Tag: fun

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More books

Karen and I went to Sunnybank to watch Charlotte’s Web today. I was glad to find we weren’t the only adults in the cinema. Not a bad movie at all. Hearing Steve Buscemi do the voice of Templeton the rat was worth it alone. After the movie we had lunch at the impressive Landmark Chinese restuarant which is just outside the shopping complex. It does yum cha every day. It has a very nice interior, and it seems extremely popular, particularly with the local Chinese community.

While we were at Sunnybank, I used the voucher my brother gave me for Christmas to buy Animal Farm and a book called How to Get Things Done, by David Allen. The second book was recommended by my friend Rhys, whom I saw at our annual UQIT2K Christmas gathering (UQIT2K being the name of the mailing list we set up after we graduated from ITEE at UQ in 2000). I figure I need to get a bit more organised. After taking an official Myers-Briggs test at the NICTA retreat, I found out that I’m an ENTP. I’m only marginally ‘E’. I used to be an ‘I’, and my personality is only E-like at work. I’m definitely ‘N’, ‘T’ and ‘P’. The ‘P’ means I’m laissez faire, disorganised and a bit chaotic. While the laid back thing is good, I’d like to organise some aspects of my life a bit better, which will hopefully give me more time to do more stuff, such as reading all those books I still have to read!

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My Christmas haul

I already mentioned that I was given the book Nineteen Eighty-Four for Christmas (by my parents-in-law). I’m enjoying it much more this time around than when I read it for the first time sometime during my teens. Karen bought me the new U2 CD, U218 Singles. It’s a compilation of U2’s greatest hits, plus two new singles. She also got me a nice pair of Jensen headphones to replace the dodgy ones I have at work. Mum got me some clothes (I was hanging out for a new pair of shorts – I’m utterly hopeless at buying new clothes when I need to, though my Mum and Karen are trying to correct that flaw), Dad got me a 2007-2008 calendar of Italy, which I’ll hang in my office space at work, and Nigel got me some chocolates and an Angus and Robertson book voucher. I’ll probably spend the book voucher on The Road to Serfdom, Capitalism and Freedom or Animal Farm. Karen and I also bought ourselves some goodies, such as the Canon MVX430 video camera.

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Canon MVX430

Yesterday, in the post-Christmas sales, Karen and I bought a Canon MVX430 video camera. We’d been saying for a while that we should invest in a video camera to take on holidays etc. After reading all the reviews, deciding we didn’t need an absolute top-of-the-line camera and agreeing that we didn’t want to spend more than $1000, we came to the conclusion that the Canon Elura 100 would be perfect for us. The respected camcorder.info website rated the Elura 100 the best video camera in any class for 2006. But it turns out that the Elura is not sold in Australia, at least not under that name. After doing some specification comparisons, I realised that the MVX430 and the Elura 100 were the same, except that the Elura 100 has 20x optical zoom as compared to 18x for the MVX430. The digital zoom also differs between the two. And of course, the MVX430 is PAL-based whereas the Elura 100 is NTSC-based. My suspicions were confirmed by a discussion on the camcorder.info bulletin board. There is a camera being sold in the UK called the MVX460 which is more-or-less an exact match of the Elura. For some reason it isn’t being sold in Australia. Anyway, we ended up getting the MVX430 for $679 from JB-HiFi, who were good enough to match Myer’s sale price. That’s more than $100 less than the RRP. I’ll be getting a further $75 back from Canon when I claim the Christmas cashback offer.

My poor computer has begun its decline towards the scrapheap (or recycling heap, that is). One of the fans has gone, and it isn’t a part that can be replaced any more, such is the pace of change these days. Furthermore, neither Karen’s nor my own computer supports firewire (or USB 2.0 for that matter) meaning we can’t transfer any video footage from our new camera to the computer. My ancient computer monitor, which predates my current computer, died a couple of months ago. That has since been replaced with a sexy Dell 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor. No sooner had I replaced my monitor than the trouble with the fan began. Anyway, it looks like you can put together a very decent box for little cost these days. Another alternative might be to buy a PCI firewire card for my current computer, but that depends on how long my PC is likely to last without the deceased fan (which I believe is for the onboard video). We’ll see.

