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In Utero Tonight!

This story about unregulated ultrasound clinics raises more questions than it answers.

Australian ultrasound doctors say they are concerned about pregnant women using non-medical ultrasound studios to get images of their unborn children.

Sounds terrible, right? Why are we letting these amateurs with a machine near our babies? Will someone please think of the children!?

But nowhere in the story is it said that the non-medical ultrasounds are being used as a replacement for the medically-supervised ones. And the difference is crucial. I can understand the concern if parents are using unaccredited ultrasound “studios” instead of legitimate diagnosis. On the other hand, if the non-medical ultrasound — otherwise known as “entertainment ultrasound” — is merely in addition to the prescribed ultrasound sessions, what’s the harm? The distinction it is not clearly stated, so what’s going on here?

This isn’t the sort of topic I normally discuss on girtby.net, but the ambiguity annoyed me so I went digging.

Madness and Death

It’s hard enough, hard enough Just to survive, just to be alive – NoMeansNo, Madness and Death

Recently I have heard some complaints from various quarters that girtby.net is too nerdy and incomprehensible to those that actually have a life, or at least interests beyond cataloging UI glitches or some other nonsense. I hear ya, guys. It’s not that I’m not interested in real life topics; I like to think I’m at least moderately aware of current events. The trick is finding something interesting and new to say. There is a lot of great commentary out there, if you know where to look, and trying to compete with that is daunting, to say the least. But here goes anyway.

Onward to Victor-reeee!

In a previous post I said:

Bad Forms

In a previous rant, I mentioned the proliferation of ransom note typography as endemic in the corporate world, as a direct result of using WYSIWYG editors such as Microsoft Word. However there is a less common, but far more annoying, side effect of the Microsoft Word proliferation: forms.

Who Reports the Error Reporter's Errors?

Talk Like Pirate Day Needs To Walk The Plank

Dear victims of the talk-like-pirate-day meme,

Girt By Anniversaries

Happy anniversary, Girtby.net, you’re one year old today!

The Red and White Sox?

I’ve always thought that one of the most important rules to follow for successful blogging (or writing in general) is to not state the bleeding obvious. However, rules were made to be broken, so herewith a short (and non-techy) diversion into the world of Australian Rules Football.

Spam For Life

As conservative politicians go, there are certainly those more obnoxious than Malcolm Turnbull. Although I can’t quite decide whether he helped or hindered us becoming a republic back in the heady days of the referendum, but it seems his heart was in the right place on that issue and this buys him a certain amount of credibility in my book.

So recently we had his (AFAICT) mostly redundant tax reform ideas, and now a frankly bizarre suggestion to give every Australian an email address.

iCal, uCal, we all Cal

<img src=”/images/ical.jpg”height=”128” width=”120” alt=”iCal icon” class=”lede” />I mentioned iCal back in January as an example of a hybrid web/desktop application. Since then I have been using it some more and have come to really appreciate some of the finer points of its design. Here is an attempt to explain some of these and how powerful hybrid web/desktop applications in general can be.