What's in a Name?

Monday, January 26, 2009

Happy Australia Day (Hottest 100 Part 1)

So it's Australia Day and that means it's HOTTEST 100 time. That also means it's time to pick a shortlist and make your own (iTunes powered) Hottest 100 CD... The first 50 have passed and this is the shortlist so far.

(#101) - Jackson Jackson - All Alone
#99 - Muph & Plutonic - Don't Worry About Nothin'

#96 - Dizzee Rascal - Flex (Dave Spoon Reflex)

#91 - Lisa Mitchell - Nepolitan Dreams

#90 - Lily Allen - Guess Who Batman? (Aka F**ck You)
#89 - Kanye West - Love Lockdown

#86 - Muph & Plutonic - Beautiful Ugly

#78 - The Ting Tings - Shut Up and Let Me Go

#76 - Yves Klein Blue - Polka

#73 - The Killers - Spaceman

#68 - Empire of the Sun - We are the People

#67 - Flight of the Conchords - Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

#60 - Flight of the Conchords - The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room

#54 - Pnau - Baby

#52 - The Killers - Human

#50 - Ash Grunwald - Breakout

Saturday, January 24, 2009

My Glutenous top 10

iamhausfrau's gluten binge this week got me thinking, if I had to eat Gluten for a week what would be the first foods on my list. I realised that some of the things I miss the most are the convenience foods, all the good restaurants make delicious gluten free meals (like the lamb rump I had at Aqua Linea last night). So here goes

Bacon Double Cheese burger (McDonalds)/Whopper (Hungry Jacks) (I know it seems wrong but I actually miss being able to eat one of these.... especially when I'm hung over)
Krispy Kreams/Dreamy Donuts Donut (These came out after I was eating Gluten Free so I'm a Donut Virgin)
Cheese and Vegemite Scroll from a bakery
Dominoes/Pizza Hut Meat Lovers Pizza
Indian with NAAN bread
Milo Bars/Kit-Kats
Baskins Cookies and Cream Icecream
Nutri-Grain®
Tim-Tams
A Hoegaarden (let's face it, gluten free beer is not great)

Friday, January 23, 2009

Twitter is making me blog more!

It's a bit strange really but since I've started to use twitter a lot more it's actually compelling me to blog more rather than less. I think because I've captured the points of interest during the day I've got more queues to elaborate on at the end of the day. This post is here only because I'm waiting for my lunch and company to turn up and i'm trying not to internet shop from my phone (paypal is entirely too easy to access from my phone). Which brings up another good point. Not long ago I would have found it hard to imagine being able to shop effectively from my phone let alone the ease that I've got now (and that's even without an iphone), now however I'd be hard pressed to remember before I had this level of connectivity. Let's face it, I could have ordered my lunch from my phone while I was walking down had I not been dodging the rain.
How can you not love the intertubes.
(well that's probably just about enough lunch time ramblings for one day)

Feel the Ebay Love

Yesterday a few (4 to be exact) packages made it to our house, 1 for Zach, 1 for Ness and 2 for me. Both of the big ebay purchase had arrived at the same day. First off, I picked up a set of speakers for the TV, I decided to go for something powered so I didn't have to mess around with multizone on the Sony (which confuses my harmony no end) or add another amp to my already overcrowded media cabinet. After a bit of searching I decided on the Cygnett Unison i-X5 or the Wharfedale Pro 8.1. Fortunately I found the i-X5 on ebay for less that half price (more than $250 off RRP). When they arrived yesterday, I was amazed to see them sealed in the original box with all the original (and unopened) packaging.

It's a very simple hookup, I'm letting the TV do all the audio switching and I'm simply taking the output from the headphone jack and plugging it into the Line in on the i-X5, that way the TV still controls the volume and audio selection.

From Sigma Zoom

I'm really impressed with the sound, even at high volumes very clear and tight. A little on the bass heavy side (as most of the reviews say) but that's quite good for most TV applications.

Onto the second toy for the day a new lens. The big thing that I'd missed coming to the Pentax from my Fuji Bridge camera was the Zoom. After not very much searching I stumbled across 28-200 Sigma Zoom on ebay. First impressions are very good. It gives me the lens convinence back (even with some macro capability) and the shots are still great.

From Sigma Zoom

Shot of the speakers at full zoom, taken from the same location as the shot above.

From Sigma Zoom

Macro shot of my Nokia 6110 Nav

I'm going to take the camera out with me today and take some shots in the afternoon, I'll post up some more then.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

It's a New Chair!

Just before Zach was born we went shopping for a feeding chair and found a great one. The only problem has been that it's so comfortable that I've wanted one for me. I narrowly missed one on Ebay a few weeks ago and have been searching ever since.

I manage to find (and win) this matching white one, it's in really good condition and came with a great bonus when I went to pick it up. After a brief chat about the fact I was buying it to match a black one, he said he was selling it because it's pair was broken so gave me a set of matching cushions!

The new white one is just as comfortable as it's darker, more evil cousin... now all we have to do is decided how to recover the cushions :)

(My vote is red btw)

Annoyances with Gluten Free Bread

Knowing one of my fellow GF friends is now on a Gluten binge reminded me of some of the big annoyances with being Gluten Free. My biggest problem with Gluten Free bread is not the taste or the consistency, there are some really good ones around now. The IGA even has a potato loaf that toasts like 'real' bread. The thing that annoys me the most is the size! It seems that no sooner have you bought a loaf that you're at the end, this is also compounded by the fact that the slices are so much smaller as well... 2 slices of toast for breakfast isn't really much, but by the time you've had 2 slices for breakfast and 2 sandwiches (4 slices) your halfway through the loaf.... (or in this mornings case, the last half way through the loaf).

I'm not expecting it to change anytime soon but a normal sized loaf would be nice.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Zach and the new Camera

As you're all aware for various reasons we now have a new camera. A Pentax K200D and I'm very happy with it. It's still very new so there is still a lot of playing to be done, but I tried taking some photos of Zach with it and I was pretty happy with how they turned out.