Marjorie and Mark get dey wing on. Tonight we made our best effort to recreate our favorite Atlanta tradition, Wing Night. When my parents came to visit (and I still have yet to blog about our trip together), they brought me some real buffalo wing sauce, which is not available here. (Well, they have Hooters wing sauce at USA Foods, but it's wrong on several levels.) Not owning a deep fryer, we cooked the wings on the grill, then doused them in sauce. We cooked tater tots (potato gems, in Aussie parlance) instead of fries, and used creamy Italian dressing (also brought by my parents) instead of bleu cheese. But the celery sticks were true to form, and the beer we chose (James Squire Golden Ale) was perfection: slightly microbrewish, just like the pitchers of (? we forget!) that we used to get at Taco Mac. Yum.

The email you never received:

Subject: New friend request from Mark

Mark wants to be added to your Friendster friends list. By becoming friends with Mark, you will be able to send Mark messages and connect with his friends.

He would have invited you a long time ago, but, c'mon, "Friendster"? It just sounds like another internet fad, the kind of thing sent to you by the same sort of people who tell you that Bill Gates will send you $1000 for forwarding on this email. However, Mark and his wife both like meeting new people, and if Friendster helps, then why not? But he would rather not risk annoying you by putting an invitation in your email inbox.

So if you are doing the Friendster thing, drop him an email or leave a comment and he'll send you a proper invitation.

Go Knights! My old alma mater played their first ever bowl game this weekend. Sounds like it was a great game but with a disappointing result. They even had the highlights on TV here last night.

It's hard to get in the Christmas spirit when:

There is a largish planet between you and the bulk of your family.

It's the middle of summer.

Flies have taken over. (Okay, there are no "swarms" here but they're still pretty bad.)

You have to work the next week.

A large, dead tree in your backyard picks Christmas eve to start falling over. What's worse is that it's a tree that for some reason -- elephants? -- evolved prickly thorns all over its branches, and even its trunk. I've been at it with a saw for much of the afternoon.

Still, we're making do. This is traditionally the day to gorge myself ill on my grandmother's pierogies. We found some pierogies here to do the same, but tomorrow's supposed to be hot, so we decided to cook the turkey today.

Merry Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Festivus/Newtonmas to family and friends everywhere!

Year-end music wrap up. Oh, it's been a sad year. I just had a look at the Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2005 and I've heard, let's see, none of these albums. Not a dang one. I am official OLD and OUT OF TOUCH. Phooey. I've heard of one of the top ten bands, and that's only because he went on a rant after the New Orleans disaster.

I dunno, I filled out my collection of the back-catalogue of a few artists I already like, like Lucinda Williams. I listened to a fair amount of new stuff on Pandora. I saw a few concerts (Finn Brothers, Polyphonic Spree, PJ Harvey, Mudhoney, the Shins). But, musically, as far as new stuff goes, this year has been a giant sucking dearth.

If Laika, our dog, could talk, most days would sound like this:

Morning:
Me: Good morning. [Scratches Laika behind the ears.]
Laika: Good morning. Thanks for the scratching. You don't mind if I follow you around while you get ready, do you?
Me: That's fine.
Later.
Laika: I see you are ready for work now. Give me my rawhide chew, and I will run out back to eat it alone, because that is my instinct. Then you can close the kitchen door and go do whatever it is that you do.

Afternoon:
Laika: Hooray! You're home!
Me: Good to see you too, girl!
Laika: Hooray! You're home!
Me: Yes yes, okay, good girl.
Laika: Hooray! You're home!
Me: Settle down.
Laika: Let me lick your face!
Me: No.
Laika: Let me lick your face!
Me: No.
Laika: Let me lick your face!
Me: No. Oh, okay. [Lick.]
Laika: Hooray! You're home! Can we go to the park?
Me: Mind if I put my things down first?
Laika: Can we go to the park?
Me: Can I go to the bathroom first?
Laika: Can we go to the park?
Me: Give me a minute, would you?
Laika: Can we go to the park?
Me: Oh, okay.

(Back from the park. Mark is eating a piece of cheese.)
Laika: That cheese looks good. Can I have some?
Me: No.
Laika: Can I have some cheese?
Me: No.
Laika: Can I have some cheese?
Me: No.
Laika: Can I have some cheese?
Me: [Sighs.] Okay, here you go.
Laika: That was quite delicious. Can I have some cheese?

(Later.)
Laika: You can't take my toy away.
Me: You're right, and I don't want to.
Laika: You can't take my toy away.
Me: Yuck, get that slobbery thing off of me.
Laika: You can't take my toy away.
Me: Yes I can. [Yank.] See? Now go fetch it. [Throw.]
Laika: [Fetches, returns.] You can't take my toy away.

"Where do you find all these awesome websites?" I get asked that a lot at work, when I pass on a link. Here's where:

Blogdex - most popular links culled from people's blogs.

SlashDot - the best techie news site, with user comments.

Digg - sort of cross between the first two. I check this more and more these days.

del.icio.us popular list - sites people are saving as favorites.

Got any others you like?

The hazards of using your second language. Today, one of my Asian cow orkers (while heading off to lunch) said: "Well, I'm off to get some grubs." I hope he didn't mean that literally but I stifled my laugh just in case.

Weekend summary:

Friday night: Mark's other office Christmas party. We discover after arriving that partners were not invited, so we make an early evening of it. Indian food in town at Gaylords; my dish, yummy, Marjorie's, not so much. They also served ketchup with their papadums.

Saturday: Mark up early to watch the World Cup draw (Australia drew Brazil, Croatia, and Japan [ouch]. USA's in with Italy, Czech Republic, and Ghana [double ouch]). Afternoon: shopping, massages. In part of Mark's ongoing quest to try every type of spa treatment, he subjects himself to the "Traditional Stepping Massage". This did not involve the tiny-footed Asian girl as I had envisioned but rather an older Chinese guy in socks who proceeded to work me over thoroughly like the roughest soccer game I've ever been in. But it was surprisingly envigorating.

Sunday: Rollerbladed down to the Espy. Burgers on the grill. Then we set up the tent in the backyard just to try it out. Laika seemed to get the idea of camping, but was too excited by the surrounding possums to settle down, so she got the boot early on. The possum twittering drove Marjorie in soon after that; I made it to 5 a.m. or so, when the morning mynah birds drove me inside. Now I realise the real reason people have houses: they're to keep out the animal noises while you're trying to sleep.

The local paper has a short article and photo about last weekend's photo shoot. I won't say who I am in the photo except to say that I'm very, very visible.

This morning I got up at 5 am, shaved my tongue (the office Christmas party was last night), and went into town to get naked in front of a bunch of strangers.

It was a hoot, but damn cold. There were, I'd say, sixty of us. All body types; all ages; tattoos, piercings... One woman was there with her five year old son, who was a good sport most of the time, but was not happy to have to lay on the grass. It took about 40 minutes in all. The worst was posing on a bridge over the Yarra river, where we were exposed to the wind. Plus, I ended up having to lay in a wet spot (it rained last night). Brrr! Also, it started drizzling at the very end. The only witnesses were a group of joggers, one person on a hotel balcony, and a mostly-empty tram.

The calendars should be ready in about a week. Be warned, I might post some scans!

Sad News:
We found out yesterday, that one of Laika's park buddies, a dog named Charlotte, was killed in a hit and run on Saturday. What kind of person hits an animal and can't even stop? I suspect he/she was speeding, drunk or both.

An interesting possibility presented itself at work today. The company has ideas about starting to outsource work to India (like everyone else these days). But, though it's way too early to call, it might mean a trip or two to India to set things up. Hyderabad or Mumbai. How cool would that be?

"Silly Season" is another Australianism, which is their term for the time around Christmas, when there are a slew of office (and other) parties. Silly? Hah. They've got nothing on the good ol' U. S. of A..

Uh oh. Last night we went to a (Aussie-style) Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's house. They had a picture of up by that famous photographer, Spencer Tunick, that takes pictures of large numbers of naked people in famous locations. He's even taken shots in Melbourne before.

I said to Marjorie, you know, if he ever comes to town again, we should participate. She said, you go right ahead, I'll watch.

So this morning I'm surfing around, and guess what's happening next week?

What I want for Christmas. An interesting bit of journalism from from favorite new author.

Apparently, Melbourne has another sport to its credit, besides footy, that was invented here and is played here pretty much exclusively. It's called trugo, and was invented in the 1920's by railroad workers, and involves knocking a rubber ring through goal posts with a railroad mallet. We had never heard of it until last night. Strange.

A friend of mine just got back from a trip to Egypt. I'm insanely jealous. Fortunately Marjorie decreed that tonight was the night we'd book our trip to Tasmania, which makes me feel better. Tasmania's always been just an obscure place on the map for me, not some place I'd ever thought I'd visit, and I'm stoked that we're going.