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Cairns

We had intended to go to Cairns sometime just before Christmas, but Karen had to present a paper in Cairns on Tuesday so we decided to take our leave a bit early. We headed up to Port Douglas last Friday night straight after work and stayed there for three nights before returning to Cairns for another two nights.

While we were at Port Douglas we took a boat ride out to Low Isles. Absolutely beautiful. Saw heaps of green turtles while we were there. The tour operators, Quicksilver, were first class, and genuinely friendly. They had to deal with a whole bunch of people throwing up on the way out and on the way back. The seas were very choppy and we were in a largish sailing boat. The crew suggested that anyone who tends to get sea sick should take some preventative tablets (which they made freely available). I guess it didn’t work for some people. I don’t imagine that sea-sickness turned many people off their lunch, which was included, because it was mouthwateringly brilliant: prawns, chicken and a variety of salads.

On Sunday we saw the Daintree, Daintree River and Cape Tribulation with Billy Tea Bush Safaris. Again, it was wonderful. We spent a good part of the day cruising around in a big Landcruiser with ten others plus the driver. We saw some smallish saltwater crocodiles on our Daintree River cruise. The smallest was about 20cm long! Our boat driver, Bill Smith, was a real funny bloke, and he had eyes like a hawk. Unfortunately we didn’t spot any cassowaries in the Daintree Rainforest. I went for a swim in Emmagen Creek with some of the other people on our tour. Cape Tribulation was a very idyllic looking place, with its secluded beach and gentle waves.

Monday was spent walking around the town of Port Douglas. We walked up to the lookout for a nice view of the beach. Wouldn’t mind buying one of the houses up there on that hill! On Monday afternoon we caught the bus back to Cairns.

On Tuesday I walked Karen to the Cairns City Council building where she had to give a presentation to various government types. Then I headed off to Kuranda on the Skyrail cableway. The Skyrail was impressive in that it was a fairly long ride with two changeovers in the middle. At each changeover, you can do a five minute bushwalk through the Barron River Gorge rainforest. I had a cable car all to myself for the entire journey. Kuranda itself was pleasant, but extremely touristy. I checked out the markets and went for a couple of bushwalks through the rainforest. The train ride back to Cairns on the Kuranda Scenic Rail afforded some nice views of Barron River Gorge. Karen and I had dinner on the Esplanade.

We spent Wednesday wandering around Cairns. We checked out the main shopping centre. We got back home at around 8pm on Wednesday night. A nice holiday, and Karen’s presentation was very successful.

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From Zero to 1.65 billion in less than two years

Speaking of Google acquisitions, YouTube has been snapped up by the Web search giant for the not insignificant sum of US$1.65 billion. YouTube was founded in February 2005. Not a bad pay-off for twenty months’ work! Okay, so a lot of the work was probably done before the company was founded, but still…

Anyway, this acquisition comes less than two weeks after Mark Cuban suggested that you’d have to be a moron to buy YouTube because of the litany of lawsuits that are, apparently, just waiting to happen. Material is often posted to YouTube by users who are not the copyright owners.

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Gondola Cruise

Last night Karen and I took a gondola cruise up the Nerang River and through some Gold Coast canals. This was part of a wedding gift given to us by my friends. The cruise included dinner, and it lasted about 1.5 hours. It was magical. Instead of giving a detailed account of where the gondola went, what we saw and what we ate, I’m just going to recommend that you go and do it some time, if you haven’t already. Thanks once again to everyone who contributed to this gift; we really loved it!

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Wine Tasting Tour

Karen and I finally found a spare weekend to enjoy the wine tasting tour that was given to us as a wedding present by some of my friends. It was wonderful. We drove around the Mount Tamborine area in a Landcrusier with our guide and another couple, stopping at four wineries and a park where we had a picnic lunch. We tasted pretty much all the wine that was on offer. Since we had to drive back to Brisbane, I ended up spitting most of the wine into the little bucket things that they provide for that purpose.

