Election Fever!

The federal election has brought me out of hibernation.  Firstly I must state that at the moment I am an ALP member, and have been for about fifteen years now.  Back in the mid 1980s I was in fact a Liberal party member, God knows what possesed me to do that.  (Actually it was Mum & Dad, but let's not go into that now).

I need to make quite a few comments on the election.  Firstly re the political process itself.  I absolutely hate it when people say they can't be bothered with politics, you can't trust politicians and they couldn't care less who gets in.  Probably the middle point is true, but we get the politicians we deserve.  They come from us.  They come from people who care enough to care.  If no-one cares any more, then obviously the standard of political candidate decreases and any old so and so can get in.  But whose fault is that, really?  All politics is local, and if you care enough about it, then there IS something you can do (ask me how - I won't go on about it here).

Secondly, consider the electoral process of "compulsory" voting.  As Mark Latham pointedly reminded us, we don't HAVE to make a mark on the ballot paper, we only have to turn up and get our names crossed off the roll.  However I think if you've bothered to turn up, get a paper issued to you and are in a polling place anyway, it'd be crazy not to vote.

That's not the crazy point.  The thing that drives me mad is that half the nation simply couldn't care less about politics.  They don't understand the processes, they aren't interested in the game at all, and they regard voting as an inconvenience.  In some countries, people have died (literally died) over the right to vote, yet half of us couldn't give a toss.  Just do a quick street poll and see if you can find out what proportion of people can actually name their local member.  I reckon you may be in for a big disappointment.  When Kruddy was toppled that fateful day a couple of months ago and Gillard was made Prime Minister, I actually spoke to people who had never even heard of Julia Gillard.  It says it all, really.

But in Australia we force them to vote and influence the outcome of the elections, yet their decisions as to who to vote for might be based solely on such factors as the colour of the candidate's hair, or the fact that their second cousin has the same surname as their local candidate.  These criteria, for some people, are the main basis of their decision.  More fool us for forcing them to vote.

Accordingly, the election campaign has to be pitched at a level that the dumbest Australian can understand.  Don't worry about giving them facts about economics, don't worry about giving them aspirations, don't worry about giving them foreign affairs and defence policies, it's a waste of time.  What you do instead is give them a sound bite with a juicy quote, or a picture, such as buying a pie from a shop, or chucking around a football.  This is what Australian politics has been reduced to, and it's not something that gives us a good government.  The sad thing is that instead of basing a political choice on the outcome of a debate, a lot of Australians might prefer to base their decision on the result of a bare-knuckle fight between a couple of political leaders.

So I say this: make it optional.  If you don't care, don't vote.  If you don't understand, don't vote.  If you hate having to interrupt your Saturday footy or fishing trip, or visit to the pub, don't bother, we're all right without you.  This way those who care enough to vote will be the ones making the decisions and the rest of the nation can just acept what those who did vote actually said.  This is the way it works in most countries in the world.  According to Wikiedia, only 32 countries have compulsory voting.  Notably USA, UK, New Zealand, etc, etc do not, yet people do not tend to argue these nations are undemocratic.

Thirdly, and I need to probably end this post on a positive note, isn't the outcome of this election great on the same basis as the second point?  To form a government, the independents and Green will need to be courted by someone aiming to form a government.  On this basis they need to convince not a dumb electorate, but some of the most wily and canny political thinkers in Australa.  I've been listening closely to what the non-aligned members have been saying (okay, ONE of them is a little disappointing with his parochialism - sorry Bob) and I am encouraged.  They WILL be making a government based on policies, aspirations and abilities, and not the colour of the hair, or the relative's names.  Won't this be a welcome breath of fresh air into the mix.

As a prediction, I cannot see either Tony Windsor or Rob Oakeshott coalescing with the Liberals.  Adam Bandt has actually come out and stated that he wouldn't.  I have no idea how Bob Katter will go (nor does anyone else, I'd say - even including Bob Katter, I'd reckon).

