Blog Marco

I don't know what to make of this story... Should I empathise with the trader? Or should I just laugh at him for being there in the first place? (remember that he is MARRIED and he went there ON HIS OWN)

A Wall Street trader is seeking damages after allegedly being hit in the face by a stripper's high heel as she performed a lap dance for him.

Stephen Chang, a securities trader, claims in court papers filed at the Manhattan Supreme Court that he "sustained serious personal injuries" on his visit to the Hot Lap Dance Club near Madison Square Garden in November last year.

His lawsuit against the club states: "During the course of said lap dance, the employee suddenly swung around, striking [Mr Chang] in the eye with the heel of her shoe." Mr Chang, who is married and in his early 30s, had visited the club on his own. The establishment, which describes itself as the "Playboy Mansion of Manhattan party lofts" charges a $50 cover charge and a $10 one-time joining fee. A lap dance typically costs around $40.

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Submitted by Marco on Wed, 19/03/2008 - 8:05pm.

American politics taking on Web 2.0 - on YouTube! First one is "I Got a Crush...On Obama" By Obama Girl and the second video is the answer to that video from the Hillary Clinton camp: "Hott4Hill feat. Taryn Southern"

The song and video features scantily clad actor and model Amber Lee Ettinger lip-synching to lyrics that profess her "devotion" to US presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A parody of the Obama Girl video, Hot 4 Hill involves another good-looking young American woman gyrating and cooing her affections for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The video starts with a direct reference to the Obama Girl video, which began with actor Amber Lee Ettinger calling Obama on his phone. Taryn Southern the girl in this film spends much of the video dressed in a stars and

Here's a photo of two men watching news on live TV - when the real action is happening in the distance. Live Action TV when the Action happens right in front of you

According to news reports, Channel Seven is going to air both Heroes and Prison Break on the same day as their US screenings. So does that finally mean we don't need to download TV shows from the Internet? It possibly does. It would definitely save internet surfers time (and electricity!). Both TV shows wiil be aired in September and October. Also, Channel Seven is looking to release TiVo in Australia soon. CHANNEL Seven will broadcast two of its cult import dramas, Heroes and Prison Break on the same day as their US screenings in a ploy to lure drifting audiences away from DVDs and the internet.

Once again, the tabloid newspapers in London astound me. First they reveal a restaurant which delivered an exploding sausage, then this... have a read of this article:

Web bullies 'drive pupil to suicide'
"A boy of 13 has hanged himself in his bedroom after being bullied by classmates on an Internet site. Casey Knibbs is thought to have received taunts and death threats from four other pupils on his Bebo web page. Sources claim he was found dangling inside his wardrobe when his mother and father returned from a parents' evening at Kingsbury Comprehensive school in Sutton Coldfield. The alleged bullies were allowed to return to school just days after Casey's death, but police are now looking into the suicide. 'We are now conducting an investigation to find out why a seemingly happy boy should coose to take his own life." Said a Warwickshire Police officer."

Seems like real life is being replicated in the virtual world. We have commercial websites, a red light district on the internet, people on the internet through networking sites like Bebo, Friendster and MySpace…. And…. Web bullies. Same as real life bullies, the bullying would only get worse the more you pay attention to them – so ignore the web bullying.

English magazines can report suicide? I’m not sure if it is true but I have heard that it is illegal to report suicides and even if they are, they don't go into such detail as above! If you haven't had enough read this:

The latest news from a free London newspaper (much like our local mX here in Sydney): "Restaurant diner was left with horrific burns after a sizzling sausage dish blew up in her face. The unnamed woman spent two weeks in hospital and needed skin grafts, said it was like 'being hit by a flame-thrower'. Rui Daniel Faria Velosa, owner of Sporting Clube de Londres in Westbourne Green, West London, was fined £4,000 and £2,000 in court costs at West London magistrates court for breaching safety rules."

A few things to note about the article:

1. A Sausage can Blow up
2. English law allows the news to name and shame restaurant owners

(Unlike in Sydney, Australia, it is not allowed for the councils to report to the public which restaurants have breached safety/health regulations

This Blog's one year anniversary just went floating by the other month. I posted up my first blog post on the 21st of August 2005. Since then the number of hits to this blog has been increasing. Blog Marco officially gets about 2000+ hits a day and has 844 blog posts (including this one).

In the beginning I was posting quite a few posts about Programming, but once I had the kinks out of this blog, I was also blogging about my trip to China, record petrol prices in Sydney and the City 2 Surf. But now I've been posting Celebrity photos, YouTube videos and Photography.

Thanks for everyone's support and I hope this blog will continue to flourish. Enjoy your stay.

