I'm an Australian, based in the Washington, DC, area of the United States. I spend a lot of time there with Jasmine, Australia's best-known speedsolver of the Rubik's Cube. Prior to the US, Jasmine and I were based in London, UK. We have also lived previously in the United States and Australia.

I have worked for an Australian business rules and compliance company since 1999 in Australia, the US and the UK. I have also lectured in IT and Law related topics at King's College, London, and at The Australian National University.

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These are a few of my favourite links:
- Jasmine's site
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- Mikal
- Daveydweeb
- Beth
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- Doug
- Marissa
- Lisaloha
- David (Greenomics)
- Paul's Ramblings (music)

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London pirate radio of the 1980s

Someone mentioned a weird Sigue Sigue Sputnik remix to me the other day. The remix had originated on London pirate radio in the 1980s.

I had never thought much about pirate radio, except perhaps in the episode of The Goodies where the team sets up its own pirate radio station (which only ever played "A Walk in the Black Forest" by Engelbert Humperdink) just off the UK coastline. However, I had a look around online over the weekend, and found an interesting page talking about a London pirate station from the 1980s, Radio Duck.

I love the site's description of the Radio Duck setup:

During ON-AIR time, the station consisted of a small transmitter, a 12 volt car battery, a car cassette player (modified), an aerial and a tree. The rig was on a timer so the station members could be safely down the pub in case the DTI fancied a raid. The shows were pre-recorded on 1/4" reel to reel tape, then copied to a C120 cassette. The cassette player played the left channel of side one, then auto-reversed to play the left channel of side two. Then it auto-reversed again to play the right channel of side one, and finally the right of side two. A whole four hours of broadcast from one cassette! Ingenious.

I suppose no one would ever go to these lengths today because it's so easy to propagate music online, without having to worry about wrapping wire antennas around trees.