Sweet! Last night, in front of 83,000 people, Australia's national soccer team (dubbed The Socceroos) beat Uruguay to qualify for their first World Cup appearance in 32 years. It came down to a penalty kick shootout, which are VERY nerve-wracking, but for the first time in a very long time, the team I was rooting barracking for actually won a big game.

I watched from a pub with dozen or so of the lads from my soccer team. It was crazy fun; I yelled myself hoarse. Sadly, no one did the "Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oy oy oy!" cheer there, but people on the news were doing it. There were similar celebrations across the whole country, apparently: soccer has arrived.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Mark's out wandering around the Outback, encountering Emu's and other strange birds, while I'm here with the dingo and LimeWire re-experiencing the joy of being able to download random music. Remember Nik Kershaw? Bet you couldn't find his albums in most record stores these days, but they're online. And so is most every other random artist you may have ever liked.
Gotta love the internet.

Last Tuesday was a holiday here in Melbourne; probably the only one in the world based on a horse race. This year, we actually went. We would've witnessed some history, had we been able to see: the horse Makybe Diva won for the third straight year, a new record. Have a look.

Quote of the day:

"In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country--hold up your head. You have nothing to be ashamed of." -- Mark Twain

Watch this video clip of some white dots moving against a black background. It is extraordinary, but only if you know what you're looking at.

It's a star, whipping around the very center of our galaxy. Notice that you can't see the thing that it's whipping around. That's because it's a black hole, at the very center of our galaxy. This video clip pretty much confirms that there is a black hole at the center, which can be determined not only by the fact that you can't see it, but the speed at which the star whips by it. They estimate its mass to be about two million times that of our sun.

I had always thought that the center of the Milky Way was too dusty to see into; I don't know how they did it (though the answer seems to be "adaptive optics"). Notice the numbers on the top left; they indicate the year that each frame was taken, so you're looking at a ten-year time-lapse. And at this distance, it didn't just happen; you're looking at a star passing by a black hole about 28,000 years ago. Boggles the mind!

There was a classic commercial when I was growing up in the US, for Chevrolet. It was nothing but a theme song and a montage of scenes depicting Americana; the song went "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet", over and over. At the time, it really seemed to sum up America, and was a very popular commercial, if I remember correctly.

I'm currently working on the web site for Holden, Australia's biggest and truest car maker, in spite of their actually being part of GM. And the other night on TV they had a hour long documentary on the history of Holden, which I felt compelled to watch. They showed some early commercials, and one was almost identical to the aforementioned Chevrolet commercial. They had different words, though, to the theme song; this, apparently, was how you summed up Australia at the time: "Football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden cars".

So now Time Magazine gives us a list of the All-Time 100 Novels (in the English language). Of them I've read:

Catch-22

The Catcher In The Rye

A Clockwork Orange

Deliverance

The Grapes of Wrath

The Great Gatsby

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Lord of the Flies

1984

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Slaughterhouse Five

Snow Crash

Their Eyes Were Watching God

To Kill A Mockingbird

Fourteen percent -- that's a lot better than I usually do on these sorts of lists. I also tried to read Neuromancer but couldn't take it. It's a questionable pick anyway.

Teacher's pet? My soccer team's end-of-year banquet was last night, in a natty little upstairs function room in town. Pretty fun. Lots of greasy hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and awards. I took home the coach's player of the year award (for the thirds team) which was a nice surprise.

Read this, then this.

For a while I've been keeping a list of the IMDB's Top 250 movies, and checking them off as I go. Others apparently like to do the same sort of thing, judging from this new web site. A link to the movies I've seen can be found via the new link over on the right side under the kangaroo picture.

What's the highest ranked movie you've never seen?

Three posts about the same book? Sorry, but I just finished that diary, and man, they need to make a movie about it. Since I reported last:

The remaining Jews, the guy included, received orders to appear at SS headquarters in two days times with a packed suitcase, for what everyone knew was a death march. He was one of the ones that had to go help deliver the orders.

The night before they were supposed to appear, Dresden was firebombed.

In the resulting confusion he decided to cut the Jewish star off his jacket and run for it.

He and his wife joined the throngs of refugees fleeing the city.

Through a series of close calls, phony ids, and continual near starvation, they make their way as far as Munich.

They are near Dachau when the Americans arrive, and he witnessed survivors, the walking dead, still in their blue and white striped linen.
It all reads like Hollywood. Perhaps most interesting were his reports of the reactions of the people as the war ended and they came to realize that they had been fed humongous pack of lies. Naturally, those that were clued in knew all along (including all the atrocities); on the other end of the spectrum, there were plenty who kept on believing, but of course denied involvement.

"Mo"vember. A bunch of guys at work are planning on using the month of November to grow mustaches. They're calling it "Mo"vember. There'll be judging at the end of the month; I don't know what the prize is, but I thought about participating. Marjorie thinks it would be hilarious if I did.

I think it would be funny, but I like my jokes to last somewhat less long than a month. I don't see it happening.

More Aussie-isms.

To rock up: to show up, especially at a social event. "You all go on to the pub; I'll rock up in a half hour or so."

To shit: to bother. "That new guy may be smart, but he really shits me."

Ye: you (plural). Actually, I think this is an Irishism. "You can work on this by yourself, or the two of ye can finish it together."

Upon noticing my Irish coworker using this last one, I told her the similar rule used in the Southern US: "y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural. She got a big kick out of that.

Sufficient density. It used to be that you could know pretty much everything about computers, but not any more -- not by a long shot. (The same could be said of mathematics, physics, or several other fields.) In the IT business, you really have to pick and choose what you learn. There's always a buzz of new ideas, which is what makes it such a fun field, but which ideas are worthwhile, and which are a waste of time? Some people just seem to try out everything that sounds cool, and revel in that approach. Not me. I have to wait until I hear a thing mentioned in enough places before my interest is piqued.

Which is a long way of explaining that I've set up a list of my favorite links on del.icio.us. I'm a little dubious that a site for publicly listing your favorite links will have the broad social implications that some people are predicting for it. But, it's reached sufficient density to at least appear on my radar. And at least I'll get to access my hot links from anywhere. So what, beeg deal.

Snobservation. A sure sign of mediocrity in a restaurant: do they use iceberg lettuce in anything?

I'm With Stupid! I had Marjorie look over one of my chapter submissions for the book I'm contributing to. Among other things, she pointed out that in one place I used the word "stupider" instead of "more stupid".

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou...

The book I'll be contributing to is called "Mind Performance Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Becoming a Better Thinker". It has chapters on memory, math, creativity, clarity, decision making, info processing, communication, mental fitness, and "metaprogramming". My chapters fall under math and communication, but I'll leave the specifics for a later date. I think it has the potential to do very well; I find this sort of thing discussed a lot out on the web, and an earlier O'Reilly book on a similar subject was quite popular. I've seen the proofs, and there's some choice stuff in there. Due out in January. Exciting!

It's already listed on Amazon, Powell's, and Barnes and Noble (under the wrong title).

Years ago, after picking up Mary Chesnut's Civil War diary on a whim, I resolved to read a lot more historic diaries. It has to be THE best way to learn history; even though it's from a single point of view, you still get all the little details that make it real.

I went on to pick up I Will Bear Witness, the first half (1933-1941) of a diary by a Jewish professor of literature living in World War II Nazi Germany. It's amazing, but I never picked up the second half (To The Bitter End, 1942-1945) because the book company was only selling it in hard cover at the time (dirty trick!).

Just recently I managed to procure a copy of the complete diaries ("The Klemperer Diaries") through our library system. It is just an astounding read. The author was Jewish by heritage only; he was actually a Protestant, and had an Aryan wife (which undoubtedly saved his life). Still, as the war presses on, he is increasingly deprived of everything; his academic title, his home, his typewriter, his savings... I'm up to 1942, and was nearly in tears on the tram today as I read about them putting down their much-loved cat before it could be rounded up according to a new decree. This was followed immediately by the Gestapo's first raid of their house. By Klemperer's account, they got off "easy" -- he was visiting a friend; his wife got slapped and called "a Jew's whore". They of course ransacked the place and stole a number of provisions, there being severe shortages at the time. They also ground up some garlic they found and hid it around the house, just so their home would stink.

He's 60 years old and had angina, but still was ordered to work with a road crew shoveling snow -- and was the youngest on the crew. Hard to believe there are still another three years of this to read about; he is continually so close to death; not just from his physical condition, but from the whims of the Gestapo.

Hunt this one down, and give it a read. Utterly captivating.

Read any good historic diaries?

Marjorie's birthday wrapped up with the chocolate indulgence high tea at the Windsor. With me, it's class all the way, see?

