eurovision

If people vote for spain - they deserve to die.

There are some very attractive euro acts, and a little musical talent.

Tonight is a night of crap. Indy 4 is average, starts of quite good then yeah, goes down hill. They did well to keep it themed in the 50's, and was filmed quite well (yay for spielberg). Ahh well, it better be over with no more sequels. I watched about 5 minutes of Big Brother, it's still crap but at least it's different to previous years. Now flicking between CSI, eurovision and all the other junk on free-to-air digital.

I am not a fan of steph working nights. I should prob do some work.

P.S. movie prices in melbourne SUCK! I miss southbank cinemas.

Icey

So this morning I wander on down to the proton, which I have finally paid off the student loan for, and it was covered in ice. colder weather is starting to kick in. None of this crappy brissy ice on the windscreen, it was virtually covered in ice. c'est la vie.

damn students loans are evil, as soon as you are "expected" to graduate they hit you with bigger interest.. nothing compared to a normal personal loan, but still. I want to buy before the end of the year, need to save $$$$.

blah, almost time for the coffee van to arrive.

Lab or Lib

So, who is happy with the new government? Are people amazed by the new budget? Has it made Australia better off. Are they happy with the labor government's point-of-view that a complete stagnation of the economy is the only solution?

Regardless of what I think, the figures don't add up. 16000 people will apparently miss out on the baby bonus now, and about 40,000 will miss out on some form of family benefit tax. Interesting since the last sensis showed 216,000 Australian households earning over $150,000.

Funding for medical research/science has been redistributed, reconfigured and essentially reduced. The previous government has steadily increased funding over the last 10 years to come almost level with other developed countries (obviously paling in comparison to the states). This government kept the total amount of funding the same. When you factor in quite a large inflation, funding for Medical research/Science has decreased. No wonder people head overseas and take their gifted minds/inventions with them.

I liked Rudd when he was just the local MP in brissy. The government is screwing the country up, and the liberals are like pathetic little kids bickering over the scraps thrown to them after their defeat.

today

Weirdest realisation of the day - Toby Maguire looks a lot like K.D. Lang. seriously messed up.

rainy cold weather is perfect for chilling on the sofa bed and watching a movie. First day that was 'cold'. I like it.

Got back from my holidays down the great ocean road 2 days ago... A good break. Had some nice wine at Otway estate.

My 7" digital photo frame arrived today, a freebie after buying a HP printer 6 MONTHS ago!

FA cup is on tonight and I can't be assed heading into the city at midnight to find a pub that has it on tv... I wish I had foxtel.

Parkour meets futsal

tv

so, I watched a little TV recently (Apart from replay premier league and catching up with underbelly). There are some cool doco's on the HD free-to-air channels. Some crappy soaps aswell. I can't remember what I was watching - oh yeah the Rove dance after party thing.

Mischa barton rocks. There is a cool photographer called Chris Weeks that I follow/occasionally chat to through uber, deviantart etc. He doesn't care for technique, or what people think, as long as it sells. He has had the chance to photograph mischa a few times and keeps saying how cool she is. I didn't believe it till the rove interview. Her favourite TV is animal planet/nat geo etc. anyway, she's cool.

During this crap there were a few ads for BigBrother 08. It looks like a total freakshow. Might be worth a laugh, for once, until the media shuts them down for discrimination against, dwarves, mentally impaired etc etc.

so yeah, there is no real point to this post other than waiting 5 minutes for the hood, and Mischa being cool, and BB08 freakshowness.

Crust

Crust Pizza (Burked Rd, Camberwell) is the worst gourmet pizza place I have been to. $15.50 for a piece of crap that ended up having half of it thrown away. The base was good, so they did well with the crust. that's it. Perhaps they should sell bases to other pizza places. Anyway, my calzone was not much better, absolutely dripping in tomato juice and oil. Totally crap. Just thought I'd rant about it.

P.S. Here's a photo to relieve your boredom from the above rant.

why

why do melbournites dress so casually, yet it still looks cool.

why do they drive 20-30kms over or under the speed limit, but never at the speed limit.

why does the monash-westgate bridge upgrade project have mythical "roadworks" underway with reduced speed-limits (for months).

why does indomart sell organic, preservative free 500g tubs of tofu for only $1.80.

why does gelsolin give me issues cloning one fragment, but not another.

why does PKR never abide by the rules.

why do coated peanuts taste so good.

why is steph so hot.

why does nastro azzuro taste so good

just a few questions I have thought of recently.

byebye office

so the office area is being renovated... and I have to pack up my desk. It's kind of annoying after finally getting settled in. At least I haven't accumulate much yet.

So busy times, work, fun, work. Sister is down this weekend with her hubby. Jared's friend terry is down at the moment, so should be catching up with him. Joe cremin is moving down to melbourne next wed. My parents are visiting end of may...

Ahh well, stuff to do. I am addicted to coffee, I am drinking way too much of it lately. Not good. Need to slow down I guess..

