What Does Merry Christmas Mean?

How many people have personally wished you a Merry Christmas this year? Does each additional wish put pressure on you to enjoy the day more? Or does it increase your excitement and anticipation? Now that it's Boxing Day, we can analyse this in retrospect.

And how about those tardy cards that arrive a few days after the big day in the glut of mail. Do the words have any effect now that the day has passed? Or are they merely decorated pieces of cardboard?

In my mind, the words contribute marginally to my warm fuzzy glow of festive cheer, no matter how many times  I hear or read them. To understand this better, realise that instead of a fuel guage in most of our minds is a Christmas guage that ranges from empty to full depending on the time of year. And each card received, each greeting, each Christmas special on tv sends the needle further towards full. 

Cards also have a science fiction element for me - they trigger a visualisation of the person who sent it, like a hologram: I picture them sitting down and writing amid a stack of other cards.

Noël Van Winkle

Eeeks, I've just awoken after sleeping solidly for three straight days and nights and it's only 30 minutes to Christmas ! My shopping for gifts is somewhat restricted at this time of night - options are sausage rolls and corn chips from the petrol station down the road, or flowers from the neighbour's garden. I might repackage up my old video recorder and pass it on to an elderly relative - they won't notice its vintage. And there's a spare cat wandering around the corridor near me as I type - if only he can be tempted into a large box.

Next year I'll make sure not to contract a nasty bug from a buffet. It really ruined my 7th to the 11th days of Christmas this year.

Tricks of the Buffet

Lunching at a pricey buffet today, my mind was drawn towards getting the most value from the experience. Here are some thoughts.

Tricky with soup

1. The restaurant supplied dainty little scissor tongs (left) to handle the food. They were so small and delicate and fiddly that a surgeon would have had trouble using them. They didn't grip well and they had the desired effect of frustrating people so much that they abandoned any thoughts of filling their plates. My solution - bring a heavy duty tool from the garden. You'll be loading up your plate in seconds.

2. Go for desserts first. When the restaurant opens, the dessert station is virgin territory. Get yourself over there before its despoiled by the stampede and take your pick.

3. Order a la carte (much cheaper) but then "borrow" food from other people. The wait staff can't keep track of any mince pies that may be passed illicitly under the table.

Arachnoblurrier

You might suspect this shot is out of focus. I'd say no, there's defiinitely something in focus, you just have to hunt for it. In any case, can you blame me for not wanting to hang around this backyard monster too long?

Tilt Shifting for Dummies

Taking tilt shift photos is so simple when your camera has the function built-in. When I tried it three years ago with my box brownie it took months of painstaking work to achieve the effect, working with individual pixels using a pair of tweezers. Anyhow, here's another shot from the Seattle Space Needle.

I took some photos from the Seattle Space Pin over the road, but it's only three metres above the ground - hardly worth the $0.15 admission charge.

Back to Seattle

The view from the Space Needle in Seattle.

Fluoro Orange

Why on earth did they paint the tower at a local university such a striking fluoro orange? What were they thinking?

Unexpected Sky Liquids

In the middle of the huge downpour on Monday night, my only aim was to photograph falling raindrops. Here are seven. They must have been heavy, judging by the exploding buckets of water.

Lost Dr Who Episodes Discovered, But My Tapes Still Missing

A scene from my 12th birthday party. Bod is at the rear.

With the astounding news that two long lost episodes of Dr Who from the 1960s have been discovered, I must sadly report that home videos from the early 1980s of my family's birthday parties are still lost. In tragic circumstances in the late 1980s, a shortage of video tapes in the lounge room led to certain peoples (who shall remain anonymous) being forced to tape over our priceless footage.

Despite remaining ever vigilant, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that we will ever see those scenes again, especially since the number of working video recorders in the extended family has declined to one, and more importantly, we have not discovered yet how to unerase video tape, despite numerous emails to the FBI.

Luna is Eclipsed

The moon was swallowed up by the earth's shadow last night, and even more eerily, turned a shade of orange at the peak of the spectacle. Your intrepid blogger was there all evening, braving the mild and clement conditions in the pursuit of astrophotography. That didn't work out, so here are some snaps I took.

7:30pm - the moon started the evening looking nomally moonish.

9:00 pm - the first chunk has been bitten

9:45pm - werewolves are by now ripping their shirts off

10.10pm - it's a little nippy, so shirts are back on again by now

CHOGM - Gone but not Forgotten

Just when the excitement of Perth's recent CHOGM  was dying down, a commemorative coin landed in my pocket.