This being Marjorie's birthday weekend, we rented a car and drove up to Daylesford/Hepburn Springs for some west and welaxation. I've recently resolved to try all the various different types of spa and massage treatments that exist, so this time I got coated in mud and cocooned in a blanket, while getting a head massage. Very nice! Marjorie opted to get her feet done.

Along the way we saw our first two wild kangaroos -- alas, roadkill. But while waiting for our spa treatments, we walked a little ways up a nature trail. After spotting some Jacky Winters, a superb fairy-wren, and several crimson rosellas, Marjorie spotted a small kangaroo peering at us from the top of a rise fifty metres away. Our first!

Super Bowl Grand Final Sunday Saturday. Last Saturday was the big game day in Melbourne, our second footy Grand Final. And for the second time, no Melbourne team was involved, despite the fact that Melbourne teams make up more than half the league. This time it was the Sydney Swans versus the West Coast Eagles. Support in our neighborhood was overwhelmingly in favor of the Swans, for reasons we couldn't fathom. Was it an east coast versus west coast thing? Turns out, the Swans used to be the South Melbourne Swans, before moving north to Sydney.

Twice while we were eating out during the weekend did the patrons spontaneously break into the Swans team song. Obviously, they won.

Geek warning. A thread on a board I read regularly spurred me to go out and try to do some basic astronomy. We only have one crappy little set of binoculars, but I thought I would at least see if I could orient myself. Living in the city means you only get a handful of stars (though Melbourne has far clearer nights than any comparably-size city I know). But with a little help from Your Sky and a field guide I bought a long time ago, I was able to pick out the tail of Scorpius yesterday. Slightly hazy tonight, but I spotted it again, and followed a trail from it to a particularly bright star just above the horizon. My field guide identified it as Rigil Kentaurus, which didn't sound familiar. So I looked it up online, and it turns out that that's just the proper name for Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbor! A lucky find, considering there were only twenty or so stars even visible through the haze. Like the Southern Cross (supposedly right next to it, but obscured by a cloud), it's not visible from most of the Northern hemisphere. Pretty cool, I think.

I'm the penultimate! Our soccer team tallies best player votes at the end of each game. The other night we had our annual Vote Count night, where we see the tally from the year, presented as a game-by-game slide show with running totals.

I took second (for the thirds team), which is cool. Especially considering I have no ball skills to speak of, and don't have a particularly cool head when I have the ball. Early on I was aiming at not being the worst player on the team, so I'm happy with this.

Fairly eventful weekend, last. Saturday evening we went and saw a perennial favorite of ours, Glenn Tilbrook, at the Espy. Always a hoot. Nice thinly populated show, which is a good way to catch him. I called for him to play "By The Light of the Cash Machine", and he complied straight away. Marjorie walked up to the stage between songs to request the song he wrote with Aimee Mann, which he said he didn't remember -- "but I think it had a G chord in it." He did his amazing rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile", on acoustic guitar -- it has to be seen to be believed. He put the guitar behind his head and played an intricate repeating part while talking calmly into the mike -- he's quite an amazing guitarist. Climbing up on the bar, he did "Goodbye Girl" and "Black Coffee in Bed" singalong. There were a couple of blues covers with a guest guitarist whose name I didn't catch, that were quite tasty. And he closed with a cover of the Cornell Hurd Band's "Genitalia of a Fool" that had the crowd in stitches.

We stayed out too late, so I had to play our last soccer game of the season slightly hung over and with not enough sleep. We lost a game we should have won. But it was fun. Home for a nap, then the first of a scheduled year's worth of once-a-month wine tastings, organized by a friend. Our turn to host will come. It should be a lot of fun, and edumacational too.

In the evening I went out and met with all my soccer teammates who were out "getting pissed". Out too late again, and I forgot to eat dinner too.

Not exciting news. YET. I've been asked to be a contributor to a forthcoming book. Without getting too specific, I will mention that it's an O'Reilly book, which is about as cool as it gets in the techie arena. I'm not going to get my hopes up too high, since my contribution would be small, and may not survive the editing process. It's very much the equivalent to a walk-on part in a big movie, that may well end up on the editing room floor. Still, it will be VERY COOL if it pans out, and might lead to follow-on stuff. Further details as events warrant.

On a lighter note. Here are the photos from our trip to Hamilton Island.

I just saw this broadcast from Fox News. I'm no fan of Fox News and Geraldo Rivera, but good for them, and the other journalists covering Katrina, for getting the word out that the people of New Orleans need HELP, and so far, it hasn't been forthcoming.
This is not a proud time to be an American. Bush just seems to go from one deadly decision to another. I hope history accurately records the ways in which this administration have let America down, and voters remember this in 2008.

New Orleans. Not sure what to say. Still trying to fathom the extent of this tragedy. I went there, once. A little seedy but a unique and fascinating place.

There was a chart in a recent National Geographic, showing the number of hurricanes in the last ten years as almost double the number in the previous ten. They say this is due to the ocean temperatures being warmer. Is this a global warming issue?

Podcast, schmodcast. Mixmaster Marjorie and I sat around the kitchen last night with some beers and played songs for at each other. We had just finished listening to the new White Stripes album, which ends with a gospel-y number, so "gospel" was the original theme. But we ran out of that, fast, and so switched to "original and cover songs", where we'd play a bit of the original and then play the cover. The playlist:

I'm Lonely (But I'm Not That Lonely Yet) -- White Stripes

Paul McCartney -- That Day Is Done (I like Elvis's version better)

Love Is Stranger Than Death -- The The

Jesus Gonna Be Here -- Tom Waits

Smells Like Teen Spirit -- Nirvana/Tori Amos

Which Will -- Nick Drake/Lucinda Williams

Hounds of Love -- Kate Bush/Futureheads

David Watts -- The Kinks/The Jam

Hallelujah -- Leonard Cohen/Jeff Buckley

Redemption Song -- Bob Marley/Joe Strummer (Somehow we don't own the original. Who could cover this song, but Joe?)

La Vie En Rose -- Edith Piaf/Louis Armstrong

New Amsterdam -- Elvis Costello/Tasmin Archer

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath -- Black Sabbath/The Cardigans

Cactus -- The Pixies/David Bowie

Hang On To Your Ego -- Beach Boys/Frank Black

Ruby's Arms -- Tom Waits/Frente

Gimme Some Truth -- John Lennon/Sam Phillips

Winterlong -- Neil Young/The Pixies

IGY -- Steely Dan (Who snuck that in there?)

The Other End Of The Telescope -- 'Til Tuesday/Elvis Costello

Speeding Motorcycle -- Daniel Johnston with Yo La Tengo

Police On My Back -- The Clash

Things started to break up towards the end, but it was fun.

Weird things my brain does.

1. Lately I've had the annoying tendency to confuse words that start with the same letter. So, I tell people I work on LaTrobe Street instead of Lonsdale Street (the next one down). Or I order a Cappriociosa pizza instead of a Calabrese (and end up with a pizza with anchovies. Ick. We peeled some off and gave them to the dog, and she promptly threw up). I confuse characters in books whose names start with the same letter, too. My brain must just index things that way.

2. While at work, particularly when I'm programming, I have random flashbacks, once or twice a day. Just for no reason, suddenly I start thinking about being in the parking lot of particular mini-malls back in Orlando, or ordering particular meals in restaurants in Atlanta.

3. The other day I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. As I was getting back into to bed, out of nowhere the name Gustave Flaubert pops into my head. Now, I've heard his name before, but I have no idea who he is (or I didn't until I just looked him up) and I hadn't heard his name lately, that I can think of.

Maybe I've been heading the ball too much in soccer.

At any rate, I've found a great new trick for training my brain. I'm starting a new project at work. It's a project that's been ongoing for a couple of years, and it's large and complex. I'm pretty much "drinking from the firehose" as they say, in the process of trying to assimilate it all. So, in the process of having things explained to me, I've decided to apply a method that Feynman espoused in one of his books. It's a simple principle, and it sounds obvious, but I don't think it's very widely applied, by anybody. Basically, what you do is to not let the person who's explaining things proceed until you are absolutely sure you understand the previous bit. Ask stupid questions, even if it's about something you probably should have known already and it makes you look bad. If you don't get it, make the person repeat things, even if they've just spent a half hour explaining it. Don't just let things proceed and hope that you'll get it through osmosis or something later on.

It works, and very well. My initial impression of this project is that it's pretty much the equivalent of a car that runs great but is maintained using silly putty, duct tape, and some very knowledgeable mechanics. It's my job to pretty much rein it in, or at least come up with some explanations as to why it requires such constant maintenance, so I have to pretty much get it all down cold. And to document everything, of course. Joy.

Is on-line grocery shopping still happening anywhere in the states these days? Mark and I have been occasionally using Coles on-line here, for our big shops as it's more than worth it to pay a $5 delivery fee to have some one deliver all the heavy items we would normally have to carry.
Seems like this would be great for areas like New York City. Does anyone know if it's happening? I know there was a service in ATL, but it went under.

