Month: January 2005

So hot today. Saw this reflection of the Queen Victoria Building and Centrepoint Tower from York Street today waiting for the bus home…

Happy blog-birthday to me!
Yes, folks, it’s that time again. I have now officially been running w-g for four whole years. Nuts, huh? (The archives go back a bit farther since they incorporate my very first blog, which didn’t live here.) As I did the previous two years, I’ve compiled some statistics to commemorate the occasion:

• Total posts: 874 (up 6 from last year)
• Total comments: 3323 (up 44 from last year)
• Comments-to-post ratio: 3.8
• Posts mentioning the Snook in some way or another: 199 (22.7% – Good grief!)
• Comments made by the Snook: 0 (He likes it that way. He’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery.)
• Top fifteen commenters this year: 1. Me (790); 2. Amy (255); 3. WeeB (121); 4. Tricia (109); 5. Moire (99); 6. Jenny (97); 7. Aim (74); 8. Eileen (74); 9. Claire (72); 10. Brigita (71); 11. Robert (70); 12. Max (61); 13. Miss Helen (60); 14. Niffler (54); 15. Lindsey (52)
• Most commented posts: Election Aftermath, Simpsons Valentine (yes, still), Wedding Announcement, Dude, Where’s my Fetus?, Just Married
• Most popular day for posting: Wednesday
• Most popular day for commenting: Wednesday
• New continents blogged: none!
• Jobs held: two!
• Weddings attended: four (Martin & Mimi, Major & Steph, Amy & Dan, Me & Snookums)
• New additions to the family: one (our cat)
• Pictures posted of my cat: 13 (I think that’s pretty darn good, considering!)

It’s funny to see the patterns emerging over the years. Women have made a strong resurgence on the top-commenters list, but WeeBen is now higher than ever (thanks to the fact that he started using a consistent username). I’m also noticing that my fellow bloggers are mostly dropping down the list, which I totally understand given my own commenting on other sites has dropped significantly. (Usually I’ll just respond with a link here instead.) And It’s weird how the number of posts and comments is almost exactly the same as last year. I guess that means I’m blogging at full capacity, huh?

Thanks to everyone who contributed with a comment or an e-mail last year! (And hey, you lurkers, at least say “hi” once in a while, okay?) I was especially touched by all your messages of congratulations about getting married. It was a little bit sad not being able to have all of our family and friends together in one place, and you guys really helped alleviate that. Onwards and upwards…

Note to self: Investigate using this Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention method. I’ve been having trouble (yet again) with message board dweebs stealing my images. This time it’s “Merry Christmas from the Hoff.” I’m having fun with them, though…

