That 70s stuff, Boston, doggies, Budweiser, Foxtel and the beach over the road

Well, that’s it. All over rover. Thank goodnes for that I say. Christmas is one time of the year I have disliked for ages. This none was sadder than most for various reasons I won’t go into, but there was one bright side.

This year I was host to my brother Graeme and his wife Lisa, plus their three dogs Maggie, Luka and Boston. Maggie is 16, blind in one eye, deaf and a bit loopy, but is a lovely dog who mostly sleeps. Luka is a Labrador-sized doggie, around 6 years old, very lovable and pretty much minds her own business, siting and watching the world go by. Boston is a Great Dane. And I do mean GREAT. He is huge, able to do a flying leap over my breakfast bar from the kitchen into the lounge room. At full stretch he is probably 6′ 8″ or so. And as mad as a maddy, mad, mad thing as Blackadder would say.

He gets on famously with Budweiser (my dog, a third his size and born the same day. Biorythmns anyone?) and they spent hours and hours and hours rolling around, biting ears and generally having doggie fun. Many geat photos were taken! And being across the road from the beach, much swimming, splashing, chasing seagulls and  biting waves were in order.

My mother, 85 and sadly badly suffering from lung cancer was also here, as were at various times mothers and fathers-in-law (Graeme’s not mine), sons, brothers, friends – the usual Christmas fare. So amongst all this general mayhem, it was brilliant to discover a small gem I was not aware of.

Graeme and Lisa, having just moved the Bridgetown, 2 1/2 hours south west with little decent free to air TV coverage have recently installed Foxtel – which I have had from Day One. With all the Christmas merriment upstairs, and my music system down, Graeme showed me a Fox Channel I didn’t know about – well I had seen it but not investigated further – called ‘air’.  Fpor music lovers, this could be the best channel, like, ever. I am especially struck by the 70s and 80s sections as they have a secondary benefit.

You may remember the old saying, “if you remember the 60s, you weren’t really there“. Well the same sort of thing also applies to the 70s and 80s, mainly in my case as so much was happening to me, in the many, many places I worked, visited and played, that while my memory of events is sharp, associated dates and times aren’t. So, as the air channel displays not only the name(s) of the song(s), artists, album, and label, it also gives the year. Being pretty good at matching music to dates and events (Space Oddity by David Bowie, heading up Weest Coast ighway to play at the old Scarborough pub – see?) is simply brilliant and sets all my timelines correctly.

And while working during the day, it is much less distracting than talkback radio to boot. That’s a bonus.

Every man and his dog have done a review of Avatar it seems. So damn it, so will I.

I only ever went to two movies with my Dad – Grand Prix with James Garner and the original Planet of the Apes. The reason was simply he didn’t go, because, as he said, he wanted to be entertained and not see “real life” as he had enough of that. Most of the movies at that time he opined, were those designed to make you think, or portray that “real life”, and not to allow him to escape for two or three hours as he wanted.

(Real life in the Pilbara in the 70’s wasn’t that flash if you were a Government worker as against a Mining Company employee. Chalk and cheese. Have not’s versus haves).

He would have loved Avatar then (my Dad died in 1976). The storyline is not particularly original, the characters a tad clichéd, bits of other movies have been nicked (which seems common these days), and yes, there are even parts that are supposed to make you think, but by golly, you leave the theatre knowing you have seen a classic movie.

The photography is breathtaking – with a caveat – and the effects simply stunning. The caveat is that I am pretty sure that where you sit makes a difference to the 3D “experience”. I was in the middle towards the front (row E) and I reckon that some shots, especially high action ones, seemed to be out of focus.

Speaking of the 3D, thankfully you are spared any over-the-top 3D stuff that directors other than Cameron may have been tempted to use such as things being thrown at you to see if you duck. It only happened once that I recall and the scene required it. Other times it is used are purely to give depth to a scene (such as forest or flying sequences) or to emphasise the size of something; an animal, tree or even a battle scene.

The lighting is also exquisite, but I was a little disappointed with the audio, but again this may have been a sign of the seating location. I seemed to me that the surround sound was more stereo / front oriented, not having the same impact as say the landing scene from Saving Private Ryan

Keen pilots will also scratch their heads at some of the places they managed to get enormous formations of helicopter like craft (reminiscent of the ornithopters in Dune) in the places they did.