This is such a collector's item, its face value of $1 is dwarfed by its street value of $1.00001 among numismatic aficionados.

Note the 17 sheets of toilet paper encircling the globe in a symbolic joining of the bottoms of the world.

Mediaeval Stained Building

Another from the Freo Festival.

Kingly Wall

Another gorgeous scene from the Freo Festival. The image was animated and even more magical in person.

Hidden Veggies

For the reluctant vegetarian, this is the perfect pasta sauce. I spotted it in my local supermarket on the weekend.

There's a complementary range of sauces called Hidden Meat targeted at people  trying to undermine militant vegetarians in their own family.

Freo Festival - Illuminated Buildings

The patterns changed every few seconds.

More from the Fremantle Ferris Wheel

One of the seven wonders of the Southern Hemisphere.

Fremantle Lights

As part of the Fremantle Festival, animated projections on various buildings appeared on the weekend. These two sailor boys were bouncing around merrily on the Bar Orient.

Sunset over Fremantle Harbour

This view is from the ferris wheel. Note the misleading "Perth" sign.

The Moreton Bay Fig

Here's a view from another angle. I'd like one of these in my lounge room, but I'd have to remove the ceiling. Note the giant baubles; so large they'd flatten an elephant. Every day, one of them drops to the ground and cracks open, with hundreds of surprise presents spilling out . A stampede of children gather at much booty as they can and everyone is happy, unless it's one of the slime baubles, full of goop and fish heads.

Christmas Lights are Lit

Seen in Fremantle last night, an aviator (or is it James Dean?) taking an interest in the newly turned-on Christmas lights on the High Street.

Male Pattern Strangeness

Male Pattern Strangeness can be treated with ointment.

But don't wait long, it may be too late.

Avoiding Sales Assistants

Playing hide-and-seek among the aisles of shops is my sixth favourite game. Dare venture into an electronics store or clothing boutique at a quiet time when sales assistants outnumber customers, and they'll swarm towards you with unwanted help and misleading advice, interrupting your finely-tuned decision-making process. This doesn't apply to Harvey Norman whose sleazy sales staff tend to be too occupied gossiping among themselves or playing X-Box. But in other stores, it's necessary to use advanced stealth techniques to evade them.

You're especially vulnerable alone and your fundamental technique is to keep on the move. Don't linger too long in one area or you'll be caught and the game's over. Keep moving from one salesperson's patch to another's so they're not sure what you're interested in and where you're heading. If you can sneak around behind them, you'll gain precious extra seconds before they close in, much like Pacman's ghosts.

It's far better to shop with a confederate or dummy shopper. The premise here is that your partner will attract the attention of staff, their spiel will commence and you'll be free to wander unmolested. It helps if your dummy shopper is preloaded with some silly questions that take time to answer. Here are some samples:

"I'd like to buy a colour printer. Can you help?" 


"I've heard that gold-plated cables improve tv pictures. Is this true?"


"How do I use this camera? What do the buttons do? Where do I put the film in?"

Hopefully these techniques will allow you to shop in peace.

Galleried Street Art

An exhibition of Roa's Australian work is currently showing at the FORM Gallery in West Perth. To enter it you walk through the legs of a giant kangaroo, painted on discarded wooden pallets.

Fiat

In Northbridge yesterday I came across a display of super-compact Italian cars. They had less power than a ride-on mower but better fuel economy. Beware large meals though - you'll not squeeze in should you eat too heartily.

Negative Charmingness

Charisma fascinates me. For one thing, its definition is an anagram of itself: "charisma is a charm". But I'm in awe of the magical trait that some people are born with and some people have no clue about.

It's obvious when someone has it - with a few deft remarks and a knowing look they instantly captivate you, put you at ease and make you feel positive about yourself. And clearly some people have zero charisma. When they speak to you, their emotional connection to you is similar to that of an inanimate object - a wall or a spoon, or possibly PVC piping. But is it possible to have negative charisma? Indeed so. Imagine someone cursed with the ability to deflate you, to demotivate you and uninspire you with a disapproving look or a few harsh words.

Tomorrow examine the people around you. Rate them on a charisma scale and try to identify at least one person with strong charisma, one neutral and one negative. Now rate yourself. I dare you.

Cryptic Parking

Parking in Leederville this afternoon, I was puzzled to see their new signs. Can you work out what this one means?

My first assumption is that for times not listed on the sign, no restrictions apply. So from midnight to 7am, anything goes. But what happens between 7am and midnight? The tricky part is the time that overlaps between the top and bottom signs - between 7am and 7pm. Which restriction takes precedence?

Answers on a postcard please.

Filling Your Brainicle

Travel and new experiences broaden the mind. Imagine a kid growing up in a box indoors with no windows, with nobody to talk to, no books, no tv, no interaction with anything except bland food pellets delivered every four hours through a slot in the wall. What would he dream of? What would he spend his day thinking about? A grey room with no sounds and no colours? (Interestingly, my brother did spend a few years in such a situation, but he eventually escaped and he's now quite normal !)

Now let's examine Dougie. He's spent his whole life loitering around a few northern suburbs of Perth, never leaving the city, never leaving the state, never leaving the country. His life is routine and predictable and he's always either at work at Woolies collecting trollies, or playing on his Playstation. His dreams and imaginings will be infinitely richer than the kid in a box, but he'll still be limited to his little world, and what he's seen on tv or learnt at school.

And for our third test subject, let's analyse Talitha. She flies overseas whenever her savings allow it, and she never returns to the same place twice. She's drawn to novel experiences, and is curious about different cultures. Even when she's at home, she can instantly revisit one of her travel destinations at the speed of thought - her brain has a reconstruction of various exotic locales and she can imagine herself being there without difficulty.

Three brains similar in terms of biology, but so different in terms of what they hold.

Random Rubbishings

Every year or so, the local council changes its rubbish collections. A few months ago, residents were given the option of replacing their large non-recyclables wheelie bin for a small red bin. And as a reward for downsizing we could then request a large green bin for garden clippings. And to complete the set, everyone has a yellow bin for recyclables. Now comes the tricky part - which bins to put out each week? Some are collected weekly, some fortnightly; but during holidays, it may be delayed by a day or two. So what is a confused resident to do?

My technique is to drive up and down the street, analysing what combinations of colours are left on the verge. This was foolproof in the days of two types of bins. Even if only two-thirds of people were correct, that was a strong enough sign. But now with at least colours, everyone is confused. Last night I drove from one end of the street to the other and found pockets of neighbours who were trying their luck with a red and a green, but other pockets who were going with a green and yellow. Or just a red. There was no consistent pattern to be discerned. And so for the third week in a row, I made my pick and took out two bins, and woke up the next morning disappointed - yet again only one bin was emptied. But I'm adamant this won't happen again - I'm taking notes about bin colours each week, and by the end of two or three weeks, I'll have cracked the pattern, and once again my rubbish will be disposed of, rather than accumulating endlessly beside my front door.

Midday Sun

Question. What idiot would choose to play singles tennis in the 36 degrees heat of the midday sun? And why is that regarded as fun?

Answer. Speaking as that very same idiot, I can tell you that I won, so yes it was definitely a sensible way to spend my lunchbreak. And not only did I boost my fragile ego by beating someone in a meaningless contest of hitting a yellow ball back and forth over a net, I also rewarded myself with a coca cola. Win win !

Giant Rat Graffiti

Here's some more street art by Roa, this time in West Perth.

Occupy Floreat Moves into New Sandier Phase

Thanks to posterdistrict.com 

Despite a total lack of success in our campaign for cheap salads at Floreat Forum and the inevitable condemnation from Perth Catholic Archbishop Hickey, the protest movement has grown stronger by the day. After many of the original revolutionaries tired of sitting around playing Plants vs Zombies on their smartphones all day while occupying the café, they've since been spotted recovering at Floreat Beach, and other nearby leisure spots. But by replacing themselves with cardboard cutouts, their protest lives on, without the lingering smell of unwashed young Marxists. For while their bodies are now lying on the beach or sitting in a bedroom shooting Nazis, their minds are still very much with the politics of redistribution.

¡Viva la Revolución!

Healthy Eating in Vegas

It may be hard to believe but I resisted the urge and chose not to eat at this establishment when passing through Las Vegas. I went for the healthier option of a block of lard sprinkled with icing sugar.

Note the convenient location of the medical facility across the road on the right.

Protection from Phantoms

Ghosts are intriguing. Despite scaring us silly, they're surprisingly feeble and easily deterred. Their power to frighten lies more in their unexpected appearance and our overactive imagination of their intent and what they may do to us, rather than their ability to physically harm us. Should you sense a ghostly presence in your bedroom, remember one thing: you're entirely safe under the sheets. Ghosts never harm someone hidden under the covers.

