Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

US/UK/HK Trip: Leaving and Arriving in LA

Categories Life

Part of our 2012 US/UK/HK Trip. See the explanation and summary entry.

We went to the airport on Sunday to catch our morning Qantas flight to LA to begin our trip. After clearing security and customs and grabbing a quick snack, we were about to walk to the gate for boarding when the dreaded announcement happens: "Unserviceable problem with the aircraft landing gear doors, new aircraft due in 8 hours, go to the gate for instructions".

Great start. We were offered by Qantas to go to a hotel for the day in which we would be fed and given … Read more →

Goodbye Faithful Clock-Radio & Loopers

Categories Life, Technology

Old Clock RadioIn this past week I said goodbye to my faithful clock radio that has been my bedside accompaniment for the past 17 years.

My Dad had got me the clock radio/CD player (Sony ICF-CD800) on an overseas business trip in 1995; I was 12 at the time and marvelled at the ability to play CDs in my own bedroom. Yes, CDs!! Remember those? 😛

It played its last CD quite a few years ago, and since then I've really only used it as a clock and an alarm. It's a considerably sized device because of the CD tray and speakers, … Read more →

Ruby Sparks

Categories Life, Movies

On Friday night we went and saw Ruby Sparks. It's a movie with quite a weird premise (reminiscent of Stranger Than Fiction a while back): a socially awkward successful writer with writer's block somehow unwittingly manifests into existence a girl that he has been dreaming about by writing about her.

After she is 'around', he can then change anything he wants about her by continuing to write.

The film is tagged as a romantic comedy, but I think that's an unfair pigeon-holing of the movie as a whole. There's definitely a big part of the usual rom-com aspects in there, … Read more →

Compulsory ISP Data Retention

Categories Internet, Rants, Technology

Government internet spyingFor all the goodwill that this government has generated among IT people with the NBN, it always seems to have something up their sleeve that goes way too far in terms of people's "safety".

Previous plans for compulsory internet filtering have thankfully (and hopefully permanently) been shelved. Now the Government seems to be proceeding with plans to make ISPs and telecommunications providers compulsorily store and retain customer usage data for two years. Whilst it hasn't yet been revealed specifically what 'customer data' will be retained, one can presume that for ISPs it will contain customers' internet browsing histories.

This type … Read more →

A New TA Successor on Kickstarter

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Internet

Planetary AnnihilationThe idea of crowd funding has really taken off in the past year or so. Headlined most prominently by US-based Kickstarter, it enables people who want to raise money for something to easily pitch their idea to anyone on the internet, who can in turn pledge a certain amount of money often in return for some rewards once the project gets off the ground. It's a great way to raise early capital for a project without having to go to banks, or relinquish part-ownership to venture-capitalist firms.

I hadn't yet previously supported anything on Kickstarter or on other crowd funding … Read more →

Shambolic Ch9 Olympic TV Coverage

Categories Life, Rants

Ch9 Olympic Coverage Fry MemeThere's probably one thing that most Australian's will remember about watching the London Olympics, and it's not London, the athletes, the gold medals, or anything like that.

I think what most people, including myself, will remember is the absolute disastrous Channel 9 free-to-air coverage.

Disastrous might even be an understatement. There's so many things that have been wrong about the way 9 has covered the second-biggest sporting event in the world (everyone knows the biggest is the football World Cup :P), it's hard to even coherently put them into words, but I'll try.

In my opinion, there are two main … Read more →

I Just Can’t Get Into Skyrim

Categories Gaming

I like to think of myself as a pretty diverse gamer: I play across multiple genres, on multiple platforms, from both AAA big-publisher titles down to the small downloadable indie-type games.

But if I'm brutally honest with myself, all that is a big fat lie. Recently I have come to the realisation that, in terms of video games, I like what I like and even the best game that doesn't fit into my pre-conceived set of 'likes' or 'interests' will never grab me.

Case in point: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This game was fantastically well received critically, and … Read more →

The State of Firefox?

Categories Internet, Rants, Technology

Firefox & ChromeThere's been a few articles rolling around the internet recently on the state of the Firefox web-browser. I've made no secret that since 2004, Firefox has been my browser of choice.

However in recent years, Firefox has been losing ground rather than gaining. Most commentators point to the rise of Google's own Chrome browser, and a lot of people I know have converted over from Firefox to Chrome for various reasons. A lot have been for social reasons, i.e. because it's 'cool' (something that was previously a Firefox drawcard over Internet Explorer), and other reasons people cite are practical: … Read more →

Getting Back Into Reading & Kindles Everywhere

Categories Geekery, Life, Technology

Kindle TouchWhen we got married over 6 six years ago, I stopped reading books. I'm not totally sure why - maybe it was being more busy and more tired - but other than a select few non-fiction books, I haven't read a single fiction book in the last six years since.

Recently, after going to bed at night it has started taking me a while to get to sleep, and I've realised that previously I would have used this 'non-sleeping time' to read a book.

So I decided to get back into reading.

I bought a Kindle Touch e-reader direct from … Read more →

The Increasing Nicheness of Web Development

Categories Internet, Rants, Technology

HTML5 CSS3 modern web designIn the past month or so I've done a little bit of web development. In addition to totally redesigning this very website, I have also recently put together a new website for my brother-in-law's cabinetry business.

Before now, it had been at least a few years since i've done a fully-fledged new design for a website, and it really struck me how things have evolved and progressed in terms of 'modern' web design and development.

Back when I first did my website in 2004 (blog post, site archive page), pretty much anybody who knew the … Read more →