the quick slides that flash past after the credits. Usually there is a single slide (a vanity card) for the production company or companies and the distribution company. Some times these are short animations with a sting (short music bit).

But Chuck Lorre Productions create a new vanity card for almost every episode of every series they make. Below is a sample which you won’t. And most of them are pretty funny.

Take a good look at the picture news.com.au used to illustrate their story about a United Airlines flight having to make a landing because it was low on fuel. That plane landed without difficulty, refuelled and took off. Why UA flights are running out of fuel is another matter. The image that has been used clearly depicts a UA flight that landed a couple of weeks back with a landing gear issue and made an emergency landing, with the starboard undercarriage failing to lock in position.

That didn’t happen in the story being reported. That some sub-editor or picture editor has picked a misleading image is sadly tyical of this publication. It is a rag in paper and equally so online.

Just spent an hour doing what any real coder would have done in 30 seconds. My first iPhone app may be in beta by the time we’re embedding chips in our heads. But there is great satisfaction in figuring these things out for oneself.

The dirty little secret about the internet is that if not for the porn industry it probably wouldn’t exist today. Or if indeed there was a version of the internet that started without the massive investment of the porn industry it would be vastly different than what we enjoy today.

The whole concept of displaying images via the internet was thanks to the porn industry. There’s only so much you can do with letters to the editor that start off something like; “Dear Penthouse, I read your letters every month and never thought anything like this would ever happen to me…(insert details of threesome, the good kind, here).

Then consumers demanded video. The porn industry delivered. Then instant messaging. Helllllo, porn industry. And of course the porn industry is like any other enterprise and wants to be be paid for the services offered. So they developed the technology for high security payment platforms years before the banks had heard of internet banking.

There’s a famous story about a research group at HP testing the technology of a scanner they had just invented. They wanted to email the scanned image to colleagues in the UK over the internet and determine if the result was acceptable by comparing it the original image. How do you get the original image to them for comparison? Their solution was to scan an image from a publication that is printed identically around the world. They chose Penthouse. As it turns out Miss November in the US is the same Miss November in the UK

The latest advance that the porn industry is leading us towards is 3D TV. smh.com.au has a story about it here.

I have the latest Mad Men (Season 3) and Dexter (Season 4) if anyone wants them. Leave a comment below.

It’s so important for businesses to deliver what they promise. I was researching domain expiration information for a friend this morning and being a client of NetRegistry went to their site. They offer a IM (instant message) service where you can chat with a salesperson. Great idea! Doesn’t work. Responses took many minutes and my contact at NetRegistry ‘mbaker’ was obviously ‘mshangrahanasingh’. (see update below)

Here are the screen dumps of the chat – they don’t show the time stamps but the period from comment to reply was in each instance several minutes. That’s not instant. And particularly annoying when he was asking questions that I had already answered.

UPDATE @ 10:18 on 16/12/09

Just got this email as a response to my complaint to NetRegistry.

———-

Hi,

We don’t offer the service, hence the sales person had no idea about it.
Probably a better question to put through support rather than sales.

Regards,
Brett Fenton
Chief Operating Officer
Netregistry Pty Ltd.

———-

I unreservedly apologise to ‘mshangrahanasingh’ for implying he is in anyway associated with NetRegistry.

While procrastinating instead of job hunting this evening, I searched YouTube for this ad. It was made by Clems and won Australia’s first Gold Lion at Canne in the early 1990’s. I’m willing to stand corrected if it was not the first but it was surely before the new metal they give out these days; the Platinum and the Titanium.

In all my time in advertising I always wanted to make an ad this brilliant. Not for the metal but for the emotional impact. I still cringe slightly at the last line but that is my only criticism. I love the single long shot, timed to perfection (before computers) so that we hear ‘speared‘ and then start to see the smash.

And while searching for this clip I discovered one of its creators, Mike Dowd passed away this year. I wish we were turning out ads just as good these days; something with an idea instead of the pretty, lifestyle, appeal to the masses shit we have thrown at us now.

In full disclosure: I chose to buy a very old Benz. Because of this ad. If I could, I’d own a very new Benz. Because of this ad.