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Wed, 26 Apr 2006
[11:03] Unicycling...not as easy as it looks
Here's me and my beautiful unicycle, post-practice:
The sport is particularly unkind to those pieces of the male anatomy with a predilection towards dangling. As portrayed in this unicycling safety diagram:
[Posted at 26/04/2006 19:03]
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Tue, 25 Apr 2006
[13:27] Interview II, part two
I just had my second phone interview for the original job I applied for. My first interview went pretty damn well but this one was definitely not as impressive. I was pretty tired due to getting up for ANZAC day this morning (I'd been up for about fourteen hours when the interview started) and I think I was a litte fuzzy and not as articulate or energetic as I'd like to have been.
I think the fact that I'm applying for jobs with companies that are good, and know it, mean that they can be a bit more meticulous about the whole hiring procedure and actually do all they can to verify that what they get matches what was written on the packet. If nothing else, I've certainly enjoyed the whoel interview process - I've picked up a couple of cool ideas and reading suggestions from all of my interviewers so far and it's been good talking to people who obviously enjoy what they get to do every day!
I'm going to keep my fingers crossed because this is really my dream job but I'll begin to prepare myself for a "No thanks" I think....
[Posted at 25/04/2006 21:27]
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Mon, 24 Apr 2006
[22:52] Lest We Forget
We just got back from the London ANZAC Day ceremony. There was a pretty good turnout and it was interesting to see a truly ANZAC ceremony (as opposed the Australian ceremony that I'm more used to) - I've never actually heard the New Zealand national anthem before today! It wasn't the quiet ceremony that I'm used to, with all the traffic blocked off around the Australian War Memorial service; this one was at the major intersection that is Hyde Park Corner with buses and taxis and the occasional wailing siren throughout that make a quite a difference to the magpies and cockatoos that accompany the service back home.
The ceremony was considerably more religious than the ones we've had over the last few years in Australia and the "standards" like In Flanders Field and Lest We Forget were, for me, noticeably absent. Also, it seems that candles are not de rigueur over here, so we were the only two that had them.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
[Posted at: 25/04/2006 06:50]
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Sun, 23 Apr 2006
[12:46] The Return Of Jason
Jason is back in the country and to celebrate his return he came down to London for an evening of fun and frivolity. I had to work during the day so he went out to Ikea with Shona ('cause he's got a car) and they went shopping. I also snuck out at lunchtime and bought my unicycle (yay!). I got pulled over by the cops when I left, about a kilometer from work, asking for proof that I'd bought my unicycle and, once I produced the receipt, querying why I was carrying it like a dickhead (I had the wheel balanced on my handlebars and the seat resting on my shoulder). I assured it that in future I would be riding the thing rather than transporting it and he was happy enough to let me go.
When I got home there was some Ikea construction work in progress and I was rather impressed with one of the tools included in the chair kit. The tool was, of course, the ubiquitous allen key, but with a twist:
Jason took us out to a joint called the Blue Elephant for dinner (no relation to the old Indo-Lankan Blue Elephant back in Canberra). I have to admit that the restaurant was pretty damned good, expensive, but you get what you pay for! The joint is set up like a stereo-typical Indonesian jungle restaurant, there's greenery everywhere, a stream sporting both fish and a boat, a bridge over the river to the other half of the dining area and sarong clad serving staff are always right behind you, obsequiously polite. I had a coconut juice (basically a coconut with the top cut off and a straw in it) and Chiang Rai (very spicy stir fried pork with chillies, garlic and green peppercorns). I think the "very spicy" had been watered down to English tastes but despite that the food tasted great! I've never eaten what I assume were fresh peppercorns before, only the dried ones that we use to create "pepper". These are great and come in little bunches like grapes - see if you can find them because they'd make an excellent addition to a stew or salad. We proceeded to a "German" bar where we had about a litre of beer in a largish glass and some wurst before the long trip home on the tube. I also stopped of for chips at the Waterloo Kebab and Burger House because you've got to really!
[Posted at 23/04/2006 20:46]
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Fri, 21 Apr 2006
[11:06] Job Interview II, but no unicycle
I had my second interview for one of the two jobs that I'm applying for at the moment. I'd have to say that as far as interviews go, this has been the most thorough that I've ever had. It started at 1230 and I didn't get out until 1803; That's right, five and a half hours of interview! It was split up into four different groups who asked questions ranging from the technical through to general social/public knowledge and trivia. They covered everything I claimed I'd had anything to do with, basically my resume was ransacked! I guess they're trying to pick out the people who are inclined to a bit of BS to make themselves look more suitable. I'm glad that I don't subscribe to this sort of thing because if I did I think I'd be feeling quite foolish right now - as it is I'm thinking of making a few modifications.