Brrr. Coldest day of the year so far, I think. There were threats of snow in Melbourne today. It hasn't snowed here in ten years, from what I've heard. And we didn't get any, though I heard rumours of flurries.

Ever heard of Sudoku puzzles? I stumbled across them on the net yesterday, and played a few today at lunch. They're apparently big in Japan, huge in Europe, and sweeping America, but I had never heard of them. Then, coincidentally, a woman on the tram home today pulled out a book of them to pass the time. They're fun, but I like tsunami puzzles better.

Mark and I often talk about "Clue Cards" to help the fashion challenged. One of my biggest pet peeves is inappropriate midriff exposure, which we see a lot here in the warmer months. This week I learned a new term for the I.M.E., courtesy of Mark, the term is "muffin-top". Perfect.
The other thing that's exciting me this week is the amazing cover of "Hounds of Love" by the Futureheads. It's brilliant.

There are now only eight planets. Or ten, depending on how you count them, but I think eight is more proper. A new object has been found orbiting the sun that's bigger than Pluto, and even comes closer to the sun than Pluto's farthest point. There are many who feel that Pluto already shouldn't be considered a planet.

No matter how you slice it, it just ain't right to say that there's nine planets anymore.

Just finished Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I agree with the author, that this is his best work. I had given up on him after reading Stranger In A Strange Land, which I disliked rather much.

Looks like this book may join the long line of obscure books that get made into movies shortly after I read them. Previous examples include A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander, and one other that escapes me. Hopefully this one won't star Russell Crowe.

There's another thing we learned last weekend.

We rented a car, and ended up driving our nutty dog Laika up through the central business district (CBD) of Melbourne, quite possibly for her first time ever.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the city was a whirl of sights and sounds. So it was surprising that any single stimuli might catch her attention. But, from a long way off, she spotted some horses pulling a carriage. And just freaked out.

I guess we can't ever send her to live on a farm. Apparently our girl hates horses.

Chicken Parmesan or "parma" is a Melbourne pub staple that we've enjoyed on many occasions. It's a rare pub that doesn't serve it.

A few weeks ago we caught a special on TV about a group of guys who go around and rate the best chicken parmas in Melbourne (no doubt in defiance of their doctor's orders). Turns out the best is just up the road from us. So we went and gave it a shot the other day.

I don't know what we were expecting. How good can a chicken parma actually be? It's not like they make it with ambrosia. It was good enough, I guess, but paroxysms of culinary ecstasy eluded us.

Club song. My soccer team sings a club song when we win. Every footy team down here also has a song. I don't know where these songs come from, but I'm sure there's some recycling going on. I know some of the footy songs date back to the '20s at least.

Since we've won our last four games, I've actually gotten to learn the club song. The words are interesting to me, because they seem to be carefully worded to avoid asserting the greatness of the team or anything like that. I'm not sure why; perhaps they are designed to be singable even when we lose? Here they are:

Weeeeeeell it's a grand ole team to play for,
And it's a grand ole team to see,
And if you know your history,
It's enough to make your heart's go whoa-o-o-o,
We don't care what the other teams say,
What the hell do we care?
Coz you always know,
That there's gonna be a show,
And the Middle Parkers will be there.

We are back from Hamilton Island (but we're not sure why).

Hamilton Island is the largest populated island in the Whitsunday island chain, just off the Great Barrier Reef.

Day one: Got up far too early to catch the flight, but it had us there by 10:30am or so, so we had the whole day to explore. While sitting on the balcony of our room, we were swooped by some Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos, which liked to perch on the rails of our villa. Later we were to find out that these cockatoos have a sort of Crips vs. Bloods thing going on with the crows all over the island, competing for scraps left (accidentally or not) by tourists. Also getting in on the action were Rainbow Lorikeets, Pied Curawongs (new bird sighting!), Silver Gulls, and a Pacific Black Duck. (We also spotted Yellow-bellied Sunbirds, Purple Swamp Hens, some sort of Friarbird, and some sort of eagle, or perhaps a Brahminy Kite).

No cars to speak of on the island -- just golf carts. So we rented one to tool around in. Even at golf cart pace, you can probably drive on every inch of road on the island in about 45 minutes. So we scoped it all out, then I pulled us into Wire Flyer, where they strap you into a hang glider and send you off, albeit dangling from a fixed wire. I was going to chicken out, but peer pressure won the day. Very fun! I want to try the real thing now. (Marjorie would have gone, but we only had enough cash for one, and it was my birthday.)

Later we went down to the one bottle shop on the island for a bottle of wine, and headed up to One Tree Hill to enjoy the view. Reminded us both of the Pacific northwest, actually.

Had some nice steaks for birthday dinner.

Hamilton Island was interesting to me in that they practically have their own currency (most people opt to charge everything to their room, which every business in town [save for Wire Flyer] accepts). And, there's exactly one of every institution required to make life livable to a Westerner -- one general store/grocery, one post office, one video rental place, one hairdresser, one church, one bottle shop, one health club, one pharmacy. Of course, there are several restaurants and souvenir shops.

Day two: Slept in. Had lunch and headed out towards the unpopulated section of the island, which accounts for about two-thirds, up some well marked hiking paths. We ended up going farther than we expected (to within 750m of the peak) and enjoyed some magnificent views. Came back and waded out in the water off the beach for a bit. But as I stupidly forgot to pack my contact lenses, my snorkel gear wasn't much good.

Day three: We had scheduled a snorkel trip out to the reef. Fortunately we found out that they offered snorkel masks for different prescriptions, so forgetting the contact lenses wasn't a problem. The operation was Fantasea, and it was quite an operation. They took us out (in two meter seas, which was a chunder-fest for many passengers) to their exclusive platform on the Great Barrier Reef, known as (ulp) ReefWorld. Not the most organic of first experiences on the reef, but we came to appreciate the amenities. Water much calmer there with the protection of the reef. I got my prescription maskie, and we suited up in our wetsuits (water was quite chilly). We basically only made one long pass of the snorkeling area. Spotted a green sea turtle and a good number of other interesting fish, though. Swam up onto one sandy patch when Marjorie started plucking at my leg. At least I thought she was; turns out I was being attacked by a very territorial (and dauntless) little fish. We headed back soon after; even in our suits, the water was too cold for our blood.

Back on the platform we got some lunch, then headed out on their half-sub, which is like a glass-bottom boat, only you are much more down in the water, and can look out the sides. Very nice. Got to see a few more turtles. It was the start of manta ray season, and they even occasionally spot a whale, but no such luck today. Back at the platform we could see a massive grouper ("George", they've named him) that hangs out under the platform. He's at least six feet in length. The platform also has a fixed viewing chamber which we checked out, where a wrasse that was a good four feet long (big enough to have two remoras) swam by for our benefit.

All in all, a very nice operation, but I would recommend going during the middle of the week, and not at the height of winter!

Day four: Wake up, breakfast, and fly home. Lots of screaming kids.

We got our doggie back! She was staying with another family courtesy of TopDog Minders. A great operation, and quite affordable. We're worried, though, that she may have had too good of an experience; she got to play with another dog the whole time, whereas she's alone much of the time with us. Though initially happy to see us, her reaction at being home I would qualify as "reserved". She does seem a bit tired, so maybe it's that. Next time, we'll put her in one of those cement-and-chain-link kennels -- that'll teach her to appreciate us! I kid.

Attack of the hippies. So yesterday I took a break at work, and headed down to the food court below the building to use the ATM. Just as I arrive in the lobby, a dreadlocked mass of hundred or so hippies storms in. Each was carrying a sunflower. Several of the more ambitious ones jumped over the security gates, trying to reach the elevators. They were whooping and hollering. Some of them followed me through a door they thought led deeper into the building, but actually led into the food court. They sheepishly ran back in. When I got back from using the ATM they were squatting in the lobby, chanting "One two three four, we don't want no global war." A couple were arguing with a security guard who they said was using excessive force in preventing them from getting through the security gates.

While I don't know what their specific beef was, I did figure out that they were protesting BHP Billiton, who we share the building with.

The police came, and I eventually made it back through the gates and into the lift.

We are definitely not in Singapore anymore!

Man of action.

Yesterday marks one year that we've been living in Melbourne. It doesn't seem that long at all. The amazing thing (to me) is that I haven't been on a plane since. I don't think I've ever gone a year without jetting off somewhere since the first time I flew.

Not that nothing is scheduled. We'll soon be flying off to Hamilton Island. I'm really looking forward to this.

May be starting a new project at work soon, which might send me to Adelaide on occasion as well.

Apropos of nothing, I have really bad hiccups right now, that have been going on for a half an hour.

