Things I’ve Seen

Perhaps you’ve noticed that posting frequency has dropped off around here. Well, now that we have at least ’soft launched’, I can reveal why…

For the last couple of months I’ve been working with Hugh and Kristen, two friends I ‘met’ through LibriVox on Collectik; a social podcast aggregator. Just in case I missed any Web 2.0 buzzwords there, it does use AJAX, is written in Ruby (but not on rails - I never could get my head around rails), and works best in Firefox (but seems to work ok on Safari, Opera and even IE).

The idea is that you subscribe to your favourite podcasts (bloglines style) and then ‘tick’ the individual shows you want to download (sort of del.icio.us style) and subscribe to a single feed which contains just your ticked shows. Then, of course, the social bit kicks in - you can see what everyone else is subscribing to, tagging, ticking, recommending, and so on. It all gets a bit self-referential, too: you can subscribe to another person’s collectik output feed as one of your inputs…

I haven’t been into podcasts until now - for me at least, Collectik has been the missing piece - a way to find shows that people I respect seem to like.

It’s free, too. So why not give it a go…

http://collectik.net

Published in the Sydney Morning Herald by Mike Carlton . I got to it from yourdemocracy.net.au via a tip from New Matilda.

HOWARD DIDN’T KNOW
With apologies to Banjo Paterson.

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him at the wheat board, years ago
He was chairman when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him
Just on spec, to make the point, that “Howard doesn’t want to know”.
And an email came directed, not entirely unexpected
(And I think the same was written in some Middle Eastern bar)
‘Twas his CEO who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it,
“Trevor Flugge’s gone to Baghdad and we don’t know where he are.
But when he left Australia, he was going to meet with Alia,
A trucking mob in Jordan, who were keen to grease the wheels
For 10 per cent commission, they could swing Saddam’s permission
To get our wheat accepted: it’s the mother of all deals.
But I guarantee, Prime Minister, that there’s nothing at all sinister:
The chaps at DFAT told us that the sums looked quite okay.
When you’re selling wheat in billions, what’s a quick 300 million?
If it keeps the Nationals happy it’s a tiny price to pay.”
Sitting here at Kirribilli, I’ve been thinking, willy nilly
That it’s somehow reminiscent of the children overboard:
But I can handle Rudd and Beazley as I always do, quite easily,
By endlessly protesting that there’s nothing untoward.
I’ll tell Bush next time I meet him at
The White House, when I greet him,
That I’m sure he’ll understand about the wheat board’s quid pro quo:
He’ll forgive this minor error in the global war on terror
When I look him in the eye and tell him Howard didn’t know.

This would be fun even if it wasn’t GWB…

(thanks to Hester)