But the upshot of all this is I can't see Tony Abbott as Prime Minister this parliamentary term.  The numbers are so close, however, that I also don't think the parliament is going to be workable.  If a minister needs to go overseas, if an opposition member gets sick, if someone dies, or (more likely) someone has to resign due to either retirement or corruption, the parliamentary dynamic can change.  The fact that the governing side would probably need to give up a speaker who doesn't have a normal vote also makes it difficult.  So my prediction is a Labor/Green/Independent coalition for now, but it'll become unworkable due to an external factor and we'll be out at the polling booths again within a year.

Try to Remember (that kind of September)

The singer is Tamara Abbott, as part of Wyong Drama Group's show "Harp on the Willow" on Saturday 21 August 2010 at Wyong Memorial Hall.  The video speaks completely for itself.  One of the nicest renditions of the song you'll ever hear.

Vive le Tour

At last, tomorrow, the road warriors depart for three weeks of self-imposed torture.  And I'll be watching as much of it as I can.  Cadel Evans has a new team, hopefully he can get the support of it more than the old Lotto squad he has left behind - but is it really Cadel's lack of support, or Cadel's lack of just that little bit of extra true grit?

I find that when he's required to pull out all stops and push just that inhuman amount more than possible, it seems he leaves a stop in place, and just can't quite make it.

Anyway, this year, I'm going for Mick Rogers.  If anyone deserves a win it's ol' Michael - it may be the last chance he gets before he reaches the age of impossibility.

In all reality, however, I can't see anyone beating Alberto Contador this year.  Not even Lance.  My fingers are crossed for Mick, however, hopefully he can at least get a top ten in the GC.

Regards also to Stewart and Robbie.  Don't forget the website is probably one of the best sporting results sites around http://www.letour.fr/us/homepage_courseTDF.html

#@&%! Facebook

Hmm, I just have had the distinction of being blocked from sending further messages on Facebook because it detected my activities were abusive to others.

Sheesh!  All I was doing was trying to re-connect with a few friends from the 1990s Newcastle BBS world.  Okay, well, QUITE a few friends from the BBS world.  Still, the activity I was doing certainly WAS legitimate, private use of Facebook, for EXACTLY what the intended use was.  IE "Facebook helps you connect with your friends".

Well, I guess I'll just have to stop posting messages on FB for at least a few days.  I really have no choice!  If you reply to me on FB, please forgive the lateness of reply, as I'm blocked.  The block will last "from a few hours to a few days", whatever that means.  I'll try to use normal email for now anyway.

It's amazing how connection with ONE old acquaintance can lead to connections to a dozen old acquaintances.  But that's how it goes, I suppose.  We are all connected somehow.

Slow Progress

It was late last year when I started looking for old schoolfriends in various ways, and at the start there were precious few I could track down.  It is amazing how far and wide we have spread.  Some are not even still in the country.

Anyway, at the start I had managed to contact eight or nine of you, and it stayed reasonably static for a few months.  In the last few months, however, the contacts list has steadily grown, and now I have email addresses for 23 of you.  It seems to be snowballing.

One of the best tools for doing this is, of course, Facebook.  I didn't quit on "World Quit Facebook Day" on 31 May past.  Why would I want to do that, just as the quest for former schoolfriends is getting interesting.  Anyway, things don't happen overnight, I have planted some more seeds, and they will probably germinate over the next week or so.

Incidentally, I have been given about eight class photos in the last DAY to add to the Gorokan High Website.  I'm pleased to say they are all online now as we speak.  See http://my.integritynet.com.au/wdgi/class_photos.htm

Newcastle BBS History

Just came across an old notebook I kept when first using Bulletin Boards in Newcastle.  It contains some historical records I want to put down for later use and to get on to a Google Search for other people's reference in the future.

