Happy New Year… to all my read­ers! May 2010 bring world peace, per­petual hap­pi­ness and an Apple slate com­puter. – Enoch, in Rome.

05 Jan 2010 by Enoch Lau | 4 comments

When the uni­ver­sity launched its rebrand­ing last year, I was quite pleased: a glossy bro­chure explain­ing the kind of image the uni­ver­sity wants to pro­ject to the pub­lic, a new logo, new momentum for change on super­fi­cial and deeper levels.

Now it’s all ruined. Take a look for your­self (click to enlarge):

Yes, this is the new Uni­ver­sity of Sydney web­site tem­plate. I kid you not. A gen­er­ous per­son might call it “func­tional”. A less gen­er­ous per­son might… well, let’s leave this blog G-​​rated. It’s grot­esque. It has all the charm of a late 90s web­site. It car­ries none of the per­son­al­ity that the uni­ver­sity aims to pro­ject, and all of the air of design-​​by-​​committee and oh-​​look-​​I-​​learnt-​​css-​​in-​​24-​​hours. There’s no warmth; the design alienates.

For bonus marks, it even dis­plays in Arial on a Mac.

(For com­par­ison, here’s a screen­shot of the web­site as at 5 January.)

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Ok! Packing’s nearly done and I’m just about to scoot off to the air­port. Me and Dan will be trav­el­ling to the USA, Europe and parts of Asia over the next few months – can’t wait!

25 Nov 2009 by Enoch Lau | 2 comments

Optus, Optus, Optus. You really like screw­ing over your cus­tom­ers right? I really didn’t appre­ci­ate hav­ing to work out why my home net­work printer stopped work­ing right in the middle of exams — because you screwed with DNS to earn a few easy quid. (Same goes for you, Tel­stra.)

19 Nov 2009 by Enoch Lau | No comments

Berkoff v Burchill [1996] 4 All ER 1008 at 1019 per Mil­lett LJ:

It is a com­mon exper­i­ence that ugly people have sat­is­fact­ory social lives – Boris Kar­loff is not known to have been a recluse – and it is a pop­u­lar belief for the truth of which I am unable to vouch that ugly men are par­tic­u­larly attract­ive to women.

Trivia: Lord Mil­lett has a Chinese name, 苗禮治 (miu4 lai5 ci4), pre­sum­ably because he is now sit­ting on the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong.

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'If you like your sex life, don't stick a firecracker up your arse' -- David Rolph's media law life lesson #7

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Photo taken by Dan

Photo taken by Dan

Lip­stick on a pig?

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The point is that cap­ital works – from a new police sta­tion to a new port – deliver a flow of ser­vices stretch­ing over 20, 30 or 40 years. Bor­row­ing to cover, say, half the cost of the work is a way of shar­ing its cost between the present and future gen­er­a­tions who will bene­fit from its ser­vices.
(full art­icle)

Ross Gittins is a genius – this art­icle is prob­ably the best explan­a­tion I’ve seen of why the gov­ern­ment should bor­row to pay for infrastructure.

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The Uni­ver­sity of Sydney is rebrand­ing from 2010, with a new logo, a new state­ment of pur­pose, and a new domain name (www​.sydney​.edu​.au).

I missed the staff present­a­tion on it today (doh!) but the “Brand Book” is up on the Brand web­site for uni­ver­sity staff to view. It’s nice and glossy, and con­tains state­ments of what the uni­ver­sity stands for, what the uni­ver­sity believes in, and how the brand is developed on a more prac­tical level.

And it has the new logo too! How­ever, I’m led to believe that there are ser­i­ous legal con­sequences for me if I post it up here, so I won’t. But I must say that I have a pos­it­ive impres­sion of it – it’s a logo that acknow­ledges the past, while present­ing a fresher image of the uni­ver­sity. Although some might con­sider it a heresy to change the logo at all, I can ima­gine some much, much worse altern­at­ives – I’m just relieved they haven’t gone for some­thing min­im­al­ist, abstract or just plain-​​old Web 2.0.

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“If we do not des­troy ourselves, we will one day ven­ture to the stars…”

And who said sci­ence can’t give mean­ing to your life, and can’t imbue you with a sense of purpose?

Part of me still wishes I did that phys­ics major.

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