I really haven't been that much of a fan of the new free-to-air sports channel, One, until these past few weeks. I wasn't really interested in anything other than the poker shows before then.

However recently they've started showing live baseball from the States and I'm loving it. I have no idea why I like watching professional baseball so much, some might say it is the American equivalent of Cricket (which I generally despise watching). I guess I like the plays, the banter, the way a single inning can turn a game, and generally the length isn't anywhere near as … Read more →

I've had one of the most busiest, but also one of the most enjoyable weekends I've had in a long long time. Most of the weekend was taken up by catching up with a friend from the USA which I met at UQ six years ago, who very awesomely made a side trip up to Brisbane to visit us whilst she was in the country on business.

It was just the reality suspension I needed after a tough week and-a-bit. The visit was also well-timed with a winter heat-wave. We're in the middle month of winter here in the southern … Read more →

I can't remember how we actually got onto the topic, but last night me and Des were discussing our favourite of the old-time cartoon characters (think original Warner Brothers and Disney characters).

Here are mine:
Out of the Warner Bros. characters, my favourite is definitely Marvin the Martian. A close runner up to him from the WB characters is Daffy Duck, with an honourable mention going to Wile E. Coyote. By the looks of those choices, it seems i'm attracted to 'losers' of the WB bunch :S.

Out of the Disney characters, my favourites are Goofy and … Read more →

Entering the month of August usually sees the English Premier League start up again. Whilst we're still a week and a half away from that, I have myself been playing a lot of football.

We've continued playing in the mixed futsal on Friday night (last Friday the females did awesomely well as we won 8-1), and of course I am still playing indoor on Sunday.

Recently on the PS3, the highly anticipated downloadable game Fat Princess has been released. The concept behind this game is great: it's basically an RTS in which two teams have to try to rescue their … Read more →

Just under a year ago I wrote this blog entry about my rage at LucasArts for not releasing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the PC, whilst releasing it on every other current and past platform known to mankind. In that article I said this:

Don't be surprised if in 12 months down the track, after they've made all their initial release and hype money off the console versions, they will release a PC version of the game to try to squeeze what they can out of the PC market at that time.

Turns out I was 100% correct. … Read more →

We've just finished a long weekend here, as Despina had an RDO today (Monday) and i took today off with her. It's good that we've had today off, because we've had a busy and exhausting weekend.

Friday night started with Futsal, as me and Des are playing together once again in a mixed competition, however this time we're playing with other members of my extended family, which makes things even more interesting.

The game on Friday night was an extremely strange one. Nearly every person on the court made at least one comical error each to gift the opposing team … Read more →

Regular readers might recall my situation of leaving my previous mobile phone company (Soul/TPG) and expecting incorrect 'early termination' fees for a phone contract that I had actually served out.

Well since that previous post, they did in fact charge me those fees, and I ended up having to go back to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) to make yet another complaint about the incompetent idiots.

After months of posturing and back-and-forths between me, the TIO, and Soul, today I received a full refund of the charges in question (about $120 worth). Take that you lying *insert expletives here*.

In … Read more →

It was a pretty big geek news day today, with most of the headlines coming from Google. Early this morning Australian time Google announced that they have finally taken Gmail, and a host of other of their online services (eg Google Docs etc), out of their now previous seemingly perpetual beta. I touched on this a few years ago when I thought that Gmail had outgrown the 'beta' tag. It's going to be a bit weird seeing the Gmail logo now without the 'beta' attached to it.

The other big Google announcement today was their official confirmation of what many … Read more →

The start of the financial year has also seen the release of Firefox 3.5. Just like the 1.5 release all those years ago, this x.5 release sees a few relatively minor additions and improvements to the trusty fox.

Other than general speed increases, the main new features of the browser are a 'Private Browsing' mode similar to those already implemented in IE and Chrome, as well as tab 'tearing' similar to the behaviour in Chrome.

So all in all it is a solid step forward and keeps pace with the good new features that have made their way into … Read more →

Last night we went and saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and it was utterly and totally pure awesomeness.

After such a great entrance that was the previous Tranformers movie, I had long been sceptical about this sequel. As mentioned in that previous blog entry, so many times sequels of awesome first-time movies haven't gone right: in recent history I have previously voiced my opinions on X-Men 3, and more pointedly the horrendous 2nd and 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

The major failings of the latters were taken themselves way too seriously, having an average plot … Read more →