But these things are really nitpicking and seriously more for those reviewers that seem to put down on movies that rake in millions and rate highly ones those no-one watches!

As an entertainment experience, Avatar works. The three hours ripped by despite the pretty easy to work out storyline and it was an enjoyable experience as a movie should be. Yes you can see the “green” theme, the “rape and pillage the planet for profit” theme and even the “George Bush attitude to the armed forces and invasion” theme.

I admit though, “unobtainium” was a bit lame in the same vein as “Faraway Downs” ….

But it doesn’t matter if you choose to ignore this or the “messages” because I am pretty sure you’ll have a good time regardless. Watch it as a movie not as a lecture or social piece.

Go and see it. And as an aside, I think the release Blu-ray disc could be the one to finally make that industry roar!

An open letter to tech people, PRs and the over 40 age group

Yesterday in  a Letter to the Editor, a writer lamented the following (paraphrased here):

“With today’s technology, the kids have no problem working it out, but what about us older people? We can afford it, we have it but don’t understand it to get the best from it and no-one seems to be able to explain in our language“.

You only have to go and sit in a Telstra shop or Harvey Norman store and watch and listen for a couple of hours to know this is true. And as I have mentioned before, I believe that most – if not all – tech magazines and web sites are aimed at the converted.

This age group and demographic are the ones currently with the disposable income and leisure time – in short, what marketers want. But in their own words, they are not being addressed by the very people they want to spend their money with.

So I am curious and want as much feedback as possible please.

I’d like to compile a list of what are the most common tech problems faced by the 40+ age group. Will you help please? Either post here or email to vbthedog@gmail.com.

Many thanks!

David Hague

Toyota, Chenin Blanc, Kylie and welcome to my circus, sucker! I win.

As you do, I was sitting on my balcony the other afternoon, enjoying a nice glass of Chenin Blanc and watching the world go by.

I am relatively lucky in that I live on a beach frontage, that has a grassy park leading to the beach proper and this dotted with free barbecues, seating, tables and shade cover. This makes for a popular location on weekends and holidays, and absolute mayhem on Australia Day. Adding to the popularity is a licensed coffee shop/eatery 100 metres down the road. The beach is also north facing making it very safe.

Anyway, watching the people enjoying themselves and both the passing and parked cars on this day made me realise something; we mere mortals when it comes to absorbing marketing hype are all barking mad! Or BT Barnum followers if you like.

Take cars. Out of the hundred or so that I could see parked along the street and the adjacent car park, probably 40% were 4 wheel drives or pretend ones such as the Ford Territory, Toyota variants and the like. Further watching made it clear that the drivers of these vehicles were not Akubra, Driz-a-Bone wearin’ country folk either; they were mostly board short wearing, goatee ‘d baldies with a couple of 4 year olds in tow with the missus. Who are mostly called Kylie, Sheryl or Chantelle.

Why does this person need a dirty great 4 wheel drive that has never seen dust in its life? And to whom Kimberley is a teenager in a very bad American sitcom. Some even had snorkels for goodness sake.

Or take the humble Mazda 121 and other similar 4 cylinders with exhaust pipes wider than the Harbour Tunnel. They have spoilers on the back. Why? To keep the rear of the car on the road because of the surfeit of power to the front wheels? I don’t think so.

I even saw a Toyota Avalon with mag wheels, rear spoiler and a wheelchair rack on the roof driven by someone who looked like they needed dusting.

It’s marketing, that’s what.

I can just see it; Steve-o goes to buy his new car, and Kyles wants a shiny 4WD so that she matches all the other mothers at the school drop off point (in fact there used to be a TV ad just like this with all the Mum’s dressed as pseudo truckies).

As an aside, why don’t kids walk or ride a bike to school these days? I know of one family whose parents both work, one on shifts. If there is no one to take little Billy to school a mile away, he doesn’t go!

Anyway, back to Steve-o. The nice salesman in the shiny polyester suit will no doubt tickle Steve-o’s ego and treat him as if he were a long lost brother of the Leylands’ or second cousin of Malcolm Douglas and assume that he needs the “Nullabor Pak” and “Faraway Downs” options. And of course, he wants others to think that is JUST what he is like when they clap eyes on the brand Steve-mobile, so he falls for it.

