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I’m still here on planet Earth.  I switched jobs two months ago (already!?!) and to say that I’ve been busy would be a gross understatement.  I’m now working from home for a company in the US - LibraryThing. I’ve mentioned them here before; after two years as a very happy user the opportunity came up for me to work with them, and I decided to take the plunge.

I’m behind on everything (photos, blog posts, etc) so rather than try to catch up all at once I’ll try to do it a bit at a time.  Starting with photos, I think.  Later.

The Wii started pulsing its blue light just before bed last night, but I figured I’d leave it until this morning to figure out what it was trying to tell me.

This morning I found a system update waiting, along with updated Internet and Everybody Votes channels. The system update was to provide support for USB keyboards - an obvious feature which should have been there at launch, but better late than never, eh?

So, here I am typing this on a keyboard plugged into my Wii. It’s probably not the most practical device for everyday browsing, but there are a number of things it should be perfect for. Having keyboard input makes it that much more usable, and given that the browser is fairly capable (it copes just fine with GMail, and Google Reader even has customised controls which recognise the Wii remote) I can see some cool possibilities!

Hmm, now to go update Twitter from the Wii, just for maximum geek effect.

Gamespot have been sending me invites to join their (exclusive! elite!) “Gamers Instinct” panel. It’s basically a marketing thing designed to tap into the “vibe on the ground”, I imagine. I also imagine that some 40-something marketing exec actually said “vibe on the ground” when pitching the idea.. but anyway.

Here’s a question designed to pin down what kind of gamer I am:

Which type of gamer would you say you are?

Well, that leaves me with a difficult decision.  I am not a hardcore gamer, though I certainly was in the past.  If I was single, or perhaps even merely not a parent, I might still be a hardcore gamer - but right now I can’t dedicate the time or money required to maintain that status.

“Core” is a description I haven’t seen before, and I’m not sure that that’s me either.  Outside of family and work, if you ask me what my hobbies and interests are then gaming is right up there at number one.  It’s just that I don’t have the time for that to be expressed properly anymore.  I mean, I’m just as likely to spend the car ride to or from work arguing about Nintendo’s latest sales figures, or how Sony seems determined to shoot themselves in both feet simultaneously, or that everyone should stop trying to “innovate” for a while and just copy XBox Live until they all reach that as a base standard of competence in online services.  (See, you don’t want to get me started!)

But I probably spend about as much time talking about games as I do playing them these days.  I think what’s needed is a new category, and I hereby declare it to be:

    floppycore: (n) post-hardcore; someone who can no longer keep it up.

(I picked the hardcore option in the end.  Who cares if I’m only gaming 6-10 hours per week - I do live for gaming.  Part of my marriage proposal to Louise included the caveat that “this is not a phase I’m going to grow out of”, and while my time spent gaming has dropped significantly I like to believe that it’s now concentrated into a few precious nuggets of gaming nirvana.)

Technorati Tags: gaming, gamers, hardcore, floppycore, lifestyle, marketing

I’m addicted to lolcats, and now I’ve hooked Lou too. We check ICanHasCheezburger? daily. I just made these, which I suspect means either the beginning of a new level of obsession, or the start of me getting over it.

Bonus Bazmo photo!

Technorati Tags: lolcat, sphinx, monorail, “solar powered kitty”

Wow, that was quick.  It doesn’t seem too long ago that Ollie was born, yet today he turns one year old!  The first four months were pretty difficult but things settled down after that and the rest of the year has gone by in a blur.  He took his first unassisted steps this afternoon - impeccable timing!

We had a birthday party for him at playgroup (easier to clean up!), and I’ve put a few photos online here - a handful really, as I’ve had to exclude all those which included people whose faces I wouldn’t be comfortable putting on the internet without their permission.  As for me, I’ve almost given up any hope of privacy online - an idea which I’m currently embracing rather than fighting (although I’ve seesawed on that one before and may do again).

In other news, I managed to get to about lunchtime on July 21st before caving in and buying the new Harry Potter book.  We don’t own any of the others and I’d been planning to borrow it (as I intend to buy a box set once it (inevitably) comes out), but I decided the risk of having the ending spoilt was just too great.  I read it pretty much every chance I got over the weekend, and finished it at 1AM on Monday morning.  Do you think anybody spoke a word about Harry Potter to me on Monday at work??  Of course they didn’t.  Lou started it at breakfast on Tuesday and had finished it comfortably before bedtime - still a much faster reader than I am!

It was good: I’ve really enjoyed the series and I think it’ll survive as a classic of children’s/teenage fiction, if nothing else.  I’d like to see more of the world of the novels explored, so my hope is that if/when Rowlings revisits it she might choose to do so from the perspective of another character (preferably someone new, or at least not a primary character from the HP novels).

Well, that about covers it for now, I think.

I’ve been playing some games lately!

