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It’s funny to see that David E Kelley has clearly just had enough of the state of his nation right now — every week on Boston Legal it’s more of Alan Shore (James Spader) trying to convince some judge on what’s wrong with America. And he’s always right, and it’s just getting more and more farcical, but only because everything really is getting more and more farcical over there.

The US does seem pretty well broken, at least in a formal governmental sense, entirely by design, yet most of thhem still don’t seem to have noticed this. And the fact that the Republicans are considered even slightly competitive for this November just boggles the mind.

But hey, here in Australia we seem to have an epedemic of child abuse cases (or more likely, just abuse being reported more widely to fit that trendy non-trend the media enjoys finding), and today for good measure we had a triple axe murdering.

And everyone’s noticed that petrol is up worldwide, inflation is up because the mining boom is going to keep the economy ticking over no matter what the rest of us do … and yet this will somehow be declared the fault of the government that’s barely been in six months. As opposed to the lot that saw it coming for two years, did nothing, then probably breathed a secret sigh of relief when they got kicked out.

Of course, people only ever want to blame the ones with any power now …

Nutty times, for nutty people. Sometimes I think Denny and Alan have the right idea

Just Will and myself went over to Westfield today, to look for a few things for myself (book, maybe some other stuff) and of course to look for more Cars toys for Will. It’s fun for just the two of us to go out, Dad and son style. But of course, with Will, an ever energetic, ever moody 4-year-old, it’s always trying in a sense too

I’ve found that the worst part is always trying to leave places. Unless you get him focused on the next destination, he doesn’t want to leave, immediately starts the tantrum, and usually drops to the floor and makes me carry him out while he screams. It’s not usually as bad as that sounds, and it’s not every place we go to, but it happened enough today.

The other scourge is repackaging. When he finds something he likes the look of, but doesn’t realise he already has it just because it’s been repackaged differently to before, and insists on buying it, even though I have to explain to him that we already have it. I don’t know if it’s that he doesn’t believe me, it’s more like he just gets fixated on the new thing, even though it’s not a new thing.

And all the time there it was “get Flo” — he’s been missing the Flo figure from his Cars set (and a few others), but he’s really fixated on that one. We tried every shop with no luck, and eventually he settled on Wingo, one of the bad cars. I swear I could see how he settled too — we were at Woolworths getting groceries, he knew we were going soon, so when he saw Wingo, it was “get Wingo” — he knew it was the only choice he had. Then I got home and Sallie found there were 23 pages of Cars toys on eBay. Literally everything. Of course.

But lunch was fun. In the end it was clear that Will needed lunch, so we both had Maccas of course, and Will was suddenly the most placid and happy little guy. He’s like me in this respect — mental if he goes too long without eating He likes the look of the Kung Fu Panda Happy Meal stuff there, but I don’t think we’d be seeing that anytime soon.

Really, I had a good day with him, even if it seemed somehow just exhausting in the end, and even if it was a little trying at times. Four year olds really aren’t supposed to be perfect, and in many ways it’s all part of the process to try and encourage him to fix his behaviour when he’s not so well behaved. In the evening, he did talk about screaming at the shops, and I’d swear he seemed a bit embarressed, so maybe it’s getting through.

This is all part of the process, it’s wonderful even when it isn’t exactly

Real quiet one today, nice and slow, not doing a lot except some cleaning at home and watching some movies. Watched most of Cars again with Will and Alex … felt very cute and cozy in a family way, and Cars is very watchable even on multiple repeats.

Been reading up on some Cars stuff online after, including the history of Route 66, all the details of the Cars movie characters, and am once again amazed by the sheer breadth of knowledge of online people in Wikipedia and other places. And it’s amazing how much detail Pixar packed into the movie — every character has a name, every sign and notice is a reference or a joke. There’s a tonne of car racing material as well that I had no idea about, things like The King looking like Richard Petty’s real life famous car (Petty voiced the character), that racing fans would have known instantly but we didn’t.

And another funny thing that occurred to me was that Cars could so easily have been done in Australia — exactly the same story, but with the Australian car world: V8 Supercars, voices like Dick Johnson, Mark Skaife, Craig Lownes etc, and all the Australian cars, especialy Holdens. And the whole story about dying small towns and road trip holidays is just as relevant here as it is anywhere else (although the sometimes violence of cars and roads is always in the back of my mind as well).

