Well the Boxing Day test is over for another year - within 3 days! Australia have beaten England, the traditional rival, by an innings and are now ahead 4-0 in a 5 test series. Warne and McGrath's last test in Melbourne was very memorable. Feel pretty sorry for BB and NickP 'tho - they'll miss out on the big fourth day they'd planned in the Long Room.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Cricket + Firefox/Blogger issue?
Have had a great couple of days at the Boxing Day test. Yesterday morning England's 159 first innings score was starting to look pretty good, until Hayden and Symonds destroyed the bowling. The English team are really going to need some counselling when they get home; their confidence must be totally shot by now. Every time things start to look up, fate (or Australia) kicks them in the face.
Have been using the new(ish) IE for a while now - have been having trouble getting the latest version of Firefox to start up on my computer. It's now starting up (although every time it asks whether I want to restore the old session - which it claims crashed - or to start a new session), but when I look at my blog on Firefox the formatting is F*CKED - whereas it looks totally fine on IE. Is this a common problem?
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Boxing Day
Good day at the Boxing Day test today... 5 wickets to Warne (including his 700th) in his last home-ground test as England collapsed (again), sat with M and her family in great seats, spent some time with BB in the Long Room and spent some time with S up in the nosebleed seats. And killer left-over xmas turkey sandwiches provided by Sam. The weather was f*cked, 'though. Cold, windy, mid-winter, horrible.
Also, really good article in the NY Times - 'Can Private Equity Build a Public Face'
Friday, December 22, 2006
Compliments of the season
I may not celebrate Christmas, but there is still plenty to like about the Christmas period. Traffic and shopping are not among them. But there is plenty to like.
Such as ...
Christmas pudding with brandy cream.
Turkey.
People starting to wind down for the year.
Christmas carols.
Watching people try to work out the politically correct thing to say to a jewish person instead of merry christmas. [handy hint: happy chanukah, while the obvious answer, is sort of silly]
Big lunches
The Boxing Day test
The smell of christmas trees
The angels on top of christmas trees
And so much more
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Emmalina is back
Emmalina's back. But not dancing.
Becoming an overnight sensation, then an overnight pariah for doing nothing other than being a normal teenage chick wouldn't be that much fun. Good on her for getting back up on the horse.
In 2006/7 popularity cycles are faster than ever; it's like a human version of Moore's Law. But for time instead of miniaturisation.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Etopian
Was at a party yesterday when someone asked me what happened to etopian... the Bubble 1.0 Internet venture founded by Ben, Dan and myself. I hadn't even thought about it in a while, but for the record things turned out ok. Not spectacular but ok.
Sold part of the business (the investor community 'concept') to Blaze International (ASX):BLZ. Blaze was then coming off the reflected glow of its spectacular flame-out Freekick and failed to commercialise the opportunity. Probably for the best.
The other part (generally known as 'the good bit') ended up, effectively, in a joint venture between AMP and DirectAdvice (a pioneer in online financial planning). AMP launched (if you can call putting the service up with no marketing and making it really hard to find and register on their website launching) the DirectAdvice online financial planning tool (which I maintain was really, really good) to underwhelming demand. Ultimately DirectAdvice was sold and the Australian version of the service shut. Etopian did ok out of it though.
Founding / running a (very junior) dot.com was a weird trip. First I felt like a rock star (in the heady days of 98/99) then it was hard work and no money and not getting anywhere, then the industry crashed and burned, then belatedly it sort of turned out ok but in the meantime I had no idea where my career was going. Very weird.
In any case, etopian was a very cool name for a company. Not that I can take any credit for the name.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Random
It was a big weekend. Hot (more than 42 degrees celcius), Busy (wedding planning and lots lots more) and Acquisitive (I somehow ended up with new shoes, pants and assorted other stuff among the confusion). And Weird - the haze in the sky from the fires burning across Victoria gave the weekend a very strange aspect.
Great minds think alike. Check out bb's recent post on suck. Compare and contrast with my recent post on suck. It's a no contest; ben's post is much better. In fact, go read his blog.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Fiji coup
I'm not the only one curious about the coup in Fiji - looking at my blog stats, I've had a few visitors this afternoon searching for news about the coup. Which tells me that my blog is being indexed very promptly intdee
So...
Latest ABC article - Bainimarama has now declared that he's taken over the country as of 6pm today local Fiji time (ie. one hour ago at the time I write this).
Meanwhile, fijilive is also reporting that Bainimarama has taken over the government, that Commander Voreqe is the new head of state, that Dr Jona Senilagakaliis the caretaker prime minister and that Bainimarama did not intend to arrest anyone.
Also on fijilive, Qarase insists he will not resign and that he's still prime minister.
Check out gnoos for the blogosphere's take on it all.
A transitional era + coup in Fiji
Growing up, we often holidayed in Fiji. I have a real affection for the place and like to keep an eye on developments. As [yet another] coup unfolds today - so far without violence (so far as I know) - I am simultaneously relying on and cursing the Internet.
News of previous coups - eg the 80s and 90s versions - came primarily from the newspaper, with a smattering of radio + tv coverage. As a 2000's coup, this one is unfolding via The Age and the ABC. For example, see here and here. All very sad.
A few minutes ago I realised the extent to which I take the the constant availability of new news for granted (I guess we all do nowadays); I was frustrated because I hadn't been able to find a coup update less than 20 minutes old.... given the current state of play the ability to follow political events in a small pacific nation with a 20 minute lag is probably as good as it gets.
But I have a pretty firm belief that generation next [to use a hideous buzzword as a shortcut to mean the generation who don't really remember / identify with the world pre-popular-internet] won't find a 20 minute lag acceptable. When shit's going down, they'll want live streamed video, they'll want the latest blogs and vblogs and they'll want it wherever they happen to be at the time. A service like gnoos, which is all about recency, therefore has to be on the right track - accuracy is important [and is a given] but i want to know what's happening right now.
Friday, December 01, 2006
albums of the year
an early call, but so far my albums of 2006 are:
- Random - Lady Sovereign
- Black Magic - Swollen Members
Thinking back, 2005 would probably be M.I.A and 2004 would be Dizzee Rascal
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