Like Seinfeld, this page is about nothing in particular. It's here to host a miscellany of images, sound bites, and any other stuff that I want to make available to online friends -- and that's about as far as the "mission statement" goes.

Competing in a "talent" competition on an Adelaide radio station, and armed with just a guitar and a versatile voice, contestant Gerry gives hilarious, realistic-sounding renditions of how Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, John Farnham, Kermit the Frog and Midnight Oil (Peter Garrett) might interpret Baa Baa Black Sheep. Hearing is believing! (MP3 file, 2.3MB)


News websites requiring registration

Isn't it a pain in the arse when someone on a bulletin board posts a link to an article on a news website, and when you go to check it out, you run into a login wall because it's a registration-only site -- and the poster neglected to mention that little obstacle? If you're like me, you probably think "bugger that for a joke" and forget about it, because it's not worth all the mucking around of filling out a personal details form, choosing a login id and password, waiting for the confirmation email back from the website, yada yada yada ... just to read one measly article from a newspaper that you might never have heard of before, and mightn't have occasion to visit again.

Fortunately, as more and more news websites choose to adopt the "registration virus" (even though they're still free to access), help is at hand at BugMeNot. BugMeNot is a free and instantly accessible site -- no signup required -- where anyone can donate or retrieve a working login id and password to a free registration-only site. BugMeNot will only accept donations of accounts for free sites -- it is expressly forbidden to donate accounts for pay sites. Of course, any account information retrieved from BugMeNot is on an "as is" basis. There are no guarantees, for instance, that what you retrieve will work; however, there may be more than one account available for the more popular websites.

The way I see it, if you're going to be a regular reader of a free news website, then you might as well register properly, anyway, if it genuinely helps them to screw more money out of their advertisers to provide a better site. If you're feeling reasonably ethical, you can still give them valid generic demographic information about yourself -- while not giving personally-identifying information like your real name or address -- and you can give them your spam-special Hotmail address to send their "offers" and "promotions" to. But if you're just making an ad hoc visit to a registration-only site to read an article that someone else has linked to -- well, wouldn't you be doing that site's owners a favour by using a BugMeNot account for the occasion, rather than distorting their reader database with additional and probably fictitious demographic "information" about a one-off visitor to their site?


The biggest dill in Australia

If you've ever woken up to a bad-IQ day, take heart -- there's always someone worse off than yourself. The evidence has been captured in a sound bite of the biggest dill in Australia struggling to win a prize in a phone-in competition on a Sydney radio station. Have a listen (WAV file, 846KB) -- you won't be disappointed!


Voting for kids

What those "Voting for kids" bumper stickers really mean.


Web-safe colour charts

Do you happen to design your own website or home page, and, if you do, are you still anal-retentive about using "web-safe" colours? If so, you might like one of these (also available in a less-cluttered hex-only version).


Media cupboard

The find-it-yourself cupboard of images and sound bites on this site (including the original moomobile, how to massage a pussy, the versatility of the f-word, etc.).