Good day … got to have long weekends more often

A funny thing happened today … all the computer systems at work are being replaced, and it suddenly became apparent that no one was getting anything done there today. So no one went there. And once I checked at home, it was clear that no email from work was available, so little could be done at home either. All very well and good, so it’s a day off then

Went to the playgroup this morning with Sallie and the kids — have been there once before, it’s a special development group to help with learning and abilities. Some of the other kids there have quite a few problems, so it leaves Will fine by comparison, and Alex is already completely normal, so it’s an interesting experience. Still, it’s an extremely worthwhile event, they help out heaps, and help encourage Will in all kinds of areas.

The afternoon and evening … well, quieter Seemed like a necessary step as we work out moves for the future and actions we’re going to take. Again, very obtuse, but I don’t like to write about everything here, at least until it’s happened.
And another thing — it was my wedding anniversary on Tuesday. It was something I completely forgot about here, though I will say outright that I did not forget about it on the day With the kids and a workday we couldn’t do that much, but I got paid in the night, so we had a nice eat-in Chinese dinner, I got Sallie some flowers and chocolates, and generally we basked in our warm glow of marriedness

That’s two years married now. Two years of ups and downs, lefts and rights, kids and nappies, wonderful amazing times, difficult times, slow times, fast times, mysterious times, obvious times. We don’t get it easy, but I don’t suppose we get it particularly difficult either.

But they’re all good times, really

Read a couple of things today that seemed entirely unrelated at first, but then it all came together in a magnificent way.

Locally, ABC chief Kim Dalton says that we should be regulating Internet content like we do TV content. Thought he was talking about censorship at first, which is both dumb and unenforceable online, but it turns out he’s actually referring to levels of Australian content, which is a completely different concern, but still largely unenforceable online.

He is worried that with more people getting their entertainment online, and even more major media groups either putting work online, or switching to online, that any rules we have on making sure there is Australian content out there will just fall by the wayside, because foreign content is both numerically more plentiful, and just cheaper for local distributors as well. And he’s probably right. So what do we do about it?

Well, the key has to be the niche. Part of this is that mainstream media outlets used to mainstream profits really don’t know what to do online — where there is money to be made, but probably not with the same amounts or the same overheads of traditional media. It’s the place for small teams to thrive, small companies, small media makers. And the mainstream doesn’t like that.

It ties into another piece I read, about the Seed Conference in Chicago, put on by 37signals, a company I’m a big fan of, as well as some others. They speak of small companies doing great things, of not expanding unnecessarily, of following your niche, or creating your personal brand. All things I’m a big fan of, but it has slightly different applications for Australia. And it’s all about the niche.

In the US, these guys can create a niche for their domestic audience, and draw 30,000, or 50,000 or a million readers to their site or product, hit a great profit line, but still be a niche. They make a great business, and they thrive based on the fact that they’re still only trying to hit a niche, rather than make any play for the mythical “mainstream”.

But in Australia, of niche is almost never enough for anyone to get by. The equivalent niche here is lucky to be 10,000, or 20,000, and even if you hit that, the profit margin is barely there. And the more you hit in a small market, the close you go to the mainstream, which means the broader you need to try and make the voice. And you lose out to the existing players when that happens.

The only option is to try to pitch to the wider international audience in your niche, then you wonder if you need to broaden the content, then you wonder if you’re losing your Australian voice. Which comes back to what Kim Dalton said in the first article — if you spread your audience too far and try to appeal to them to make something happen, you often end up dropping your Australian identity, which is another problem.

So we either end up with niche businesses that really don’t occupy enough of a place to have real viability, or wider businesses that push themselves on the overseas audience so much that they lose all sense of being local.

There’s probably more to this, but I can see the problem both ways …

Had a small farewell thing at work today (third one in three months I’ve been there, which probably says something). Went to a local pub for lunch and a few drinks. Which naturally lasted nearly three hours …

It’s not like we were staggeringly drunk or anything, but we had a few, and when you go back to work for an hour, you just don’t see yourself doing much … and even when you try it doesn’t seem to get far.

And now that I’m home … damn I’m just tired. Really, tired. Far more than usual. It might be nothing, but it’s probably just an afternoon socialising. Which doesn’t happen as much as it did in my old job, so it’s nice for a change.

Sleep now … have barely been keeping myself awake

First picked up on this news last night on John Scalzi’s site — it’s a little disconcerting when you read something big on a blog before a news site, but it happens more and more now.

Carlin was a funny guy, a talented comic, and an inspiration to so many comedians that came after him (read Jerry Seinfeld’s NY Times op-ed to get an idea of this). I have to admit that most of his really famous work was before my time, and while I’m fully aware of things like “Seven Words” and other famous routines he did in the ’60s and ’70s, I really haven’t heard them, or at least all of them.