30 minute CityRail train delays! CityRail! This was the first time I've felt the train jolt like that in my 11 years of riding these Sydney trains. It was like a slow speed car crash from the rear. The train jolted about 6 or seven times before the train driver finally had the train at Redfern station. The CityRail train did it a few times between Macdonaldtown and Redfern. A lot of people must have been late for work.

It took about 20 minutes for people to get from one platform to the other. Just imagine if there was an emergency at Redfern train station. If there was an accident and it takes that long to move up a set a stairs, many people would have died or suffered. Although, I guess there are two ways to exit from the platform, from the top or to the bottom end.

CityRail delays like this used to happen quite often. Especially with the old train timetable. Last year they revamped the timetable, with less frequent and much slower services. The trains suddenly became punctual.

Looks like Australia's shortage of Banana's will be ending soon. Tens of thousands of Bananas will soon be landing in markets around Australia with the Queensland plantations bouncing back 5 months after Cyclone Larry wiped out the banana crop (in March). Queensland typically supplies 90 percent of Australia's Banana supply with Australia refusing to accept Bananas from the Philippines. Prices in NSW will drop from around $8 per kilo to about $3 with the new incoming supplies. In the market's peak - Sydney prices for bananas rose to $16 per kilo.

Can you imagine the day when laptops will be banned from planes? Well, the day has come - with these recent UK arrests of terrorists planning to bomb multiple planes. The threat has severely restricted what passengers can bring on board with them in the airplane cabin. everything is banned - electronic devices to books and newspapers: only medicines and your passports are reported to be the only things allowed to be carried on board. Those in-flight movies better be good.

Our favourite electronic devices are suddenly facing a very uncertain future on international flights under new security measures being introduced into airports in Britain and the US.

In response to recent revelations of a suspected bomb plot targeting some UK flights travelling to the US, transport and security agencies in both countries have issued strict new guidelines, which international airlines such as Qantas must observe.

Suggested measures for travellers:

1. Do not check in what is obviously a laptop bag. Instead bury
your laptop and other devices in another bag with adequate
padding.

2. Remove all the data from your hard drive not deemed essential
for your trip. The removed data can be carried on your person on a
CD or USB stick if it is required at your destination.

3. Get insurance that will cover the loss of expensive devices
should they go missing with the rest of your luggage and maintain a
list of serial numbers and product specifications.

News by Marco | Travel | Technology + Gadgets | Marco's blog | add new comment | read more »

Submitted by Marco on Mon, 14/08/2006 - 8:16am.

I've written about Nigerian scams before... from a Column 8 piece to a report of the number of Australians being taken in by the scam. Now, an online vigilante has turned the tables - scamming the Nigerian scammer in their own game. Have a read of their email exchanges where "Shiver Metimbers" poses as the director of Derek Trotter Fine Arts and find out how the carved Commodore 64 keyboard became a part of this funny story.

Millions of dollars have been conned out of gullible Australians who fall for a variety of Nigerian scams (also known as 419 scams) received via spam email or in a targeted response to an online advertisements they have placed.

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Submitted by Marco on Sat, 01/07/2006 - 12:08am.

Sydney has been ranked the world's 19th-most expensive city by a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The least-expensive city surveyed was Asuncion, in Paraguay. The 50 most expensive cities in the world, according to the cost of items including housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment:

• 1. Moscow
• 2. Seoul
• 3. Tokyo
• 4. Hong Kong
• 5. London
• 6. Osaka
• 7. Geneva
• 8. Copenhagen
• 9. Zurich
• 10. Oslo
• 10. New York
• 12. St Petersburg, Russia
• 13. Milan
• 14. Beijing
• 15. Istanbul
• 15. Paris
• 17. Singapore
• 18. Dublin
• 19. Sydney
• 20. Shanghai
News by Marco | Sydney | Marco's blog | add new comment | read more »
Submitted by Marco on Mon, 26/06/2006 - 6:52pm.

The Australian Socceroos have done it! They've tied with Croatia 2-2 giving them the ticket for the knockout stage second round for the 2006 World Cup in their Group F match just half an hour ago. Croatia first scored within the first three minutes from Darijo Srna's free kick, then Craig Moore equalised the game at 38 minutes. Croatia scored another goal in the 56th minute by Niko Kovac. Finally Harry Kewell equalised at 79 minutes. The next soccer match would be against Italy this Monday at the same stadium Australia beat Japan in Kaiserslautern.

Had to wake up at 5am for this match - and it was well worth it!

An Australian Team from Newcastle University wins RoboCup 2006. RoboCup is a competition of Sony AIBO robotic dogs playing soccer without any human intervention during the game. Yes, it's all run with pre-programmed Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the final game - played overnight - the University of Newcastle's NUBots beat the University of New South Wales' rUNSWift team 7-3.

According to this opinion piece Bob Carr (NSW's ex-premier) has never held a drivers' licence. Interesting.