Categories
books Film music

Music, Foreigner and WarGames

Saw a guy on the train with an old-style portable CD player. ‘Cos, you know, digital music from real CDs have a warmth that MP3/AAC on iPods just can’t match… Watched WarGames again the other night. As Marita commented, no wonder geeks like it — geeks get to save the world. (Though they almost destroyed  ... [More]

Categories
General

Followups

There’s a lot of great comments that present themselves from readers on this site. Allegedly in the innanet industry this is what the marketing types call user-generated content or some such. Whatever, but it shows what highly intelligent people you all are. My old school mate KTK remarks that obscure names are an advantage for  ... [More]

Categories
Culture

You’re right

“Sorry.” “No; you’re right.” I’m not sure where I picked it up, but it seems to be a new speech pattern that’s entered the language that makes much more sense than the higher-profile “Yeah, no, yeah.” If someone says sorry, but it’s for something they really shouldn’t be apologising for, I won’t say “That’s okay”,  ... [More]

Categories
driving

New tyres

So I moseyed down to the tyre place yesterday afternoon. The bloke looked over my tyres, and just as I’d suspected, told me in no uncertain terms that they were beyond the bounds of roadworthy. He also puzzled over why there were non-standard (wider than usual) tyres on the car. “Someone in the past must  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Home life

I am no longer gormless

Yesterday I followed a time-honoured tradition, something done by countless millions on the Easter Monday holiday, right across the western world. I returned stuff to Ikea. As many did, I had gone along on Saturday, full of good intentions and a cashed-up wallet, ready to splurge on something new and exciting to spend time building  ... [More]

Categories
Photos transport

Still impressive

I don’t agree with the name change, but I do think the renovated Southern Cross Station is impressive. Compare this picture from about a year ago to how it looks today (yep, there is a massive tram stop in front of it, seen here with a massive tram, so it’s a bit harder to see  ... [More]

Categories
Home life TV

Great Friday

Ah, Good Friday. It seems like ages since I’ve been able to sleep in, then laze about the house in my pyjamas. Shortly I’ll watch the vid of last night’s West Wing, then maybe, maybe I’ll consider having a shower and shave and getting dressed. But no rush. I’ve decided, by the way, that the  ... [More]

Categories
Clothes

High-visibility jackets

It used to be just construction workers that wore high-visibility tops. Now they adorn police on traffic duty, tram/train customer service people, cyclists, truck drivers, builders, couriers, and so on. They do make a person more visible (spectacularly so at night), even if they do little else. Railway industry people wryly observe that some of  ... [More]

Categories
Health

I’m going to be poor next month

I’m going to be poor next month. Such is the life of a contractor that you don’t get to claim for public holidays, and since I send in invoices monthly, April’s will be missing not only Good Friday, Easter Monday and ANZAC Day, but also today, as I’m at home convalescing. Yesterday I found myself  ... [More]

Categories
driving

April is car maintenance month

April is car maintenance month for me. First thing will be new tyres. I don’t do a lot of driving (in the region of 10,000km per year, which is apparently about half the average), but the tyres date back to last century. The front-left deflates rather too fast, and they are failing the matchstick head  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Food'n'drink

Saucy!

My kids love tomato sauce, so we often have it on the table during meals. There’s several brands available, the main ones being Masterfoods and Heinz (Big Red). They both taste the same to me. But the Masterfoods one comes in a bottle with recycle code 4, which is not recyclable in my area. Heinz  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Net

Should Daniel sell-out?

Daniel wears Glo-Weave shirts. He shops at Safeway. He loves Weetbix for breakfast, and always includes Leggo tomato paste in his spag bol. A while back I decided to play around with Google ads on a few pages: Here, here and on Geekrant.org. To my utter surprise, it’s now earning US$5-9 per month. Which is  ... [More]