Exceptionally Uncaught

ColorQuiz is kind of interesting. It gives you a psychological breakdown of yourself based on what colours you pick.

My results were interesting. Maybe a little too accurate for me to feel comfortable posting them here.

Although I was the one that let several people know about the advanced screenings of Serenity, I had to miss out (what with going overseas and all). But since the movie was officially released last night, I finally got the chance to go and see it.

One word: AWESOME!

I don't want to say much about the movie for risk of ruining it for anyone - there were a few moments that I completely didn't see coming, but probably could have guessed if I'd had even a hint. I'd be interested to hear what people who hadn't seen the Firefly series thought of the movie - what is it like when you don't already have an emotional investment in the characters?

It still left me with the bitter-sweet feeling I've always had at the end of a Firefly episode - what I've just watched has been very amazing, but I'm now that much closer to never being able to see another new story.

Oh, and I'd been vaguely wondering how they were going to do the mandatory space-ship fight scene (since this is a sci-fi movie) when the main ship doesn't have any weapons. Very cool.

This caught my eye a little while ago (before World of Warcraft), but back then the idea of a subscription-based game didn't really appeal. Since my conversion, I decided to take another look. I even managed to (quite randomly) turn up a free 14-day pass.

It's certainly very pretty. It remains to be seen how nice it actually looks though.

So now I have to decide if I want to take the risk of giving it a go. I don't really want to be in a position of paying for two games each month, especailly when I don't have as much time as I'd like to play one. And I've said before that the only game that I was even considering playing instead of WoW was F.E.A.R (which isn't out for another month).

Hmmmmm.

Harvey Danger has decided to release their latest album online for free. Cool move. If it's any good, I'll definately buy it.

Yesterday afternoon I logged onto the ABC News site and spotted this article (the "Unity" section wasn't there at that point). Wow, I thought, first Bob Carr, now John Brogdon. Then I noticed the "former leader" bit. Things were pretty confusing, and I only had this paragraph to explain what was going on:

The former Liberal leader was forced to resign as opposition leader late last month over several public indiscretions, including a racial slur he made against the wife of the former premier Bob Carr.

He then made his attempted suicide bid.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1470388.htm

Huh?

So I emailed a mate of mine:

Hey, did you hear John Brodgon has resigned? I just spotted the article on the ABC website. I didn't even know he'd stepped down as opposition leader, let alone sexual harassment and an attempted suicide! When did that all happen?

And his reply was:

You are kidding aren't you? How did you not know this, it happened weeks ago.

Oh, unless it happened while you were away. [...]

There then proceeded to be several explanations from various people about what had happen, several articles (including this media watch transcript, that just goes to show the Daily Telegraph is the most evil main stream Australian news paper) and an afternoon of me playing catch up. The general comment has been "how did you miss that? It was all over the papers...".

Despite being away, I am surprised I missed all this. I was checking the news while I was away, but I guess things slide off news sites pretty quickly. What's even more interesting is that I didn't hear anything about it since I've been back. Or maybe I did, but because I had no context it just didn't register.

I never liked Brogdon - he seemed to sum up the slimy politician archetype better then almost anyone at his level in state politics (and I guess his behaviour kind of confirmed that) - but I feel really bad for the guy. The next NSW election is certainly going to look a bit different

Since I've been noticing more and more a polarization between those who love World of Warcraft and those who can't stand to hear any more about it, I've decided to stop posting my WoW adventures on Exceptionally Uncaught.

In completely unrelated news, I've now got a second blog at http://warcrafting.blogspot.com/

The weekend was fairly unexciting. We had people coming over for dinner on Saturday night, so we went into uber-cleaning mode. We joked that some of our friends have to clean like crazy for rental inspections, but we do it for dinner parties. For some reason I decided it was a good idea to take to the tiles with a scrubbing brush. My shoulder and knees are still sore. Next time I'll just stick to a mop.

Sunday night we went out for dinner with my family. My grandparents like to take us all to the Ainslie Football Club on Sunday nights - they have massive roasts, salad bars, meat raffles and all the things old people seem to love. The food is okay if you remember that it's a club, and so order the sorts of foods clubs do well (deep fried stuff, roast meat, etc). We ended up winning one of the big boxes of vegetables - not quite as good as a pile of free meat, but still not to bad.

Oh, and I spent most of the weekend smiling because of Lindsay's comment on Friday.

