Archive for the ‘Australia’ tag
eCensus
In Australia, tonight is census night. I’m filling out my form online using eCensus. Unlike the appalling eTax package Australians can use for their tax returns, eCensus is browser-based (and thus multiplatform), and intuitive. Do the census, everyone! It’s important to be represented in the statistics, and privacy is so last century. Really.
Slow blogging month
Just a short post to indicate that yes, both I and this blog are still alive and operational. I’m still settling into Melbourne, having been back from Japan almost a month now. I found myself a cheap city apartment, and have been doing some transcription work as an office temp, while I look for something more interesting and more lucrative. Given the ludicrous situation that one usually has to wait weeks for an ADSL connection in Australia, I’m stuck on dial-up access, which is no inducement to blog. Expect the site to become more active once I have real internet access again.
Back online
I got my Powerbook back on Thursday night, just before work.
Having a computer again has its upsides and downsides: while I’m not going crazy for lack of a writing machine and a way to talk to my friends and family in Australia, I’m also back wasting a lot of time surfing the web. Computers have a rhythm that they can tie you to, and since I got mine back I’ve spent a lot of my free time reading news from RSS feeds and putting my data back in order from the horrible mess that attempting to migrate to Linux left it in. It’s easy to just keep working on such things, and I tend to stay up later than I’d planned. While I was without my laptop, in contrast, I managed to read a book an a half, and get in some early nights and the consequent much-needed sleep.
I am, by the way, back on OS X for a good while yet. Ubuntu Linux has matured a little since I last tried it, but it still doesn’t have the polish and usability that OS X has. One day, I hope, Linux will beat all of the proprietary operating systems at desktop usability, and when that day comes I’ll make the switch for good, but for now, again, I’m afraid not.