Marjorie often accuses me of having a fourth-grader sense of humor. I deny that. Actually, I think she's just mad because my sense of humor is rubbing off on her. She even makes puns these days.

Anyway, there's a song that my friend Jim used to sing that I recently tried to remember. It took a while for us to piece it back together, but I think we have it. It's very much the sort that would appeal to a fourth grader. Oddly enough, neither of us could find it anywhere out on the web. Sorry I can't post the melody, but here are the words:

Old Lady Bliss
Went out out to piiiiiiiii...ck some flowers
Stood in the grass
Up to her aaaaaaa....nkles, dearie
She saw a bird
Step on a turrrrrrrr...key feather
It broke her heart
She let a farrrrr...mer take her home.

Visit Austrlia. We may have one less apostle but we do have one more dolphin species.

Just bought a new 19" flat screen monitor that's big, bold, and beautiful. And what better way to break it in than some new pictures from space. I'm giddy. Earlier today the Deep Impact mission successfully slammed a coffee table-sized probe into the comet Tempel 1 to analyse the ejecta. The comet is a dirty snowball that has been sitting around peacefully since the time that the planets formed, so analysing what it's made of should tell us lots about the early solar system. Great work folks!

Update: Now with video. How did you picture a comet to look like, up close? I really had no idea. There's no sense of scale in the video, but the thing is about half the size of Manhattan. I've never thought of comets as things you could walk around on.

Last night we celebrated our anniversaries (three years of marriage, seven years together, and one year in Melbourne) by getting all dressed up and going out to the Waterfront Restaurant. It was nice, but we are a bit crapulent today.

Our new pub is fifteen minutes walk away. There are three or four pubs closer, which is why it took a while for us to find it. We like it quite a bit. Big and homey, with an interesting menu. They've decorated with some interesting kitschy touches, and have a couple of fireplaces and a mellow tabby cat that's given free wandering rights of the place. There's also a big lovely beer garden out back that we're looking forward to hanging out in come spring.

Last night we played trivia there -- it was their first night having it, I think -- and won. Took away two bottles of wine and six free drink coupons. Not a bad haul.

The Big Idea. Our company is pushing a big Thought Leadership initiative. They want us to come up with innovative new ideas, and leverage them into the market. (Did I really just say "leverage"?) There's even a prize for the best idea that's proposed within the next few months: a trip for two to Byron Bay.

Right about the time they announced this, an awesome new idea struck me. The particulars of it are technical (they're described at the end), but in short it would mean that at the very least our company could be producing much more reliable software. Conceivably the Idea would grow to become the ultimate new must-have testing tool. And further afield, I thought it might have the chance to change the way programming itself is done.

I thought about it for weeks -- in bed, on the toilet, on the tram. It would be difficult to write, but not beyond my ability. I had visions of leading a group of employees to develop and expand it, and to apply it to our existing applications. Or even to apply it to existing software (such as the Java Virtual Machine itself).

It would be hailed by one and all. And I would be feeling all smug and heroic while Marjorie and I relaxed up in Byron Bay, margaritas in hand.

The Idea was sitting out there, ripe and unplucked. I looked around, and could find no one else who had done it before. This was it. My big moment.

And so. Just before I started bearing down to work on a proof of concept, I decided to give one last look around to make sure it hadn't been done before. And as you've probably guessed by now, I found a product that does exactly what I had been thinking of, and then some.

Rather dismayed, I downloaded and ran it against our current project, and it found a lot of bugs. They did a great job with it, but the fact that it has not taken the programming world by storm is of some small consolation.

[Geeky technical description: I'll talk about how it applies to the Java programming language, but there's no reason why it couldn't be applied elsewhere. It occurred to me that you could, through code analysis, determine places in the code where null pointer exceptions would occur, simply by tracking variables as having a value of "null", "not null", or "maybe null". Methods would be tracked as returning the same possible values. So, it is quite possible to determine, for every pointer dereference, whether a null pointer exception was even possible. A program that passed such a scan with no possible null pointer dereferences would be guaranteed never to crash that way. And that is one of the most common ways for a program to crash.

After considering that for a while, it occurred to me that other unchecked exceptions, such as array index out of bounds and class cast exceptions, could be scanned for in a similar manner.

The program I found that does it is JLint. It finds many, many other kinds of bugs as well. You can integrate into the Eclipse API using this plugin, just like I was planning to do with my idea.

I don't know why it's not used more widely. Probably because it was done as a research project and has no advertising dollars behind it.]

Very mean of Marjorie's parents, to make Laika fall in love with them and then run off home like that. After two weeks of near constant attention, she's stuck alone again on the weekdays, now that they're gone. We'll post some images from their visit soon.

Next month we'll be celebrating our 7th year together, my birthday, and our one year anniversary in Melbourne. So we're going to go away somewhere. I get to pick, since it's my birthday, but there are just too many options to choose from.

When people ask you, "Who is the man?", how do you respond? Now, you can tell them, it's me. It's probably not good form to crow when the team loses the game but dang it feels good to score.

To spare you from having to endure these reports in the future, I've set up The Dull Blog, where I will be posting all my game results, in addition to books I've finished, movies I've watched, CDs I've bought, and a whole host of other unfascinating statistical minutia about my life. As the name implies, it'll just be things too dull to make it to the main blog. Well, I'll probably still crow a bit here when I score a goal or something.

Marjorie's parents have been in the country for a week and a half now, and seem to be having quite a good time. They've already visited Sydney, Cairns, and Uluru. They've ridden camels, held koalas, and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. They've actually seen more of this country/continent than we have now. Her dad says there's a few months worth of things he'd like to see here. Tomorrow I'm taking off work and we're going to go explore some more around Melbourne.

Marjorie's parents are visiting. They came all the way from the other side of the world just to bring us a suitcase full of American groceries. Isn't that nice. Oh, they're going to see a thing or two while they're here as well. Today Marjorie took them around to see some wildlife, and scored on all fronts -- koalas, kookaburras, flying foxes, lorikeets, galahs, pied cormorants, and brush-tailed possums. Later in the week they're all heading up to the Great Barrier Reef together, leaving me all alone and OH MY GOD I'LL HAVE THE WHOLE HOUSE TO MYSELF FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND -- uh, I mean, I'll be lonely.

Quote of the day:

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."
--Groucho Marx

Three years, three continents, three cities, seven apartments. Yesterday was our third anniversary. We just did a quiet evening at home, but we splashed out a bit on a bottle of wine. Let's see, first anniversary is "paper", second is "cotton", and third is "cold germs", right?

Sickie. Only my second week of work, and I'm taking my first "sickie". Actually, that word has connotations of "faking it", but I really am sick. My first big, brash, Aussie cold, and I got some big, brash Aussie drugs to counter it with -- all cold medicines are over-the-counter here, but they have codeine in them.

Laika is the only dog I've ever known who doesn't bark at visitors. Workmen came to fix the kitchen ceiling, and she greeting them with a wagging tail. Our kitchen is filling with dust as I write this.

My soccer team now has a website where you can read game reports. I know you will all be checking regularly. I'm back on the thirds team for now. And apparently I was chosen as "B.O.G" for our last match, which I hope means "Best of Game".

After upgrading our workstation to Windows XP, I made the mistake of not turning on the firewall.

Stupid.

IE had started rerouting my default homepage to some search engine that encouraged me to look up information on Viagra. We started getting popup ads for anti-spyware programs (which is like a burglar breaking into your house and leaving pamphlets for home security systems). Ad-aware just found 117 infected files, and cleaned them up. Hopefully. There's a good chance it didn't find everything.

Things like this make me start to reconsider my opposition to capital punishment.

Tonight is our soccer team's big social event of the year, in honor of the FA cup. There's going to be something like 130 people there. It starts with a trivia competition at 7:30pm, but the game doesn't start until midnight, Melbourne time. Then I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow morning for, you guessed it, our soccer game. Sounds like poor planning but that's just how it worked out. I'll be rooting for Man U if Tim Howard is playing, or for them to lose big otherwise. This game is just a warmup for the big match next week anyway.

Same same, but different:
It's a well known fact that Melbourne has a large Italian and Greek population. What you may not ever think about before visiting though, is that Italians and Greeks here speak English with Italian and Greek and Australian accents. So it's like Tony Soprano merged with Kylie Minogue.
They even say "yous". It kills me. Just another thing to love about Melbourne.

Tonight we rented I Heart Huckabees, an unlikely little movie that we enjoyed very much. Say what you will about Hollywood -- they still turn out a slew of daring, original titles each year that don't pander to the masses.

After Marjorie went to bed I heard a crash from over in the kitchen. It turns out a big chunk of the plaster roof, about a meter square, came crashing down on our kitchen counter. A nasty, dusty mess that took me a good hour to clean up. It got into the stove, toaster, and sink, so I hope our dinners aren't crunchier than usual this month.

