There's a show we like on local television called Spicks and Specks. It's a low-budget music-themed quiz show, hosted by a local comedian. It's loosely formatted, and often breaks down into everyone just cracking jokes.

We went and saw a taping last night, which was a lot of fun. They have guests every week, usually Australian celebrities who we've never heard of, and last night was no exception. But they have a lot of amusing challenges for the contestants, like these we witnessed last night:

Substitute: One team member must sing a well-known song, but with lyrics substituted from another book (such as ones about Communism or picking up women, as we saw). They do this one on every show.

Watch thirty seconds of a cheesy video clip, and answer questions about it afterwards.

Recognize a song that's played backwards.

Guess what's missing from an old album cover with part of it blocked out.

Before the show, the host was warming up the audience, and asked if there was anyone here from outside Australia. Aside from a couple from New Zealand, there was only us. So he made a few jokes in our direction, and referred back to us a few times during the night (not while they were filming though).

Just watching the production was interesting to me too. They had to cut a few times to fix sound issues, then try to pick up where they left off in such a way that they can edit it together. There was even some funny audience comments that they wanted to capture on film at the end, so they had to ask the audience member to reenact it on camera. They filmed a good 45 minutes for each show, I think, that gets edited down into 25 minutes or so.

Gammy leg. The MRIs came back on X-ray sheets, ten big ones with twelve cross-section shots on them each. Most of the shots looked like grade-A nicely marbled rib-eye steaks. Looks like all the force-fed corn and hormone injections paid off.

Just got back from the doc, where we went over my MRI results. Bottom line, it was indeed the cartilege around my hip/thigh ball joint, and woo-hoo, no evidence of tendon or ligament damage. I'm now scheduled for a consultation with a surgeon next month, in preparation for probable surgery in April. Arthroscopic, so I should be up and around quite quickly. I may not even need crutches. No soccer this season though.

I'm a freak, apparently, because I like flying. Even the ridiculously long flights it takes to get back home, I enjoy. I can't explain why, really, but I'm pretty much alone on this one, from what I can tell.

I'm also fairly alone in liking public speaking, as I've just noticed the other day. If you know me at all, you might find that surprising, as I've had several embarassing public speaking disasters in presence of friends and family. Sometimes, I just can't form a sentence, and my voice decides it wants to sit halfway down my esophagus.

But the other day I gave a talk with a coworker at a staff meeting, about new web trends like del.icio.us and Wikipedia, and it came off superbly. If I had to do it for a living, I wouldn't mind that at all, believe it or not. And I can't wait for my next chance.

Tragically, hip. Saw a proper sports doctor this morning. He pretty much confirmed that it's the cartilege where my right femur joins the hip that's messed up. I got an MRI this evening to find out just how bad. I'll get the full analysis of it a week from Wednesday, but by all indications my options are going to be a) take anti-inflammatories, play for maybe one more year, and not fix the problem; b) quit; or c) surgery. I can't imagine how invasive it must be to get to the hip joint during surgery, but it might be better in the long run. I don't like any of those options much.

The MRI was cool because I got to choose the music I wanted to listen to, through (non-metallic, air tube style) headphones. I almost fell asleep. If magnetic insoles and such are really supposed to have curative effects, then how come you can lie in a 10,000-gauss magnetic field and come out feeling only slightly bored?

Just got back from the Big Day Out festival, where we caught Franz Ferdinand, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and the White Stripes. From a distance, as people our age are wont to avoid contact with screaming sweaty drunks. Franz Ferdinand was sterile, but less so than their records, so it was actually pretty enjoyable. Iggy's still nuts; I saw him probably fifteen years ago or so, and if anything, he looks younger and still has the same energy. The White Stripes sounded really good but we were too far back by that time for any real involvement.

It was interesting to watch for cultural differences in a festival crowd as compared to shows we've been to in the states. Mostly it was subtle things. I like that the whole crowd here can sometimes act in unison; you hardly ever see that in the US.

I failed to mention that a few weeks back I went and checked out the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. It was fabbo. Lots of movie clips playing, along with original props, early press releases, protest letters, costumes, models, equipment; all kinds of wild stuff. I never knew that Kubrick put in the most work of all towards a bio-epic about Napoleon. It never got made, but just seeing his filing cabinet of notes, his stacks of books on the subject, production schedules, and repeated drafts of scripts was boggling. What's the most batshit crazy a person can be and still function in society? That's the place on the spectrum to look for genius. Exhibit's still running for a few more days if you're in town.

Marjorie hosted wine tasting at our place yesterday. It happened to be the hottest day that either of us can remember -- and we used to live in Singapore, so that's saying a lot. The high was 43 celsius, which is 109.4 fahrenheit. Yikes! Our place has no air conditioning, so we hooked up the bogan AC, which is bowlfuls of ice in front of oscillating fans. Wisely, Marjorie chose white wines, and everything went swimmingly.

Surreal moment during house cleanup beforehand. We encountered a number of spiders that were driven inside, presumably because of the heat. Marjorie, who's no timid country mouse, caught a big black one in a glass, and gave it to me to release. (Some of our best friends are spiders, so we don't kill them -- usually.) I ran across the street to set it free on a tree, which it promptly started climbing. What I didn't realise is that I had just condemned the poor creature to death. Halfway back across the street I turned around, just in time to see a minah bird swoop down, land, and do a quick hop up the tree to gobble up him up. It was literally less than five seconds after I let him go.

Nature, red in tooth and claw. All part of the food chain, I guess, but after that minah just pooed on me the other day, they're one species that's off my Christmas card list next year.

I went to see Fizzy O'Therapist a day after my last blog. Not being a true doctor, he couldn't give me a full diag- or prog-nosis, but the problem is definitely centered around my right ball-and-socket joint, where it joins the hip. And it's probably ligaments. He gave me some exercises to do, and I am going to see a real sports doc next Monday. At any rate, I'm a little more sanguine about my prospects for playing more, even if it isn't this season.

Boring soccer updates may be over, for good. I played a friendly game tonight, and my torn ligament, or whatever it is, decided to make a return visit. Worse than ever, too, despite being pretty much idle for months.

It's right where my right leg joins my hip, and I feel it bad whenever I kick the ball with my right leg, especially if I kick with the side of my foot. What stinks is that I can still run just fine, and am playing as good as I ever have. I just can't kick the ball. (And that's kind of important in soccer.)

I'll go see a physio, but I don't have a lot of hope, since I think it's a ligament tear. I suspect my options will be:

Learn to kick with my left foot exclusively.

Quit.

Become a goalkeeper.

I'm not depressed about it -- yet. I'm just angry right now.

Other Tasmania trip points of note:

While staying in a hotel in Hobart that had a small kitchen, Marjorie asked me to boil some water while she took a shower. What I didn't realize was that the kettle had its own separate base unit that you plug in. Instead, I put the thing -- which has a plastic bottom, btw -- on the burner, then left the room to go deal with the car situation. She came out of the shower to find the room filled with acrid smoke. I totaled the kettle, and left melted plastic all over the burner. It's a damn good thing I'm so good looking, and don't have to get by on my brains.

We arrived home sometime after midnight. While opening the front door, we disturbed a mynah bird that had been roosting in a rafters of the front porch. He shat on me and flew off. Welcome home!

If it's 4 a.m., it must be Regis. A friend of mine is right now trying to become a contestant on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", at a taping at Disney World. He wants me to be his "Phone A Friend" person, so I might be getting a call, as early as 4 a.m., from -- well, I thought it would be Regis Philbin, but that just shows how long I've been out of the States. Meredith Vieira. The odds are slim that he'll be one of the ones randomly selected from the audience, but you never know. I'll be ready to Google the answer if I don't know it offhand.

