ausculture.com

Hey, did anybody check out the list of the best 100 Australian web 2.0 apps?

Interesting to see Gnoos on there. I’m surprised the site was up long enough for Ross to rate it. Also, I’m not going to name names but some of the other sites on the list have already closed down. Go click through and have a look at some… be mindful of the ones that probably wouldn’t call themselves Australian unless you were buying a round.

Anyway… I think that’s a sufficient dose of abrasiveness for the moment. After all, the many people who put hours of hard work into ausculture.com every day are undoubtedly just insanely jealous.

Still, I was looking at the list and noticed a few other sites that had simpy whacked a crappy theme on top of Pligg. I say “other sites” because that’s exactly what ausculture.com did. As I was looking at these sites though, I noticed that 95% of the links were straight into the websites for major Australian newspapers. Honestly, I think that is kinda missing the point. Part of the reason people liked Digg in the first place was in the charm of sending truckloads of users to small and obscure sites to look at really interesting content. That the Digg effect usually brought those sames sites to their knees was part of the fun.

It’s not so much fun when your social news aggregator is just giving you an alternative top ten articles on the major online newspapers. Those sites already have most popular lists.

Of course, this causes me to ask the question “Is there any room for an Australia social news aggregator?” - particularly one that is aggregating more that four sources and concentrating on Australian content?

I’d have to say that so far, it’s looking like a no from where I’m sitting. Anyone have a different opinion?

Maybe there is, but that such a site would have to do more than reskin pligg (or reddit.) I notice, however, that perthnorg isn’t just a reskin and their traffic looks less-than-stellar.

Possibly related stuff elsewhere

• Nielsen: Digg Traffic Sucks. Mashable: That’s What She Said
• The 30 Top Social Bookmarking Web Sites on ebizma.com.

I drank a coke today, which is not that rare an occurrence. What was rare however was the less sickly feel to this sugary, caffeinated beverage. I was most surprised when I glanced at the ingredients list. This is what I saw:

Cane sugar? I thought they had done away with that in the 80’s?

Unofficial tagline: ‘Giving ET an extra colon’

Welcome to the first extra:terrestrial, a look at environmental change as it relates to Australia, it’s values, culture and way of life. Or I might just find some beach volleyball jpegs and shove in a line about the increasing need for good sunscreen...

Today is World Environment Day 2008. (I’m sure it would be quite unkind to point out that the UN has allocated just one day of the year to this but an entire year to the potato.) The double-whammy of penning the words “...environmental change as it relates to Australia, it’s values, culture and way of life”, and doing so on World Environment Day is frankly freaking me out – not the way we roll round here. I mean I’m the kind of guy who’s much more likely to post a film review the day it closes than the premiere. If at all.

But I digress.

Australians live on a knife-edge ecologically. While there are vast expanses of land, most is unsuitable for agriculture or large-scale habitation. We have ‘cheated’ nature by using irrigation to make arid land fertile, but as the rains fail longer than any drought our food bowls are starting to become dust bowls.

The Woolworth/Safeway group has started placing ‘Fresh Market Update’ ads on TV to reassure customers that their storm-damaged Queensland fruit and dust-covered South Australian vegetables are still top eating. (The cheery spruiker also extols the virtues of the potato – the UN would doubtless be delighted.)

In A journey down the not-so Mighty Murray, the ABC’s AustraliaWide paints a graphic picture of a river system in crisis. Though not helped by mismanagement – “Y’now, all fairness to Karlene Maywald, the only thing she’d know about water is when she’s sitting on the toilet seat.” says fisherman Eric Hayward of the Minister for the River Murray – ultimately it’s lack of rain that’s causing the dropping river levels.

Just about the whole of mainland Australia below the tropics is affected, with even south-east Queensland on Level 6 restrictions. Victoria might like to think of itself as ‘The place to be’, but with Melbourne reservoirs down to 30%, it’s Tasmanians – who are using only 1% of their major river’s water – for whom things are going swimmingly.

The good news is that there’s been an amazing seachange in Aussie attitudes to the environment, and next time I might take a look at that. That’s if I can’t find the jpegs...

18th of May, 2008. The erudite (yeah, right) Corey Worthington is interviewed by Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O’Neill:

Jackie: “You preferred Bec. What about Bianca?”

Corey: “Oh, she was alright, I guess.”

Kyle: “Bit dopey though, Jackie, don't you think?”

Jackie: “Bianca? You think she's – You're talking about Brigitte?”

Kyle: “Oh, Brigitte – sorry, I get them confused.”

You get them confused? You get Brigitte and Bianca confused? Perhaps try looking up at their faces. It’s just a suggestion.

25th of May, 2008. Sandilands has had a week to remember to take his pills and try to grasp the most basic information relating to the Eviction shows he’s supposed to be co-hosting. For instance, the public votes for their favourite Housemates and the least popular three are put up for the HMs themselves to nominate for eviction. This week, they have a choice between Nathan, David and Rory. That’s three people, you see? The kind of maths even Corey would be capable of.

