As a family, we tried out Orienteering this weekend, just doing a short and easy course as a family sharing the map reading and dibbing. Luckily it was set up in Withdean Park, a place we often take the dog, so we had a bit of an idea of the geography of the place.
And the results were:
We came 16th on the Orange course, which feels good when we were very much feeling our way.
I really enjoyed it and want to do more.
Posted via email from grasuth
Gordon Brown today warned that the world is on the brink of a “catastrophic” future of killer heatwaves, floods and droughts unless governments speed up negotiations on climate change before vital talks in Copenhagen in December.
This applies to the US as much as anyone, he said, adding that “there is no plan B”, and that agreement cannot be deferred beyond the UN-sponsored Copenhagen conference.
Posted via web from grasuth
I’ve gone a bit posterous mad so now have a couple of extra blogs for
specific things. A little summary here for the interested:
Posted via email from grasuth
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
It makes perfect sense. Read this press release.
Posted via web from grasuth
I’ve started to add my writings to an old blogger blog that I started in 2002. That’s happening over at grasuth.blogspot.com.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) just don’t get it. A world first remixable film project has ground to a halt because the creative commons license is deemed “inappropriate” by the MEAA.
The full sad story from apc.au ict rights monitor:
SYDNEY — Film company, MOD Films, employing Creative Commons licensing, was refused any dispensation from the Australian Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) to contract local actors to an interactive re-mixable sci-fi film called Sanctuary. The decision on Wednesday brings to a halt an AU$100,000 short film shoot scheduled this month by preventing actors from being contracted under the MEAA award, despite letters of support from all the principal actors.
The MEAA Board decided that it could grant none of the dispensations sought by MOD Films, on the grounds that these would be “inappropriate”. The production had asked for dispensations and support for its world-first plans to employ professional actors in a film with only “Some Rights Reserved” by the production company. The company intends to permit non-commercial use and re-voicing of the film by the audience. The MEAA also rejected the option of any further negotiations with MOD Films.
I just went and did the Commonly Confused Words Test like Robert did.
I scored a very strange 26% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 66% Expert!
26% Beginner? What? I went and looked at the answer key and I’m sure I got them all right. Something not working there. The test is good fun. Not sure about the answers though.
I wake up to no power and gentle rain. Low cloud keeps the sunlight out of the house. Lib and Bea decide to have a bath outside because it is raining. Nothing is better than a bath in the rain.
It is too dark inside. Morning tea and juice ritual disrupted by lack of power. I eject myself from the house and in bare feet walk to the park, then follow the path along the beach for a bit. The shuffled-up iPod chooses Gorecki’s 3rd in all its dark sombre beauty. Half way to the old power station I turn and descend to the beach and walk back with my feet playing in the shallows.
There’s a bit more news on the South Beach Remediation that fills out the story a bit.
Firstly, the Environmental Management Plan, once a big secret we weren’t allowed to read, has now been released for public comment. I had a look. It sounds a little better than my worst fears. They are not going to sieve all the dirt any more to pull out larger particles — instead they are going to rake out the large particles with a rake attached to a bulldozer. This at least means they aren’t going to pour all the dust through the air into the sieve, which is a part improvement.
But I don’t know. The monitoring program seems a bit thin on the ground and I think sampling they have done to find out what is in the ground has not been done at a high enough density.
Thankfully, Fremantle council has decided to step in and conduct an independent assessment of the remediation plan. The results of that will be interesting.
I’ll take the holiday thanks.
We live in South Fremantle, just a couple of streets back from South Beach. We live in a dead-end street. It is quiet. We can easily walk to the beach. Paradise? Yes, almost. As usual, in every perfect world there is something evil creeping underground waiting to strike :-(
There’s a old factory at the end of the street. It borders onto South Beach. That old factory is build on the site of a lead smelter that closed in the 1920s. Developers are now about to pull down the factory and prepare the land for construction of a whole lot of houses. Problem: the ground is unstable. The developer plans to dig out 5m of soil and filter it, taking out the big bits, and put it back, then add 0.5m of new topsoil.
The big problem there is the filtering. My understanding is that they are going to pick up the dirt and filter it with something. They are going to do it in the open, with prevailing winds blowing the dust into my house, garden and all our lungs.
Best practice for the developer would be to build something to contain the dust over the whole site but they aren’t going to do that.
Most likely we’ll have to move away from our home for a few months to escape exposure from the dust. To turn that big downer into something positive, we are thinking about a 3 month work break/sabbatical/exploration in Europe and Asia, maybe Vietnam, Japan, Italy, UK … plus a few more. We will see.
There’s a bunch of community action going on which we are supporting, including a Supreme Court action against the government to get the approval for the remediation plan set aside, and a really result by Adele Carles who ran against the sitting ALP member in the state election. At this stage of counting she has over 6% of the vote.
More on the whole issue at savesouthbeach.com.
A blog by Lib and Gra and Bea where we tell stories and throw in a few photos. Recently, that’s life in Brighton, UK. We moved to Brighton in May 2007, deciding we wanted to give Europe a go after a few years in Fremantle, Australia.
For our business and business blogging have a look at Nodestone.
More about Libby at libbydavy.com
More about Graeme at grasuth.com.
This here gravyland was called middle~path until late February 2005. And up until March 2007 this was purely Graeme’s blog. But since March 2007, Lib and Bea are joining in too, to make it a family thing.
You know how most browsers will offer to save usernames and passwords when they see them so you don’t have to type the password again and again and again? Mostly these kinds of things have worked really well for me, but look out for the trap I fell into in the last couple of days with Firefox and a couple of Linksys routers.
Witness Colin Barnett the cane toad hopping down the canal and multiplying. Inspired stuff and hilarious.
And I just have to add in a link to a really beautiful ad that the greens put in last Saturday’s West. There’s a scan of it up at Kick and Scream.
Time for a change. The old middle~path look was getting pretty tired and over-complicated.
So, welcome to gravyland. [Breaks champange bottle] God bless her and all that sail in her.
The address has changed. If you have a link to middle~path, it will be redirected, but it would be swell if you could update links to the new name and url: http://gra.id.au. Thanks.
There is still some tidying up to do. This template isn’t quite me yet.
There’s an announcement from the federal government today that we are sending more troops to Iraq.
In all the news reports I can find no reference approval or welcoming or anything from Iraqi authorities. Seems really strange. I though this might change after the elections in Iraq.
Finally, somebody has explained what this Colin Barnett canal thing is all about :-)
via Robert
Well, we tried to move the meetup back to Perth for this month to make it a bit more fair for those not in Fremantle and south, but we’ve not found a good location yet. So, Wednesday night’s blogger meetup is going to be back at Gino’s in Fremantle.
I hope that doesn’t inconvenience folk too much.
Details from the meetup site.
If you’ve got location ideas, send me an email or comment on meetup.
Margaret River now has a full online news service [http://news.mronline.com.au] which includes local news, community and club news, opinion columns, movie timetables and all sort of things. This is a first for a WA town I think.
We might be doing some budget travel this year, so sleepinginairports.com might have some useful tips for us:
For travellers who are REALLY on a budget and are looking for a way to skim a few bucks off their travel expenses, why not consider sleeping in an airport? Many airports are actually better than local lodging. And to top it off – IT’S FREE! Your friends and family may look at you funny when you return with your airport stories, but that’s only part of the fun. So now, sit back….get out your travel itinerary and plan which airports you’re going to sleep in (or avoid altogether) during your next trip.
Link via BoingBoing