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Well, we're taking the jump. My wife and I test drove 3 EVs today - MG 4, MG 4 Urban and MG 5. Kate had already put down a deposit on the MG 4, but after driving all 3 we're tossing up between the Urban and the MG 5. In all 3 cars the acceleration is brilliant. Handling is great. We found the Urban and MG 5 more comfortable because we're both tall (and possibly a bit wider than we should be). Over the weekend we'll decide which way to go and switch the deposit on Monday.

An old work mate has cancer and I haven't seen him since late last year. I've been meaning to ring him for a while but didn't know what to expect considering how sick he looked last time I saw him. Anyway, he rang me yesterday and he sounded great, just like his old self. It was the chemo making him sick last time I saw him he told me. His wife has cancer as well and both have been on chemo and have had a lot of success with it. They're both doing well and are back to fairly normal lives, so good news.

Definition of a gentleman - someone who knows how to play the bagpipes -- but doesn't.

Interesting question. I could just wimp out and say, “I’m retired now.” Music has always evolved alongside technology. The instruments available to composers today are vastly different from those available centuries ago, whether in orchestras, jazz, rock, or electronic music. Of course, AI is a rather different innovation. I think AI in music is inevitable, and like most technological change, it will bring both benefits and drawbacks. On the positive side, AI is a democratiser. It allows almost anyone to experiment with composition, arranging, and production. That could open the door for talented people who may never have had formal training or industry connections. On the downside, it may also lead to an overwhelming amount of average material. Music has often evolved because composers and performers broke the rules of their time. AI, at least in its current form, largely works by analysing existing music and reproducing variations of it. Whether it can truly innovate in the human sense remains an open question. For me, music is deeply human. I would rather hear a second-rate live orchestra or band than a flawless recording of a world-class performer. The imperfections, the spontaneity, and the sense of shared experience matter. In some ways, this tension has existed for decades, as recordings became increasingly engineered and perfected. Technology has always reshaped the music industry. In the 1940s, venues employed large big bands with 20 or 30 musicians. The arrival of the electric guitar and amplified music made it economically attractive to hire four or five performers instead. That was a loss in one sense — the big band era was awesome, but it also helped create rock and pop music as we know it today. I suspect AI will become very useful in commercial areas of music. For example, we may not always need a human composer to create an advertising jingle or background track. My concern is whether this eventually leads to a kind of musical “fast food”, content that is efficient and disposable, but lacks depth, individuality, and genuine human expression. In the end, I don’t think AI will destroy music. But I do think it may change what we value in music, and perhaps make the human element even more important.

BRS, one person, claims he is innocent. Twenty soldiers who served with him and risked everything to bring these alleged atrocities to light. I support the 20 against the one.

When I mentioned probate, I was referring to the filing fee. At present in Victoria the fee is $2,471.10 for an estate worth between $1 million and $2 million. $2 million to $3 million it goes to $4,942.10, and $3 million to $5 million it is $7,396.40, and so on to a maximum of $17,297.50 for an estate of $7 million or more. My property is estimated to be worth about $1.2 million according to the Domain Real Estate website, so I have a bit of wiggle room before it goes up. If my $20 million Powerball ticket comes up a winner, I will split it between the three kids who can then cover all the bills and anything I want to buy. As you know, I live with my elder son and daughter. He was just starting primary school grade 1 when we moved here, and my daughter came here in a bassinet 15 months later. She was registered carer for my mother-in-law, and later for my wife, who had a palliative care nurse drop in a couple of times a week. She is now recorded as my carer, although all she has to do is the cooking. No nursing homes so far. The house is split between the three of them in my will.

I think that is the Chinese way. The best way to humiliate Trump is to ignore him as best you can. Xi is a statesman, Trump is a buffoon.

Nice pics, Octave. Looks like the view from my bedroom window

Trump, or at least, the Trump organisation, has pulled the plug on Trump Tower Gold Coast.

On my new Samsung 26 Ultra phone, I just have to ask AI to draw me up a wallpaper image that suits my description. I typed, "I want a beach scene painting and nothing else, drawn in the impressionist style". It promptly produced a very good "art-deco, impressionist style" wallpaper, with a beach scene with chalk cliffs behind the beach, art-deco style ships in the distance, and impressionist images of people and umbrellas on the beach. I'd give it 9.9 out of 10.

If you get a window seat even on a Moonless night you can often pick out lights that tell you where you are That's an early A-320 wing. The best seat is up the front om the Left. Nev

None, They all represent interests of themselves as billionaires.