I have been away from the States for a while. I just realized that last week marks two years since I've set foot on U.S. soil. Zowee. Later this year, we'll be heading back (now that it looks like I won't be getting World Cup tickets :).

Update. He didn't make it in. Oh well.

By the gods -- facial hair!. I didn't shave over vacation, and Marjorie apparently has a thing for Mennonites as she asked me to shave it this way.

My man sack. Girls are on to something. Over the break I bought a over-the-shoulder carry bag, and I already can't get by without it. What aversion do men have to being able to carry things?

Why do dogs always develop nicknames in addition to their given names? For whatever reason, Laika is almost always refered to as "Sweet Girl" or "Dingus McDognus" in our house.

We booked our trip to Tasmania just just a few weeks back. We called a bunch of places asking about rooms, and they all pretty much laughed at us. Finally someone explained to us that the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race was going on, and the hotels in town were pretty much chockablock. Finally we started calling pubs, and found a place that agreed to take us.

When we arrived in Hobart and drove to the hotel, we found the room to have just a sagging single bed, crumbs in the carpet, etc. So we declined and tried looking around for somebody with a cancellation. We even tried neighboring towns. Finally we realized that we weren't going to do any better than sleeping in the car. We got a tip from a guy in a hostel about a good place to park along the river. So we got a bottle of wine and headed down. "Stick with me, babe," I told Marjorie. "With me, it's class all the way. Spending New Year's Eve in a Hyundai Elantra drinking wine from a thermos cup."

There were dolphins in the river, which was cool. We ended up crashing out at about 9 pm. Fortunately it was raining, which was conducive to sleep. We half awoke at midnight to the sounds of fireworks, and a few people in the park whooped it up for a while, but the rain soon drove them home.

We slept in until almost 9 am. Our booking the next night was in a caravan park down in Adventure Bay on Bruny Island, so we headed south, caught the ferry, and arrived around noon. Ah, showers and a soft bed. Bruny Island has some crazy wildlife, including white wallabies and lots of rare bird species. We took a few hikes and basically relaxed for a few days there.

The next day was unplanned, so we just decided to get a nice place in Hobart using the money we saved sleeping in the car on New Year's. Our rental car picked that evening to die on us. Consider all the remote places in Tasmania, it was fortunate for us that it happened within a block of our room. Hertz sent a man out who couldn't fix it, so they had a new car waiting for us the next morning. Good on 'em.

We then headed up to Bicheno, a nice seaside town with some great tidepools that we spent a lot of time exploring. We picked Bicheno because it is near Freycinet National Park, which we explored the next day. I love that one of Tasmania's biggest tourist attractions can only be reached via a hike.

Our last day was spent driving up to Launceston, to catch a late flight home. Again, see the pictures for a more vivid experience than my flat prose can provide. Tasmania was maybe not as different from Melbourne as we had hoped, but is definitely interesting in its own right. I wish every place was as focused on preserving their history and ecology. Traveling there, one finds oneself pondering deep questions, such as: What is life all about? Could I survive alone in the wilderness? And, is it possible to make a White Russian with soy milk?

(Birds we spotted: Tasmanian native-hens [which, as you could never guess from their name, are native to Tasmania], green rosellas, Australian gannets, little pied cormorants, white-faced herons, black swans, mallard ducks, Australian wood ducks, kookaburras, pied oystercatchers, sooty oystercatchers, masked lapwings, tons of silver gulls, Pacific gulls, a flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos, musk lorakeets, a ton of welcome swallows, either a pink robin or a flame robin, New Holland honeyeaters, many superb fairy-wrens, some unidentified terns, and lots of unidentified birds of prey. We walked through the habitat of the exceedingly rare forty-spotted pardalote but didn't spot any.)

Mark didn't shave the entire time we were in Tasmania. Last night I shaved his beard with creative license, now he looks Amish. Funny. I suspect it will only last the morning. We'll post a picture if he allows it.

Tasmania. We just got back from our trip to Tasmania, where we spent New Year's and the week after. More detail to follow, but in the meanwhile, enjoy some pictures. Hope everyone had a nutty New Year's.

Marjorie and Mark get dey wing on. Tonight we made our best effort to recreate our favorite Atlanta tradition, Wing Night. When my parents came to visit (and I still have yet to blog about our trip together), they brought me some real buffalo wing sauce, which is not available here. (Well, they have Hooters wing sauce at USA Foods, but it's wrong on several levels.) Not owning a deep fryer, we cooked the wings on the grill, then doused them in sauce. We cooked tater tots (potato gems, in Aussie parlance) instead of fries, and used creamy Italian dressing (also brought by my parents) instead of bleu cheese. But the celery sticks were true to form, and the beer we chose (James Squire Golden Ale) was perfection: slightly microbrewish, just like the pitchers of (? we forget!) that we used to get at Taco Mac. A tas-ty TREAT!

The email you never received:

Subject: New friend request from Mark

Mark wants to be added to your Friendster friends list. By becoming friends with Mark, you will be able to send Mark messages and connect with his friends.

He would have invited you a long time ago, but, c'mon, "Friendster"? The name alone makes it seem like the sort of thing that Mark, in less enlightened times, would have labelled "totally gay-wad". It sounds like the kind of thing sent to you by the same sort of people who tell you that Bill Gates will send you $1000 for forwarding on this email. However, Mark and his wife both like meeting new people, and if Friendster helps, then why not? But he would rather not risk annoying you by putting an invitation in your email inbox.

So if you are doing the Friendster thing, drop him an email or leave a comment and he'll send you a proper invitation.

Go Knights! My old alma mater played their first ever bowl game this weekend. Sounds like it was a great game but with a disappointing result. They even had the highlights on TV here last night.

It's hard to get in the Christmas spirit when:

There is a largish planet between you and the bulk of your family.

It's the middle of summer.

Flies have taken over. (Okay, there are no "swarms" here but they're still pretty bad.)

You have to work the next week.

A large, dead tree in your backyard picks Christmas eve to start falling over. What's worse is that it's a tree that for some reason -- elephants? -- evolved prickly thorns all over its branches, and even its trunk. I've been at it with a saw for much of the afternoon.

Still, we're making do. This is traditionally the day to gorge myself ill on my grandmother's pierogies. We found some pierogies here to do the same, but tomorrow's supposed to be hot, so we decided to cook the turkey today.

Merry Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Festivus/Newtonmas to family and friends everywhere!

Year-end music wrap up. Oh, it's been a sad year. I just had a look at the Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2005 and I've heard, let's see, none of these albums. Not a dang one. I am official OLD and OUT OF TOUCH. Phooey. I've heard of one of the top ten bands, and that's only because he went on a rant after the New Orleans disaster.

I dunno, I filled out my collection of the back-catalogue of a few artists I already like, like Lucinda Williams. I listened to a fair amount of new stuff on Pandora. I saw a few concerts (Finn Brothers, Polyphonic Spree, PJ Harvey, Mudhoney, the Shins). But, musically, as far as new stuff goes, this year has been a giant sucking dearth.

If Laika, our dog, could talk, most days would sound like this:

Morning:
Me: Good morning. [Scratches Laika behind the ears.]
Laika: Good morning. Thanks for the scratching. You don't mind if I follow you around while you get ready, do you?
Me: That's fine.
Later.
Laika: I see you are ready for work now. Give me my rawhide chew, and I will run out back to eat it alone, because that is my instinct. Then you can close the kitchen door and go do whatever it is that you do.

