office 2007 is neat

Still officially being a Uni student, Deb managed to get a full copy of Office 2007 for $75. According to the articles I've read, that's a 93% discount off the retail price (although who really uses Publisher and Onenote anyway?)

So, we got home from dinner last night and installed everything, and I've got to say, it's pretty damn cool. There's loads of little details that make the whole experience nicer. When you select a block of text and then go to change the font, the text changes to the different fonts as you roll over them. It doesn't sound like a big thing, but trust me, it is.



The colour palette has had an upgrade as well. Instead of just the standard crappy (and weird) colour selection, you can also select a theme, which will give you better and more consistent looking colours. Sweet!


Excel is probably where I'll spend most of my time though, it now has over a million rows and 16,000 columns to work with. It give you a full selection of functions when you begin typing, as well as an explanation of what each one does.



Obviously, unless you actually use Excel on a regular basis, you won't see why this is neat. Also, if you're as old as a high percentage of people in my department, it won't be neat, it will be scary and unsettling. Maybe that means it's time to cash in your super!

verdict: very cool. Shame I won't see it at work until at least next year

pride of the south

Found out last weekend that our local bottle shop sells 24s of Speights.

It's a bit weird though, as the labels and bottles are different for export. They aren't screw cap (which I assume is to make it classier) and the label doesn't say "Pride of the South" on the front.

Anyway, at $42 for 2 dozen, it's reasonably priced compared to other imported beers, so I think I'll be buying a lot more in the future. That said, when I was home in Feb I noticed that you could get a dozen Speights for $9.99 if you shopped at the right place...



verdict: beer is good

time for a wii

Dumb name for a console, but it's pretty damn fun.
I saved up points in a reward scheme we have at work and bought a Nintendo Wii.


I've had it for a week now and still feel like a dork swinging my arms around to play baseball, but it really is good fun (even more fun is watching Deb at the bowling alley. It's only a matter of time before she leans too far and goes through the TV. I guess that would mean it's time to upgrade to an LCD... with a plexiglass screen to protect it :)


verdict: the control system will be perfect for the Super Monkey Ball, which I picked up on eBay today

climate change?

For those who are doubting there's a water shortage here, these photos were taken at the reservoir just outside of Heathcote.

mpaassholes

nz air

So I'm back in NZ for a wedding.
I've got no more to add, so here are some photos I took during the flight:

The Southern Alps


A braided river


Cromwell


Clyde Dam

dad's off to the solomans

My old man is off for a six month stint in the Soloman Islands. I didn't realise it made the papers!

lilydale to warburton

On Sunday me and Deb went for a bike ride with folks from my work.

We started at Lilydale around 8.20am and got back to the car sometime around 3pm I think. We covered 76km over that time, the second half being mainly uphill. It was a shallow climb, but was still pretty hard work near the end.

Map


Wandin


Somewhere on the track


Kind of like snakes on a plane, except with cows

and no plane

sketchup

Sketchup is a really easy to use 3D modelling tool that I came across the other day (and it's free!)

What's the first thing you do when you play with something like this? You recreate where you live of course!


If I'm still bored tomorrow, I might have a crack at furnishing the place, including having the right pictures on the walls.
I really did it so I could show my folks what our place looks like without them having to fly over here to see it.

cabinet part xxiii

It's been a while since the last cabinet post, so I thought I'd post a short update:

...

and that's about all that's happened since last October.
I've just bought a pot so I can move the volume control off the amp on the floor to a spot beside the speakers. I'll then be able to put the amp inside so it's not making the place look untidy. At the same time, I bought a switch box so I can move the output from the speakers to the TV without having to unplug cables and stuff. I might pull the box to bits and incorporate it into the cabinet itself; another step towards tidiness.

I also priced the cost of printing a marquee at Ted's. Because the width I need is wider than the roll of paper they use, I'll have to print it longways, which means It'll cost around $100 with 60% white space left over. I'm going to have to fill it up with other pictures to get my money's worth, but it's a good step towards completing this damn thing. I really wish I'd left the control panel until everything else was done, because now that everything works there's not as much motivation to make it look pretty.

happy new year!

It must be time for another bulk catch up.

Since you last tuned in:

• I went home for Christmas and actually enjoyed my time there. I think I could almost move back to live if there were jobs that paid well enough for the scattered skillset that I have.
  
• I bought a new compact camera after giving my old one to my folks. They had it for a week before it got a major error and I had to pull it to bits to remove the permanent battery. Hopefully it's all fixed now :) The new one does fancy tricks like letting you pick one colour to remain while the rest goes black and white. Cool.
  
