It’s not my place to elaborate on all the specifics, but a good friend of my sister passed away in quite tragic circumstances on Friday. One can only feel for her family, in particular her husband and two young kids. BeyondBlue: Postnatal depression. Donate (no online option unfortunately). PANDA: Postnatal and Antenatal Depression Association. Donate ... [More]
I have a profile on Facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time there; mostly playing the Scrabble clone Scrabulous, actually. (I’m winning one game thanks to “zit” on a triple word score; the other is heading for a photo-finish.) And seeing what my friends are up to. I’m not doing the free-for-all friends thing. ... [More]
Sometimes my brain doesn’t join the dots. Context in particular can throw me. I’ve had numerous emails over the years contributing to my Weird News page, most of them from a fairly small number of dedicated contributors. A few weeks ago at the Walk Against Warming, one of those contributors came up and said hello, ... [More]
Who is Vladimir, and why does Connex think he’s affected more than anybody else when the trains are out?
It’s like writing the wrong year in January. I keep hearing the words “The Prime Minister” on the news and thinking they’re still talking about John Howard. Is it just me? At first glance, I’m impressed with the code of conduct Rudd’s written up.
I’ve seen Google and Yahoo put out reports on the top search terms of the year, and we’re only a week into December. (Happy Hannukah by the way.) Seems a bit odd to do that before the actual end of the year, but what the hell, I’ll jump on that bandwagon. Here are some stats ... [More]
I’m in two minds about the kids using Wikipedia as a reference. On the one hand, it’s known to be a generally accurate source of information, with studies showing it can rival the big commercial encyclopaedias such as Britannica. And I love the idea of the information in it being free, helping to spread knowledge ... [More]
A few brief snippets: Okay, so it’s December now. And I’ve sent precisely zero Christmas cards. Really should get into action, shouldn’t I — I’ve already got some from overseas. Who Do You Think You Are with Stephen Fry on Sunday night was gripping, fascinating, poignant television. Looking forward to the rest of the episodes. ... [More]
Andrew blogged on this subject on Friday, so I though I’d jump in too. The Pakenham bypass ($242 million) opened over the weekend, and is already expected to cause traffic problems further south. The Tulla-Calder interchange ($150 million) is almost finished — which may be why it’s still showing red on the Vicroads Travel Time ... [More]
Call me slow, but I didn’t know until I spotted the ribbon-sellers in Collins St this morning that it’s World AIDS Day today. There are various causes out there with varying degrees of deservedness (is there a better word to use there?). Some of those that put highway collectors out on weekends in particular I’ve ... [More]
<geekyPost> A couple of years ago I wrote a post encouraging people with blogs to make sure their RSS feeds were turned on. I thought I might just repeat it now. RSS helps people like me who have little time to go to one place to catch up on all the blogs we like to ... [More]
Forgot to post these photos from last weekend. Or was it the weekend before? Footscray Road, Saturday afternoon, an important convoy came through. With escort cars, flashing lights, the full works. They seemed to be heading west, last seen heading along Ballarat Road, rather than towards the North Pole. Maybe Santa’s got a local distribution ... [More]
I have a filing system which works well on computers, but is hopeless for real life. Everything goes into a big pile. It’s the GMail principle. In GMail you archive everything in a big “pile”, then search for it later when you need to find it again. On my work email, I now do the ... [More]
Final word for now about the election. There was much discussion with friends on Saturday about the perils of who to put last — particularly in the Senate, where every man and his dog was in the race, including parties nobody had ever heard of before. Do you put the racists last? Or the nutbags? ... [More]
I got my sausage at the polling place sausage sizzle, so I was happy. There seemed to be a few wedding parties about during the afternoon. I guess they’d managed to find church halls that weren’t being used for polling. (One wedding party on the steps of St Paul’s in Bentleigh were memorably sipping from ... [More]
“My father Sydney was a watchmaker from Nottingham, and my mother Verity was – well, she was a nurse, actually.” — John Smith/The Doctor, in the episode Human Nature, 2007. For all you did, thank you, Verity.