woowoowoo

…just wanna ride on my motor sickle – at least that’s how the Arlo Guthrie song went. Yes, my big new year’s present to myself is a motorbike. Not a great big prestige mid-life crisis motorbike, but a small, slightly gutless and not very exciting ‘commuter’ bike, (a Honda CB250). Still, it’s exactly what I want for my city-bound life these days. I love it. I’ll try to get to a photo sorted tomorrow. [edit: photo sorted now!]

we don’t usually do the ‘stay up to see the new year in’ thing, but this year some good food, good wine and good company kept us going along easily… and it was worth the wait.

Melbourne is pretty flat, but our friends have a second storey balcony and their house is perched on the brow of what passes for a hill ’round these parts, so we got a fantastic 180° view of about 8 fireworks displays in the city and surrounding suburbs. It was excellent! We also threw water bombs at the kids… all around a really good night. Happy New Year!

today was warm, so we headed down the coast to Point Lonsdale – our current favourite destination. It has a combination of good snorkelling, some rockpools to ramble around and a couple of reasonable coffee shops. Anyway, the snorkelling was great – there were plenty of fish, one good stingray and a Leafy Sea Dragon, which was a bonus.

Afterwards, we headed back up to the Blueberry farm near Portarlington and picked a couple of kilos of fruit. Mmm, Blueberry Muffins tomorrow morning!

In Chinatown the other day, crossing the road when I spotted this one. I really don’t know that there’s anything more to say.

[edit] you just wouldn’t believe it… I wonder if he’s related? Thomas Crapper at wikipedia and snopes.

Yoiks, it’s hot all of a sudden! 8:40pm and the WeatherPixie says it’s still 35°c. There is a storm building on the radar, but it’s about 200km. away so it’ll be three hours before it gets here, even if it doesn’t miss us. Today was my last day at work, I’m not going back until the 17th of January which is sweet! However, out of nowhere I’ve got a sore throat and a headache, which is a bummer. It’s shaping up to be a big Christmas for eating – Yum Cha tomorrow for lunch, bbq for dinner – then on the big day we get down to some serious eating! We’ve got family staying for a few days which is always good fun. Anyway, if I know you and haven’t sent a card, I’m sorry, but have a great Christmas and a safe New Year!

Just to get you into the Christmas spirit, check out this wonderful charity effort from a few selfless celebrity musicians.

I’ve recently been lucky enough to participate in the recommendation of a Content Management System for the University of Melbourne. In the process I learned a little about CMSs so I thought it was about time I tried one out myself.

I didn’t want to try Mambo. Partly because I knew people on the original development team and I sort of felt too close to it, but after several recommendations I thought I’d better try it and see what it would offer me – well, I have to say, it installed beautifully, but that was about the end of it! it’s waaaay too busy and complicated for my needs.

So, I looked around at what else there was – thought Typo3 looked nice and clean, so I installed that. Again, a nice easy install, but after a couple of hours I still hadn’t worked out how to change the templates, so I decided that it definitely wasn’t the cms for me!

I’ve now installed my third cms – well, perhaps cms is a grand word for it, lets say ‘rich blog’ – WordPress, and finally it seems like it’s a back end I can understand. The easiest and quickest install of them all. Not only that, but when I was adding links I happened to visit Eric Meyer’s site and found that he’s using it too! what exalted company!! OK, so it’s a way off being and enterprise system, but it’ll do me (for now!). By the way, straight out of the box it does valid xhtml – nice!

I am so cross! According to the election result, more than half of the population of Australia have chosen to forgive John Howard for his lying, sneaky politics, his disrespect for human rights, his dragging us into an illegal war, his destruction of the health and education systems… </blood_boils>

Why? – presumably, because they thought they might be a few dollars in the pocket a week worse off than they are now. (and they’re almost certainly wrong about that!)

Sometimes being right isn’t cheap, but you’ve still got to do it. What a pathetic lot we are!

There’s a park near us which was redeveloped about 18 months ago. For reasons unknown, it’s taken until today to officially open the facility. An auditorium is part of the facility, so musical acts were on the program – headed by the wonderful Vika and Linda.

Well, I don’t know what happened to the publicity – there were almost as many councillors as there was audience, such a disappointing crowd! – still, once the officials had all droned on enough, the music started.

So, Vika and Linda played to about 120 people – almost like a private concert – their voices cutting through the late winter wind, weaving and crying their way through about 10 numbers – most of my favourites – mostly gospel. Sensational! The band, just cool and unfussed – perfect.