It’s a double Eviction, so Bianca (that’s the one who does know what ‘illiterate’ means, Kyle) has to vote out two of the three who are up. She nominates David for two points and Nathan for one, the latter being because she was close with Renee before Nathan came along and whisked her away to a quiet corner of the garden. And when she has finished:

Kyle: “That's a bit of an odd choice.”

Jackie: “No, I got that. I mean, you know, he [Nathan] is spending all this time with Renee. And I reckon she's a bit different around him.”

Kyle: “Well why wouldn't she vote out Renee, if she thinks Nathan's the nicest person on the planet?”

Jackie: “No –”

Kyle: “Is she not that smart either?”

Jackie: “Rory, you mean? Why wouldn't she vote out Rory?”

Kyle: “Oh, I don't know.”

Jackie: “You don't know what's going on.”

Kyle: “She was just – she just looked like a giant bugs bunny up there, that's all I could see.”

No, Kyle, it’s true, you don’t know what’s going on. I think this is about the point that the psychiatrist would be asking you what day of the week it is and who’s the Prime Minister. (The answers, Kyle, me old pal, are Ketchup and Wa-boo, Wa-boo. Don’t mention it.)

Images: Network Ten

Aren’t these the guys overcharging me for my phone service?

This page from the National Gallery of Victoria What’s On – May-Jun 08 booklet shows visitors naively viewing the Sidney Nolan exhibition, unaware of the imminent dangers. Look closely and you see that the visitor on the left has her stiletto caught in the floor grill. Alas, we’re not shown the frame of her crashing back onto her coccyx.

In this age of interactive performance art this was a natural progression: the gallery becomes one large installation, and the toppling tourists an integral part of the piece. This is art that affects the viewer; art in which the viewer is recognised and acknowledged. The artist is saying “Yeah, this person knows her arse from her elbow – her arse is the one that’s sore.” Good on ya, NGV!

So, this post from Hippo has indirectly alerted me to De Bortoli making beer. I’m somewhat disturbed that the article there on the ABC is from February last year. Where have I been and where is the beer?

Apparently that is the bottle there on the left of the Red Angus Pilsner.

Anyone who reads this blog (ie. nobody) knows that I’m a big fan of Australian craft brewers such as Murray’s so I’m very interested to see what De Bortoli can do.

If anyone who reads this blog stumbles across this blog via Google has tried the Red Angus Pilsner, or any other beer produced by the De Bortoli owned William Bull Brewery please drop a line to let me know how it was and where you found it.

Those of you who remember the old blog will probably also remember that it had Google ads on it - the reason behind this was to help cover the cost of bandwidth.

Given that there are no ads on the new site I’ve been finding other ways to reduce bandwidth costs by killing some image indexing, removing mp3’s and using Amazon’s excellent S3. I’ve started hosting some images and other static assets on S3 and it seems to have been working out pretty.

There is a difficulty though in the format and delivery of the log files from S3. Instead of spending time I don’t have available to faff around with getting those log files into some analysis software I decided to have a look at S3Stat which is a service that does the fiddly stuff, runs your data through Webalizer, and uploads the reports back to your S3 account. Pretty handy!

S3Stat has been working pretty well for me so - in true “cash for comment” style - with the aim of getting the S3Stat service for free I’m suggesting to anyone that uses S3 and wants to see traffic data on things like image files that they should check out S3Stat.

Disclaimer: this is much longer and more disjointed than I had planned.

So Crust are getting a heart foundation tick of approval on six of their pizzas. It seems that we find this important enough for it to be a “top 5” article on The Age, to also be posted on NEWS.com.au as “Heart Foundation gives Pizza the tick”, and on abc.net.au as “Nutritionists ticked off over approval for pizza chain.” If you check out the Crust website you’ll notice the tick of approval is already proudly displayed.

TV ratings evidence would suggest that us Australians are as fat obsessed as the next nation with high levels of obesity (we were ranked 21 in the world on percentage of population overweight at last count.

But… why the interest? Why the coverage? Sure, almost anything can get in the news these days (and if it’s not good enough for the news it still has a chance to get on Today Tonight or A Current Affair) but a pizza chain getting a heart foundation tick is usually the sort of thing that would slip by relatively unnoticed.

Which leads me off on a wild tangent to the questions at hand.

• Is pizza in any way an identifiable part of our national identity?
• If it is an identifiable part of our national identity… do we bring anything to the pizza oven or are we just riding along?

I think I can address the first question fairly quickly… like so:

• Pizza goes with beer
• Beer is part of our national identity
• Therefore, pizza is part of our national identity… by proxy. QED

It’s the second question that troubles me. Do we bring anything to the world of pizza or are we just riding along?

I’ll start this with some beer talk and meander around semi-aimlessly until I arrive limp at the end, sans-conclusion.

In beer terms, Australia is starting to produce some great beer. Those who doubt me should put down their imported beers for a second and try something from Red Oak, Murray’s, Barons, Little Creatures or any of a number of small boutique breweries. I enjoy an Orval as much as anybody but some of these boutique breweries in Australia are producing great beer. Particularly Red Oak and Murray’s.

Yet, whilst we are starting to create some great beers we’re still generally recognised for Fosters internationally and many Australians would sooner pick up an adjunct lager like Corona or a mass produced import like Heineken than adventure into the world of Australian boutique beers.

