Saturday with Nonna

The first day of summer!

In the Mountains with Pa

An afternoon with GG

The 30 Day Song Challenge begins

Decided to start the (New and Improved) 30 Day Song Challenge.

Here's the rules:

Day 1. Your Current Favourite Song

2. A Song That Can Always Calm You Down

3. A Song You Like That No-One Else Seems To

4. A Song That Uses Weird Noises Well

5. A Song You Believe Has Great Lyrics

6. A Song You Would Like Played At Your Funeral

7. A Song That Gets Your Heart Racing

8. The Song That Changed Your Mind About Music

9. A Song By A Band You Stopped Listening To, But Started Again

10. A "Classic" Song Everybody Seems To Like But You

11. The Best Love Song You've Ever Heard

12. A Song That Ends Too Quickly

13. A Song With A Great Drum Rhythm

14. A Song By Your Favourite Singer

15. The Craziest Song You've Ever Heard

16. A Good Song That Does Get A Little Repetitive

17. A Song From Your Childhood

18. The Greatest Guitar Work You've Heard

19. An Exceptionally Sad Song

20. A Song By An Artist No Longer Living

21. A Song With A Great Bass Rhythm

22. A Song You Can Deeply Relate To

23. A Song You Could Play Over And Over And Never Get Sick Of

24. A Song Played At A Memorable Event In Your Life

25. A Song You Don't Understand

26. The Best Rock Song You've Heard

27. A Song That Forces You To Reminisce

28. A Song That Gives You Shivers

29. A Song That Helps You Live

30. Your New Current Favourite Song

And here's #1: James Blake - Unluck

As unluck would have it, for some reason there are only live version of the song on YouTube, so this is from an Italian website.

What do I love about it? The menacing minimal dub of Burial + the soul of Jeff Buckley + Jamie Lidell + Bon Iver + gospel. It has so many influences that it shouldn't work at all. And yet it rises above all of them to something amazing. And he uses autotune and it actually sounds good.

The result is... my current favourite

Rose's graduation show

More photos from her NAS show here!

Celebrating Dad's 59th birthday in Austinmer

The full set of photos from the day are here

Losing It

Design is kinky

I submitted these to Design Is Kinky a few years ago for some design comp. Didn't make it, but they're kind of cute.

Super bunny!

Here's Gen, Easter circa Feb '82

Doodles

Some time I scans these little doodles in - might as well share then now.

Home made cards

I'm also packing up my trusty home G5 Mac, deleting what I don't need and backing up what I do. Here's a few things worth another look before they hit the trash.

Birthday at the trusty Waverley Bowlo

Pre Doha booze-up at the newly opened Beauchamp Hotel

Post-Doha yum cha catchup

Christmas card featuring the world's biggest chandelier, photo taken in Oman

Shirty thirty

A couple of rags that were once Tshirts

Pota! Pota! Pota!
My host family bought this Tshirt for me in 1998. I had been looking for some mementos that were in Italian and this was one of the few around. The words are apparently Bergamo slang for something, and some comedians used to always say it on TV, along with 'Fia!'. Hilarious apparently, so much that they made Tshirts.

This on is also special as it has a screenprint on the back that I did with my late cousin Jack, probably not long after my time in Italy.

The next one Zander screenprinted for me, as a birthday present to accompany the main present; a ticket to Kraftwerk, with him and Ashley. We all got a Tshirt, but I bet they didn't hang onto theirs as long as I did. I persisted with wearing this one to the gym until only recently, when I discovered quite how threadbare it was when it went basically see0through after a sweaty session!

Farewell old friends, to landfill!

Moving out

Gen and I have started the packing process; we move into our new house in a week and a half. I've been coming across a few of those things that have to be thrown out, but need recording first. So I'm taking pictures or scanning stuff as I go.

Remember this? This is Gen's SIM card from her first mobile phone, which was with the now defunct One Tel

And here's a matchbox from my favourite cafe in the world, Kobus Kuch, in Delft. Best apple pie ever. Gezellig...

So now I've shared, now I can throw this stuff out!

Mark Priestly one year on

About a year ago our mate Mark Priestly took his own life. We all still miss you mate.

Back to the future photo time machine

This is what Michael Jackson was supposed to look like in the year 2000

Love ya Dad

Keyboard Cat is the new Fail

I have to admit to a weakness for cats. Not in real life, just on the internets, where they're so much funnier. I've blogged before about my guilty obsession with ICanHaz Cheeseburger.com, where photographs of cats (mostly) have captions added to hilarious effect.

Keyboard cat but this latest one is even more irreverent. As far I can understand, the original video of a cat playing a ditty on the keyboard was first uploaded to You Tube by one Charlie Schmidt in 2007.

Next, someone named Brad O'Farrell combined this with a Fail video to create pure internet meme genious. The effect is that the cat 'plays' the subject of the video 'off' (stage).

Check out the ever growing list of videos here.

Sparkly sparks

The SMH had pictures online today of antics of the local backyard boffin obsessed with very dangerous looking experiments involving electricity. The photos are amazing (even if the website is daggy).

Easter in the country

Gen and Evie and I went down to visit Dad and Henriette in Jugiong, possibly the last time before Dad moves away. I have lots of photos of Evie being cute, but I also got some nice landscape pics early one morning. There's really nothing like warm, dawn, country light.