I was sitting doing some coding at work when The Posture Police arrived. The Chair Squad. The Ergonomic Inspectors. Seriously, a team of three did a sweep through the office and checked every chair to make sure it was working properly, able to be adjusted, and offering the correct back support. Zowee. It reminds me ... [More]
Wikipedia started a fundraising drive in December, and given the value I get out of it, I decided to contribute. Happily, I chose a day when all donations were being matched by some anonymous donor, which was a bonus. Imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks after Christmas, I got a Christmas card from ... [More]
Some pictures snapped in the last few days… I’ve never seen them have to explain what Happy Hour is before Pah, I’m not even going to try Hands up who remembers Stacks of Slax from The Late Show? Alas, they’ve just closed down.
With all the controversy over the flag this year, and what it may represent in the hands of some people, I found it refreshing to read this, posted on one of The Australian’s blogs by ex-serviceman John Taylor: The Australian flag has many places where it can and should be displayed. But this is not ... [More]
I know how much I’ve changed over the years. I’d like to think I’ve matured. My outlook on all sorts of things has altered. My lifestyle is radically different now from when I was 18 (if you think I’m a dag now, you should have seen me then), and has changed several times during that ... [More]
I saw this Google Map Mashup a while back, but Pete found it for me again: What happens if the sea level rises? Even for the maximum shown, a 14 metre rise, if this is right, apparently most of Melbourne will remain above water, though if you live in Altona, Port Melbourne or Chelsea, you ... [More]
The cockroaches are starting to get me down. I gather they’re around the city in large numbers this summer, but that’s no consolation when I seem to find at least one somewhere in or around the house every day. Possibly the worst moment was stepping on one in the dark last week in my bare ... [More]
This morning’s train in: And if you think that’s crowded, you should have seen the one before it. Admittedly this was down to earlier cancellations, but regular peak hour travellers know this kind of thing isn’t that unusual. So, are they buying more trains? No. (In fact they just scrapped a bunch.) But hey, they ... [More]
I wonder how much money actors make? I don’t mean the megastars, I mean just your average medium-sized stars. Random example: Gareth Thomas. Played the title character in Blake’s 7, which must have occupied him for the three-and-a-bit years he was in it back in the late-70s, and made him famous. Since then IMDB lists ... [More]
Okay dream analysts, see what you can make of this one: I was appearing on a Siegfried and Roy TV show. You know, those odd American/German guys with big cats (who stopped in 2003 when Roy was injured by a Tiger). I was meant to lie down on my stomach, with my arms outstretched, and ... [More]
“A lot of people died in Iraq today, most of them kids. This is a very minor matter.” — Chris Murphy, Matthew Newton’s solicitor, to reporters. Is this going to be known as the Matthew Newton Defence: claiming what you did wasn’t so bad because there’s worse things going on, unchecked, elsewhere in the world? ... [More]
I’ve mentioned before my exploits with video, a set of productions made predominantly when we were teenagers, with zero budget, on equipment borrowed from school. The very last production was an episode of the Professionals-inspired “STRIKE”, about a secret crime-fighting organisation. Made in 1993, by which point all of us were either at uni or ... [More]
Mathom sounds like something out of The Meaning Of Liff, but it’s not. Apparently it’s a word from Tolkien meaning something you have no immediate use for, but which you want to keep just in case. In the stories, the Hobbits sometimes had entire extra houses dedicated to mathoms. This sounds just like my mother. ... [More]
I count myself lucky, given the power chaos yesterday. I got out of the city just before things really got pair pear-shaped (even if the train was an old non-aircon one, at least it was moving, and not too crowded, and we opened all the windows, which helped a bit). Marita was, I think, less ... [More]
The past couple of weekends, Marita and I have got on our bikes for a ride. Nothing too fast-paced. Certainly not the hell ride. Not even the slightly-less intimidating heck ride. Probably not even up to the standards of the gosh darn ride. No, we did a leisurely ride down the Nepean Highway service road ... [More]
Have you seen the latest chain email, claiming that Woolworths/Safeway are going to donate all their profits on January 23rd to drought relief? As someone who gets chain emails regularly, and has to almost always Reply All and tell people it’s crap (generally providing a snopes.com URL to prove it) I initially scoffed at it ... [More]