December 22, 2006 – 10:17 am
[as] Beijing: Queueing for Free Cabbage; it’s impossible to imagine a scene like this in Sydney
December 20, 2006 – 11:20 pm
Movie: Casino Royale
Despite what everyone has said about this being a great movie in its own right, it remains at heart a Bond Movie. If you like the genre, you’ll like this one, if you don’t, there’s still not much in it to save it from itself. Watchable, enjoyable fluff, great action sequences, but feels [...]
December 20, 2006 – 10:18 am
dinner - lamb with watermelon salad
It’s been a while since I’ve cooked something worthy of photographing, but last night’s dinner made the grade.
I spotted a recipe in this month’s Delicious magazine that just sounded odd. Lamb with watermelon salad. How does that work, I thought, and so last night [...]
December 20, 2006 – 9:36 am
[kottke] An explanation of the deadweight loss of Christmas; where the giver spends more on the gift than the recipient would have spent - "An economist might suggest that the solution is to abandon the pretense and simply start exchanging small piles of money. The boom in gift cards is a kind of socially tolerable [...]
December 20, 2006 – 9:26 am
[kottke] Short Imagined Monologues: (Famous atheist) Professor Richard Dawkins Speaks at Fair Hills Kindergarten Regarding Santa Claus
December 19, 2006 – 9:49 am
Book: Defensive Design for the Web
In an attempt to return to some professional development reading, I picked up this aging classic from 37 signals, and read it overnight - there’s a lot of stating the obvious, but it all needs to be said. If you’re looking for guidelines on what messages to display to customers [...]
December 19, 2006 – 9:19 am
Interview with Bill Gates - my favourite quote: I didn’t buy the last DVDs of (the TV series) 24. I try not to purchase these so I can receive them as gifts.
December 18, 2006 – 1:19 pm
Ripples, milsons point
Karmee coffee. Immediate views of the opera house, and the underneath of the harbour bridge: to order a takeaway coffee is to stand at the “please wait to be seated” sign, and a polite, formal, yet friendly waiter is business casual attire takes the order and the [...]
December 18, 2006 – 12:12 pm
Words of the day: Enclave and exclave - political geography terms.
December 17, 2006 – 8:08 am
[andrew p] Pray for Coal - the ten most dangerous toys of all time
December 16, 2006 – 11:44 am
cafe freddo
One of the drinks on my coffees t-shirt is the chilled cappucino, or cappucino freddo. When I spotted a cafe freddo on the menu at oven, I had to try it to see what such a drink is like: I haven’t seen one on a menu anywhere else!
It’s [...]
December 16, 2006 – 5:59 am
Just heard about this on the radio: the Hawkesbury Harvest is a collective of
farms and others where you can get fresh produce this time of year.
December 15, 2006 – 12:06 pm
[as] Reads like a comic book: World’s tallest man saves dolphin
December 15, 2006 – 7:28 am
Leslie Harpold wrote this secular fiction piece that celebrates some of the good things in life: Possible Scenarios for Heaven
December 14, 2006 – 3:23 pm
interact with a virtual storm
December 14, 2006 – 12:32 pm
Why I Write - an essay by George Orwell - Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
December 13, 2006 – 9:55 am
Advice from a veteran project manager: Project Management Made Easy
December 12, 2006 – 4:59 pm
How to Read and Why, by Harold Bloom.
As someone who loves to read, but doesn’t have a background in the humanities, I found this book useful in opening up a range of other titles to consider. Bloom clearly thinks that Shakespeare was the best author in history, and this thesis recurs throughout the book, but [...]
December 12, 2006 – 2:20 pm
An atheist author, who clearly has an axe to grind against Josh McDowell, presents arguments against what he terms the Trilemma; the three-way argument that Jesus (based on the claims that he made about himself) is either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord.
If you’re familiar with the argument, you might find the article useful in [...]