One of my colleagues sent this through to me, thinking he'd discovered my secret, after-hours identity. I have to admit, the photo on the first page looks scarily familiar, but the others aren't so close.

I mean, c'mon, how different can two chubby, bald, white guys with goatees really look?

Monday, 19 September 2005

That's that for another year :-(

Not so long ago they were at the top of the competition ladder, but yesterday the last remaining wheel fell off the Broncos' season :-(

As bummed as I'm feeling, I know it'll get worse tomorrow, as my Eels supporting colleague will be back in the office. This has been a tough year for me re: football. First Queensland lose the State of Origin, the Wallabies have been in a rut for awhile now, and finally the Broncos drop out of the finals.

sigh....

Monday, 4 July 2005

State Of Origin III

One of the downsides of travelling for work is that you can almost guarantee that you will be away when there is some event that you want to attend. For example, I haven't managed to be in the country for any State of Origin match for the last 3 years. The first match this year I was in Singapore, but even there, with such a big population of expats, I couldn't find a pub that was showing the game.

However, Wednesday night, for the first time in three years, I'll be in Australia to watch the mighty Maroons smack the snot out of the Blues. One of life's small pleasures :-)

Sunday, 29 August 2004

Hama-rikyu

I spent a very lazy and indulgent afternoon at Hama-rikyu today. Hama-rikyu was the family garden of the Tokugawa Shogun, and sprawls over many acres beside Tokyo Harbour. I've meant to visit these gardens on my last few trips, but this is the first time for awhile that I've had the weekend free in Tokyo.

Unfortunately, it rained constantly (Typhoon Chaba is on its way to Japan now that it has finished with Taiwan), so it wasn't the best weather for photography, but it did mean I had the place pretty much to myself. I only saw two people in 4 hours, which is a rare occurence in Tokyo. One was the Head Caretaker of the gardens, who charmingly came out to thank me for visiting in spite of the rain, and the other was the lady who served me at the tea house.

Despite the rain, a very relaxing afternoon. I'll post more pictures, but many of them didn't turn out very well due to the light.

Monday, 28 June 2004

Ping

You'd be forgiven for wondering if I was still alive, but life has kinda gotten in the way of blogging over the last few weeks.

First, my wife and I escaped the winter in Sydney for a 2 week surfing holiday in Bali. Then I returned to work right at the end of quarter, so it's been a little hectic.

That said, I have a couple of articles on Variables that are moving towards completion, and also one on Constraints that is less far along. If I can get past Wednesday I'll get stuck in and finish them off.

Tuesday, 27 April 2004

Excuses, excuses

I'm still suffering from the stomach bug I picked up in the US last week, and it's left me so drained I've managed to pick up a flu as well. Apologies if you are waiting on an email response from me, it may still take a few days for me to get back on top of everything.

Monday, 5 April 2004

Cowboy Bebop

Since FBO have re-sent my DVD's, I've been watching Cowboy Bebop - Session 4. It's going to be a sad day when I reach the end of Session 6. Bebop has been the most enjoyable of all the anime series I've watched.

The other series I've been trying out to replace my Cowboy Bebop addiction haven't really done it for me (Rurouni Kenshin, for example. Samurai X was OK, but the slapstick in Rurouni Kenshin really annoyed me).

Someone suggested I try FLCL, but I want to do a little more research first. My copy of Rurouni Kenshin Vol 1 is destined for eBay, and I'm not in a hurry to order another one on spec.

Any other suggestions?

SMS Alerts on your Bank Account

One of the guys in the Borland Korea office mentioned in conversation that most Credit Card companies in Korea offer to send you SMS messages whenever your card is used. Apparently they pitch this as a security measure, but it is not much used for its original purpose. It's wildy popular, apparently, among husbands who get their mobile numbers assigned to their wife's Credit Card, thereby letting them monitor their wife's spending.

I told my wife about this (who, by the way, was out shopping while I was at work being told this), who quickly declared that it would never take off in Australia, and added, with a challenging look, "certainly not in our household".

Funnily enough, my bank back here in Oz has just sent me an email saying they are about to start trialling it for all their accounts, including Credit Cards. They aren't pitching it as a security measure, more as a way to find out when that important payment gets deposited into your account. Hmmm, wonder if I'm brave enough to tell her :-)

Korean Protests

We actually got caught up in this protest in Seoul last week. We came out of Kyobo (Korea's largest bookstore) and walked straight into a horde of protesting Koreans. The photo makes them look angry, and indeed the people I spoke to in Korea were mostly irate at the opposition's behaviour, however from what I saw at this protest they were enjoying themselves thoroughly. Bands were playing, vendors were selling food and it seemed like hundreds of people were trying to give us candles in cups (it was bloody cold, so we were very tempted to take them just to warm our hands). Apparently the protest went on for 3 or 4 days, so maybe all protests should be this much fun.

Korean Delphi event

We took a bit of a holiday in Seoul at the end of my trip, so I'm just getting back into it.

Before the holiday, however, we had a half day Delphi 8 for .NET event, with just shy of 700 Delphi developers showing up! I'm going to write something up for BDN with some photos.

Anyway, the Borland Korea staff worked like crazy on the event, and I swanned in to do the opening keynote bit and a C#Builder plug (as well as inflict my grasp of Korean on the audience. Needless to say, they were very polite).

As is usually the way, the one who did the least work got the glory, and I ended up in Korea's largest IT newspaper the next day, which earned me many brownie points with my Korean Mother-in-law :-) However, it has raised the bar, as she expects me on TV next time I'm in Korea, another newspaper clipping just won't cut it.

Hmmm, do you think I might be losing my hair?

Snow!

I'm in Seoul, Korea at the moment, and a few days before I got here they had their biggest dump of snow in 100 years. Needless to say, there is still snow to be found lying about, which is a novel experience for a boy from Sydney (where today, BTW, it was 39 Celcius/102 Farenheit). I've been caught a couple of times smiling like an idiot at a pile of snow by folk from the Borland Korea office. I've restrained myself so far, but I may just sneak out of the hotel tonight and find a quiet spot to throw a snowball or two.