Oddly enough, he’s most familiar to me for his work in recent times, like his acting for Kevin Smith in Dogma, Jersey Girl and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, or his voice work on a Simpsons guest spot. I remember probably the first time I ever saw him was in (of all things!) Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, where he played uber-cool time traveller Rufus. And of course, my son knows him without knowing him, for one obvious reason:

Carlin was warmly entertaing as Fillmore, the hippie VW Combi van in the Pixar movie Cars, a veteran alongside many other veterans like Paul Newman, Cheech Marin and Paul Dooley.

It’s great my four-year-old son knows the man’s work, even without really knowing him.

RIP.

I’ve started thinking again that shift work, or more precisely evening shifts, would probably appeal to me again. I did them over a couple of jobs for a few years when I was younger, including some of my time at Fairfax, and generally I found it OK. I wouldn’t do graveyard shift stuff, but 2-10 or 4-midnight stuff wasn’t too bad at all. I’ve always been a night person, and anything even remotely like an early start has never impressed me.

The only downside in the past was seeing Sallie less because she worked days, but these days she’s at home, the kids are at home, and quite frankly we’re probably all better in the mornings than at nights now anyway. I’d see more of them in the morning than I do in the nights right now.

It would have to be the right work of course (and at this stage might be only short term anyway if the right things happen), but there’s a couple of possibilities out there.

Ha … here we go again? Can only do what looks right, or at least just look at it at first.

Talking Points Memo is a political blog/commentary/news site from the US that I’ve read for years now, and it’s top notch. It’s leftish, but a real reportage site, better than most mainstream news, and really fair. It was started by one guy, but now has 9 or 10 staff in a few locations.

They have a post today that really explains their structure and organisation — it’s what I like to think of as the workplace of the future:

As most of you know, we have a bricks-and-mortar office in Manhattan. But that’s just the anchor for our operation. We have a reporter in DC, another reporter who works most of the week from Connecticut, and I’m in Missouri. So a third of our staff of nine is not based in the NYC office.

I love reading stuff like that, but only in the context of “wish I could get into that situation”. Commuting for hours, sitting at a desk in some office, doing things on a computer you could just as easily do from home — that’s 20th century living. Working like TPM, or 37signals, or IMDB, or many other web companies, who employ decentralised workplaces, who only occasionally or never meet up, using IM, chat, Skype to communicate — that’s the future. When we’re all working on computers anyway, we might as well decentralise.

And yes, I really don’t like office work, being cooped up somehwere far from home for no reason (except for your bosses, maybe), where you can all be watched and monitored, like no one believes you are doing the work unless you’re seen — ridiculous. Often working in silence anyway, with people that while you hopefully don’t actively hate them, you usually have little commonality with anyway. Apparently some people like this lifestyle, wouldn’t know what to do without that office commute each day … don’t know what to say … that’s just not me.

Obviously, I need to start my own thing. Fully intend to

The whole family went to Flemington today, for I think the third time, to the Paddy’s Food Markets. Until recently, it was something I’d never done before, but already it seems like such a smart thing, that is easy, new, but old at the same time.

For most people, food is something you get from the local supermarket, but for the smart ones (and admittedly the ones able, though it doesn’t take much) the markets are the place to go. Weekly, monthly, whatever.

It’s always such a place of havoc, and noise, but damn the prices are good. We got potatoes, eggs, herbs, mushrooms, apples, pears, capsicum, chicken and more, all in amounts and for prices you wouldn’t get anywhere else. Enough for Sallie to do her canning that will keep us in the food we like for weeks, for far less cost, and better quality, than the local supermarket.

And the other thing you have to notice about the food markets is that Anglo Aussies for the most part don’t do it. Both buyers are sellers are almost always from the various multicultural groups of Australia, and the best part is that they’re from any number of groups. Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, African, Greek, Italian and more … they all know what it’s about. About buying in bulk, preparing your own food, storing things in the right way.

It’s traditional thinking and living in a lot of ways, but for the smart people, it’s a new way of doing it in a century where we’re probably not going to be able to live like 20th century suburbanites like people used to (and that’s if we even want to anymore, which is a bigger driver right now).

Even the kids don’t mind going now — it can get a bit concerning going in with a pram and having forklifts and hundreds of trolleys and people pushing past everywhere, but Will finds it exciting and Alex just went to sleep in there, so no trouble anymore

I freely admit that Sallie is the main driver with this, and I like that. She’s shown me a lot of new things, which is what a marriage should be about. And she does most of the preparing and preserving of this produce, even though I do most of the final cooking

I’m just glad we can get good food more cheaply, in a new old way.