Timekeeper

For the first time in over a year, I have started wearing a watch again.

I got tired of using my mobile phone as a surrogate watch, which isn't a useful solution in situations where my phone is switched off (which happens more often than I first thought it would).

I own three watches and up until yesterday morning, all three of them needed new batteries. Now only two need new batteries (they also need new watchbands, but one step at a time). I didn't have to spend any time at all deciding which watch I was going to resurrect first. The watch above was given to me on my 21st birthday by a group of my university friends so it has great sentimental value to me.

After all this time, wearing a watch feels weird. I'm still not used to the extra weight on my wrist or the scraping noise it makes when it hits the desk while I'm typing. I have lost a bit of weight since I last wore it so it is still a bit loose on my arm. I am sure I will adapt.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Herbert Simon, Recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
and the A.M. Turing Award, the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”

Life how it used to be lived. The return of Main St?

I used to love the idea of urban sprawl with everyone having their own slice of land. These days, I wish there was more urban infill. I feel like so much community is missing in my personal interactions and I wish I could create opportunity for me.



Superkul is a Canadian architectural firm that turned a run down residence and returned it to its original shopfront/residence glory and added a third floor into the bargain. There are some great pictures of the setup on Treehugger.

Bring it on, I say. Main Streets rock.

The hammock district.

Even though Canberra is now firmly in the grasp of Winter's icy tendrils, every now and then Mother Nature throws up a gorgeous day like today. No breeze, moderate temperature (max 14C) and barely a cloud in the sky.

It shouldn't take a genius to work out why I decided to read the paper and take a brief nap in the hammock this morning. I fed the boy lunch to give my wife a chance to do the same. Her nap was, shall we say, not so brief. I had to wake her an hour later! Still, it has done her a world of good and we're both much better for our hammock adventures today.

If only all Canberra winter days looked as gorgeous as this one!

One of these ones is not like the others

I spotted this ad in this morning's Canberra Times newspaper. I just had to laugh..

It's a bit difficult to read but it says:

• In store signing with Australian adult movie stars
  
• Pole dancing and lingerie shows
  
• Penthouse and Hustler showbags worth $120 for only $25
  
• 24 booth adult movie arcade
  
• Sausage sizzle
  

Brrrr!

I thought it was cold this morning when Elijah woke up at 5am and wouldn't settle so we brought him back to our bed. He then woke me up 10 minutes later playing "The Nose Game" [1] before he settled back to sleep.

I thought it was cold when I dragged myself out of bed at 5:45am to start getting ready for work. I have to get up this early a couple of times a week to get the early bus so I can leave work early. It was cold. My shower was extra hot to compensate and I stepped out of the shower a satisfying shade of lobster read.

I thought it was cold when, while walking at a vigorous pace to the bus stop at 6:55am, I spied this poor frosted flowering plant in someone's front yard.

I thought it was cold when I walked past the York Park Conservation Site between the bus stop and work and it was sheathed with fog and looking rather spooky (it's normally a dry, empty looking patch of endangered native grassland)

I knew it was cold when I got in to work to check the Bureau of Meteorology site for the temperature to find out it was -5 C (about 23F).

Winter is well and truly here, and this is just the start of it.

[1] "The Nose Game" was started by me, and Elijah loves it. I poke him on the nose and say "Beep" or make another appropriate fun noise. Elijah worked this out pretty quickly, and started poking our noses as well. Of course, we would "Beep!", much to his delight. Unfortunately, he does this a lot, in any situation. He sometimes would also grab my hand and drag it to his nose, whereupon I was expected to "Beep!" or suffer the consequences. "The Nose Game" is cute at 4:30pm when playing with blocks in the lounge room. At 5 in the morning with freezing fingers? Not so much...

Power toolage

I don't often get a chance to crack out the ol' power drill and do something constructive. The last time I did this was when I put up the guitar hoooks a couple of months back.

At the moment we've been keeping the boy's toys and associated stuff in his portacot which lives in the lounge room. The downside is that it means he can't actually use his portacot, and every now and then he seems to like pretending he's been imprisoned (that and he likes to peek over the top and giggle at us - entertainment is sooo cheap at this age). We bought some stackable wooden boxes to solve this problem, with the added bonus that we can now quickly pull down the portacot and put it away when we are not using it.

The boxes came in a heavy box and were flat pack. I was worried they would be held together with nails (hammering is not my strong point - to much hand-eye co-ordination involved) but thankfully, it was a screw-based construction.

There were three boxes in all. The first one looked like this after I ripped it out of the box and laid it out, ready to go:

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to put together, and I was once again reunited with the joy that is power tools.

The final, very handy and useful product below:

It was a good day for power tools, actually. One of the presents we gave Elijah for his birthday in April was a wooden trolley with wooden blocks. Unfortunately, the guide holes for the screws in the side of the trolley bore no relation to where the screws would actually need to go if the handle was to be attached. After an extended period of forgetfulness, I finally got around to drilling some new guide holes and attaching the handle, giving Elijah a "brand new toy" to play with.

And we join together today ...

One of my friends recently announced his engagement, which is good and exciting news which makes both me and my wife quite happy to hear.

If you're reading this, Dave, I reckon you need a pair of these for the wedding...

8 prong connector originally uploaded to Flickr by janabrevick.

Counting with fingers

Apparently, boys with the longest ring fingers relative to their index fingers tend to excel in maths, at least according to Science.

Not sure what this says about my hand, but I did fail Maths in Grade 12. My ring finger looks pretty long to me. I can't say I'm convinced...

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