Monday 3 December 2007

Kyoto Ratified!!

Really happy to read that the first thing newly sworn in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has done is ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This is fantastic as Australia can now start to regain international credibility in environmental issues.

Saturday 10 November 2007

Mr Howard, you're Fired!

(or why I am voting to remove the Liberal / National coalition in the 2007 Federal Election)

All governments have a use-by date. I think that the current Federal government has definitely past its use-by (probably before the 2004 election in fact) and I feel more strongly than ever that it is time for a change in government. Normally I think about this closer to an election, but this time I was convinced of this in about January or February this year and nothing since then has made me waver. Why? In this blog post I will examine a number of issues and how I think the current government have failed the Australian people and simply do not deserve to be returned. Please note that this is not going to a critique of the Kevin Rudd led Labor party or why they are better.

• Doing nothing on climate change for 10 years. John Howard has never believed this is an issue, even despite what he is telling us in this election campaign. We should have ratified Kyoto (yes it is flawed, but it is the best thing out there), had a carbon trading scheme now (not in several years) and started energy efficiency programs.
• Involved us in Iraq invasion with the US. This is an unjust war and our involvement helped to legitimise the US invasion. We have had a continuing stream of lies for the reason for the invasion and Australia should never have been involved as it has actually made us less safe. This war has brought attention to us from terrorist elements and for an unjust war that it not worth it. Lastly, Howard has no exit strategy from Iraq.
• I can't believe its not Work Choices. Worst piece of legislation in the last 30 years and exceedingly unfair to younger people. We don't really know if this has created more jobs (the economy was doing well before this!!). Besides the Workplace Authority have not released any stats on this so we just have to believe the government saying we are better off???? This legislation has moved the rights too much towards business and needs to be brought back into more middle ground. The guy in charge of this (the snide Kevin Andrews) is now showing his “talents” in the immigration area recently with his comments on African immigrants.

These are my top 3 (equal placing) reasons. I think each is a reason in itself to not vote for the Liberal / Nationals. However, beyond that there are more reasons...

▪ David Hicks. How could our own government let an Australian citizen (no matter what he did) rot WITHOUT trial for years? Our government failed bigtime in doing nothing. Truly pathetic and completely unacceptable on the part of our government. Pathetic too that they had to gag him until after the election.
▪ Not saying sorry to the stolen generation. John Howard has failed miserably on Aboriginal affairs, he is opposed to land rights and saying sorry. We need to heal the wounds here, not create division...
▪ Wasting a very large amount of money on advertising (especially for Work Choices). $1 million a day, how many hospital beds can that buy? Did you know the Federal government is one of the top advertisers in the country? This is a WASTE of taxpayers money and has really been pseudo election advertising all year.
▪ The so called Pacific Solution for refugees. This is a truly awful way to treat displaced people and a complete waste of money (hundreds of millions!!). These people including children are locked up for years while waiting for processing. Surely there is a better way of doing this.

Now I also want to make it clear that this does not mean I am wholeheartedly voting Labor, but looking at the 2 major parties they are the least worst. However, to make things interesting I will be voting much more selectively in the upper house (most likely Green as the Democrats seem ineffectual these days) and helping to return it to a house of review.

So Mr Howard, for dreadful and cynical performance over the past several years....You are FIRED!!! Mr Costello for not having the guts or gumption to challenge for the leadership you are fired too.

Monday 29 October 2007

Matthew Reilly, Leopard and our new Mac Mini

Last Friday we were at Macquarie Centre for 2 reasons. One was to get our new Mac Mini (10% off at JB HiFi!) which will become our new media centre (more on that in a later post). The 2nd reason was to go to Borders to meet Matthew Reilly and get a signed copy of his new book Six Sacred Stones :)

Also last Friday at 6pm Apple released Mac OS X 10.5, though it is probably better known by its code name, Leopard, which Apple is also using in its marketing. I didn't get a copy on Friday (despite NextByte and JB HiFi being open after 6pm) as I qualify for a $13 upgrade with the Mac Mini purchase.

