Tyroga – A Human Equivalent

Eww I have the worst taste in my mouth that wont go away. Doesn’t matter what I eat or drink it just lingers and it looks like it may all be down to recent consumption of pine nuts.

Sucks most cause they taste great when you eat them, but word is in recent times people have been reporting that eating pine nuts has lead to a foul, sometimes metallic, taste that lasts for up to 4 weeks!

And it over runs everything. I can eat a Snickers bar and while the bar is on my tongue there is momentary relief but once it is swallowed the taste in my mouth returns.

There’s no evidence that anyone else I interact with is affected, it appears that the nuts have just changed the way my taste receptors are working at the moment.

It’s driving me nuts (pardon the pun). As a vegetarian it seems everything has pine nuts in it and now I have to be even more choosy about what I eat.

I’m thinking this case of pine mouth came from one of four sources I’ve eaten in the last week.

1. Stuffed capsicum from Lee’s, our regular cafe for lunch at work (last Thursday),
2. A pasta dish from Livewire (lunch last Friday),
3. A vegetarian calzone from Crème in Altona (Sunday), or
4. Beetroot, parmesan and pine nut dip I had at home (Monday)

Where ever it came from I wish it would go away. From what I’ve read of late this has become a pretty common thing in the last year or so and seems mostly related to pine nuts coming out of China.

So if you have ever suffered “pine mouth” you’d know it. It is the worst!

What’s the deal? A set of 65 glass negatives were found and believed to have been created by master photographer Ansel Adams. They were bought by some guy in California at a garage sale for $45 after he talked the seller down something like $80.

They were shown to art experts who declared them most likely to be the work of Ansel Adams and valued them at more than $200 million dollars.

Then the Adams crowd came out and said, no they aren’t his work. This was followed by some lady who said they were the work of her uncle Earle and suddenly they ain’t worth squat.

What the hell is that about? It sucks that if you have a name your stuff will sell, but if someone looks at your work, can’t distinguish between it and the work of a master, then your work is worth nothing once they realise they were wrong and you’re not the master.

So kodos to Uncle Earle where ever you may be. You’re work is apparently exquisite. But up yours to the art world who declare it worth a hell of a lot less because while Uncle Earle’s work = Ansel Adams work : Uncle Earle ≠ Ansel Adams.

It’s really just the first one with new photos and new graphics. I did all of the design on the new elements of this application (building on the previous design by our design team at work). I like this one better than the first. I think it has to do with the more colourful imagery rather than the mostly black and white of Our Great Game.

This application is in support of our new book The Story of the Melbourne Cup – Australia’s Greatest Race.

You can download the app for your iPad or buy the book.

I know blogging about dinner seems a little mundane, but it’s not every day I get a dinner like I did tonight, especially after getting home late from a speech by Bill Henson.

David made some great crepes for dinner. Filled with zucchini, corn, sour cream, cheese, leek, capsicum and mushroom. It was awesome.

And not to be outdone, dessert was even awesomer. Sticky date pudding with ice cream.

So as you can see it is worth a blog posting. The photos here taken on my new iPhone 4 and modified with Camera+ app.

We had a great night Saturday night, even though we were a little sad we were one down in our party with Kathryn being ill and having to bail out.

David, Sue and I met with Sandy and Rob at Pellegrini’s (66 Bourke Street, Melbourne) for an awesome dinner. From the outside the place looks like bedlam. People packed in at two long bars down either side of the tiny little restaurant with barely enough room to squish ourselves down to the tiny kitchen in the back, which is where we sat at a long table.

All of the cooking is done on a tiny little stove, feeding the entire restaurant packed with people. And the food was great and relatively inexpensive, not cheap by any means. It seems like it could be hard to get a large group in, at 5 we were only just accommodated. And they don’t take reservations so it might be hit and miss getting in.

After dinner we headed over to the Haunted Bookshop to wait for our Melbourne Ghost Tour to begin. We got there a little early on a nippy night and huddled together trying to stay warm as many other tour participants arrived.

At 8:30 pm the doors to The Haunted Bookshop opened for us all to go in and buy our tickets we then met outside again for the tour to begin. I recorded the tour’s 7km walk on my iPhone’s “Trails” application so I have it plotted out on a map, just have to figure out how to get that on a Google Map at some time.