Geez, you've really been sucking on the Trump Kool-aid bottle, haven't you? What do you think is going to be the next thing to happen? A long-lasting peace plan engineered by Trump, where the Iranians lay down all their arms, and come meekly to the surrender table to sign the surrender document? You're off with the fairies, along with the Tangerine Toddler. He's so full of sh**, it's a wonder they haven't called the portaloo collectors to come and collect him.

This is beautiful.

He's a petty little man. Reckon he must have been a bully at school. This article sums up his (and his family's) profiting from his position. The extent of corruption and fraud is breathtaking. Any one thing he's done, if it had been any previous president doing it, would have led to impeachment and possibly jail. But he just does it so constantly that it's the new normal. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/14/trump-drain-the-swap-billionaires

Pot kettle black.

It's the Prayer room in Canberra.. Nev

Another Positive to celebrate. It looks as if the Trump Tower at Surfers is not a Goer. Nev

My positive today was a walk we did up Flinders Peak. It is a very foggy day here, but we climbed up and out of the fog into a beautiful sunny day. Then we climbed down into the fog, which still persists here at sea level. 1000011323.mp4

America had a treaty with Iran on nuclear weapons, and Trump scrapped it, purely because it was arranged by Barack Obama.

Maybe DJT was cunningly trying to implicate the other see? The holy one? He doesn't like the pope much!

Have you tried ‘bring me a beer’?

If it came down to a choice between those 2 shows, I'd read a book.

Here is a video from a musician who has a pretty good YouTube channel. This video is about how AI music will affect musicians. It is 15 minutes long, so I understand most folks are not that interested, so here is a summary of the conclusion. (created by AI of course) 6. The conclusion: art survives, even if the industry changes The overall message is cautiously hopeful. The speaker accepts that: AI is not going away, parts of the music industry will change dramatically, and some commercial opportunities may shrink. But he argues that: artists will still create, audiences will still seek authentic human connection, and genuinely creative music may become even more valuable precisely because it is human. His final idea is that true artists make music primarily because they need to express something — not just to make money — and AI cannot take that impulse away. The tone of the video is interesting because it starts from real fear and grief, but gradually moves toward adaptation rather than denial. It’s less “AI is wonderful” and more “AI is here, so what parts of music remain uniquely human?”

Lighty, I didn't realise you were that kinky. Does Barnaby know about this?

I emailed him and got a reply within 15 minutes. He is well, but has had a few system problems logging onto different sites.

Here are a couple of pieces of music trivia. During war 2, the BBC would play the opening of Beethoven's 5th Symphony (which I think everyone would recognise) before news programs. The rhythm is short, short, short, long, which is the same as the Morse code for V. This became part of the V for victory campaign. Famously, Churchill used to hold up his fingers as a V but initially got it the wrong way round, which meant something quite different. The well-known theme tune to Mission Impossible, composed by Lalo Schifrin started out with that famous long, long, short, short, which is Morse code for MI

Although I love aviation, I find commercial air travel to be mind numbingly boring. There are however usually some moments of beauty. I snapped this last night on my way home from Adelaide.

I think that the question has been well and truely answered. By its very nature, AI can only utilise what already exists. As you can say, it can rearrange what exists, in the same way that composers have created variations on the works of others. However, it takes a human imagination to innovate. Here's an example. Pete Townsend of The Who played around with reverberation using an electric guitar. No AI program would have thought to do that. When he achieved a useable result, other rock guitarists began to use the technique.

I sometimes think that bananaby's face is a reminder to take my hypertension medicine...... or put on more sunscreen. Anyone else wanting to Slip, slop, slap?

My random discovery.....

All UAE has to do is wait for the right time to activate the self destruct system they left in the aircraft.

I'm have got to stop starting posts with headline-like sentences. They are always misinterpreted. What I was trying to say was that it was a good thing that domestic solar installations were being done at a great rate and that the battery subsidy was a big help. It was my belief that the inability to store excess electricity was holding back the adoption of solar. That disability now seems to have been overcome That's good. An aside: I was nearly going to write that solar installation rates were going through the roof, but I didn't want to pun.

I never take a HTV card. Firmly of the belief that everyone who is eligible to vote should take their responsibility to engage in democracy seriously and number all boxes. It's not a big ask, once every 3 years.

Wait up..... I'm confused ...... I'll have to go back and find some episodes of 'Blue Hills' and 'Dad n Dave'...... that should clear this up.

So, since Trump is saving the world from the spread of mass killings and nuclear weapons, when can we expect him to make Israel give up their nuclear weapons?

Every ON voter questioned on TV, when asked why, said "We needed a change."

It seems funny hearing people refer to 4% as high interest rates. It was 17.5% when I took out a variable rate loan to buy my place, and the loan peaked at around 20%. My father was paying around 22% on his business loan at it's peak.

