cloudburst

The rain in Melbourne for the last few days has been ridiculous. It's been falling so hard that water bounces back up to your waist. I joked about buying an umbrella off the guy from our noodle shop tonight, so he fashioned a raincoat out of a big rubbish bag for me. I laughed at the time, but it really kept me dry. I guess I owe him a beer!

We've had leaks in our lounge roof in the past. The first time it was repaired it didn't rain again for six months, so we didn't know that it wasn't fixed. The second time around, the roofing dude said he couldn't find any leaks on the roof, but bogged up the most likely areas, so every time it rains we expect to come home to a big puddle of water on the table.

And now you know the back story.

Deb was out on the booze tonight and I felt like having a laugh. I sent this picture message to her phone:


It was a 2 minute photoshop, so it doesn't look like much at this size, but I guess it looked convincing enough on her mobile screen, as her phonecall's first words were "what the fuck?!"

It made my night anyway :)

pre-owned chump

I took time out from the stress of trying to find the perfect xmas present to have a look in EB Games. Super Paper Mario is selling brand new for $99 or pre-owned for $95. What a great business! They buy back the game for bugger all then sell it again for almost the original price! Do mugs really buy these pre-owned games or am I missing part of the equation here?

meetings are suck

"no to all" tip for windows

This is probably a well known tip, but I discovered it today and it is totally invaluable!

When you're copying a large number of files from one place to another (as I tend to do when backing up photos), you're presented with this option:


For simplicity, you can just overwrite all of the existing photos with an exact copy, which really is just a waste of time. What's even more of a waste of time though is sitting there for 20 minutes clicking "No" for every file so that you only copy over unique files.

Here's the tip: hold down Shift when you click no. It's essentially a virtual button that says "No to all" on it. Frikkin' sweet.

Thanks to Jigar Mehta who happened to be the first link I clicked on.

back up your photos

The hard drive that I store all my photos on is starting to play up. I can't open a couple of dozen photos, but luckily most of them are backed up in various locations.
The problem now is finding out where the dodgy files are and replacing them either from the backup drive (that I haven't used as often as I should), Deb's laptop (that only has backups of more recent stuff), the portable hard drive that we used in Vietnam (that was going to be used as a proper backup drive from today) or my backup at work (which was current as of around this time last year).
This year, the plan is to build a proper RAID file server so I won't have to worry as much about failing hard drives. Of course, I also need to figure out what the hell RAID really is, but that's a small detail.

hehe, neat

I couldn't wait until we got home, so I posted this from the train :)

Here's a better photo now that we're home:

and one that the Jeweller took:

Ian from Ellissi was fantastic. He's really down to earth and having spent his entire working life in the trade, knows his stuff too.

Legend.

maybe the coolest thing in the world

Create your own plastic 3D models with this:

Product page

I love the idea of being able to print out my own Angelina Jolie action figure.

another tree

We've got our tree up now.

It's sitting in front of a window, so is hard to take a good photo. You'll just have to use your imagination.

stupid fruits of the world #19: mango

If there's ever been a strong argument against intelligent design, it has to be the mango.

On the outside, it looks like a normal, easy to eat fruit, but no. To prepare it, you have to cut the "cheeks" off and to avoid wastage spend a further 5 minutes hacking slivers off the great big seed in the middle. It still looks tasty, so you inevitably try and nibble the remaining flesh off the seed, but instead end up with masses of hairy fibres between your teeth.



Verdict: fuck it, stick to apples

8-bit christmas

This is in downtown Madrid (Spain for you less worldly types).





Thanks to Gizmodo and Clipset

nice tree...

This from the fashion capital of Australia.

i'm assured it's hygenic

I came back from grabbing some lunch to find that desert had been supplied.
Shame it was my favourite red stapler.

Now I'm going to have to set the building on fire.

vietnam gallery

The photos from Vietnam are closer to being finished.
I've uploaded a good chunk of them to a webalbum, so if you're interested, have a look!
http://picasaweb.google.com/reidcparker/Vietnam

We're still in the middle of captioning everything, and we really need to do that before we forget what everything was. I've also been tagging the locations on Google maps, so if your bandwidth is up to it (sorry Mum), you can view the satellite images of Vietnam with our photos pinned onto it.

and we're back

Nice day in Melbourne, tired as shit, photos to follow

tan son nhat airport

Our plane from Saigon to Singapore has been delayed, which means we'll only get to spend 3 hours at Singapore airport!
/sarcasm

We needed to get water and barely had enough cash left. This is because we were used to paying no more than 5000d for a bottle and they were charging 32000d for them after passing customs.

Cool, we're boarding now!

saigon

Our last day in Vietnam is in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as every single person still calls it). This is the view from our breakfast table at the Majestic Hotel. It was a treat being able to sleep in clean sheets, have a shower in water that doesn't smell and have people waiting on you that appeared happy to do so. (appeared was supposed to be in italics, but my phone can't do that :).
Next stop is Singapore for a bit of duty free then we're back in Melbourne in time for work on Monday.
Woo hoo.

mui ne

We're finally in the sun! We are 5 seconds walk from the beach and I've just had my first shave since we arrived in Vietnam. Deb isn't too pleased.

da lat

This is weird. After walking the streets of Hoi An being eyed up like a walking bag of money, we're now in Da Lat feeling like celebrities! People walking past yell out hello ard get big grins on their faces when we reply with xin chào. We paid next to nothing for a couple of coffees (around 1/3 the price we've had to pay up until now) and the hotelier looks honestly pleased to see us. I'm pleased we did the north first so we could really appreciate the difference.
We're doing a day trip with the Easy Riders tomorrow which should be a laugh. It's our first time on the back of a motorbike since we've been here and the traffic is ridiculous, but I'm sure we'll be fine.

raining again

Just booked our tickets to Dalat. From what I can figure out, we get a cab to De Nang, train to Nha Trang, stay the night and then a bus to Dalat.
The weather has turned a bit rainy in Hoi An, so the bad stuff is going to hit the coast soon. Hopefully it clears up or we'll have to skip Mui Ne and spend a few days in the Mekong Delta instead. At least the typhoon has been downgraded to a tropical storm, so we'll be a bit safer.

and again

They have free wi-fi AND free pool. How could we refuse?