The Twilight Report

siblings

2008-05-24T16:47:00

My brother is going to turn into a danish and my sister is going to turn into a frozen bubble.

moods or people

2007-12-22T12:21:00

Wednesday I decided to come down to Canberra. I went to Dick Smith’s to get iPods for Tristan and Lara. I pointed at the merchandise and said “I will have a blue one and a green one” and the salesman responded “is that for different moods or different people?”

Thursday I did the rest of my Christmas shopping, including getting a gift for Secret Santa ritual at work. Usually stuff in Australia closes at 5 or 5:30pm, but Thursday before Christmas everything is open till midnight practically, if not in actuality. It was a mad rush! Friday we had Christmas lunch at work. The food was really nice and we had Christmas crackers and everything. Then everyone drew numbers and picked gifts and/or stole gifts from others. I never want to steal other people’s gifts because it seems rude somehow (I realize it is just a game meant for fun of course), but it is always entertaining to watch other people steal gifts. My gift was the last one to get unwrapped. Can I just mention here how awesome my new coworkers are and my new work environment is?

Friday I flew down to Canberra. The airport was surprisingly uncrowded for this time of year. The aeroplane was mostly empty. When I got to Canberra, Tristan had his earphones on listening to music, and I thoughts to myself, I definitely got him the right gift. Lara was excited about her iPod too, although I think she was more excited about the games and the possibility of putting music on it. Dad already has the DVD I got him, which was unfortunate.

tucson “snow storms” and december in the southern hemisphere

2007-12-02T23:57:00

In four years in Tucson, I remember it snowing exactly once. Actually I don’t even remember the snow itself, but reading about it the next Monday morning in the Wildcat, because I had slept through the snowing (and immediate melting) and it having snowed was newsworthy enough to be on the front page. Not that the front page had to be terribly newsworthy when it came to the Wildcat. Although I think the Wildcat probably had more content and journalistic integrity than mX does, and I always pick up a copy of mX if I am going through Town Hall station at the right time of day. The price is right.

I have been rewriting bits of my website in PHP in order to improve my PHP coding skills. It’s painful because Perl (on which most of my website is already written) is about a million times more powerful in almost every regard. It’s sticky to configure I guess, and is horrible to maintain if written by someone who is unskilled in the ways of the Perl. This is why companies that do OpenSource web development tend to stick with PHP, which bundles itself with everything and dumps everything (including kitchen_sink_faucet_on()) into the same global namespace. Hence the need to brush up on PHP and the loathing of said PHP.

I have also been introducing Tristan 賢 to some of my music. Some of it seems to be taking. I have this dream that he won’t be as conventional in his approach to things artistic as my dad is. He has to figure out what he likes on his own though, and he will do that, but it is fun to show him things that he might not otherwise see or hear :)

let’s face it: bears are scary. and they want our honey.

2007-09-23T02:28:00

Today Tristan was asking me about Transformers again. This pleases me because this is the list of the things that I am somewhat expert in (no particular order):

Transformers
C/C++
Star Trek
Perl
Doctor Who
Photography
Thursday Next
Never Being Confused

Anyway, he was asking me about where the Transformers came from and I told him about Primus and Unicron, the gods of the Transformers. This is sort of how it went:

me: Primus and Unicron are the gods of the Transformers. Primus created the transformers to battle the evil Unicron.
Tristnan: Did Unicron create the Decepticons to fight the Autobots?
me: No, Primus created both the Autobots and the Decepticons
Tristan: Why did he create them just to fight each other?

I really love the questions that Tristan asks. Now, granted we are talking about a mythology that nobody believes in, but you could easily recreate this exact same conversation using a number of “real” religions that I can think of, and this is exactly the sort of abstract thinking that should be applied to the subject.

apec go home

2007-09-07T21:19:00

I am so ready for APEC to be over. Those world leaders can go jump in a lake as far as I am concerned and frankly the lake can take our rotten “leaders” too.

Dateline Canberra. Nothing happens here. Ever.

Sibs are good. I am educating Tristan on important things like Doctor Who and asking annoying questions like “what did you do in school today.” I know this is annoying because I did a whole speech for the speech contest on the subject in primary school. That must have been before I was mortally terrified of getting in front of people to talk. Or it might even be the reason for it, who knows.

My dad is a neo-luddite. I told him he was a technophobe and he admitted to being “conservative” about such things. What is so hard about programming a number into a phone or sending an SMS?

...

2007-03-22T01:06:00

brothers and sisters

Today I realized that I decided to take the week of ANZAC day off. That means that I am taking a day off that I was already getting off! Oops! Part of the time I will be spending in... Canberra. So exciting (not). I want to spend more time with my siblings though. This makes up for it.

I was having this conversation with Tristan the last time I was there, and he used my own dogma and bias against me. It was pretty awesome. I was so proud of him for thinking critically and not just regurgitating what other people say. I would like to have more moments like that. I can’t believe he is going to be 14 this year. I can still distinctly remember when he was a newborn. I was a lot younger then too.

the write [sic] and wrong of it

Nobody is ever on AIM anymore. I mean, they are sort of on, in that their computers are connected to the network, but they aren’t on in that they are actually asleep. It must have something to be on the wrong side of the planet. Just like most of them also drive on the wrong side of the road. And yes, by “them” I mean the giant ants. Why is it that they seem to come up so often?

Climbing trees in Canberra

2006-04-19T03:39:00

Today I climbed a tree in order to rescue Tristan's frisbee. It was a lot of fun, and felt like quite an accomplishment. It reminded me of two people I know who like to climb trees: Amber and Brad. It's fun to act young.

(more random thoughts that have collected over the easter weekend)

more pictures here

(and some more)