Changing the look of the blog at the moment. Experimenting with a few themes to see what I can do — want to make it a little more varied, with a little more scope for plugins and things that WordPress can do …

Spent most of today out for a family farewell — wife’s cousin, but they’re my family too now of course

Went to The Oaks Hotel at Neutral Bay, not at all my usual stomping ground, but a nice pub anyway. Good atmosphere, big space. Coincided with the Super 14 Rugby final that NSW Waratahs were playing in, which meant a big crowd by 5pm. Waratahs lost, but they had a huge task that they almost pulled off.

And that “lower north shore” hotel was probably the perfect location to watch the game. It wasn’t on network TV, so everyone went to pubs to watch it, and Neutral Bay is real top Rugby territory. Doubt the atmosphere would have been the same anywhere else.

A few days ago I got an email from a company I’d spoken to a CeBIT the week earlier. I’d gone to the CeBIT show for a few hours to look at new stuff and recommend things to my current employers (I’ve gone to it the previous two years as well for previous jobs). It’s the sort of thing you can go to now to get something out of for any job — computers are that common of course.

Anyway, this email informed me that somehow I’d won a prize. A speaker company there had awarded me an Edifier S550 multimedia speaker system in their daily prize. Impressive, to say the least, as I’d been to stuff like this a few times at CNET for two years, and not won a thing (while watching colleagues win stuff repeatedly).

And it’s already arrived, with the courier fortunately popping in while Sallie was unexpectedly home this morning. And damn, it’s big. It’s got the biggest sub woofer I’ve ever seen in person, and nice looking main and satellite speakers that suit the room well.

Technically it’s a high-end computer speaker system, so it only has one input, but it’s still outstanding quality (worth about $700), and can be worked into our system. Also helps that the old one was on te way out completely. Might be a good excuse to buy a new receiver later on (good Pioneer ones are surprisingly cheap now), but it’s worth it as it is.

This was a nice one. An unexpected and surprising professional gift at a time when I’m not feeling the best about professional prospects full stop.

Good day today … only worked in the morning, and from home at that. Not that I could get much done in the morning, which is fairly typical of course, so at least I didn’t have to do it further away.

Whole family went over to the kid’s hospital at Westmead — we had a nice lunch then took Will to see the surgeon first, then his physical therapist. The latter was much more fun, since it pretty much consists of just playing with many toys, encouraging him to do a few things, and they trying some new stuff with various toys.

He was fairly tired by the end, but I love this stuff. I want to work less and do more of it, at least as much as I can. It feels important even when it’s tough.

Just some laid back fun tonight, including finally watching that Family Guy Stars Wars movie. Never really been hugely into Family Guy, but this thing was seriously funny, with so many clever Star Wars touches including authentic music and sound effects. Good jokes from all angles.

Back to the office tomorrow … but I’d rather have more laughter and responsibility right here at home.

It doesn’t surprise me when I see this stuff — it’s not like Howard’s Australia was going to go away overnight, but of course, it had always been there anyway. Maybe it’s partially about the UK media as well (this stuff almost never gets reported in the US), but they seem to like these stories that show Australia in a particularly bad light:

Australia Muslim school rejected

Authorities in an Australian town have rejected proposals to allow an Islamic school to be built there.

Now, there’s a lot of sides to this story, and I strongly suspect the school was rejected for completely valid reasons by the council, but damn, there’s still a lot of really ugly racism associated with this situation anyway. The flag waiving gits, the religious fundie paranoids like Fred Nile and the just damn bigoted scum managed to drown out any local voices that may have had more legitimate reasons to oppose the school anyway. And reported worldwide — “Australia: look at what a bunch of backward rednecks that lot are (again).”

Blanchett steps into nude art row

Cate Blanchett has defended an artist whose portraits of nude children has sparked a censorship row in Australia.

Now again, there’s several sides to this. It seems perfectly reasonable to say you’re not impressed by these works, don’t like them, don’t support them, but do we really want police shutting down art galleries and hauling artists off to jail? What kind of country does that sound like? This guy has produced art roughly of this kind for a long time now, and while I’m sure its merits vary, I don’t think anyone can seriously argue that any kids are being abused, or are under threat in any way.