One more point to ponder: should you check under your bed for lurking spirits before sleeping? You may think it's safest to know if a malevolent presence is waiting for you, but that's exactly what they want you to do. Instead jump into bed from a metre or so, leaping over anything that may reach an arm, tendril or tentacle out to grab your foot.

Sleep tight tonight.

Occupy Floreat, Liberate the Salads

With the Occupy movements continuing their protests around the worldwide, I'm happy to announce today that Occupy Floreat is being launched. To protest against the extortionately priced gourmet salads at the Delish Café, demonstrators are occupying the eatery until their demands are met. No longer can salads be unaffordable for the 99%. Liberate the butternut squash and spinach salad. Let the proletariat sample the salade nicoise with croutons.

Grassy Treey

I came across a plain of grass trees in Mt Lesueur National Park recently. Here's the one with the wibbliest flower stalk.

Top 7 iPhone Apps

The iPhone4s is quite chunky

iPhones are a necessity of life for those with short attention spans. But how to choose which of the 500,000 apps to install? Fret no more. I've personally inspected over 16 of them, and here are my top seven*.

1. Word with Friends - lose simultaneously at Scrabble to friends world-wide. Much more exciting than just losing to one person at a time.

2. Fark Reader - weird news about goats driving tractors and babies with two heads. Read it here first, and two days later see it in your local newspaper.

3. Skype - free phone calls and messaging and video calls. Get in fast before Microsoft microsoft it up, now that they've purchased the company and will inevitably break it for non-Windows devices.

4. TuneIn Radio - streaming radio from anywhere in the world, but mostly Nigerian hip-hip.

5. Peggle - addictive game, a mixture of pinball and lacrosse and tossing the caber

6. Flixster - find local movie times and reviews, and send rude messages to the director if you don't like their work

7. Around Me - locate nearby theatres, bicycle shops and Lebanese restaurants. It's a great concept but sometimes you wonder why they don't diversify and help you locate other places. I'm sick of eating kebabs.

*  I chose a top seven rather than a more usual top five or top ten so this post is more likely to be discovered by a googler. Nobody thinks of lists of seven except heptathletes and there are only two such people in each country. In Australia we have Jane Fleming and some tubby bloke who wanted to be a decathlete but doesn't have the energy.

Midsummer Night's Party

Do you stay till the bitter end of parties? In the back of my mind, I always hope that as the evening turns into early morning and sobriety diminishes and tiredness grows, the inherent weirdness of the world will emerge from the shadows and reveal itself. Once darkness falls and any formalities are over, and once the first guests are leaving with their excuses ("I need to be up early tomorrow" is the most common), the atmosphere can change for the better. As long as there's a core of like-minded people, there's potential. These are folk who are prepared to stay up till dawn if they're suitably entertained. Music can help the mood, and a spontaneous conga line that ends up in a golf course bunker is always a good sign, but whatever the outcome, it's worth trying to overcome the desire to sleep so that just for once, you'll see the faeries emerge from their hidey-spots.

For an inkling of my meaning, watch A Midsummer Night's Dream. I do like the 1999 film version. 

Rays at Seaworld

On Friday morning, we had a tour of Seaworld on the Gold Coast. This is the view of the largest tank featuring scores of vicious creatures all trying to eat each other.

By the way, these guys are all called Ray. But the stingray is called Steve.

Zooming into Brisbane

Here's a close-up of the tiny ant city, visible between the clouds from the Airbus A330.

Brisbane Spotted from Above

Flying home from Brisbane, the city's towers were visible from 50km away.

More interestingly, we nearly hit an enormous floating red arrow on our ascent.

Night Train from Brisbane

It was an alienating place waiting for the train at Brisbane Airport last week, a colour-coordinated scene of yellow and silver that would appeal to robots or someone building a Lego train station, but not humans.

Giant Numbat Discovered in Fremantle

This is the recent work of renowned Belgian street artist Roa. Knowing Freo, this will be graffitied within a few weeks.

Airport Scanners Catching Terrorists

Further reports linking X-ray airport scanners with increased chances of cancer are comforting. Yes it is true that up to 100 Americans and unknown numbers of non-Americans may die each year due to the dose of radiation delivered in the name of detecting explosives and hidden weapons, but on the plus side, these scanners will eventually strike at the terrorists, and decades later a proportion of them will succumb to cancer. We just have to try to forget that the scanners are statistically as dangerous as the terrorists (read more here).