Afternoon:
Laika: Hooray! You're home!
Me: Good to see you too, girl!
Laika: Hooray! You're home!
Me: Yes yes, okay, good girl.
Laika: Hooray! You're home!
Me: Settle down.
Laika: Let me lick your face!
Me: No.
Laika: Let me lick your face!
Me: No.
Laika: Let me lick your face!
Me: No. Oh, okay. [Lick.]
Laika: Hooray! You're home! Can we go to the park?
Me: Mind if I put my things down first?
Laika: Can we go to the park?
Me: Can I go to the bathroom first?
Laika: Can we go to the park?
Me: Give me a minute, would you?
Laika: Can we go to the park?
Me: Oh, okay.

(Back from the park. Mark is eating a piece of cheese.)
Laika: That cheese looks good. Can I have some?
Me: No.
Laika: Can I have some cheese?
Me: No.
Laika: Can I have some cheese?
Me: No.
Laika: Can I have some cheese?
Me: [Sighs.] Okay, here you go.
Laika: That was quite delicious. Can I have some cheese?

(Later.)
Laika: You can't take my toy away.
Me: You're right, and I don't want to.
Laika: You can't take my toy away.
Me: Yuck, get that slobbery thing off of me.
Laika: You can't take my toy away.
Me: Yes I can. [Yank.] See? Now go fetch it. [Throw.]
Laika: [Fetches, returns.] You can't take my toy away.

"Where do you find all these awesome websites?" I get asked that a lot at work, when I pass on a link. Here's where:

Blogdex - most popular links culled from people's blogs.

SlashDot - the best techie news site, with user comments.

Digg - sort of cross between the first two. I check this more and more these days.

del.icio.us popular list - sites people are saving as favorites.

Got any others you like?

The hazards of using your second language. Today, one of my Asian cow orkers (while heading off to lunch) said: "Well, I'm off to get some grubs." I hope he didn't mean that literally but I stifled my laugh just in case.

Weekend summary:

Friday night: Mark's other office Christmas party. We discover after arriving that partners were not invited, so we make an early evening of it. Indian food in town at Gaylords; my dish, yummy, Marjorie's, not so much. They also served ketchup with their papadums.

Saturday: Mark up early to watch the World Cup draw (Australia drew Brazil, Croatia, and Japan [ouch]. USA's in with Italy, Czech Republic, and Ghana [double ouch]). Afternoon: shopping, massages. In part of Mark's ongoing quest to try every type of spa treatment, he subjects himself to the "Traditional Stepping Massage". This did not involve the tiny-footed Asian girl as I had envisioned but rather an older Chinese guy in socks who proceeded to work me over thoroughly like the roughest soccer game I've ever been in. But it was surprisingly envigorating.

Sunday: Rollerbladed down to the Espy. Burgers on the grill. Then we set up the tent in the backyard just to try it out. Laika seemed to get the idea of camping, but was too excited by the surrounding possums to settle down, so she got the boot early on. The possum twittering drove Marjorie in soon after that; I made it to 5 a.m. or so, when the morning mynah birds drove me inside. Now I realise the real reason people have houses: they're to keep out the animal noises while you're trying to sleep.

The local paper has a short article and photo about last weekend's photo shoot. I won't say who I am in the photo except to say that I'm very freakin' visible.

This morning I got up at 5 am, shaved my tongue (the office Christmas party was last night), and went into town to get naked in front of a bunch of strangers.

It was a hoot, but damn cold. There were, I'd say, sixty of us. All body types; all ages; tattoos, piercings... One woman was there with her five year old son, who was a good sport most of the time, but was not happy to have to lay on the grass. It took about 40 minutes in all. The worst was posing on a bridge over the Yarra river, where we were exposed to the wind. Plus, I ended up having to lay in a wet spot (it rained last night). Brrr! Also, it started drizzling at the very end. The only witnesses were a group of joggers, one person on a hotel balcony, and a mostly-empty tram.

The calendars should be ready in about a week. Be warned, I might post some scans!

An interesting possibility presented itself at work today. The company has ideas about starting to outsource work to India (like everyone else these days). But, though it's way too early to call, it might mean a trip or two to India to set things up. Hyderabad or Mumbai. How cool would that be?

"Silly Season" is another Australianism, which is their term for the time around Christmas, when there are a slew of office (and other) parties. Silly? Hah. They've got nothing on the good ol' U. S. of A..

Uh oh. Last night we went to a (Aussie-style) Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's house. They had a picture of up by that famous photographer, Spencer Tunick, that takes pictures of large numbers of naked people in famous locations. He's even taken shots in Melbourne before.

I said to Marjorie, you know, if he ever comes to town again, we should participate. She said, you go right ahead, I'll watch.

So this morning I'm surfing around, and guess what's happening next week?

What I want for Christmas. An interesting bit of journalism from from favorite new author.

Apparently, Melbourne has another sport to its credit, besides footy, that was invented here and is played here pretty much exclusively. It's called trugo, and was invented in the 1920's by railroad workers, and involves knocking a rubber ring through goal posts with a railroad mallet. We had never heard of it until last night. Strange.

A friend of mine just got back from a trip to Egypt. I'm insanely jealous. Fortunately Marjorie decreed that tonight was the night we'd book our trip to Tasmania, which makes me feel better. Tasmania's always been just an obscure place on the map for me, not some place I'd ever thought I'd visit, and I'm stoked that we're going.

Sweet! Last night, in front of 83,000 people, Australia's national soccer team (dubbed The Socceroos) beat Uruguay to qualify for their first World Cup appearance in 32 years. It came down to a penalty kick shootout, which are VERY nerve-wracking, but for the first time in a very long time, the team I was rooting barracking for actually won a big game.

I watched from a pub with dozen or so of the lads from my soccer team. It was crazy fun; I yelled myself hoarse. Sadly, no one did the "Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oy oy oy!" cheer there, but people on the news were doing it. There were similar celebrations across the whole country, apparently: soccer has arrived.

A while back I mentioned that "shit" or "crap" are used as adjectives here, in place of "shitty" or "crappy". As a good example, today I got emailed this joke at work (as did Marjorie):

A woman goes to the zoo, and is shocked to find that they have only one animal -- a dog.

It was a shitzu.

Last Tuesday was a holiday here in Melbourne; probably the only one in the world based on a horse race. This year, we actually went. We would've witnessed some history, had we been able to see: the horse Makybe Diva won for the third straight year, a new record. Have a look.

Quote of the day:

"In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country--hold up your head. You have nothing to be ashamed of." -- Mark Twain

Geek alert. Watch this video clip of some white dots moving against a black background. It is extraordinary, but only if you know what you're looking at.

It's a star, whipping around the very center of our galaxy. Notice that you can't see the thing that it's whipping around. That's because it's a black hole, at the very center of our galaxy. This video clip pretty much confirms that there is a black hole at the center, which can be determined not only by the fact that you can't see it, but the speed at which the star whips by it. They estimate its mass to be about two million times that of our sun.

I had always thought that the center of the Milky Way was too dusty to see into; I don't know how they did it (though the answer seems to be "adaptive optics"). Notice the numbers on the top left; they indicate the year that each frame was taken, so you're looking at a ten-year time-lapse. And at this distance, it didn't just happen; you're looking at a star passing by a black hole about 28,000 years ago -- paleolithic times.

Think I'll go get stoned.

There was a classic commercial when I was growing up in the US, for Chevrolet. It was nothing but a theme song and a montage of scenes depicting Americana; the song went "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet", over and over. At the time, it really seemed to sum up America, and was a very popular commercial, if I remember correctly.

I'm currently working on the web site for Holden, Australia's biggest and truest car maker, in spite of their actually being part of GM. And the other night on TV they had a hour long documentary on the history of Holden, which I felt compelled to watch. They showed some early commercials, and one was almost identical to the aforementioned Chevrolet commercial. They had different words, though, to the theme song; this, apparently, was how you summed up Australia at the time: "Football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden cars".