While in Melbourne we ducked into one of those tiny crowded miscellaneous gift stores you sometimes stumble across.  They had a rack of magnetic poetry kits, and given that I was on holiday I couldn’t resist picking up a couple.

I love magnetic poetry.  I’ve wanted a kit at home for years, but obviously have never hinted hard enough (or remembered when I’ve been asked outright for present suggestions).  Now I’m trying to resist the urge to go buy a bunch more kits to flesh out our magnetic vocabulary.

The little nuggets above weren’t the first thing I came up with, however.  In fact I put those up there to replace my first poem after it made the first two viewers (Lou & Jo) blush.  The two kits we bought have the themes Motherhood and Fatherhood - nice, safe, family-friendly themes. Unfortunately, somehow the first thing I came up with was basically smut. We’re in real trouble if I ever get my hands on the Romance or (heaven forbid) Sexual Innuendo kits.  I chucked that poem up on Flickr as well, but I marked it as “unsafe” content.  You can see it here, if you’re not my mum.

I’ve been playing some other games too:  Mario Strikers: Charged, Trauma Center, Lego Star Wars II (Original Trilogy), and Paper Mario on the Wii virtual console.  We both loved Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on the Gamecube - I don’t understand why that game hasn’t had more attention.  Maybe it’s a niche thing, but I loved it.  I’ve only spent a few hours on the original Paper Mario so far, but every indication is that it’s a steal at $15 on the virtual console.  Go pick it up now, if you have a Wii!

Technorati Tags: magnetic, poetry, motherhood, fatherhood, parenting, sexual innuendo, paper mario, wii, virtual console

I’d intended to add this as a postscript to my previous post; earlier today I posted an entry (”Who’s being swindled?“) on my other blog, about the “controversial” BBC documentary which was shown on ABC last night. Short version is that I didn’t see it, but still know it’s a load of rubbish. Go read the post for the longer version.

Busy lately!  We went to Melbourne over the weekend for a friend’s wedding, the eponymous dwarf for whom I’ve toiled so many an early morning.  When going to a wedding where I don’t know many people I always worry that I’m going to spend the evening sitting quietly in a corner.  But aside from spending time with Paul & Jo we managed to chat with a bunch of strangers and members of the families of the happy couple, and had a great time.  The venue, Stonnington Mansion, was like something out of Pride and Prejudice.  Just my cup of tea.

The kids stayed home with Nanny and GG over the weekend, making this our first real fun pass in quite a while.  We got reasonably merry, and after making it back to the hotel sometime around 12:30AM the girls (in between fits of giggles) demanded that we fetch them some McDonalds.  By the time Paul and I had returned from our expedition to the nearest 24hr McDonalds several city blocks away, the girls were almost asleep.  Still, we made them eat their Maccas anyway.

On Sunday, at the insistence of the girls, we went to Chadstone shopping centre (which wikipedia tells me is the second largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere).  I think that I’d spent more money there than Lou by the time we left, and we had to buy another suitcase in order to get our loot home.  Oh well, at least it’s not something we do often!

In other news, it’s hard to believe that it’s less than three weeks until Ollie turns one!  I feel really guilty about not having taken enough photos of him, but it’s much harder to get good shots when a) he screamed for the first four months solid, and b) Bazmo dominates the rest of them. Still, Ollie is mostly a delight to be around these days.  Bazmo is lots of fun too, though fairly high-maintenance as I guess two year olds are reputed to be.

That’s enough for now, back to the grind!

I was rather chuffed to get an email earlier today from Russell Potter, Professor of English at Rhode Island College, who is also a bit of an expert on Sir John Franklin.  He maintains a list of online resources regarding Franklin, and is also the author of the John Franklin entry on Citizendium, which is an online encyclopedia trying to use the wikipedia technology with a more traditional approach to article creation and approval.  Ironically, the best summary of what Citizendium is all about is probably the Citizendium entry on Wikipedia, although their own entry is also worth a read.

Anyway, back to the point.  Russell Potter emailed me to say that he “saw [my] excellent photos of Franklin square on Flickr”, and to ask for permission to use the close-up of the Sir John Franklin statue in his Citizendium article.  I said yes (of course!), so now if you view that entry you see my photo!

Citizendium is an interesting idea.  I think the ideas behind it are sound, although I also feel that Wikipedia is amazingly useful even if it doesn’t have carefully vetted articles written and approved by experts on the subject.  There’s plenty of room for both approaches, and it won’t hurt anyone to have more than one resource to look at.

Technorati Tags: Wikipedia, Citizendium, Russell Potter, Sir John Franklin

I’m still behind on sorting through my photos, though I’ve started trying to catch up. Here are some of the photos that made it on to my Flickr account:

..or you could go look at the lot:

• Sebastian’s 2nd birthday party
• Wandering around Hobart
• Field trip to Cornelian Bay

Technorati Tags: photos, Hobart, birthday, cake, aloe vera, crane, cormorant, wtaer, dinghies, pier, pinecone