If you haven’t heard about them, I’m gonna be talking about The Chaser Team. The comedians that have bought greate Aussie comedy to our screens, including CNNNN, The Chaser Decides and most recently The Chasers War on Everything.

I’m a big fan of the Chaser. They’re politcal satire and comedy skits are fantastic. Willing to test the boundaries no other show, or no other TV Network is willing to go. Every other TV network has to keep their sponsors happy, not the viewers. The Chaser being on the ABC means they’re given almost a leash free run, well I must stress almost.

In 2007, The Chaser Team made international headlines when they successfully breached APEC Security in Sydney Australia, by pretending to be a Canadian Motorcade. The NSW Police let them through the biggest security operation in the nations history, without a single check. It wasn’t until the motorcade got meters from trained snipers on then President George W Bush’s hotel, that the Chaser executive producer (Julian Morrow) decided to turn the motorcade around.

In 2008, The Chaser team took a year off the air to go around the country with their live show. Now back on TV screens in 2009, the second episode of the season has got the show into hot water. There was a national outcry when a skit targeted seriously sick children. The skit, made the point that terminally sick kids in hospital should not have celebrity wishes, or things happen for them, because they were “going to die anyway”.

Although I can see why there would be such a reaction to the skit, I think people need to step back, and stop be so fucking self obsessed. The Chaser is a satirical comedy show. Not everything in the show is meant to be taken literally! There’s so much political correctness and people bitching that now, Australian TV will miss out on 2 weeks of the TV show, because the ABC has suspended it.

If you can’t take a joke, then don’t bitch about it and ruin it for the people that are actually smart enough to see the Chaser for what it is. A satire! Meant to evoke emotions.

The Chasers website has been taken offline, and now displays an appology that reads:

A message from The Chaser team.

We want to make an apology for a sketch we created called “The Make a Realistic Wish Foundation”.

We’ve just heard from the ABC that they’re suspending the show for 2 weeks. We were keen to keep making the show, so we’re disappointed by the decision, and we don’t agree with it.

But that aside, we’d like to apologise. The piece was a very black sketch. Obviously too black. And we’re really sorry for the significant pain and anger we have caused.

Many people have asked how could we possibly think a sketch like that should go to air. We realize in hindsight that we shouldn’t have done it. We never imagined that the sketch would be taken literally. We don’t think sick kids are greedy and we don’t think the Make a Wish Foundation deserves anything other than praise. It was meant to be so over-the-top that no one would ever take it seriously.

But we now understand the sketch didn’t come across as intended, and we take full responsibility for that. Now we’ve seen the impact of the piece we wish we’d thought it through better. There was no value in it that justifies the impact it’s clearly had on people whose grief or trauma is so great already. We should have considered that. We got it wrong. We’re sorry.

We’ll be making no further comment at this time.

Coincidentally, we had planned to use this long weekend to refresh our website at the conclusion of some redesign work, and it will be back online in a few days’ time.

Lets hope the Chaser’s war on everything survives this ’shitstorm’ to battle another day!

The Chaser has my full support, and I hope the winging people in this country can learn to take a joke, and get over it. If you can’t laugh at yourselves, then you can’t enjoy life.

Coming off the highly successful Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the highly anticipated sequal. Although we’re not sure if it will be called Call of Duty 6, Modern Warfare 2 looks fantastic.

COD4 was the highest played first person shooter game in 2007 when it was released, and one of the best selling. At January 2008, over 10 million copies had been sold.

Modern Warfare 2, like the name suggests, will not be the typical World War 2 genre game, like the other Call of Duty series games. Similar game play to COD4 looks present. The game goes on sale globally on the 10th of November. If you’re in Australia, you should be able to pre-order the game. Electronics Boutique (EB) have the game cases up in the ‘coming soon’ section, while JB Hi Fi are advertising pre-orders in the store.

I beleive this game launch could be one of the biggest game launches. If you can, I would recommend pre-ordering the game. I’ve never been one for camping outside a store for a game launch, but I must admit that I can’t wait for November 10, and will be eagerly out the front of the store I decide to pre-order from, going to play the game as early as I can.

Inifinity Ward have been releasing ‘teaser trailers’ for some time, but they’ve finally put a proper one, giving much more of an insight into the game at their website, http://modernwarfare2.infinityward.com

They’ve also released the trailer on YouTube, which I’ve posted here.

Are you a lover of chocolate? Then you’ll undoubtley know the brand of Cadbury. The owners of A glass and a half Produdctions, who’ve made those highly popular (and I bet revenue raising) advertisements including The Cadbury Gorilla, and The Cadbury Eyebrows.

