Last saturday night, Yunna and I went to La Piazza (formerly Viva Italia) to have dinner. I have no idea why I decided to give this venue another go. After previously having possibly the worst experience ever at a restaurant there, under the banner Viva Italia, what was I thinking? I was hungry and it was local. We didn’t finish our meal, we complained and didn’t pay for a half eaten chicken caesar salad.

I spoke to the manager, complained and expressed my concerns. She then decided not to take any responsibility for it and called for the chef to come out and have me explain it to him.

Mashable reported early last week that the mega-popular site myspace was hacked early last week with some of it’s pages having a flash redirect to a blog post about the Government being behind the 9/11 attacks.

The weekend just past, we saw power outages due to a heat wave in CA cause myspace to unavailable for hours, then completely shut down over the weekend and remains to be down.

Here is a report on the Heat wave and which areas are being affected.

It’s amazing that such a massive site like myspace isnt at a redundant data center. I suppose its amazing that a site like myspace doesn’t have good design or tidy code. Lots of people i know that use it have have experienced lots of error pages. Check out my friend dale’s myspace.. hold on, its down.

Anyways, its not YOUR space! .. what does that even mean?

EDIT: i’ve attached an image of an artist impression of the situation at the myspace datacenter and a new meter to calculate hacking difficulty of a web site.

Artist’s impression of the situation at myspace datacenter

By law and popular demand the Queensland Government has introduced the nation’s toughest anti-smoking laws, and this had an effect on my washing and showering habits. Typically, if I’ve been on a night out in the town, I’ll return home with my body, hair and clothes smelling like an ashtray.

If my hair smells like smoke, it will take me twice as long to shower as I usually have to wash my hair twice. Also, my jeans will need to go in the wash if I want to wear them again the following night. If every weekend that I go out, i wash my hair twice and put on a load just to wash my jeans, I’ll be consuming more water than is necessary.

If someone was to work this all out there would be a significant saving across the state each year. Just imagine how much water I use for the extra 3 mins it takes for to wash my hair twice, and how much extra water i use just to put on the smallest load to wash jeans. If a large number of people, in my demographic, does this once a fortnight each year, then these new smoking laws are helping more than just our lungs. Brisbane and Logan are on a level 3 water restriction which is a total ban on outdoor hosing.

From the Queensland Government Tobacco Laws web page:

Indoor Smoking Bans
The whole enclosed area of liquor licensed premises must be no-smoking.

Poker Machines
All poker machines at a liquor licensed premises must be no-smoking.

Outdoor Smoking Bans
Non-enclosed eating and drinking areas where food or drink is provided as part of a business, must be no-smoking.

Pubs, clubs and casinos may set aside Designated Outdoor Smoking Areas where only smoking and drinking can occur. These areas must be under the control of a Smoking Management Plan for the venue.