topicalhuman.com

Om Malik points out that one of the very best cricketers ever is podcasting! Sunil Gavaskar seems to be a media saavy guy. He was a player I always looked forward to watching whenever Australia played India, as he played alongside other Indian greats such as Kapil Dev.

I also want to weigh in on the ‘Darrell Hair Affair’ (read some of the background here, here and here).

There has been suggestion, even in mainstream media in Pakistan, that Hair’s interpretation was motivated by racism. Some have come out and said that he is being far too harsh in his interpretation. And then he has been criticised for his subsequent offer to resign with compensation.

This all strikes me as greatly unfair to a very good servant and umpire of the game. The racism angle is just plain ridiculous. I think he has every right, in fact an obligation, to be strict in his application of the rules of the game. And let’s not forget that Hair didn’t act alone - another quality umpire, Billy Doctrove also agreed, supported and executed the course of action at the Oval late last month with Hair.

Moreover, I think that he had every right to make what is really quite a fair offer to stand down to avoid any possible tarnish to the image of the game he obviously loves. Malcolm Speed  deserves a kick in the pants for leaking what was a private communication, and for not supporting his umpires. What sort of message does that send to the other umpires - “Next time one of the players gets really sooky, you’d better let them have their way”?

Anyway, I’m starting to rant - in a nutshell I think he did the right thing (ball tampering is a blight on the game), and deserves better treatment from players, the media, and especially the people at the ICC.

My brother Ben has a couple of recent posts that are inteesting in a technical sense. He points to Speedtest, a tool that allows actual testing of the speed of your internet connection. He also posts about using dual monitors under Microsoft Vista’s Terminal Services Client.

I have a question for Ben though, and that is why can’t I seem to leave comments? Have you disabled them, or am I just not seeing the link?

Mainly for my own (future) reference, I wanted to record the link to www.dnsstuff.com, a site that seems to have all sorts of neat tools for testing lots of, well, DNS stuff!

My goodness. In what has been a bad week for iconic Australians, it seems that another has died in tragic circumstances.

The Townsville Bulletin is reporting that Peter Brock, the legendary racing car driver, has died in a Rally in Western Australia.

Well, it is around 5:00am in the morning, and I’m not in bed. Why? Because my Mum leaves on a flight to Seoul, South Korea, today to begin her job there at one of the universities.

This is a big day for her and for my brothers and sisters and I. We may not see her for another 12 months. I’ll miss you Mum!

Well, it is sadly the case that Steve Irwin is dead. I guess the silver lining here is that he apparently died doing what loved so much - being in the middle of nature, filming his adventures for his millions of fans to enjoy. I’d hardly describe myself as a fan of his, but it is sad to see anyone die in their prime.

Perhaps that is why the death of another influential, albeit less celebrated, Australian hasn’t gathered the same swell of media attention. One of my favourite authors of all-time was Colin Thiele, the man who penned Storm Boy and Blue Fin among many others. These two books, and the film adaptation of Storm Boy were favourites of mine as a kid, and they stand out because they have never lost their appeal to me. I’m sure many, many other people feel the same way.

Colin Thiele died yesterday due to heart complications - he was 85 years old.

I’ve just been told that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has died! A report from what appears to be a credible source can be found here.

I have a friend that works at Australia Zoo, so I’m going to see if I can get hold of him to check if this is real or not.

Crikey!

[Understandably, the links above are getting hammered right now.]