Guess who left the car window ajar overnight? Yup. Fortunately it didn’t rain much this morning. On the bright side, I managed to do a bit of time-travelling on the way home today. Something like this: 16:50. Get to Flinders Street, just miss 16:49 Mordialloc train leaving. 16:52. Deftly leap aboard an Alamein train direct ... [More]
Oops. This fine site was down for a couple of hours last night after my web hosting provider pointed out the bill was three weeks overdue. Nothing like downing your site to make you sit up and take notice. I found the errant bill languishing in my e-mail inbox. Full credit to them though, they ... [More]
Plan A for Sunday: Take the kids to the footy, meet up with Tony, Rae and Phoebe and watch the Cats lose. Plan B for Sunday: Walk down to Dick Smith Powerhouse, buy an XBox game, come home, play it. Maybe have a bounce on the trampoline at some stage. When these two plans were ... [More]
Finally got around to watching Finding Nemo on Friday night. Great stuff. My favourite characters would have to be the seagulls. “Mine!” I think they captured them perfectly. It made me recall Andrew Bolt’s critique of the movie. It’s a terrific laugh, as Boltie usually is. I always make sure to check out what he’s ... [More]
Sunday evening, 6pm. In the supermarket. Two blokes staring up at the bewildering choice of bottles of olive oil. “How on earth are you meant to choose one?” “There’s only 5 million up there, I don’t know what the problem is.” My reply got a chuckle, and I went back to staring up at them ... [More]
…and how pictures make a story real. If there was a Daniel FAQ, these questions would feature in it: Why are you involved in the Public Transport Users Association? What’s in it for you? And can I tell you about how late my train was this morning? Perhaps another long rambling retrospective is in order. ... [More]
An onion. Just an onion. A brown onion. That was the request. A Friday night, dark, and cold, no car available. Had it come to this: cast out to trudge through the inky blackness, in the rain, at the mercy of Footscray’s cesspit of villains? Nah. It wasn’t that bad. I ensured my winter layers ... [More]
Yesterday afternoon at the instigation of my mother and her partner Peter, I endured raucous Irish folk music. Now, there is a time and a place for everything. Except perhaps raucous Irish folk music. Okay, maybe over a Guiness or five with some mates on St Patrick’s Day. But when you’ve stopped by for a ... [More]
I give up. Enough people I know have posted this on their blogs… so now I’m giving in to peer pressure. I have bloke-ified it up a bit (and had some fun doing so), and altered some of the questions to reflect that a lot of people who don’t know me in person read this ... [More]
Went out to lunch with some colleagues, to some little place off Collins Street. Honey chicken, mixed vegetables and fried rice. And an orange juice. $8.90. Gave $20 to the girl, and she came back with change totalling $19.10. Something obviously went wrong there. Gave her a $5 note back, before realising later that I ... [More]
Just watched Seven Wonders of the Industrial World. Historic geek TV goes prime time. It told of The Great Eastern, Brunel’s doomed gigantic ship. It was in the style of a dramatised documentary, with interviews of the major protagonists as the story unfolded, and didn’t shy away from mentioning the horrific toll of industrial accidents ... [More]
Just another day in the (network) neighbourhood. Thanks to Tony for the tip-off. (Tattersalls building, Dandenong Road, Caulfield/East Malvern)
I’ve been playing Scrabble a bit. The word that got me winning the last game was “zebra”, on a triple word score. 48 points, thank you very much… I think I had been trailing before that. My sister is the demon Scrabble player from hell. Or so her reputation says. I don’t know if I’ve ... [More]
Call me an old fuddy duddy if you like, but for the most part I still like the video and computer games of olde a bit better. Though graphics and sound have leapt forward over the past couple of decades, the quality of gameplay is the subject of some debate. How playable is a game ... [More]
Just upgrading to WordPress 1.2. I see the comments have vanished. This will be fixed shortly. (Well, after I’ve done the dishes.) 10:30pm. Okay seems to be working. Some of the trackbacks and other wierdo URLs aren’t working ‘cos I have to find time to fiddle the .htaccess file to cope with my old archives. ... [More]
Its arrival has been much anticipated, and finally it happened yesterday. We got a trampoline. It has been a long time coming. I have been looking around for trampolines for a while now. Just one element in a wide-ranging family exercise regime. We never had one growing up, but I recall visiting our friends the ... [More]