Category: Old and Uncategorised

It’s 9:23am on Tuesday the 29th of June and rather than being hard at work in at the office I’m sitting in front of my computer at home waiting for a plumber with a stopwatch to come and time how long it takes for water to dissapear down my drains. This somewhat surreal exercise is the latest in the longrunning saga of the totally screwed up drainage that plagues the lower floors of the building – the strata company apparently deciding not to fix the problem, but at least to find out exactly how much of a problem it is.

Somewhat ironically Charmaine at L.J.Hooker (apparently Josie decided that my ongoing requests for a working bathroom sink and Rebecca’s continuous demands for the strata fees to be paid on time were just too much trouble) got a plumber out to fix my bathroom sink two weeks ago, so everything is draining pretty well. Or at least draining, which after a good four or five months of no draining at all counts as “pretty well”.

Now I could be at work – I could have left a key with the caretaker – but I decided to take the morning off instead. I was planning to take the whole day off, but there’s just too much work to justify it. And I forgot that I had a meeting over at the Alzheimer’s Association yesterday morning which pretty much meant that I only got a half day’s work done on Monday. So as soon as the plumber has been and gone I’ve got to iron some clothes and drag myself into the office. Bah!

Ah well. At least I got to sleep in a bit 🙂

Anyway for wont of anything else to write about (or at least wont of anything else I feel like writing about 🙂 I figured I’d mention some songs I’ve been listening to over the last few months. Normally I would have put these in the music section, but I haven’t got around to putting the music section back in yet after the great Blog Disaster. So I have to put them in here instead.

OK, let’s see… (I’ve been scribbling them down on a piece of paper and now have to try and decipher my handwriting)… OK. First of all Wasted and Ready by Ben Quelar (if indeed that’s how he spells his name). Nothing too important to say about this one except it’s mildly catchy and the chorus is great to sing along to. Looking Good by Frenzel Rhomb – very sharp lyrics in this one, very tightly written with regards to rhymes and meter. And quite funny in an extremely dark way.

Mighty Little Man by… uh… that guy from “Blue’s Clues”. Really great song with a kicking chorus. The Begining of the End by Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side. Apparently these guys are from Brisbane but the lead singer (presumably Gentle Ben himself) sounds so like Jarvis Cocker that it’s not funny. I mean if you took the bit where he says/sings “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” and played it to 100 Pulp fans, at least 92 would identify it as a Jarvis sample. Uncanny.

Of course I can’t talk about recent musical releases without mentioning the first new Pixies release in 32 years (as one website I read put it – 12 years is a bit more accurate 🙂 Bam Thwop. To be frank I didn’t really like this when I first heard it (blasphemy! :). Much too poppy and inane. But it’s grown on me since. I guess I was expecting some kind of opus like Debaser or Letter to Memphis, but when you think about it they’re hardly going to release their strongest material first up. And also it’s a Kim Deal track which means it’s going to be different to most of the rest of their catalogue anyway. It actually works a lot better if you think of it as a Breeders track with the rest of the Pixies sitting in as guest musicians.

Anyway as I said it’s grown on me a lot. When you ignore the lyrics and actually listen to music it suddenly sounds a lot more like a Pixies track – that distinctive barely-in-control guitar sound is right there. And the insane organ break in the middle isn’t like anything I’ve ever heard on any of their other tracks, but fits right in as the kind of thing you’d expect the Pixies to do. When you consider the song in those terms it suddenly sounds a whole lot better.

So, my final conclusion on Bam Thwop? A big thumbs up 🙂

Anyway it’s now 10.00 and there’s no sign of the plumber. I suppose I’d better iron those clothes anyway. *sigh*

1. The guys responsible for King Peladon’s costuming managed to pre-empt the complete New Romantic movement by an entire decade
2. AAA-GAAA-DOR! DOR! DOR! Push the statue crush the Doc, AGA-DOR! DOR! DOR!…
3. What the heck happened to Day of the Daleks?

