I caught the first five minutes of the new season of Rush last night. I thought it was a tedious cop drama. I was wrong.
Here is my paraphrasing of the opening sequence.
Scene 1: High rise inner-city apartment. SWAT Team gorillas kick in the door, blast the place with tear gas and charge around kicking down doors, wrestling the occupants to the ground and screaming 'Freeze, motherfucker!'. They truss up said motherfucker and his girlfriend like pigs and find a machine gun on the carpet.
'Jeez,' they all go, posing in front of the Sydney skyline. 'Jeez.'
Scene 2: Two cops are administering eye drops to the now un-trussed girlfriend on account of she was in the apartment when they were redecorating it with the tear gas.
'What happened?' they ask.
'I don't know,' she says. 'He just went and got this tattoo and he reckoned it was Bob Marley and I said that it looked more like Bindi Irwin and he just went crazy and pulled out the machine gun!'
Thursday, July 16, 2009
And the most frustrating thing I couldn't do without my thumb was ...
Tear open a packet of sugar. Try to do it with just your left thumb and fingers, no gripping within your right palm. And do it without getting frustrated and chucking it on the ground and screaming throaty gypsy curses at its tough, waxy-papered little hide.
Even learning to wipe left-handed was easier than exerting a useful grip between index and middle finger. Although, there were a few nervous moments there I can tell you. The bum radar (patent applied for) wasn't too sharp the first few times, but rest assured - I remained relatively unscatted.
***
And for you stalkers out there: Charlie speaks!
Even learning to wipe left-handed was easier than exerting a useful grip between index and middle finger. Although, there were a few nervous moments there I can tell you. The bum radar (patent applied for) wasn't too sharp the first few times, but rest assured - I remained relatively unscatted.
***
And for you stalkers out there: Charlie speaks!
Monday, July 13, 2009
Like having an injection in reverse
They drill the wires into your bone using a hollow drill-bit and hammering the steel in. The Jurgen Balls are just for protection. The doctor had them off using a multi-tool clipped to his belt.
He pulled the wires out using just a pair of pliers from Bunnings bunged through an autoclave.
"Okay mate, just lie down here and hold still."
"No anaesthetic?"
"Nah. This is quite uncomfortable."
A tradesman who came through work recently knew all about K wires and Jurgen Balls because his wife had had some jammed down her finger-tip.
"She said getting it pulled it out was the single most painful experience of her life. And she's had two kids!"
"Thanks, mate. Just what I wanted to hear."
"Well, it was a bit infected ..."
The doctor gripped my wrist in one hand, tucked my arm under his and pulled the wire straight out of the bone like a stubborn wine cork. I almost expected to hear a 'pop' when the thing came out. I certainly felt like a drink afterwards. A pale-faced intern asked me if I was all right.
"I'm okay. Are you?"
"Not really," he admitted. "I think I might just go and sit down."
Which he then did.
He pulled the wires out using just a pair of pliers from Bunnings bunged through an autoclave.
"Okay mate, just lie down here and hold still."
"No anaesthetic?"
"Nah. This is quite uncomfortable."
A tradesman who came through work recently knew all about K wires and Jurgen Balls because his wife had had some jammed down her finger-tip.
"She said getting it pulled it out was the single most painful experience of her life. And she's had two kids!"
"Thanks, mate. Just what I wanted to hear."
"Well, it was a bit infected ..."
The doctor gripped my wrist in one hand, tucked my arm under his and pulled the wire straight out of the bone like a stubborn wine cork. I almost expected to hear a 'pop' when the thing came out. I certainly felt like a drink afterwards. A pale-faced intern asked me if I was all right.
"I'm okay. Are you?"
"Not really," he admitted. "I think I might just go and sit down."
Which he then did.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
This looks like a job for ...
Daniel Kinsman.
Dan - your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a programme which analyses the content of the last page of any document sent to a physical printer. If there is less than, say 1% of the printable area used, then your magical programme will ask the user if they want to print that useless last page with the tiny watermark at the bottom.
If the user selects "yes", then a small sound effect will play: a chainsaw felling an old growth tree for office paper.
Better yet, you could set it in advance not to print those pages at all and simply ask afterwards: "Did you really want to print that last page of nothing?"
Yes, we should stop printing everything.
No, people aren't going to.
