In a break from tradition, Threadless are having a $9 T-Shirt Sale!

Well, it’s “from” $9. There’s a few t-shirts going for $9 but most are more than that. Still less than the regular price, though.

Favourites this time round: The Scr-Emo ($9 for Tees, $35 for a Hoody), Meat Is Murder ($9 Tees) and Refrigerator Running ($9 Tees, $35 Hoody)

Get some new t-shirts!

Matthew Hayden’s characterisation of serial racist Harbhajan Singh as an “obnoxious weed” has clarified once and for all the real difference between the Australian and Indian cricketing teams.

Both sides are guilty of indulging in sledging. Of that there is no doubt. It’s something that probably shouldn’t be in the game, but for whatever reason it seems to have become standard practice for sides all round the world. Whether the Indians or the Australians are more offensive when they do it is probably not something you could gauge, without secretly recording them throughout a game.

If you simply make everyone wear a microphone, very little will be said of any consequence.

But where does the real difference between the sides come in, then?

When an Indian cricketer is accused of making a vile, racist, taunt, in full hearing of a number of players, he can expect the full support of his cricketing association in fighting the charge. This support can include lawyers and even threatening to withdraw from any further matches involving the victim’s team.

When an Australian cricketer gives a frank, honest, but scathing review of an Indian player’s character, he is immediately required to front up to a hearing with his association and may face fines and/or a suspension.

This is on top of behaviour like Ishant Sharma’s abuse of Andrew Symonds, wicketkeeper MS Dhoni’s use of illegal gloves and the constant refusal of certain Indian players to walk when given out throughout the recent Test series and in some of the One Day matches this summer.

India love to make a big deal about playing “in the spirit of the game”. I fear the day when everyone plays the game in the same “spirit” India has shown us.

Good news for Australian gamers today with the announcement that the Federal and State Attorneys-General will discuss whether to allow the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification to give games a rating of R18+. The current highest rating a game may have and still be sold in Australia is MA15+.

[...] a spokeswoman for the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, confirmed the issue of “whether or not to allow an R18+ classification” for games would be discussed by censorship ministers at the next Standing Committee of attorneys-general (SCAG) meeting on March 28. It will be the first time the issue is discussed since November 2005.

Why would this be good? Because various games have been banned over the years due to being unsuitable for the MA15+ rating. Eighteen, since 2001. Eight of those were retooled to remove some elements of the game, the rest were simply not released here.
In other words, they were banned due to them being deemed unsuitable for children.
And an unknown number have been retooled before even being submitted for classification, to make them suitable for children under 18 years of age.
Yet the average age of gamers in Australia is 28, with more than 50% being over the age of 18.
And movies do not get treated in the same way. Hundreds or maybe thousands of R18+ movies have gone past the OFLC since 2001 with no problems, including movies made in Australia like Wolf Creek. Yet a game that may actually contain less controversial content than some movies is not allowed into the country, because it doesn’t quite fit into the MA15+ classification.

The reality of the modern world is that with this restriction in place, people are more and more turning to importing their games and gaming hardware to avoid the ban. Or, worse, turning to piracy of games, as uncensored versions are generally available on the internet, often before any version, censored or otherwise, would be available in Australian stores.
This is bad for the game developers and publishers, as they lose valuable sales through piracy. This is bad for Australian retailers, as they lose sales to overseas retailers who stock the games they’re not allowed to.
And it’s bad for gamers, who miss out on a lot more games than they need to.

It’s time Australia joined the modern world and had a completely standardised rating across all forms of entertainment. Gamers should be treated the same as movie buffs, not as second class citizens and adolescents.

Apparently nobody at The Daily Telegraph bothered to verify Nine programmer Michael Healy’s claim that the advertising aired during Underbelly was the regulation 13 minutes per hour, despite the groundswell of complaints being made by the general public that there seemed to be a heck of a lot.

