So, a little more time has passed, and what have I done to make sure that you, dear reader, still come back for more? Not a lot. So, here's a list of interesting tidbits one can ponder after the immensity of the Japan situation has eroded all sense of scale and importance of mere secular indulgences, without less of a technology angle this time to prove that I am, after all, human ;
Subnormality : Last week I ordered as a poster
this fantaboulus comic which I fell in love with some time back, and it arrived in the mail a few days ago to much glee and satisfaction. My kids like it a lot, and it has been hung up in the best spot in the house where we mostly ponder the important things in life; the back of the toilet door.
Pigs Fly : A few months ago I was hunting beer at my local liquor store (
Kiama Downs IGA on the corner), not expecting to find much more than rubbish Aussie beer (with a few exceptions, like Coopers), when the lady behind the counter surprised me
with this treat from a local brewery (
Bowral, home to Australia's perhaps most famous and loved cricketer, is in the Southern Highlands, about 1 hour north of here) called "Pigs Fly." I highly and absolutely recommend giving this a try; it is now officially my favorite beer in the world. It's
that good.
Pictures : For Christmas I bought the "family" a new camera, since I wrecked our last one in an attempt to take pictures of water with a non-water camera (
sorry, Julie!); A
Panasonic Lumix G2, a
four thirds system based camera that I'm starting to love to bits, allows me to really explore a more professional realm of photography. Apart from fabulous picture quality (
pressing the right buttons, of course) there's a hack available to give you the option of doing 1080p resolution video in 60fps, which looks Awesome! I've dumped a few initial shots to
my Flickr stream, but more to come as I refine skills and motives.
Sheltered objections : I've kinda decided to be a bit more pro-active on my old blog of philosophy, secularism and epistemology. It's been lying dormant as a rather busy life has rushed past, but things are settling down, and I want to start a series of analysis of various definitions epistemic notions people hold while talking about things in their normal lives. Oh, and I've been given a ton of various "religion X for skeptics" over the last little while, and I wanted to document not only what it means to be a skeptic, but also be a bit more explicit about why these pamphlets are failing.
Coffee : We've just got ourselves a nice little coffee machine, and I'm already quite good at making cappuccinos, mochas, and that Aussie favorite, long black (short black being a bit of an oxymoron). We got it at some garage sale for cheap because it didn't work properly, but I cleaned and fixed it up, and it works really good, and is quite fast and looks great. Come on over for a cuppa.
Pool : Did I mention that our house has a swimming pool in the back? Yeah? Well, you know what I love almost most of all when it comes to house maintenance? Grab my snorkeling gear, jump in, and clean that sucker out. The bubbles and quiet thundering serenity gives me great pleasure as I suck all sorts of grit into the cleaning tube, mix chemicals, and scrub walls. If you need a good way to dis-connect and revitalize after a busy week of work, this hits the spot for me.
Update!
Stewart Lee : A few months ago I stumbled over a link to Stewart Lee's
documentary "Don't get me started", a smallish documentary on blasphemy, the religious conundrum of embracing and banning certain freedoms of expression at the same time, and his story about his musical "Jerry Springer: The musical" meeting with censorship and persecution of the religious. I've since gotten quite smitten with this comedian / writer / artist to the point of writing him a thank-you note to which I got a great reply as well (
which now sits in my glory box, obviously).
I just wanted to show you
this amazingly funny and fantastic clip where he's talking about "Top Gear" and their hosts. Tell me what you think.