The same goes for pizza. Dominos and Pizza Hut are both heavily entrenched in the Australian market complete with crusts stuffed with five different kinds of bad cheese and five different kinds of meat derivative products.

So how about the so-called gourmet chains? The ones I know, and have tried are Crust (NSW, Victoria and Brisbane) and GPK (NSW) in addition to a few smaller chains that have the same feel to them. Usually I find the term gourmet dubious, and I was with these places labelling themselves as such, but generally they’re of varying good standards - if you’re not in a pizza purist mood. I’m not going to review them but my experience with Crust was ok and with GPK was actually good. Their bases are good - again in a non-traditional way.

Still, there are too many pizza places in Australia with the word gourmet attached. In some cases gourmet seems to mean “our pizzas consist primarily of ingredients you don’t normally find on pizza” and in some instances it just seems to mean “our pizzas are more than 20 dollars each and we have one with some sort of Teriyaki chicken on it.

I really hope that running with the word gourmet isn’t the only thing of note about Australian Pizza.

So, where else to look. Perhaps to those members of the Australian community with Italian heritage. According to the 2006 Census that is somewhere around 800 000 of us, which sounds promising. After all, if there is someone I can trust not to put pineapple on my pizza, it’s usually an Italian.

I can only really speak for Sydney here as I haven’t lived in any other states, but for traditional, neapolitan style pizza it’s usually the inner west to Haberfield and La Disfida, Napoli in Bocca or Il Goloso. I know these places get bad reviews at times and I have actually taken people there that were entirely unimpressed but you get real mozzarella (you know, the type that’s more white than yellow) and, as you can tell by watching the pizzas being prepared and cooked in the wood-fired ovens, it’s treated like a craft.

Still, looking at these places, Toto’s at nearby five dock, Rosso Pomodoro at Balmain or a number of other pizza joints around there’s nothing that grabs me as uniquely Australian about them. Sure the pizza is good, sure we have many Australians with great Italian heritage but… where is the Australian edge on all of this?

I know, at this point I may be renounced as a heretic but I do think there should be room for something Australian about our pizza. In the same way that our national football team needs to find an Australian playing style, and just like how we need to produced Australian beers, I think we should be doing something more than overusing the term gourmet and putting heart foundation ticks on things.

If Barons can put Wattle Seed in a beer and actually get a good result, then why can’t somebody do something with Pizza that still does the rest properly but adds a small touch of Australia to it.

Again, I know i’d be called a pizza heretic for suggesting something like this but why not Macadamia oil? Why not bush tomatoes? Mountain Pepper?

Why not indeed? Next pizza I make is getting the native ingredients treatment. I’ll let you know how it goes.

As for the fat obsession, I don’t think we should worry. Just tell the kids that Pizza is a sometimes food. Anyway, on that leaderboard of the fattest nations Italy comes in at 111 to our 21. I’m hazarding a guess that they consume more pizza than Australia per-capita.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone in Melbourne has been to Pizza Faro, what did you think? I’m a big fan of spelt flour and I hear Pizza Faro makes a particularly good spelt pizza base. Plus, it seems you can order their pizzas with Buffalo cheese from the Shaw River. With the Shaw River being in Australia I think that’s a great idea.

A young P-plater hits a man on a pedestrian crossing and drives off. He justifies his actions by telling himself that the man shouldn’t have suddenly stepped out, and that he barely clipped him. However, the man is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Years later, the driver, now a wealthy, middle-aged man, motivated by a nagging guilt that won’t go away, tracks down the man he disabled and says “Sorry about what I did to you all those years ago, but I’m not giving you a cent of compensation.”

This morning, Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the Federal Government of Australia, finally delivers the long-awaited apology to the Stolen Generations. But he’s already stated that there are no plans for compensation. And it gets worse...

This quote, from the Cathy Freeman episode of ancestry program Who Do You Think You Are? on SBS, paints a picture of life for indigenous Australians in 1918:

“Under The Act [of 1897], all Aboriginal wages, including military pay, was controlled by the Protector of Aborigines, who, at his discretion, would then pass it on to those who had worked for it. The reasoning was that Aborigines couldn't be trusted to spend their own money wisely.”

Fast-forward 90 years and the current Intervention sees compulsory ‘quarantining’ of welfare payments, a Government officer with powers to seize Aboriginal community assets at his sole discretion and plans to seize land. The reasoning is much the same, and the application as indiscriminate and heavy-handed as ever.

Emotive arguments were used to justify the Intervention, Howard suddenly announcing that it was a national emergency shortly before the Federal election in 2007 – this despite the NT’s Little Children Are Sacred report following four similar major State Government reports dating back to 2002. An in-depth report by the ABC’s Four Corners in November 2007 stated that not a single arrest had been made during the Intervention’s first four months for child sexual abuse. Which is not to say the problem doesn’t exist, but nor is it confined to Indigenous Australians. And I haven’t heard of any plans to strip assets, remove employment opportunities and ban alcohol and porn in any of our Capital Cities.

Today’s apology states “...the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.” But the injustices continue.