It has been interesting reading the reports on Leopard (mainly since I am seeing what people's overall experiences are). I generally try to ignore the more sensationalist stuff and instead read sites whose authors know their stuff and give praise or criticism when its due (such as John Gruberor the always excellent Mac OS X reports by John Siracusa's reports).

However, I am really disappointed in the Sydney Morning Herald's incredibly poor and badly researched report "Spotty Leopard makes Mac users catty". The report implies that Apple's latest operating system is flawed and Apple have been deluged with support requests. This is simply not the case and the fault of this error lies equally with a 3rd party hack by Unsanity and Logitech. Unsanity provide "extra" functionality to the Mac by installing stuff in into the parts of the OS that Apple say not to. Generally users who install this stuff keep the hacks up to date, but what is worse, Logitech have installed this as a part of a mouse "driver".

The lesson here is when installing a new OS (whether Mac, Windows or Linux) it is best to start from scratch. Leopard (and Tiger before it) provide an option to "Archive and Install". This copies your old system files (including all the 3rd party stuff into a separate folder) and installs a fresh copy of Leopard, it also can (set by default) copies across all your user and network settings.

Back to the SMH. I have noticed of late there has been an anti-Apple bias in the reporting there (or at the very least they just copy their news from blogs). With a small amount of research (like I did above) the article could have been balanced and less sensationalist and instead provide a bit of guidance to users. At the very least once new information became available the article could have been updated to indicate it was a problem with the Unsanity hack and that users were at risk if they had installed Logitech stuff. Newspapers have a responsibility to report critically and fairly, many people read this stuff and just believe it (I had a few discussions on this at work today trying to dispel the fallacies in this article. So Asher Dunn you are now on notice.

And, yes, I will be doing an Archive and Install on our iMac

UPDATE: Apple have sold over 2 million copies of Leopard. It took Tiger (10.4) a month to sell that many!

Wednesday 17 October 2007

Leopard release date announced and price drop for iTunes DRM free tracks

Apple has announced that MacOS X 10.5 (or Leopard) will be available on October 26th and is now available for presale ($158 or $145 for Education). If you bought a new Mac this month then you can get it for $12.95. They have also added a webpage with a categorized list of new 316 new features. However, if you don't want to go through the whole list then Appleinsider has a good summary.

Also Apple (most likely in response to Amazon's MP3 store) have reduced prices of their iTunes Store DRM free tracks to $1.69. However, there is no indication currently if there is a price change for upgrading existing tracks to DRM free. Also, they have also added a number of independent labels. Good stuff :)

Tuesday 16 October 2007

Get This cancelled - TripleM you buggers!!!

Just heard today that one of my favourite radio shows (which I grab via podcast) is being cancelled. Triple M have cancelled Get This (see SMH link). Despite several time slot moves they were rating well, not sure I understand the logic of this one!!

Sign this petition to try and reverse this.

Saturday 29 September 2007

Amazon launches MP3 store

This week Amazon have launched the Amazon MP3 Store. What makes this interesting is that the nearly 2 million tracks available do not contain DRM. This is another nail in the coffin for DRM after EMIs announcement in April (see my previous post on DRM removal).

This is the first store to seriously challenge Apple's iTunes Store and the tracks are cheaper than the regular iTunes tracks (let alone the DRM free iTunes Plus ones which cost 30% more). However, only 2 of the 4 major labels are available (EMI and Universal). Also "officially" the store is only available for US residents, however, they don't check the country for your credit card's billing address just your home address. Though I reckon this won't last long...

Thursday 30 August 2007

My Money Minder 1.9.7 released

I have released another bugfix version of My Money Minder (which I hope again will be last bugfix before v2!!). This release also includes a revised help system which is modelled on the current style in Apple's apps and is also searchable. For the full details and download links go to the My Money Minder pages .

