Recovery of the old records will be a bit of a process – fortunately I still had a copy from when I migrated from f3d.  And I’ve found a [...]]]> Problems with my organizational ability collaborated to ensure proper payment did not end up at my host in a timely manner.  So they dropped my DB.

Recovery of the old records will be a bit of a process – fortunately I still had a copy from when I migrated from f3d.  And I’ve found a tool called Warrick (which can be downloaded and installed instead of waiting on the free server queue) that has helped recover some of the interim entries.  I’ll work to reinstate these over the next little while.

I do plan on keeping this little bit of posterity online.

Living in Brisbane has been good, but introverted. I’ve spent too much of my time by myself, and with the knowledge that I would [...]]]> Brisbane and I are parting ways in less than a week. Got a ticket to Melbourne for $69. Not too shabby at all! I’m there for about two weeks.

Living in Brisbane has been good, but introverted. I’ve spent too much of my time by myself, and with the knowledge that I would be moving on at some point, I had trouble making friends with new people.
Been spending a fair amount of time with the Adblock community – which is virtually everywhere, so I’ll be able to continue where ever I end up. That’s where a lot of my efforts have been going.
Spending time here with the cat. The cat is quite loud and insistent – in order to get cuddles. It’s pretty strange, I don’t know that I’ve ever met a cat like it before. It will bang it’s head into me (and other people) in order to say “pay attention to me”. Happiest on peoples laps, backs, beds, and (strangely) under tables. Always looking for confirmation of acceptance.
Been walking as well, through the parks on the 45min – 1 hr walk between my place and Michelle’s. The last bit is on a busy road, but most of it is nice. We had a storm here a few days back that brought down inches of hail in some parts of the city, torrents of rain and lots of lightning – all in about 1 1/2 hours. Afterwards I walked to Michelle’s, and the creek/drainage area that goes along the centre of the parks was rushing. I would have liked to have my tripod – it was too dark to use the camera without some stability.
Anyways, that’s what’s up for the moment.

The web site in the aforementioned entry is now getting 10x the traffic that this site is, and it’s only been up for [...]]]> Brisbane keeps pulling me back. Or maybe not so much Brisbane, but the comfort that I feel here. Wonderful girlfriend, nice place, familiar surroundings. Still, I need to move on.

The web site in the aforementioned entry is now getting 10x the traffic that this site is, and it’s only been up for just over a week! I’ll put it down to fortunate listing.
Folks back home have put together a “Brendan Come Home” petition. Sweet folks! Don’t know if I’m supposed to see it yet, but nevertheless, I’m impressed at the succinct and accurate comments from everybody. Each and every one of them hits the nail right on the head. Well, I can’t stay in Australia indefinitely, I don’t qualify for a skilled migration or anything like that these days, so I’ll be back, but not absolutely sure of when, yet.
Oh, and load time may be a bit more ’cause I got a background picture, from Byron Bay.

I miss the album of The Streets that Alison had, ’cause it’s different than the one that everyone else has. Better flow to it, or maybe just the flow that I’m used to. The “other” album isn’t as appealing. One of the good tracks is on the radio right now. Amazing how memory works.

Home is calling. The spring, the rebirth, the emergence from hibernation. The social groups, the sense of belonging, everything there. But I’m not ready to go back, I’m not done here yet, there’s more to see and do.
Michelle and I had won tickets to a screening of XXX2 while going to the free movies at Southbank. There must have been confusion while filming – they made something along the lines of The Fast and The Furious 3 instead. Bit of a title change over here, too – “xXx2 The Next Level” instead of the American title “xXx: State of the Union”. If the first one blew your mind, then this one will be enjoyable. If you’re like me, and found the first one required a bit of forced suspension of disbelief but was otherwise fun, don’t bother.
Getting my head around Javascript and PHP, ’cause may be using these for a work-type project soon. In the meantime I’m setting up some hosting/installation of Adblock modifications:
http://www.sitesled.com/members/bene/adblock.htm
It’s still pretty basic, but working on it.

When [...]]]> Talking with folks back home, there isn’t an acceptance that oil is going to become much more expensive and that’s going to change the way we live. It’s not really understood here, but the price of oil has increased 4 times in the last 5 years for Australia, which is kindof significant.

