My Blog Posts

People of Exmouth, I’m watching you. Be good or I’ll tell my Mum. Courtesy of the lovely people at The Register.

After a short interlude the daily photo is back. Here’s JFGP enjoying a quick coffee at a cafe in Manly. If he doesn’t get his daily caffeine fix he can be a right bugger.

I used to work with a chap whose first act every day, upon sitting at his desk and turning on his PC, was to check the obituaries column in the Times online. A morbid hobby, but apparently a very intesresting one. These days I suspect that he would be better served by the ever fantastic Wikipedia which has, I discovered today, a recent deaths section. Anything you could possibly want is on that site, with the possible exception of how to calculate and store sub-contractor retentions on supplier invoices. But that’s my problem and not yours, so take a look and don’t drown in the seas of knowledge you find there.

Just when you thought it was safe, and the political posts had stopped, I discover that ID cards are the talk of the day in New South Wales now. The fact that I’ve already got a photo driving license in my pocket has got nothing to do with it. I’m opposed to centralised population databases of any sort, mainly because they are never secure. I’ll be writing to my MP on this, just as soon as I figure out who that is.

I’ve extracted the latest group of photographs from my camera and uploaded the half decent ones to Flickr. Enjoy. Selected highlights of this set will be appearing here with hilarious commentary in the next few days (or weeks if I get a little distracted).

From the always readable Neil Gaiman the finest euphemism I’ve heard in ages (and I went to a Bill Bailey gig three days ago; “he’s also distancing himself from the reality-based community”

All it takes is a little puff of wind and the Manly Ferry stops running. Which rather inconveniences those of us who use it to travel to and from work. It only took me two and a bit hours to get to the office this morning, a little longer than my usual, leisurely, hour long trip. I did, at least, manage to get out of the house though, unlike the brummie pseduo-salesman who last night stayed in and didn’t come to see Bill Bailey. Apparently he was concerned that his roof would blow off. Wuss.

I’ve long maintained a personal list of people who will be “first against the wall come the revolution”. Rapidly ascending that list is Dan Brown who stole several hours of my life when I read his execrable novel “The Da Vinci Code”. Luckily, I’m not alone in this opinion and Ben Last explains the pain that is a Dan Brown “novel” much more eloquently than I ever could. But today further evidence reaches us that accelerates Mr Brown’s rise up my personal pick of the tossers. Take a look at the picture in this BBC news article. He’s wearing a polar necked jumper and a tweed jacket. Heresy! Is it still the 1950s? I rather think not. Last smoke with your blindfold Mr Brown?

Over the next couple of days I’m going to be doing a little surgery. You may notice that this fine web site isn’t available for a short period of time, for which I apologise in advance. I’m also mucking about with my e-mail so if you send me a message in the next few days and I don’t respond it’s not because I’m ignoring you, probably. See you all on the other side.

A few good wishes today. Good luck to my brother (SLAHWHM) who started a new job this week, here’s hoping they don’t work you too hard. Then good luck to the 70’s throwback’s liver. He’s spending the weekend at Minehead watching the finest band from Aylesbury. There will be much drinking, and I’m sure he’s eminently well prepared for that. I am entirely not jealous that he will be seeing the first (and probably only) live performance of Ocean Cloud. Not jealous at all.

This popped into my inbox today; “Hi there! Fatty, Sterlo, Matty and Chief are back on your TV screens next Thursday night at 9.30pm. We’re kicking off the season in a big way, our first show will be at the Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre and we are inviting you to be there with us to welcome back the footy season! Tickets are only $25.20 and can be purchased from Ticketek by clicking on the following link; http://premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/show.aspx?sh=FOOTYSHO05

It had to be today that they cancelled the ferry. After tallying in bed for about ten minutes too long I got a shift on with the morning routine and hustled down the hill to the wharf just in time for the 8 o’clock ferry. Only to find that it was cancelled. So faced with a choice of squeezing onto the crowded Jet Cat or taking the next ferry and arriving at work a little bit late I did the conscientious thing and shuffled onto the Jet Cat with all of the other thrusting executives.

People. Don’t use “verbalize” try exercising your vocabulary and using “say” or “said” you’ll find that they are quite versatile words. This post was inspired by the smashing people at http://www.weaselwords.com.au

It’s 6:30 on a Friday afternoon, I’m sitting in my garden under glorious blue skies with a chilled glass of Chardonnay and surfing this here intarweb wirelessly. Marvelous.

I’m laid up at home sick as a dog, after a weekend of tending to the family who were likewise. Consequently I’ve got nothing interesting to say and will instead share these quotes from The Friday Thing a rather smashing topical email I receive; On Michael Howard : “a crude facsimile of a human being fashioned from pure smarm.” On binge drinking : “Maybe, but it’s also part of the UK’s ongoing war on binge drinking, surely the greatest menace to our island nation since the Nazis discovered how much fun panzers were.”

I don’t know why, but I love the expression on JFGP’s face in this photo. It was taken at Mahoney Mansions (guys, if you’re reading this, you owe us a phone call) last year. I’ve only just uploaded this photo which is why it may not be entirely chronologically in keeping with the rest of the photos of the day. I haven’t been attentive to this journal as I might have been over the last week. My only excuse, and it’s quite a feeble one, is that I have been rather busy at work.

Announcing a new RSS feed. Today I am mainly doing chores. After cutting the lawn and cleaning the bath I’ve changed the style sheet on my web site and would like to introduce you to another innovation. If you’re reading this in bloglines or any other RSS reader I recommend you switch to my shiny new feed. It comes courtesy of the smashing people at FeedBurner and not only includes my words of wisdom but, as an added bonus, the photos I put up on flickr and the pages I bookmark at del.icio.us.

“Never forget: there was no doubt about the identity of the 9/11 hijackers; the issue was their intentions.” Blimey, once more I find myself linking to Boris Johnson, enfant terrible of the Conservative party. I particularly like his reference to a law lord’s ruling from 1951 (when ID cards were abolished after WWII). Probably the only hope for the citizens of the UK is that a similar ruling will take place in the near future which will consign this latest waste of taxpayers time and money to the history books as well.

For those, like us, with a bun in the oven who are searching for the perfect name comes the Baby Name Wizard. Perfect for finding common names, and even finding out what have been the most popular names over the last hundred years or so. It’s a bit seppo-centric, but apart from that it’s just fun to type in your own name and see how popular it’s been. Unless you are called Ciaran, in which case it’s a bit of a let down.

It’s been a long while between daily photos. But I’m human, and quite busy to boot. JFGP received a gift this weekend. It was a bit late for Christmas, but his Mum bought him a (handmade) chair of his own. We could tell it was popular because he wouldn’t get off the blooming thing all afternoon. As you can see from this photo he insisted on eating his tea in the chair - whilst watching the Wiggles naturally.