so I'm fishing in my wallet for $2 for the hamper raffle for the company Christmas appeal. and I said to the woman selling them: "I thought I had $2, but I spent it on a chocolate bar."
then I stopped. thought. and handed over a $5 note instead.

tiles. expensive. pretty. expensive. going mad. never renovate.

INTRANET TIP
Leaving the building for lunch? Check the current
temperature outside first by clicking `Melbourne weather' at
the top-centre of every Intranet page.
Intranet address:

etc...
or you could just ask someone who's just come inside. "should I wear a jacket" is a totally subjective human question.
(&*)%^&, I'd like a coffee.

well paint me pink and call me an elephant!
amazingly, I received an email today from my editor in the US, who was part of my tax-deductibilty justification of my trip to NYC.

I filed a lovely 4-5,000 word piece on the domain naming system in Australia to her in July or so. it took me weeks of work, after hours, on weekends, early morning coffees. I rang lots of contacts and used up lots of people's time. the book will look at domain name systems round the world. it's less boring than it sounds.

when I met her, I left the meeting thinking "nice woman, but I don't think this book is coming out."

but today, I received a contract offering me US$500. she says she actually has a publisher. I nearly fell off my chair. this amount is of course a pittance and well below going rates, here or in the US of A. the contract also asks me to pay for all kinds of ancillary things of unspecified scope, and commit to open-ended unspecified "revisions". but I'm sure we can sort that out.

I wouldn't get paid until what, late next year. but right now it would be better than the big fat zero I have.

(can't remember if she reads my blog. I think not. anyway, nothing in here I haven't said (more tactfully) in my reply email.)

I might volunteer to work over my holidays. just so I can experience the sheer pleasure of a fast Web connection.
not.

am trying to give up coffee, for health reasons. so don't get in my way today. or tomorrow. or anytime for the next few years, OK?

oh great. tried to fix it and now it still doesn't show number of comments. but there are/were TWO comments buttons.
look, just send me an email, willya? I'm going for a walk.

wow. Meredith mentioned she'd commented on my blog. I thought "that's funny, comments died ages ago". so I logged onto YACCS and discovered all these comments! it was just the counter that stopped working. and all the comments were waiting for me.

so, for the record:
Meredith, the ornaments were easy.it's the tree. the damn thing's 180 cm high.
%00: my temper's fine, thanks. SO SHUT UP!
batty: thanks for thinking of me amongst all your own pressing matters.
Laura: it's a pleasure. plus I get paid for it.
"bitch" at IP address: 68.101.110.114: you have a problem with my spelling problem? my life's fine. and I'll thank you not to swear in here. that's my job.
" A. Nony Mouse at IP address: 158.252.218.148: what's special? I don't geddit. I suppose you're being sarcastic. luckily, I have no fucking idea what you're talking about (see previous for swearing policy)
Kathryn: I suppose you were referring to "all men are...?"
Implisitt @IP address: 129.177.211.81: keep your preference in sex toys to yourself.
hoopty again: it isn't whether we need peemail, is it? I mean, do we need life insurance salesmen? it's just a fact of life in the 21st C
Jill: what you said. only double. he should just start wearing a studded dog collar.

ooh, I know I'll get in trouble for this. but in the interview, Roddick says: "But, and it's a big but..."

the fat-suit debate. via this woman's work

the original article
an interview about the article
some comments (don't know if that link to a comments area will work)
big fat blog (it is what it says it is)

Marc [SOS]DeSwaggy's Renegade clan site.
they are 13th in the world.
he is going to kick arse tonight.

memo to self: before you buy a 180 cm-high blow-up Christmas tree, consider two things: how big exactly is your flat? and more to the point, do you in fact have a pump to blow it up with? "manual" is out of the question. the thing is about 200x my entire lung capacity. so far have blown up one small branch ornament. the tree itself is a sad and floppy green pile beside my chair.

