Category: Life

Goth Chick #1: Swords? Why would we want to look in the swords stall?
Goth Chick #2: Duh… Zombie Apocalypse?
Goth Chick #1: Oh, yeah.
— Medieval Faire, Castle Hill, Australia
(nods to ‘Overheard in New York‘)

Anyone watching Australia’s Funniest Home Video Show this Saturday (May 27th) may notice there are more members of the Cook family sitting in the back row than there are usually.
We went around the corner to TCN9 in Sydney for a taping this week, and the kids (and Granny!) are quite proud of their new autographed AFHV hats. We’re pleased to report that Toni Pearen gets the fashion thumbs-up from Those That Know These Things – for the first time ever.
We liked ‘the video with the kid licking the glass’. I don’t know whether it’s the audience hype-up session, but I think it’s funnier to see these clips live, with an audience.
If you’re in Sydney, with an afternoon to spare, and you’re not made squeamish by repeated clips of people being hit in the groin or head, we’d recommend turning up. There aren’t that many locally produced televised gigglefests these days.
UPDATE: I’ve had a few people emailing me asking me for information about the show. Sorry, but I’m not connected to Channel 9 or AFHV in any way – best place to go is funniesthomevideos.ninemsn.com.au

Starbucks. Venti. Iced. Chai. Tea. Latte.
Seriously. Do it.

Good to see that even after weeks of neglect, BONWAG is still fulfilling its destiny. Nice to know it’s still useful. Thanks, Niamh!

“Some people are like Slinkies…Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs” – unknown

I’ve just returned from Ikea. I have a problem with my purchase.

Found another cool optical illusion which is a useful wake-up for anyone who thinks they’re in control of their own brain….

Caleb’s Birthday today – the big Double-Digit one where you renounce your allegiance to Fisher Price, to be inducted into the great church of Sony (Nike Reformed).
This year, Pokemon continues its reign at the top of the list, with Digimon a close second. How do those toy marketers do it for so long? Caleb’s grown up on these things.
As for me, who turned thirtysomething last week – I was nicely surprised by a bunch of stuff to keep me warm – jackets, shirts, bedsocks, chocolate, and a Sudoku puzzle anthology.
A real winter birthday. I guess I’m resigned to the fact I won’t be getting beach towels as birthday gifts, unless I happen to move to the northern hemisphere at some point.

Here’s an amazing radar picture – of a storm which hasn’t hit Perth, yet. I can see it in the distance, and it looks threatening, but it looks like it’s one long, straight stormfront which won’t last for long. What a weird radar image it makes, though.

Looks like yet another excellent piece of software has been set free by the Big Boys. And it’s all good news.
I’ve been looking at ‘Konfabulator‘ for some time, because it’s such a cool way of putting your computer to work in a multitude of small ways, rather than in one big way (like Windows or Office). You download whatever widget you need, for activities like checking the weather, or keeping an eye on some hidden part of your computer, and it does the job. Simply, elegantly, and in new ways you hadn’t thought of before. Also, it’s able to work with both windows AND mac computers, so everyone wins.
Having been a commercial product for a couple of years, today, it’s been bought by Yahoo, and is now free. Free, I tells ya. Woo hoo!
It’s the latest in a long line of products which the big internet companies have acquired with their own money, and have offered to you and I for free, as a way of driving people to their way of thinking about the internet. Yahoo did it with Flickr. Google bought Picasa and Keyhole. Microsoft occasionally offer tools and programmes for free as tests of things they’re planning for new versions of Windows.
So, it’s no longer the case that in order to work with a computer ‘on the cheap’, you needed to put up with tricky tech tricks and freeware. These are really useful, commercial-grade products which you can get for free.
I highly recommend Konfabulator.