(Work’s still insanely busy and I spent much of today fighting a migraine – so still no energy for a major update *sigh*)

MORRIS DANCERS!!!

AIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Yes, yes, it’s been ages I know. This is down to two main causes, the immense amount of effort required to keep the business running while Dale’s in the UK, and illness. I won’t carry on about work because it’s all too disheartening (Dale’s finally struck upon an advertising policy that works meaning that we’re totally flooded), but I will talk about the illness a bit, because I’m sure you all want to hear about my suffering at the fickle hands of contagion.

Overblown metaphors aside, basically I had the flu. That is to say that I reckon it was the flu, Ali is more sceptical. Working from the basis that all guys are pathetic wimps who horribly exaggerate even the slightest illness or injury she’s decided (from the vantage point of the other side of the planet *g*) that I merely had a cold. A “death cold” perhaps, but definitely not the flu. Well, I could prove her wrong with a brilliantly stated series of counter arguments, but I’m not going to dignify her scepticism with the effort. So there. Nyaaaaa! 😉

(I could provide counter arguments. Lots of them. Honestly! 🙂

So what else has been happening between being horribly overworked and deathly ill? Well there was the transit of Venus a few weeks back, and a bit of a thought provoking co-incidence regarding said transit that I shall now elaborate on for the education and general edification of all 🙂

The transit occurred on June 8, which here in Western Australia is Foundation Day. I’ve often made humorous comments along the line that this is a holiday celebrating a woman cutting down a tree, which is entirely accurate if slightly duplicitous because it’s not the actual tree felling that we’re meant to be celebrating, it’s why the tree was cut down. Said innocent plant – bothering no-one by going about it’s daily tasks of transpiration and photosynthesis – was hacked down as an impromptu symbol of something-or-other at the official founding of the Swan River Colony in 1829 – the Swan River Colony of course becoming the State of Western Australia 72 years later at Federation. So June 8 is the official holiday celebrating just how wonderful this great state of ours is – or is at least supposed to be.

(For the sake of accuracy I should state that the Swan River Colony wasn’t the first British settlement in WA, people had been living at Albany for two years previously. They just didn’t have the sense to cut down a tree and make it official.)

Now, anyone with a particularly agile mathematical mind will have noticed that 2004 is 175 years since the auspicious tree-lopping, making this particular Foundation Day the centre of a whole lot of extra Government hooey on just how wonderful we are. There’s was a specially designed logo, some TV adds attempting to show just how far we’ve come since the 150th anniversary (judging by the footage we have actually come a fair way – skin tight white t-shirts, horrible pseudo-afro-hair, and weedy singing by children’s choirs are no longer thought a good idea for a start), and probably an official website if I can be bothered to track it down. But what interested me is the fact that a transit of Venus (a very rare celestial phenomenon) should occur on not just the anniversary of the founding of our State, but on such a significant anniversary too.

Why? Let’s follow the links…

Why was the Swan River Colony founded? Well, technically because a bunch of British people had got fed up with Britain, wanted to make a fresh start elsewhere and happened to read a report (by a certain Captain Stirling) saying that the Swan River on the west coast of Australia would be a good place to do so, having a pleasant temperate climate, abundant fresh water and fertile soils (excuse me for a second HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! Sorry, but Stirling must have been suffering some kind of brain fever). But the real reason (i.e. why the British Government decided to allow them to do it) was to claim the land for the Crown and keep it out of the hands of the dastardly French.

The French had been sniffing around the west and south coasts of the continent for quite some time and the British were terrified that if they established a colony somewhere there’d be no way to get rid of them. The east coast was safe, there were British colonies all over there, but the west was completely un-settled (apart from 60,000 or so aboriginies – but they didn’t count having neglected to ceremoniously chop down any trees). So setting up some kind of British colony on the west coast was imperative, otherwise the British would have to share the continent with the French (and it was bad enough having to share Europe with them).

So, it’s entirely reasonable to say that the Swan River Colony was established on the west coast because British colonies already existed on the east coast and the British attitude to unsettled coastlines was “gotta catch ’em all”. In that case we must ask why were there British colonies on the east coast?

