Headed to Big Day Out in Sydney last week. Stayed with the ever hospitable Shara and Jac, they even let us watch Foxtel!

Highlights for me were:

• The Music – no fuss, just top songs – see them
• Eskimo Joe – great pop songsters
• Johnie Butler – not the best venue for him but still grouse (come back to Woodford John!)
• Powderfinger – oldies but goodies
• Beastie Boys – varied set, pretty darn good
• Chemical Brothers – masters of blips and beats, despite a languid crowd
• Spiderbait – top brainless rockers
• Grinspoon – even more brainless
• The Hives – missed most of their set, but still tops (memories of Deutschland)

Who did I forget?

And thanks to the NSW Police for arresting all those drug peddling 14 year old girls, I feel much safer now.

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Rusty has written up some of his thoughts on the negative effect extending intellectual property rights has on people’s real-world property rights. He’s talked about it at lunch a few times too, and I think it’s a good point.

I think cars are a good example because they’re very tangible, everyone has one¹, and they actually do contain software these days. So imagine that having bought a car you then weren’t allowed to sell it, because the license on the software in the car (intellectual property) didn’t allow that. There are already licenses for software that are like that.

Something Rusty mentions, but didn’t stress, is the way such a scenario relates to the traditional Right-vs-Left view of the whole IP issue. Given the above example I think it’s clear that by strengthening the copyright holders’ intellectual property rights you reduce the buyers’ property rights. In practice that means reducing the rights of individuals, and giving more rights to big corporations.

Given that, somehow Bill Gates still thinks it’s sensible² to go around calling the people who are arguing for individual rights and freedoms “communists”. I’m may not be a Pol-Sci major, but I thought it was the capitalists who believed in private property and individual rights?

Update: Bill Gates has more to say which is a little less inflammatory but unconvincing. And yes he did call them communists:

There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. – W. Gates

1. That’s a separate problem

2. He doesn’t, he knows “communist” is a loaded word in America and it’s a good way to attack Open Source.

For the fourth year running I spent Boxing day to New Year at the beautiful Woodford Folk Festival. It’s an awesome way to spend a week, sitting in the sun, lying amoungst the trees, listening to music, eating, drinking, dancing ’til dawn in the grass, and trying to get some sleep in between.

For the curious, Woodford is about an hours drive north of Brisbane, near Maleny and other hippy towns. The festival isn’t acutally in Woodford town, it’s a few minutes drive away, on a piece of farm land that is used every year. There’s showers (cold) and toilets (flush), a little shop, and lots of little trees that one day will be big and make lots of shade (please!).

The festival runs from Boxing day until the 2nd of January. There’s a wide range of music, from traditional “folk” folk music to international folk acts like Java from France, and Aussie groups like the Cat Empire, Missy Higgins, The Resin Dawgs. For the dancers there’s the Jungle Arbour with DJs playing ’til early every morning.

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Here’s a whole bunch more photos thanks to Matt. There’s heaps of people shots in here, in contrast to my photos which are mostly of things.

Warning: if you’re on a slow connection the thumbnail page will take a while to load.

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Here’s another bunch of photos thanks to Steve via Ben C. Perhaps not the most flattering collection ever put together, but that’s the way it goes.

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While at Woodford, Scott, Tom and myself made a trip up the nearby Mt Beerwah. It’s the plug from an extinct volcano and it’s seriously steep, rising 500 meters from the surrounding plane at about a 40 degree angle.

Scott and I climbed it last Woodford, but this year we wanted to be on top for dawn. So after Missy Higgins & The Waifs finished we got an early night, in bed about 1am. 2 hours later, at 3 am, we got up again and headed off in the car. Yawn!

We really should have got up at 2:30am, in the end we hit the top only just before the sun rose. Scott made it up in about 25 minutes flat, while Tom and I strolled up in 30 minutes. The record is apparently 39 minutes up and down.

Afterward we got a tip-off that Kondalilla falls was a nice swimming hole, so we headed there (sort of) on the way back to Woodford.

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Following the success of last year’s Woodford return road trip, we decided to do the same again. Jess and Catherine were planning to hire a car, but at about $300 each for the week, we managed to squeeze them in our car instead.

We took it very easy on the 2nd, we went into the festival, which was still remarkably active, and had some food, not leaving until after the traffic had subsided. We headed to the water hole, but so did everyone else, so instead we found a little spot on the river where we could sit in the water to cool off.

Bribie Island was our first night, on the south west end of the island. The water was warm, the camp ground passable (mossies!), and we had some great discussions over beers at the Surf Life Saving club.

From Bribe we headed to Murwillumbah, where we ended up staying three nights. We went to the Currumbin rock pools, relaxed, ate nice food in remarkably good cafes, and were generally lazy. Ben & Jo joined us for one night, and also the climb up Mt Warning. Although it was a bit hazy, the views were still good, and the climb was good exercise. They also came with us to the Natural Bridge.

Catherine had to be back at work by Friday arvo, so we did a big day of driving straight down to Sydney where we stayed with Shara. Friday morning saw us heading back to Canberra, sniff, with a detour down George St, oops!

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