Misc

Not only is it to the arts what the mob at Alexandria was to classic literature, it proceeds from a cowardly unwillingness to acknowledge that what we enjoy is not always great art, and great art is not always what we enjoy.

Princess Bay late on Christmas 2010.

High points of Christmas:

• Ada playing with a pair of Barbie-esque dolls at my in-laws’. She announced to me that they were a mermaid Mama, a fairy Mama, and their babies were in the back of their speedboat which could also fly. Apparently when the fairy falls in the water the mermaid swims to rescue her, and the fairy rescues the mermaid if she falls out of the boat when it’s flying.
• Being told by Ada to put my phone away so I wouldn’t get distracted by it while she explained the details of the aforementioned family.
• Ada’s delight at her camera and her Lego crocodile.
• Maire’s delight at her guitar and bag.
• My father-in-law’s pleasure at Ada having selected a great book for him.
• Maire’s pleasure at Ada’s present, which, again, Ada had selected.
• The K9 Mail client for the Android.

Low Point:

The Vivitar camera doesn’t fucking talk to Windows 7, or Windows XP, or Linux. So Ada’s 15 Christmas photos are lost. Off to Dick Smith’s tomorrow to roundly abuse them for selling the product that ruined my Christmas evening. And then buy her a non-Vivitar camera, because not only does the camera not work, their site has no driver downloads, manuals, or information about any of their products. Fuck Vivitar.

LL918 with spares!

About a year ago I dug out my old Lego for Ada to play with; since then she’s aquired quite a bit of her own. One of the things I’ve taken care to do is to stash the instructions, because it’s been a bit sad for me that I haven’t been able to put together some of my old sets, like my Lego Space stuff, having long since lost all of mine.

Until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon this giant collection of old manuals, including such gems as my 30-plus year old Space Transport, Rocket Base, and various other sets.

Of course, after 30-odd years, moving from New Zealand to Scotland to New Zealand again, there are some bits and pieces missing. And this is where Lego are o for oarsum. With the part numbers in the Peeron set inventory, I was able to order replacement parts from the Lego website; after quiet for a couple of weeks, I came home on Friday and found a small package containing the parts. Well done, Lego!

Probably the thing that stood out most from my first French lesson is the overloading of ça va; apparently there’s nothing it can’t do. Of course, trying to get this right in a room full of people where meaning can’t reliably be inferred as a result of the use of the rising inflection. Although that seems likely to be the least of my accent related crimes against the French language.

It’s like I was out to 2 in the morning with the cool kids yesterday, but I didn’t actually get to, you know, go out. Clearly I should have gone out on the piss with the Google Wave mob and at least got the fun out of it.

Why am I the go-to guy to be unfathomably rude via the medium of honesty?

A reminder of why I try to avoid going to the gym at peak lunch hours: patrons draped over the equipment gossiping like fishwives. Gentlemen, if you wanted to bend each others’ ears, you could have done it at the pub.

Still, there’s always the unintentional humour; nothing beats the amusement value of watching a couple of young blokes using a deadlift machine to grunt and scream their way into lifting weights for a few poorly-controlled, albeit machine-assisted reps, then high-fiving each other. You’re doing it wrong.

In an effort to make the commenting slightly more user-friendly I’ve added Markdown support for the handful of readers who would like to be able to leave links.

What is the barista trying to tell me?

So when I had coffee at Mojo on the wharf, I got this design. Answers on the back of a postcardcomment block please.

WTF: Othellos Gifts of Distinction?

What are these gifts, exactly: handkerchiefs? Chokers?

Coming up next: Medea’s Babyware.