Over Easter there was a tragic level crossing accident in Victoria which resulted in loss of life.

Afterwards, it was explained that it was “too expensive” to install boom gates (supposed to cost $500,000) so it is up to us to drive more carefully.

How stupid are we? TAC happily spends MILLIONS of our premiums on advertising and sponsors a football competition (the AFl’s TAC Cup).

Just a fraction of the money wasted on advertising or paying for young men to chase a ball around a paddock could have saved the lives so tragically lost.

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For the last few months I have been working with Chris Lang, the author of “How Investing in Commercial Property Really Works”, on the software behind his new Commercial Property Investment LAB. We are now in the official launch phase and Chris has released a video which contains his view of the Australian commercial property market.

The video contains what Chris calls a “Dire Warning” about these markets in the near future. If you’re in this market, or contemplating getting into the market tou owe it to yourself to watch the video

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I have a new definition of “old”. If you can remember when you were allowed to be an idiot, you are definitely OLD!

Recently someone made the comment that you’d have to be an idiot to ride a bicycle without wearing a helmet. Maybe that is true, but on that basis anyone of my age would be an idiot. From about the age of 10 I rode to school and, when I lived in Broken Hill, regularly rode on the highways to go camping. In those days no one wore a helmet. To the best of my knowledge the bike helmet did not even exist.

Not many years before that, racing drivers wore a leather “helmet” to protect them from the wind as they drove at speeds of over 100 miles per hour.

When I got my drivers licence, there was no speed limit on the open road, rather, the police had to prove that your speed was dangerous to yourself or others. And of course most cars of the time did not have seat belts, radial tyres, disc brakes or any of the current plethora of safety devices found on modern vehicles.

Yet when I recently drove from Melbourne to Albury and back I was subjected to about 20 speed cameras because it is now considered the height of anti-social behaviour to drive today’s ultra-safe motor cars, on today’s ultra safe divided highways at more that 80 miles per hour. The fact that many drivers (myself included) hit their brakes whenever they saw a camera, with the attendant dangers of suddenly changing speed on a highway, seems to be considered less dangerous than driving a few K’s over the limit.

Now I’m not saying that we should return to the bad old days, but a little balance would go a long way. And, it is sometimes good to be an idiot.

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My motorcycle Learners Permit arrived in the mail yesterday (hideous photo) and with it three pieces of interesting information. The fact that two have absolutely nothing to do with driving is, I suppose, offset by the fact that the cost to the government is minimal.

But wait, the infomation is really valuable…

The Deafness Foundation advises “ALL WOMEN” that Rubella “causes deafness and blindness in the unborn child“ — thank goodness the born child can hear and see!

But it gets better…. I bet you did not know that since December 1, 1999 it has been illegal to travel in a car boot without a seat belt!

And, according to Vic Roads this is one of the most significant changes implemented by the State Government (since 1999)

And finally, what is the Floral Emblem of Victoria? Sorry, if you don’t know you’ll just have to wait for your licence renewal letter to find out. You should be safe since Vic Roads haven’t changed the wording on the letter for the last eight years.

Gumpy old man? YOU BETCHA

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Maybe I’m getting old and no longer like change… But who was the idiot who decided that the All Blacks have suddenly become the Half Blacks? As a staumch supporter I switched on to the NZ/Scotland World Cup match this morning and thought that I had the wrong match. Once over that, the whole game was ruined as a viewing experience as it was virtually impossible to tell the difference between the teams.

At least once an All Black player couldn’t make a pass because he couldn’t tell who was on his team!

BRING BACK THE ALL BLACKS — We are not the Half Blacks nor are we the Half Greys!

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Following Jim Wilson’s comment I have revisted this subject and now offer my own extension which adds Textile2 to the AlternateSyntaxParser without the need for hacking Jim’s original extension.

You can download the extension here.

