Monthly Archives: December 2010

30th Birthday

Family, Life

Like sands through the hour glass, err what was I thinking – I’m now officially 30!

The day kicked off by Claire, Hugo & Evie waking me up – which is always good fun. Hugo enjoys waking me up in the morning I think, he knows how to say ‘wake up’ and knows that if my eyes are shut that he should say it and I get a big smile from him when he succeeds and I open my eyes.

Claire loves presents and can’t wait & I obliged when she whipped out a couple of presents and sat them on the bed. Of course, at this stage I’m still bleary eyed and have the cognitive capacity of a well fed gnat but lets not get into that! I was completely spoiled for gifts and received:

  • Two new Nintendo Wii games
  • Season 3 and Season 4 of Heroes
  • Gift voucher to go tandem parasailing!
  • Samsung 40″ Full HD 100Hz LCD television

The new LCD TV in the list was my ‘big’ present this year and it was absolutely worth it. I can’t believe we’ve, and I’ll use this word loosely, suffered with an old 45cm CRT television we’ve had for at least the last six years but probably closer to eight! You don’t realise how poor something is until you replace it and then get the ‘wow’ kind of moment. We’ve now had that and I’m definitely never going back!

After presents were dealt with, standard morning things ensued. For breakfast, Hugo and I popped out to the local McDonald’s get to get some pancakes – which he loves.

As a bit of a tradition, we’d normally head to Hogs Breath for lunch however this year we decided to break that tradition as the traffic to get into Sea World or Marina Mirage is typically bonkers at this time of year due to school holidays, which was going to be compounded by today being the first sunny day in quite a while.

In lieu of Hogs Breath for lunch, we grabbed a couple of sausage rolls from Brumbies – which are always delicious. The remainder of the morning and lunch were spent organising for the afternoon when we were having a few family over for afternoon tea and an early dinner.

Everyone arrived nearly at the same time which was fantastic, so we ended up with:

  • Sterle, Lorraine & Jean
  • Anita & Lucy
  • Andrew, Belinda & Ben
  • George & Jude

Hugo and Ben spent quite a bit of time playing in a new outdoor water toy that Hugo received for Christmas. Water went everywhere, they both got wet & had a great time doing it. We snacked on a variety of things for afternoon tea, ate a little pizza for an early dinner and attempted to put a dint in a completely evil chocolate cake from the Cheese Cake Shop – I failed miserably!

I’d just like to thank everyone for driving up this afternoon, it works out to be nearly a neat hours drive for everyone. Its great to be with family and friends on your birthday and it means a lot of me to have you all here, especially since my birthday falls on the back of Christmas festivities & madness.

Next up, 31 – look out!

Changing Expectations

Family

For as long as Hugo has been able to walk, we’ve been telling him not to put things into the bath and more recently into the baby bath for Evie. Despite that, from time to time, he still gives it a go to see if the rules have changed.

For Christmas, Hugo received a fantastic set of foam stacking blocks for use in the bath. Claire and I were excited to give them ago, as he loves his normal stacking blocks and are not water friendly.

We gave the mesh bag to Hugo to carry up to the bath, which he was more than happy to assist with. I then took the bag and put it into the bath and then there were a whole lot of tears. Initially, I thought he was crying because I’d taken his new stacking blocks off him, as it turns out he was crying because I was getting them wet which he thought was going to break them.

Across the course of the bath, I tried a few different times to put the stacking blocks into the bath and each time I was met with more tears. In the end, it was easier to leave them out of the water on the side of the bath & try again next bath.

After I realised what he was upset about, it makes complete sense – we’ve been telling him for a year not to put things into the bath. Then all of a sudden, we go and put a brand new present into the bath – we were breaking our own rules!

Child, Teenager, Adult

News

I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on what has happened in the media in the last week surrounding the St Kilda Football Club and the photo scandal, which involves a 17 year old female and lewd photos she posted on Facebook of Nick Riewoldt, Nick Dal Santo and Zac Dawson.

Lets get the obvious stuff out of the road to start with, someone is lying and it certainly appears to be the 17 year old. She claims that she took the photos herself in April, however the three footballers have confirmed that they were taken last year while overseas. That leads to the next question, how did the female come into possession of the photos & it appears they were stolen. At a press conference earlier in the week, Nick Riewoldt stated that he’d requested that the photos be deleted immediately when they were taken, which he was told they were & that he is extremely disappointed with Sam Gilbert for not doing so. Sam Gilbert has subsequently made a statement saying that he is very disappointed in what has happened and his role in it and now appreciates the seriousness of the matter.