Two main reasons. One: To get rid of all those pesky criminals (i.e.: poor people) and uppity Fenians who were clogging up the Thames and causing a danger to navigation in their prison barques. Two: To stop the French getting a base in the South Pacific (do I detect a pattern here?). When the decision was made to set up new penal colonies in the South Pacific the best place for them was judged to be New South Wales (which at that point meant the whole east side of the Australian continent – the west generally being known as New Holland) it being in the right part of the world, fertile, well watered and abundant (excuse me for a second HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! must have been that brain fever again). And probably most importantly it was a possession of the British Crown.

So, why was New South Wales a possession of the British Crown? One word. Cook.

Captain James Cook that is of course. In 1770 he’d sailed up the east coast and claimed the whole damn thing for Britain. He’d also just done the same thing for New Zealand, being (brain fevers and tendencies to name newly discovered lands after places they in no way resembled – South Wales for instance – aside) a fantastically skilled navigator and explorer. He’d just been to Tahiti and was taking the long way home on the back of some secret orders from the Admiralty to see if there really was any kind of gigantic southern continent down that way. It turned out that there wasn’t (or at least it was a lot further south and much smaller and ice-bound than everyone had hoped) but he did manage to run into Australia (literally in the case of the Great Barrier Reef).

So, the British decided to establish their colonies on the east coast because Cook had been there and claimed it for them on his way back from Tahiti. So, what was he doing in Tahiti? Well (and here’s the clever bit…)

OBSERVING A TRANSIT OF VENUS!

Yup! Cook had led an expedition to Tahiti for the purpose of observing a transit of Venus as part of an elaborate plan by the Royal Society to figure out just how far away the sun was (possibly to see if they could get a ship there to colonise it). Without that transit of Venus Cook wouldn’t have been in the neighborhood, Australia wouldn’t have been claimed for Britain, the penal colonies on the east coast wouldn’t have been established, there would have been no need to grab the west coast as well and Western Australians wouldn’t have been celebrating the 175th anniversary of Foundation Day under the slightly attenuated light of the 2004 transit. Ain’t history wonderful? 🙂

So, did I see the transit? Sort of. The 8th was a Tuesday so as is tradition (the tradition being to grab as many long weekends as is humanly possible) we had the Monday off. So on the day of the transit I was stuck in the office. I did manage to leave early by being deathly ill and managed to make it home about midway through. Any plans to drag out my telescope though (to project the sun onto a screen – I’m not an idiot) were stymied by a massive bank of rainclouds that completely blotted out the sun just as I made it across the road to the building. Bah!

So, I watched the transit via an Austrian webcam.

I did however get to see the transit with my own eyes. While I was waiting for a train at Subiaco I noticed that there were rainclouds coming in, so I made a point of looking right at the sun. Only for a fraction of a second (again, I’m not an idiot – or at least not a complete idiot 🙂 and of course I couldn’t actually see anything, but if my eyes had been able to focus and if such focusing wouldn’t have burned out my retinas then I would have been able to see the transit. So I reckon that counts 🙂

I was going to write more, but my inane historical rantings have worn me out. And Treks in a Wild World is about to start and last week the traveler was Megan McCormick – so obviously I’m hoping for a repeat (even if the chopped down half-hour format means more time is spent on the destinations and less on the travelers, boo! 🙂

To quote the KLF, over and out!

RIP Ronald Reagan 1911-2004. A great loss to the cinema of the chimpanzee.

That’s probably in rather bad taste, I can’t really tell having come down with either a bad cold, or a mild case of the flu. But at least I’ve got a nice bathroom to be all coldish/fluish in.

Another week, another general lack of entries. This is mainly due to the fact that Dale has taken 8 weeks off to go to the UK, and left me and Bevan in charge of the office (so far we haven’t quite managed to sink the business, but it’s early days). I’ve been doing a lot more work than usual, and work that involves actually talking with clients. Face to face. It’ll be a miracle if I get through it all without a complete nervous breakdown. Or at least without developing some interesting new facial twitches.

