The last dozen years governing the economy

Good summary of Howard's term in office, from one economist's point of view.

Oh, Mr Rudd!

It's nice to see that the PM elect catches public transport. But just because you're trying to get yourself elected doesn't mean that you should go around tagging everything.


Well, he is going to be the PM for all Australians - including graffiti artists …

Trying to cross the highway a couple of days ago …

Yes, the curb is totally under water.

Exam time 2

Part of my (now) ongoing series of exam venue photos, taken on my phone.

More progress on the kitchen

Dad and I laid the tiles and they look great. We also found a dish drawer on Ebay (the photo is of me collecting it). So, all we need now is wall tiles, wall paint (almost chosen) and to drill some holes to connect the dishwasher. Everything else is working.

Today in writing class

Well, I'm doing a course on writing at work and today there was a competition to invent a new word. Mine is meganym.

Meganym - overly positive (or negative) superlative used in place of a more appropriate synonym.

Examples: 'terrible' instead of 'bad'; 'superb' instead of 'good'.

Used in an ironic sentence: 'the overuse of meganyms in contemporary speech exasperates me'.

Feel free to use it :)

Contrecoup

The Else came on the iPod today - this is TMBG's latest album btw - and it's good to listen to it with headphones because different details can be picked up. This time I noticed the song Contrecoup has some intersting words in it. So, when I got home (after playing frisbee in the rain) I looked them up. As part of my investigations I came across the reason why these odd words were in the song in the first place (also see here.). It was basically a dare, an interesting nerdy dare :)

In progress…

We know how old the kitchen was

Taking out the trash

TMBG

I've been meaning for a while to write about my love of They Might Be Giants. I'm writing this a little too late at night to be bothered to write anything properly but I wanted to get it out of the way. Or something…

I reignited the flame when I bought the Spine and I found that I really loved the album. Then I caught up on a bunch of their podcasts which included such gems as their opinion on string theory. Check out this video (thanks Phil).

Katrina gave me Here Come the ABCs which is a fun "children's" album and then I bought their 12th album bringing my total up to eight. (I'm missing their first two as well as the internet only album released through eMusic.)

I'm looking forward to Here Come the 123s :)

Although I've managed to regain contact with some friends with whom I had lost contact, my use of Facebook is turning into a battle with Maz on the Traveller IQ Challenge.

Arrr!

Avast!

FBOP

Recently the mother-in-law gave us a sample box of Earl Gray FBOP tea. What? Well the packet told us that 'F' stands for flowery. Hmmm… Subsequent investigations have opened up a new world of tea and we are planning on doing some exploring. I'm looking forward to trying TGFOP :)

Ah, yes I see…

Although the main distraction is in setting up my profile and joining lots of random groups and seeing who are friends of my friends and sending invitations to friends etc. I feel that once it is set up the actual use of it will be small.

And I'm not sure that the whole social network is all that social. Seeing whether you're the same kind of werewolf as your friends and leaving messages that say less than your average sms aren't the most meaningful forms of contact…

Fun,yes (take me on in the Traveller IQ Challenge) but deep, no.

The question everyone's asking

No, not 'when are you going to write something on your blog?'. Only two people have asked me that… This particular question is just a bit more common than that:

Are you on Facebook?

A couple of people ask me. Why would I be? I get an invitation. I ignore it. More people ask me. Or, I'm present when they ask someone else. Then my wife joins (!) and everyone I know is wanting to be her friend. Then I'm asked a couple more times. Then I get another invitation. Then I see this while I'm (meant to be) studying…

Can you see where I'm heading? Well, too late. I'm already there…

Where did we go? Here's a clue:

OK, if you want to know more, click on the Picassa link on the right. Do you want stories to go with the photos?

Marge: Homer, is this how you pictured married life?
Homer: Yeah, pretty much, except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.

Well…

It's really hard to know how much my life will change tomorrow. How much and what ways.