We knew the first winery, Cedar Creek, very well, as that’s where our wedding reception was held. It was great to go back and visit it, because it brought back some very happy memories of our special day. It was especially nice that some of the staff at Cedar Creek remembered us by name. We ended up buying some Tawny Port. However, we’d also previously bought a couple of bottles of wine (their trademark Rosé and some kind of Semillon I think). No doubt we’ll visit Cedar Creek many more times yet.

The next stop was Mount Nathan winery. Neither of us thought that much of the wines at this place. A lot of the Mount Nathan wines have honey added to them!!! However, we did like the cream-based drinks. They had chocolate cream, butterscotch cream and coffee cream. I think they all had honey in them too. We bought a butterscotch cream and a coffee cream. Then it was time for lunch.

Perhaps the best winery of the lot was Albert River Wines. It was a nice setting: an old colonial style home on a vast acreage, some of which was used to grow grapes. The wines here were good, and we got a lesson in wine tasting. They had a delicious port, which we purchased, and a pretty good Merlot (some people won’t drink Merlot; in general, though, Merlot is probably my pick of red wines). I’d like to visit Albert River Winery on a Sunday so we can enjoy the Vineyard Grill.

Our last stop was Witches Falls Winery, back up Mount Tamborine. Our favourite wine at this place was the Saignée, a sweet Rosé like wine. We picked up a bottle of that as well as some caramelised balsamic vinegar.

It was a terrific day, and we’d like to thank Anna, Ian, Matthew (Boggo), Nathan and Rhys for giving us such a cool gift (we’re going to use up the other half of your gift, the gondola cruise, the weekend after next). Sadly, most of the stuff we bought along the way is not for us!

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Complete Lies: the answer

I can sense that the tension out there on the web is near breaking point: the whole world is just dying to know which of my lies is actually a truth. Well, it’s number 5. I have never smoked tobacco.

Biology was my preferred degree up until the last few days prior to making my final choices at the end of high school

Actually, I almost ended up doing psychology. The switch to computer science was pretty much last-minute.

I made my debut for the Northstar XXXX League U-19 team at the age of 15

This one is almost true. I was 16 when I first played for the under 19 team.

In 2002, I caused a two-car accident while riding a moped around a Greek Island

While I did ride around a Greek Island in 2002, I did not cause any accidents as far as I know. Rhys can vouch for this one.

With respect to US politics, I believe the Democrats are, in general, a worthier party than the Republicans

In general, I do not believe the Democrats would be worthier of my vote if I happened to be an American citizen. While I don’t think that George Bush is much of a President (yes, that’s a gross understatement), the Republicans have done some pretty admirable things in their history, such as abolishing slavery. One can only hope that the GOP can produce a President with Lincoln’s conscience and eloquence again. I wonder what Abe would have thought of “nucular” weapons? It’s not necessarily that I think the Democrats are crap, just that they are not more worthy than the Republicans in general. Why do I even care about all this stuff, given that I’m an Australian? These days it’s impossible to have an interest in global affairs without having an interest in US politics. That’s just the world we live in at the moment.

In 2003, I was arrested for being drunk and disorderly at Gilhooley’s in the city while partying with my cousins

As previously explained, I’ve never been arrested for anything.

So now you know.

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Complete lies: follow up

No, I’m not giving away the answer just yet (I’m not giving away the answer directly, anyway). But it seems certain quarters of the world have formed a rather dim view of my character, and I’ll be sure not to ask them to stand as a reference for me in the future. ;-)

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Random observations

Complete lies

So Tinni has invited me to participate in a meme in which I need to list five complete and utter lies, and one truth. The first person to guess which is the true thing wins (the meme rules do not stipulate the nature of the prize, but I reckon another blog entry identifying the winner should suffice). So here goes:

    1. Biology was my preferred degree up until the last few days prior to making my final choices at the end of high school
    2. I made my debut for the Northstar XXXX League U-19 team at the age of 15
    3. In 2002, I caused a two-car accident while riding a moped around a Greek Island
    4. With respect to US politics, I believe the Democrats are, in general, a worthier party than the Republicans
    5. I have never smoked tobacco
    6. In 2003, I was arrested for being drunk and disorderly at Gilhooley’s in the city while partying with my cousins

      I tag the following people: