Zoombie Menace

This concerning public safety poster was discovered in my archives. Thankfully the zoombie threat levels are currently rated at MODERATE.

My Cat's Top Ten Films of 2019

Here are Gizzie 's top ten films for 2019, plus some honourable mentions.

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - totally love a good revenge film, even if it is pure fantasy....

2. Jo Jo Rabbit - Nazi themes, Sam Rockwell, Taika Waititi, Rebel Wilson, Scarlett Johansen all in superb form, as were the two main boy actors (loved the larger framed one) - funny, tragic, moving

3. Nightingale  - incredibly violent, can see why people walked out of cinemas, even I found it challenging and I have watched a lot of violent films over the years, but brilliant depiction of all the forms of oppression throughout our history...

4. Destroyer - Nicole Kidman was brilliant in this, and like I said, love a good revenge story, as well as stories of atonement

5. Aftermath - romantic and set with Nazi background, am always fascinated by Nazi themes 

6. Cold Pursuit  - Liam Neeson - bloody funny film

7. All is True - Kenneth Branagh as Shakespeare - reflective in his old age

8. Swoon - creative, colourful, well told story

9. Terminator: Dark Fate - for the fans mostly... love Arnold when he does humour

10. Zombieland Double Tapped - for the fans again... great cast

And honourable mentions for:

Doctor Sleep - not Kubrick, but I thought that this was a fairly good sequel, not as scary or suspenseful, but still well done

The Dead Don't Die - any film with Bill Murray ranks highly with me

Parasite - interesting and surprising.... heard good things about it, wasn't sure, but when I did see it, was intrigued

Surviving the Heatwave

With Perth enduring it's worst ever December heatwave, I closely monitored the temperature inside my home each day. I was keen to know how rapidly an impoverished household with only a feeble fan to cool them would cope. 

Date	Indoor Temperature AM	Outdoor Temperature Max	Indoor Temperature PM
12th Dec	26C	37C	28C
13th Dec	27C	39C	30C
14th Dec	29C	40C	31C
15th Dec	30C	41C	32C
16th Dec	30C	41C	32C
17th Dec	30C	38C	32C
18th Dec	30C	33C	31C
19th Dec	29C	34C	30C

The verdict - after two or three hot days (over 35C), the room temperature hots up to 30C to 32C. And it takes a couple of milder days to cool down again.

Top TV Shows of 2019

Here are my favourite shows of the past 12 months.

10. Euphoria

9. This Time with Alan Partridge

8. The Man in the High Castle

7. Stranger Things

6. The Crown

5. Good Omens

4. Game of Thrones

3. The Marvellous Mrs Maisel

2. Chernobyl

1. Halt and Catch Fire

Top Ten Films of 2019

Not a classic year for films, with many worthy productions ending up on Netflix instead of in the cinemas. But despite that, I'm pleased with my top ten, which is dominated by comedies or dramas with a sprinkling of humour.

10(=). Animals - delightful Irish female buddy film

10(=). I Feel Good - crazy French satire. A smooth-talking but not terribly successful minor entrepreneur concocts multiple schemes in order to achieve the fame and riches he craves. His latest scheme is to transport elderly folk to Eastern Europe for plastic surgery to beautify them. 

9. The Nightingale - Aussie vengeance drama, set in Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s amongst the convicts and settlers

8. Cold Pursuit - yet another Liam Neeson revenge film, after his son dies in Colorado, he sets out to track down anyone involved. The difference is that this one is a black comedy.

7. Booksmart - coming of age comedy drama as two studious girls graduate from high school

6. Avengers Endgame - I'm ashamed that a superhero flick made it onto this list, but this one was wildly entertaining

5. The Favourite - Queen Anne and her insane court

4. Knives Out - as good as a top-notch Agatha Christie, with the addition of humour

3. Aftermath - Keira Knightley is mesmerisingly good in this film set in Germany immediately post-war

2. Doctor Sleep - sequel to The Shining, and no match to the original, but still worthy.

1. Apollo 11 - so many unforgettable moments from history. The pulsating score and lack of a narration leads to a trancelike state as the astronauts are propelled towards their fate

Avebury amnesia

Sighted at Avebury a few weeks ago, an unconscious figure lying below the mysterious stones. His fate is unknown.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Re-reading Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four this week, I was struck by the huge number of his concepts that have permeated current culture. Now that we're living in a dystopian surveillance state, writing about this may trigger interest from Australia's Big Brother government, but I'm prepared to risk that. So before they cut me off, here's a list of concepts from that novel. How many of these are you familiar with?

Big Brother

Room 101

Thoughtcrime

Doublespeak

Memory hole

Crimestop

History is stopped

Big Brother is Watching You

2 + 2 = 5

Newspeak

unperson

Ministry of Truth

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength

City Beach gloaming

A decent sunset over city beach a few weeks ago.

Dingo Rainbow

On the way to Freo a week ago, a magic rainbow emanated from the Dingo Flour mill. Please send me a postcard explaining the meaning of this.

Mobile Garden Bed

Although I normally commute by car, I'm still a committed environmentalist. After all, why else would my car have seedlings growing on the roof? Surely there's no other explanation.

Old Timey Keyboards

How could it have taken me so long to discover the joys of mechanical keyboards? The last few work keyboards I've had the misfortune to suffer with have had a squelchy non-responsive feel. They don't work well with my primitive form of touch typing, and the lack of a clicky noise when hitting the keys makes typing sadly unrewarding. My error rate has increased as my joy has declined. So it was exciting to discover that old-fashioned clicky mechanical keyboards are making a comeback.

And for those lacking desk space, why not ditch the rarely used numeric keypad? It is a sacrifice to ditch the media keys, but it's still possible to reprogram a key combo to perform the same functions.

This is the sort of keyboard you can end up with... a Ducky One 2. I've ordered one and am counting down the days till I can hook it up to my pc.

One Week of Autumn Colours

Autumn foliage colours don't last long in Perth's climate. I never react in time, and only ever remember to stop and take a photo at the tail end of the season, by which time the rich colours have already faded. This avenue is on my route to work each day...

My Cat's Favourite Streaming Shows

My cat spends countless hours on the sofa watching the latest shows from Netflix et al. Here are his top recommendations from the last couple of years.

• The Walking Dead  (zombies)
• Masters of Sex  (50s and 60s sociology)
• Halt and Catch Fire (the nascent tech industry of the 80s and 90s)
• Twin Peaks (2017)
• Game of Thrones (you've probably heard of this one)
• The Terror (the ill-fated Franklin arctic expedition of 1845)
• Veep (political humour, though not as biting as The Thick of It)
• The Man in the High Castle (the Axis powers triumphed and rule a divided US)
• Tom and Jerry

Field of Light: Albany

At dusk on Mt Clarence above Albany a week ago, the commemorative lights twinkled.

Albany Bottlebrush

The scarlet of this bottlebrush is so vivid against the green. It was beside the road in Mt Lindesay National Park, near Mt Barker.

Albany's Gap

We arrived at Albany's Gap and Natural Bridge nigh on sunset last Sunday.

Denmark Eden

Staying in Denmark last weekend, this was the view of paradise on waking up Sunday morning.

My Cat's Favourite Films for 2018

As is traditional, my cats also have strong opinions on movies and have compiled their list of favourites this year. Their preferred genres are Aussie dramas, war films, science fiction, and anything involving vengeance (e.g. Liam Neeson on a rampage).

1. The Darkest Hour

2. Death of Stalin

3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

4. Molly’s Game

5. Ghost Stories

6. Chappaquidick

7. Gringo

8. Ophelia

9. Overlord

10. Foxtrot

11. Swinging safari

12. Bad Times at the El Royale

13. Solo 

Films of 2018

So far I've seen 99 films at the cinema this year, well behind most years. And it hasn't been a particularly memorable year. No science fiction or fantasy films left their mark, and there weren't many successful comedies. But I've still managed to scrape together a list of my top ten.