Next up is the actions of the 17 year old in question, who it appears has complete disregard for the law and due process. It would seem as though she feels she is above the law and her actions are some how justified. To give you an idea of her head space, she was dismissive of the heavy threats from the lawyers representing the St Kilda Football Club, which could have seen her paying back damages for the next 15 years if found guilty. When ordered to appear in court, she said she wasn’t going to turn up because she was on the Gold Coast and the court hearing was in Melbourne. While the media have a gag order on them from showing her face, printing or announcing her name – she has thrown that whole notion of protection out the window by posting the photos on her Facebook page (clearly identified) and subsequently web cam videos where, I believe she states what her name was in one form or another.

Keep in mind, the female is 17 years old – so in less than a year she’ll have the full legal right to do anything she likes – she’ll be driving, smoking, drinking & voting among other things. My question is, while I appreciate where the law sits on the matter, when does someone move from child, to teenager and into adulthood? Is the strictest view of the law an appropriate measure? Should you be allowed to do, virtually anything you want as a minor with no repercussions?

In this instance, it would seem as though the female has thrown the gauntlet down, virtually begging the St Kilda Football Club and their lawyers to take her to task on the matter. Especially when ordered by the Federal Court not to distribute the photos, she mocked the courts directions and stated she was going to distribute other photos as she had plenty of others. It was clear early on that she was just looking for more and more attention, highlighted ever so clearly when she commented that she’d only take the next steps if there was a media circus at Melbourne Airport on her arrival.

Friday it appears she has sought legal representation and they’ve directed her to comply with the courts directions, stating that all photos and copies would be destroyed. Nice for her to get away with not even a smack on the wrist, the photos of the footballers are out in the wild now – never to be withdrawn and after causing an immeasurable amount of damage to some of the AFL’s flagship players.

The comment in the media that aggravated me more than anything was from Victoria’s Child Safety Commissioner Bernie Geary, in which he raised concerns about the treatment of the female, that she was being unfairly vilified by the public/media and that everyone should remember that the teenager is still a child. At 17 years of age, I don’t think she is a child anymore and in many respects the law already sees it that way. However, she’ll no doubt escape this with little to no consequence to herself and that annoys me because it sends completely the wrong signal.

Complaining Solves Nothing

Life

I came across an insightful post by Sebastian Marshall today, via Scott Yang, titled “Okay, so what are you going to do about it?“.

The article resonated with me, mostly because I semi-regularly find myself complaining about similar things, which annoys me for a number of reasons – least of which is the Groundhog Day nature of it.

Sebastian has a great quote toward the bottom:

Complaining solves nothing, it makes you unhappy and turns people off. Claim solutions, improve things, build, fix, work, repair, serve.

I’m going to try that on for size & see how I go.

Grundy Television, Copyright & Social Media

TV

YouTube Grundy Television Copyright ClaimTelevision and movie companies love their copyright, rightfully so – they’ve invested a lot of time, money and energy into producing something. Unfortunately, in their rush to protect their copyright, they often stomp on a thriving community which is actually advocating their brand and product.

Case in point, back in 2006 when Bobby Flynn was on Australian Idol I posted a number of links on my blog to excepts of the television episodes that’d be recorded and uploaded onto YouTube. Those clips have existed on YouTube, copyrighted or otherwise now for a number of years, received hundreds of thousands of views, all of which help build and reinforce the brand Australian Idol, but only now, years later does anything happen with it.

YouTube were clearly given a legal letter from Grundy Television to remove the copyrighted material from their site, which they of course obliged. The thing is though, Grundy Television don’t provide a comparable service – if they did, everyone online that wanted to talk about how positively amazing Bobby Flynn was, would have linked to their excepts of the show with him singing.

I see these sorts of actions from television and media companies to be rather short sighted. People online wanted to discuss the different contestants from Australian Idol, re-watch and live their performances & the TV companies should be elated about that fact. It could be worst, much worst, everyone could be completely bored with the format, show and what it has to offer and be on Facebook instead – but they aren’t, they are actively seeking out information and videos about artists from their show.

If I were in their boots, I’d be setting up an Australian Idol channel on YouTube and uploading every song of every contestant from the first series to the latest. Then I’d start uploading interviews with each of the contestants, then the judges and more. All branded with the appropriate network logos and product placements. They’d then be in a position where they can control, more or less, what gets published online and since their is an official channel on YouTube – the enthusiastic viewer doesn’t need to upload an inferior qulality recording. All the while, they get to engage with their avid fans and target audience – seems like a win win situation for me.

I understand the copyright side of the fence but what were Grundy Television losing by allowing the songs from Australian Idol to exist on YouTube, the single biggest, most prolific source of video on the internet?