I'm really keen to get away from where I'm working now and I'm fortunate enough to be being considered for, what I consider to be, two awesome jobs. The only problem is going to occur if I get cleared for both of them but, to tell the truth, I'm not sure if I'll get either. I'm feeling semi-confident about this one, several of the mini-interviews went quite well (I think) but at least one of them was quite unspectacular. We'll see what happens next.
One of the cool things was that the floor I was interviewed on was glass-walled and appeared to have a ring of binary "code" at the height normally reserved for those white "Warning there's a wall here" stickers. Whilst waiting between mini-interviews I decoded the binary down to text and it turned out that the last guy to interview me was the one who designed the floorplan and the stickercode. I got it all right except for one character (I blame it on the fact that I had to work it out on a piece of toilet paper) and I figure that's gotta be worth something right?
Unfortunately I didn't get out until post-closing time for the shop I intend to buy a unicycle from so I'm going to have to try and get over at lunchtime tomorrow.
[Posted at 21/04/2006 19:06]
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Mon, 17 Apr 2006
[12:01] Happy Birthday Shona!
Today's a holiday in the UK, in honour of Shonas birthday (it's also been hijacked by religious zealots who are claiming it's some "Easter" holiday as well). We went book shopping at the local second hand book store, "My Back Pages". I love second hand bookshops and this was my favourite sort, the kind that looks like it organically grew and consumed the surrounding shops. It's got little hidden corners and enclaves and staircases, all full of the most esoteric collection of books. I managed to snarf Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection, A Brief History of Time : The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition and, because it had related but different information, A Briefer History of Time. I've always wanted to read that book and, for £5, why wouldn't you! We also bought Shona a couple of books, one on squishing up plants to turn them fabric dyes and one on cooking fabulous meals with two pieces of off ham and a cabbage. We then retired home to do some hardcore reading!
[Posted at 17/04/2006 20:01]
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Sat, 15 Apr 2006
[10:57] A shopping we will go
Work finished early today so we took the opportunity to go shopping in Camden to pick up a pressie that's "on the list". We met up at Bank and caught the Tube together up to Camden (how romantic!). It occured to me that the local comic shop (MegaCity Comics) might stock the Spider Jerusalem comics I was looking for mid last year. Turns out they did! I'm looking forward to reading Back on the Street this weekend. We also bought the present so that's another item off the list!
Whilst browsing the through the juggling shop (because I can't go to Camden and not go through this shop) looking for an extra juggling ball (working on four balls) I stumbled upon what I think is going to be my new obsession: Into The Thunder Dragon - Mountain Unicycle Odyssey) and I'm pretty keen to give it a shot. I used to be able to see a guy commuting to work on a unicycle from my window back in Canberra and that always appealed to me. I'll sleep on it for a week and see if I'm still keen.
[Posted at 15/04/2006 18:57]
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Wed, 12 Apr 2006
[11:45] Padcast vs Podcast
I've developed quite a dislike to the word "podcast", mostly because of the Apple connotations that it invokes and thus the implicit advertising they receive everytime someone uses it. I HATE advertising for things and I always strip labels from bottles, pens, hats and other miscellany.
I don't object to Apple selling over-priced and unusable gizmos (what the hell was whoever came up with iTunes THINKING). Nor do I object to them, or anyone else, using the word 'podcast'. What I object to is every gimboid in the universe referring to any internet-sourced piece of media as a podcast. A podcast is a piece of media made specifically to be played on an iPod, OK?
I've been convolutedly referring to "internet-sourced media" as Mediacasts but, lets face it, that word sucks quite a lot. On the weekend the word 'padcast' occured to me whilst observing folks on the Tube and their Personal/Portable Audio Devices. As those words crossed my lips I wondered why I'd never thought of them before (yeah, I'm slow). I'm certainly not the first but when I remembered to look it up today there were only 422 hits from Google and even less from the IceRocket Blog Search. What's worse, the Wikipedia podcast entry is attempting to subsume the padcast entry!
Help prevent rampant commercialism and the evil trend of subliminal advertising. I urge you to join the incredibly catchily named 's/podcast/padcast/g' campaign today by adding this incredibly crappy button I just smushed together to your website immediately:
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Sun, 09 Apr 2006
[13:42] Hittin' the Mueseums
Due to DR testing at work this weekend, I've had quite a holiday. We decided to try and work through some of the items on the "Things To Do In London Before We Go" list. Because we're currently based in the "Gateway to the South" it takes a little longer to get back into town, about 30 minutes on the Northern line (assuming that the bastards running).
Yesterday we went to the Science Museum which was both interesting and sadly neglected. I liked the idea behind the place - making science "hands on" and relevant with lots of new exhibits but sadly a lot of the exhibits suffered from pretty obvious neglect. I was pretty impressed with the Boeing 7x7 wheel assembly that's right inside the front door, I've always wanted to get close to one of those but there was a section inside on the second floor called "Communications". This would have been interesting if I hadn't had to break out my torch to read half of the information panels due to the lights (both overhead and inside the display cabinets) being out. One of the monitors mounted on the wall showing various little spiels was broken and had so much dust on its screen that someone had managed to write "clean me" in the dust.