I'm feeling calm at the moment but I think that is mainly because I haven't been thinking enough about it. Perhaps I still don't realise what's about to happen. I've found that it is easy to stay distracted by thinking about and doing (and not doing, of course) all the little things I need to get ready. I've had to pack up and clean my flat (I'm in the middle of doing that now), organise a holiday :) and generally get ready for 'the big day'.

I'm not worried about tomorrow. I think it will mostly be fun. I can do events and I can be the centre of attention if I have to. So taking part in a wedding is fine. But then what? What does that mean? I'm somewhat prepared for a wedding but I'm not sure how prepared I am for a marriage.

OK, with God's help we can work it out together as we go. I just need to work out how much I need to change and to learn to love Katrina, making her needs and interests a priority, even though I won't always understand when her mind works differently to mine.

Some advice that we were given for the wedding also applies to the marriage: remember to have fun!

(Meanwhile, you can look forward to honeymoon photos…)

A dark, lonely Monday night...

This is the scene at 6pm tonight, outside a lecture room, waiting to have an exam. My first exam in 6 1/2 years. I got out of the room at 8.50pm.

Despite being a bit distracted (in thought and deed) and not always having motivation to study, I was satisfied and found that I had done enough study and thinking about the subject. So yes, it went pretty well I think (but no promises about what mark I'll get). I just finished the first subject of my post graduate course :)

Good to have it out of the way so I can concentrate on... other things... for the next week and a bit.

And at least it didn't start raining until after I got home and was relaxing in front of Futurama :)

indecisive because I'm not emotional enough?

I like Ross Gittens. It could be partly because I'm discovering that economics can be interesting and he explains concepts well. He also looks at things from a more human perspective rather than a purely rational one (as in economic rationalism). This article is an example of that.

But the reason I'm putting it here is because of something he mentions briefly. I seem to have a bit of a reputation for indecisiveness. Yeah, OK, it's often true, I'll admit. But it's not that I can't make decisions. It's more that I'm not good at making random ones. I need to have a certain amount of information before I can decide that option A is better than option B. If I don't have enough information, what can I do?

I also have a reputation for not being very emotional. Hmm... yes and no... It's true that I have a preference for rationality. It's true I don't have extremes and there are a lot of things that won't affect me very much. But I definitely have emotions (you'll be pleased to know) and I can be emotional. I even make emotional decisions sometimes. But if you put me on the scale from emotional to rational I'm definitely placed to one side...

So, it turns out that these things might be linked. If I'm indecisive about something it could just be because I can't easily make an emotional decision about it.

5.5 weeks

In 5 weeks, 3 days, and 12 hours the ceremony will be about to begin. It's only just starting to sink in that I'll have a fair bit to do in that time.

This month will be pretty busy so I'm expecting that there won't be much time to play with people - we'll hopefully make up for that in August... Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

I've got my uni course to finish, my wedding to arrange, my fiance to support and a new flat to renovate. I'm swamped.

J. R. R. Tolkien on marriage

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

Katrina sent this to me. It comes quite close to some of my thoughts on marriage. Well, especially the first part - we'll have to work on the second part…

New photos…

Follow the appropriate link on the side...

She is such a girl…

From an email:

And I've realised that one of the benefits of having taught myself many years ago to touch-type is that I can type while looking at my pretty sparkly ring... :D

Studies

Bart: Look at me, I'm a grad student. I'm 30 years old and I made $600 last year.
Marge: Bart, don't make fun of grad students. They've just made a terrible life choice.

Yes, I am technically a 30 year old grad student.

This is old news, and I meant to write about it closer to when it started, but I'm currently studing development studies at Sydney Uni. I tried to enrol in the Masters but they wouldn't let me. They did, however, like me enough to let me start with the Graduate Certificate (if I go well enough - prove myself - I'll be able to transfer to the masters). I was going to do the grad. cert. in one year, doing two subjects each semester, but I've already dropped a subject...