I love how with the current version of MS Access, whenever you open an mdb file, you get to see this:



The wording if fantastic - it basically translates as "it might not be safe to do something dangerous". But the thing I love most about this message is that if you create an mdb file, close it and then re-open it, you'll get it! Way to make developing with Access less of a hassle!

I just discovered the "Delete Comment" button on my blog. So now only I will know about the Oodles of Poodles, the grand opening of NYCity Jewelry and the rest of the random spam I just got!

My birthday almost always means an influx of new CDs - people seem to like to give me either money or CD vouchers, I guess because it's easy. My haul so far consists of:

The Beekeeper - Tori Amos
Green - R.E.M.
Once More With Feeling - Placebo (it's all their singles. I wanted to get an album, but this was cheaper so I could get more stuff)
Origin of Symmetry - Muse
Transcendental Medication - Inger Lorre

I'll do a CD of the Quarter sometime soon, but as always they're all on my iTunes share.

The other interesting person I discovered last night was Kate Miller-Heidke. They decided to play a song of hers on Triple J last night while I was waiting for Karina. Fortunately it's available for download from her website (Space They Cannot Touch). I'm seriously considering buying her album now...

You know, with the increase in stats, some new powers, suddenly getting full health and mana. It would be kind of interesting.

I'm 25 now. An eighth of my life is over. I have a valid drivers license until my 30th birthday. I can no longer tick the "18-24" age box on forms. Not much else has changed though.

So this post, combined with this post, seemed too good to pass up. Now Gordon has what he wants!

I'll bring my camera in tomorrow and get a photo.

For anyone who remembers the "Walmart" Google image search, here's another one. The first few rows of images are pretty much what you'd expect, but there's a surprise towards the bottom.

Well okay, so I'm sure it's actually not hard to guess that I'm back home. I got to see Washington in a few different ways - during the day, at night, drunk... Everyone in the office was really cool. And I picked up a few useless toys that I'll probably post about later.

Turns out American Airlines are the worst people I've flown with. It was still an okay flight, but it just had this general feeling of "yuck". The flight from LA to Sydney wasn't full, which meant me and the guy on the other side had the entire middle isle to ourselves. Lots of room is very nice. I managed to get an earlier flight back from Sydney (that I just made). The guy at the ticket desk was very sorry that there were only centre seats left, but whoever was meant to have the window seat next to me didn't show up.

I decided I didn't want to lug my main bag through the airports so I checked it through. The cable tie I had on the zip was gone when the bag appeared at Sydney. Inside was a nice note from the US Airport Security people saying they'd checked my dirty undies and socks for bombs. I assume since I got my bag back they didn't find anything. I was a little concerned that something might have been missing (or added!), but it seems all that happened was they burst one of the boxes of Hagel I'd packed.

At LAX I decided to get rid of the last of my US money by buying a book (since I only had a few pages left of my other book). With the sales tax I was 11 cents short. So the guy at the desk pulled out a jar of pennies and counted out the difference from that. It was pretty nice. I got Smoke and Mirrors by Niel Gaiman if anyone was wondering. And it's quite goood.

I know it's probably a bit late, but I figured I should probably set the record straight. Stilly was wrong when he guessed that the sharpreader user who Scott mentioned was me.

While I do use Sharpreader (well, when I'm in Australia anyway), I'm not actually subscribed to Scott's blog. I'm pretty sure that's actually Ian.

So I guess that raises the question why I'm not subscribed to Scott's blog. The honest answer is that I'm just not. I do read Scott's blog from time to time, but I guess I've never hit the "subscribe" button. I'll have to fix that when I get home...

These ducks are German. I didn't mention the war.


I found a series of really cool bridges in Dusseldorf while I was wondering around on my first day.


The bridges got more and more ornate, until this fountain on the last bridge.


This was the very tasty snack I had one afternoon in Venlo. Yum.


This is just a random street shot in Wokingham. I really liked the look of all the buildings.


This is the Wokingham town hall.

Outside Westminster Abbey. These are new carvings of 20th century Christian martyrs. Apparently our guide was once asked why Princess Diana wasn't among them.


This was one of the pubs in Wokingham. I've got more photo's to show Chris...


Another pub sign

And another pub sign. This is where I was staying. Well, I was staying in a building to the left.

I went for a walk along the Thames, and found these steps to nowhere. I though it was really strange, until the tide went out

This is my favorite photo.