So now Time Magazine gives us a list of the All-Time 100 Novels (in the English language). Of them I've read:

Catch-22

The Catcher In The Rye

A Clockwork Orange

Deliverance

The Grapes of Wrath

The Great Gatsby

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Lord of the Flies

1984

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Slaughterhouse Five

Snow Crash

Their Eyes Were Watching God

To Kill A Mockingbird

Fourteen percent -- that's a lot better than I usually do on these sorts of lists. I also tried to read Neuromancer but couldn't take it. It's a questionable pick anyway.

Teacher's pet? My soccer team's end-of-year banquet was last night, in a natty little upstairs function room in town. Pretty fun. Lots of greasy hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and awards. I took home the coach's player of the year award (for the thirds team) which was a nice surprise.

Read this, then this.

For a while I've been keeping a list of the IMDB's Top 250 movies, and checking them off as I go. Others apparently like to do the same sort of thing, judging from this new web site. A link to the movies I've seen can be found via the new link over on the right side under the kangaroo picture.

What's the highest ranked movie you've never seen?

Three posts about the same book? Sorry, but I just finished that diary, and man, they need to make a movie about it. Since I reported last:

The remaining Jews, the guy included, received orders to appear at SS headquarters in two days times with a packed suitcase, for what everyone knew was a death march. He was one of the ones that had to go help deliver the orders.

The night before they were supposed to appear, Dresden was firebombed.

In the resulting confusion he decided to cut the Jewish star off his jacket and run for it.

He and his wife joined the throngs of refugees fleeing the city.

Through a series of close calls, phony ids, and continual near starvation, they make their way as far as Munich.

They are near Dachau when the Americans arrive, and he witnessed survivors, the walking dead, still in their blue and white striped linen.
It all reads like Hollywood. Perhaps most interesting were his reports of the reactions of the people as the war ended and they came to realize that they had been fed humongous pack of lies. Naturally, those that were clued in knew all along (including all the atrocities); on the other end of the spectrum, there were plenty who kept on believing, but of course denied involvement.

"Mo"vember. A bunch of guys at work are planning on using the month of November to grow mustaches. They're calling it "Mo"vember. There'll be judging at the end of the month; I don't know what the prize is, but I thought about participating. Marjorie thinks it would be hilarious if I did.

I think it would be funny, but I like my jokes to last somewhat less long than a month. I don't see it happening.

More Aussie-isms.

To rock up: to show up, especially at a social event. "You all go on to the pub; I'll rock up in a half hour or so."

To shit: to bother. "That new guy may be smart, but he really shits me."

Ye: you (plural). Actually, I think this is an Irishism. "You can work on this by yourself, or the two of ye can finish it together."

Upon noticing my Irish coworker using this last one, I told her the similar rule used in the Southern US: "y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural. She got a big kick out of that.

Sufficient density. It used to be that you could know pretty much everything about computers, but not any more -- not by a long shot. (The same could be said of mathematics, physics, or several other fields.) In the IT business, you really have to pick and choose what you learn. There's always a buzz of new ideas, which is what makes it such a fun field, but which ideas are worthwhile, and which are a waste of time? Some people just seem to try out everything that sounds cool, and revel in that approach, but not me. I have to wait until I hear a thing mentioned in enough places before my interest is piqued.

Which is a long way of explaining that I've set up a list of my favorite links on del.icio.us. I'm a little dubious that a site for publicly listing your favorite links will have the broad social implications that some people are predicting for it. But it's reached sufficient density to at least appear on my radar. And at least I'll get to access my hot links from anywhere. So what, beeg deal.

Snobservation. A sure sign of mediocrity in a restaurant: do they use iceberg lettuce in anything?

I'm With Stupid! I had Marjorie look over one of my chapter submissions for the book I'm contributing to. Among other things, she pointed out that in one place I used the word "stupider" instead of "more stupid".

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou...

The book I'll be contributing to is called "Mind Performance Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Becoming a Better Thinker". It has chapters on memory, math, creativity, clarity, decision making, info processing, communication, mental fitness, and "metaprogramming". My chapters fall under math and communication, but I'll leave the specifics for a later date. I think it has the potential to do very well; I find this sort of thing discussed a lot out on the web, and an earlier O'Reilly book on a similar subject was quite popular. I've seen the proofs, and there's some choice stuff in there. Due out in January. Exciting!

It's already listed on Amazon, Powell's, and Barnes and Noble (under the wrong title).

Years ago, after picking up Mary Chesnut's Civil War diary on a whim, I resolved to read a lot more historic diaries. It has to be THE best way to learn history; even though it's from a single point of view, you still get all the little details that make it real.

I went on to pick up I Will Bear Witness, the first half (1933-1941) of a diary by a Jewish professor of literature living in World War II Nazi Germany. It's amazing, but I never picked up the second half (To The Bitter End, 1942-1945) because the book company was only selling it in hard cover at the time (dirty trick!).

Just recently I managed to procure a copy of the complete diaries ("The Klemperer Diaries") through our library system. It is just an astounding read. The author was Jewish by heritage only; he was actually a Protestant, and had an Aryan wife (which undoubtedly saved his life). Still, as the war presses on, he is increasingly deprived of everything; his academic title, his home, his typewriter, his savings... I'm up to 1942, and was nearly in tears on the tram today as I read about them putting down their much-loved cat before it could be rounded up according to a new decree. This was followed immediately by the Gestapo's first raid of their house. By Klemperer's account, they got off "easy" -- he was visiting a friend; his wife got slapped and called "a Jew's whore". They of course ransacked the place and stole a number of provisions, there being severe shortages at the time. They also ground up some garlic they found and hid it around the house, just so their home would stink.

He's 60 years old and had angina, but still was ordered to work with a road crew shoveling snow -- and was the youngest on the crew. Hard to believe there are still another three years of this to read about; he is continually so close to death; not just from his physical condition, but from the whims of the Gestapo.

Hunt this one down, and give it a read. Utterly captivating.

Read any good historic diaries?

Marjorie's birthday wrapped up with the chocolate indulgence high tea at the Windsor. With me, it's class all the way, see?

This being Marjorie's birthday weekend, we rented a car and drove up to Daylesford/Hepburn Springs for some west and welaxation. I've recently resolved to try all the various different types of spa and massage treatments that exist, so this time I got coated in mud and cocooned in a blanket, while getting a head massage. Very nice! Marjorie opted to get her feet done.

Along the way we saw our first two wild kangaroos -- alas, roadkill. But while waiting for our spa treatments, we walked a little ways up a nature trail. After spotting some Jacky Winters, a superb fairy-wren, and several crimson rosellas, Marjorie spotted a small kangaroo peering at us from the top of a rise fifty metres away. Our first!

Super Bowl Grand Final Sunday Saturday. Last Saturday was the big game day in Melbourne, our second footy Grand Final. And for the second time, no Melbourne team was involved, despite the fact that Melbourne teams make up more than half the league. This time it was the Sydney Swans versus the West Coast Eagles. Support in our neighborhood was overwhelmingly in favor of the Swans, for reasons we couldn't fathom. Was it an east coast versus west coast thing? Turns out, the Swans used to be the South Melbourne Swans, before moving north to Sydney.

Twice while we were eating out during the weekend did the patrons spontaneously break into the Swans team song. Obviously, they won.