Similarly, young Siobhan or Anastasia buying her first new car – probably a Mitsubishi Lancer – is duped by words comparing her to a female Peter Brock and ends up with booming exhaust, wide tyres, rear spoiler and bonnet scoop all straining at the leash of a 97Kw motor-thundermobile that if it moved any faster is at the risk of breaking into a standstill.

So who wins?

The salesman of course! He’s patted a few egos and in the meantime pocketed a nice commission in add on sales – and we all know apart from exorbitant servicing costs and shonky warranty, that is where the REAL money is.

So resist I say! Go bland, that’ll show ‘em – and at the same time make my Monaro stand out even more than it does. Because THAT is the whole aim of the exercise after all!

PS: I do run the Monaro on track days so need the wide tyres and rear spoiler. And I have a CAMS licence – so there!

I have the dreaded disease of “insomniawerewolvavosis.” Just call me moonface.

Yesterday here in Mandurah one hour south of Perth, it was blisteringly hot – the hottest this summer so far. The official temperature was around 34 degrees C I believe, but my trusty weather station put it at over 41 degrees at one point. And humid too – biblically so. As such, the air-conditioning here which is evaporative and not refrigerated was struggling.

I live right on the beach front, literally 20, literally 30 metres from the water, so thankfully, when the sea breeze, the well known Fremantle Doctor makes it’s welcome appearance every afternoon, I am one of the first to feel the benefits. Yesterday though, it had all the puff of an asthmatic hamster through a straw.

At 9pm I decided I had had enough and to try and sleep was the best thing after a shower to cool down and remove that horrible sticky feeling you get in humid weather. Mattress-fall was made by 9:45pm and for the next 8 hours I tossed and turned, one moment hot and sticky and then finding a part of the bed sheet that was cold from exposure to the air-conditioning, rolling to that locale and whilst not shivering, decidedly uncomfortable and chilly. And so the cycle went around and around, with sleep only seemingly snatched in 2 – 3 minute grabs if my digital clock was to be believed.

At 2am in desperation I decided to take a 1/4 of a histamine tablet designed to help you sleep; normally this would zonk me within 15 minutes, but after 45, I took another. An hour later, the full second half of the tablet. Around 5am, with the sun coming up, I finally fell asleep only to be woken at 8:30 with a phone call that could have waited.

Feeling as if I had done 128 laps of Bathurst in Peter Brock’s boot, I struggled into the shower. The radio came on and informed me that last night had been a full moon.

That explains it then. I have the dreaded disease of insomniawerewolvavosis caught via the rare bacterium lunarhowleiiii. And as this was apparently a blue moon. It’ll be just ages before it goes away. It’s going to be a long, long summer.

Now where is my Bat out of Hell album?

PK, Juicy Fruit, the Taliban, donuts and cricketers that chomp and may go BANG!

I am tolerant of most things; as I have stated I have a particular dislike for hypocracy in all its forms, but generally most other stuff is  OK. Except parsnip, turnip, broccoli, cats, Toyota Prius’,  country and western music, U2, Jimmy Barnes, tattoos and chewing gum.

Chewing gum especially irks me. I don’t know why, I’ve just never liked it even as a kid. Other young ‘uns were munching away on Juicy Fruit and PK or blowing bubbles hoping to be floated out of the school ground and freed for life, while my only vice back then were little chocolatey jelly baby thingies called Chicos.

In fact, I’ve never really been into sweet stuff at all and I put that down to working as an apprentice pastrycook for a number of years. Look at doughnuts, sugar, mock cream and jam every single morning and the novelty soon wears off. Same for vanilla slices, chocolate eclairs, apple turnovers or “matchsticks”.

But I digress.

I have even been known to turn off the cricket as there have been too many shots of Tubby Border or Punter Taylor gnashing away on it. Where do they put it once it has lost its flavour I wonder? Not too many bed posts in the middle of the MCG I wouldn’t have thought.

But according to the news services this morning, there may just be a solution to the Great Chewing Gum Problem of ’09. Seems someone made a mistake and mixed citric acid from a lemon or something with an “unknown substance” and at first chomp, literally blew his face off. He didn’t survive the ensuing bang. The powers-that-be are trying to work out what the mystery substance was. I imagine then they’ll do a mass airdrop of chewing gum in the areas frequented by the Taliban and their ilk.

