Our first anniversary is looming, so I just booked us a hotel to stay in as a celebratory sort of thing. In researching this I came across an interesting Couples romance package: 'Enjoy overnight accommodation, full buffet breakfast and adults only 24 hour movie block.'  Unfortunately curufea thinks that we shouldn't book ourselves into a hotel to watch ( Read more... )

The universe seems to be sending me weirdos this week...

( Selection of odd emails trimmed... )

Busy period ahead for me:
( webmistress-ship, book reviewing, and general procrastination... )

I noticed a blind spot in my eye on Friday after a particularly violent coughing fit (viral infection following my trip to Hobart), and got in to see the optometrist yesterday at 12. It's a little bit of blood - similar to what I got about 8-9 years ago after falling off a stool while painting (don't ask, was stupid!) - but the proximity to my ( Read more... )

I'm unreasonably excited about Trove (aka the National Library's 'Single Business Discovery Service') - this is the cross-search platform which allows you to do a keyword search and get results from Picture Australia, historic  newspapers, People Australia (bios and identities - under development), Libraries Australia (books held throughout ( Read more... )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/01/google-youtube-monetise-contentRead more... )

If anyone's interested, my group Brindabella Chorus is running their famous Women's A Cappella Christmas Chorus for six weeks, starting Weds 4th November (next week). For $40 you're taught how to since 8-10 songs in four-part harmony - no music-reading required as learning tracks are supplied - and then the big group will be the warmup act at the ( Read more... )

I've just been playing with an augmented reality app on the dread iphone - Wikitude. It drops geotagged Wikipedia links and user-generated points of interest over your camera view. I've been trying to add POIs in the Wikitude.me website, but it's rather slow at the moment (combo of our dodgy wifi router and a fair bit of site activity, I think). ( Read more... )

curufea managed to get the tele to pick up all the free to air channels on the weekend (we'd previously only been able to get the 2 ABC and SBSes as digital channels, not that it was really a bad thing). So this morning I was wildly channel surfing and came across Today doing one of their traditional no-research stories, this time something I'd read ( Read more... )

I'm determined to have a more useful kitchen garden this year (esp. compared to last year, when I just couldn't be bothered with it and let everything go!). So far, we're prepared two no-dig patches and planted taties in one and silverbeet at the back of the other (the front will be tomatoes when I'm sure it's warm enough), also stuck in a couple ( Read more... )