I've always had a fascination for London. Lindsay made the comment to me that no matter how long she spends in London, she always finds herself wishing for a few more days, and that sounds about right to me. To get to London from Wokingham (where I was staying in a cupboard - more on that later) each day took me more than an hour on the train and cost more than $30 a day (which took care of all my transport), but I was still happy to do it three days in a row.

Speaking of Lindsay, she said a little while ago that friends are like pokemon - you've got to collect them all. Well, friends are also like pokemon in that you never know when you're going to find a new one. During my first London Walk around Westminster I got talking to an American girl who'd been living in London for the past few months. She was heading home on Wednesday, and so was trying to fit in all the tourist things she'd hadn't gotten to yet. We just kind of clicked, and ended up hanging out together for the most of the long weekend - we did the London Walks together, and on Monday went through the National Gallery and the portrait Gallery. It was really cool meeting someone totally new who was so much fun to hang out with (not to mention how nice it was to move around with someone who knew their way around London). The only downside was it was only for three days.

A city like London is full of so much history that it's really hard to go anywhere that doesn't have a story behind it. I had lunch at a pub Carl Marx used to drink at. We had a beer at a pub next to an alleyway down which Captain Kidd was drowned. I walked the same paths as kings, queens, movie stars, heroes and villains.

I did so much cool stuff. I just wish I had a few more days...

Before I left Australia, Lindsay recommended that I do some of the walks run by London Walks. They looked interesting, so I thought I'd give them a go.

Turns out, they rocked.

I did the Old Westminster on Saturday morning. Since it was my first walk, I wasn't sure how it was all meant to work. It was actually very easy - I just went to the right exit at the tube station and there was a guy holding up a pile of London Walks pamphlets. I got my ticket (and a frequent walkers card) and off the group went. The guide was fun, knowledgeable and friendly. We'd walk along and he'd stop us at anything interesting and tell us some stories. He told us about Churchill, Cromwell, the Queen and the parliament. Having a guide who knew the area meant we saw some things I'd never have found if I was by myself - like the house Lawrence of Arabia once lived in.

Since I knew I could easily spend 8 hours at the British museum and still not get past the first two rooms, I decided that would be my afternoon walk. It turned out the guide was the same as the morning guy - which was cool, because he was good. He took us straight to the most important and interesting artifacts. We saw artifacts from Egypt, Persia, Britain, Rome and Greece. The really amazing thing was that everything we saw - the massive marble statues, the huge stone wall carvings and even the entrance to an Egyptian tomb - were the real thing. My personal highlight was actually seeing the real Rosetta stone.
After the tour finished I stayed in the museum until they kicked me out. There was so much to see.

On Sunday morning I did the Tower of London walk. I'd been to the Tower last time I was in London (when I was 15), and if I'd remembered how expensive it was I might not have gone again. But it was cool to have a guide. He took us in through a back way so we avoided the line. The guide pointed out all sorts of interesting things - like how the hump in a path was actually an access tunnel to the river at one point. We got to see the Traitor's Gate (I could just imagine what it would have felt like to be taken in to the Tower through it). The best thing about it was that our group was small - unlike the groups the Beefeaters were leading around of 80+ people. This walk was the least good, but was still well worth the money.

Sunday afternoon was a walk around Wapping. This was really cool. Our guide took us all through the dock areas and the East End. She told us about pirates, smugglers and murderers. We got to go down onto the banks of the Thames (since it was low tide), which I never even knew was possible. We walked past impressive new apartment blocks, really old pubs and learnt about a really interesting part of London.

Sunday night I did a Ghost Walk through old London. The guide was an actor, and very good at what he did. He take us to an interesting site, stand on a little stool he had with him and told us a spooky story. We heard about ghosts looking for their heads, their husbands or just mischief. There were ghosts in churches, pubs, houses and even the National Bank. The best ghost story was totally made up and had me nearly kicking someone in the head. It was great.

There were lots of other walks I wanted to do, if only I'd had time. So if you're ever in London, do at least one of these walks. They are fantastic.

There seems to be a fair amount of interest in the Webservice at the US office. I just found out that there's going to be about 12 people at the "what is this Connectivity Toolkit thing?" talk I'm giving tomorrow (including a couple of sales guys who'll be phoning in). I was expecting maybe 2 or 3. It kind of messes with my preferred "informal and casual" style, so I figured it would be better to spend today preparing rather than being a tourist.

The plus side is that I have some time to catch up on blogging as well...