I have of course been taking refuge in TV, such as Charmed. Not a bad episode all told. Not a great episode, but then Charmed hasn’t been great for several seasons. Let’s see, what happened? Oh yeah, Leo seems to have departed for good, Piper’s found out that Chris is her son and Gideon’s turned out to be a bad guy. Hmmmm, wouldn’t have thought he’d have time for it what with running a distinctly Harry Potteresque magic school and traveling around the world leaving Bibles in hotel rooms (sorry, that was uncalled for *g*). Oh! And Rose McGowan’s dyed her hair back to black, which is great – I was getting bored with the whole redhead/blonde thing. How long it’ll stay that way is anyone’s guess though.

I was also going to say something about a much appreciated upswing in the number of brunette science chicks on TV at the moment – except that it looks like Neela might be leaving ER next week. Well that sucks. Oh well, at least there’s Abby on NCIS to comfort me – although it is on a bit late for my taste. And I suppose there’s that scientist on Jake 2.0 which premiered on Friday night (I haven’t managed to pin down a name for her yet).

Is it just me or does Jake 2.0 seem a lot like a revamped version of Now and Again with a younger, hipper cast? Does anyone except me even care? 🙂 You’ve got to love nanotechnology though, it’s great. You can use it to justify any kind of ridiculous plot you like. What I want to know is what happens when someone tries to hack into Jake’s central nervous system via a firewire link. Have they installed a firewall? A virus checker? And who takes care of updates and resubscription services? 🙂

I’d better leave TV for now (noooo!!! noooo!!!) and talk about what I got up to the Thursday before last, because I promised Rebecca I’d post this photo…

…and she keeps bugging me about it *g*. What is it you ask? Well read on dear reader, read on!

It all comes down to floors. Specifically the floors in the unit. Rebecca managed to get a really good deal on wooden flooring (I accidentally typed “Woden flooring” there, I wonder what that would be like? Lots of muscular shouting and ravens I expect 🙂 and is going to upgrade the scungy lino in the living area and carpet in the hall with it. Yey! In order to accomplish this however she needed to get someone in to measure the place and figure out the exact square meterage.

She arranged this for Wednesday of three weeks ago. The plan was she’d come over about 6:30pm with the flooring guy and get the measuring done, then we’d go out for dinner at the Red Orchid (that is her and me, not her and me and the flooring guy ’cause that would just have been weird).

Unfortunately the flooring guy called up at the last minute to say he couldn’t make it. So the whole thing was rescheduled to Thursday of the next week. No problem (for me anyway, for Rebecca I can imagine it was extremely annoying).

So, all this was going to plan until early in the week when she realised that the Thursday in question was in fact Dom’s birthday and it wouldn’t be particularly birthdayish to leave him home all alone while having dinner with me. So, Dom was added to the party. No problem (for me anyway, Rebecca was quite embarrassed about it 🙂

Then the actual day rolled around. Just to make sure there wouldn’t be any further problems Rebecca phoned up the flooring people (I could name the company but then I’d have to be careful about what I said and that’s no fun) and asked for confirmation that the appointment was going ahead. They replied by saying that they didn’t have any idea what she was on about, and just who was she anyway?

It emerged (no doubt after a fair amount of yelling) that “Steve” (not his real name, although I am willing to say that it’s the same as that of a recent movie 🙂 had moved to another branch, and not left any messages about appointments and such. They suggested rescheduling for a week later. Given that she’d already rescheduled for a week Rebecca decided instead to yell at them until they sent someone around – which worked remarkably well.

So, on Thursday evening she and Dom came around to wait for Steve’s replacement to show up. Of course since it was Dom’s birthday Rebecca insisted on bringing him a cake -or at least a chocolate brownie. She also insisted on sticking 26 candles into this rather small brownie (it ended up looking like a startled porcupine) and was just about to light them up when pseudo-Steve arrived to measure the floors.