What I'm learning is all very new and all very intersting and I'll hopefully try to write about some of it. Anybody out there know much about economic theory? Or can tell me much about the relationship between the US and China now that the US is starting to impose countervailing duties on certain imports from China? (I'm kind of doing an assignment on that one.)

Honeymoon Destination Guessing Competition - Prizes!

In 3 months Katrina and I will be going on a holiday :)

Can you guess where that might be? I'm going to avoid giving clues, as much as I can, in case I give too much away. So feel free to exert you powers of educated guessing. What is likely? What is realistic? What is appropriate? What isn't? It's a big world...

And if you guess correctly, or at least most correctly, you will get a prize. Yes, you read right - there will be a winner and the winner will get a prize. This is likely to be something from where ever we end up to prove that we were there.

So, start putting your thoughts in the comments. If this works I'll probably post updates on the main page.

Post TWZ activity

I seemed to have passed through the Three Week Zone (thanks James) relatively unscathed. In fact it has now been four weeks since I proposed and although there will always be doubts at the back of my mind they seem to be staying there. In the week since emerging from the TWZ a fair bit has been organised...

It seems that a lot of people think that three or so months is not enough time to organise a wedding. That makes sense if you are trying to find the right reception venue and the places you want are booked out. Well, we had already settled on a date because it fitted in with uni holidays and a few other things. Then last weekend Katrina's parents went to look at a few places. On Monday we were taken to their first choice which is perfect for a range of reasons. We loved it. Anyway, a couple of days later it was booked :)

We also had to think about booking some sort of holiday to have after the wedding. It's such a big world - what should we do? Well, several things came together and key things have been booked. We'll be starting a Honeymoon Destination Guessing Competition soon...

Closer to hand, we have also sorted out plans for the engagement party. (Just need to sort out invitations. We have connections for the printing of them which makes that part easy. The harder part is working out the list...)

Three points for the moment but these are fairly key things so we think we're doing well.

Any married people reading this? If you would like to give any advice of what else to keep in mind that would be good too :)

happy eater

Easter

Good article on what Easter is about and why it's offensive.

What's wrong with this picture?

This should give you a few seconds of... interest.

Hmm... I seem to just be putting up the odd thing that I find interesting or amusing. And since I often couldn't be bothered coming here I often don't share good interesting things that I find. I don't want this to just turn into a totally superficial blog. (Feel free to offer encouragement.)

For the Mac nerds...

You know those "I'm a Mac" ads? I've only seen one other take off to compare (the one with Linux) but this is the funniest I've seen. I especially like the reference to Ultimate... (For those of you who couldn't be bothered the gist is that Mac users are young, hip, video making, Ultimate playing hippies.)

Several notes:
- Yes, I know there won't be many people who are reading this who fall into this category
- Yes, I found got this link from Daring Fireball and I know that those who are reading this blog and are interested probably already saw this, for that reason (hi Nic)
- Yes, I am going to bed...

07/07/07

More on that later.

Google takes over the world…

I intend for there to be a bit more activity on this blog from now on. There are certainly plenty things happening in my life to talk about. The catch is that these things are going to take up a lot of my time so I'm not going to have so much time to be wasting on writing this sort of stuff. But we'll see how I go.

And what's this about Google. Well, you'll see them often enough in the news to think that maybe they are expanding their... interests to be heading towards world dominations. Actually, my point is that I seem to be using a few Google products. Blogger, of course. I have a Gmail account (of course). The point about that is that my Gmail address is the one I use for both GTalk and MSN. So, if you use either of those, please feel free to add me to your list. (It doesn't matter which, I use a program that lets me check both at the same time.)

And, the other thing to annouce is that I'm starting up an photo gallery over at Google's Picassa... Check it out.

Old?

Today is such a momentous occasion, I've been given an extra hour to celebrate...

yes, lets see what happens…