Rorting and worms?

As we’d missed the televised leadership debate in the current Australian election campaign, I thought I would catch up on the issues by reading the newspapers the next day at the local Portland library.

I was puzzled by two undefined terms used in articles in both national newspapers.

By reading the article headed “Car subsidy scheme ‘open to rorting’” I deduced that “to rort” had something to do with cheating. The writer felt that someone might buy an old junk car just to qualify for the proposed rebate if they traded it in on a newer vehicle.

The second term—worms—was used in ways that offered no such contextual clues. The references seemed to imply one or more pundit’s opinion about debater performance, but “bloke worm” and “pink worm” made it confusing. Neither national newspaper had any obvious explanation of the term.

Luckily, the librarians were able to help—amidst laughter about how odd it must seem to someone unfamiliar with the terms.

“Did you watch the debate on TV?” one asked.

“No, I just caught a few clips later in the news.”

“Ah… well they probably didn’t have the worms active then.”

“Worms” turned out to be graphed responses from a selected audience group who reacted to the leaders performance by choosing a 1 to 5 rank on handheld devices (i.e. dislike a lot to like a lot, with neutral as 3). The consolidated feedback was displayed in real time on the screen as a constantly-moving graph under the leaders as they spoke—and the clips I’d seen no longer included it.

I guess I just don’t watch enough TV.

And “rorting”? The librarians thought my deduction was correct, but we did confirm it online: according to a Wikipedia definition, “rort” is a term used in Australia (and NZ) for “a financial impropriety, particularly relating to a government programme.”

Now if only I’d been reading the article online, perhaps the terms would have included a hyperlink definition…

How do I use a blog?

“Well I got the link you sent Eric, but I’m not sure how to use a blog.”

This comment made during a conversation on my mobile phone yesterday made me reflect on how we adapt to new things. Mobile—or cell—phones are a good example. I had read about them of course, so the first time I saw someone using one, I knew it was like a telephone. But the first time I actually used one I was tentative as I found my way around—and nothing happened until I realized I needed to press a “Call” button! After a few uses though, it became second nature, and I could soon navigate around to get to functions I didn’t even know about.

Instructions help, but use and practise is always the best way to learn.

We have been sending a link to this blog by email, so I know everyone getting it will at least have an Internet connection—and if you are reading this, you will already have managed to get to the page.

A blog typically has the most recent post at the top. If you scroll down, you’ll see the last few posts with a link to other older posts at the bottom.

The title of any given post is a link to a standalone version of it, so if you click it, you will see just that post—and the browser bar will have the address that can go directly to the post, so you can bookmark or copy it.

Since both Katharine and I will be posting to the same blog, we use labels that differentiate between our posts. The navigation bar at the top filters the posts by our names.

Other labels we use in posts are displayed in the “tag cloud” on the right. If you were to click the word “flying” for example, it will filter all of our posts to show just those we’ve tagged with that label. The tag cloud is updated as we add new posts, and the most commonly-used labels are set larger.

In this blog, our navigation bar also includes pages with links we are currently using and a map that lets you see pictures we’ve put up on our public Flickr site—and shows them in context on a map.

So how do you use a blog? Well, you can’t break anything, so just jump in and click to explore your way around it!

Petroglyph at mouth of Nimpkish River

Petroglyph at mouth of Nimpkish River, originally uploaded by SpiritwoodPix.

The Nimpkish River meets the ocean across from Alert Bay. Back in 1792, it’s here that Captain George Vancouver visited Cheslakees village. On December 28, we explored the exposed intertidal beach, then examined boulders above the high-tide zone. We’d heard that some have petroglyphs carved into them. Waning light and a bitterly cold wind made our search increasingly difficult but just before I stepped inside the forest’s wall, I found this boulder. Celina and I looked at it closely but couldn’t determine the shape of the carvings... then I took this photograph.

Voila! The ancient image of what is possibly a large sun face in the centre of the rock — plus what might be a smaller moon to its bottom-left — was suddenly revealed.

Leaving on a jet plane

Being able to print a boarding pass at home is certainly a big change from the sheaf of papers we had to have in hand when we did a similar trip in the mid-80s. But of course then there was only minimal airport security, and it was still possible to catch a flight minutes before the gate closed...

Flight 189 to Vancouver being prepared at Ottawa airport.

We left Ottawa a bit behind schedule and managed to see some dim lights at Spiritwood as we gained altitude over the Ottawa River. Happily, it was an uneventful flight to Vancouver.

The hardest part is saying goodbye

Planning was exciting; packing was tiring; dealing with details was tedious—but saying goodbye was tough. And the hardest goodbyes were to our animals.
We can stay in touch with our friends, and plan to see them again, but how do we assure a cat or a horse that we will be back?

But we left knowing that they were all in good hands.