Dom – not wanting to explain what a candle festooned brownie was doing sitting on the table – hid it on a kitchen shelf for the duration of pseudo-Steve’s visit. Which was over rather quickly as he was actually very efficient. Once he left the brownie was rescued from exile and the lighting commenced.

This took a while as 26 separate candles had to be lit. Also Rebecca started from the outside in, meaning that the remaining center candles had to be lit while trying not to burn one’s hand on the ones at the edge. As the combined heat output and updraft from these was fairly intense it took a bit of doing. But in the end they were all blazing away, and she insisted I take a photo before Dom blew them out.

So I did. She also insisted I posted said photo on the Wyrmlog, hence its appearance above.

With that over we ate the brownie and went out to the Red Orchid, stopping for Gelatos on the way home. Not a bad night all told.

Rebecca and Dom are over here again today, painting the bathroom. I didn’t ask them to do this, they just decided to do so of their own accord. That’s the nice sort of people they are *g*. Actually as I type they’re out to lunch with some distant relatives of Rebecca’s, but they’ll be back soon to keep going (two thirds of the room have been painted, this needs to be finished and then the cupboards put back in). Then I’ll have a shiny new bathroom with fashionable blue stripes, yey!

Unfortunately I won’t be able to have a proper hot shower for a few days because the paint apparently doesn’t like steam until it’s fully dried (stupid wimpy paint). But we’ll be going out for dinner tonight, so I suppose that makes up for it 🙂 We haven’t decided where we’re going yet, but it probably won’t be the Red Orchid – we’re all Red-Orchided out.

In other news Ali has written to me in defence of the acting talents of Matt LeBlanc. I won’t try and argue with her, as my experience of Mr LeBlanc’s portfolio is limited to Friends, Lost in Space, and the Logies a few years ago. He’s great in Friends but his performance in Lost in Space was fairly limp and dull (of course the entire film was fairly limp and dull, so maybe that’s not entirely his fault). His showing at the Logies (where he played “Special International Guest Matt LeBlanc”) however was not particularly convincing either. His part seemed to be made up of some desultory conversation with Darryl Sommers about his pet dogs, then a not particularly convincing shout of “Australian TV Rocks!!”. The scriptwriters should have been shot 😉

But seriously folks, I don’t have anything against Mr LeBlanc and wish him total success for his Friends spin off show Joey (even though we all know it’ll probably be as well received as Jason Alexander’s Seinfeld spin off George).

Ummmm, don’t know that there was anything else I had to say really. So I’ll shut up then. Yes.

PS: Well, Helen says she liked Matt LeBlanc in Lost in Space, and Joey is apparently doing fairly well. No accounting for taste I suppose ;D. But seriously I thought Lost in Space was a film with great potential let down by unimaginative scripting and characterisation (and that darned monkey thing). If it had been written better then maybe I wouldn’t be so hard on Mr LeBlanc.

PPS: There was a weird JSP problem on the server yesterday evening which was causing the ‘white screen’ effect Ali mentions on her blog. That’s the first time I’ve seen it, but Ali seems to suggest it’s happening a lot 🙁

From this week’s New Scientist…

Well, it made me smile 🙂

Now that Friends is finishing what is Matt le Blanc going to do for a living? I mean, it’s not like he can act.

Well, Ali starts writing regularly, and I stop. There’s symmetry for you.

I’ve been fairly busy the last few weeks. I can’t be bothered writing about all of it right now because the work related stuff is just too depressing. But some of the rest is OK, so I’ll write about that instead, OK?

Ah, it turns out that Ali didn’t like Estonia. Well, there’s just no accounting for taste. They were clearly the best act of the contest and deserved to win, and I will brook no argument on that fact. So there 😉

Also it seems that Ali (this is a very Ali related entry isn’t it? I thought this blog was meant to be about me 🙂 has been going through the weird questions that blogspot asks on personal profile pages or something. I’m not going to emulate her example by answering all of them, but two in particular did catch my eye…

Your superpower is that you smell like dandelions whenever someone lies. How will you maintain your secret identity?