I’m not advocating all Spearmint munching folk should be force fed this stuff, but perhaps a warning on the wrapping a la cigarette packaging to warn people what could happen if they aren’t careful. It might just get users abstaining. And that would be a good thing unless of course, you are a Mr Wrigley the Younger waiting for the old man to pop his clogs.

Don’t buy a cheap netbook for the wrong reasons.

Ever since the personal PC became available, I would suggest that they have been oversold in their capability. And the main reason for this has been a lack of knowledge by salespeople primarily, and customers secondly.

With the recent glut on the market of inexpensive laptops – correctly called ‘netbooks’ – this problem has become exacerbated. Seduced by prices as low as $400 customers are buying these portable machines in droves and are either a) hoping or b) being told they will run applications not designed for this level of computer power.

The term ‘netbook’ is used for a reason.

These machines were developed to be used for surfing the web, emailing, Facebook, Twitter and other ‘net based applications. Word processing is expected to be done with something like Google Docs as are spreadsheets. There are applications available that are very light weight in their processor usage for the mundane tasks of word processing, spreadsheet, database and email, but they have nowhere near the functionality of their bigger brethren from Microsoft, Apple and so on.

Yes, the higher end netbooks can be loaded with Windows 7 and Office, but don’t expect blistering speed. Oh Office will run, but such a netbook you put it side by side with a properly spec’d notebook or desktop, it will be like tap water versus Stella.

And if you want to play games that require gobs of processor grunt, simply don’t bother with a netbook.

Remember when you bought a new stereo system you got the sales staff to play for favourite records on different systems so you could compare? Well you should do the same with a computer; make the sales staff earn their commission and get them to run various applications and games so you can weigh one against another.

Don’t take their word for it, and make sure you ask lots of questions and don’t get the Mr Humphries’ electronic version of “it’ll ride up with wear”.

Tower of Babel, Z Cars, June Dally-Watkins, the famous 5 and langling the manguage.

I’ve just back from making an appointment, at which during the process, one of my pet hates occurred.

“What was the name again?” the pretty receptionist asked. I bit my tongue longing to say something like “the same as it was yesterday”.

Another happened later at the supermarket – “Was that all today?”

Now I left school too long ago and despite being a working journalist, I can never remember the difference between a split participle and a crossed noun, but even then, this sentence just seems plain wrong.

An article in today’s West Australian by Zoltan Kovacs, seemingly of similar thoughts to me and vice versa, also covers this subject in depth. He peruses the thought that while the English language is a living breathing beast, and therefore ever evolving as it should, the rate of change of late could mean that in the near future it could become unintelligible ie: we won’t understand what another person is saying! A sort of Towel of Babel effect is my own interpretation.

So we would be right back where we started.

Of course many will say that “text speak’ has contributed to most of this. Younger generations have always had a language that was designed I suspect to infuriate their elders (as they didn’t understand it) and also be used to pass on secret messages. So what did “lashings of ginger ale” REALLY mean to Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy the Dog, Could it have been “Quick Timmy, go and round up the baddies at Smuggler’s Cove while we break into Uncle Quentin’s secret Grandfather Port supply”. We’ll never know.

While I do agree text speak has contributed some of the downgrade of the use of the language, I think that this been primarily caused by carrying it over into everyday speech. Shorthand, little used these days I imagine, is a form of text speak, but the purveyors of the art wouldn’t dream of talking to others using it. Not that I am sure you can.

An interview on the radio last week with June Dally-Watkins, the doyen of good manners and taste, did blame it partly for the increase in bad manners however, by suggesting as people didn’t talk face-to-face as much as they used to, many didn’t know how to behave properly in the company of others.

Interesting thought that.

But it is not a new phenomena. Why does a generation always think it invented something? I can remember in the early 70s, watching an episode on TV of Z Cars, one of the early cop shows from the UK. The baddies were Geordies (from Newcastle) so they couldn’t be understood anyway, but they also had their own form of slang to thwart the plod’s investigations. When they finally heard those fateful words, “you’re nicked”, the senior detective said something along the lines of “you thought I couldn’t understand you didn’t you. Well ….” and then proceeded to launch into a two minute Geordie slang fest that was pure cinema. Without taking a breath.