Thursday 23 August 2007

Canon 40D, Holden Utes and Google Maps

Well it has been a couple of months since I started this blog and the regularity of posts has faltered somewhat! However whilst there have been things I have wanted to blog about I have had writers block. Oh and the fact that about a month ago I discovered Facebook...

I do have a few ideas for blog posts (damn writers block, well that's my excuse and I am sticking with it!). We will see :)

Anyway this week I don't have writers block and there are things I want to write about! Firstly I have been thinking for some time of updating my Canon SLR to digital. Until this week it was an easy answer as I would get the 400D which I have found for under $1000 at Photo Buff. This week Canon announced the next model up, to 40D which is tempting but probably outside my price range.

I am bummed that this week's Top Gear was the last one on SBS until summer. But to keep the inner car buff happy Holden has obliged and released details on the VE based ute (which we have waited nearly 12 months for). Tempting as it looks great!! But practically I will still keep my new Golf turbo diesel. It was only this time last year I sold my VR Commodore for it even though was very very very tempted by the new VE SV6. Hmmm, if they had a diesel version...

This week Google has announced two new items. Google Sky is an addition to the Google Earth app where you can reverse things and look at the night sky. In fact many of the southern sky images were taken at the UK Schmidt telescope in Sidings Springs near Coonabarabran in NSW. Also you can now embed your Google Maps into your own websites, which reminds me that I need to sort out our Cairns photos! Here is the map from our NZ trip.


View Larger Map

Monday 2 July 2007

Transformers

I was excited about going to watch the new live action Transformers movie as I remember watching the tv show as a kid (and the cartoon movie) as well as having the toys (Bumblebee and Jazz are the two I remember). However, I was a bit worried as I found out the director was Michael Bay who had directed the woeful Pearl Harbour, but only a bit as he had also done the fun Armageddon, The Rock and Bad Boys.

Well overall this movie was not only fun, but was everything a blockbuster should be and was exciting too! Now I am disappointed that Bumblebee was not a VW Beetle as he was in the toys and tv show. However, this was not too bad as instead he was a very cool 5th gen Camaro.

In fact this was probably the best movie we have seen recently so just go an see it :)

Oh and not to detract from the movie, but there is some dumb Hollywood science in it. Have a look at (spoiler warning) the Bad Astronomy review.

Ben: 4 stars, Ruby 5 stars

Ocean's 13

Another one in the many sequels released this year (still have Harry Potter and Die Hard 4.0 to go). Now in this case the previous installment, Ocean's 12, was just plain dull and really should have been a reason not to make a further one. However, in this case I am glad they did. 13, whilst nowhere near as good as Ocean's 11, is an enjoyable sequel. There are some bits where it falls flat, but overall it was fun.

Ben: 3 stars, Ruby 3 stars

Monday 4 June 2007

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Pirates 3 was missing all that was fun in the first movie. You would be better to skip this film and buy the DVD of the first film and watch that. It was too long (167 mins), the plot too convoluted and it was neither fun or exciting (as a blockbuster should be). This is a great example of why you should not make films back to back and have films with cliff-hangers. What they should have done is cut this and Pirates 2 into the one (shorter!!) film.

Lets hope the other sequels coming out in the next few weeks are better than this one.

Ben: 1 star, Ruby: zzzzzz.

Monday 28 May 2007

Spider-Man 3

2 weeks ago we saw Spider-Man 3 and overall, despite it being a long film at 138 mins, we enjoyed it. However, despite it being fun to watch it is not as good as its predecessors. There are too many things going on in this film because of having too many villains and this leads to it being a long film with many plot holes. They needed to have either Sandman or Venom not both. Ultimately, despite these flaws, Spider-Man 3 was still fun to watch.

Ben: 3 stars, Ruby: 3 stars.

Saturday 12 May 2007

Stuff from this week #8

I think Ross Gittins article on the Work Choices legislation is spot on. Howard's recent minor changes to it does not change a think. This is bad legislation and must go.