And instead of an X-ray we can opt for a body pat-down in which the only health-hazard is embarrassmentitis.

Car Crash Today

Several cars collided near my house today.  The Fire Brigade seemed to be rescuing people trapped in one of the cars when I passed.

What Colour Car?

Having long been safety-conscious, my default choice of car colour has been white or silver - very visible in poor light. But I couldn't resist a dark blue Mazda3 last time, despite the rational parts of me screaming not to. And I'm glad I was adventurous, but there have been downsides to the change in colour.

Reduced visibility to others. I'm definitely not as visible to others. On more than a few occasions, cars have popped out of side roads into my path as if I did not exist. After this happened several times on one weekend last year I decided to keep my headlights on permanently. Now I'm noticed again, and there haven't been any more such incidents. There is solid evidence that car colour can make a large difference to safety. For instance this research shows that at dawn or dusk, black cars are involved in 47% more accidents than white cars.

Dirtier. My car shows up dirt more than previous lighter colours. I can wash my car on a Sunday night and my Monday morning, the car could well have been involved in the Paris-Dakar Rally without my knowledge.

Hotter. A dark car does absorb the heat more than a lighter coloured one, as proven by the Mythbusters:

A black car heats up faster than an identical white car. 

CONFIRMED

A fan wrote in and asked a follow up question: "Does the color of a car affect the way it heats up?". The MythBusters used two identical cars, one black the other white and left them both out in the summer heat with thermometers in both. By mid-afternoon the black car had heated up to a temperature of 135 °F while the white car topped off at 126 °F, almost 10 degrees cooler.

Prettier. Despite all of the above, I do like the classy look, and don't regret my decision. After all safety and comfort are not as important as style and looks.

Weather Mysteries

It was only a few years ago that weather was a mystery. At best you'd hear a forecast of showers on the radio at breakfast and so you'd wear a raincoat outside. But with the advent of freely available weather radar, smartphones with weather apps and other recent technologies, rain can be seen as it approaches and can be forecast by the minute, and the day's temperatures are predicted by the hour. And this saddens me. Although I'm addicted to following local conditions, it was wonderful in more primitive times to be surprised by a sudden downpour, or an unexpected blizzard, or soe bolts of lightening flung from the clouds by Thor. Those days are rarer, and a little of the mystery in nature has gone forever, or at least until civilisation collapses and modern communications technologies are shut down. But that could be another ten years away.

Maths Exams are Today

Paying respect to the thousands of students sitting their maths exams today, we are now simulating exam conditions in our office. For 150 mins, there is absolute silence, calculators and mobile phones are confiscated and we're having to scrawl away with paper and pen without resorting to modern technology. We're now trying to work out how to rewrite sine and cosine expressions, and doing complex arithmetic and we're heading towards a resounding fail.

You're doing it wrong.

How to Cut a Pizza

Having not made many contributions to world cuisine (other than appropriating family recipes such as Tuna Surprise, and Eric's Beans), I do have one useful piece of wisdom. Cutting a pizza can be done several ways, including using a knife, or a pizza cutter, or ripping by hand. But by far the most effective technique is to scissor it. Try it once and you'll see what I mean.

Don't use one of these

Pockets of Silence

Analysing the dynamics of group social situations can be intriguing, and one theorem I'm publishing here for the first time today relates to the ongoing battle between extroverts and introverts. Let's explore some different scenarios.

Fill a large room with ten to fifteen quiet folk and the end result is a deafening silence, punctuated with a few abortive attempts at conversation that wither away without support. The best outcome to be hoped for is that a few people start one-on-one conversations with the person closest to them.

The other extreme is a room of talkative types who within seconds will start numerous rowdy conversation threads that fill the space with hubbub.

Now for the interesting dynamic - a mixture of shy and outgoing people. With several extroverts among many introverts, decent talking starts, and even though most people aren't contributing, there's enough energy to overcome that. But there's a critical threshhold, a minimum proportion of extroverts needed to keep the talking going. With only one or two, the bravery needed to overcome the silence may be too great. But if you have just enough, the conversation can flow.

Around each quiet person is a pocket of silence, and around each chatty person is a pocket of chattiness. These bubbles interact and push against each other dynamically as people move around, mingle and new dynamics emerge. Out of these interactions, if too many pockets of silence join together, the talking can halt. Too many listeners all listening to each other doesn't work.

 More to come...

Sniffing the Air

Tiny Claws Still Hurt