Happy Australia Day from Murray By Moonlight and ULblog!

Today, in Australia, is a day to spend with friends and family, to fire up the BBQ, to play backyard cricket, to swim in the pool and to visit the beach.

I hope all my Australian readers [1] have a wonderful day, and for any non-Australians, today’s a great day to practise how to say “G’day!”

Footnotes:

1.	Yes, both of you.
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Don’t stop for any reason. Whatever you do… DON’T STOP FOR ANY REASON!!

That’s the frantic advice being given by a chain email that made its way into my inbox today [1].

Your life depends on it.

You are not safe.

If you pull your car over, if you stop, you are going to become a victim of a gang robbery, rape or perhaps even murder.

Footnotes:

1.	Thanks to Darren K
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This is probably old news for some, but I thought I’d mention it as a friend on Facebook shared this video as being true.

It isn’t.

This video was produced by French marketing company, LastFools, for mobile accessory manufacturer, Cardo Systems, who make headset systems.

The video, of course, went viral, and while there are a lot of demonstrations on sites like YouTube that you can’t pop popcorn with mobile / cell phones (my favourite one demonstrates that you can ‘do’ the same thing with bananas), there are obviously people who are still encountering the original viral marketing campaign for the first time.

Further reading: Videos of ‘popcorn’ mobile phones faked

Brisbane, the city in which I live, is about to experience its worst flooding since 1893.

Residents are living in fear that the Wivenhoe Dam, a major water catchment upstream on the Brisbane River, might fail. If it does, it will be the end of my city.

Currently, Wivenhoe is releasing approximately 645,000 megalitres of water per day into the Brisbane River, in an attempt to stop the dam from failing entirely.

To put that in perspective, all of Sydney Harbour, one of Australia’s most internationally recognisable bodies of water, contains approximately 562,000 megalitres of water.

Even if Wivenhoe holds, by tomorrow and Thursday flood waters are projected to reach levels that haven’t been seen in Brisbane in almost 120 years, exceeding the peak levels of the infamous 1974 flood.

Elsewhere in Queensland, it is estimated that the total area of the state that has been impacted by flooding is larger that the area of France and Germany combined.

And the rain is predicted to continue.

More: Brisbane prepares for worst flood in 118 years (brisbanetimes.com.au)