Bono's 47th birthday this week (10th May). Happy birthday mate, keep up the good work :)

Were you one of those people who thought Marty McFlys shoes were cool in Back to the Future? Someone has set up a petition to get Nike to put these up for sale. Hmm I would much rather the flying DeLorean...

Looks like New Order have officially broken up (unlike going on hiatus like in the mid 90s). I wonder where the album worth of songs that were recorded during the Waiting For The Sirens Call sessions will get to...

YouTube video of a car owner revenge on a traffic light window washer :)

The Federal Budget was released this week in Australia and you can't half tell they are buying votes in this election year (as they have done in the past couple of election year budgets). Also they have plenty of cash left over for some election spending and wasting it on advertising for Work Choices or Superannuation. I would have preferred that instead of a tax cut and all those payouts that they invested in more infrastructure (like water tank rebates, better public transport, improvement to hospitals).

UPDATE: The New Order break-up seems to be only the bassist Peter Hook. A source close to the band says they are still together.

Wednesday 9 May 2007

My Money Minder 1.9.6 released

Just a quick post to announce the new version of My Money Minder. In fact today is 5 years since I released v1.0.

Originally I was planning to have v2 out this May, however, I realised a while back that this was not going to happen. Along with that several users reported some bugs. So, instead, I combined some of the work I was doing on v2 which fixed issues in csv/tsv file importing, fixed some of the other bugs and added 2 partial localisations. I am hoping that this is the last 1.x versions of MMM...

Anyway head on over to the My Money Minder pages to see what the changes are and grab a copy.

Saturday 5 May 2007

Stuff from this week #7

Oh no! You can now buy baby clothes to match up with your iPod!

Telstra starting on the broadband propaganda wagon. I getting really sick of Telstra's propaganda on this broadband issue, I have been getting stuff in the mail from them too!

Cool pics of Jupiter from the New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto and Kuiper Belt.

Stephen Hawking takes a zero-g flight. Looks like he had fun too!

Finally Australia has implemented a Do Not Call register for telemarketers. I signed up yesterday, pity it takes 30 days to activate and only lasts 3 years...

Funny stuff from YouTube: Darth Vader calls the Emperor after the Death Star is blown up and Darth Vader vs Japanese police.

Wednesday 2 May 2007

Website update

I have now updated each of the three sections of our website (done over several days). I approached this update much like I do with home renovations, I make a list of things that are broken and things I want to improve.

While my blog is relatively new and the standard Blogger template I was using was ok, if I ever wanted to change any of the colors for the nice rounded boxes I would need to change all the images. This would be a pain! I had used some CSS trickery on the Ben's Software pages to do this but that was also a pain to maintain. I also wanted to have random backgrounds on the blog. The Ben's Software pages were the oldest part of the site (having been transferred from Geocities with little modification) so it was time to do a general cleanup to make them look at bit more professional. With the addition of the blog I now had three separate sections to the website and I wanted each of these linked and improve their navigation. Lastly I wanted to add in better website tracking.

To find the rounded corners I just did a couple of Google searches and reasonably quickly found what I wanted. In the end I chose two different javascripts that generate the corners on-the-fly. In the end I found 2 different javascript solutions. To give me nice anti-aliased boxes that will work with any of the random backgrounds on the blog I chose Curvy Corners. However, since I wanted a drop shadow for Ben's Software, I chose Ruzee Borders (which does not work well with the random background). Another Google search found a random background javascript, currently there are 6 possible background images.

For improving the navigation I had a look at a couple of other websites (such as Apple.com) and they used links at the end of each page called breadcrumbs. These have been added to Ben's Software and the Photos pages.

Lastly I added Google's Analytics to monitor traffic on each section of the website.

I have tried to make sure that these changes work in well in most browsers (let me know if things don't work or look right). However, I have done most of my testing on Safari and Firefox. This should work in Internet Exploiter but I highly recommend you get Firefox as it is quite simply much better :)

Saturday 28 April 2007

Stuff from this week #6

Kylie to star in Dr Who! Apparently she will be a cyberwoman (perhaps with an Aussie accent “G'day, you will be deleted, maaate!”)

