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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 →

Things have just been tumbling along lately. Either i've gotten lazy in my blogging or nothing much has happened. In truth, it's probably a bit of both.

It's hard to believe we're almost half-way through this year. In some of the end-of-financial-year sales i've picked up a few things. I got Madworld on the Wii for a very awesome $40. Quite a bargain that one. The game itself is pretty good, but not totally great.

The really graphic violence and the Sin City-esque styling is well balanced, and i'm actually a little surprised that they got it passed the classification … Read more →

The weather in Brisbane has been fantasticly gloriously cold. No, i'm not being sarcastic, I really actually do enjoy the cold as much as I hate and loath the heat. Temperatures in Brisbane have been going as low as 5 degrees in the past few days (I can here many nothern-hemisphere people laughing "yeah right that's cold?"), but for Brisbane that's almost as cold as it gets here, and I for one am grateful for it.

Anywho, enough talk of the weather. Friday night we saw Terminator: Salvation, and despite low expectations, I thought it was pretty good. Although … Read more →

Ain't public holidays grand? Here we are on a Sunday night at almost midnight, and I can actually type out a blog entry instead of having to prepare for work tomorrow. Cheers Lizzy, and happy birthday!

Today we did something out of the ordinary. I'm not sure where I got the idea from, but today we went to the Brisbane Planetarium and saw a show, Passport to the Universe, narrated by Tom Hanks.

I'm a big 'space' fan, and I can't believe that I hadn't done this until now. Last time I was at the Planetarium would have to … Read more →

The past couple of weeks have seen two big finals in European football. Last week I got up to see Barcelona absolutely and convincingly outplay Manchester United to win the European Champions League.

The manner in which Barca passed and moved throughout the game meant they were pretty much in total control of the game and were thoroughly deserved winners. It was good seeing an attacking and passing-minded team win it over more defensive-oriented teams in the competition (Man Utd don't belong to that group through, i'm thinking of more the Italian teams and to an extent Chelsea too).

Saturday … Read more →

It's been coming for a while, and with the help of the wife this weekend, I finally manned-up and made the decision that needed to be done: yesterday I had most of my hair cut off (see right).

It was basically forced upon me by my increasingly obvious hair-loss that has been happening over the past 4 or so years, and I still think it's criminal and unjust that for a man in his mid-twenties it had come to this. My father lost his hair in his late-30s/early-40s (fair enough), but at least my brother is pretty much in the … Read more →