I’ve had a reply from the ABC saying they don’t have the rights to show the Thames Jubilee Flotilla live!

They’ll be showing a delayed program at 6pm on Monday 4 June, but it’ll obviously only be edited highlights and if it’s on ABC1 it will only be in standard definition.

I can’t believe it. This will be an event which has not been seen since the 17th century in the times of Charles I and will never be seen again in our lifetimes, yet we won’t be able to see it live or in full.

It’s like saying that a manned landing will be occurring on Mars next month but we won’t be able to watch it due to rights, or costs, or lack of demand.

The BBC will be covering it in full in hi-def, so there will be a feed available. So where can we see it? I don’t know and I can’t seem to find out. So disappointing. We can get the live web feed but I doubt it will work for me on my limited bandwidth connection. So disappointing.

I hope I’m mistaken and if I am, I’ll happily correct my comments.

PS to below: I’ve searched the ABC-TV website and according to their program guide, there is NO broadcast of the Thames pageant scheduled on Sunday 3 June!

Naturally I’ve emailed them asking why, but after 48 hours there’s been no reply and I don’t have much hope of satisfaction.

Funny, we’re told repeatedly that Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Australia as well, but we get lower status than Europeans at UK immigration counters, are not allowed to work in the UK even though people from the EU are, and now it seems we won’t get to see this pageant.

I hope I’m wrong, but …

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I’m bloody psychic! I see the future! I’m convinced of it.

Yesterday (Monday) morning I was dreaming just before I awoke and the dream vividly showed a side yard of a house somewhere in a city. In the dream there was a blue painted steel fence above a brick wall and oddly, a crane or something was installing rectangular blue painted steel mesh columns spaced about 2m apart inside the railing fence. Weird, brief, but a very clear dream.

Then last night (Monday, same day) I watched 4 Corners on the Madeleine McCann missing girl in Portugal mystery. In the program they used quite a lengthy shot of – a wall with blue painted steel railings on top! Same blue, similar style!

Coincidence? Pretty strange.

The Thames Jubilee pageant: I’ve found this website Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on USTREAM: Bringing you LIVE broadcasts from aboard Broad Ambition 

I don’t know any more than what you see, but it’s a start. The start time in London will be 1pm, which will be 9pm our (WA) time, Sunday 3 June.I haven’t found any TV broadcast info yet. I’ve searched the ABC’s website but found nothing obvious. I hope they will devote their hi-def channel, News 24, to a full broadcast, free of interruptions until its finish time of 5pm GMT, 1am WA time.

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The RAAF balloon that “crashed”, no, sorry guys, had an unscheduled stop last Thursday, came down in Shardlow Loop Carine. That’s Peter Partridge’s street and he was there. So were nearly the entire suburb after a while, apparently, but it was a pretty unusual event. I briefly saw the balloon in the air but that’s all.

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I was returning from the shops where I was amazed to see, among the biscuits, nuts and sundry groceries, recordable DVDs in Black & Gold packaging! Yes, these ultra hi-tech discs which used to cost a fortune and come in gleaming jewel cases are there in 25 disc spindle packs among the food items.

Then in the newsagent, I saw 1Terabyte USB3 portable hard drives in blister packs for $156 or something, among the rulers, pencils and envelopes. Computers are now sold in Retravision, 8GB USB thumb drives come in double blister packs at the Good Guys where you can buy Mum a wi-fi router for Mothers’ Day… is nothing sacred?!  

What other commodity or service has fallen so far in price than electronics? It’s all due to the cleverness of electronics engineers that this is happening. They never stop finding better, cheaper, faster, easier ways of making electronic products. Would that people in other industries had the same aims and abilities.

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I proudly call myself a precisionista now. If you read Zoltan Kovacs’s articles in Saturday’s West Australian pages, you’ll know what I’m talking about. We used to be satisfied with the label of pedant, but I like the new term better.

Credit ESO

Isn’t that nice? It’s two galaxies colliding somewhere light years away in space, but astronomers have nick-named it Tinkerbell.

Wow, I’ve just read (see here  and here) about the Thames river festival to be held in London on Sunday June 3 for the Queen’s Jubilee. Wow! I wish I could be there. This is the first I’ve heard of it.

The Olympics leave me cold. I’m sure it’ll be great for people who like sport, but crowds, transport, security, not to mention cost mean I wouldn’t go even if I could. But to see a spectacle of royal barges, music, massive peals of bells, fireworks and colour even bigger and better than they used to do it in the 17th century would be near the top of my list of things to do before you die.

As the article says, the procession will take 90 minutes to pass any given spot and will be loud, colourful and best of all, advertising free. It will surpass anything seen in the past 300 years.

I’m sure they’ll be recording it and I’ll line up to buy a BluRay DVD. I hope they do it justice.

PS: Yeah, why don’t I just go? I just checked airfares – Singapore – Paris return for ~$1050. Eurostar to London to avoid the delays at London airports. But I can’t even get my shoes on or walk to the shops these days. Not feasible. Not a hope.

 In the post before this one I said I bought a Lotto ticket on the strength of the PIN chance.

Well, that one didn’t win, but the next one did. Yes, folks, I’m a Lotto winner. Don’t start queueing, though. I won $12.90 (the ticket cost $7.85). I think this is the first time I have ever won anything at Lotto or the lottery.

Aaaaah, I love this cool, still, damp weather. Perth used to be the Windy City. I didn’t like the way the wind was always blowing, gusting, swirling the leaves, bending the branches. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems to me it’s much calmer these days along with less rainfall and warmer temperatures.The climate is changing.

