Quick! Or the bunny gets it!

Fred's about to experience some serious problems. You've got 60 seconds to perform life-saving surgery.

Your time starts.....NOW!

http://www.10mg.nl/ (requires Flash)

Found via Boing Boing [permalink]

What I did on a sunny Sunday morning

This morning was some of the most beautiful, glorious hammock weather I have seen in Canberra in months. It could possibly be the last such day until the end of winter (some time in September!).

How did I spend such a magnificent morning?

Reading this. Inside at the kitchen table, coffee in one hand, pencil in the other.



12 job applications for some positions within my Division at work. I got sucked in to being on the selection panel because I didn't have any good reason to say no (much like jury duty, I guess). I gave my manager the opportunity to pull me out of this by saying that I could only do it pending his approval.

His response? "I guess we all have to be good citizens and do our corporate duty" (once again, much like jury duty).

Go corporate citizenry. Woo.

Sandman

Guess what arrived in the mail late last week?

*drool*

The photo doesn't even begin to do justice to the gorgeous quality of this massive (and very heavy) hardcover collection of the first 20 episodes of The Sandman, written by one of my favourite authors Neil Gaiman.

I haven't actually read it yet (or opened it beyond taking the photo). I want to be able to sit down and dedicate some time to this one.

Oooh, the anticipation...

First World Problem

My wrist is so tired today. I played so much squash last night that when I got home I couldn't double click my mouse....

One of my co-workers this afternoon, unwittingly describing to me a classic First World Problem.

Simple can be best...

This site just made me smile the whole way through (it doesn't take long).

Found via Signal vs. Noise [permalink]

Brush with fame (well, almost)

I was flying back home after a quick day trip down to Melbourne for work. Who did I see clowning around in economy class (well, not really clowning so much as sitting quietly and minding their own business)?



Gomez

I love these guys and have been big fans since their first album Bring it on was released. I had the perfect opportunity to say "Hi", maybe say how much I liked their work and wish them good luck for their Canberra show tonight (and maybe get a happy snap with my camera phone).

Instead, I chose to leave the guys alone. I'm sure they would have been cool with a fan coming up and having a few quiet words before moving along, but I elected to give them their space. Odds were they were going straight from the plane to soundcheck and are probably flying back out again tomorrow. It's only fair they be given a chance to chill out before the show that I couldn't manage to make it to (nearly 1 year old boy, lack of money - the excuses are long).

Hope the boys have a good show.

In the end, I walked away a little wistful, doing a little bit of "maybe, could have, what if..." but ultimately, no regrets.

(photo pinched from Wikipedia. I know, I'm a bad boy but Gomez don't have any press photos on their site)

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The me that you know is now made up of wires...

The holter monitor in all its glory. I have to wear it for 24 hours.

It started itching like crazy after one.

No news is good news?

The blood tests showed that everything seems to be normal, which is good news I guess, although it doesn't bring me much closer to finding out what's the deal with my heart, or weight loss, or lethargy either.

Onwards to the Holter monitor.

The heart of the matter

My wife's been complaining that I have an irregular heart beat and I've been getting palpitations of increasing frequency over the last week and a bit (some palpitations so violent that you can actually see my whole chest moving in time to my heart beat).

A visit to my doctor on Thursday had him concerned enough that I've had blood tests and an ECG (apparently my resting heart rate is a little slow) to get an idea of what my base heart beat and rate is like. It is not so much the heart itself that is the concern but the the associated symptoms that, until recently, I thought were completely unlinked:

• massive weight loss without any real change in diet - in the last year I've lost 10kgs and only put 2kgs back on - at 68kgs it's obvious I didn't have that spare weight to lose!
  
• extreme tiredness - I often battle to stay awake mid-morning and mid afternoon. Case in point - this morning I got up at 7:30 and was back in bed for an hour long nap at 9:45 (it's a public holiday). I got 8 hours sleep the night before.
  

While the Doc won't speculate ("it could be so many things, so these blood tests are just a fishing expedition"), my suspicion is over active thyroid which is easily treatable with medication. Absolute worst case (according to Google :> ) is my slow heart rate needs to be corrected with a pacemaker to make sure it fires regularly and at the right speed (my doctor didn't tell me this one, probably because it would be from a very rare condition and highly unlikely, but Diagnosis-by-Google is so much fun!).

Right now I'm not worried. If the blood tests come back without any answers, then I might start to think about it a bit more...


"iron-heart-stone-bench" originally uploaded to Flickr by A.M Griffin. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Addicted to glove..

One of my favourite pastimes is interchanging the words "love" and "glove", particularly in relation to pop songs. It's fun. You know you want to try it...

This headline really made my day on Saturday.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information

- Oscar Wilde

I guess some times the more things change, well, the more things change.

A better mousetrap?

For the last few days, we've been plagued by a rodent of some description. My wife saw some movement beside the oven early last week, although when I went to check with a torch, whatever had been there was gone.

On Thursday, I got a phone call at work that explained to me in no uncertain tones that there was indeed a mouse (too small to be a rat) in the house and was currently taking residence under the refrigerator. A large number of nocturnal bumping and knocking noises could be heard in the region of the fridge for the next two nights.

Yesterday, while grocery shopping, I picked up one of the little bad boys like in the out-of-focus camera phone picture above. Apparently the mouse trap was designed for those who want to kill a mouse but have no desire to see the end result. While my main concern was in fact prying little fingers, it was a point of view I had some sympathy with.

The trap has a little self-adhesive label on the underside which can be peeled back to allow you to place your bait (in this instance, I whacked some peanut butter in). Once you have done that, you twist the whole thing clockwise which opens up an entrance into which the rodent crawls in. When the trap is triggered, the whole thing apparently turns at speed, trapping the creature inside.