In January 1990 I noted these Bulletin Board Systems in the Newcastle region:

Communication 2000 run by Ian Mason.  Based in Toronto, this was probably my favourite system.  Ian started off using QuickBBS, then went to Remote Access.  He got sick of running a BBS for nearly a year, then returned with a vengeance with software called BBS-PC, which he paid big bikkies for and renamed the BBS to \/ector X BBS.  Unfortunately the user-friendliness of this system was not up to scratch, although it had a lot of power.  The problem was many commands required several letters to execute (almost a command line interface at times) and while I found this a brilliant facility, not many other users were into it, who preferred the usual one-key commands.  After suffering from diminishing call rates, Ian pulled down BBS-PC and returned to Remote Access.

Ian was a consummate sysop who setup his system with the users in mind, and was very attentive to detail.  His day job was as a school teacher.

Cybertron was run by Brett McKenzie on QuickBBS, then made the transition to Remote Access, like probably everyone else at the time.  Brett was located at Georgetown.  Brett, like me, had several problems paying his phone bill and was off the air for some months at a time.  The BBS disappeared after a few years of sporadic operation.

Mega Technology TBBS was the biggest and oldest system in Newcastle.  It was a three-line system, with the biggest hard drives, and offered that incredible facility of the day of multiline chat!  It used TBBS (or The Bread Board System) which didn't allow the operation of standard Remote Access BBS doors, and the ones available for the TBBS software were pretty lame, in my opinion, although they all had multiline capability.

The sysop was Stan White and the system operated out of Boolaroo.  Stan used to also run a computer shop at Boolaroo.  The system was probably the first to offer online CD rom access, which meant there ended up being a massive lot of files online.  I remember Stan saying at one point he could no longer add any more devices as he'd used up all the letters of the alphabet in drive names!

Bill's BBS was an interesting system at Broadmeadow, and run by Bill Mastrippolito (AKA Mastro).  This system ran on an Apple //e system on a 5 megabyte hard drive, and was quite basic, although it was normally up most of the time.  Naturally it didn't offer network messaging or all that much in the way of file downloads, but Bill persisted with running it for quite a few years mainly to prove a point that an Apple //e COULD actually run a Bulletin Board.

The Local BBS was located at Tighes Hill, sysop was Tony Dodds and ran Quick BBS (later Remote Access).  I didn't use this system very much and have precious little in the way of notes on it.

Small Business BBS must have been near Lambton somewhere (from the phone number I have) and I don't have any notes on it at all.  If I can recall correctly the sysop was Geoff Bilborough and the system was aimed at providing a network for small business owners in the local area.  It didn't get much action, and was frequently offline.  I think Geoff had a lot more to do than ensure his BBS hobby was well-maintained.

Newcastle Microcomputer Club (which was founded in October 1976) met twice a month (2nd & 4th Monday of each month in 1990) at the University.  NMC BBS was run by the clubp and the long-suffering Sysop was Tony Nicholson.  The system was on a phone line at the uni, and so used to operate outside business hours - ie 5pm to 9am Monday to Friday and 24hrs on Saturdays and Sundays.  I have an extract from Tony's section of the NMC newsletter (Jul/Aug 1990 issue):

"A hard disk failure put the system off the air from about 19:00 Friday 1st June until 17:00 on Tuesday 5th June.  Some files and messages entered in the system on 1 June have been lost. "

"We've had two hard disk drive problems lately.  Firstly, the old 20 Mb Miniscribe (which used to be in  the old CP/M BBS System) started giving lots of errors and making a whining noise.  It has been retired.  Then (just after doing a lot of work getting the network software going) the newer 32 Mb drive stopped with a "general failure on drive C:" message.  I could not do anything on the weekend (it happened on Friday night) so the system was down for four days while I did a low level format and ran drive diagnostics.  Luckily I had made a full backup only hours before the failure so only a few messages were lost".