The first thing you need to bear in mind is that Underbelly, the flagship of Channel Nine’s new year programming, began seven minutes late, making way first for the now-expected overrun of reality TV show The Chopping Block, then the nightly Lotto draw.

Now if you accept that as part of the “first hour” of Underbelly, but ignore any ads prior to the show beginning, you are left with a total of five ad breaks.

The durations of these breaks were, 2 minutes 30 seconds, 2 minutes 40 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 minutes 30 seconds and 3 minutes 10 seconds.

Some quick math brings that to a total of… fourteen minutes and fifty seconds. Well outside the claimed 13 minutes of advertising that is regular (and, I believe, officially regulated) for an hour’s television. And technically it was not even an hour’s worth of television, but a mere 53 minutes, since 7 minutes was eaten up by the show starting late.

Moving up to an entire hour of Underbelly - where a break in the “episodes” is very apparent, would include a sixth ad break. 3 minutes 20 in duration.

This brings the total duration of the ads during the first full hour of Underbelly to a staggering eighteen minutes and ten seconds. Leaving a mere 41 minutes and 50 seconds of actual Underbelly.

Maybe the reported budget of $13 million has them nervous and they’re trying to recoup their investment before the rest of the public realises how utterly appalling a production the show has turned out to be.

[Update: It's back! Yeah baby yeahhhhh! Go there now!]

Just to let everyone know that I am aware The Biggest Loser Recap is currently broken.

Until the monkeys in charge at my webhost get their shit together, I can’t fix it.

If people are desperate for their recap fix, I could maybe post them here until the problem is sorted out… but I don’t know how many Recap fans are even aware this part of my site exists. :)
If there are any and you can cope with coming to a slightly different site for a couple days, holler and I’ll think about it.

After around 10 years as a journalist and 20 years pretending to be one, Ray Martin has left the Nine Network, with rumours some potential changes to his show are behind the exit.

The 63-year-old says his departure does not mean he is retiring from journalism.

Can you retire from something you haven’t been doing in years? I wouldn’t've thought so. Nevertheless, it’s a shame he’s obviously planning to move on and pollute another bastion of journalistic integrity with his own low standards.

Ray, just give it up. What little respect most people had for you dried up years ago when you claimed your return to ACA would herald a renewed integrity for the show which never eventuated. You’ve been in charge of one of the two most execrable “Current Affairs” style shows and only made things worse.

Retire with whatever is left of your dignity. The Australian public deserves better.

[Source: ABC News Online]

To be honest, I haven’t gotten far enough into the game to really understand the purpose of this yet. But it’s kind of cute and looks like it might be a way to waste 5 minutes a day.

First, go visit Mythorville.

Next, click the “Build my city” button on the right, after you’re done admiring the fine hamlet I have created through no real effort of my own.

Select a country in which to build your town, name it, then click Create!

At this point you should move on to your own minicity page. And your city will probably have just a single house. Awww!

Feel free to post the URL to your own cities in the comments section for other folks to visit. (Please, no linkspam for other games.)

Your city will start to expand as other people drop by your town’s page, so it’s important you get other people to go there. But remember, spamming links on random forums is not a way to win yourself friends. ;-)

Let us know if you discover anything cool you can do with your minicity too!

Seriously! Channel 10 is resurrecting the show due to the writer’s strike in the US. Channel 10 relies fairly heavily on American TV content, so it’s not surprising they’d be hurting this year.

There’s more details in this thread on the MOSH comedy forums, but the gist so far is that Paul McDermott will be returning as host and the two team captains will be announced in the next couple of days.

The scheduled start date is some time in February. Which, if you’re not keeping track, is not very far away at all.

Most awesome, most unexpected news so far this year!

Take the test!

As explained in the instructions, you simply pick which colour you think has been selected and hit the “Predict!” button. If you’ve predicted (or guessed) correctly, you get a point. If not, you don’t.

The answer is selected when the page loads, not after you make your guess. It could be done after you’ve guessed instead, but that would be a test of your ability to predict the future, rather than something in the present. I may make a test that does that in the future. Or I may not!

