Category Archives: News

New job – finally!

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For the last about 14 months I have been working on a particular project at work which, last week, finally came to a close. This job has been both the best and he hardest job I’ve had: I’ve learnt a lot of stuff, met some really great friends and I’m now feeling quite burnt-out. Anyway, after some to-in and fro-ing last week, I’m starting in a new job tomorrow in a different area. I’m quite looking forward to it – it’s getting me right into the kind of work I’ve been hoping to do, so we’ll see how it goes. Look for me to start looking less tired and a bit more invigorated again in the near future.

Moo!

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Stikfas with Moo MiniCards

Originally uploaded by Mister Tim.

The last few weeks (basically since arriving back at work after our WA holiday) has been the most stressful time at work I’ve ever experienced. Fortunately, now that the Fair Pay Comission has made its first decision, things are a bit quieter and my project is (finally) finishing up on Friday week. While it’s been a great job I’ve had over the last year, I’m now ready for a change and something a bit less stressful.

One bright point this week is that Tegan and I each received a box of Moo MiniCards. This is a cool little company that we discovered via flickr. Basically, they’re trying to reinvent the calling card concept, but make it fun and personal – not like a business card. We ordered our boxes a week or so back when they were offering free international shipping as an introductory offer (and the shipping was really fast, considering they came from London).

These cards are drawn from our Flickr accounts – and they look so cool! The ones in this photo are all mine, but Tegan got some nice ones as well. My cards turned out a bit better than Tegan’s – several of hers were a bit dark and we can’t quite tell iff it was specific to the print run for each of them, or just because I chose photos that were brighter or had more contrast. Regardless, we both think they’re cool and so do the people we’ve given them to!

So, please ask if you want us to give you one/some, or you might just find that we hand them out for various reasons at points in time. And we’re both already thinking about how we can improve on the ones we’ve got when we order the next batch…

Holiday in WA

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Well, we’re in Western Australia.

For those who didn’t hear, we were coming over for the wedding of one of Tegan’s cousins on 30 September, and independently a bunch of our friends were planning a group holiday to WA, and we have managed to combine the two. I’m posting from Dunsborough, which is on the coast north of the Margaret River – a few hours south of Perth and Fremantle.

We flew down on Monday night, spent a few days in Perth and Fremantle – checking out Rottnest Island and the Pinnacles, and then headed down South on Thursday. We spent yesterday getting settled and went to Cape Naturaliste (a popular whale watching spot, but we didn’t see any) and then to the Ngilgi (the first ‘g’ is silent) Caves, which are beautiful and very interesting limestone caves in the area – not as big, grand or old as the Jenolan Caves, but very good nonetheless.

The seven of us are staying in a luxury holiday home which has proved so far to be an excellent base for exploring the region. Today being a little windy for outdoor exploring, we’re heading off to tantalise our tastebuds with some of the local culinary delights – wine, cheese, chocolate, olives, fudge, more wine…

Highlights so far:

  • Riding bikes around Rottnest Island (and seeing quokkas)
  • The Pinnacles – amazing limestone formations (about 3 hours north of Perth)
  • Hanging out with good friends
  • Ngilgi caves
  • Taking lots of photographs (hundreds of digital shots already, and almost four rolls of real film so far)

Da Vinci Code Google game

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Apparently I was a third prize winner in the Australian version of the Da Vinci Code Quest that Google ran recently. I arrived home today to find a large-ish black bag with rope handles – like a cheap version of the type you get in swanky stores – stuffed into our letterbox. Upon opening it I found a copy of the ‘Da Vinci Code’ book, and a number of other bits and pieces all with Da Vinci Code logos on them, as you can see in this photo:

From left to right, back to front (and with the bag it came in behind them) they are:

  • a leather folio/organiser type of thing – like a purse for a man
  • a combination luggae padlock
  • a little notebook in a metal casing
  • a copy of the Da Vinci Code novel
  • a little keyring flashlight with batteries
  • a globe-shaped puzzle (called, interestingly enough, a global puzzle)
  • a Da Vinci Code-branded disposable camera

Now, I’m mildly interested in reading the book, since I’ve never read it before, and the puzzle is kind of interesting – but it’s all really a bit tacky. I couldn’t decide at first if I had really won something or whether they just sent this to everyone who completed the Google competition puzzles, since there was no letter or explanation with the package. After a bit of Googling (how ironic) I found some references that said that in Australia there would be 30 third prize Da Vinci Code travel packs – so it looks like I’ve won one of those. I’m not sure what to do with it all now – give it away, keep it, sell it on eBay.

Any suggestions?

Sharing interesting things when you don’t have time to write

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I find nearly everything interesting.

It’s one of those things about me that I can become interested in all sorts of different things and I like to know a bit about everything. At some level I just want to know everything, but that’s a pretty unrealistic goal. I’ve had conversations recently along the lines that the ability to find something interesting in anything is kind of a geeky trait – or maybe just a mark of intelligence – but it’s a trait that I relish in myself. it also goes some way to explaining why, particularly in this Internet age, I’ve become a bit of a news junkie.

It’s great and it’s terrible; a blessing and curse. It’s great because I can satiate my thirst for knowledge and read breaking news, opinion, commentary and all sorts of tidbits just about whenever I want. I’ve got quick links on both home and work computers to sites such as the Sydney Morning Herald, digg (a great newer find), Slashdot, Whirlpool, Wikipedia and a few other news and reference services.

One of the things I tend to do from time to time is email links to interesting articles to Tegan or to other friends, and from time to time I quite enjoyed sharing them on this site and writing up some thoughts about them, for example in this post: https://www.johnsons.id.au/?p=32. However, I also don’t really like doing it. I feel that not many people really read this site, and those who do do so because they are friends or family, and less because they want to know what I’m interested in.

Enter del.icio.us

I got started with this service a little while ago, mainly as a way of bookmarking things at work and then being able to easily access them at home – in the past I used to send myself emails at home with links to pages I wanted to look into more or bookmark. Now with this service, I can easily bookmark them online, easily find them again and, thanks to a Quicksilver plugin on the Mac, they’re nicely integrated and searchable on my main home computer.

Another advantage is that they are easy to share with others. By visiting ‘my’ del.icio.us page at http://del.icio.us/mistertim, you can see any pages I’ve bookmarked. Tegan has started looking this up occasionally to find interesting things I’ve found, and I could even add an RSS feed of my bookmarks into Safari or Firefox for live updating, or I could add a feed of them to the sidebar on this site so that, say, the last 10 sites I’d bookmarked in del.icio.us would show up there.

My links are, obviously, heavily skewed towards my interests – politics, public service, good eating, technology, gadgets and religion. If you’re interested, have a look from time to time or subscribe to the RSS feed at http://del.icio.us/rss/mistertim. You might even find the service useful yourself.