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, seems like the longer you go without posting, the harder it is to do. Especially as I don't have any exciting news. Life is going well. My job is tolerable, and Mark is now permanently employed (hallleluiah!). We're still really enjoying Melbourne, and the dog is relatively happy. All's good. In sad news though the bagelry that used to carry salt bagels is no longer doing so. No more salt bagels in Melbourne. I'm probably the only person who ever ordered them. Alas.

Good news. I've been contracting for nine months with this company. They are choosy about whom they hire, it seems. But now they've asked me to join on, and we've agreed on a salary. Huzzah!

In no time at all, it seems, the sun started going down before we even get home from work. And the days are only getting shorter. We're on a comparable latitude with NYC, so I don't know why it seems so extreme, and so sudden.

It's roughest on the dog, who doesn't get the same sort of quality park frolic time she used to. Everyone here is in the same boat, and so the poo density in the park is increasing, as no one can find their little steaming piles of responsibility in the dark to pick them up. And thus nature provides itself fertilizer for the spring, and the cycle is complete.

As I alluded to, yesterday I played on the second "reserves" team, in addition to just the thirds team that I usually play on. I honestly can't figure out why, as there are much better players than I on the thirds, and that's not just false modesty. But I ended up playing pretty good, and had a really good time in the end. I like the bigger pressure. I got to watch the first team play afterwards, and hoo boy, I am most certainly not ready for that.

Before the game the seconds team coach collected my ID (they have stringent requirements here), and did a double take, saying "Hooray, I'm not the oldest guy here!". That gives me mixed feelings. I'll show these young hooligans a thing or two though.

Back on-line. Upgraded the home computer to Windows XP, upgraded the RAM, installed a wireless network card, and we're back. I was going to switch to a Mac but I couldn't find anywhere selling the necessary components to assemble. (That's a joke.)

Not a lot new here. Weather has been awesome. Spring seemed to give us a miss, and summer wasn't much to speak of, but autumn has been just one spectacular weekend after another. This is the first weekend that's it's been cold at all during the day. Looking forward to playing soccer in it tomorrow. Somehow I ended up agreeing to play two games tomorrow, which is going to hurt.

I should be hiring on permanently at work soon (finally). The project is approaching the critical end stage, and I only recently learned how huge in scope it really is. More details to come.

What a mess. So, after the misadventures with the first repair place, I took it to another. After a week, they called to say it was ready. Of course, it wasn't; it was having the exact same problem. So today was another week later, and this time they said it was the memory that was bad, intermittently. Okay, fine. The replaced the RAM, and I tried it out in the store; it booted, but kept getting some sort of page fault when it tried to shut down. But at least it was booting, so maybe they were on to something.

I have it home now, and it's connected to the internet, so I'm a tiny bit satisfied. Everything seems really sketchy, though; I think there are problems with the registry. So, I'm in the process of uninstalling everything. Now the wireless card has stopped working. Anyone know any good diagnostic software?

The return of boring soccer reports. Dull cheers and golf claps, everyone!

First game was today. Inauspicious, in that it was way the hell out in whatever the Australian equivalent of Podunk, Iowa, and I tried to go by public transport. Despite leaving more than two hours beforehand, I only just showed up as the game was about to start. And I scraped myself climbing over the chain link fence to get to the pitch.

Luckily I had the first half to compose myself on the bench, since you have to clear it with the referee that your a registered player. This is a MUCH stricter league than in Singapore. Everyone has these large printed ID cards with their pictures on them, and scan codes that the referee swipes with a bar code reader whenever you get a yellow or red card. Finally in the second half I got called to go on, and the ref took my number and made me tuck in my shirt. Then, just as I was about to run on, he said, "I can't let you on with that earring..."

I didn't play horribly, but I didn't play well. It seems like a good bunch of folks, and I think my skill level is about right. Good to be playing again.

Phoo. Our long silence has been brought on by a sick computer. It gave me the blue screen of death mid-email, and simply refused to boot afterwards.

I took it to one repair shop, who promised to get back to me in a couple of days. After harassing them a bit, finally, a week later, they called me and said that it was all fixed, that the problem was caused by dust.

So I went to pick it up, and luckily I tried booting it before leaving the store, because the exact same problem was occurring. Not only that, the plastic around the display had a nice new crack in it. Which they denied responsibility for.

I was not pleased.

Now, I don't want to mention any names, but it was Phil's Computers on Pelham St in Carlton.

Anyway, now the computer is in another shop, and we have brought out our backup computer (thanks Susan and Gary!), and have connected using dialup. Soon we'll get it hooked up to the network proper, but for now, some access is better than no access.

Our friend Ken from Singapore (he of the art and the zoo is in town for a visit. Yesterday we drove out to the Healesville sanctuary, which turned out to be more zoo than sanctuary. But it was quite cool. Every exhibit featured wildlife native to Australia, which was good because we got to see some local things we hadn't ever seen before, like Tasmanian devils and pygmy possums. The koalas and echidnas were active as well, which is unusual. The highlight (at least for Marjorie and me) was the lyrebird. We had seen one of these before in the wild but this time we got to hear him display for a prospective mate. Lyrebirds are the best mimics in the world, capable of imitating barking dogs, chain saws, camera shutter noises, etc., but this one seemed intent on just imitating local birds. Finally, after a few minutes, we were presented with an uncanny imitation of an ambulance siren, that even transitioned between the slow rising/falling note and the alternating high-low sounds just like the real thing. Very interesting.

I joined the fantasy football league at work. That's fantasy Australian rules football, actually. As I can't name a single player, it's going to be tough. So I picked every player in the league who's named "Mark". My team name is the All-Marks.

Woo hoo!

Find soccer team (Mark)


I think I finally found my team -- Middle Park -- and they play just up the road. There's actually three teams; firsts and seconds that compete hard, and a third that is more of a show-up-and-play social team like I had in Singapore. They train on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I practiced with them on Thursday, and boy is my [everything] tired. Not used to doing actual drills and such. We did running drills as well as pushups and situps. Afterwards everyone went to the pub, and I chatted with just about everyone. There's guys from all over -- England, Chile, Scotland, France. They used to have an American, who was really good apparently, so everyone is calling me the "replacement Yank".

Although they take the game seriously, it seems more of a social club. To wit: at the end of the night at the pub, they said to me, "You should keep coming out. Oh, and if you want to play some soccer too, that would be great!"

The company I'm working for just landed a choice new contract with Lonely Planet, to do some work on their website. I'm hoping I get a chance to work on it when my current project is done. How cool would that be?

Flotsam.

Happy third birthday to our niece Katie!

It's Labour Day weekend here. Just like Labor day in the states, it's a three-day weekend at the end of summer. By good fortune, the weather is supposed to be in the 30s (that's a good thing here). We're going to try to hit the beach.

In chess news, I've been playing a guy who's a bit better than me, but who I can beat on a good day. But today I played a guy who just wiped the table with me, two games. A good dose of humility. Part of the reason that chess is fascinating to me is because you can follow all the supposed rules of strategy, and see them work, but then good players are still able to drive in a wedge and crash over you like a wave (to mix a metaphor).

The last great physicist of glory days of the first half of the last century died this week. This was the guy who figured out how the sun shines. I always wanted to meet him.

The Station Agent is a great little movie.

Australian phrases: Australians have colourful ways to say things. This day's example "to spit the dummy" is just another way to say tantrum. "A dummy" is a pacifier in Australia, so "to spit the dummy" is to spit the pacifier, like a baby pitching a fit. I love that expression. Another way to say the same thing is "crack the shits". I'm not really sure how that phrase came to mean what it does. I'm scared to ask.

Melbourne is THE place to be if you are a sports fan in Australia. This week, in our very own neighbourhood, is the Australian Grand Prix. We were expecting the noise from the cars to be a major annoyance this weekend. But really, so far, we haven't heard much at all.
Melbourne is also the home of the Australian Tennis Open, the first cricket match of the season, the AFL championships, and The Melbourne Cup (THE Australian horse race, like the Ascot opening day).
We've been watching some of the television coverage of the Grand Prix, getting a little thrill seeing our neighbourhood on TV. Maybe next year we'll actually go see a race.

We've been "disoriented" long enough, so we're trying out a new blog name, for a while. It's a fairly common Australian phrase that can be defined thusly. We rejected a few others for various reasons, including "Two In The Bush", "Settle Down (Under)", and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road". We're not 100% sold on the new one, so it may change again soon. We were just tired of the old one.

According to the word on the street, we live on THE street to live on in Melbourne. Guy Pierce and Hugh Jackman are alleged to live on our street. We knew we lived somewhere very nice, but we didn't know we lived where the cool kids live. I think a lot of other musician types live nearby in St. Kilda too.

