Memorial

Half the people in the state must be remembering eating in the cafe at Port Arthur. Today I can feel the slaughter invading my memories, happy memories of day trips to the ruins and camping trips to the Tasman Peninsula with family and friends. It’s twisting the significance and implications of [our] pasts ... not nearly as terrible as its impact on the victims and their families, of course, but still a disturbing legacy for a great many.

From my letter to The Australian after the Port Arthur massacre.

28 April 2006 · Events

Language fun from the Graun in 2001, with undercover reporters turning the tables on English-speakers...

Tom Standage on how the more things change, the morons stay the same. (Sorry, an irresistible pun. Link via Virge.) And speaking of the pace of change, there have been some great ripostes to critics around the traps lately.

27 April 2006 · Net Culture

But enough about me. Let’s hear about Eugene. Eugene Mirman, that is, a New York comedian who has a highly entertaining website and blog, a new album coming out, and an appealing way with email hecklers. Don’t miss the eight-minute mp3 on the Show and Tell page, or the Legal Disclaimer and Privacy Policy.

27 April 2006 · Comedy

Can You See the Real Me?

I don’t have too many graven images at this particular shrine to self, but this was too good to resist. We all meet doppelgangers from time to time, in popular culture if not in the flesh. For years I’ve known of two in particular, but recently encountered a third...

Read More · 23 April 2006 · · Journal

Stupid Comics, as opposed to stupendous ones like Epileptic (which I’ve just finished reading—thanks for the tip, Bill).

Defrosting the Fridge

The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick, author of The Cartoon History of the Universe.

The MP3 Collection

As mentioned the other day, yes, I’ve bought an iPod, succumbing to their shiny white allure at last. It isn’t my first mp3 player, though: I’ve had two years of mixed results with various flash-based players. Allow me to bore your ears off (or eyes out) with some tales of temperamental technology...

Relighting the Glowing Splint

The housekeeping continues. Hope James won’t mind me dragging these out of the bottom drawer, given that their intended home is now defunct. FutureScientific was going to be the next Onion, except more sciencey and futuristic. (You can still enjoy the words, if not his attractive design, at archive.org.)

Read More · 10 April 2006 · · Whatever

Instant Karma

So, I thought I’d try this moblogging that Tom Coates and his ilk are always going on about—snapping a few photos on the run and posting them to my blog in an instant. Trouble is, my mob. is an old Siemens C65 with no Bluetooth, and I couldn’t be bothered paying six quid for the connector cable, and it took me nine months to get around to sending the photos across to Jane’s by infrared and from hers onto the Mac. Still, now you can thrill to the immediacy of these tiny low-res photos of the G8 summit!

G8 Protests

(All from 6 July 2005. Yes, that is as good as they get.)

10 April 2006 · Events

Bird Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

At last it’s here. For months the local tabloids have been screaming BIRD FLU REACHES EUROPE... BIRD FLU 300 MILES FROM BRITAIN... BIRD SEEN COUGHING IN CALAIS. Now it’s only a few miles as the asthmatic crow flies from where I’m typing this, and a few days ago we had the best headline of all:

Don't Panic

Five Days in Tassie

Nicole has asked me what to see on a spur-of-the-moment five-day trip to Tassie, starting in Hobart and ending in Launceston—me being the born and bred Tasmanian and all. Which puts me on the spot, because although it looks like a tiny place you could nip round in an afternoon, Tasmania is actually as big as Ireland (it even has the same North–South sectarian divide), and it’s impossible to see it all in a short trip. So it’s a case of deciding what sort of things you’d like to see the most.

Rather than just reply in an embarrassingly long email, I thought I’d turn it into an embarrassingly long blog post. So, read this while pretending you’re Nic (which if you are Nic should be a piece of cake).

My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been boring anyone within earshot about the latest Book That’s Changed My Life. It’s hardly a book for the ages—no Moby Dick or Middlemarch—but it’s exactly the one I needed to read: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.

Cultural Attaché

After averaging 26 months between visits to Australia since we left, I’m about to slash my average to 19. The photographic opportunities are just too good to ignore, especially when one of my friends is willing to dress up and dance around in front of the camera like a man possessed—possessed by the spirit of matrimony.

Of course, when you’re faced with shelling out for two international airfares it helps to have work pay for half of it. And it helps even more if it’s somebody else’s work. And it helps even more if you get to swan around Tokyo doing your best Scarlett Johansson impression while the work is being done by that somebody else. Which is exactly what I’ll be doing while Jane goes to a trade fair, when we stop over in Japan on our way back from Melbourne.

A Paper Bag Saved My Life

Radiohead Paper Bag

Read More · 2 April 2006 · · Whatever

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