Bill Gates, I want my half an hour back.
I've been frantically trying to file Blogon from home, but every time I tried to send, Hotmail froze. I even tried to blog the text just so my editor could get at it.
eventually I worked it out: Word was putting a stupid little doovie over the "e" in "decor". this doovie must have contained killer code that the online interfaces couldn't cope with. the minute I deleted them, bingo! worked just fine.
funny formatting code from my work program, Cybergraphic, has killed a blog before. but never something in Word.

working from home is good when you'd otherwise be at work.
when you're home sick and just have to get certain things done, it sucks. especially when you pick a stupid blogon topic and can't find any blogs that mention said topic more than once. sigh. time to pad with photos.

also, Orange Socks

yes I know the rest of the world has seen this.
but some Melbourne bloggers were discussing it and might like to know where it is: Things My Girlfriend and I have argued about.

I might buy it for A for Xmas

How the Web was made
blogon
Stop Design
The man behind the slightly controversial but politically correct redesign of Wired magazine's site bares his artistic soul in Stop Design.
Subscribing to a philosophy of both accessibility and clarity, he uses his blog to talk about his working life.
The main issues last week were the strangeness of going freelance after permanent employment, categorisation methods on a museum website and some retrospective musings about the instant fame the Wired redesign brought him. There's a portfolio area showing designs he helped create, like the WebMonkey logo and the look for a book called The Art & Science of Web Design.
Those are forceful answers to a former boss at a design firm who told him 10 years ago that the Web "would go away within a few years".
And of course the site itself is very nice indeed to look at.

Lucdesk
Focusing on making websites easier to use, the LucDesk site links to articles on Internet banking, the Internet's role during disasters, new kinds of personal computer and technical standards issues.
Over recent months you could have read about the legal implications of "cut and paste" and the security risks posed by some personal digital assistants. It gives just enough information about each link to let you decide whether you'd like what's at the other end, and there's an excellent list of like-minded blogs for further reading.
The blogger doesn't offer a lot of his own opinion but the comprehensive coverage more than makes up for that.


Zeldman.com
Self-described "designer, author, and stunt double Jeffrey Zeldman" is also the man behind the intelligent mailing list A List Apart, which tackles design as only one part of the complex equation of getting things right on the Web. His Weblog discusses design, the just desserts of arrogant makers of products, digital certificates and James Bond. It's a writing style that flits over popular culture and ideas without looking back.
Zeldman's respected place in the design zeitgeist means he hears about most of the good things first, and going to his blog and following the links is a lot easier than tracking down stuff for yourself.
Last week's examples included a site where you can read "other people's stories", often poignant or funny, a list of useful Photoshop 7 short-cuts and what the US law says about Internet accessibility and useability. It's eclectic, but the unifying theme is the Web, and it works.

Brainstorms and Raves
What's under the hood of the WC3's latest Markup Validation Service? (Translation: The WC3 is the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets Web standards, and its mark-up validation service helps designers check their code.) Why on earth should you bother using standards in your design work? What should you look for in a digital camera? What's the buzz on technology and productivity? Brainstorms and Raves has solid advice on what just works, and combines strong technical knowledge with an understanding of the human side of "human-computer interaction". The blog is a project of an established United States design firm, SKDesign.

a nice RGB colour wheel.
that's it for today. I've had a little visit to Mr Hospital and plan to do nothing but stare out the window and wait for the eclipse.

have just interviewed an academic who has been studying how a certain group of people feel about technology in their workplace.
the short answer is that people will only want to work on new technology if it helps them do their jobs better.
strangely, this doesn't seem to have been expressed in a scientific manner before.
I must be turning into one of those grumpy people who walk about muttering "it's just plain commonsense, innit?"

well, he/she died.
at least, it was lying on its side on the bottom of the tank, not moving, and didn't respond when I gently shifted it with a chopstick. I think it died last night, but I left it there just in case of a miraculous recovery.
so I put it in a jar full of water, and on my way to work stopped at the bridge over the Elwood Canal, just where it meets the bay, and tipped it all over the edge. it looked so sad, just a tiny golden fish shape floating out to sea, surrounded by the darting grey mini-fish that live in the canal.
its name was Sushi, thanks to Meredith, who noted when I last rescued it with a chopstick that the whole thing was a bit to close to that particular dish.