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Des Devlin

North Coast study

Warwick George Fisher LLM
Law and Justice
The Law Relating to Land Sharing Communities in New South Wales.

Hegemony and energy supply

After too long on the phone going back and forth to Origin and Energy Australia here is what I have learned today. It is only relevant if you live within Energy Australia’s network area. (Tempe is, Katoomba is not.)

When you move out of a property Energy Australia charges the third party retailer a disconnection fee.

Except if you are a customer of Energy Australia in which case there is no fee.

So if you are considering going with a ‘greener’ retailer, in our case Origin, you will be penalised for your trouble. We were slugged with a $90 plus $9 GST disconnection fee.

The moral of the story – go with the retailer that is also its own supplier.

Which surely raises questions of fair trading and monopolistic behaviour.

(I know, I should probably send this to the Herald or whatever.)

Slow going on the blogging front

But I am pinging out occasional snippets at http://www.twitter.com/desdev/. Update: permanently deleted this account. The performance anxiety was just too much.

FoJ final report

Life in the Clickstream: The Future of Journalism Report (http://www.alliance.org.au/)

In a nutshell: the alliance is embracing the new world, recommending training to less tech-savvy reporters.  It tries to be sensitive to the damage being done by online, notably in the integrity of copy and quality of reporting. A few things I found interesting were:

1. A dilemma of sorts: “Some reporters are expected to run opinionated blogs, while writing unbiased news stories on the same subject. This reflects and impacts on journalism standards. Much of the internet material is simply cut and paste rather than real journalism. Reporters do not have enough time to do quality work when their days are divided between supplying newspaper and online copy.” p14

2. The race to the bottom editing model: “Suddenly, you find the day’s paper splash is hardly read; the page-five brief is most popular; the unusual animal story from a country you’ve never heard of gets mega-hits.”
…
“Feedback and data on story popularity let an editor crank up coverage or quickly downscale a story that isn’t working.”p17

Which is to say, popularity rather than substance now shapes journalism. Think Samantha Brett vs Ross Gittins.

3. And this oddity: “Journalists must also develop an extensive repertoire of reporting styles. Blogging requires a first-person approach that journalists may not be training for.” p18

Really? First-person reporting has been around for as long as journalism. It was also what the new journalism of Didion, Capote et al was all about.

ee debug

CP Home › Admin › System Preferences › Output and Debugging Preferences

Because you can never remember and ee navigation is not too intuitive.

35 RC at APEC rally

Not using BW here, just Photoshop. This huge image of the mahatma was pretty striking as it moved along above the crowd.

35 RC middle distance

The RC from about 4 metres. This up-periscope surveillance is a new practice – at least to my knowledge. It looked as though video is captured to a device in a pack mounted on the back. Whether a signal is sent on to an OB truck I wouldn’t know. Its primary purpose may have been to intimidate.

35 RC up close

A young concerned citizen with a handmade banner. The RC copes well wide and the colour is punchy.

Konica verdict

The Konica just doesn’t cut it. Someone with boffin skills or patience or something might be able to get results out of it but I find it too difficult and volatile. Though I do like some of the accidents it produces.