More practical Regions

The problem with the corona-regions is that they are isolated. More specifically, most of our population is in Perth and tourism hotspots are cut off from Perth.

Try this:

Each region is defined by its main access road. For example...

If you live in Perth and want to visit Broome, you *must* follow the yellow highway. And come home the same way. (Bus companies and car rentals could boom.)

The blue "region" to the east is for visits to Goldfields, Esperance and to look at the Eastern States border crossing. And so on.

The beauty of our state road system is that it is not easy to get from one major route to another. Travellers can visit locations to either side of their route, they can be politely asked to not cross to another route.

Perhaps add a checkpoint just north of Exmouth, another to the west of Esperance. The pattern of major roads makes for "automatic" regional boundaries.

The hordes of people in Perth can bring their tourist dollars to each and any region. Region dwellers can get to the State's capital city.

No more regional isolation.

... Nick

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"No sense being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway." … per Ginger Meggs
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Dying for you to read my blog, at https: // notdotdeaddotyet .blogspot. com. au/ :-)

Can we get warmer?

Late update: This post was published in The West(16/5) with minor changes. Changes for publication can be interesting, so I'll include them below.

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We can come back better

Gemma Tognini (Opinion, 15/5) makes a very valid point, -- "[It's] it's so cool to be in the sensible middle" (Opinion, 15 May). On the other hand -- we don't want to miss a golden oppportunity. [Oops, neither of us spotted those three p's.]

WA -- all of Australia -- has closed down for the coronavirus. Now it's time to open up again. Will we take the "sensible" option of[,] business as usual?

[From here on was all one para. Which loses some impact but does save a little space in the paper.]

Wouldn't it be nice to recover -- but without "recovering" high levels of pollution? Wouldn't it be nice to recover -- with a far broader basis for a sound economy? Wouldn't it be nice to recover -- and maintain our current compassion for friends, family and neighbours?

No it would not be easy. But it would be nice if we could recover -- to an even better way of life.

Yes, it's so cool to be sensible. We can still be sensible -- while aiming for a place which is even better that the original, rather compromised, "middle".

Nick Lethbridge, Churchlands
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No "real" changes -- which is pleasing. To me that means (a) a well-written letter and (b) I picked the right tone and topic for the paper. Live and learn... that's why I like to check the changes that were made for publication.

Game of thugs

Hayden Ballantyne offers an interesting insight into the tactics of a football thug (How to be a footy pest, 25 April). Most important, he writes, is to not get caught.

His style of play is, he writes, to annoy players on the other team. And when another player annoys him in return, Ballantyne brags that he won the exchange -- by belting the other player.

This thug seems to enjoy physical confrontation. Like every other bully, he is extra tough when he has his bigger bully-boy "friends" to back him up. And like other sociopaths, he believes that he is unfairly targetted by the people who manage the rules of the game.

Nick Lethbridge, Churchlands

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6 Thornbill Way,  0419197772

Nick Lethbridge  /  consulting dexitroboper
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"We must believe in free will -- we have no other choice." … Isaac Bashevis Singer
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28apr20: The above rant was published in The West. Then -- there is a letter in reply! I'm both pleased -- and embarrassed. In justification... the original article (by Ballantyne) made me shudder. If that is an acceptable attitude, football is far too nasty. For me, anyway.

   

food for thought

Crikey! What was it our soldiers fought for? Certainly not Anzac cookies. The recipe in today's paper should be for Anzac biscuits. Or simply Anzacs. Strewth, we're not bloody Septics.

covidUnemployed

"Let's use this time to grow." It's the slogan on a large ad, accompanied by a picture of a man working -- at home -- on his laptop. So?

It's an ad for Ashley & Martin. Very clever :-) An entertaining ad in a time when their business may be suffering.

Are you covidUnemployed? What business are you currently in?

Our rubbish is still collected each week. Mail is delivered. Water, power & gas supplies are uninterrupted. All of these are essential services. Things which we "need".

Food shops are open. Cafes and restaurants are closed. We "need" food, we only "want" to have our food served with the added atmosphere of a crowded restaurant or cafe. The hospitality industry is suffering. Fashion is out of fashion. We get by without beauticians and barbers.

Are you unemployed because your company satisfies a "want" rather than a "need"?

If you get the choice, work to satisfy a "need" rather than a "want". The work is just as satisfying. The future will be more certain.

Nick Lethbridge  /  consulting dexitroboper
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"We must believe in free will -- we have no other choice." … Isaac Bashevis Singer
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it all becomes clear

First up I have to state my position: I like Donald Trump. Doesn't mean that I agree with him. He's the President that America wants and deserves. He's better that the alternatives. He's far better than our own Clive "the Trump-alike" Palmer. Still...

I have a theory:

He is really a Deepfake character. "Deepfakes (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake" ) are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake, April 2020)

Trump is an anonymous actor with the Trump face superimposed. The face was created by GAN, generative adversarial network (https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/). On a day when random variables were particularly unfortunate.

Trumps speeches are written by a politicised version of https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/. His tweets are sent directly from a variant of https://theselyricsdonotexist.com/ -- the Rap version. Try, for example, a topic of "coronavirus".

Finally, it all becomes clear.

I almost typed, It all makes sense... but no, it's politics, no sense involved.

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"No sense being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway." … per Ginger Meggs
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Dying for you to read my blog, at https: // notdotdeaddotyet .blogspot. com. au/ :-)

Re: photo sharing

Actually, I think there are captions... the caption for that one is "Of course walking home alone was always uphill", yes?

I think possibly the issue, which did trick me the first time, is that you have to click on the photo so that it brings it up properly.  The first screen is the 'thumbnails', which is a bit misleading because, since there's only one, it's huge.

When you click on the photo itself, it moves it to the centre and then the caption appears in the bottom-left.

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 7:56 PM Nick Lethbridge <nickleth@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm trying to share some photos -- so that Mum can share them with friends -- now that actual meetings are out of fashion. fyi here are the photos on Google Photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QpN6Ti4RkXzkrWv37

Trouble is -- there are no captions. So whoever looks at them has no idea why the photo is (to me!) interesting. I've added "info" for each photo but it's not obvious that the info is there. (If it's even possible to see it.)

==> Do you know any package that allows photo sharing -- with obvious captions?

I tried Instagram, couldn't see any option to actually load a photo. I tried Flickr, no captions but it did come with a virus. I'm reluctant to try Facebook since I could never understand it...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

hmmm... I may go back to a Powerpoint slide show, stored on Dropbox or Drive...

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"Metaphors be with you" … Ginger Meggs
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Dying for you to read my blog, at https: // notdotdeaddotyet .blogspot. com. au/ :-)

--

******
Tim