I set you to your task.
Dan - your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a programme which analyses the content of the last page of any document sent to a physical printer. If there is less than, say 1% of the printable area used, then your magical programme will ask the user if they want to print that useless last page with the tiny watermark at the bottom.
If the user selects "yes", then a small sound effect will play: a chainsaw felling an old growth tree for office paper.
Better yet, you could set it in advance not to print those pages at all and simply ask afterwards: "Did you really want to print that last page of nothing?"
Yes, we should stop printing everything.
No, people aren't going to.
I set you to your task.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Gillie would be a great dad
Parenting is like wicket-keeping: no-one much comments on a job well-done, but drop one little catch ...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
I should have broken a cup
Three women and a man enter a country art gallery. The man is wearing a cast and holding a crying, burbling baby. He jiggles the baby with the cast arm and walks around to settle the child while the women he is with examine the local artworks.
Enter Middle-Aged Curator: Oh! How adorable! With Dad! How old?
Cast man: He's three and a half months. He is gorgeous, isn't he?
M.A.C.: Oh, what's all that racket, eh?
Cast man (over baby's fading wails): He's tired.
M.A.C.: Lovely! What a lot of noise! Darling little fellow!
Middle-Aged Curator bustles off to sell sell sell her prize-winning pottery to the other three woman and the baby, now free of overhead chit-chat and possessed of a manly chest clad in a soft coat to snuggle against, falls instantly and deeply asleep.
Some half an hour later, Cast Man's cast arm has long since fallen asleep and the other arm is swiftly following it after single-armedly cradling a five and half kilo dead weight for thirty minutes. He relents and hands the baby to one of the three women, the baby's mother. Middle-Aged Curator appears from behind a large painting of an emu.
M.A.C.: There we are! He'll go to sleep just fine with his mum!
Cast Man has to be quietly man-handled out the gallery's front door, a feat made possible only by his weakened arms.
Later that night, as Cast Man is walking his son to sleep around a restaurant, another young father cuffs his 18 month old son over the head in front of the three women. This is the same young father who absolutely would not return Cast Man's comradely nod at the start of the evening; opting instead for the blank 1000-yard stare.
Enter Middle-Aged Curator: Oh! How adorable! With Dad! How old?
Cast man: He's three and a half months. He is gorgeous, isn't he?
M.A.C.: Oh, what's all that racket, eh?
Cast man (over baby's fading wails): He's tired.
M.A.C.: Lovely! What a lot of noise! Darling little fellow!
Middle-Aged Curator bustles off to sell sell sell her prize-winning pottery to the other three woman and the baby, now free of overhead chit-chat and possessed of a manly chest clad in a soft coat to snuggle against, falls instantly and deeply asleep.
Some half an hour later, Cast Man's cast arm has long since fallen asleep and the other arm is swiftly following it after single-armedly cradling a five and half kilo dead weight for thirty minutes. He relents and hands the baby to one of the three women, the baby's mother. Middle-Aged Curator appears from behind a large painting of an emu.
M.A.C.: There we are! He'll go to sleep just fine with his mum!
Cast Man has to be quietly man-handled out the gallery's front door, a feat made possible only by his weakened arms.
Later that night, as Cast Man is walking his son to sleep around a restaurant, another young father cuffs his 18 month old son over the head in front of the three women. This is the same young father who absolutely would not return Cast Man's comradely nod at the start of the evening; opting instead for the blank 1000-yard stare.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Not the one-handed computing YOU'RE thinking of ... although that will present its own problems ...
Bloody hell.
Dislocated thumb by hockey stick.
Sounds tough but actually hurt less than stubbing my toe.
Thanks, Panadeine Forte!
So now I'm typing this with one hand.
My left hand, of course.
The right hand is wrapped in a special OT-melted cast and velcro to protect my Jurgen Balls.
For three weeks.
Hence, everything I write now will be severely curtailed into
bad poetry.
*
Dislocated thumb by hockey stick.
Sounds tough but actually hurt less than stubbing my toe.
Thanks, Panadeine Forte!
So now I'm typing this with one hand.
My left hand, of course.
The right hand is wrapped in a special OT-melted cast and velcro to protect my Jurgen Balls.
For three weeks.
Hence, everything I write now will be severely curtailed into
bad poetry.
*
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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test
Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.