Yet the police are giving this a “major crime” treatment, which I can’t help but thinking is a pretty poor use of resources (you mean there aren’t any real pedophiles left to catch?) And again, we just look fairly rubbish to a large sector of the world.

So … it doesn’t necessarily matter what others in the world think of us, but it is interesting to see what kind of image we’re projecting. And today, I don’t think it’s the best one.

Science probe for ‘space pistols’

“Given pride of place in an unassuming museum on the East Coast of America is a pair of 200-year-old duelling pistols shrouded in mystery.

The intricately decorated guns were said to have been forged from the iron of a fallen meteorite.”

… and it just goes from there. Guns made from fallen meteorites, gifts to former Presidents, origins shrouded in mystery, potential fraud … this is pretty wild stuff.

How long until we see this as the next sequel to “National Treasure”? Or something new entirely?

Definitely worth a read.

It’s amazing how wonderfully distracting a four-year-old can be. Even when he’s really just too much to handle, it’s still a wonderful distraction.

That’s pretty much where tonight went

Sing that and repeat.

I mean, most things are great. Family is wonderful, and generally, what I do with myself is exactly what I want to do. I could probably be socialising more, but that has its ups and downs, and I don’t expect it to be too active.

But the big professional question — well, it’s there, and it’s still there. New things aren’t cutting it … actually, new things are pathetic really, which I’m still finding hard to believe.

Damn, this probably isn’t the way to be thinking late on a Sunday night.

I don’t know if it’s about confidence, either professionaly or financially, or whether it’s about finding the time to fit more in, or just making the time because the things are important. Have to do something about reclaiming train time — as much as I enjoy reading, when I read so much I’m pouring through huge books, I know I could do more than just that.

But I have to run my own enterprise. Have to work around the finances if necessary. Part time work maybe — give me some time to arrange? Only if it works financially of course, but that’s a real option.

All I know is, I have to make it happen.

Didn’t leave the property today except to go to Aldi and Woolworths. Don’t mind that really at all. It’s amazing how much that suits me actually.

Had a great time with Will and Alex in the backyard for about an hour or so. Playing bubble blowing and just running around and wrestling and other wonderfully amusing stuff. Too good for words. This whole parenting life really agrees with me, I have to say.

Spent several hours clearing out the garage. Kind of tough, but at the same time it does feel good to be clearing some of the clutter from our lives.

I am a big fan of Aldi — for no other reason than I can get out of there with so muc for so little. Still go to Woolworths, but only for the specialty and the luxury.

Ended up watching most of “Bring it On” again tonight — another one of those late 90s teen movies that is far better than it should be, with a good cast and lots of fun. And the hot ladies in it (especially Eliza and Kirsten) really doesn’t hurt either

This is getting ridiculous.

I mean, would they prefer Rudd to just lie and say that everything will be all right and he can just fix it all (as Howard did, I guess) ?

I mean, it doesn’t sound like the greatest answer in the world to admit you’ve done all you can do and it’s not enough, but that’s one of several reasons why I think it’s the true answer. If you have any solution that makes you look better, you always take it. That would be politically expedient — but this is politically truthful.

What no one really wants to say is that for centuries we have been hooked on oil to the point that the entire world’s economy is based on it, and for several decades we’ve known that was always going to end, and for years we’ve had ways of changing that energy monopoly, but for all sorts of reasons we’ve done more or less nothing, so a fluctuation in world oil prices based on supply and demand principles that everyone has endorsed were always going to mess up the world economy.

And since governments stopped setting prices on these things manually years ago, there’s basically nothing they can do to change them. Of course, for Johnny this would probably have meant another round of middle-class welfare … but that’s half the reason the country is in the problem it, infation wise at least.

No one can say they didn’t see this coming, or that there weren’t ways to mitigate it. For now, we’re just going to have to see where it goers.

Meanwhile, Sallie is preserving food with the whole food canning thing, just in case we have to get through the downfall of society (I joke).

Really tired now … long day where plenty of things got done but none of them were really that consequential. Got home just after 7pm, which used to count as on time, but now seems quite late.

Had a lot of fun in the early evening though – Will was happy hyper and we played Mario Kart AND read Finding Nemo Happy hyper usually means lots of fun followed by a later crash due to extreme tiredness.

Lots of fun for all, but I guess it was too much for him too in the end