Anthony Malloy

I know everyone has one by now but if anyone still wants a Gmail invite drop me your name and email address.

After being (unfairly) derided the last time I recommended a video to watch on the net I’m going to give it another go.

Go watch the clip to Nature Boy to see just how rock god cool a boy from Caufield can grow up to be.

(Here’s a direct link to the high speed Windows Media version)

Well, Phee recently moved on from CD’s to the radio. She has her own, um, we once called them boom boxes or ghetto blasters (what the hell are they called now?) in her room and up until recently it was CD after CD after CD.

Now she’s discovered the radio and has settled, unprompted, on her station of choice.

The station being Triple J. Sure, it’s only a former shadow of it’s former wondrous self but given the alternatives she’s done well.

She’s my geek, and I’m proud of her.

Well, it worked for a while. A couple of years ago I bought a Good Pen to try and stop the eternal problem of losing pens and biros. Everything went well until the other day when the clip broke off, leaving a lovely jagged edge. Jagged pen edges and pants, skin, PDAs, mobile phones, just about anything really, don’t get on so today I continue The Good Pen Project.

Introducing The Good Pen, V2. It’s not engraved yet, that’s tomorrow’s project.

Still couldn’t write neatly to save myself though.

When I saw the doc recently he told me I have to exercise; fair enough, I agree. One thing he said stuck in my head, “if you find a good hill, go up it twice.”

Living in The Worlds Flattest City that can be a tough ask and up until tonight I’ve been finding a good flat bit and doing it thrice. But no more. After realising there was a convenient back entrance to Newport Lakes not too far away I headed off, found a suitably steep grade and proceeded to march up, scurry back down and march up again. This I repeated until I couldn’t stand. I don’t know how good this will be for my heart but I can tell you my legs aren’t happy with me.

Tomorrows exercise will be tackling the jungle that should be our lawn.

If you’re wondering who that freshly shaved, nice smellin well entertained guy who just walked by is, it’s me.

I had a wonderful Father’s day, not a sock or jock in site. Fantasticly wonderful smelling shaving gear, bath foam (from the school stall) and two great DVDs, one of which, Auto Focus, we’ve just watched.

Great day, wonderful family. I’m smiling.

Better late than never. Last week Daniel had a picture of his bins.

Up until today though I didn’t really have a bin worthy of a photo but after a quick trip to Bunnings we’re now the proud owners of a compost bin!

Click for notes.

After a lovely walk in the sunshine with Phee I realised I have the power to see in to the past.

I can picture it now.

Some time in the mid 50’s, a car chugs up the road and stops. It’s a warm day, the man stepping out of the car has his white shirt sleeves rolled up. He tugs on his braces, moving them so the are comfortable as he looks up the street. He grabs his leather bag, flicks his hat on to his head and steps on to the footpath.

“Today, I’m going to make enough to retire.” he thinks to himself.

And I’m pretty sure he did for the blocks around our place are surely the cladding capital of the universe.

Being the good early adopter geek that I am I just upgraded to Windows Media Player 10. Downloaded, installed and fired it up. All was going well until I thought I’d check out the radio tuner.

Hmmm. Nope, not there. Nor there. Mmm, and not there.

So, when all else failed, I hit the Windows Media site only to find out that Windows Media Player 10 no longer has a radio tuner even though it was part of the v10 beta. Oh, and if you had any radio stations saved in your library on version 9, well, they’ve just been deleted.

You can apparently find stations in ‘the Guide’. ‘The Guide’ lists two and the feature you’re told to look for doesn’t exist. Or you can register with an online store to gain access to radio stations. That’s all good and well but there’s no online store for Australia and we’re not given the option of registering for any other.

Normally I don’t rant against Microsoft, even though Firefox is my browser of choice and I’m switching to PHP and MySQL for development work, I’m no uber open source geek but this time they’ve really pissed me off. I guess they couldn’t figure out how to make money from letting me find radio stations so that feature had to go.

Idiots.

My top three favourite films, in no particular order, are Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Sex Lies and Videotape and Proof.

Up until today I only had two of the three on DVD.

Now I have Proof.

I love this film, have since the first time I saw it at The Longford, now sadly gone. When The Longford was shutting its doors a couple of years back they had a screening of Proof attended by cast and crew. My copy of the script was in storage at the time, and even it hadn’t have been I think I would have been too overawed to approach any of them to sign it. The boy who played young Martin even turned up, on his 19th (or was it 20th?) birthday. It was an amazing night with that collection of talented people sitting two rows behind me.

Well, the Longford (where I first saw The Vanishing and This Is Spinal Tap as well) has gone but now I have a wonderful copy of my favourite Australian film, even if they have replaced the classic hazy Polaroid graphic from the films original run with a more contemporary feel.

And I’m too bloody busy to watch it.