We discovered this bit of trivia at Trivia tonight at the Albert Park Hotel, where we won first place playing with a friend we met at grape grazing (and her friends). See, alcohol brings people together.

If we haven't indicated it before, Melbourne is a very nice place to be. The city is beautiful and the people are truly lovely. I've never come across a more consistently friendly and unpretentious city of people. In six months here, we feel pretty at home.

Caught Mudhoney last night at the Corner Hotel. A solid set, with a good mix of old and new. But overly smoky. Mudhoney is a band that I'm happy to have just grind out albums and tour, forever. Most bands have one essential member; they have three, in Mark Arm, the singer/songwriter, Dan Peters, the drummer, and especially (I decided last night) Steve Turner, the guitarist.

The dog's favorite food is, officially: cheese.

Geek alert. I made an interesting discovery recently. The building next door to my work is the State Library of Victoria. And, they have an entire room dedicated to chess. So, a couple of times over the past few week, I've started grabbing a quick lunch and running over to get in a quick game against random strangers. How geeky is that? Geeky enough to not even mention it to my coworkers yet.

Very sad about Hunter S. Thompson. I wonder if he was sick. He doesn't seem the sort to go quietly, know what I mean?

For future visitors, I highly recommend the grape grazing festival, or even just a tour of the wineries if your not here in February. The Yarra Valley wineries we saw were lovely, and the people we went with were a very fun lot. And Sunday wasn't too painful considering we spent all day Saturday drinking. Best of all, we found three different people willing to dog-sit Laika in the future when we want to venture forth without her. Excellent.

Laika nearly dug her way out of the backyard yesterday while we were at the wine festival, as we were gone for thirteen hours. So today we took her with us when we went to breakfast at an outdoor cafe.

A bird pooped on her head.

Afterwards, we took her to the dog park.

A bird pooped on her head.

What are the odds?

Maybe we'll rename her after Steve Martin's dog in The Jerk.

Fruits of the vine. Yesterday we boarded a bus with a dozen or so of my cow orkers and headed out to the yearly Grape Grazing festival. We hit the first winery by 10:30 am. By the fourth winery, there was a lot less swishing and swirling; the Grape Grazing festival had become more of a Wine Swilling festival. Twice we ended up behind another bus full of women exhibitionists.

The festival was hosted by Honda, who recommend a nice Cabernet Sauvignon before getting behind the wheel.

We had a fantastic time.

Call me the man from Nantucket. I took third place in this year's Valentine's Day Limerick Contest. This year, your limerick had to reference medical pioneers, skin conditions, or microscopic life. So my limerick is about the little creature that lives in your eyelashes.

I don't mind losing to Eeksy-Peeksy, whose blog is a continual delight.

I had another submission that I thought was better, but probably got marked off because it was off-color, and maybe because the last line doesn't scan perfectly. You'll have to find it yourself.

If you're at all interested in the workings of the brain, biology, evolution, or conciousness, might I suggest getting a dog?

I mean, in addition to all the usual accolades of dog ownership, it's fascinating to have this other mind, this other kind of mind, living in your household.

The communication barrier is between us and her is bewildering to me. There's just no way to tell her some things. It kills me that when she arrived home here, she didn't even know she was staying. When we go for a walk, she doesn't know which way we're going to turn, at every intersection. When we go out without her, she doesn't know if it's for a minute or for eight hours.

I was surprised to see her start exhibiting behaviours appropriate to her breed. She won't fetch things, except at the beach -- where she'll swim out and fetch (other dog's) balls and sticks, then come back and drop them on the beach, just like a good retriever should. I never realized such a specific behaviour could be bred for, even if it's substituting balls for ducks. But why not? Beavers build dams on instinct alone, and spiders spin webs. I tend to think of such specific behaviours as learned, not ingrained. Evolution in action, even if the selection isn't "natural".

Which makes me wonder -- why have they never bred dogs strictly for intelligence? At least, not that I've ever heard of, or can find with a web search. Why concentrate on floppy ears, miniature size, long or short hair? I wonder just how smart you can make a dog. (Just out of curiousity. Laika, bless her heart, is in the fat of the bell curve, methinks, but we have no plans to trade her in.)

Recording history. I have a kind of fascination with things that are lost to history:

The loss of the Library at Alexandria -- almost inconceivable.

Two whole Shakespeare plays -- Love's Labour's Won and Cardenio -- didn't survive to the modern era.

Lennon and McCartney sat down, early on, and knocked out about fifty songs, which have vanished into the mists of time.

Countless early movies have been lost, or survive in only partial or edited form. (I for one would love to see the orignal ending to The Magnificent Ambersons.)

Many movies are in the process of being lost. There are people trying to prevent that.

Most of early television is gone. People just didn't think it would ever be considered important. Even recently, most of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from the 1970's is nowhere to be found, I understand.

Those who don't learn from history, they say, are doomed to repeat it. So, I often wonder if there's anything happening these days that's being lost, because we don't realise that future generations might be interested.

Which brings me to an idea for a web site I'd like to implement, if I had more time. It would be appealing in the present mostly to music geeks. In fact, most would consider it frivolous at best.

What I would like to create is "gigography.com", a web site that archives concerts. It would list the band, venue, and date at a minimum, but also trivia, band line ups, set lists, opening bands, audio files, etc. Not just new concerts but shows dating back in history. You could easily browse back and check out the Woodstock lineup, or the Beatles set list on the Ed Sullivan show.

Until recently, this would be an impossible task for one person. But now with the concept of wikis, where anyone can add content, it's quite doable. You would be surprised how many fans have already compiled similar lists (cough) for their favorite artist. But so far, nothing has been centralized. It would be a simple matter to put the plea out there to various music lists to get the ball rolling.

Pointless? Maybe. Historically necessary? Well, doubtful. Fun? Surely.

Life goes on. We drank a toast to Mike at the Rufus Wainwright show last night. (Don't know if Mike was a fan, but it wouldn't surprise me.) An intimate venue, and a fantastic show. I don't think I've ever seen an audience held in such a trance. While the songs were intense, Rufus was jovial in between, joking a lot about being on a diet because his mother said he was fat recently. And because it was just him, he was free to rearrange his songs on the fly, and skip over or redo bits at will. An enormous talent. I never realized what a good piano player he is, too.

We both thought about Mike again during a song Rufus did about Jeff Buckley, who died tragically at a young age. Who frew da ham?

By an odd coincidence -- I watched an old M*A*S*H rerun earlier in the day. It was the one where the nurses all get sent off, and it featured a folk singer that played a sad song in the officer's club. In the closing credits it was revealed that the singer was Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus's father.

Sadness. Our friend Mike has died, far too young. We met in Atlanta, as a result of our mutual Elvis Costello fandom. His blog was consistently our favorite, and we've linked to it many times here.

His last blog entry has become the place for tributes.

You might remember trip to NYC just before we left the states, where we got to see David Bowie in an intimate venue. That was all Mike's doing.

I have a handful of other memories of Mike, and they're almost all gems; an Elvis show in Nashville, Steve Earle, Neil Finn, and Nick Lowe shows in Atlanta. Beyond that, some parties, some dinners, an occasional email.

It's hard for me to characterize just how decent a person he was, both globally and locally. It was my good fortune to know him. Goodbye, my friend.

In between shows. Last night we caught The Shins at the Corner Hotel. I wasn't too familiar with them going in, besides liking some songs. But they're from Albuquerque NM, so I was subconciously expecting them to be, well, inconsistent. But they were anything but.

So rare for good bands to come out of smaller markets. The only other one I can think of is Built To Spill out of Boise, Idaho. Any others?

Tomorrow night we have an evening planned with Rufus Wainwright. Very exciting.

As the resident Yank at work, I receive a fair amount of grief. My co-workers think it's cute when I bring in a bagel for breakfast or peanut butter sandwich for lunch, fullfilling their expectations of the stereotypical american. This week I've recieved gentle teasing over the following slips as well:
Not ever having a "pavlova" a common Australian dessert of some kind.
Saying Xerox instead of photocopy.
Talking about the "weed-wacker", I can't remember what it's called here, whirly something.

The teasing is always good-spirited, and it's the aussie tradition to take the piss, so I'm not offended. More, just surprised by the little differences that attract their attention.

Alas. I caught the first half at home, a bit of the second half at the casino, then monitored the game at work via the internet. It seemed whenever I was watching, the Eagles did well. So their losing is obviously all my fault.

Something else was missing -- the Super Bowl isn't the same without the million dollar Super Bowl commercials.

All this talk of "dynasty" in regards to the Pats. Winning three Super Bowls by three points each does not a dynasty make, in my book. If they are, they must be the most boring dynasty ever. They play football with German efficiency.