Geek warning. A thread on a board I read regularly spurred me to go out and try to do some basic astronomy. We only have one crappy little set of binoculars, but I thought I would at least see if I could orient myself. Living in the city means you only get a handful of stars (though Melbourne has far clearer nights than any comparably-size city I know). But with a little help from Your Sky and a field guide I bought a long time ago, I was able to pick out the tail of Scorpius yesterday. Slightly hazy tonight, but I spotted it again, and followed a trail from it to a particularly bright star just above the horizon. My field guide identified it as Rigil Kentaurus, which didn't sound familiar. So I looked it up online, and it turns out that that's just the proper name for Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbor! A lucky find, considering there were only twenty or so stars even visible through the haze. Like the Southern Cross (supposedly right next to it, but obscured by a cloud), it's not visible from most of the Northern hemisphere. Pretty cool, I think.

I'm the penultimate! Our soccer team tallies best player votes at the end of each game. The other night we had our annual Vote Count night, where we see the tally from the year, presented as a game-by-game slide show with running totals.

I took second (for the thirds team), which is cool. Especially considering I have no ball skills to speak of, and don't have a particularly cool head when I have the ball. Early on I was aiming at not being the worst player on the team, so I'm happy with this.

Fairly eventful weekend, last. Saturday evening we went and saw a perennial favorite of ours, Glenn Tilbrook, at the Espy. Always a hoot. Nice thinly populated show, which is a good way to catch him. I called for him to play "By The Light of the Cash Machine", and he complied straight away. Marjorie walked up to the stage between songs to request the song he wrote with Aimee Mann, which he said he didn't remember -- "but I think it had a G chord in it." He did his amazing rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile", on acoustic guitar -- it has to be seen to be believed. He put the guitar behind his head and played an intricate repeating part while talking calmly into the mike -- he's quite an amazing guitarist. Climbing up on the bar, he did "Goodbye Girl" and "Black Coffee in Bed" singalong. There were a couple of blues covers with a guest guitarist whose name I didn't catch, that were quite tasty. And he closed with a cover of the Cornell Hurd Band's "Genitalia of a Fool" that had the crowd in stitches.

We stayed out too late, so I had to play our last soccer game of the season slightly crapulent and with not enough sleep. We lost a game we should have won. But it was fun. Home for a nap, then the first of a scheduled year's worth of once-a-month wine tastings, organized by a friend. Our turn to host will come. It should be a lot of fun, and edumacational too.

In the evening I went out and met with all my soccer teammates who were out "getting pissed". Out too late again, and I forgot to eat dinner too.

Not exciting news. YET. I've been asked to be a contributor to a forthcoming book. Without getting too specific, I will mention that it's an O'Reilly book, which is about as cool as it gets in the techie arena. I'm not going to get my hopes up too high, since my contribution would be small, and may not survive the editing process. It's very much the equivalent to a walk-on part in a big movie, that may well end up on the editing room floor. Still, it will be VERY COOL if it pans out, and might lead to follow-on stuff. Further details as events warrant.

On a lighter note-- here are the photos from our trip to Hamilton Island.

New Orleans. Not sure what to say. Still trying to fathom the extent of this tragedy. I went there, once. A little seedy but a unique and fascinating place.

There was a chart in a recent National Geographic, showing the number of hurricanes in the last ten years as almost double the number in the previous ten. They say this is due to the ocean temperatures being warmer. Is this a global warming issue? Hard to say; could just be a fluctuation. But it's worth investigating.

Podcast, schmodcast. Mixmaster Marjorie and I sat around the kitchen last night with some beers and played songs for at each other. We had just finished listening to the new White Stripes album, which ends with a gospel-y number, so "gospel" was the original theme. But we ran out of that, fast, and so switched to "original and cover songs", where we'd play a bit of the original and then play the cover. The playlist:

I'm Lonely (But I'm Not That Lonely Yet) -- White Stripes

Paul McCartney -- That Day Is Done (I like Elvis's version better)

Love Is Stranger Than Death -- The The

Jesus Gonna Be Here -- Tom Waits

Smells Like Teen Spirit -- Nirvana/Tori Amos

Which Will -- Nick Drake/Lucinda Williams

Hounds of Love -- Kate Bush/Futureheads

David Watts -- The Kinks/The Jam

Hallelujah -- Leonard Cohen/Jeff Buckley

Redemption Song -- Bob Marley/Joe Strummer (Somehow we don't own the original. Who could cover this song, but Joe?)

La Vie En Rose -- Edith Piaf/Louis Armstrong

New Amsterdam -- Elvis Costello/Tasmin Archer

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath -- Black Sabbath/The Cardigans

Cactus -- The Pixies/David Bowie

Hang On To Your Ego -- Beach Boys/Frank Black

Ruby's Arms -- Tom Waits/Frente

Gimme Some Truth -- John Lennon/Sam Phillips

Winterlong -- Neil Young/The Pixies

IGY -- Steely Dan (Who snuck that in there?)

The Other End Of The Telescope -- 'Til Tuesday/Elvis Costello

Speeding Motorcycle -- Daniel Johnston with Yo La Tengo

Police On My Back -- The Clash

Things started to break up towards the end, but it was fun.

Weird things my brain does.

1. Lately I've had the annoying tendency to confuse words that start with the same letter. So, I tell people I work on LaTrobe Street instead of Lonsdale Street (the next one down). Or I order a Cappriociosa pizza instead of a Calabrese (and end up with a pizza with anchovies. Ick. We peeled some off and gave them to the dog, and she promptly threw up). I confuse characters in books whose names start with the same letter, too. My brain must just index things that way.

2. While at work, particularly when I'm programming, I have random flashbacks, once or twice a day. Just for no reason, suddenly I start thinking about being in the parking lot of particular mini-malls back in Orlando, or ordering particular meals in restaurants in Atlanta.

3. The other day I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. As I was getting back into to bed, out of nowhere the name Gustave Flaubert pops into my head. Now, I've heard his name before, but I have no idea who he is (or I didn't until I just looked him up) and I hadn't heard his name lately, that I can think of.

Maybe I've been heading the ball too much in soccer.

At any rate, I've found a great new trick for training my brain. I'm starting a new project at work. It's a project that's been ongoing for a couple of years, and it's large and complex. I'm pretty much "drinking from the firehose" as they say, in the process of trying to assimilate it all. So, in the process of having things explained to me, I've decided to apply a method that Feynman espoused in one of his books. It's a simple principle, and it sounds obvious, but I don't think it's very widely applied, by anybody. Basically, what you do is to not let the person who's explaining things proceed until you are absolutely sure you understand the previous bit. Ask stupid questions, even if it's about something you probably should have known already and it makes you look bad. If you don't get it, make the person repeat things, even if they've just spent a half hour explaining it. Don't just let things proceed and hope that you'll get it through osmosis or something later on.

It works, and very well. My initial impression of this project is that it's pretty much the equivalent of a car that runs great but is maintained using silly putty, duct tape, and some very knowledgeable mechanics. It's my job to pretty much rein it in, or at least come up with some explanations as to why it requires such constant maintenance, so I have to pretty much get it all down cold. And to document everything, of course. Joy.

My favorite new Aussie term: "knob". Meaning, "dick", as in "He's such a knob."

Brrr. Coldest day of the year so far, I think. There were threats of snow in Melbourne today. It hasn't snowed here in ten years, from what I've heard. And we didn't get any, though I heard rumours of flurries.

Ever heard of Sudoku puzzles? I stumbled across them on the net yesterday, and played a few today at lunch. They're apparently big in Japan, huge in Europe, and sweeping America, but I had never heard of them. Then, coincidentally, a woman on the tram home today pulled out a book of them to pass the time. They're fun, but I like tsunami puzzles better.

There are now only eight planets. Or ten, depending on how you count them, but I think eight is more proper. A new object has been found orbiting the sun that's bigger than Pluto, and even comes closer to the sun than Pluto's farthest point. There are many who feel that Pluto already shouldn't be considered a planet.

