'Strewth, it's been a truly Ocker past coupla days. With my move delayed yet again, ironically because of dodgy removalists, I have taken the opportunity to use some spare time restoring old wood. I have a number of furnishings that have seen better days, and the combination of sandpaper followed by stain and varnish has improved my well-used work ( Read more... )

Settlement for my new apartment was on Friday, putting me in the frankly ridiculous situation of currently owning three places. Of course, I still have to move all my possessions and prepare the Willsmere house for sale, and I'm actually sufficiently cash poor at the moment that I can't do this right away (my conveyancing agent wanted their fees ( Read more... )

My major news for the week is that I've apparently become a teacher, of intermediate and advanced English, at the University of Rojava. The pre-dawn orientation meeting via video-conference was quite enlightening, but the difficulties the students face in war-torn Syria are also as expected. It was also interesting to meet the other teachers of ( Read more... )

It has been a very busy week. In part because I seem to have purchased an apartment in Southbank. It's a mere 500m from Flinders Street station, a massive 100m^2, and sold for quite a reasonable price. A bank has offered me an unconditional approval for a loan and, despite a minor error in the contract which all parties are happy with fixing (two ( Read more... )

The past several days have been thoroughly enjoyable, both in terms of time spent in fine company (especially that of the lovely lei_loo) and in terms of getting some of my home environment organised. Whilst normally a public and external person, I will confess to also rather preferring a clean, and neat home environment. Part of that this past few days I ( Read more... )

The last four workdays I've been on annual leave, mainly because I've accumulated too many holidays and that makes the bureaucrats feel nervous. Most of the time I have spent at home, albeit with a couple of exceptional social outings, one of which I joked with the participants that I was "on a hot date with three girls" (they were all older women ( Read more... )

There are many occasions where I am quite pleased in my profession. A recent example is the cracking of the Zodiac cipher on Spartan, an announcement that has made quite an impact in the international news. I confess that I was aware of it a week ago, but for obvious reasons, I've waited for the official announcement by the FBI before commenting. ( Read more... )

With just under three weeks to go, I am feeling quietly confident that everything is falling into place for the Cyberpunk 2020: Year of the Stainless Steel Rat convention, now with Fraser Simons, Rick Wayne, and Stephen Dedman as confirmed speakers. It will be quite a good way for the RPG Review Cooperative to end the year, especially that ( Read more... )

Apropos my last entry on seeing We Lost The Sea, I have two reviews up on Rocknerd of said band. The first is of the concert itself, where I do express my appreciation of the work. The second (posted on the same day!), is of their latest album, Truimph & Disaster which was released only a couple of months ago. My considered opinion is that it's ( Read more... )

A good portion of the past few days have consisted of moving various furnishings around in preparation of getting part two of our flooring done; thirty plus years old carpet goes out, laminate floorboards go in. The problem of being a somewhat bookish person is that one ends up with literally dozens of bookcases, and these aren't much fun to carry ( Read more... )