SPIDERS moved up my list with each listen, and before I knew it I was playing it every day. I think it’s the vocal performance of the year and I’m surprised that it hasn’t had the same attention as other songs on the album . 
 It’s my favourite of Lola Young’s songs (ahead of Messy from last year and Conceited from 2023 ). 
 
 
 
…
A superb song from Chappell Roan with bonus points to Haute & Freddy with two entries (the only songs they have released to date). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chappell Roan - Good Luck, Babe! 
 
 
 
 Chappell Roan - Good Luck, Babe! 
 Haute & Freddy - Anti-Superstar 
 Polish Club - How Dare You Fall In Love In This City…
The Last Dinner Party is a revelation. I don’t think I’ve picked three songs from the same group since Chvrches way back in 2013 . 
 Many thanks to my love for introducing me to them and Lola Young. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Last Dinner Party - Nothing Matters 
 

After last year’s hiatus I’m back with ninety minutes of Twenty Twenty-Two. Some movie-length Matt-music. 
 Yeah, there are a lot of similar sounds here. I’m consistent. 
 
 The Beths - Silence is Golden 
 Death Cab for Cutie - Here to Forever 
 Wet Leg - Angelica 
 Future Islands - King of Sweden 
 Wet Leg - Ur Mum 
 Teen Jesus and the Jean…
Eligibility: Shows were considered if part of their first (or only) season aired for the first time in 2020. Other great shows that aired later seasons in 2020 were not included (Bojack Horseman, Better Call Saul, Ramy, What We Do In The Shadows, Rick and Morty) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Atticus and Leti 
 

Only fifteen songs this year. A lot of good but often depressing music was made given that it was 2020, and I’ve limited this to songs that excite me whenever I hear them. 
 
 Inara George, Dave Grohl - Sex in Cars: Road Angel Project 
 Perfume Genius - On the Floor 
 Julia Stone - Break 
 Bombay Bicycle Club - Is It Real? 
 Cardioid - Old Records 
 Sharon Van…
Top tracks from the Twenty Tens. A bit inconsistent with my annual lists, some songs didn’t age well. Or I didn’t. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 'If you never see 'em coming, you'll never have to hide' 
 
 
 
 Perfume Genius - Slip Away 
 Death Cab for Cutie - Gold Rush 
 Mitski - Your Best American Girl 
…
Eligibility: Only seasons that aired in this timeframe are considered. For example, The Office (US) is one of the best-ever comedies, but its great seasons aired in the previous decade. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 A little ditty, BoJack & Diane 
 
 
 
 BoJack Horseman 
 Mad Men 
 30 Rock 
 Fargo 
 Veep 
 The…
Twenty-five top tracks of Twenty-Nineteen. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Death Cab For Cutie - The Blue EP 
 
 
 
 Death Cab for Cutie - To The Ground 
 Angel Olsen - Lark 
 Holy Holy - Teach Me About Dying 
 Big Thief - UFOF 
 Billie Eilish - bad guy 
 Julia Jacklin - You Were Right 
 FKA twigs - sad day…
I’ve only picked twenty songs for my list this year. There were some gems that I really enjoyed, but a lot fewer than in recent years. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Childish Gambino - This is America 
 
 
 
 Childish Gambino - This Is America 
 The 1975 - Give Yourself A Try 
 Janelle Monáe - Make Me Feel 
 Death…
Majority government 
 The major parties, business groups, and elements of the media have convinced the electorate that majority government is vital. In 2006 Labor won 14 seats by playing the line that only they could win majority government. This year, the Liberal Party has won 13 (possibly 14) seats, by selling the same message. 
 Of course, the communication of issues and policies has an…
Many amazing tracks have been missed, as always. My favourite songs are the ones I can listen to over and over again. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 David Le'aupepe of Gang of Youths, taken by Bruce from Sydney via Wikimedia Commons 
 
 
 
 Gang of Youths - Let Me Down Easy 
 Perfume Genius - Slip Away 
 Phoebe Bridgers -…
Today’s high-definition slo-mo replays put umpires under significant pressure to make the correct call. In earlier times, players and barrackers might get upset about a perceived bad call but had no proof to point to, and having a tough decision go against you was acknowledged as the luck of the game. 
 Now that proof is readily available for any incorrect call, the AFL has responded by…
If you have an online gambling account that hasn’t been closed or severely restricted, the company believes you are a loser, and is treating you like a mug. 
 
