My Blog Posts

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has finally made it’s way onto television here in Australia. Praise be, and let us rejoice. This now justifies the extra twenty bucks a month I spend on Foxtel that I ponied up a year and a half ago expecting to see Mr Stewart and his cohorts, and it will save me a large amount of bandwidth as I won’t need to download the show over the interweb.

Today was almost a perfect day. It started with a crushing victory in the first round of the Wakehurst Men’s Doubles championship (followed by a close loss in the second semi final). On returning home I managed to spend half an hour snoozing on the sofa whilst listening to some quality sounds on my stereo and then a couple of hours cooking a slap up Sunday roast for the family. Which wasn’t really appreciated by anyone under three years old, but what can you do? In my case I’ll just carry on cooking until they blooming well like it.

Why? Because the start of the British Grand Prix has just been announced (as in, we will show the start in about half an hour) on Channel Ten but I know that it finished about ten minutes ago and what the result is. Damn you broadcast television.

Apparently there’s a World Cup starting in a couple of days. My only contribution is to be slightly miffed when JFGP insists that the game is called soccer [1]. It isn’t, it’s football. Regardless, I’m generally fairly oblivious to the round ball game, and can sum up my sentiments about the next five weeks as - what he said. I’d also like to make the point that I’m not in any way taking the mickey out of Mr Housewife even though he is claiming that because of this sporting festival he will be glued to the goggle box and won’t be able to leave the house for five weeks. I am particularly not pointing out that this will make it rather tricky to take Ethan to school and pick him up again each week day.

Thanks to the nice folks at Download Squad I’ve discovered Splashr.com a nice little service that creates presentations from your photos stored at Flickr. It’s really quite good, here are a couple of samples; A selection of photos of Alexander Oliver poses for the camera Some people that I work with

OFB is home safely from the hospital. The boy and his mother are a bit tired but otherwise all seems to be well.

I don’t normally sully this page with actual news, but just for a change here we go. OB Todd is spending some quality time at the Children’s Hospital with what looks like another UTI. Luckily he’s in the best place for treatment and hopefully this time we got onto it early enough that he’ll be alright. He’s currently on intravenous doses of the horse strength antibiotics and with luck and a following wind will be allowed to come home on Friday.

Normally I’ve got something witty or pertinent to say when I post a photo. Today I’ve got nothing. Luckily this picture doesn’t need exposition or explanation, it’s just Olly doing what he does best - going in for the gnash. He has chewed everything in our house. Next thing you know he’ll be munching his way through yours.

It’s Sunday night after a particularly tough weekend and SWMBO is making me watch the Eurovision Song Contest. Again. I shall have to set up a relief fund. Do think of contributing, even a small donation may help maintain my tenuous grip on reality.

Yesterday I discovered that Australia has joined the first and second worlds, even if it’s only in an online sense. What am I talking about? Google Maps has updated their database to cover this wide brown land. Look, here’s my house.

It’s popcorn fiction of the worst kind, with cliche ridden dreadful writing and less than one dimensional characters. The prose style is taken directly from the sub-editors desk at The Sun. Don’t even get me started on the enormous number of simple factual errors in the text, not least the screamingly obvious fact that Mr Brown has never set foot outside the continental United States. At the end I just wanted to know where I could get those three hours of my life back.

And I’m not afraid to use it. Thanks to Robyn’s efforts I’ve now got a nice white box to photograph things in. My first effort was a couple of test shots of JFGP’s pet monkey. Expect to see more random lightbox shots in the future. Oh, and if you want to play tennis on Sydney’s northern beaches you can’t go past Wakehurst Tennis Club.

Three will go into one boy’s small chair. Even if Oliver is more concerned with eating the television remote. Togetherness is big at Chez Todd although whether it’s based on familial love, trying to get Mummy’s attention or just a fondness for the best seat in the house is open for conjecture.

I went away for four days last week and all I managed to get out of it was 650 photos. And into trouble with SWMBO. This is probably the only one of interest, the attendees at the Lend Lease ICT Asia Pacific conference 2006 (also known as the love-in). I can’t recommend the venue highly enough though, it’s a lovely hotel if you are ever in need of accomodation in that part of the world.

Mark this day. The Identity Cards 2006 bill is now law. People in the UK, please enjoy your police state. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so. Update: It gets even better (or is that worse?) there is now an official ID cards web site which tails us all how wonderful they are. Update 2: According to this reasoned analysis it will never work anyway. Roll on the Poll Tax like public dissent.

Look, I’ve been slandered on video. Damn those Bucks!

I am the supreme nerd commander. Bow before me. People have often accussed me of being a “nerd” or a “geek. It’s nice to know that I now have proof of how hip and cool I am. I challenge you, dear reader, to do any better. Unless you’re a 13 year old boy with an unhealthy technology obsession you will be hard pressed to beat me.

My fellow Australians, and particularly those commentating on sporting events can I remind you that the name of your country is Australia. It is neither pronounced nor spelt “Awstraya” That is all.

The Todd clan spent last weekend in picturesque Jervis Bay. It was rather nice. Even after the rather horrible exit from Sydney in the rush hour traffic on Friday afternoon doubled our travel time. The weather was just about perfect and the location,White Sands fantastic. We had a choice of beaches within two minutes walk of our cabin and I even managed to grab a paper on Saturday morning. I still haven’t read it of course, but there’s every possibility that I’ll get to scour a page or two in the coming week. At the very least my Dad will get to update his knowledge of Australian current affairs when he and my Mum arrive back from Melbourne sometime tomorrow.

I think, thanks to Mil Millington, that I’ve found the present to end all presents for my father. Say hello to the Butter Wizard. It is quite possibly the useless gadget to end all useless gadgets.