I tried the beer when I was up in the country, but it was hard to get, warm and tasted like the worst home brew you'd ever tried. Rotten egg gas smell when you opened them and no two bottles were the same. Apart from right hand drive cars driving on the right, another oddity was a couple of years later when Ne Win introduced new currency based on his lucky number 9. He also demonetized three existing notes which rendered 75% of the country's cash invalid. It wiped out most people's savings in a country that relied heavily on black market cash and hammered the economy. The military government was a bit crazy. In the first place I stayed there was a window between floors in the stairwell. In the distance seen out of the window was a big red building, and on the wall a poster with a stern government warning not to look at the big red building. I imagine in the big red building there would have been a government agent with the job of looking through a telescope to see if any foreigners were looking at the big red building. I wouldn't have even noticed the big red building if I hadn't seen the warning sign, so of course the natural response on reading the sign is to look out the window at the big red building.

I agree with you there Nev...the media in this country is shockingly bad. Journalism is now tainted with woke and left bias. Very few have any right bias its mainly left. What ever happened to unbiased fact based journalism that just gave you the facts and not the spin depending on who owns the media company The ABC used to until it was poisioned by idealogy and crap interviewers

He's had it in for Obama ever since he humiliated Trump at the Correspondents' Dinner in 2011.

and he's playing my all time favourite guitar, a 70's gold top Les Paul Deluxe. It's on the bucket list.

So I managed to cobble a career together from my dubious musical talents. I like to say that I strived for mediocrity and damn near made it. One of the joys in my life has been meeting and working with people who, although much more talented than we would no the less interact kindly with me. When I lived in Braidwood, NSW, a friend of mine talked about a well-known musician who had moved into town and asked if I knew them. This musician was called Martin Armiger. This name struck a chord with me. In the late 60s and early 70s, my parents were involved in amateur musicals. One of the orchestral conductors was a woman called Joyce Armiger. It turns out that Martin was her son. Being a small town with a vibrant art scene, I eventually crossed paths with Martin. I played in a concert where I could see Martin sitting in the front row, head bobbing with the music. After he came up and discussed the piece I had played with great enthusiasm. Although I guess we were never best friends, we did get invites to his house for lunch. Martin had an early career success with pop music in a band called "The Sports" Later, he became a noted film composer https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0035469/ Whilst attending a lunch at Martins, he retrieved a clarinet part from a film score he was writing and asked for my opinion, which I found flattering. My wife and I performed at a concert wth his very talented wife. He was also commissioned to write the ABC News theme circa 2012. He complained that he had to write 13 seconds of music and it had to reference the traditional theme and had to be given the OK by a committee, a tough ask. Later in my work, I came across students who were studying film composition at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School under Martin. They all spoke highly of him. In 2009, Martin gave evidence in the copyright trial of Men at Work's "Down Under" In the mid 70s, Martin was the lead guitarist in a band called "The Sports" Martin died at the age of 70 in 2019. He was one of the kindest people I've ever met in the music industry. There are many pictures of him online, but this one, in my opinion, catches his kindness and affability. Martin is the guitarist in the light grey jacket

You've got a good handle on it octave. This quote from your earlier post is an important aspect. Rule breakers have always pushed the evolution. AI by it's nature is rule based and at this stage in history is limited by that. Whether AI can evolve to become more human is something time will take care of one way or the other.

Yes, I would love to slap, slap, slap Barnaby.

Maybe he didn't want any military hardware at the WW2 victory parade because he feared some of it could be turned on him.😍

Have you ever wondered about the weird and wonderful jobs that have to be done, and which never make any news articles, documentaries, or "this is your life" shows? Yes, there are hundreds of them, and many are so basic to everyday needs, that they just don't even get discussed. Jobs such as chicken sexers, aeroplane repossession agents, ball divers (yes, I know you never even considered what happens to those golf balls lost in deep water), and... wait for it - barnyard masturbators. Yes, there is even a job involving getting animals horny for ease of insemination, which must take a special type of person.

I agree with him too, but he forgot to add that the US is responsible for creating the new normal that he's complaining about.

Your preferences only apply in your electorate, which wins one seat in parliament. To win government, a party must win sufficient electorates in a first past the post race in the House, so it's only a partial preference vote.

People pay big money to go for long train rides, and the aura and advertising associated with the "Great Train Journeys of the World" is very prominent. Both the Ghan and the Indian Pacific make money from passenger traffic. These trips are advertised as "premium" tourism events, and the passengers pay high prices for premium accommodation, premium food and dining experiences, and associated events in towns that the lines pass through. A company named Journey Beyond runs these train trips and the whole operation is quite highly profitable.