Singapore. Beautiful photo. Not mine! I wish it was. From the Guardian.

A bit of winter today, but I can take this, no trouble at all. It’s about 17degC and intermittent rain, but with blue sky breaks. My only concession to winter is that I wear a wind cheater instead of a T-shirt (not as well as). Otherwise it’s shorts and sandals as usual. I don’t feel the cold. Bah!

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Well, Western Australia (WA) is now virtually Covid-19 free, and free of social distancing restrictions. As of midnight last Saturday, everything’s open again, bars, nightclubs, restaurants. I’ve just made a booking for tomorrow in my local restaurant and I asked about 2sq. m rules. She said leave it to them, they have the tables separated as required.

I also heard on the news that WA now has no virus cases in hospitals. That’s pretty reassuring. Some people get blasé and think restrictions, checking-in and mask wearing are infringements on their personal rights, but what about the rights of hospital staff, the ambos, nurses and doctors who are in mortal danger attending a Covid-19 sick patient.

The leader of the “Liberal” (actually, conservative) Party, Liza Harvey, is being very vocal about how we should be opening up our borders because it’s so bad for businesses. Businesses? They take priority over people’s safety? It would only take one person entering the state to be a carrier without symptoms to restart the virus here. She’d see the state locked down again and her beloved businesses would suffer even more. She’s a mad woman! She’s way out of step with the public and even with her own party. It’s good, as far as I’m concerned. I want to see the Liberals lose the next election as badly as they lost the last one.

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By the way, some people have been getting on their high horses, complaining about having to leave their name, address and phone number at restaurants, saying it’s an invasion of their privacy. People can look and see your number and address. What?! First, if you feel the need to be private, don’t go out in public, then. Simple.

But secondly, it’s only a few years ago that we had paper phone directories, remember them? There, for anyone to browse, was your name, address and phone number. If it didn’t bother you then, why are you so paranoid now? Ridiculous.

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I’ve been running the CovidSafe app on my phone since May when the federal government implored us all to install it. I wasn’t worried about being “tracked”.

But yesterday I uninstalled it after i read a report that said not one example had been traced since the app was introduced. Not a single use has been made of it, despite over 6m downloads and installations. The government paid some company over $1m for that! It’s useless!

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This government spends money as if it were water on things that concern them, such as prosecuting journalists and pursuing court cases on whistleblowers, yet they’re cutting funding for science and technology ( the CSIRO, just when we need it ), Tech Colleges, Universities, schools, hospitals, you name it.

Yet they’ve just announced (quietly) $200bn on new defence equipment. Two hundred billion dollars! On equipment that will go obsolete before it’s ever used for its purpose. Or more likely, will be frittered away in bungled contracts for massively overpriced equipment, or equipment that’s never delivered. The record of the Department of Defence is literally criminal. Do a bit of googling and you’ll find all the scandals going back decades of HUGE mistakes costing $billions. Like buying obsolete helicopters for the Navy that were so defective they were never put into service and are just stored away somewhere! It’s sickening. No-one was ever held to public account for this blunder. It’s such a blunder that you have to ask, just why was the decision made. I think the answer’s obvious. Some official or public servant suddenly became very rich.

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I mentioned that I lost my internet connection last Tuesday, and it came back, mysteriously, almost exactly 24hrs later. It’s stayed OK so I though it was just one of those things.

But after the iiNet support guy got me to go through the wi-fi modem settings, I’ve discovered that although my desktop PC is connected OK, because it uses a cabled connection, none of my other wi-fi devices will work. That’s the laptop on my dining table, my landline phone, my hand phone and Netflix via my Panasonic HD Recorder.

I’ve tried everything I can think of with no result. Grrrrrrrrr!PS: 17.30 – add my car GPS to the list. It won’t connect either, but at least it’s telling me why – very weak wi-fi signal. This is the answer – the wi-fi modem just ain’t putting out any wi, fi or not. My desktop PC works because it doesn’t use wi-fi, it uses LAN cable. OK, that’s progress. I might be able to fix this myself.

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Bloody iiNet. I’ve just had a call from them to tell me that they’ve cancelled a visit from a tech as they consider the problem fixed. Not so fast, I said, and told him of this new problem. Oh, he said, well please call support and tell them. Goodbye.

So now I’m in for another difficult support call with low level phone line, heavy accents and satellite delays from South Africa. Bloody iiNet. They used to be the best in the business, Perth based, but once the Perth owner sold out to TPG it’s all gone down the drain. I’m going to have to change ISP.

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I spent nearly two hours carefully cutting a 24mm x 12mm rectangular hole in my car’s plastic “woodgrain” radio fascia yesterday, to fit a USB socket.

This is for a USB lead to the back of the Pioneer AV unit I’m installing. It went OK although I wish it was a little bit angled left, if ya know what ah mean. Just for the visual effect. It worked fine. I have a small engraving tool with abrasive steel bits and I used a conical bit (with a sharp end) to smooth the cuts and get into the corners. I had to work very carefully as I didn’t want to make any mistakes.

It’s nearly ready to go into place in the car as soon as I can get the wiring harness sorted:

Mitsubishi car connector on the left, Pioneer radio plug on the right. You can’t buy a ready made adapter. In theory, joining all the wires of the same colours should do the trick.

Trouble is, I’ve got a couple of wires that don’t match. Lucky I’m not charging by the hour, because I’ve spent hours poring over the wiring diagrams (literally with a magnifying glass as the print is so fine). I’ve done this before and it should work, but I’m always a little nervous that there’ll be a puff of smoke and something will be damaged. Nah, she’ll be right, mate (that good Aussie expression). 🙂

STOP PRESS: I’ve found a pre-made wiring set on-line, from a shop just up the road, so I went out and bought it. It cost about $39 but at least it’s plug and play. It should just work.

The difference with this installation is that it’s a DAB+ radio (that’s why I bought it) and the antenna is for VHF reception around 170MHz. The antenna is a stick-on type on the inside of the windscreen on the passenger side, which means a fine coaxial cable has to be poked down the A pillar and behind the dash to reach the centre console. I’m not sure of my dexterity to do that. We’ll see, to use a Trumpism.

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I’ve just seen a US female comedian doing a routine where she imitates Trump’s voice with her own mouth. It looks as ridiculous as he sounds. The man is illiterate, incoherent, imbecilic, uneducated, ignorant and racist.

When you put together Trump, Bo-Jo Johnson, Bolsonaro, Kim Jong Un, Putin and a few other hard right wing repressive loonies in power now, then add in the Covid-19 pandemic and runaway climate change……… It makes you wonder what else can go wrong. I shudder to think.