No matter how you slice it, it just ain't right to say that there's nine planets anymore.

Just finished Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I agree with the author, that this is his best work. I had given up on him after reading Stranger In A Strange Land, which I disliked rather much.

Looks like this book may join the long line of obscure books that get made into movies shortly after I read them. Previous examples include A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander, and one other that escapes me. Hopefully this one won't star Russell Crowe.

There's another thing we learned last weekend.

We rented a car, and ended up driving our nutty dog Laika up through the central business district (CBD) of Melbourne, quite possibly for her first time ever.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the city was a whirl of sights and sounds. So it was surprising that any single stimuli might catch her attention. But, from a long way off, she spotted some horses pulling a carriage. And just freaked out.

I guess we can't ever send her to live on a farm. Apparently our girl hates horses. And, it seems, she's not alone.

Chicken Parmesan or "parma" is a Melbourne pub staple that we've enjoyed on many occasions. It's a rare pub that doesn't serve it.

A few weeks ago we caught a special on TV about a group of guys who go around and rate the best chicken parmas in Melbourne (no doubt in defiance of their doctor's orders). Turns out the best is just up the road from us. So we went and gave it a shot the other day.

I don't know what we were expecting. How good can a chicken parma actually be? It's not like they make it with ambrosia. It was good enough, I guess, but paroxysms of culinary ecstasy eluded us.

Club song. My soccer team sings a club song when we win. Every footy team down here also has a song. I don't know where these songs come from, but I'm sure there's some recycling going on. I know some of the footy songs date back to the '20s at least.

Since we've won our last four games, I've actually gotten to learn the club song. The words are interesting to me, because they seem to be carefully worded to avoid asserting the greatness of the team or anything like that. I'm not sure why; perhaps they are designed to be singable even when we lose? Here they are:

Weeeeeeell it's a grand ole team to play for,
And it's a grand ole team to see,
And if you know your history,
It's enough to make your heart's go whoa-o-o-o,
We don't care what the other teams say,
What the hell do we care?
Coz you always know,
That there's gonna be a show,
And the Middle Parkers will be there.

We are back from Hamilton Island (but we're not sure why).

Hamilton Island is the largest populated island in the Whitsunday island chain, just off the Great Barrier Reef.

Day one: Got up far too early to catch the flight, but it had us there by 10:30am or so, so we had the whole day to explore. While sitting on the balcony of our room, we were swooped by some Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos, which liked to perch on the rails of our villa. Later we were to find out that these cockatoos have a sort of Crips vs. Bloods thing going on with the crows all over the island, competing for scraps left (accidentally or not) by tourists. Also getting in on the action were Rainbow Lorikeets, Pied Curawongs (new bird sighting!), Silver Gulls, and a Pacific Black Duck. (We also spotted Yellow-bellied Sunbirds, Purple Swamp Hens, some sort of Friarbird, and some sort of eagle, or perhaps a Brahminy Kite).

No cars to speak of on the island -- just golf carts. So we rented one to tool around in. Even at golf cart pace, you can probably drive on every inch of road on the island in about 45 minutes. So we scoped it all out, then I pulled us into Wire Flyer, where they strap you into a hang glider and send you off, albeit dangling from a fixed wire. I was going to chicken out, but peer pressure won the day. Very fun! Maybe we'll buy in. I want to try the real thing now. (Marjorie would have gone, but we only had enough cash for one, and it was my birthday.)

Later we went down to the one bottle shop on the island for a bottle of wine, and headed up to One Tree Hill to enjoy the view. Reminded us both of the Pacific northwest, actually.

Had some nice steaks for birthday dinner.

Hamilton Island was interesting to me in that they practically have their own currency (most people opt to charge everything to their room, which every business in town [save for Wire Flyer] accepts). And, there's exactly one of every institution required to make life livable to a Westerner -- one general store/grocery, one post office, one video rental place, one hairdresser, one church, one bottle shop, one health club, one pharmacy. Of course, there are several restaurants and souvenir shops.

Day two: Slept in. Had lunch and headed out towards the unpopulated section of the island, which accounts for about two-thirds, up some well marked hiking paths. We ended up going farther than we expected (to within 750m of the peak) and enjoyed some magnificent views. Came back and waded out in the water off the beach for a bit. But as I stupidly forgot to pack my contact lenses, my snorkel gear wasn't much good.

Day three: We had scheduled a snorkel trip out to the reef. Fortunately we found out that they offered snorkel masks for different prescriptions, so forgetting the contact lenses wasn't a problem. The operation was Fantasea, and it was quite an operation. They took us out (in two meter seas, which was a chunder-fest for many passengers) to their exclusive platform on the Great Barrier Reef, known as (ulp) ReefWorld. Not the most organic of first experiences on the reef, but we came to appreciate the amenities. Water much calmer there with the protection of the reef. I got my prescription maskie, and we suited up in our wetsuits (water was quite chilly). We basically only made one long pass of the snorkeling area. Spotted a green sea turtle and a good number of other interesting fish, though. Swam up onto one sandy patch when Marjorie started plucking at my leg. At least I thought she was; turns out I was being attacked by a very territorial (and dauntless) little fish. We headed back soon after; even in our suits, the water was too cold for our blood.

Back on the platform we got some lunch, then headed out on their half-sub, which is like a glass-bottom boat, only you are much more down in the water, and can look out the sides. Very nice. Got to see a few more turtles. It was the start of manta ray season, and they even occasionally spot a whale, but no such luck today. Back at the platform we could see a massive grouper ("George", they've named him) that hangs out under the platform. He's at least six feet in length. The platform also has a fixed viewing chamber which we checked out, where a wrasse that was a good four feet long (big enough to have two remoras) swam by for our benefit.

All in all, a very nice operation, but I would recommend going during the middle of the week, and not at the height of winter!

Day four: Wake up, breakfast, and fly home. Lots of screaming kids.

We got our barky back! She was staying with another family courtesy of TopDog Minders. A great operation, and quite affordable. We're worried, though, that she may have had too good of an experience; she got to play with another dog the whole time, whereas she's alone much of the time with us. Though initially happy to see us, her reaction at being home I would qualify as "reserved". She does seem a bit tired, so maybe it's that. Next time, we'll put her in one of those cement-and-chain-link kennels -- that'll teach her to appreciate us! I kid.

Attack of the hippies. So yesterday I took a break at work, and headed down to the food court below the building to use the ATM. Just as I arrive in the lobby, a dreadlocked mass of hundred or so hippies storms in. Each was carrying a sunflower. Several of the more ambitious ones jumped over the security gates, trying to reach the elevators. They were whooping and hollering. Some of them followed me through a door they thought led deeper into the building, but actually led into the food court. They sheepishly ran back in. When I got back from using the ATM they were squatting in the lobby, chanting "One two three four, we don't want no global war." A couple were arguing with a security guard who they said was using excessive force in preventing them from getting through the security gates.

While I don't know what their specific beef was, I did figure out that they were protesting BHP Billiton, who we share the building with.

The police came, and I eventually made it back through the gates and into the lift.

We are definitely not in Singapore anymore!

Man of action.

Yesterday marks one year that we've been living in Melbourne. It doesn't seem that long at all. The amazing thing (to me) is that I haven't been on a plane since. I don't think I've ever gone a year without jetting off somewhere since the first time I flew.

Not that nothing is scheduled. We'll soon be flying off to Hamilton Island. I'm really looking forward to this.

May be starting a new project at work soon, which might send me to Adelaide on occasion as well.

Apropos of nothing, I have really bad hiccups right now, that have been going on for a half an hour. Perdue, help!

