Apple delivers again

So Steve Jobs is off for medical reasons again...

A little known feature of the iPhone is the built in genetic sampler. Each person who swipes their finger over the screen gets their genetic code read and sent back to Apple's HQ. There it is compared with that of Steve Jobs'.

Nobody reads software licenses, they just accept them. Someone out there has already received that special message from Steve, having accepted it before they even received it in their inbox. It reads "Give me your liver."

The sad thing is, they'll probably feel that warm inner glow of an Apple user even as the knife goes in, smug in their certainty that Apple knows best and that surely it doesn't matter if they are missing a liver, there'll be an app for that.

They have no choice.

That's why I use Android.

Update: I posted this in another (non Apple) forum and had my post very quickly deleted by a moderator. Proof  (in my own mind) that the Church of Apple brooks no blasphemers and certainly lacks a sense of humour when it comes to their pro[fi|phe]t. I'm laughing at them now. :)

100 Famous Views of Edo

While browsing the Kinokuniya bookshop in Sydney I was taken with the Taschen publication of Hiroshige's 100 Famous Views of Edo. These are gorgeous woodblock prints of famous sights in Edo (now Tokyo) during the mid 1800's. You can see poorer quality copies of the 100 views online along with his other works (above image courtesy of the site).

Floods and fire

Seventy five percent of Queensland is currently flood affected. That's a staggering amount. The footage of the torrents of water that passed through Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley is terrifying and my heart goes out to those who have experienced loss.

I have family up in Central Queensland. My sister in Rockhampton has told me that she's not directly affected and my Mum's major problem is that the airport is shut and she can't return from her holiday in Sydney! I've not been in Rocky during a major flood, managing to just escape on possibly the last flight during the 1991 event.

Flooding has not just been restricted to Queensland. Some of the regions we passed through during our post Christmas trip to Melbourne had seen the Murrumbidgee and other rivers break their banks, leave fences filled with debris and pools of water where none usually sit.

It's difficult to believe how the country was only just gripped by a huge drought, but these cycles of drought and flood are common in Australia. 2009's Black Saturday bushfires and dust storm in Sydney were eerily familiar from living in Melbourne during 1983. The summer of 1983-84 saw flooding in Victoria and probably elsewhere. I can remember that we couldn't retrieve our caravan from storage near Geelong because the Werribee river was flooded, blocking our route.

It's the cycle of El Nino and La Nina and it's part of Australia's (and the world's) climate. In my relatively short lifetime it feels like good farming conditions are an aberration rather than the norm and that farmers need to plan for the tough years rather than relying on assistance with an expectation of good conditions. The good farmers already do, I'm sure.

The scary thing is climate change causing more frequent extreme weather events and the climate seeks a new equilibrium (a dynamic one at that). Furthermore, more atmospheric heat means greater energy pumped into the system. Be prepared and be scared!