Speaking of bitterness (and nailbiters), I think I'll finally quit biting my nails, thanks to a new product -- Stop That! by Manicare -- that's like clear nail polish, but is extremely bitter (and non-toxic). I made it through most of the day without biting today, but got a good nasty taste a couple of times this evening.

I like the name -- "Stop That!". It's like having Marjorie in a bottle! Ha ha.

Super Bowl Monday! Monday morning here, and I'm home watching the Super Bowl. Eagles looking a little tentative so far but are starting to settle in. The dog is trying to relax next to me, but keeps jumping up when I shout out the TV. The game started later than I thought, so I'm probably going to have to miss the second half, as I'm expected in at work at lunchtime.

Metamorphosis' Valentine's Day limerick contest is back. The subjects this year are medical pioneers, microscopic animals, and skin conditions. We'll be back to defend our crown.

I placed a bet on the Super Bowl today, legally, at Crown Casino. (The guy at the counter tried to wind me up a little, saying "Eagles? You mean the West Coast Eagles?")

Rumor has it that Paul McCartney, who's doing the halftime show, is an Eagles fan.

Another Aussie-ism is to use "crap" as an adjective, instead of "crappy". Like, "It was a crap movie." If something is really bad, it was "the crappest".

Yesterday's weather was the crappest. It rained all day to start with, then in the evening the wind whipped up as well. And kept it up all night. Supposedly it was the heaviest rainfall in Melbourne since they started recording it in 1856. Wow. To top it off, the huge ferry that leaves for Tasmania from just up the road from us was forced to turn back in 20m seas (more than 60 feet!). Bleah.

We were woken up at about 5am by the sounds of drips; our bedroom roof was leaking in a couple of places. It also leaked into our kitchen and bathroom. The wind was still blowing something fierce. But, less than an hour later, it all stopped, and there were blue skies.

Everyone took their dogs to the dog park today, since no one could yesterday. There were twelve trees down. I think we were actually pretty lucky all in all. Mad weather here.

Bike. Last weekend I bought a used mountain bike. There are some spots of rust but it rides good and I like it a lot. Marjorie already has a bike, so this will definitely extend our range, having previously being limited to walking and our single tram line. Not always, of course, but most of the time I'm glad I don't have a car. I think bike's are one of the greatest inventions ever. The fact that they've had the same basic design for a century says a lot.

Bikes I have owned in the past (that I can remember), and their eventual fate:

Age 5: Orange tricycle.

Age 6?: The bicycle I learned on. I seem to remember it was red and very stripped down.

Age 14: Red, white and blue bike with banana seat. This was a cool one.

Age 16: Ten-speed.

Age 18: Ten-speed. My college bike. Left it locked up over winter break and it was gone when I came back.

Ages 18-33: Nothing!

Age 33: Mountain bike. Great bike. Left it locked up at Music Midtown in Atlanta; came out and it was gone.

Age 37: Green crappy Carrefour (i.e. K-mart) special, in Singapore. Stolen from train station bike rack. And they say there's no crime in Singapore!

Age 38: see above.

Joy. We are freshly back from the Polyphonic Spree show, and boy are our spirits uplifted. It was like being at a religious revival. There were twenty-three in the band, by our best count, but it was hard to tell because they were constantly going nuts. Everyone dresses in choir robes. The eight-person choir spent half the time dancing like a cymbal crashing. Besides drums, bass, and guitar, and choir, they featured a harpist, trumpets, flutes, and a French horn. Great songs too. The audience ate it up; they turned on the audience lights at one point and I could see everyone was grinning ear to ear. Some people were going into paroxysms, like they'd just been healed. Hard to describe, but totally joyful and original.

We finished up our Australia day by going to see Closer, featuring equal parts Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen. It was engaging enough, but didn't see a lot of point to it. Nor did I particularly care for any of the characters, which isn't usually a problem for me, except that I get the feeling that I was supposed to. Clive Owen was his usual excellent, though, and I'm glad to see he got an Oscar nod for it.

I'm reading my blogs nowadays through an aggregator, which I highly recommend. I also use it to watch for updates to a lot of my other favorite sites, like Snopes and the NY Times Science section. There's hundred of other things you can subscribe to.

While we were gone today Laika got into a box and chewed up my drinking bird. Besides the "yikes" of her chewing on glass and doubtless tasting the red mystery liquid contained therein, it's kind of a bummer -- it was a gift from a friend. He got it for me after a discussion we had one day where we both found out, to our mutual amusement, that we each independently had a "random object" that we kept ready to mention whenever someone asked us to name a random object. Mine was a drinking bird; his was a doorknob.

Now that I think about it, we never found the drinking bird's head. Double yikes.

Happy Australia Day! We've celebrated in a relatively Australian way, by taking the dog to the beach and then enjoying a backyard BarBQ complete with lamb (for Mark, I find it a bit gamey). It's been one of the hottest days of the year today (35 C), so it feels like the fourth of July at home.
It's nice having a day off in the middle of the week. Particularly because today is sunny and the rest of the week is forecasted to be rainy. This evening we'll probably go see a movie, maybe one of the best picture nominees.

Aw yeah. The teams I root for never seem to make it to the final game, at least not since I was a kid. Today my Eagles made it. Woop! I had to get up at 7 to watch it, and I could only watch the first half before having to go to work. For the Super Bowl, you can bet I'll be staying home to watch the whole thing.

Who needs a phone? If you have a microphone on your computer, download Skype and give me a call -- my contact name is "angusmcpresley" (don't ask). I'm trying to hook up with parents this way, but they're asleep most of the time I'm on-line.

I realize this is like posting my phone number on the web, but if I start getting crank calls, I'll just change my handle. That's the other advantage of this over phones.

Update: I just had my first successful call to my parents. Talking around the world for free is hard to beat. The sound was only a little murky (possibly due to the hardware or connection speeds involved) but not too shabby.

While I'm elated that the Cassini/Huygens mission went largely as planned, apparently there was a glitch that went almost entirely unreported. A software bug caused the loss of nearly half of the 700 images that were hoped for.

See, that's why I'll never work on a project like this, despite being an enthusiast. I just can't imagine what it would feel like to be the one responsible for introducing a bug that dashes the hopes of your colleagues and costs millions of dollars, while instantly flushing at least a decade of your life down the toilet.

What will make a good weekend for me?

The Huygens probe lands successfully on Titan.

The Eagles beat the Vikings.

I get the shelves hung.

A bad weekend, obviously, will be the opposite of all those.

Update: Three for three!

I really don't like the new "typing pool" work setup. Very distracting. I feel like the guy in Memento, where every thirty seconds I forget what I was working on. I need to find an mp3 of white noise and some headphones.

We are in the process of trying to score some Rufus Wainwright tickets. We listened to his "Poses" album over dinner, and both just marvelled at it for the umpteenth time. So, as is our frequent wont, we started coming up with another music list over dinner. This list was, Albums That We Consider To Be "Old Friends", Mutually:

Rufus Wainwright, "Poses"

REM, "Reckoning"

Squeeze, "Frank"

Radiohead, "The Bends"

Jellyfish, "Spilt Milk"

Elliott Smith, "Either/Or"

Neil Finn, "Try Whistling This"

Soul Coughing, "Irresistible Bliss"

Soul Coughing, "Ruby Vroom"

The Kinks, "Village Green Preservation Society"

Hoodoo Gurus, "Mars Needs Guitars"

Elvis Costello, "Imperial Bedroom"

Sam Phillips, "Martinis and Bikinis"

Billy Bragg, "Talking To The Tax Man About Poetry"

Jiminy! Members of the Australian Cricket team are going to be in my building tomorrow doing a tsunami benefit.

Cricket (the sport) is ubiquitous here. I'm starting to appreciate it, a bit, though I still have no real connection to it, and I still don't fully understand it. Like most Americans, I'm learning it in how it relates to baseball. Though the spirit of the game is quite different, the comparison helps one learn the rules. Take baseball, but:

Give the pitcher a running start. No umpires to call balls and strikes; rather, if the ball hits the sticks, yer out. Get rid of first and third base. No foul balls either; everything is in play. Instead of trading sides every innings, have everyone bat. Then it's the other team's turn. Make a home run six points, and hitting it to the fence is four.

Actually, the main way I'm learning it is through playing the game that everyone in our office has been playing: StickCricket. My highest slog score thus far is 218 for 4.

Happy Birthday Lana and Rick! I hope you both have a great one.
Lana, I tried to email you and don't have your current email address. Could you email it to me?

I bet Jon Stewart had something to do with this decision. Thanks Jon.

The weather forecast for Melbourne today was a low of 12C and a high of 18C. The weather forecast in Atlanta today was for a low of 54F and a high of around 64F. These are almost the same, but it's supposed to be summer here (in spite of the fact that we are wearing sweaters and jackets). Brrrr.