Hmmm, I am also wondering when the ABC will show the new season of Dr Who here. My guess is Sunday night at 7.30 after Robin Hood finishes (mid July I think) as the Saturday night slot is now taken by The Sideshow (not sure how long that will go for).

Plasma Pong. Whoa! An interesting take on this old game :)

Amazon is hoping to sell non-DRM songs in its digital music store (and not just ones from EMI). Apple has also let all its iTunes partners know they can sell higher quality and DRM free songs from May.

Hubble had its 17th birthday on the 24th April. Despite its troubled beginnings it has turned out to be a big success. 500,000 images in 17 years!

Another Exoplanet planet has been discovered by the European Southern Observatory, interestingly this is the first one that is in the habitable zone...

Sunday 22 April 2007

Stuff from this week #5

15-year old pretends to be the ABC and gets the Chaser's content removed from YouTube. Funny bit is the ABC does not mind it being there! The kid has since apologised.

Australia is in big trouble with the Murray-Darling water system having very little water. Hopefully this will force a rethink on some crops grown which use too much water such as rice and cotton. Also mining out in the west of NSW uses a lot of water too. Perhaps there is opportunity to move to recycling more water for the townships.

Customers are not happy with Microsoft Vista. Dell has changed their policy and is now allowing users to specify Windows XP instead of Vista.

Consortium wants to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait linking Alaska and Russia.

Saturday 21 April 2007

DRM, AAC and iTunes Store lock-in

Onto my first opinion post. Originally when the EMI/DRM news came out I was going to do a post (albeit shorter than this one) all about that. Well in the end I never finished and it ended up as only a couple of lines in my weekly stuff. Since then I have heard and read quite a few media reports on this and most seem to be treating Apple as though they are the Microsoft of music. I think that is completely wrong, so I wrote this new article :)

Now before going into the article it is worth noting that I have owned 4 Macs (2 still in use), Ruby and I each have an iPod and I have purchased tracks from the iTunes Store. So, yeah, I do like my Apple stuff. Hopefully this will come across as a balanced article and not too much of an Apple fanatic...

Digital Rights Management

I think the announcement by EMI and Apple that all their tracks will be available in May DRM free is really big news. To me this is the beginning of the end of DRM. I really don't like DRM as it restricts what you can do with your music and treats you as if you are a thief. This does not really encourage me to buy new music!! I can buy a CD, play it in my car at home or rip it and put it on my iPod, Phone or mp3 player. With Apple's DRM (called Fairplay) I am restricted to playing only in iTunes or on an iPod. However, it is worth noting there are a couple of simple ways to get around this (not that I have bothered).

Now some of the media reports on this announcement have been interesting as well as a bit misleading. They have focussed on the fact that price of individual songs has increase by 30% (this is for the US store, the Australian price has not yet been announced). Some have mentioned that the quality of the songs has doubled. However, very few have noticed that the prices of complete albums has NOT increased.

AAC files and iTunes Store lock-in

Another thing many of the media reports have been focussing on is that Apple's iTunes store locks you into using an iPod and the change in DRM makes no difference to this. Apple does not use the MP3 format for the iTunes Store (though the iPod can happily play MP3s), instead it uses AAC. Now many in the media seem to think this is an Apple only format (Apple Audio perhaps!). It is not an Apple format, AAC is an international standard just like MP3 and can even be thought of as a successor to MP3 (have a look at John Gruber's excellent post on AAC for a good explanation). Other devices apart from the iPod can also play AAC like the Sony PSP and PS3, Sony Ericsson phones , some Nokia phones and the Xbox 360.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple do not want to control music. What a lot of people forget is Apple makes most of their money of hardware sales (Mac or iPod) as these have a generous margin. Apple instead uses innovative software solutions (such as the iTunes Store, Mac OS X, iMovie or Final Cut Pro) to help drive software sales. It is also worth noting that the iTunes Store makes very little profit.