Instructions are included in the source, but for convenience, they are repeated here…

Installation:

1. Install the AlternateSyntaxParser extension.
2. Drop this script (AlternateSyntaxParserTextile2.php) into $IP/extensions/AlternateSyntaxParser

1. Enable the extension by adding this line to your LocalSettings.php:

1. Download the Textile2 library
2. Extract the file classTextile.php from the downloaded archive.

1. Drop classTextile.php into $IP/extensions/AlternateSyntaxParser/

Usage:

To use Textile2 in a page, put #MARKUP textile2 at the top of the page:

Alternatively, you may specify a site-wide default alternate language by setting the $wgAlternateSyntaxParserLanguage variable in your LocalSettings.php.

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MediaWiki is used extensively for documentation sites simply because it has so many features that make it ideal for this type of wiki application. The primary example is, of course Wikipedia

Naturally, I want to use MediaWiki for my own documentation sites. However, I use Textile – a lightweight, humane web text generator almost exclusively wherever HTML markup would otherwise be used. Also, I have to admit that I find the built-in MediaWiki markup verbose, ugly and counter-intuitive.

So, I was pleased to find a well written and documented MediaWiki extension which provides for alternative parsers, including textile. For some reason, the standard extension does not work on my sites. What I describe here is a simple mechanism to replace the TextilePHP parser with the Textile2 parser.

Step One

Install the MediaWiki AlternativeSyntaxParser extension. Test it and if it works for you you’re done!

Step 2

If the basic installation does not work, or if you want to try Textile2, add the following lines to AlternativeSyntaxParser.php at about line #153

 case 'textile2':
    require_once('classTextile.php');
    $textile = new Textile();
    $text = $textile->TextileThis($parser->mSwappedOutText);
    break;

Step Three

Download the Textile2 source from here& and copy the file classTextile.php to the same directory where the alternative parsers are.

Step Four

Actually, you’re done! You now have another alternative parser ‘textile2’ available.

Once you have installed this, the editor buttons are no longer useful… maybe I’ll integrate TheEditorHelper unless someone else gets it done first.

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The White Pages in Australia are being updated now. The publisher, Sensis, appears to think that the Internet can make them insanely rich — the cost of a listing including an email address and web site address is over $600 per year! That’s 10 times the cost of a phone number listing, and I didn’t even ask how much extra it would cost to have the listing printed in bold print.

Bear in mind that the person who looks up your phone number in the directory is already committed to contacting you. Therefore, the added value of the additional contact information has to be very close to zero.

The profit margin on these listing must be approaching infinity. It would be interesting to know how many small businesses are suckered into this rip-off. Unfortunately the White Pages web site doesn’t even have details of the cost of listings, let alone any statistics.

To put this in context, a small business can buy 200,000 targeted visitors to its web site for about $600

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Did you know that I also publish a site called Best PC Tools? On that site I try to share information about tools (software, hardware and knowledge) which will help you get the best from your Linux or Windows PC.

Most of you will know that I believe that He who dies with the most toys WINS … Why not take a look at my latest toy.

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For the last couple decades the America’s Cup competition has (generally) made good to be a Kiwi.

Even though I haven’t lived in NZ since I was a young boy, I have resolutely held on to my Kiwi citizenship (and passport). During the cold war I argued that this was actually a measure of self preservation as I figured that if WW3 did break out, NZ would be close to the bottom of the list of targets and I could therefore return home to comparative safety.

I also thought that, in the days when I did a lot of travelling, the NZ passport would be close to the Swiss in terms of insignificance. This proved to be wishful thinking as NZ proceeded to ignore the rest of the world opinion and play sport with South Africa, as well as antagonise the USA with an anti-nuclear policy.

Well, we are now within the proverbial cat’s whisker of challenging for the Cup again.

And it looks like, for the third time in a row, I will be in Auckland when the races are held. The amazing euphoria of winning. The universal, palpable, despondency of loosing, And the general feeling of pride that a nation of about 5 million souls can take on the world in a high budget contest and win will hopefully be there to be experienced when I am in Auckland later this month.

And, of course, the continued success of the All Blacks helps too!

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