One answer will start out selected. This is not an indication as to which selection may be right or wrong, rather it is a facility to allow you to simply click “Predict!” repeatedly, as the highlighted option is chosen randomly. Theoretically, you ought to end up with an accuracy around 33% using this method, as the computer is both selecting answers at random and predicting at random.

It is possible to cheat on this test, if you’re desperate to get 100%. The answer is not heavily protected and the anti-cheat mechanism is really quite simplistic. I could have tried to make it more difficult to cheat the system, but realistically I couldn’t account for every eventuality. You’re really only cheating yourself if you do it and the result will obviously be invalid as proof of your phenomenal cosmic powers. :-)

Why did I make such a thing? Well, mostly because the idea took my fancy and I wanted to see if I could do it. It was also an opportunity to learn a little more about PHP and figure out how that fancy hidden text thing works. I’m not sure I learnt anything that is going to be useful to me in the future, but it kept me out of trouble for the day!

Is it a totally accurate test of a person’s psychic ability? No, not really. If you want a proper test there are better ways than a page on the internet. This is really more just for fun and to demonstrate the wonders of statistics. Unless you truly do have some extraordinary ability, be it psychic powers or just luck, you ought to get somewhere around 33.33% accuracy as a result, particularly as you go beyond the relatively small number of predictions required to get the HTML widget - fifty. If you want it to be as accurate as possible, I’d advise getting to at least a hundred. If you’re still above 45% accuracy and can maintain it beyond 1-200 attempts, you may actually have something.

Or you’re just cheating. :-)

And please, for the enjoyment of others, if you work out how to cheat, don’t go blabbing. Feel free to contact me and let me know, though. I promise not to dob you in.

First and foremost, as a wise man once said - shit or get off the pot.

Either continue with the tour and abide by the decision of the judge, whenever it may be handed down. Or go home.

Holding the threat of a cancelled tour over the heads of the Australian team, the Australian public and the ICC is very clearly “not in the spirit of the game.” It’s never been part of good sportsmanship to take your ball and go home if a decision doesn’t go your way. Harping on about the Australian team’s lack of sportsmanship while continuing to threaten the governing body if you don’t get your way only makes you look like hypocrites.

So do what you’re threatening or shut up and get on with it.

Secondly, you are very much entitled to appeal Harbhajan’s suspension. The system is in place to do so and you might get a better result from the appeals process.

A three match suspension is not the maximum punishment though which, as a repeat offender, is what he really should have received. The Australians did try and let it stay on the field the first time, but when it’s a pattern of racial abuse coming from one player, are they just supposed to ignore it? That is why racism in cricket became so prevalent - nobody did anything about it.

Cop it sweet and tell him if he can’t stop using racial epithets, just shut the hell up. It’s not rocket science!

Thirdly, I agree with the rumoured stance you will be taking in the Third Test, assuming you go through with it. If the Australians are such horrific sledgers, report them. Every single time. Gentle ribbing is to be expected, but if the opposition really is referring to your player’s as bastards, why wouldn’t you report them?

The only reason I can think of is that you know full well you’re replying with much the same language, or worse. Well, it’s time for it all to stop. If your team isn’t being abusive and the other team keeps getting reported if they start in, it’ll get cleaned up right quick, won’t it?

So don’t just mutter about it. Do it! You’ll have a lot of support from a lot of quarters. A lot of fans don’t like that aspect of the game, so you’d be doing us a favour as well.

Last but by no means least, if you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. Criticising Australia’s batsmen for not walking when they were out comes off very hollow when many times your own batsmen are not walking when they have actually been given out by the umpire. The rules are very clear in this regard - you do not have to leave your crease when you have not been given out by an umpire. But you do have to do so when you are. You don’t get to walk down the pitch to question the umpire, nor do you get to stand around for 10-20 seconds looking down the pitch in disbelief.

That is not in the spirit of cricket, either.

Oh and if you could speed up your over rate while bowling, that’d be ace.