Other Systems existant in Newcastle included the Hunter Schools BBS, Sysop name was Troy Harper which was a small system based in Newcastle West, operated by some local education establishment and run by students.  Also there was a BBS called the Novocastrian Computer Link (sysop was Matt).

On the Central Coast there were a couple of systems.  Coastal Opus at Kariong was run by Kevin Mann, which used the Opus-CBC BBS program, which wasn't really good for games and downloads, but Kevin was a dedicated mail mover who was later to become both network and region co-ordinator in Fidonet.

Another very interesting system was The Round Table BBS which was run on an Amiga out of Koolewong and used a Skypix system.  This wass software ahead of its time.  As well as being able to use ANSI graphics, both monochrome and colour (like almost all other systems at the time), Skypix also allowed users to download a set of what we would now call avatars - full graphical pictures that were displayed instead of ASCII characters.  This was well before the invention of HTML (hypertext markup language) and the invention of the world wide web, of course, but the system was before its time.  For a start, you needed an Amiga computer to be able to use it, so the 5% of computer users at the time with an Amiga would have been happy.  Unfortunately this BBS was at STD rates for me, and I didn't login all that often.

I suppose I need to add that Inquestor BBS started at some point in 1991, and operated for many years.  The sysop was Peter Deane, operated on an Amiga and concentrated on mail distribution.  We always had troubles paying the phone bill and finding hard drive space, but the hobby was extremely rewarding and introduced me to computers in no uncertain terms.  I used a number of software programs to get the system running (rather than an integrated package our IBM friends would have used) and ended up modifying the existing BBS code of Metro BBS (which I called OzMetro) and wrote an entire message section called Plutonic which was a powerful *.msg message editor with a number of utilities.

Three things killed Inquestor.  My move to Toukley from Newcastle, which meant my regular callers all became STD calls to the system; the rise and rise of the internet and world wide web; and (of course) the bankruptcy of Commodore Business Machines and the failure of the Amiga computer to remain with a viable user base.  As I have mentioned before, Inquestor still exists.  I will drag out the old A2000 it lives on in the next few days, and dump all the files from the hard drive via a serial cable to this machine.  With the Amiga Emulator, it might even be possible to get it running on the IBM PC, but at least if that is not possible, the message bases and text files will provide interesting memorabilia.

Old Friends Reunited!

Well, despite the best intentions, time has been the killer in posting to the blog.  Did I not promise to try posting every second day at least?  One post in the last two months has not been a good record!

One thing that has become apparent, however, is my quest to track down prior friends, acquaintances and relatives.  I have setup a website of school memorabilia at http://my.integritynet.com.au/wdgi but the problem with that is it is not interactive.  People can reference the material there, but cannot interact.

What better mechanism for providing output and a forum for input than this very blog we are looking at now?  In the next few weeks I will be publicising the existence of this site and hoping to get not only a few responses from users to me, but possibly some interaction between old acquaintences.

I'll also not stop at former schoolfriends.  In a former life, back in the late 1980s I used to run a Bulletin Board System called Inquestor BBS on an Amiga computer in Newcastle.  At one point it held a record for being the longest continually-running bulletin board in the Newcastle region.  Note how many qualifications were needed in order to assert that record!  In the early 1990s, however, two things happened.  Firstly I moved to Toukley from Newcastle meaning the number of people in the local calling area diminished substantially, and secondly technology overtook bulletin boards, and this thing called the internet seemed to become a lot more significant than the esoteric academic/military plaything it had originated from.  Our worldwide Fidonet Nodelist went from a size of well over 2 megabytes to what is now about 150k.

Hopefully we can catch up with a few Inquestor users over here as well.  If you'd like to add your comment, PLEASE DO SO.  You know how.

Incidentally, Inquestor still exists - last time I booted up the amiga last year it did, anyway.  I might see what I can lift off the hard drive that might still be useful.  In the meantime, another really useful website is http://fidonet.ozzmosis.com/ which contains a few posts even YOU may have typed!