If it doesn’t fit elsewhere, it goes here.
Karen and I had dinner at SumoSalad tonight. We were after a light meal having had a rather big lunch. We both found our meals to be very ordinary. The main problem was that one our meals didn’t contain the ingredients it was supposed to contain. Reminder to self not to eat there again.
In the spirit of Inchoate‘s "A misplaced apostrophe in the wild", I bring you the following instance of incorrect spelling courtesy of a Foxtel Digital advertisement that’s been running on News.com.au for a while now.
I prefer chocolate. So does Charlie.
Karen and I were married in a beautiful wedding ceremony at Mount Tamborine at 1pm on Saturday, April 15. Thanks to all who came to help us celebrate our special day.
The ever-reliable Inchoate informs me that Anthony Towns has been elected as the new Debian Project Leader! A hearty congratulations to you, Anthony! The Debian Project has a very capable leader at its helm.
Some time ago, Karen bought us season one of an old BBC sci-fi series called Blake’s 7. Karen has already seen the whole series, and really liked it. We’ve finished watching season one together, and I’ve got to say I love it too! Naturally, it appeals to my inner geek, but the political intrigues are what hooked me. Avon rocks!
Sydney FC won the inaugural A-League grand final in front of 41,689 spectators this afternoon, pipping the Central Coast Mariners by one goal to nil. I’m glad they won. Usually I’ll go for the underdog when I’m not obligated to support one of the competing teams, but the A-League is still a fledgling league, so I think it’s important that the club that forked out the big money from the very start was rewarded for their investment. They were prepared to bring in Dwight Yorke and procured the services of an excellent coach in Pierre Littbarski. Hopefully this will encourage other clubs to invest in players of a similar calibre in future seasons. Unfortunately, we don’t have Foxtel, and Karen was not feeling at all well so we couldn’t go down to the Queensland Lions club to watch on the big screen. From the highlights on the news it looked like a fairly exciting game.
I think many people observe that birthdays come around faster as they get older. For me, the last year seems to have flown past, despite the fact it has probably been one of the most eventful of my life so far. It started with an overseas holiday and ended with a new job as a researcher. Along the way, I submitted a Ph.D. thesis, began and ended a job as a software engineer, got engaged, bought a house, moved into said house (thereby leaving "home" for what was the last time), watched Australia finally qualify for the World Cup, and was awarded a Ph.D. (in something like that order). Needless to say, there are many, many people to thank for helping to make that year what it was.
So this year has a lot to live up to. It will start off well enough, for I’ll be marrying Karen in April. What else happens during the year remains to be seen, but I’m looking forward to it! I’m thoroughly enjoying my new job, and my interest in ubiquitous computing has been re-energised. On the one hand, I’m hoping for another eventful year (as long as the events are positive!). On the other hand, it would be nice to have a quiet year in which Karen and I can just enjoy being married.
Karen bought me a Humax set-top box for my birthday/Valentine’s day. It’s standard definition since we only have a standard definition 4:3 television anyway. It’s got an 80GB hard disk drive built into it for recording, and it has some nice features like being able to press pause while watching live television and having the stream buffered to the HDD. Handy for when you’re watching football and you get interrupted by a phone call. We used it last night to record Gilmore Girls, but I think we might have missed the end of it since the stupid Commonwealth Games swimming qualifiers went way overtime. Do television viewers really find it interesting to watch people swimming laps in a pool for so many hours on end? We were at Suncorp Stadium watching a highly entertaining game of football. :-)
Christmas was great. Karen and I hosted it at our house and it went really smoothly. Everyone had a great time.
I’ve started at my new job with NICTA. I’m working on autonomic networks and context-awareness as applied to disaster prediction, response and recovery. At the moment I’m familiarising myself with the work being carried out by a couple of students whom I will help to supervise. Working in the city rocks.
Yesterday was my last day at global-roam. My time there was short and sweet. Being a small company, I got to learn a little bit about a lot of things: the most interesting parts of the job were probably not related to software development.
After a two week break over the Christmas period, I will begin work at National ICT Australia (NICTA). Looking forward to it.
Ben tells me he’s accepted a position at the QUT usability lab, so he’ll be back in Brisbane on a permanent basis soon. Congratulations Ben!
Every year since we graduated with Bachelors degrees in 2000, my friends and I have got together at around Christmas time to catch up and remember some of the things we did in our undergrad years (because, let’s face it, there’ll never be a time like undergrad again, and there are some things worth remembering!). This year we had a BBQ at Karen’s and my new house last Monday. It was really great, because everyone was able to make it: Ben and Marice (sans baby Daniel), Anna and Will, Kai and Julie, Rhys, Ian, Matthew "Boggo" McGill and Nathan. Karen also invited her friend Belinda around. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I always look forward to these occasions, and I’m looking forward to next year’s get-together already!