My Blog Posts

To cut a long and boring technical story short, I get hold of some choice quotations every day. Today a couple of them caught my eye and I thought I would share them with you; Rita Rudner:“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” Steven Wright: “I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.”

I’m saying nothing today. On a technical note I have changed the scope of the archive pages from weekly to monthly. That will probably be enough excitement for one day.

I do have something to say today. It is just not very interesting to anyone else. My ambition for the next week is to get to a position higher than 650 on the Vulture Central group at SETI@home. Still, you’ve got to have goals haven’t you. Oh, for those still reading, my name on the list is ‘andy47’.

All in all a very busy weekend. I don’t know if that justifies the fact that I waited until Tuesday to post here but it is the only excuse I have. The panto went very well on Friday night, even though the lighting supplied by your truly was very basic. I followed the Mr Miyagi school and all they got was “Lights on, lights off. Lights on, lights off.” The script was full of some very imaginative lighting cues involving all sorts of colours and effects. It is very hard to pull off a disco effect when you only have open white lights though. It was also a bit worrying to turn up two hours before the performance and find that no lights had been rigged. Still, it was alright on the night.

Phrase of the day, from Francis Dunnery, also spotted in Apocalypse Now, but originally from Abraham Lincoln; “better angels of our nature” Don’t know why, I just like it.

Now I’ve gone and done it. I am going to be doing the lighting for the Church panto this weekend. Which is strange because I don’t go to church. Maybe that should be “Church and Richard’s mates panto”. Regardless, I’ve been stitched up. Luckily there are only three performances and I hope the lighting requirements are not that complex. No fx lights, follow spots or fancy cross-fades timed to music queues. Because if there are I am toast.

I just wrote a very long post and it got sucked into the internet black hole. Here is a summary; I don’t control the remote control in our house now that Bobo is back from her travels. Occassionally she makes me watch rubbish. Two particularly awful examples this week were; The Michael Jackson 30th anniversary concert. Channel 7 treated us to this ’entertainment extravaganza’ on Monday evening. I could say so much, but my thoughts are expressed so much better in this Salon article. The man is a screaming loony.

Two things today. First is that Harry Potter frenzy is reaching fever pitch in our house at the moment. Bobo and the smelly backpacker can’t wait to see the movie as they loved the book so much. My protestation that the film of any book never lives up to expectations is roundly pooh-poohed, but I shall maintain my own counsel. My second thought for the day was prompted by the very first paragraph in the ‘hard news’ section of last week’s NTK. It reminded me of the pre-launch campaign for a youth ‘portal’ which was being built by a media company and television network here in Australia last year. Their posters (and banner ads) were all black, and contained the phrase “there is no scape” to tantalise the audience. The intention being, I presume, to intrigue the viewer into wondering what this could possibly be and to then launch www.scape.com onto the world with a flourish and a ‘well there is one now’ message. Sadly the joint venture perished in the dot com crash and the web portal was still born. The amusing factor here for me was the amazing foresight of the advert designers, there was (and is) “no scape”. Well, it makes me chuckle anyway.

Well, I’ve gone and done it now. Yesterday, at 5pm local time I became an Australian. Its quite a formal process you know. I received a letter from the Department of Immigration in July saying I had been accepted, but you don’t become an actual Aussie until you take the oath of citizenship. This is done at special citizenship ceremonies organised by local councils. So I dutifully toddled off to Manly Council yesterday afternoon for my ceremony. Whilst my cheer squad looked on, I swore to do various things and received in return a lovely certificate, an electoral enrolment form and a native tree. Oh, and they can’t chuck me out of the country now.

Oh, and in news from ‘sad man central’, I had trouble with my tie today. I usually use a windsor knot, which looks good and doesn’t ruin your tie. Unfortunately the new tie which I bought yesterday is far too fashionable and is shorter and wider than the ties I am used to. This means that a windsor knot ends up about the size of an apple and the ends of the tie barely reach my midriff. It was a fashion disaster, but luckily the internet came to my rescue. By searching for “windsor” and “knot” at me old mate I found the helpful how to tie at tie site and its easy to follow description of the half windsor. Problem solved, my old man is a mushroom, etc.

I have been very, very quiet. This has probably got something to do with the fact that I have bought a copy of Civilization 3. There goes my spare time. Of course, to lose my spare time I would need to acquire some first. In unrelated news it is Wednesday, so I’m off to play tennis this evening. If you are ever in Sydney and stuck for something to do on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning come and join in the fun at Wakehurst tennis club. Or not, its up to you. No pressure.

Inspired by Mark Pilgrim and Brent Ashley I decided it was time for my very own ego search. This is not always good for the ego apparently, Andrew Todd gives me nothing. I’m not even on the first page. Still, it is nice to see lots of very well qualified people with the same name as me. But wait, trying Andy Todd gives a much more satisfying results. The third entry is me, but does that make me famous?

A-ha, thanks to the lovely people at the Blogger discussion forums I’ve actually fixed up the archives. Now my words of wisdom don’t disappear into the ether after seven days. To look back, click the link in the navigation bar to the left and prepare to read a load of old mumbling.

I’ve finally caught up with all of the sleep I lost last weekend. For those of you who aren’t psychic, the reason I lost sleep was that we sailed to Port Stephens and back. This was the practical component of our AYF Coastal Skipper course. A mere 150 nautical miles in a weekend. Overall a good time was had by all, the only drawback is the four hours on, four hours off watch system. Having experienced this for just a weekend I’d like to say that long distance sailors are all nutters.

Are you a blogaholic? Apparently not. I score 40 out of a possible 100. According to the site this means; “You are a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’d post a little more often, you’d make your readers very happy.” So, who wants more of these random meanderings?

According to this article at the BBC, watching Buffy is a valid academic discipline. I think I’m ready to write my PhD thesis.

The frantic search for a mortgage has wound down now. After checking with a number of finance companies and getting flatly refused by most of them it is time to make a decision. As usual, we’ve gone for the path of least resistance and decided to give up. We may be able to secure a mortgage but because it would be an unconventional loan we think that the cost would be too much.

Why is it that Bobo and I, with a combined income that exceeds the GDP of some third world countries, can’t get a mortgage? In the UK I was looking into buying property a few years ago and the banks and building societies were falling all over themselves trying to give me huge piles of filthy lucre. Here in Australia I phoned the bank (who I have been with for over five years now) and they didn’t want to know me.

Pinch, punch, first day of the month.

But on a comedy note, Dave Barry has been talking about the big blue bear. Very funny, but a scary insight into parent hood. Hmmmmm.