I should mention that Paddington 2 missed out on last year's list due to its very late in the year release date, but it deserved to be there.

10. First Man - the story of the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong

9. Bad Times at the El Royale - who'll survive a night at this motel?

8. Juliet Naked - Rose Byrne, Chris O'Dowd & Ethan Hawke. That's all you need to know.

7. Journey's End - in the trenches of the Great War, waiting for orders to advance

6. Crooked House - a country house whodunnit

5. Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - WW2

4. The Darkest Hour - the third and best Churchill movie of 2018

3. Mission Impossible Fallout - kinetic and non-stop thrills

2. Death of Stalin - the funniest film of the year

1. On Chesil Beach - tragic drama set in the 1950s 

Clearly I like English period dramas. They make up half of the ten.

Honourable mentions go to Overlord, Solo, and Ophelia.

All-Year Christmas

My dream of never-ending Christmas is now reality. Last year, I stockpiled so much festive food (Christmas cakes, mince pies, Christmas puddings), that I've been able to eke out the supplies till now. I finished the final Christmas cake last week, and one pudding remains. But now that mince pies are in the shops, and Floreat Forum has Christmas decorations up, I can proclaim victory. The desolate non-Noel period of January to September has been survived and conquered, and I can replenish my survives as we count down the remaining months until the number one day of the year.

Happy Christmas !

Information Science

Spending my lunchtimes in UWA's Reid Library, it's amusing reading old copies of the Times Literary Supplement. Particularly interesting are the positions vacant ads. Here are a couple from 1975.

The second advertises a salary starting at 

£2,395. That works out to a healthy £46 per week. 

And I'm surprised that the profession of Information Scientist existed 43 years ago. Perhaps it's a fancy term for a librarian who can operate a microfiche? Reading wikipedia, it was regarded as quite distinct from the role of librarian, and provided focused information to technical and research staff. much like Google does today. This might explain why you no longer encounter information scientists.

My Top Podcasts of 2018

My ears are never bored. Back in the 80s and 90s, local radio was so tedious that I spent long hours listening to the world through my Russian shortwave radio. But with the explosion in niche and fiction podcasts, my life is now spent thinking of ways to cram more podcasts into my day. Here are my current favourites:

1. Kermode and Mayo's Film Review
2. The Talking Dead - a podcast dedicated to the Walking Dead tv show
3. Sword and Laser - Science fiction and fantasy bookclub
4. Welcome to Night Vale - the one and only 
5. Pod Save America - US politics. Plenty of Trump idiocy to talk about
6. MonsterTalk
7. Beef and Dairy Network - cow news 
8. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast - board gamers with heaps of personality
9. The Slash Filmcast - geeky US film reviews
10. The Black Tapes - creepy fiction set in the Pacific Northwest
11. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy  - a science fiction podcast covering science and fiction
12. SAYER - horror set on a space station
13. Skeptoid - scientific debunking
14. The Folklore Podcast - a quaint UK show with the best theme

In the mountains

Although much of my time in the New Zealand alps was under clouds, when they did lift, the scene was breathtaking. Staying in Mt Cook Village, I was right amongst the towering pinnacles.

.. and the prettiest town in NZ is Arrowtown

I've rarely seem a more beautiful town anywhere in the world than Arrowtown. Although it's a tourist trap during daylight, with busloads of sightseers wandering around licking icecreams and taking selfies, later in the day, it's quieter and more relaxed.

Autumn Colours in New Zealand

Autumn must surely be when New Zealand is at its prettiest. Although their native trees are mostly evergreen, the introduced maples and beeches and other deciduous trees are gorgeous when the leaves start to fade and drop.

The maples in Queenstown were aflame