I was a little concerned about the Watchmen movie.
I am not a comic book nut. Although I am overweight I don’t have a ponytail and have only read Watchmen a few times and it is the only graphic novel I own. Despite this I do think it is a great book and I didn’t want to see it hacked apart to suit a Hollywood studio.
Fortunately I thought the movie was excellent. Yes there are bits missing and some substantial changes. I don’t think the story suffered much for it and given the limitations of the medium I think this was as good as anyone could have expected from an adaption.
Well worth the 5-6 hour round trip travel time to get to a decent cinema. With movies, meals and stop off at mother-in-laws it ended up being about 13 hours of my life.
If I did not have to worry about travel and others I would have gone in to the next session and possibly back again the next day.
Instead I did the right thing and we took Trent to the Monash playground again today. No overalls (see previous post)
We also went to BigW and replaced Trents much worn car Wiggles CD with the much superior Justine Clarke who I think is also kind of cute. C’mon, honestly - what Dad hasn’t fancied a Play School presenter?
Overalls have their place.
They are a nice gender blending statement for lesbians and are practical for mechanics.
I don’t think they belong on little boys however. Unless they are out in the garage getting grubby.
I am currently having fight with my lovely wife over the issue. My opinion is that the appropriate summer dress for a playground is CLEARLY a tshirt with cool logo or phrase and some baggy shorts.
There will be no dads there wearing overalls. Ergo no sons who want to be like dad wearing overalls. How can mother be so blind.
At least we don’t have a girl to dress up in pink florals and fairy wings. Puke!
About to start a long weekend. What to do?
Clean the house?
Day trip to Adelaide to see Watchmen?
Upgrade the computers to Jaunty?
Style this blog?
Take Trent to Monash playground again?
Fix the leaking taps and rehang the gate?
Watch TV?
Sleep?
Telstra’s evil domination of Maccas Wifi has been ending across the nation. Renmark has finally joined the free wifi world. It was very slow when I visited. But I managed to check my email, post to a forum and sync my google reader offline while juggling a toddler and downing junk food.
It has 50M session limits and probably blocks lots of ports to keep things fair - Australian Internet is horrendously expensive compared to the rest of the world so we have to do this stuff. They don’t block secure imap or secure smtp ports which is a nice change from some of the wifi providers I have suffered in the past.
A nice contrast to the wifi provider for a Hobart hotel who seemed to think blocking everything but port 80 and 443 was acceptable on a paid service. I won’t call him names because he probably just bought the setup from someone else and was milking it for an income. Since I only wanted it for IRC and secure imap on 993 and secure smtp on 465 I was a bit pissed off. Got a full refund with no hassle. I guess the average punter just wants to use port 80.
Driving around with Renmark with Kismet running, I suspect the less ethical types could find a faster open wifi connection with higher session limits than Maccas without much problem.
I think I am sort of getting back into work mode despite being permanently attached to a toddler. I might be in danger of sending some invoices even. Oh the thrill of paying taxes like a real person. Woo hoo!
I have picked up some local Moodle training for next Tuesday. Staff could not make the trip to Adelaide for a session due to local commitments so they called the local guru. It has been a few years since I was Moodle evangelizing but I have been working with Moodle for another project recently so I am pretty current.
I think I like training. I wish I did more of it and to a more technical audience. I admired the presentation ability of Paul Fenwick at Linux Conf. Rachel says Jacinta Richardson gave a good presentation as well. It would be great to work in an area you love and get to talk about it to other people for a living.
So add training to the list of things I would like to be doing post-toddler duties.
When eating curry noodles last night the sauce was running down my chin and stopping. I went to wipe my mouth but was unsure of where the sauce had gone.
Beards are disturbing things. Further proof that the Y chromosome is genetic damage.
I will persist. You can’t grow up to be a Unix beard without one.
[A beard is also understood to be a prerequisite for developing a successful programming language. Though I have no intention of entering that field. Ofcourse in terms of longevity (and horrid verboseness) COBOL is probably the most successful language ever and Grace Hopper was not of the bearded gender.]
Too much Internet social networking is bad for the soul.
The more I read about people enjoying good food and the company of like minded peers in cosmopolitan urban settings the more isolated and frustrated I feel about living in an one pub rural town.
I felt good about returning to the country. Caring for a sick elderly parent and joining my wife-to-be trumped career and financial interests.
I am now defined by my family. I am husband and father. There needs to be a balance between family life and individual pursuits. Work. Sport. Hobbies. Toddler care and maintenance is important but is doesn’t last forever. I need to be looking to the next stage in life.
If I had the outlet through sports like others here I might be satisfied. But that isn’t my thing.
I want to work with a bunch of smart geeks with FOSS technologies. I want to live somewhere that has late night coffee shops, book shops, cinemas, lush bush walks, cycle tracks, parks. More than one pub.
I thought I was over the conveniences of city living. I thought friendly locals, close community, safe schools would be enough to keep me here. Only teenagers yearn for city living. You grow up and appreciate other things. The stars in the night sky. The relaxed pace of life. Right?
Not the Riverland
Damned Internet. As you bring people together, you also make them realise their apartness. The grass is always greener on the other side as they say. When you live in a hot drought affected semi-arid area on extreme water restrictions that saying has extra significance. The grass is dead here.
Eating breakfast this morning and I realised some Australian icons would probably not be around when this little fellow grows up.
So here is my son, eating vegemite toast in his blue Bonds singlet. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!
- Bonds and Vegemite
When you have an extremely strong brand, will labour cost savings be enough to offset damage to a brand by moving offshore? Wait and see I guess.
Happy I am not a long term shareholder in Pacific Brands.
February 27, 2009 – 1:57 am
No, not Balmer. My 16mo son.
He climbs. He has been climbing onto footstools and armchairs for weeks and recently started scaling the back of the armchairs using the dimples in the leather for footholds.
Today while on a Skype call with a client he climbs the footstool he has placed near the television. He collected two Wii-motes and brought them over to me.
This was cute attention seeking behaviour. I should have played another In The Night Garden on the MythTV to keep him occupied until the call finished. He is fascinated with remote controls. He will sit there changing channels for hours.
Unfortunately the television is not bolted down and he has now shown he is capable of climbing to where he could tip it on himself or drag the MythTv box or Wii down on him. Better charge the electric screwdriver and fix a few more things in place.
There was a geek parenting conference at LCA09 (Linux Conference Australia) which I missed - due to a tempermental child. From reports nobody mentioned the incompatability between toddlers and cables/computers etc.
[Now he has my undivided attention he is back to chasing Chihauhuas with big sticks. Much more acceptable behaviour.]
February 19, 2009 – 2:46 am
I have returned to using IRC recently. Not the time sink it used to be. Using it responsibly 
I can normally be found on freenode. You can guess my nick.
I tried to use Facebook. Briefly. It had limited appeal. Ditched it.
Finally twittering since a couple of days ago. Avoided it on principle. Because it was a hyped Ruby based project not because of the service. Seems like lots of fun though. Might have to join identi.ca as well. Very surprised by all the quality AIR based clients.