50 Things to Eat Before You Die – I’ve had nearly everything on the list with the exception of some of the fish/seafood. I’m still working on that. Read on to see my whole list. (Link courtesy of Kristen, who is much more adventurous than me.)2. Lobster – My one and only lobster experience was on Spring Break 1997 when I visited my roommate Eileen’s family in Boston. We had lobster with loads of butter. I found the texture to be really gross. And then I spent the next 24 hours on the train home puking my guts out. But that could’ve been from the alcohol, I suppose…
3. Steak – Mmm, yes please. I don’t like it as rare as the Snook (who’s been known to eat carpaccio and steak tartare), but as long as the inside isn’t too bloody, I’ll happily eat it.
4. Thai food – I’ve been told that Sydney has more Thai restaurants than anywhere else outside of Thailand. And damn, they’re all good.
5. Chinese food – A Chinese co-worker took me for some authentic dim sum at the North Ryde RSL. It was fantastic. Much better than the crap we used to get delivered in college.
6. Ice cream – Who hasn’t? I mean, honestly.
7. Pizza – I love pizza. I’ve even eat it at Da Michele’s in Naples, the restaurant mentioned here. Best pizza I ever had in my life.
8. Crab – Do crab cakes count?
9. Curry – My current favorite is the Snook’s secret recipe for homemade mango chicken curry.
10. Prawns – Currently the only seafood I can definitely say I like. Mmm, prawns on the barbie dipped straight into garlic butter…
12. Clam chowder – It’s CHOWDA! Tried it in Boston once and thought it was pretty good.
13. Barbecue – Oh, yeah. It tastes best on our very own new barbie!
14. Pancakes – I’m guilty of introducing thick American-style pancakes to the Snook, who is now obsessed with them. So I know pancakes.
15. Pasta – We don’t eat it so much these days – damn carbs – but I still love it. The more garlic the better.
17. Cheesecake – *drool*
18. Lamb – I’d never eaten lamb before moving overseas, but now it’s my favorite meat ever. Too bad the drought has made it prohibitively expensive right now.
19. Cream tea – My favorite was at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens. Lovely.
21. Oysters – The Snook finally convinced me to try one – raw with squeezed lime – last Valentine’s Day. I didn’t mind it, actually!
22. Kangaroo – Yum. Ma Snook brought us some fillets last year that were superb.
23. Chocolate – The Snook prefers his darker and less sweet than I do, but we’re both chocoholics.
24. Sandwiches – I’m ashamed to admit that my favorite is the Chicken Caesar from Pret a Manger in London.
25. Greek food – I make a mean moussaka.
26. Burgers – I’ve come to love the Aussie version with fried egg and barbecue sauce. I’ll still pass on the beetroot, though.
27. Mexican food – This is the one thing I really miss living in Sydney.
28. Squid – I’ve tried deep fried calamari. That counts, right?
29. American diner breakfast – Again, I converted the Snook. He’s now a big Denny’s fan.
30. Salmon – I don’t eat fish, but last year I was so drunk at a wedding that I happily ate the smoked salmon appetizer. And it was pretty good!
31. Venison – My childhood aversion to deer hunting pretty much vanished once I realized that venison tasted good.
34. Sushi – I tried it a couple times to appease the Snook. Not a huge fan.
38. Kebabs – The best kebab in the world comes from a little shop on Fulham Palace Road in London, near the Hammersmith Broadway pedestrian underpass. Get it with garlic and chili. *drool*
40. Australian meat pie – I’ve decided that they’re a more-then-acceptable hot dog substitute at the cricket. I still haven’t been to Harry’s Cafe de Wheels, though.
41. Mango – I’m not a huge fan of it raw, but in chutney or curry it’s sublime.
43. Octopus – I’ve had deep-fried baby octopus a couple times in Australia. Mostly rubbery, I thought.
45. Roast beef – Yum. I even ate it in England, which probably means I’ve got BSE now.
46. Tapas – There used to be a great tapas place near our house in Newtown. Sadly, our patronage wasn’t enough to keep it afloat!
50. Cornish pasty – Scarfed a few while travelling in England. Wonderful.

“High IQ cuts women’s marriage prospects.” Oh, good grief. I can tell I’m supposed to be shocked and outraged at this, but I’m really not. I don’t even really see it being a problem. I imagine that most of the guys intimidated by smart women aren’t worth our time anyway. I think it’s worth it to spend the extra time finding somebody intellectually compatible. (I’ve done the dating-a-dumb-guy thing, and the fun wears off pretty darn quick.)

Poodoo. My iPod just froze while updating. Attempts to reboot and restore proved unsuccessful. Kinda sucks, but I guess I had such good luck with my first one (three years old and still running!) that I figure I was due for some bad karma. On the plus side, I’m pretty impressed with Apple Australia’s online service request system. I was able to print out an Australia Post label and apparently when I take in the iPod, they even furnish me with all the packing materials free of charge. I just hope there isn’t a rush of post-Christmas service jobs that’ll slow my turnaround time…

Dr Amy Jones
What better way to test my new moblogging ability than with the ol’ standby: a picture of our cat! More details on my setup in a minute…

Later: Okay, so all the cool kids nowadays are using Flickr to upload photos to their sites. I like to be contrary, though, so I asked the Snook how difficult it would be to roll this ourselves. Within a few hours, he had it up and running. Basically, I take a photo with my Sony Ericsson T610 and MMS it to a special e-mail address. I’ll let the Snook explain how he worked the server-side mojo: “I wrote a PHP script using the Mail_Mime component from the Pear Repository which scans a message for text and image attachments, saves and resizes the image, and inserts a post into the database. I use qmail to feed incoming messages to the script.” So that’s it! This image and the short bit of accompanying text went straight from my phone to w-g. (This extra bit was added by hand afterwards.) Now I’m envisioning all sorts of fun uses for this in the future. Maybe Crazy Jesus Lady would let me put her on the site…?

Even later: I just realized I should probably translate for the non-nerds in the audience. By “moblog,” I mean “mobile web logging,” which is a completely stupid and made-up way of saying that I take pictures with my cell phone and send them to my website. Just in case you were confused.

Congratulations to Andrew and Kathleen, who are getting married today!

Wedding photos are now online!
At long last, I’ve managed to upload all the pictures from our trip back to the States in November. I even scanned in the official wedding shots from our big day in Vegas! You can also see us play in the snow, eat various deep-fried novelty items, and tour San Francisco in the freezing cold. Fun, huh?