Like the famous movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, there’s something magical happening at the Cadbury factory. The magicians who work there, have been able to re-design the packaging of their product, in such a way, that they can now reduce the amount of chocolate they have to put in each block by 20%.

Product downsizing is nothing new, especially in Australia. Only recently, Smiths Chips came under fire, after giving Twisties a new packaging, which reduced the size by 10%.

All of this is becoming a growing trend. Instead of marking up retail prices, company’s are cutting back our portions. All of course without telling us.

An Australian YouTube user, posted a video demonstrating how sneaky the Cadbury portion size reduction has been. Just excuse the acted and scripted ‘random public reactions’ in the video

Borat, or it’s official movie name, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for make benifit for glorous nation of Kazakstan was a great success from Sacha Baren Cohen, who also created UK gangster Ali G.

Continuing with the 3 characters he created during his hit TV Show, Da Ali G Show, Cohen’s next movie will be starring Bruno, the all gay Austrian fashion guru. And a lot like Borat, it looks fantastic.

Here’s a restricted trailer. The movie is expected to be out early July for Australians.

March 17, or March 18 for fellow Aussies was the day Apple announced it’s new iPhone 3G firmware update, 3.0. This will be the best firmware update for the iPhone! Coming in late June 2009, the update will be free for all iPhone users (first gen and 3G), and $10 for iPod Touch users.

There’s pleanty to be excited about, here’s the highlights coming:

• Cut and Pate - yes it’s officially coming
• Landscape keyboard for SMS, e-mail etc.
• MMS - now all those iPhone haters wont be able to use this against us!
• Tethering - use your iPhone as a modem for your laptop
• In App purchases - play games like The Sims and buy things inside the game like clothes etc.
• Bluetooth gaming - play your friends in one on one multiplayer games through bluetooth
• Stereo Bluetooth - listen to music wirelessly in stereo.
• Accessory Support - there opening up the framework to enable accessories, such as blood pressure readers, and glucose level counters to interact with the iPhone.
• A new search screen, allowing you to search through messages, phone calls, and everything on your phone, from the one screen.

But probably the biggest announcment out of all this. is turn by turn GPS. which will turn your iPod, Phone, PDA, and scedule system to an all in one gadget that will allow you to do almost anything you could dream it could do.

This will also give the iPhone some more advantage over the competition that is coming out. Phones similar to the iPhone, called ‘iPhone killers’, are being launched by phone companies such as Nokia and Samsung, in an effort to outdo the iPhone, and regain market share.

The firmware is currently in beta, and can be downloaded if you have a developers account at Apple. Otherwise, the firmware will be released for Summer in the US (winter in the other half of the world), with the launch expected to be around late June or early July.

This week has been a shocking week for Melbourne. We’ve had over 40 decrees heat for over three days, and is apparently a once in a century heatwave.

What is most shocking from this week though, is the murder of a four-year-old girl, Darcy Iris Freeman by her father, who threw her off the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne.

On Thursday morning, in peak hour traffic around 9:30am, a white Toyota Landcruiser stopped on the Westgate Bridge. The driver got out of his vehicle, and around to the passenger side of the car, where he opened the door, grabbed the defenseless girl, and without any care, dropped her over the edge, falling over 80 meters.

Frantic calls to 000 had the Water Police grabbing Darcy out of the water within 10 minutes, and paramedics tried to revive her for over 50 minutes, before she was airlifted to the Royal Childrens Hospital. She later died around 1.00pm that day with her mother by her bedside.

The Westgate Bridge has been notorious for people jumping off the bridge for suicides, but the Victorian Government has been ‘putting off’ installing safety barriers, which would prevent people from being able to jump off the bridge, for years.

It is extremely sad to think, that once again it takes someone to loose their life, before the Governments in this country take action. The government should have installed these barriers years ago when they were looked into. Now that poor Darcy has lost her life, we’re being told that the Government has been sitting on their hands, and only now will they fast-track the project.

A project, that if done when it should have been done, could still mean Darcy could be alive to day, and have gone to her first days of school this week. My condolences go out to the family and mother of Darcy, it is a shame that she touched this great city in such a tragic way.

Lets hope that the trial of her father goes ahead, and he doesn’t get off lightly due to “mental instability” or insanity.

On Thursday night, Facebook groups were created against the father, with many people demanding the death penalty, and showing no mercy towards the father. Before the day of the tradgedy, more than 2000 people joined the group ‘The bastard that threw his child off the west gate bridge should be hung‘, that number has now risen to over 5000, and the creator of the group has marked the group for deletion, out of respect for the family.

