Down here in Australia, we are subject to awful prices on our telecommunications technology like mobile (cell) phones and broadband. If it weren’t for Comcast introducing their 250GB cap in October last year, I doubt many Americans would know the meaning of a broadband cap.

Telstra is the largest telco in Australia, and owns the majority of copper phone line in the country. Many Australians assume Telstra is the only choice as a broadband provider, as they own the phone lines and run lots of pretty TV ads. Thus, Telstra has been able to exploit their brand image by charging their customers obscene amounts for their internet access – customers who either don’t know about the competitors supplying ADSL, or are locked into 2 year contracts with Telstra.

Here is an example of one of Telstra’s price tiers for ADSL2+ (20Mbps theoretical maximum): $69.95 / per month, which is roughly 45 USD. Seems expensive, but that’s not all. This plan has a download cap/limit of 600 megabytes! So what happens if you go over this limit? Telstra charges you an extra 15 cents per megabyte, which equates to $150 per gigabyte! (96 USD as of 24/02/09).

My grandparents related a cautionary tale to me about how their neighbour’s nephew stayed over for the weekend and racked up a monthly Telstra broadband bill in the thousands. I told them not to worry, I know a thing or two about the internet.

broadbandchoice.com.au is an excellent impartial website which gives comparisons and returns results based on search criteria for broadband plans in Australia. You’d have to be crazy to pick Telstra for your internet access after visiting that site.

My plan, while not the best now, was the best I could get in my area for ADSL2+ some time last year. It gives me 15GB/month plus 30GB/month in the times between 2am and 12 midday. When going over either of those limits, my internet speed is slowed to a slightly-better-than-dialup speed of 64Kbps – or rather, it is supposed to be.

I replaced the modem that my internet provider sent in the mail (Linksys AM300) with a Speedtouch 536, connected to a Linksys WRT54G which handles the PPPoE authentication and provides wireless and NAT functions. It seems that this combination has somehow thwarted my ISP’s attempts at slowing down my internet access speed, as I have exceeded my limit the last 2 months but did not get slowed down.

My theory is that the modem needs to reconnect to the ISP for the slower connection to be established, but maybe since I am not using the stock modem, my ISP cannot remotely reset the modem and force a reconnection. So I guess I have unlimited downloads now? (as long as there’s no blackouts) Pwn’d.

Even though my audience consists of approximately 3 regular readers plus the people who searched for the Red-footed tortoise of South Africa, AKA Jabuti – I feel like I’m letting those 3.5 readers down by my recent lack of content. 

My excuse is the Higher School Certificate, the exams which mark the end of high school. I’m currently in the middle of these minor annoyances, which after I get the results back will confirm just how difficult my professional life is going to be. It’s all on a scale from 50-100, basically ranking how intelligent (ability to rote learn lots of pointless crap) you are. 

So, tomorrow – well, later today – I shall be sitting my 3 hour Mathematics exam. It is now nearly 3am and I have to congratulate my brain’s extraordinary ability to avoid work that needs to be done. 

In the 8.5 hours since 6pm when I resigned myself to begin my epic cram session, I have accomplished the following:

• Memorisation of most critical formulae needed for tomorrow’s test ( I don’t need to actually practice)
• Learnt to play the verse riff from Muse’s Bside, ‘The Groove’, which has been repeating an endless loop in my skull for days
• Read the summary of all characters with special abilities from the TV Show Heroes
• Watched about 150 videos from YouTube

For your fix of music – From the very talented Alyssa Hart, “Crazy – Gnarls Barkely Cover”

And for a mix of both categories, “Electric Stimulus To Face” from Daito Manabe

Ahh, YouTube… I can spend hours upon hours on this thing. I really enjoy going from one video to another – perhaps starting out on something featured on the front page, or something new from one of my subscriptions. Then after watching a video and posting a comment if I have some kind of compliment to the author or to let someone know if they posted something idiotic, I then proceed to watch related video after related video – and watch in amazement as they gradually dwindle in relevance from the video I started at.

Anyway, I was looking at peoples’ cover performances of one of my favourite bands Say Anything and found one by a user called Jaaaaaaa.

This girl is absolutely bloody amazing! Julia Nunes is a very talented singer/songwriter from New York that skilfully plays the ukulele, guitar and melodica. She is of course, extremely talented at what she does. But it is proven through her talking channel that she is very fun to watch even when she’s not performing. She has this immense enthusiasm, silliness and joy that comes through in her videos, which had me grinning ear-to-ear at 2am last week when I discovered her. She is really just amazing to watch, and she has given me immense musical inspiration.

Oh man… I watched Fight Club for the second time in two days tonight – and I love that damn movie. After watching it, I was just incredulous to the fact that I hadn’t seen it before or that no one had ever recommended it to me.

For the basically violent premise of the title and plot, the blood and gore isn’t that terribly gruesome in comparison to some other R-rated movies out there; so even if you’re a little squeamish, you should still experience this incredibly well put-together piece of film. The acting and casting is superb, with stunning visual techniques and a fascinating exploration of the human psyche. This movie has a HUGE twist at the end, which made me want to watch the film for a second time straight away (quite a rare quality for a movie, I’ve found).

Again, I am quite amazed I have only just now managed to watch this masterpiece which came out back in 1999. I’m sure you’ve at least heard of this film – do yourself a favor and watch it! Here’s a preview of one of my favourite scenes

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a superb specimen of computer gaming goodness. This game is un-freaking-believable! Whether it’s on the Xbox360 or PC this is one of those rare games which people will usually find nothing wrong and nothing to criticize about. Apart from the insane graphics, gameplay and class customization, it continually gives me a very pleasant feeling when the map loads so fast.

Finally, the Call of Duty line of games has broken the time lock of the 1940’s in which it’s developers had it eternally trapped. This brings the obvious upgrades in weaponry which have accompanied decades of Research and Development into human beings killing each other, in real life. But apart from the assortment of weapons available to you in campaign and multiplayer, there’s also sections of the game where you view the story from another soldier’s perspective, with very different weaponry. There’s a part where you shoot enemies with huge rounds from an airplane, and also a sniper backstory which ends in assassinating a political leader with a 50 caliber sniper rifle from a mile away.

The multiplay gameplay is very well impemented, with around 15 different game modes. There is also an addictive rank/level system with lots of challenges and goals to complete.

In short, if you like first person shooters, buy this game. You won’t be disappointed. It is well worth the $50. It is even worth the $110 it’s likely to cost in Australia. (This is why I only have 4 360 games)