Paradise…

With 2008 being so dominated for us by holidays–four months of it were consumed by our trip of a lifetime around South America, not to mention a two week suprise trip over to Oz in February–it was inevitable that we would have to pay for it eventually. And so 2009 has been as defined by the lack of time off as 2008 was by living it up on steak and Malbec. Much as I might…

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Whinging Aussies

It’s been an interesting experience so far following the fortunes of the England cricket team from deep in enemy territory. On the one hand, I will get to see far more of this Ashes series than I would have done had I been in the UK, as the time difference turns something that would otherwise have happened while I was at work into prime evening viewing–the 11AM start for the first test translates to 8PM…

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I-Sky: Australian Style

Flicking through the TV guide that came with the Herald Sun (that would be Rupert Mudroch’s Melbourne tabloid) this weekend, I was amused to see that the final episode of Australia’s Next Top Model on cable channel Fox 8 (that would be one of Rupert Murdoch’s TV channels, on Rupert Murdoch’s pay TV network) listed as this week’s “Must See TV”. Apparently: The shining light of the show this season has been [host Sarah] Murdoch.…

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Flat Earth News

So I’m about half way through Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News at the moment. It’s engrossing and depressing in equal measure to read Davies’ detailed insider account of everything that’s wrong with the 21st century mass media–an industry so dominated by commercial pressures to fill space as quickly and cheaply as possible that its journalists are reduced to what Davies calls “churnalism”: the regurgitating of press releases and stuff copied from the internet and the…

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War On Everything

While there are many reasons why Sal and I moved over to this supposedly sunny side of the world, we certainly didn’t do it for the quality of Aussie telly. As we’re increasingly discovering during these long, dark, wintery nights, Australian TV is, for the most part, pretty rubbish. Not that they can’t make decent shows over here–the first series of Underbelly, for example, is testament to what local talent can do given enough money…

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St Kilda Shorts

Sal and I spent an entertaining couple of evenings down in St Kilda last week, at the Film Festival. I’d picked up a leaflet about the 6 day event one lunchtime a few week’s earlier, and we’d decided to buy a couple of midweek tickets, which would get us in to as much short film as we could take over the space of two nights. I was a bit worried that we were being overly…

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A Little Behind

Yeah. Sorry. I know. It’s been a while. And not for any particular reason. Time just seems to whizz by these days and before I know it another month has passed and I’ve only written two posts. Or in the case of this month, none at all–with only a couple of days left to go in May 2009 I’m in danger of letting a whole calendar month pass me by with no new entries for…

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Going To Need A Lot Of Coffee Today…

I might be in need of some strong coffee this morning, but I’m nevertheless very happy with my decision to stay up into the small hours to watch Everton secure their place in the FA Cup Final early this morning. When I made the decision to stay up for what was a 1AM kick off here in Australia, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of the game going into extra time and penalties, and thus…

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The Bump

It’s fair to say that the aussies like the odd bit of sport. Although cricket might nominally be the national game (at least when the aussies are winning), and although there’s a growing national interest in “soccer” since the last world cup (at least when the aussies are winning) and while folks in Sydney and Queensland might like a bit of Rugby, down here in Melbourne there’s only one game in town. Aussie Rules. Rules.…

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Like Twitter But With More Characters. See? We’re Totally Different

So I’m about three weeks late on this one, but anyway I just stumbled across this blog post explaining Facebook’s philosophy behind their latest redesign. When I first saw it I thought that the philosophy behind the redesign was “let’s try and make Facebook look as much like Twitter as possible and maybe all the people going on and on about Twitter will come back and start talking about us again…” but for some reason…

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