Marjorie often accuses me of having a fourth-grader sense of humor. I deny that. Actually, I think she's just mad because my sense of humor is rubbing off on her. She even makes puns these days.

Anyway, there's a song that my friend Jim used to sing that I recently tried to remember. It took a while for us to piece it back together, but I think we have it. It's very much the sort that would appeal to a fourth grader. Oddly enough, neither of us could find it anywhere out on the web. Sorry I can't post the melody, but here are the words:

Old Lady Bliss
Went out out to piiiiiiiii...ck some flowers
Stood in the grass
Up to her aaaaaaa....nkles, dearie
She saw a bird
Step on a turrrrrrrr...key feather
It broke her heart
She let a farrrrr...mer take her home.

Visit Austrlia. We may have one less apostle but we do have one more dolphin species.

Just bought a new 19" flat screen monitor that's big, bold, and beautiful. And what better way to break it in than some new pictures from space. I'm giddy. Earlier today the Deep Impact mission successfully slammed a coffee table-sized probe into the comet Tempel 1 to analyse the ejecta. The comet is a dirty snowball that has been sitting around peacefully since the time that the planets formed, so analysing what it's made of should tell us lots about the early solar system. Great work folks!

Update: Now with video. How did you picture a comet to look like, up close? I really had no idea. There's no sense of scale in the video, but the thing is about half the size of Manhattan. I've never thought of comets as things you could walk around on.

Last night we celebrated our anniversaries (three years of marriage, seven years together, and one year in Melbourne) by getting all dressed up and going out to the Waterfront Restaurant. It was nice, but we are a bit crapulent today.

Our new pub is fifteen minutes walk away. There are three or four pubs closer, which is why it took a while for us to find it. We like it quite a bit. Big and homey, with an interesting menu. They've decorated with some interesting kitschy touches, and have a couple of fireplaces and a mellow tabby cat that's given free wandering rights of the place. There's also a big lovely beer garden out back that we're looking forward to hanging out in come spring.

Last night we played trivia there -- it was their first night having it, I think -- and won. Took away two bottles of wine and six free drink coupons. Not a bad haul.

The Big Idea. Our company is pushing a big Thought Leadership initiative. They want us to come up with innovative new ideas, and leverage them into the market. (Did I really just say "leverage"?) There's even a prize for the best idea that's proposed within the next few months: a trip for two to Byron Bay.

Right about the time they announced this, an awesome new idea struck me. The particulars of it are technical (they're described at the end), but in short it would mean that at the very least our company could be producing much more reliable software. Conceivably the Idea would grow to become the ultimate new must-have testing tool. And further afield, I thought it might have the chance to change the way programming itself is done.

I thought about it for weeks -- in bed, on the toilet, on the tram. It would be difficult to write, but not beyond my ability. I had visions of leading a group of employees to develop and expand it, and to apply it to our existing applications. Or even to apply it to existing software (such as the Java Virtual Machine itself).

It would be hailed by one and all. And I would be feeling all smug and heroic while Marjorie and I relaxed up in Byron Bay, margaritas in hand.

The Idea was sitting out there, ripe and unplucked. I looked around, and could find no one else who had done it before. This was it. My big moment.

And so. Just before I started bearing down to work on a proof of concept, I decided to give one last look around to make sure it hadn't been done before. And as you've probably guessed by now, I found a product that does exactly what I had been thinking of, and then some.

Rather dismayed, I downloaded and ran it against our current project, and it found a lot of bugs. They did a great job with it, but the fact that it has not taken the programming world by storm is of some small consolation.

[Geeky technical description: I'll talk about how it applies to the Java programming language, but there's no reason why it couldn't be applied elsewhere. It occurred to me that you could, through code analysis, determine places in the code where null pointer exceptions would occur, simply by tracking variables as having a value of "null", "not null", or "maybe null". Methods would be tracked as returning the same possible values. So, it is quite possible to determine, for every pointer dereference, whether a null pointer exception was even possible. A program that passed such a scan with no possible null pointer dereferences would be guaranteed never to crash that way. And that is one of the most common ways for a program to crash.

After considering that for a while, it occurred to me that other unchecked exceptions, such as array index out of bounds and class cast exceptions, could be scanned for in a similar manner.

The program I found that does it is JLint. It finds many, many other kinds of bugs as well. You can integrate into the Eclipse API using this plugin, just like I was planning to do with my idea.

I don't know why it's not used more widely. Probably because it was done as a research project and has no advertising dollars behind it.]

Marjorie's parents have gone off home, leaving the dog to pine away alone on the weekdays, after two weeks of near constant attention. We'll post some images from their visit soon.

Next month we'll be celebrating our 7th year together, my birthday, and our one year anniversary in Melbourne. So we're going to go away somewhere. I get to pick, since it's my birthday, but there are just too many options to choose from.

When people ask you, "Who is the man?", how do you respond? Now, you can tell them, it's me. It's probably not good form to crow when the team loses the game but dang it feels good to score.

To spare you from having to endure these reports in the future, I've set up The Dull Blog, where I will be posting all my game results, in addition to books I've finished, movies I've watched, CDs I've bought, and a whole host of other unfascinating statistical minutia about my life. As the name implies, it'll just be things too dull to make it to the main blog. Well, I'll probably still crow a bit here when I score a goal or something.

Marjorie's parents have been in the country for a week and a half now, and seem to be having quite a good time. They've already visited Sydney, Cairns, and Uluru. They've ridden camels, held koalas, and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. They've actually seen more of this country/continent than we have now. Her dad says there's a few months worth of things he'd like to see here. Tomorrow I'm taking off work and we're going to go explore some more around Melbourne.

Marjorie's parents are visiting. They came all the way from the other side of the world just to bring us a suitcase full of American groceries. Isn't that nice. Oh, they're going to see a thing or two while they're here as well. Today Marjorie took them around to see some wildlife, and scored on all fronts -- koalas, kookaburras, flying foxes, lorikeets, galahs, pied cormorants, and brush-tailed possums. Later in the week they're all heading up to the Great Barrier Reef together, leaving me all alone and OH MY GOD I'LL HAVE THE WHOLE HOUSE TO MYSELF FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND -- uh, I mean, I'll be lonely.

Three years, three continents, three cities, seven apartments. Yesterday was our third anniversary. We just did a quiet evening at home, but we splashed out a bit on a bottle of wine. Let's see, first anniversary is "paper", second is "cotton", and third is "cold germs", right?

Sickie. Only my second week of work, and I'm taking my first "sickie". Actually, that word has connotations of "faking it", but I really am sick. My first big, brash, Aussie cold, and I got some big, brash Aussie drugs to counter it with -- all cold medicines are over-the-counter here, but they have codeine in them.

Laika is the only dog I've ever known who doesn't bark at visitors. Workmen came to fix the kitchen ceiling, and she greeting them with a wagging tail. Our kitchen is filling with dust as I write this.

My soccer team now has a website where you can read game reports. I know you will all be checking regularly. I'm back on the thirds team for now. And apparently I was chosen as "B.O.G" for our last match, which I hope means "Best of Game".

After upgrading our workstation to Windows XP, I made the mistake of not turning on the firewall.

Stupid.

IE had started rerouting my default homepage to some search engine that encouraged me to look up information on Viagra. We started getting popup ads for anti-spyware programs (which is like a burglar breaking into your house and leaving pamphlets for home security systems). Ad-aware just found 117 infected files, and cleaned them up. Hopefully. There's a good chance it didn't find everything.

Things like this make me start to reconsider my opposition to capital punishment.