I’d buy a small pug, name him ‘William’ and take him everywhere with me. Whenever the smell of dandelions became apparent I’d glare at him and say “William!” in a disaproving voice.

You’ve just inherited a manufacturing plant that specializes in plastics. What are you going to make?

I’d flood the market with action figures from TV series that simply don’t justify action figures. Like Law and Order, Jonathan Creek, CSI, Mysterious Ways, and Gilmore Girls.

Anyway, with that out of the way I figured I’d write about some of the things I’ve been up to instead of writing. If that makes sense…

1: Modeling. No, not that kind of modeling, not the cool kind – the geeky kind. You know, building little models of things. To be specific I’ve been collecting the bi-monthly Battle Games in Middle Earth magazine series that at $11.00 an issue presents you with selections from Games Workshop‘s Lord of the Rings range. It’s actually pretty good value when you compare the prices of the boxed sets in the stores – although the painting instructions seem to be aimed at 12 year olds (naturally I’ve been ignoring them and doing my own painting schemes based on the photos in each issue which show the models painted up pretty damn well by comparison).

I started all of this because of Ryan, who gave me the Sauron figure for my birthday back in January. Sauron isn’t painted yet – but he is assembled and glaring menacingly across my work table. The box he came in is labeled in a number of languages Sauron – Lord of the Ring, Sauron – Der Herr Des Rings etc. Two though make me laugh. The French version Maître De L’anneau which to my ear sounds like he should be seating people at a restaurant and the Spanish (Portuguese?) Señor Del Anillo which sounds like the villain in a Zorro movie. C’mon, say it in a Speedy Gonzales accent! You know you want to! 🙂

I was going to post some pictures of the (pathetically few) models I’ve finished but my digital camera doesn’t have a macro function so they came out horribly blurred. Oh well, one less stupid image for you to download 🙂

2: CDs. I’ve treated myself (for no justifiable reason) to two new CDs. Gallowsbird’s Bark by the Fiery Furnaces and Pixies at the BBC. Gallowsbird’s Bark is great. Not only the songs themselves (which I’ll cover in a minute), but the accompanying booklet too. It’s full of strange little pencil sketches of plants, animals, vaguely geographical and mystical symbols and odd little notes in cryptic writing. It’s kind of like a cross between the notes of Leonardo Da Vinci and the Voynich Manuscript -although I don’t believe either of those featured a disgruntled looking archaeopteryx 🙂

The songs, let’s see… I’m not going to rant on about all of them, only a few. Leaky Tunnel is an ominous travelogue around London, possibly ending with a descent into Brunel’s Thames tunnel. Despite it’s spooky ambiance, harsh electronic buzzing, Davrossian siren and air of incipient violence it features one line that had me laughing for days (well, OK, minutes) “I bought a tambourine at the Millennium Dome, it jangled 2000 times in a row”. Well, I thought it was clever. Up in the North is disturbingly catchy, it’s been stuck in my head for weeks. Crystal Clear of course is great, who can resist joining in on the “Filthy, dirty, cloudy, muddy, messy, mucky, crystal clear” bit? Gale Blow is… well fairly indescribably really. But good. I keep meaning to run the backwards bits through a wav editor and figure out what they are.

The only disappointment I had with the album is that its version of Tropical Iceland is a fairly laid back acoustic version, as opposed to the hepped up, effect laden radio version. Which is annoying as the hepped up, effect laden radio version was one of my main motivators in purchasing it in the first place. Oh well, live and learn.

Pixies at the BBC is also great (yeah right, like I’d say anything else :). The real stand outs are There Goes my Gun, Is She Weird, the highly underrated Manta Ray (no, not Dancing the Manta Ray, the Pixies recorded two songs about our flat aquatic friends) and Levitate Me. I haven’t heard Levitate Me before (or if I have it didn’t grab me) but this live version rocks! I’ve been wandering around all week muttering “Elevator-lady, Elevator-lady, Elevator-lady, Elevator-lady, Levitate me!” interspersed with random yells of “C’MON Pilgrim! You KNOW he LOVES YOU!!” 🙂

(I’ve also been muttering “Some people smell like a free range Ablett!” and “Egg roll!” but that’s neither here nor there)

Gah! Of course I’ve heard Levitate Me before! It’s the final track off C’mon Pilgrim for crying out loud! Sheeze!