After I set the trap, we heard a few sounds like banging plastic, so we had a fair idea that the mouse was interested. As I prepared for bed (and tried to re-settle Bugalugs), my wife went in to the kitchen to get a drink of water. She arrived in time to see the mouse creep out from behind the fridge and slowly sneak in to the trap. It stayed mostly in for a while with just its tail poking out. It must have decided that the peanut butter was worth over riding natural caution because the tail disappeared. That last step was just enough to trigger the trap which snapped around into position.

I heard a few signs of life within the trap over the next half hour before all movement ceased. When I re-read the packaging, I noticed that they had gone to great lengths to not mention just what happens to the mouse or rat once it is inside the trap. I guess anyone who is too squeamish to look at a dead rat probably doesn't want to know about the nasty death that most rat poisons cause. I think in future I might just use a basic trap. I think a quickly snapped neck might be a better passing.

Of course, tonight I heard some more knocking noises from the fridge region. Mouse traps are already on the shopping list.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.

- Mark Twain

Ouch. It hurts.

Yesterday I managed to jam a sharp piece of plastic deep under my left thumb nail. This morning it hurt so much I had to battle to do the buttons on my shirt up using only one (some how, and I'm not sure how, I seem to use my left thumb quite heavily in the button-doing-up process, which doesn't make much sense when I think about but there you are).

I have now developed a deeper appreciation for using slivers of bamboo under the fingernails for "information gathering". It really hurts and leaves behind very little splatter to clean off the walls.

Starry Starry Bamboo Mandala Originally uploaded by brainsik. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So it is true after all

Germinating apple seed_1
Originally uploaded by smperris.

Ever since I was told as a little kid that if I ate an apple core, an apple tree would grow inside of me, I've eaten the cores of green apples (the cores of red apples are black on the inside - taste fine but look ick).

Yesterday, while I was munching away on a tasty granny smith apple, I happened to see this little seed.

I didn't eat it. Perhaps I should have. A tree in me would have been pretty cool.

OMG KITTIES WTFLOL!!!1

I know, I know, it's not very mature or constructive or even a good way to pass the time. However, I'm still wiping tears from eyes 15 minutes later.

http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/

I'm not responsible for any time you may choose to waste there (and depending on web filters, it's possible it's NSFW).

Still handy

The trilogy is complete.

I've finally installed the third of my guitar hooks, keeping all my musical goodness out of reach of a marauding Bugalugs. For now.

Happy Birthday Gorgeous

You know who you are :)


Birthday-cake in Hamburg used under a Creative Commons licence. Originally uploaded to Flickr by robinoo.

If you say so.

The brand? Holeproof.

Just. Do. It.

I have had a collection of three wall-mounted guitar hooks for almost as long as we have lived in this house (we moved in August 05 - you do the maths, I'm too lazy). I've put off installing them for quite a while because, as previously mentioned, I'm somewhat lazy. It didn't help that when I was finally motivated to put them up, I discovered that my stud finder[1] worked less effectively when used slowly and carefully (it screws up its sensitively and it falsely reports when it has found the edge of the stud) and therefore I was drilling screws into plain old plaster, which wouldn't even support the weight of the hooks, yet alone the weight of a guitar as well.

When I changed jobs late last year, I finally started to get my act together and began adopting a Getting Things Done attitude, somewhat inspired by the 43 Folders/Lifehacker aesthetic. Part of the GTD method is break your big picture things down into "next actions" - that is, "what do I have to do next?" - the theory being, it's easier to go ahead and do something if the task is small and easily achievable, rather than some monolithic project hanging above your head like some sort of Sword of Damocles.[2]

Part of my @Home list (which doesn't get whittled down very quickly, but I am working on it) involved getting these guitar hooks up. A couple of weekends ago I went out and bought some nylon plaster plugs which allow me to hang up to 10kgs without needing any support behind the plaster. Over the last couple of weekends I have installed two of the hooks with one more to go (which will actually have a djembe and a ukulele hanging off it rather than a guitar or bass, but it still gets junk off the floor of the study/computer/music room).

I may not be much of a handyman, but every now and then I manage to do something vaguely DIY. Enjoy the before and after shots.

The wall before (well, technically, it's the opposite wall because I didn't think to take a photo until it was too late. However, it looked exactly the same. Trust me.)
















And here is the after shot (which is of the actual wall. Trust me.)













[1] a phrase that still makes my wife giggle uncontrollably - for extra fun, I like to tell her I bought my stud finder in Bangkok. You'd never guess that I'm the immature one in this marriage

[2] Of course, GTD is more than that. One of my favourite parts of GTD is the idea that most people are stressed because they carry around everything they need to do in their head, instead of recorded somewhere. Because it's all stored in their head, it's much easier to forget things and you tend to spend a lot of your time stressed because either (a) you just know you've forgotten something important but can't think what it is or (b) you're frantically doing damage control around some disaster, caused by you forgetting soemthing important. One of the strengths of GTD is that if you can develop a system of recording your next actions that you can trust completely, the mere act of recording stuff you need to do reduces your stress almost exponentially becuause you don't need to carry it around in your head anymore. I didn't really believe it until I tried. GTD and my trusty DIY Hipster PDA has meant that I forget nowhere near as many things as I used to, and I no longer find myself lying awake at night, my mind racing (or remembering stuff just before I go to sleep and forgetting it when I wake up and not remember it again until too late). In turn, I feel much more organised and relaxed although my wife has said she hasn't noticed any difference. I feel it though, and that makes a difference to me.