The Kilbot Factory blog

Avast Ye!

Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and ye would have to be as blind as a barnacle to have missed all the ballyhoo.

Nine years ago two lads from the New World chose the Nineteenth of the Ninth as the day to embrace the salty speech of the seadog. In 2002, syndicated humour columnist Dave Barry jumped on board and it has spread around the internet quicker than pilates on the poop deck.

It also be in 2002, on the Nineteenth of the Ninth, that your humble narrator dropped anchor at kilbot.net to create a safe port where pirates of the Perth persuasion could talk in the parlance of our choosing. Coincidence? Yarr, almost certainly.

In any case… hoist a flag, toast some RotGut, and give thanks to the rise of all things internetty.

Readers of Hamish's occaisional diary page may have seen a post about Last FM a while back. I decided to jump on board a couple of weeks ago, and like many others I am amazed this sort of thing is a) legal and b) relatively unused.

Here is a little bit from the webpage;

So basically, you download a plugin from Audioscrobbler and sign-up… Winamp or iTunes updates the website with each song played and your music profile starts to build. Once you have a few hundred songs in your profile you can stream a radio station tailored to your musical tastes, you can also sample songs from albums similar to albums in your collection.

You can see my current music profile and listen to my personal radio station by following the links below.At the moment Last FM is not anywhere near its potential, but it is one of those great internet applications which I hope takes off*. One thing that is slowing it down (if you pardon the pun) is bandwidth, most people probably don't have the bandwidth to stream 128kb/s radio and 'work' on the net at the same time, let alone the download quota to stream 1Gb of music a day, but better deals are released every month and it's only a matter of time before internet radio and then internet TV are a very viable option.

Last FM also requires a lot of users for it to be successful. With such a small number of users to choose from my 'Profile Radio' can be a little hit and miss, some of my musical neighbours are not even in the right postcode… I need a few more Fancy D. Bowers and KLs to give me some closer matches and musical direction .

* Like epinions, which sadly has not reached its potential either.

The poster campaign at Queens Parade has begun. Some flatmates were a little concerned that we might get a brick through the window but I don't anticipate any problems, Clifton Hill is in a very safe Labor seat… we are preaching to the converted but the window does face the tram line, a set of traffic lights and the Mosskito Bar, so hopefully we might ruin someone's lunch.

I found a really cheap place in Collingwood who do A0 photocopies for $2.81 (Copy World on the corner of Johnston and Hoddle for those in the area), so we will try to change the poster as often as possible before the election. I'm calling out to y'all for design/slogan ideas… naturally I will post photos of all posters here at kilbot.net, plus you'll get that warm-fuzzy feeling of publicly denouncing John Howard.

(Thanks to JohnHowardLies.com for the images).

—–EXTENDED BODY:
<center><img src="http://www.kilbot.net/news/uploads/car.jpg" alt="Liar" style="border: 1px solid black;" /><br />You will be able to see it from the road… unless you are looking the wrong way.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.kilbot.net/news/uploads/tram.jpg" alt="Liar" style="border: 1px solid black;" /><br />It will be visible from the tram, especially if it stops at the lights.

Giovanni and his demure Fancy
Giovanni Torre seems to be everywhere; in our unions, at our schools, even in our homes. He stopped past my place on the weekend and I asked him Five Quick Questions.

Favourite Book
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Favourite Movie
The Third Man (1949)… or maybe Caddyshack (1980)

Favourite Album
'Show Me Your Tears' Frank Black and the Catholics

Greatest Achievement
Pranking 2000 people outside state Parliament

What do you want on your tombstone
“Waste no time mourning me - organise!” - Joe Hill

The Billy Zabka Of Football
For all the fans of pure football - “pure” in the sense of watching an innocent 6 year old pick up a football for the first time - today marks a truly tragic day, as veteran “athlete” Clive Waterhouse aka The Waterhose aka Crazyhorse aka The Clive aka The Athletic One was unceremoniously DUMPED from the Dockers playing list, as of this year.

This truly comes as a shock to me, being your humble yet omnipotent fooseball correspondent, as “Spray Like A” Waterhose, after 8 years, was actually finally starting to realise his potential, and comprehend the intricacies of the game (ie mark ball hands, drop ball foot, ball kick goal, ball kick player, no ball no play, etc.). His form for The Mighty Tiges far more warranted a callback than, say, Gilmore, Dunn, or James “Ghost Who Plays 100″ Walker, and it was like his mutated albino freak brain was overcoming 27 years of clouded judgment, and it would all finally come together, culminating in a valuable forward flank position…

Alas, the game loses another Entity! I'm not talking Carey, Ablett “Entity” - I'm talking The Real Quirkheads Of The Game - Zanotti, Tommy Alvin, [King] Allen Jakovich, Mark Jacko Jackson, Capper, Bhudda Hocking, Doc Wheeldon, Simon Mintie-Connell, Clinton Wolf, Simmo “Doggystyle” Atkins, Wizard Mk.2, Justin Madden, Scotty Cummings(yaface), Jarrod “Train In A Flannel” Molloy - actual CHARACTERS of the game! Guys that you'd watch, not just for their skills or complete lack thereof, but just to see if something truly crazy memorable went down ala God Jakovich doing his patented 50m kick into the grandstand when only 2m out from goal!! or everyone grabbing Tommy Alvin's hair as a legitimate tackle…

I think [their story] is best summed up through this quote on The Clive:

“How often can you remember a smile creasing your lips, possibly even breaking into laughter, while watching Clive play?”

The more sterile and “fluid” this great game of ours becomes, the more likely we are to lose these great characters of the game to 20-pound weakling robot-clones (see Eagles draftlist 98-02).

Damian Drum, as shit a coach and a haircut as you like, was actually onto something when he drafted a gangly piece of turd with a shock of white hair and a 400ft vertical leap - Drummy knew comedy, and if you don't beleive that, I point to his request to keep coaching after his 1-win season!

Hopefully Clive's tragic story will inspire us all to cherish these true Legends Of The Game….

*Deez for premiers 2004