It is also worth reading Steve Job's Thoughts on Music essay. Also, this announcement from EMI is not just restricted to Apple's iTunes Store (see this Q&A transcript). EMI has made the DRM free tracks are available to any of the other digital music stores.

So its really great that we can now buy some digital music with DRM removed! However, this is only the first step, its time for the other large music companies to follow suit. Oh and hopefully EMI will soon make the Beatles catalog available too :)

Saturday 14 April 2007

Stuff from this week #4

5th paying space tourist arrives at ISS.

Apple has now sold its 100 millionth iPod. Only took them 5 1/2 years! Worth noting that Sony sold 350 million Walkmans over 15 years and that the sales of iPods have been accelerating...

Next update to Mac OS X has been delayed until October.

RTA gives up on priority traffic light system for busses on the North-West T-Way. This system would have been a good idea, allowing busses to get green lights all the way, now the RTA wants to wait until a Sydney-wide system is implemented in 2009. Knowing how things work the Sydney-wide system will be delayed a year or 18 months. You would be better to bring this system online and gradually work on other parts.

Daylight savings to be increased!! Nooooo! This is a bad idea. If anything it should be reduced back to the first weekend in March, the extra week will mean getting up in darkness and having very little extra light in the evening.

John Howard says Work Choices has increased jobs. What a bunch of crap, there is no way this can be reliably measured. This could be due to the minerals boom or the lack of sunspots. Anyway, even if Work Choices has increased jobs it has decreased the bargaining power of employees and reduced their opportunities. Whilst I am not advocating increasing union power, we need to have a good balance between the rights of workers and the rights of the business. We have swung too far towards business with this bad policy and it is time to redress this. I doubt the current Federal Government will change this so it is time to vote them out.

Chaser stunt makes news in the USA. Good also to see the Chaser's ratings are still high (5th spot with 1.3 million for Wednesday just behind Spicks and Specks). It is bad to see even more people watch the diarrhoea that is Today Tonight. Channel 10 has been running repeats of House since the Chaser started 3 weeks ago, with a new episode next week it will be interesting to see if any of the defectors return to House.

San Francisco to London? Google Maps say I need to swim across the Atlantic!! Only takes 31 days. Oh, and I tried to go to Sydney but it would not cross the Pacific!

Soccer Video on YouTube (set to Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life)

Tuesday 10 April 2007

Playing with Google's My Maps

I had a bit of a play with Google's new My Maps over the Easter long weekend and I created a couple of my own maps. In essence My Maps allows you to create a web mashup of photos and placemarkers on a map (which can also be exported to Google Earth). Previously you had to do know a bit about javascript to add these to your website. Here are the links to our NZ 2007 and USA 2006 trips. Eventually I will put links to these on our photos pages, I am still working on an update to the website and I will do this as a part of that (hopefully later on this week).

Whilst this stuff is cool, I would still like to see a one very useful addition. I would like to be able to copy directions to become lines on the map (these are tedious to create, hence why there are only 2 for NZ). This can be done in Google Earth, however, you cannot import this back into the Maps (another feature perhaps!).

Thursday 5 April 2007

Stuff from this week #3

Stuff from this week is coming early this week due to Easter :)

Big news. In fact if this had come out on April 1st instead of 2nd, no one would have believed it! EMI and Apple have announced that EMIs catalog will be available DRM free from the iTunes Store in May. Individual songs will cost more, however they will also be double the quality of the old ones (256K AAC instead of 128K). See this transcript of a Q&A with Steve and EMI boss Eric Nicoli and also a bit more info from Gizmodo.

Make a webpage look like MS Word!

List of April Fools Day 2007 pranks/jokes on Wikipedia. However the snake that escaped in Google's New York offices was not a joke!