When it comes down to it, the way that we live isn’t sustainable. Expectations of owning a car, cheap energy, easily available out-of-season foods just aren’t reasonable. One nation using 1/4 of the oil used in the world (that’s the US, using 20 million barrels of oil a day), and expectations that Saudi oil output (the most significant output in the world) will only be increased by a maximum of 2.5 million barrels per day over the next 7 years (according to the Bank of Montreal, Saudi oil company Armco says only 800,000 in the same time), and pressure from the growing Chinese economy – 1.3 billion people vs the US’s 300 million, all wanting the American lifestyle – mean that, while there’s still lots of oil in the ground, there’s a lot more people wanting it, which makes it more and more expensive.
Oh, and it’s getting more expensive to extract, both financially and environmentally, as areas like Alberta’s tar sands are seen as potential sources. Ick.

Went out to the climbing gym today, [...]]]> I’ve decided not to necessarily write entries on paper prior to posting them online. The previous entry was done that way, and this one is too. Changes with the way I’m doing things, I think it’s better to be writing something than nothing at all.

Went out to the climbing gym today, ’cause it was their one year anniversary. Met some more folks, including a guy that I’d met on the bus a few nights back. I’d raved about climbing, and he’d done it once or twice before, and so he brought his girlfriend out, and the two of them had a great time.
Thought about picking up an Adbusters magazine. Haven’t had a chance to drop by Chapters to read it for the last many months. Out of touch with that scene – I’ve always liked the fact that they call themselves a magazine of the social environment. That’s a very important thing that many people forget about. I also miss 2600. Not so much the involvement in either community, but the awareness of the activity.
Visited Michelle and Mayumi for dinner and a bit of a trim to the hair, nothing serious, and got back home to Ryan trying to set up a wireless access point and internet connection sharing and the likes. Hardware problems, odd configuration options and other things made the process lengthy, but it’s all set up now. My brain has been working well today, or at least this afternoon, having absolutely rocked on the Sydney Morning Herald weekend crossword that I was working on with Michelle after dinner.
Late night TV on weekends in Australia is good – music video program called Rage showing nonstop videos, no commercials, did Zero from Smashing Pumpkins, now March of the Pigs from Nin, Zero was preceded by a Korn video, “Where’s your head at” by whoever, and a couple other similarly non directly mainstream, not so modern, and definitely not particularly commercial tracks.
And for Firefox, the BugMeNot extension has made my news browsing a much better experience – it automatically fills in a valid user name and password for most sites that require sign ins. Coupled with Adblock, I’m a happy boy.
I was thinking of making a list of every computer game I’ve ever played.

Also, I don’t tend to write as often when I’m staying still, [...]]]> There’s been a while without writing. Have had other things distracting me, like Michelle. She’s the only one that I’m really seriously interacting with, and things that go on between us are between us, and I haven’t been writing about them.

Also, I don’t tend to write as often when I’m staying still, and I’ve really been staying still this time. I’ve been feeling that I haven’t been moving forward socially, employment-wise, intellectually, that I’m sitting here using time that could be used more effectively elsewhere.
A few notable things in the last month: making a Scrabble board and pieces out of a pizza box, Lemon Meringue Pie and carrot cake, picnic in the park, I’ve started climbing again.
I worked for a while for Greenpeace, a bit doing phone promotions for free seminars to businesses. I’ve pretty much decided that the folks who wanted to send me to New Caledonia aren’t going to, which sortof makes choices easier.
And in the mean time I’m getting older. It’s the sort of thing that happens without you doing anything.
From time to time I think about cool things, but then I don’t get around to writing them down, and they move around pretty easily. Been distracting myself with a couple of dial-up tolerant games, Warring Factions and RuneScape, both of which are free. So not too bad, ’cause we’ve got free dial-up at home. Runescape’s frameset doesn’t like Adblock.
Also looking at Peak Oil stuff. Michelle and I had a moment of hesitation when we were like “what happens if oil makes it too expensive for international travel like we know it?”
So that’s the story for the moment.