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I did a double take the other day — my supermarket checkout bill was an anagram of my PIN. I’m not going to say what the number was, but I immediately thought, wow, what are the chances of that?

Well, the chances are one in 10,000 of course. Four numbers, four digit PIN. Sooner or later they must come up. BUT, what are the chances of them coming up in the same order as your PIN? Those are different odds. I’m still working it out.

Yes, I bought a Lotto ticket. No, I didn’t win. What are the odds of that?

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A website I visit every day posted this image yesterday:

In the comments section I said, “Best thing about it? The USA is nowhere to be seen. And for once we can see my home town, Perth, Western Australia.”

Being a US website I expected a few sarcastic replies, but instead I got 9 Likes and mine is the most popular comment. Wow.

You can see a 1.2 Giga pixel version at http://gigapan.com/gigapans/103187 It’s pretty interesting.

You may remember the post a few weeks ago (15 March) about the destruction of the trees at the ovals near here. Well, we lost the fight.

At a meeting of Stirling Council last Tuesday, the vote went about 14 to 3 to spend $5 million on a new football club, so nearly all the trees in the photo below will be bulldozed.

One of the things I find most disheartening is that most people don’t care. I mentioned it to my “friends” at the club on Friday night. All I got was blank looks and so-what shrugs. “When did you last walk under those trees, Crofty?” was one response. My turn to say, so what? Whether I use them or not now, plenty of people do. But more importantly, dozens, scores, hundreds of birds do. I’ve been watching them for 25 years.

One of the councillors is quoted as saying, “they build what the community ask for.” The community in this case is the subset of parents who have kids who want to play football. I can’t believe that subset is a majority. It’s more that they have the ear of the council.

It’s not as if they can’t play football now. There’s already a full sized oval and a smaller, but still legal-sized oval, plus a clubroom. But, not content with having 95%, the sporters want 100%, or even 110% by the time they take over the car park area as well for the clubhouse.

I think it’s summed up by a Holden SS ute I saw at the shops yesterday. A big sticker in the back window said, “Don’t like my driving? Call 1-800-EAT SHIT”. How nice.

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How nice to be getting some rain and coolness. I got my March /April electricity account yesterday and it was less than half what I used for the same time last year. That’s because that time last year was hot, hot, hot – 33/34C every day from January right through to May. I was running the aircon nearly every day, whereas I haven’t needed it now for many weeks. Good.

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I drove up the street round the corner from me yesterday and saw a For Sale sign on a house I know to be the home of Cyril, a fellow dog walker who was 92 last time I saw him, which was more than a year ago. I can guess what the for sale sign means, then. He was a widower with only his dog Tina for company and he was very hard of hearing, which made it hard to talk to him much, but … he was a nice bloke. Thick Yorkshire accent. I wonder what’s happened to Tina?

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I just found this on Google Earth this morning:

How about that! It’s a passenger jet flying over London, photographed from above. 

Wow. Take a look at this if you like tricky graphics.

Copyright 2012.  Magnifying the Universe  by Number Sleuth. 

or go here: http://www.numbersleuth.org/universe/

The photo above is the location, I’m pretty sure, where we used to live in an old weatherboard and corrugated-iron roofed house in the early 1950s. It was on the point where the wide sandy path in from the road meets the scrub. I used to walk down that track to the road and wait for the school bus to take me about 6Km in to Bruce Rock for primary school.

It looks now as if nothing was ever there, yet there used to be a stone built shed among the outbuildings. House, sheds, all wiped away. Dad cleared a lot of those paddocks in the picture. He was only in his mid twenties and had never worked the land before. It was hard work.

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Oh, this unrelenting fine weather. Every day, cloudless blue skies, warm temperatures, no rain. Will it never end? Boring.

That’s irony, folks. Saying something as a joke when you mean the opposite. But I’m not sure I do.

In Britain, they’re getting worried because they’re in a bad drought. The forecast is no change for as long as next year. Amazing. Water restrictions, hose bans, crop failures, water courses and lakes drying up. That green and pleasant land could look like here soon. Now they’ll know what it’s like. C’est la vie.

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I’ve been thinking – every year this decade we’ve had a catchy date – 01/01/01; 02/02/02; …. 11/11/11 etc. This year, we’ll have 12/12/12. Then no more for a long time. We can’t have anything like 13/13/13 or any month like we’ve had this dodecade (12 years) for the rest of the century.

Last century, we had 6/6/66; 7/7/77; 8/8/88; 9/9/99 – those are the ones I remember. I suppose we’ll have 2/2/22, 3/3/33 … to go on with. At least, you will. I should see the first, but I doubt I’ll see the second and subsequent. C’est la vie.

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I’ve just taken some boxer shorts out of the washing machine to the line, and a brand new pair, worn and washed once, has pulled a thread and virtually fallen apart. I have to buy these K-Mart shorts to get my size, but the quality is just going down and down. Made in Bangladesh now, and so flimsy you can see through the cotton. I had a choice of exactly two. I complained about the scarcity and they said, yes, we don’t have much stock, try Target. Big help.

I may have to get a supply tailored for me in Bali!

Bugger, bugger, … bugger.

I got a letter yesterday marked O.H.M.S.* What’s this, I thought. Well, it was a nice note from the police with a speeding fine notice. There was my car in the picture, 47Km/h in a 40Km/h zone.

First time in over 47 years of driving!! I can’t deny it … I remember it clearly. I saw the 40 school zone sign before I entered the roundabout but another car distracted me and I immediately forgot. Not a human being, let alone a child, in sight, mind you. $75 fine but no demerit points, thank goodness.

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