There has been this annoying trend of late – particularly in the Fairfax-run websites – for auto-starting video advertisements to be “included as a service” in their pages. I’ve also heard auto-starting AUDIO ads – (so there’s nowhere to click to stop them) – invading my web experience.
However, I’ve just stumbled across something perhaps even more annoying, as the screen dump below displays:
This Telstra advert took over the page. No other functionality on the page could be used. The video ran about 5 or 6 times before it actually let go of the page, and let me do anything.
I don’t really mind advertising like this normally, but take a closer look. There’s no close button, anywhere. I simply HAD to sit through it. With advertising on television, you can walk away. You don’t have to look at billboards, or advertising in print media.
Technically, I didn’t have to watch the window while this advert was running, but it gave me no option than to let it run through. Poor form.
Apologies for a brief partial outage. A combination of mental tiredness, dumb fingers, and a failed VPN experiment from a few weeks ago contributed to a bizarre sequence of events that created a weird ARP resolution problem within my internal network.
I was ready to yell at my stupid ISP – who are normally responsible for ridiculous crap that have in the past caused almost every kind of freakish outage imaginable – when the root cause of the problem reared it’s head.
Everything back to normal around 7:30pm AEST, after about 5 hours – I had to get home from work first!
So Hawthorn’s Campbell Brown thinks Matthew Lloyd is a “sniper” hey? As ridiculous and contradictory as he made himself sound in comparing Saturday’s incident with that of teammate Lance Franklin the week before – an almost identical incident – and refusing to concede that they were similar, perhaps Campbell should look in his own backyard.
Here’s a summary of his tribunal history since joining the game:
2004 – Round 3 – Strike Brett Montgomery (PTA) – 1 match suspension
2004 – Round 11 – Involved in Melee – Accepted $4000 fine
2004 – Round 11 – Striking Jason Winderlich (ESS) – 4 match suspension
2004 – Round 11 – Wrestling Dean Rioli (ESS) – $1200 fine
2005 – Round 20 – Striking Matthew Lloyd (ESS) – 4 match suspension (early plea)
2007 – NAB Cup – Striking Lynden Dunn (FRE) – 2 match suspension (early plea)
2008 – NAB Cup – Striking Matthew Kruezer – 2 match suspension (early plea)
Who is the thug Campbell? You or Lloyd?
Australian motor sports legend, Frank Gardner, died yesterday on the Gold Coast, aged 78. Frank was as famous for his terry-toweling hat, as he was for his celebrated open-wheel and touring car racing career in Europe, including eight Formula One races.
He is particularly remembered in Australia for managing the factory-supported JPS Team BMW’s in the 1980’s, including championships for Jim Richards, managing Tony Longhurst and Tomas Mezera to a Bathurst win in 1988, and taking Longhurst and Paul Morris to Super Touring titles in the 1990’s.
A long time advocate and promoter of road safety, Frank will definitely be missed by many.
Michael Jackson married Lisa-Marie Presley. Lisa-Marie Presley is the daughter of Elvis Presley. Many ratbags think that Elvis Presley is still alive. Now this video claims to be “proof” that Michael Jackson is also still alive.
Seriously, I guess that this sort of rubbish had to start eventually. Maybe we’ll start seeing Whacko Jacko at 7-Eleven? Maybe Chris Crocker will appeal to us to “leave Michael alone!”?
How exactly this video proves anything is thoroughly beyond me. Looks like a staged attempt to get a huge number of YouTube hits. Get a life!
I have just made a few minor changes to the site – I noticed late last week that somewhere along the line, some kind of change – (either to a new version of the CMS along the way, or something I have altered) – inadvertently broke the CSS layout in some browsers, notably Internet Explorer and Chrome. I believe Safari would have been affected also, but didn’t get a chance to confirm that.
So, I’ve fixed all that up. I’ve also taken the time to clean up a bit of the backend code for my custom plugins and widgets, so things will probably load a little faster in most instances with some neater code behind them.
One of the biggest problems about being a “non-Geelong” supporter in the AFL, and actually living in Geelong, is putting up with perpetual HEAVY bias of the local media towards the local team. Perhaps fair enough, but often the main local newspaper, the Geelong Advertiser takes the “bias” far to far.
Ultimately, this is a story about Qantas seeking to cut A$1.5B from their operational costs, which has seen them cut some Jetstar (their discount arm) services operating out of Avalon Airport near Geelong. To be fair, the loss of these services will have an impact in the Geelong area.
Yet somehow, they’ve still managed to get a Geelong Football Club angle into the story. I mean, what?
FELICITY Percival says her enduring romance with Geelong Cats skipper Tom Harley might not have sprouted wings without the saving graces of Jetstar and Avalon Airport.
The Sydney-based editor of Women’s Health magazine was among regular passengers lamenting yesterday’s news of Qantas cuts to daily services from her harbour home to Harley’s doorstep.
Seriously, there is “parochialness”, and then there is “too much”. To the Geelong Advertiser, guys, it’s cheap and nasty!
Noticed this one on the way home from work today on one of V/Line’s V’Locity 160 trains. They need a key for someone to open the compartment to get to the emergency door release?
Hmmm. Really hope I’m not relying on someone in the emergency services having a V/Line key to open this in the event of a catastrophic train crash!
Whether this is a reflection of the government’s inability to sell it properly or not, people clearly are STILL not getting the point of the proposed expenditure on Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).
The money being spent is not being spent for it to be recouped. Okay? Do we build a $500M freeway and expect the money to come back over it’s life? No!
The NBN is an “infrastructure investment”. It’s a new freeway. You put a freeway in to make the rest of the ecomony around that freeway to become more efficient. Shorter travel times for people and freight, and the like. But the $500M for the freeway doesn’t come back to the place that money originally came from. You build it to allow MORE than $500M of advantage to come to the rest of the economy, simply because it exists.
The NBN is the same. The money is being spent so that everything else in the economy can improve, and ultimately generate – (via new business) – or save – (via increased efficiency of existing business) – money that might have been wasted in a piecemeal effort. Worse still, we could not spend the money at all, and let the Australian economy fall behind the rest of the world because we are communicating with tin-cans and string.
I just wish people would start seeing the point!
Got a laugh out of this pose from a five-legged cow, born at Curlewis, Victoria, Australia. Kind of looks like “spider cow”, no?
