Category Archives: Cross Posted from Club Troppo

Troppo Migration, take 2

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Jacques Chester

I’m going to make a second attempt to migrate Troppo to the new server this weekend.
I have two alternative strategies to look at. One involves chopping bits out of Wordpress that prevent the export/import system from working in the way I want them to.
The other involves a few hours of tedious SQL munging.
You may see […] Continue reading →

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Downtime today

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Jacques Chester

Today (Saturday) I will be moving Troppo to a new server. During the day you will see intermittent connectivity. Once we’ve moved across I’ll update this announcement.
Update: Ahem. The move will take longer than anticipated — it will probably happen Sunday instead.
Update 2: To prevent people being from being upset by their bon mots […] Continue reading →

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A comment on comments

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Jacques Chester

Given that Troppo has relaxed its comments policy, some of you may be puzzled as to why your comments weren’t being posted.
Well there’s two things. First, the Akismet anti-spam service still sometimes comes up with false positives which need to be fetched from the spam bin.
The second thing is that the Wordpress default is to […] Continue reading →

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Buzzity buzz

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Jacques Chester

A lot of folks on Facebook have been sending me links for a new website called “Menzies House”. According to the blurb, it’s the “leading Australian blog for conservative, centre-right and libertarian thinkers and activists”, which must come as news to the mob at Catallaxy (which is still in technical exile).
A perfunctory investigation reveals that […] Continue reading →

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Google develops moral minerals

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Jacques Chester

Google’s announced that they were the subject of a precise and sophisticated attack, apparently aimed at getting access to the GMail accounts of pro-democracy critics of the Chinese Communist regime, both living in China and abroad.
Google don’t think that the accounts were compromised but can’t be sure.
In response Google have said that they are considering […] Continue reading →

Posted in Cross Posted from Club Troppo, IT and Internet, Politics - international | 2 Comments

Finishing unfinished business in the NT

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Jacques Chester

Aboriginal affairs in the NT has always been a mess. It certainly became worse after the 1976 introduction of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) and the replacement of jobs with “sit down money”.
Then came a quarter-decade rule by the CLP, who were hamstrung both by the Act (supported largely by insipid latte-sippers) and […] Continue reading →

Posted in Cross Posted from Club Troppo, Economics and public policy, Journalism, Politics - Northern Territory | 2 Comments

A stray thought about exam questions

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Jacques Chester

Having just finished the final units I need to qualify for an undergraduate degree, the topic of examinations is still fresh in my mind. Generally these fall into two categories: open-book and closed-book; with two major categories of question: multiple-choice and short-answer.
The exact mix of open/closed and MC/SA will vary from professor to professor and […] Continue reading →

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Dear Woolworths

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Jacques Chester

Stop trying to make me use your crappy “self serve” checkouts.
I noticed you installed them a few months back. A few weeks ago, out of curiousity, I tried it.
It was just that: a curiousity. My experience went as follows:

I was reminded of my first job as a checkout operator, which I utterly detested. It was […] Continue reading →

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An annoying side-effect of politics

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Jacques Chester

Thanks to this furious sturm und drang going on in Canberra, Stateline has been pushed off the air for the week. I find this rather annoying. We have a satellite received here which lets me tune into the NT’s Stateline to get some flavour of home. I’d rather have that than another half hour of […] Continue reading →

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Cheerio, Malcolm

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Jacques Chester

Machiavelli says that fortune is like a woman (“she favours the bold”). Well it seems that fortune is a bit of a backstabbing so-and-so if your name is Malcolm Turnbull. After smiling on him throughout his entire professional career, she has utterly abandoned him this week.
I mean she’s had it in for Malcolm for months. […] Continue reading →

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