• While I was at home, I built a new PC for the parents. When Dad bought home a printer/scanner/copier/refrigerator/bottle opener I started scanning in and cleaning up some of their old photos It was really nice to see pictures that had been faded to orange for as long as I can remember become vibrant and full of colour again.
• Deb and I went to the botanical gardens for a Moonlight Cinema showing of Clerks II. The inflatable screen was a little unstable due to the wind, and we warned at the start that if it blew away the screening would be cancelled. It turned out to be a bit of a chilly evening, but we had a couple of beers, a bottle of wine, loads of food and also rented some beanbags, so it worked out fine (the screen folded in half a few times, but didn't blow away)
• Bushfires knocked out an electrical supply line between NSW and VIC, causing blackouts across the city, which was already struggling due to a 40° day. Trains were delayed (in some cases stuck on the line for 1 1/2 hours), thousands of traffic lights went down and thousands of people were trapped in their office and apartment blocks because security doors weren't working properly (now that's some piss poor planning). I rode to work that day, so wasn't affected in the slightest except I may have lost a kilo or two of sweat on the ride home.
• Bought some t-shirts from Mr Vintage. There's loads of cool stuff, but I got these three:
  

It makes me want to have a crack at designing my own (or even better: taking elements from things others have designed and making them my own)

• The cabinet is still at 85% and I don't really know how to finish it. Ideally I'd rebuild the control panel now that I've used it for a while and put in a 4 way joystick (Pacman, Dig-Dug etc) and a spinner (Tempest, Arkanoid). Would probably move the trackball back a little as well, I've almost broken my fingers on the monitor a few times being a little too enthusiastic playing Golden Tee.
• Troakie (my old boss/booze buddy from Channel 4) has moved to Bermuda. I'm led to believe it's a paradise for records managers, where filing and rum go hand in hand.
  
• Went and saw Tenacious D play at Festival Hall last Friday. The concert was great, but it must have been close to 35° with 95% humidity inside and the acoustics were terrible. We had seats and still came out totally drenched with sweat. I felt sorry for those crammed down on the floor in the general admission area.
  
• Deb and I are off to Apollo Bay on Friday for a couple of nights. This is the first time we've left the city together with just the two of us, so I'm really looking forward to it.
• Deb is off back to NZ in a week or so for her cousin's wedding. A week after she gets back, it's my turn to go home for my mate Geoff's wedding. Shame the weddings weren't closer together, but I'm sure we'll both be happy for a break from each other :P

So, that's about it for now. If anything exciting happens, I'll post it up here.

Actually, I'll probably mention the boring stuff as well.

brown tinted spectacles

The bushfires raging through Victoria and South Australia are having their effect here in the city. There is so much smoke in the air that the sky looks brown and you can look directly at the sun*.
Deb tok the phto below on the way to work:

She didn't take this one:

I'm at home at the moment and can smell the damn smoke when I open the front door, it's really eerie.
Deb and I are flying back to NZ on Saturday morning and there have been a number of delays because of poor visibility and smoke alarms going off at the airport. Fingers crossed we get away ok.


* don't look directly at the sun

stupid fruits of the world #27: pomegranate

I bought a pomegranate at the supermarket the other week. I'd heard of them, but never actually seen one before, so thought I'd give it a shot.
What a shitty, messy waste of time that was! Ignoring the bright red juice that I had to wipe from the walls and scour from my hands, I couldn't eat much because it was sour and made my teeth furry.
What kind of person wants to pick hundreds of corn kernal-sized fleshy seeds out of a leathery husk while waiting for the juice to somehow migrate from the kitchen to the lounge carpet?

fart brings down a passenger jet

Well, not directly, but the woman who droppped one was lighting matches to hide the smell.

BBC News

stop motion fight

This is bloody fantastic

john so is my bro

John So took out the World Mayor title for 2006. He is, hands down, the most popular person in Melbourne and the title is well deserved.

I saw a quote recently saying that he was a rockstar in a mayor's body, which I can vouch for after seeing him on stage at Parklife a few months ago.

ymca

catch up

It's time for one of my irregular catch-up posts, whereby I try to cram in two weeks of detail into two paragraphs. The last update was just after Deb's birthday, so since then:

• Went for a Sunday bike ride up the Moonee Ponds Creek bike track. Discovered after an hour and a half that I'd forgotten to put on sun screen and my legs and arms were turning a tasty deep pink colour. Got home just in time with no real damage done
• Picked up the framed pictures, which look pretty good. During the hanging, discovered exactly how far you can drill into concrete with a cordless drill and a standard bit: not far at all. I'll take some pics soon when the sun's out.
  
• Went for another Sunday bike ride, this time south down the Gardiner Creek track. Put on sunscreen, but I guess not enough. The backs of my shoulders have proper old skool sunburn, like an Englishman abroad. It looks like I'll score some blisters out of it too. I hope it scars. Chicks dig scars.
• Got up to 34° today. The hottest temperature of the day is always at the mid point of my ride home.
  

Hmm, boring fortnight. That may be why there's been no updates.
I'm off back to Kiwiland ^TM in a week and a half. I'm looking forward to that, not just to see the folks, but to have a decent break from work...

damn, I'm going to have to figure out how to sign these things off. I always end up rambling on for much longer than is necessary and #comment deleted#

manatee

deb's birthday -supplimentary

I dashed off to JB Hi-Fi on Saturday morning to get a couple of DVDs for Deb. She was hungover again, so I probably didn't have to rush but I wanted to have something to actually give her on the day.
Later we went down and ordered a frame for a print that Deb's had lying around since London. That was the main gift and I think it's going to look pretty cool once it's up on the wall.
A professional hangover can last all day. Ours did, so we went out for dinner on Sunday night instead.
Wagyu beef carpaccio (with truffle oil of course) is probably the ponciest food I've had this year. It's also the tastiest which just makes me question my masculinity.
After dinner, we went to the poker room at the casino for a quick look. It's a very serious place and just made me more nervous about the poker night I have for work tomorrow. There's going to be a number of tables playing off for a single winner so I think I'll be spending most of the time as an observer. I guess that means more time for drinking and food, so it's win-win really