3: Links. Here are some links I’ve been meaning to post for a while. Share and enjoy!

Strindberg and Helium (Thanks Stephanie!)
Turkish Star Trek! (Thanks Ryan!)
So true, so true 🙂
The FULL version!
The CAT with HANDS!! (Thanks Ryan again!)

4: Ryan’s Sister’s Party. Ryan’s sister Laura has been living in the UK for a few years but has come home for a few weeks, so her family decided to throw a party last Sunday (and indeed why not?). Ryan (probably in order to have someone to talk to apart from Laura’s friends 😉 invited Justin and I along. Of course Justin failed to show, but it was a pretty good afternoon-evening nonetheless. There were a number of notable things, which I shall now number and note…

1: Sweet Potato Chips: Amongst the large quantities of food supplied were some strange, red potato chips. Strange, red, TASTY potato chips. These turned out to be made from sweet potatoes (“yams” to Americans and other aliens I believe). I’ll be keeping an eye out for these in future.

2: The CAT with HANDS!!: Throughout the night Ryan kept dragging people away from the patio/grape trellis thing where the party was being held to view this on the computer. I tell, you – it’s freakier each time you see it!

3: The Fire: When the sun had set and it started getting chilly Ryan’s dad lit up a 40 gallon drum full of wood. This was located under one side of the patio/grape trellis thing and at first looked likely to set it on fire – or at least melt the nylon washing lines hanging over it. It eventually settled down though and provided much appreciated warmth and entertainment as the evening wore on. By the end of the night the bottom half of the drum was glowing a nice shade of dull orange – no doubt helped along by the large quantities of sheoak branches we kept shoving in (for those not in the know fresh leaves and other foliage from the Sheoak tree – Casurina somethingorotheris – burn with an intensity to rival petrol 🙂

4: The Cheese: There was some very good brie on the cheese platter.

5: Melanie: Melanie was apparently one of Laura’s friends. This in itself is not notable – it was Laura’s party after all – but what was notable was her absolutely remarkable resemblance to Lyndah (you know, Lyndah, that girl I’ve had a crush on for years? Keep up will you! :). When I walked into the kitchen and saw her there was a genuine “What the hell is she doing here?!?” moment – not unlike finding Victor Meldrew hiding in the pantry. Thankfully I didn’t say anything and realised – after a panicked few seconds – that she wasn’t Lyndah – but still, the resemblance was frightening.

From the back you’d swear it was her. Same hair, same height and build, same snappy dress sense. In profile you could be confused for several seconds, her nose was a bit different that’s about all. Face on she actually looked fairly different – the nose again, but she was still extremely distracting. Needless to say I didn’t say a word to her all night (although maybe that’s just as well, after all she lost a lot of geek-points when she took off Ryan’s Lord of the Rings soundtrack CD in favour of something more “upbeat” 😉

Um yeah, so that was the party.

Hmmmm, I do have more stuff to write about (involving dangerously flammable cakes and the Red Orchid) but it’s getting late and I’ve got to cook dinner. So I will quit now, and continue… well, eventually 🙂

// Expects ‘theDate’ in YYYY-MM-DD Format
String timeSince(String theDate) throws Exception (
       int theYear = Integer.parseInt(theDate.substring(0,4));
       int theMonth = Integer.parseInt(theDate.substring(5,7));
       int theDay = Integer.parseInt(theDate.substring(8));
       return Integer.toString(theYear)+”-” +Integer.toString(theMonth)+”-” +Integer.toString(theDay);
)

I did actually have a sane reason for writing this, and it didn’t end up in any actual working programs, but it’s still pretty hilarious no? (Hilarious that is if you can read Java – which you probably can’t 😉