Tonight is our soccer team's big social event of the year, in honor of the FA cup. There's going to be something like 130 people there. It starts with a trivia competition at 7:30pm, but the game doesn't start until midnight, Melbourne time. Then I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow morning for, you guessed it, our soccer game. Sounds like poor planning but that's just how it worked out. I'll be rooting for Man U if Tim Howard is playing, or for them to lose big otherwise. This game is just a warmup for the big match next week anyway.

Tonight we rented I Heart Huckabees, an unlikely little movie that we enjoyed very much. Say what you will about Hollywood -- they still turn out a slew of daring, original titles each year that don't pander to the masses.

After Marjorie went to bed I heard a crash from over in the kitchen. It turns out a big chunk of the plaster roof, about a meter square, came crashing down on our kitchen counter. A nasty, dusty mess that took me a good hour to clean up. It got into the stove, toaster, and sink, so I hope our dinners aren't crunchier than usual this month.

Good news. I've been contracting for nine months with this company. They are choosy about whom they hire, it seems. But now they've asked me to join on, and we've agreed on a salary. Huzzah!

In no time at all, it seems, the sun started going down before we even get home from work. And the days are only getting shorter. We're on a comparable latitude with NYC, so I don't know why it seems so extreme, and so sudden.

It's roughest on the dog, who doesn't get the same sort of quality park frolic time she used to. Everyone here is in the same boat, and so the poo density in the park is increasing, as no one can find their little steaming piles of responsibility in the dark to pick them up. And thus nature provides itself fertilizer for the spring, and the cycle is complete.

As I alluded to, yesterday I played on the second "reserves" team, in addition to just the thirds team that I usually play on. I honestly can't figure out why, as there are much better players than I on the thirds, and that's not just false modesty. But I ended up playing pretty good, and had a really good time in the end. I like the bigger pressure. I got to watch the first team play afterwards, and hoo boy, I am most certainly not ready for that.

Before the game the seconds team coach collected my ID (they have stringent requirements here), and did a double take, saying "Hooray, I'm not the oldest guy here!". That gives me mixed feelings. I'll show these young hooligans a thing or two though.

Back on-line. Upgraded the home computer to Windows XP, upgraded the RAM, installed a wireless network card, and we're back.

Not a lot new here. Weather has been awesome. Spring seemed to give us a miss, and summer wasn't much to speak of, but autumn has been just one spectacular weekend after another. This is the first weekend that's it's been cold at all during the day. Looking forward to playing soccer in it tomorrow. Somehow I ended up agreeing to play two games tomorrow, which is going to hurt.

I should be hiring on permanently at work soon (finally). The project is approaching the critical end stage, and I only recently learned how huge in scope it really is. More details to come.

What a mess. So, after the misadventures with the first repair place, I took it to another. After a week, they called to say it was ready. Of course, it wasn't; it was having the exact same problem. So today was another week later, and this time they said it was the memory that was bad, intermittently. Okay, fine. The replaced the RAM, and I tried it out in the store; it booted, but kept getting some sort of page fault when it tried to shut down. But at least it was booting, so maybe they were on to something.

I have it home now, and it's connected to the internet, so I'm a tiny bit satisfied. Everything seems really sketchy, though; I think there are problems with the registry. So, I'm in the process of uninstalling everything. Now the wireless card has stopped working. Anyone know any good diagnostic software?

The return of boring soccer reports. Dull cheers and golf claps, everyone!

First game was today. Inauspicious, in that it was way the hell out in whatever the Australian equivalent of Podunk, Iowa, and I tried to go by public transport. Despite leaving more than two hours beforehand, I only just showed up as the game was about to start. And I scraped myself climbing over the chain link fence to get to the pitch.

Luckily I had the first half to compose myself on the bench, since you have to clear it with the referee that your a registered player. This is a MUCH stricter league than in Singapore. Everyone has these large printed ID cards with their pictures on them, and scan codes that the referee swipes with a bar code reader whenever you get a yellow or red card. Finally in the second half I got called to go on, and the ref took my number and made me tuck in my shirt. Then, just as I was about to run on, he said, "I can't let you on with that earring..."

I didn't play horribly, but I didn't play well. It seems like a good bunch of folks, and I think my skill level is about right. Good to be playing again.

Phoo. Our long silence has been brought on by a sick computer. It gave me the blue screen of death mid-email, and simply refused to boot afterwards.

I took it to one repair shop, who promised to get back to me in a couple of days. After harassing them a bit, finally, a week later, they called me and said that it was all fixed, that the problem was caused by dust.

So I went to pick it up, and luckily I tried booting it before leaving the store, because the exact same problem was occurring. Not only that, the plastic around the display had a nice new crack in it. Which they denied responsibility for.

I was not pleased.

Now, I don't want to mention any names, but it was Phil's Computers on Pelham St in Carlton.

Anyway, now the computer is in another shop, and we have brought out our backup computer, and have connected using dialup. Soon we'll get it hooked up to the network proper, but for now, some access is better than no access.

Our friend Ken from Singapore (he of the art and the zoo is in town for a visit. Yesterday we drove out to the Healesville sanctuary, which turned out to be more zoo than sanctuary. But it was quite cool. Every exhibit featured wildlife native to Australia, which was good because we got to see some local things we hadn't ever seen before, like Tasmanian devils and pygmy possums. The koalas and echidnas were active as well, which is unusual. The highlight (at least for Marjorie and me) was the lyrebird. We had seen one of these before in the wild but this time we got to hear him display for a prospective mate. Lyrebirds are the best mimics in the world, capable of imitating barking dogs, chain saws, camera shutter noises, etc., but this one seemed intent on just imitating local birds. Finally, after a few minutes, we were presented with an uncanny imitation of an ambulance siren, that even transitioned between the slow rising/falling note and the alternating high-low sounds just like the real thing. Very interesting.

I joined the fantasy football league at work. That's fantasy Australian rules football, actually. As I can't name a single player, it's going to be tough. So I picked every player in the league who's named "Mark". My team name is the All-Marks.

Woo hoo!

Find soccer team (Mark)


I think I finally found my team -- Middle Park -- and they play just up the road. There's actually three teams; firsts and seconds that compete hard, and a third that is more of a show-up-and-play social team like I had in Singapore. They train on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I practiced with them on Thursday, and boy is my [everything] tired. Not used to doing actual drills and such. We did running drills as well as pushups and situps. Afterwards everyone went to the pub, and I chatted with just about everyone. There's guys from all over -- England, Chile, Scotland, France. They used to have an American, who was really good apparently, so everyone is calling me the "replacement Yank".

Although they take the game seriously, it seems more of a social club. To wit: at the end of the night at the pub, they said to me, "You should keep coming out. Oh, and if you want to play some soccer too, that would be great!"

The company I'm working for just landed a choice new contract with Lonely Planet, to do some work on their website. I'm hoping I get a chance to work on it when my current project is done. How cool would that be?

Flotsam.

It's Labour Day weekend here. Just like Labor day in the states, it's a three-day weekend at the end of summer. By good fortune, the weather is supposed to be in the 30s (that's a good thing here). We're going to try to hit the beach.

In chess news, I've been playing a guy who's a bit better than me, but who I can beat on a good day. But today I played a guy who just wiped the table with me, two games. A good dose of humility. Part of the reason that chess is fascinating to me is because you can follow all the supposed rules of strategy, and see them work, but then good players are still able to drive in a wedge and crash over you like a wave (to mix a metaphor).

The last great physicist of glory days of the first half of the last century died this week. This was the guy who figured out how the sun shines. I always wanted to meet him.

The Station Agent is a great little movie.

New Aussie term: "to spit the dummy". A dummy is another word for a pacifier here. So, like a baby would spit out a pacifier when pitching a fit, spitting the dummy is having a tantrum. Also known as "cracking the shits" or "having a tantie".