The Australian 2004 Blog Awards are on, and happily this humble diary has been nominated in a couple of categories by some poor deluded fools who think it’s worthy. I’m certainly not holding my breath on winning any of them, because there is some staggeringly good competition among the other nominees. But I’ll certainly be ... [More]
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Tea
The coffee industry is huge these days. Gone are the times when ordering a coffee meant a polystyrene cup full of vaguely coffee-flavoured brown gloop. These days you have to look hard to find that gloop. No, in the western world’s big cities in the 21st century, there is a world of choice, there are ... [More]
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Tintin turns 75
Tintin turned 75 on Saturday, and he still doesn’t look a day over 16. The Belgians, ever eager to remind the world where he’s from, have issued a special 10 euro coin to help celebrate. Upon reading about this in the paper over the weekend, memories of the books came flooding back, and a flick ... [More]
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Dog person, or cat person?
We had cats when I was growing up, a series of them, many of whom lived to ripe old ages. The most memorable were Hepzibah, Sooty (mine) and Mischief (my sister’s, who was later renamed Eric by my mother after my sister moved out. Why Eric? Cast your mind back to Monty Python’s pet licence ... [More]
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Junk mail
Junk mail with a difference arrived in the letterbox last week. A piece of weatherboard cladding, about 30 x 5 cm, merely a sampler of what the manufacturer promises is a new generation in cladding. It’ll solve world hunger, it will bring peace, it’s a permanent solution to maintenance, it won’t chip, split rot or ... [More]
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Au revoir, Noel
As with any telecommunications method whose usage balloons out beyond all expectations, SMS is subject to its share of wrong numbers. Last night a most intriguing one for me. A very spiffy picture message of an aeroplane arrived from a number I didn’t recognise, with the message (lack of punctuation preserved): Im leaving tomorrow Great. ... [More]
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Water bill
The most exciting item – no, the only item – in the mail yesterday was a water bill. Whoopee, the good people at South East Water want $36.95 for the quarter. Given that we are deep into water restrictions, I did have a look at the little graph showing water consumption. 300 litres a day, ... [More]
Driving along yesterday by a park, I spotted a row of people with their dogs all SIT!ting next to them. Probably an obedience class or something. Suddenly I heard a bark – one black and white dog had broken from the pack and was sprinting along. I was doing the speed limit or so – ... [More]
As you may have noticed, this diary has finally been brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Yep, I’ve done what I swore I wouldn’t do – switched to a content management system. (In geekspeak that’s CMS.) As a result, some of the stuff has changed, some of it looks different. The old diary ... [More]
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Get involved
I think it was Alexei Sayle who described people who regularly protested outside the South African embassy in London against the Apartheid regime. When Apartheid finally crumbled, they were shocked that they’d actually won, and didn’t know what to do anymore. Over in my little corner of activism land, three of us slogged our guts ... [More]
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Happy new year
Well, here we are, 2004. As you may have noticed, I’ve been busy so far with extracurricular activities. But I won’t bore you with that. Instead let me tell you about the car. Tony got the collector’s edition version of Doctor Who: The Three Doctors for Christmas – in the special box with a toy ... [More]
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Bye bye 2003
Zoom. Well, there goes the year. To me it seems to have gone incredibly fast, but a lot’s gone on in my life and around the world over the past twelve months. In the grand scheme of things, particularly in the Personal Relationships Department, the start of the year didn’t seem great to me, but ... [More]