There are also over 25,000 people who have joined a group for Darcy, ♥ RIP 4yo Darcey Iris Freeman ♥ Westgate Bridge Tragedy 29.1.09

Today, browsing the forums over at Whirlpool, I came accross an interesting iPhone webapp, which allows you to view how much of your iPhone cap you’ve used.

This is far superior to the Optus websites ‘My Usage’ facillity. The webapp, which is made by Corra Communications, is built using iUI, and PHP. The webapp is completly free, and is much easier to guage how much of your cap you have left.

Although not all Optus rates and plans are supported, the developer has made the system get your live data from the Optus website.

If you’ve got an iPhone, and are on Optus, I strongly suggest you take a look. You’ll need to register for a ‘Optus MyAccount’, from their website. I suggest you follow these instructions:

1. Create a MyAccount on the Optus website here
2. You will need to add your mobile plan to the Optus MyAccount. On your bill will be an account number, enter this where prompted.
3. You should now be able to view your ‘My Usuage’ on the Optus Website. You can now logout of the Optus website.
4. On your iPhone, go to https://secure.corra.com.au/usage/optus/
5. Accept the agreement, and enter your mobile number, as well as your Optus MyAccount username and password where prompted. It will take a few minutes to ‘fetch’ your usuage data from the Optus website, after this, your usage data will be displayed.

Screenshots courtesy of Lockie on Whirlpool

I’ve got a DNS-323 network storage system at home. I’ve been using it for about 6 months with a Samsung 1TB harddrive in it.

It’s been a great little thing (even smoother when I upgraded the firmware). I’ve been able to install a custom torrent server (MLDonkey) on it, with fun_plug. And I’ve pretty much filled it.

So I bought a new Hard Drive for it today, another 1TB Samsung Harddrive. Put it in the DNS-323 no worries, and it prompted me to format the new disk. “Data on your exisiting harddrive will not be erased”. LIAR

The system formatted the exisiting harddrive, then wanted to format the new one. I suppose its my fault for not looking at the harddrive serial numbers, but if it says the old harddrive wont be erased, why do it? I now have lost all my music, and if I cant recover the files off the harddrive, I’ll have to spend days re-copying my DVD collection to the harddrive.

Like a lot of people this year, me and my mate went to Sexpo, which is run by Club X Adult stores.

Included in your ticket price, is a free DVD on entry. This year, its a DVD called Relish, which contains sample porn movies.

What’s crap about the DVD, is it contains several sample movies, however for the good movies, you have to enter an unlock code. It’s supposed to protect kids from getting the DVD, and watching stuff they shouldn’t be, but when half of the DVD doesn’t need a code, whats the point?

You have to go into a Club X Adult store to get the code. I beleive you could go in while Sexpo was on in your Capital City, November 20ish for Melbourne. Now you have to call or text a 1900 number, pay a huge amount per minute, and give over your drivers license details etc.

Fortunately for you and me, if you have the DVD, one of my mates took it for the team and cracked the code.

(more…)

Get ready for more politics, and more tolls on our roads with the new $38bn transport package John Brumby announced this week.

The plan is being hailed as a overhaul of our roads and public transport infrastrcture, the most the state has seen in over 100 years. It all looks great, and the figures sound very generous of the Victorian Government, but when you read between the lines, and take a step back, something smells a but off.

One of the most important things for myself, living in Mornington will be the Frankston Bypass. The government announced this road, which they plan to be toll free, a few weeks ago. [See my previous blog about this: Scoresby Mark 2: Frankston Bypass]

The state government says that the Frankston Bypass will be toll free, if the Federal Government comes to the party. The Feds are saying that they have received the application from the state government, and it will be assesed based on priorities against the needs of the country. There has been no confirmation from the federal labour government.

This could carry on to the next state election, which lets face it, is all what this is about. Brumby is only Premier by default, after Steve Bracks and John Thwaites stepped asside after the previous election. Now Brumby needs to make a name for himself, and his going to use the same tactics that got the labour party into power nine years ago, promise of free roads, then make them toll roads.

The Victorian Government is “very certain” they will get the federal funding for the Frankston Bypass, but as I’ve picked up, they’re no longer referring to it as the Frankston Bypass, but instead choosing to call it PenisulaLink. Why? I may have a theory. What are the two toll roads called in Victoria? CityLink and EastLink. Conicidence? Or maybe they’re hedging their bets. Who knows, but now we wont find out until the next state election.