 Update Sep 2022: Well, this pop-culture reference has dated pretty badly. As all good jokes are better when explained - Travis Fimmel is an actor who was on popular TV show Vikings . Online betting company Bet365 had him…

 
 
 
 
 
 Mitski - Puberty 2 album 
 
 
 
 Mitski - Your Best American Girl 
 Har Mar Superstar - I Hope 
 Margaret Glaspy - You and I 
 Radiohead - Burn the Witch 
 Lucy Dacus - I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore 
 Miike Snow - Genghis Khan 
 ANOHNI - Drone Bomb Me 
 D.D Dumbo - Walrus…
When people used paper to manage their workplace footy tipping competitions they needed a simple method to decide tiebreakers. The closest guess to the margin of the round’s blockbuster game was usually the way to sort end-of-week results, and this was sometimes used cumulatively to sort end-of-season results. 
 Many online competitions follow this tradition and still use the same method…
The Anzac Day addresses of the late Peter Underwood , former Governor of Tasmania, are among the most thoughtful and important speeches made on Australia’s commemoration of war and its effects. 
 Friday, 25th April 2014 
 Thursday, 25th April 2013 
 Wednesday, 25th April 2012 
 Monday, 25th April 2011 
 Sunday, 25th April 2010 
 These were once available on the…
My top thirty tracks of the year that aren’t on the Hamilton recording. 
 Spotify playlist 
 YouTube playlist 
 
 
 Loading ... 
 
 

 Starts with my top ten for Hottest 100 purposes, the rest are ordered by (Spotify) track length. This year I restricted myself to one track per artist in the top ten. Was itching to have more Courtney Barnett, Grimes,…
Content 
 Aside from code snippets as described below, articles on this site are licensed under CC BY 4.0 ( Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 ). 
 Code snippets 
 Unless otherwise specified, original code snippets I provide within articles on this site are covered by The Unlicense . Do what you like with them! 
 Site software 
 The code for the site itself is covered by The MIT…
For some time I’ve used an online service to delete tweets that are more than one week old. I do this because I use Twitter for levity, for throwaway comments and retweets on issues of the day, and I don’t really want those saved for posterity. Thanks to search crawlers and caches I can never be certain that tweets are gone forever, but this is a small step in that direction.
My top thirty tracks of the year. Starts with my top ten, the rest are ordered by (Spotify) track length. 
 Spotify playlist 
 YouTube playlist 
 
 “I’m wearing Win Butler’s hair 
There’s a scalpless singer of a Montreal rock band somewhere 
And he’s all right” 
 
 Jessica Lea Mayfield – Do I Have The Time 
 Röyksopp & Robyn –…
I subscribe to Getflix , which is quite similar to Unblock-Us in that it allows users to access geo-blocked content. The basic method to use these services is to set one’s device to use their provided DNS servers, but this sends all DNS requests their way. I wanted only to use their DNS servers to resolve specific geo-blocked URLs. 
 There are a couple of reasons you might want to do…
Here are my thirty favourite tracks of 2013. I won’t say ‘best’ because that’d suggest knowledge and objectivity. 
 