The TGV train has set a speed record of 574 km/h. However, I don't think you will see this as a regular occurrence just yet. This was with an experimental TGV with twin superchargers and on a part of the new track between Paris and Strasbourg which has been specially reinforced.

Apple released the 8-core MacPro which is an extra $AUD2500 above the standard 4-core machine.

Wondering what Brett Lee is up to since he is not part of the World Cup? He is training up for his post cricket career in Bollywood.

Update #1: You can now create your own maps in Google Maps and share them! Cool!

Thursday 29 March 2007

Stuff from this week #2

The Chaser rated well in its new spot on Wednesday nights, in fact they doubled their average from last year. Must be those billboards in Iraq...

Arise Sir Bono!

Cool astronomy stuff: Hexagonal feature on Saturn.

Episode 7 of Chad Vader is out. This one is funnier than the last couple :)

Space junk (apparently) nearly hit a LAN Chile aeroplane. The Russians had warned that parts of a Progress cargo carrier would re-enter the atmosphere east of New Zealand, but according to SMH this was to be 12 hours later than the aeroplane's sighting.

The SMH and WWF are encouraging Sydneysiders to turn off their lights for an hour starting at 7.30pm on Saturday 31st March (they are calling this Earth Hour) to help do something about climate change. It will be interesting to see how many people do turn off their lights (we will be!). Good to see someone taking a lead on this, especially since John Howard has only made baby steps on climate change (cough..election year...cough)

Funny answers to exam questions

Wednesday 28 March 2007

New Zealand 2007 Photos

Nearly 2 months after our New Zealand trip finished I have finally organised our photos and put them up on our new photos site!
As well as the NZ photos I also included the ones we had previously put up from our USA 2006 trip. Each photo album now includes a slideshow feature (activated by the link on the top right of the individual photo page) and a couple of the photos have a link back to Google Maps for their location.

This is all part of a plan to organise all our digital photos in iPhoto. Once trips/events are done I plan to upload up another album.

Saturday 24 March 2007

Stuff from this week #1

Looks like the Chaser guys are back for another year of pranks. Still we have to wait until March 28th (on Wednesdays instead of Fridays like last year) until the new series starts. Oh and checkout their billboards.

Qantas has landed an A380 at LAX, the pic shows it dwarfs the 747.

Will It Blend? Well according to these guys, yep! They try iPods, Coke cans, glow sticks and light globes.

Further proof that you can sell anything on eBay, a time machine is up for grabs! Quite obviously it is fake. It has neither a flux capacitor or is powered by a black hole!

Wednesday 21 March 2007

Hot Fuzz

Last weekend we saw Hot Fuzz which we both can recommend. Basically it's a piss take on the buddy cop films from the guys that made Shaun of the Dead (what next, a western, sci-fi, period drama??). Whilst Ruby didn't like Shaun, she sure laughed at lot during Hot Fuzz.
Ben: 4 stars, Ruby: 4 stars.

Bonus points for working out what's up with Bill Bailey's character and lots of extra points for those who spot both Peter Jackson and Cate Blanchett (we didn't!).

Muhahahahaha!

Starting a blog...

My first ever blog posting! Wow :P

Now seriously, why did I choose to start a blog now?? Well, the simple answer is I want to better exercise my writing skills (creative or otherwise!) whether for my opinion on current events or just something I feel compelled to write about. I am finding that my writing (or getting to writing) has become a bit rusty of late (even for things like emails) and I have gotten rather good a procrastinating about starting writing. Hmmm, I think my procrastination is inversely proportional to my typing speed :)

OK so thats great, what am I actually going to write about? At this stage anything that comes to mind like my thoughts on current events politics (federal and NSW state elections in Australia this year), things Ruby and I are up to, funny stuff I find on the interweb to our photos (yeah the photos part of the website is going to be up soon) and movie reviews.

Oh and no guarantees on updates, that will depend on my schedule. Best to make use of the RSS feed to see when there are updates. Lets see how this experiment goes :)

Muhahahahaha!