Francis’ Weblog

This years Christmas party was in Sydney on a sea cat going around the Sydney bays. It was a themed fancy dress, we all had to come from a country but the country couldn’t be where you were born and couldn’t be taken by someone else… so I went as….

Yes, the phantom of the opera! .. it was either that or a french maid!

Dean went as “Chile” and Joy the new zealander went as scotland:

Yannis won the costume competition, I don’t know what country he came as… I don’t think anyone cared, he came as a maid. The funniest moment was when we all had to walk from the hotel to darling harbour to pick up the boat. The looks from the Japaneese tourists was priceless! also the wolf whisles and the bemused faces of people as he walked by:

Other photos:

Demiti works for GT in Jakarta, Indonesia and it was his first time outside the country… and the first time he has seen how we party… never seen a christmas cracker before… generally in shock most of the night but he did get into the swing of things. He managed to borrow a couple of elements of costumes from different people to make his own costume:

Picture from the boat looking back at Sydney:

My Crimbo Hamper:

Video to come!

Yes its official… headline news in auckland… “Man Drought” i’ve always loved new zealand’s news reporting… they have so little to write about. But in Alaska men out-number women 10 to 1, but there is a saying in Alaska “The odds are good, but the goods are odd”.

A mate took this awesome picture a couple of nights ago, thought I should share!

Well i was over in Melbourne for the past couple of months and while I was their I went to the Melbourne Cup. Probably the biggest event of the year in Melbourne, its even a public holiday. I did a couple of bets, managed to make around $2.70 in all a profit!

BBQ at St Kilda:

Google has launched Google Code Search. I think you can guess what it does interesting … thanks to Rob for the link! I do like the the feature where you can hit ‘p’ or ‘n’ to go to the previous or next search word. i did wonder why they created Google Hosting (actually created with one of the founders of sourceforge.net).

It is interesting that this week Google Execs this week told their developers to stop creating so many applications and now look at adding features to the existing applications. Also to concentrate on getting them more integrated. It is definatly needed. Yes the spreadsheets app is good but I wouldn’t use it. I think if Google should go towards the idea of ThinkFreeOfice, offer a large amount of space to save files I think they can really get into the thin client integrated enterprise space. Create and edit any of your files in word, excel, powerpoint, calendar and email and allow them to be shared to whoever you want at any time. Powerful! Oh and if there was a calender integration for Outlook, i’d use it! …

Windows Vista RC2 has been released for anyone to download it! It will be the last release before it goes into production. Here are some screenshots of Vista. Its nice… very Mac like

Firefox 2 RC2 has been released - quite a few new features but its more stable, i’m hoping they have fixed the memory leaks which seem to plage me!

I’ve just got back from my melbourne trip. While I was in melbourne I managed to get tickets to ‘Festen‘ which happened to star Jason Donovan at the local arts centre about 5mins walk from my hotel. The play was based on the original film which was released in 1998:

“The Father turns 60. His family, which is a big one of the kind, gathers to celebrate him on a castle. Everybody likes and respects the father deeply…or do they? The Youngest Son is trying to live up to The Father’s expectations. He is running a grill-bar in a dirty part of Copenhagen. The oldest son runs a restaurant in France, while the sister is a lawyer. The older sister has recently committed suicide and the father asks the oldest son to say a few words about her, because he is afraid he will break into tears if he does it himself. The oldest son agrees without arguments. Actually he has already written two speeches. A yellow and a green one. By the table, he asks the father to pick a speech. The father chooses green. The oldest son announces that this is the Speech of Truth. Everybody laughs, except for the father who gets a nervous look on his face. For he knows that the oldest son is about to reveal the secret of why the oldest sister killed herself.“

It was quite a good show, I especially liked how they represented everyone getting ready for bed. They had one bed centre stage which was used by all the characters in the scene at the same time but acting out their own little scenes totally independantly… worked really well

On the way back on the plane the cabin crew announced that the film was about to start and I overheard a passenger saying that it was a really good film, so I thought I should tune in… The film is called Kenny and was about Kenny Smyth who delivers pora-loos. He’s ignored and unapprciated, but its hilarious! … It was really bizare! on a plane at 30,000 feet, trying not to laugh. In the end I just gave up trying to hold it in, the rest of the aircraft was laughing so much! Toilet humour at its best! From what is says on IMDB it doesn’t have any release dates outside Oz at the moment, but I hope it does! Its the second film in as many months that has come out of Australia that has been great.

Well i’ve heard back from Alienware UK that Alienware Australia will be giving me a call to arrange pickup of my laptop. I wonder how long its going to take Well I have a work trip off to Melbourne tommorow, the last time I was in melbourne was at the end of 2001 when I did a big road trip with two mates.

Homemade flight sim, I want one!

Its amazing what you find on the internet. But on the 11th January 1797 at the Old Bailey. Look who got arrested for stealing 50 pieces of wood pipe and a wooden boat! In the end jury found him guilty and confined to “The House of Correction” and fined a shilling. I wonder if he is any relation?

On the same day in another case, James Waring (Aged 16.), William Green (Aged 13.) and John Milton (Aged 14.) were all found guilty for:

“burglariously breaking and entering the dwelling-house of John Printon , about the hour of six in the night of the 5th of December, and feloniously stealing a black silk cloak, value 26s. six yards of muslin, value 18s. and a muslin cap, value 1s. the property of the said John ;”

They were all sentenced to death… over 200 years ago.

Its been a while! … almost a month infact. I’ve been a bit crazy with work recently … and having fun snowboarding at the weekends too. Anway found a couple of interesting things this month…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4
Found this cool vid on youtube.com. This guy gets around the world showing off his expert dancing skills!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/315702
Online game. Its quite easy until you get to level 16 & 23 which I got stuck on for a bit… think its already done the rounds but its quite fun.

http://poignantguide.net/ruby/
This is a great site if you want to learn Ruby, you can even download a ruby virtual machine from VMTN so your up and developing in… well the amount of time it takes to download! ooh how I love VMs

http://www.google.com/gmm/tour.html
You can now get Google Maps on ya mobile, you can plot a route and even see it via satelite too. I used to use wap to get rail times quite a bit. Every now and again I always wanted to get maps on my phone too, but now you can

Finally I give an award to the most “inventive” post to the iPod Shuffle story:

“Hi. The iPod was shorted out by a cabal of Jewish engineers who perfected the science of invisibility and secretly control the entire universe including Burger King, but not McDonalds. They call to me hypersonically from the little holes in the electrical sockets telling me to produce movies about phony messiahs who didn’t really exist. The dead iPod is NOT an example of the Holocaust although their are millions of dead iPods which have been burried in mass graves in Croatia. Hi, sugartits. “

Truely bizare!

Well I did my snowboarding trip, here are a couple of photos:

Saturday night in Ohakune

Well that was a week ago and i’m still in Auckland, really good snow! and its still snowing!! It takes about 3hrs to drive to Ohakune and then about 30mins driving up the mountain… or should I say volcano… BUT it only went active about 10 years ago and wipped the lift system and mountain cafes off the face of the mountain one… but you try not to think about that

I’ve now got a flat on the docks right next to the centre of Auckland. It takes about 10mins to walk into the centre of town. Out here its so cheap, there is no council tax and the top rate of tax is 33% and no national insurance so its basically another 10% cheaper. You do have to pay doctors fees which is about £10 per visit but you can get insurance for around £20 a month which covers everything.