 Spotify playlist 
 YouTube playlist (some are live recordings rather than the album versions) 
 
 While Parquet Courts' sensational Stoned And Starving is way out on top, Chvrches has eight of the thirty. Their debut - The Bones Of What…

 
 
 
 
 
 The twentieth anniversary of the Hottest 100 inspired a “best of the last twenty years” version, the winners of which were announced last weekend. As always, there was much angst as to what appeared, what didn’t, and where they ranked. As with the “hottest of all time” count from 2009 the the biggest…
This post is pretty much just to shill this tool, since I like it a lot: Dvorak-QWERTY Layout for Windows . 
 I’ve been using a Mac a bit lately and, since I type with the Dvorak layout, I like that Mac OS provides a mixed-mode. This mode reverts the layout to Qwerty only while special keys (Control, Alt, Option etc.) are held down. 
 Although I can touch-type Dvorak, I don’t…
I’ve long wanted to set up my idea of the trinity of home computer hardware, and I finally got around to doing it a couple of months ago. I previously posted about procuring a small server for NAS/backup purposes and mentioned that I had a new mac laptop for general use, and this “steambox” was the final piece of the puzzle.
A recent tech buy was an HP ProLiant N40L MicroServer , which serves as a NAS, a Sick Beard/SABnzbd+/Deluge server, and as a backup server. 
 I’ve added an IcyDock Duo Swap to the 5.25" bay. I use its 3.5" bay for rotating HDD backups, and its 2.5" bay for the system SSD. Having the OS drive in a hotswap bay is pointless, but it kept the case neat. 
 There is a fifth SATA port on the…
I recently bought a MacBook Pro (with ‘Retina’ screen), but when I hooked it up to my Dell U2410 monitor via HDMI cable I was shocked by the poor picture quality. The contrast was all wrong and text was misshapen. No amount of calibration in the monitor or software would fix it. 
 Short answer: OS X thinks my monitor is a TV, and is using the YCbCr colour space rather than RGB. I…
I rarely use the easy-to-reach caps lock key, but I often stretch my little finger to get to the control key. And I never use the scroll lock key. So, in a fit of ergomania I made some changes to the Windows registry. 
 
 scroll lock becomes caps lock 
 caps lock becomes control 
 control is… still control 
 
 I have successfully done this in Windows XP, Vista, and…
At the end of the Olympic Games, people like to play around with medal tallies ordered or weighted in a variety of (dis)interesting ways. Here’s mine: 
 Country has death penalty Gold Silver Bronze No 192 211 254 Yes 110 93 102 
 The part of the world that does not legally kill its citizens is victorious! So, is removing an archaic form of justice the secret to Olympic success?…
This information is for a specific setup of the Acer AspireRevo 3700 with XBMC, but it shows that there is no hardware limitation and may provide hints for achieving the same result with other models and configurations. 
 XBMC 
 Since 2004 my original Xbox has served as a cheap entertainment centre. Until last week it was running XBMC4Xbox , a branch of XBMC that has been built…
So, Chris Judd has won the 2010 Chas Brownlow Trophy , and some people aren’t very happy about it. I reckon this is because they misunderstand what the award is. 
 The Brownlow Medal 
 
 
 is an award given to an AFL player in recognition of a good season. It’s considered to be the highest individual award in the competition, which is more due to its history and status…
Update 2014-02-25: As Marc has said in a comment below , ffmpeg now supports wtv files natively, so the dvr-ms step is unnecessary. I no longer use this process at all so I haven’t updated it, but will leave it here for posterity. 
 I use a PlayStation 3 to watch TV programmes recorded in Windows 7. The media sharing functionality in 7 is much better than in Vista, and it’s quite…
Whenever Australia wins or retains the Ashes , people call for “the urn” to be sent home with the team, believing it to be a trophy. It’s an understandable assumption, but the urn’s history shows that they are incorrect. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Sporting Times 02/09/1882 
 
 
 Most cricket fans know…
For a number of years it was illegal for an Australian to tape the footy and watch it later. At one time it was also illegal to copy music from a CD and onto an iPod. This sort of innocuous activity (known as format-shifting ) was eventually permitted by amendments to the Copyright Act 1968 . Mostly. 
 By Schedule 6, Part 2 of the Copyright Amendment Act 2006 , “Reproducing copyright…
Recently, one of my hard disks ‘disappeared’ from my computer - it was not being detected in the BIOS. It turned out that this was a known issue with my drive, and one for which Seagate had released a firmware update. 
 Unfortunately, the update could only be applied to functioning drives. Seagate will apply the fix to bricked drives for free, but I was reluctant to send my drive…