A magic TV moment.

What was the name though?

The Three ‘R’s of driving and a stupid petition

I see once again that someone is calling for P Platers to be banned from driving high powered cars. This latest stems from a crash (I never say accident) on the Mitchell Freeway south of Perth in July last year. A 19 yo was apparently racing others in a turbocharged Nissan 180SX when he lost control on the wet road and had the bonnet bone of the Nissan connect with the trunk bone of a bloody big tree.

His girlfriend of 2 months was in the passenger seat and later died of injuries. The police estimated he was doing 130 km/h (30 km/h over the limit) at the time.

Well unless I am missing something, 130 km/h in a Nissan 180SX is exactly the same speed as 130 km/h in a Daihatsu Sirion or other similar car with little puff. So the fact the Nissan was ‘high powered’ in this case is neither here nor there. Some would argue that if he was in a Sirion or similar he wouldn’t have raced. Maybe not there and then, but against a yahoo in a similar car he probably would. Testosterone kicks in and the chance to show the girlfriend his brand new Peter Brock gene he’d found that morning while looking in the mirror pretending to shave is too great.

What he DID have was the three ‘R’s. Lack of Respect for his girlfriend, a Really stupid attitude to driving and road safety and finally absolutely no sense of Responsibility.

No number of petitions will get these things fixed in young drivers (and even older ones). The answer is blatantly obvious; driver training and education of the highest standard as against teaching people how to get a licence.

Where have all the pure salespeople gone?

My very first business in life at age 19 was in Perth doing car air-conditioning. I organised deals with a majority of the Holden, Datsun (Nissan) and Chrysler dealers in Perth to supply and fit air-conditioning to new vehicles. There were a few others such as Volvo and some used car yards as well.

Later, I worked out of an office that had varied businesses. My role was flogging car chemicals to service stations but others in the place sold real estate, time share and hardware store and roofing protection products.

During this time, I met many salespeople; real hard core salespeople. The ones everyone loves to hate. One was Bob and the first time I met him, he was selling Encyclopaedia Britannica sets in a shopping centre. I later met him when he joined CBS records where at the time I was the PR manager. Within a week, he had outsold every rep in the country. Wearing a three piece suit when the unofficial “uniform” at the time were Levis, tee shirt and cowboy boots. He made an enormous commission in that time and everyone was in awe of him. And then he quit.

Why? He went back to Encyclopaedia Britannica because there was more money in it.

Another was Stewart. He was selling time share land in Vanuatu – Taveuni to be exact. There were units to be built, infrastructure to be created so all that was there to sell was the blocks of land. There was nothing else there. Stewart made enough money in the first week to buy a new car.

When I ran the Tandy Computer Centre in Subiaco in WA, (this is pre IBM PC days) we had a vacancy for a rep. An affable and very likeable Irish guy, Peter, applied for the job. His background was in the tyre trade but he had that ‘something’. And boy, he had it in spades! In the first month, he made a small fortune, knowing nothing whatsoever about computers. Nothing.

He then quit, going back to Bridgestone. More money apparently.

These guys were pure salespeople. They weren’t after “strategic alliances” or “partnerships”. Or any other current buzzword that seems to be around today. They wanted to sell. And make a commission.

They didn’t wear white shoes, have gold necklaces and shirts open to the navel. They were simply absolute professionals.

So where have they all gone, these people whose mantra is “sell, sell, sell”. Buggered if I know. I wish I did.

These three mentioned were not ‘spivs’ or sharks or charlatans. They were all family men, with wives, children and mortgages. But they treated selling as a profession and an art. It was an honourable profession. As long as what they sold the customer was happy with, then all was right with the world.

Likewise, of all the car salespeople I met in my time in my car air-conditioning business, while there were a few shonkies, they didn’t last long as having a bad reputation – and in that trade news from an unhappy customer travels very fast – was death. After all, a new car dealership wants you to come back, not just to buy your next car, but for where the real money is in service and parts!

These days I run a publishing business. So in this game, my sales are advertising based. If you are, or know of a good, red hot, top notch advertising, freelance sales person who has a track record and wants to make a serious quid in new media, get in touch or let me know.

Please!