There was also another exhibition being hosted by the Museum, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. This cost an extra £10 to get in but I thought it was worth it. Amongst various working drafts and character references they had on display a collection of storyboards for all of the movies. The concept behind them being to describe the major emotions felt during each segment of the movie. Each movie was covered by two to three A3 sized canvases that were most spectacular, although stylised, you could follow the whole movie really obviously and easily! The other static highlight was some of the art that had been done to get familiar with the medium they were trying to portray, some of the light studies from Finding Nemo were fantastic. There was also a Rotoscope style exhibit, except in reverse. Instead of a whole lot of stuff inside a cylinder they put everything on a plate and strobed the lights instead. It consisted of a wheel (about 1 meter in diameter) that had a whole lot of Toy Story characters in various positions (bouncing on a ball, parachuting from a toy bin, lassoing themseleves, etc. Finally there was a short film that featured all of the static items from the exhibition and made an end to end animation of them all. If you're a Pixar fan then it's well worth the entry fee!
Sunday brought the Natural History Museum. Since all of the museums over here are (generally) free, I don't mind paying the extra entry fee to the value-adding exhibits, besides it was only £6! There were some pretty awesome photos involved (as you'd expect) and on the way out there was a "film" that displayed the previous years winners as well. Luckily I'm not a photographer or I might have been quite discouraged by the amount of winning and runner-up photos submitted by folks in the 10-14 year age bracket!
On the way out we checked out the lower floor of the museum, covering mammals. There are a lot of stuffed animals, circa 1960-something I suspect. Most of them are fading quite badly and there are notices all over the place noting that they are aware of the fact but that it's not considered polite to go around killing things so you can stuff them in a glass box to look at - very progressive!
[Posted at 09/04/2006 21:42]
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Fri, 07 Apr 2006
[09:21] Pink Panther (2006) - Rating: Worse than Ticker
Well, I used to rate movies based on how much better they are than Ticker, the current version of The Pink Panther has reset the bar for awful movies and scores a sum total of absolutely zero stars!
Even taken as a stand-alone move and not comparing it to the originals it really is bad. Not "so bad it's funny" bad, just plain bad.
- The accents were grating - I've read various arguments saying that they were meant to be - I don't buy it.
- The slapstick was minimally amusing (the catapulting ID card and the bathroom disaster for instance were funny) but mostly it was checklist comedy, sung to the tune of "Hot Shots" but really, really badly and out-of-tune (to stretch the analogy). There was even one scene that seemed to be wire-assisted (the Globe vs the cyclist), which just took the humour out if it for me.
- Mostly it's the puerile Americanisation (for want of a better term) of British humour. What's up with that car parking scene at the start, maybe one bump would have been amusing but the back and forth for no reason was just, well, pointless. That, followed up by the "Haha, his face is in her groin" joke really put me off from the start.
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Thu, 06 Apr 2006
[03:13] ...and the mortgage battle is OVAH!
Bask in the resplendent glory:
5 years of saving and frugal living paid off today when we finally had enough money saved up to nix the mortgage! This is, of course, merely a prelude to the legal wrangling; until you actually sign the paperwork the bank still owns the place but we're pretty close now!
[Posted at: 06/04/2006 11:13]
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Wed, 05 Apr 2006
[10:13] Housesitting in Balham
A couple of friends are heading back to the homeland for two weeks so we're house-sitting and cat-minding, way down south in Balham. This'll be interesting because it means my ride to work goes from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. On the bright side I could probably do with a touch more exercise and it'll also give me a chance to listen to the grotesque number of padcasts that I try to mow through weekly!
[Posted at 05/04/2006 18:13]
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Sun, 02 Apr 2006
[14:57] Site Redesign
I've been working on and off on a new site design for just over a month now but I didn't want to put it up until it was finished, not even with an "Under Construction" icon on it. I've realised however that it's a web site and the damn things are forever being worked on so I've updated the static site and the CSS with what I've got at the moment but this makes the blog look odd and the blog menu is plain ole wrong. Hopefully I'll fix that next week.
I'd be interested to know if the new colour scheme makes your eyes bleed or if the menu is not functioning in your browser (I've only tested in Firefox 1.5.0.1 and Internet Explorer 6.0). Mostly I did this to understand how CSS works so, if it's all too horrible, then I'll just change it back to the old design or something. If you're interested, I got a lot of CSS info from CSS Basics, read the excellent tutorial on CSS Positioning from Brainjar and, of course, used the w3schools CSS site as an indispensible reference. Finally I borrowed and personalised (read mangled) the CSS menus from Stu Nicholls CSSPlay site . Check out the CSS Zen Garden if you want to see CSS in all its resplendant glory!
[Posted at: 02/04/2006 22:58]
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