Going to be redoing my photography site. My personal photo collection will be dumped (might put it up on facebook). My blog is almost done. The katharine kerr site is getting a long overdue overhaul. The worldsoffantasy.net main site is also getting a new look, which I should help with I guess.

I have so much crap to get sorted, stuff I just kept putting off till later. Now it's later and I still barely have the time. My aspect on life, work etc has changed. very little gets put off till later now. Refocussing.

TV

hey wow, gladiators is as crap as the original series. even in HD on my 32" it is still crap. haha, correction - it is MORE crap.

I have been watching a lot of sports lately. delayed telecasts (streamed from iinet) of premier league matches, asia cup, soccerroos friendly's, euro championship and even the AFL. It is impossible to avoid it down here... "football" (soccer) is still better though.  Hopefully I will start playing soccer down here aswell.

The variation of the HD channels is cool, especially with the extra doco's they seem to show. 

Not liking steph working night shifts, but ahh well, that's life.

I want to go to the Werribee zoo/safari park, before village roadshow spends $220M screwing it over.

Melanie Burford

So last night I went to the Kaleidoscope theatre at RMIT to see Melanie Burford give a seminar on photo journalism in the online age. It is sad, but true, that paper circulations are dwindling massively. The crew at Dallas Morning News, are like most of the US circulations, in that they are moving to the online world. More emphasis on audio, slideshows, video etc. The still image is dying, for that purpose anyway.

She is an incredibly laid back kiwi, shared winner of the pulitzer prize and several other awards, and inspiring. She cares, unlike most photo journ's.

Check out the Sugar Hill slideshow or The McCrays Full cycle or ... I'll add more later.

melb - the start

So, I haven't been out in melb too much yet, but gradually doing it. Our adventures took us to the Abbotsford convent which was built in 1861 or something. Right near the centre of melbourne (Carlton), next to the Yarra.

We also managed to get to the Howqua river, near lake eildon, for a day.

indomart

Ahh (one of) my local asian supermarket is good. Fresh organic tofu, 1/2kg $1.50. KohKae coconut cream coated peanuts at half the normal price. Redbean buns, BBQ pork buns, $3 for 4. And the awesome cashew/honey candy thing.

melbourne

This concept called seasons is quite interesting. Spending the last 23 yrs in brissy and the last quarter of a century up north really alters your view. Melbourne has seasons. stable summer and unpredictable "other". The other can be a mix of the three stereotypical seasons. Today is 9-20 degrees, rain, no rain, a bit of sun, the no sun.

Don't get me wrong, I am liking it, just quite different.

p.s. I like tunes, and vanilla biscuits from floriana's and wine and coffee and my new merrel shoes and my new couch from freedom that will arrive tomorrow and stephs return from her rural rotation TODAY!

mmm knoedl

Kartoffelland Knïdl - halb'n'halb in onion, mushroom and leffe radieuse (bavarian dark ale) gravy with some awesome lamb.. yeah that's a good meal.

Why was I born in australia?

That's one of the benefits of melbourne I guess, it's not just the occasional gourmet deli that imports foreign food  - it's fricken all of them. Well a lot. Although for some damn reason it's so damn hard to find prosciuto. I am not a fan of the million and one salami's - but like my cured/semi-cured Pork products.

Someone wants to give me and my 2 siblings $5k. Now I am torn as to whether my scepticism over it being a possible scam and my debt being reduced a bit. Have one more aspect to check out tomorrow to see if it's a valid trust/insurance payout company, two avenues seem all clear so far.

Juno

So, I watched Juno. Quite impressed actually. A little slow at points, but overall quite a good, mostly unique movie. Simple, but entertaining. Go watch it.

p.s. Dodgy old fluoro lights + white shirt + shiny screen = bad reflections. Lets see if they replace the light fixture when they do the roof tiles and desks for the office area next week.

new blog

so peeps - changing servers. new blog will be at http://worldofannwn.net/night/blog/ <- nightshadow.co.uk will be redirected there soon enough... a few new tricks, once I get them sorted - like openID support - prefpass if it chooses to work, new syndication - windows live writer plugins to crosspost to blogger, lj and my site. etc etc...

mmm beers + tiesto make work on a sunday almost pleasurable. (p.s. a real tiesto CD, bought from a store, my how the times are changing).

I am just starting to get over a nasty bug - it may well be real influenza. Knocked me in the ass, which is very frustrating since i never get that sick.

paying off debts, working hard, steph managing to get the car towed, buying some new furniture (cheap ikea bookcase etc) and ...

A new laptop.

Asus F3SR, 15.4" WS, C2D 2.0 Ghz, 4 gig ram, 160gb sata, BT, abgn wifi, DVD multi, fwire,fprint reader, cam, vprem etc

A fast lappy (bought for work, not geekiness, photog etc) and fast net (nakedDSL) is a nice combo.

No time to set it up how I want it yet, just installing the basics.

Steph is now sick, so thats no fun. Also got to clean the apartment, and take more crap to the storage locker downstairs

My head hurts, I might take some codein with some beer.

What is the benefit in stagnating a countries economy?