It was a great talk and walk led by our guide Drew Sinton. To find out we have ghosts all over our city is amazing. It’s great. I can’t wait to get to some of the locations again to check them out in my own time. In particular the ghost who apparently inhabits the State Library in the atrium near the newspaper section. According to our guide there used to be a two storey building on the site and the ghost used to live there and now walks the second floor which extends into the atrium so she appears to float as she walks along a floor that is no longer there.

The other amazing thing to find out is that under a very popular, and Melbourne’s oldest park, Alexandra Gardens, there are thousands of bodies buried. Bodies that were never moved because in the olden days the wooden grave markers were stolen for firewood by the poor parts of the North Melbourne community. So there they lay, below a park that many frequent and many bask in the sun with their lunch in the summertime.

Melbourne’s other old and now gone graveyard with over 10,000 bodies in it now resides under the Queen Victoria Market (a very short walk from Alexandra Garden), of these 10,000+ bodies when the redevelopment came to take place to create the market only about 900 were relocated as only their graves could be identified and their families requested they be moved. All of the other bodies remain under market to this day.

It was a great night and an interesting walk with great friends. I recommend it to anyone. It was only $20 per person, a steal.

A little video of Bill recorded on my iPhone 4 and editied (on iPhone 4) using iMovie. Need to learn to have a more steady hand when doing these things. Also how to use the light a little better. The background gets a little blown out at times.

Looks like my first app is ready and available on the iTunes App Store. Of course even before I was finished developing it I wanted to make changes to it, and those changes will come. But for now, YAY.

There is another application coming that is basically the same as OurGreatGame, but the new one is more my favourite, it looks better than this one in my opinion.

So if you have an iPad, go download it and rate it (well).

Worried that some people make relationships into something they need not be: hard work!

Here’s a tip.

If you argue with your significant other. If you ever go to bed angry. If you begrudge them having their own time to do their own things. If you feel you have to question who they were with or what they were doing while they weren’t with you. If you don’t enjoy just hanging out together and always have to have something on. If you compete for power. If you don’t support each others’ dreams no matter how crazy they may seem. If you don’t laugh together at least once a week, and I mean really laugh. You’re screwed.

Sure you’re in a relationship, but that person isn’t your partner if you believe them to me more an adversary or a burden to your existence.

Do both of you a favour and be the one to break it off. Find the person with whom you can laugh and grow… someone who complements you, not completes you.

Break it off now cause you only get one life and it should be filled with joy and love.

And that’s my rant for the day.

Today’s post was inspired by a friend’s post on Facebook. I really am sick of people who complain about their lives (and yes I’ve been guilty of doing it). There is so much wonder in the world there is little reason to be unhappy. No one is in a position they can’t get themselves out of. No one. Some may need assistance and some may need courage. But ultimately we are each responsible for our own happiness and the pursuit of happiness should be your goal.

Nice, ANZ sent me a letter saying I can design my own credit card and they’ll send it to me. Pity I can’t design it so I never have to pay it back.

I was thinking of calling them to have mine replaced as it has split, this saves me a call and makes sure I get a cool looking card while I’m at it.

Below are the images I thought about putting on my card. In the end I went with the Ferris wheel. Second choices would have been the reeds and the pelican. I did want Bungee but it might have been too sad to got spending money on her all the time.

My new card should arrive some time next week. Yay.

… until you think you’re not; but really you still are.

We have a new Prime Minister. Ms Julia Gillard. Probably one of the fastest ever no-confidence leader dumpings. Talked about one day, over the next with no contest from, now, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

After this action what are all the people on the comments of news stories bitching about? That they didn’t vote for Julia Gillard, they voted for Kevin Rudd and that if there was to be a change of leadership they should have had a say in it. And that’s where they show their ignorance. Perhaps not completely their fault.

You see in Australia we don’t vote for the person who leads our ruling party, we vote for the party. In this case when you cause your vote you’ll notice the “how to vote” forms say “How to vote for Labor”, or “How to vote Liberal” etc. They don’t say “How to vote for Kevin Rudd” because you didn’t. You voted for the Australian Labor Party to run the country (if you voted for them, else you voted for the Australian Coalition to run the country but they didn’t win). You may well have voted for the Greens, but you know what, they then gave your votes to someone else cause we’re a two-party preferred democracy.

Unlike the United States (which many Australian’s seem to think we do everything the way they do) we don’t have elections where the person who will run to contest the presidency is voted for. We just vote for the party and the party themselves determine who will run the party. At least I think that’s how the American system works, I’m allowed to be a little ignorant about their system, I’m Australian :P

In the past year it seems every major party has gone through a “spill”, the party’s leader being overthrown from within, at least two of these have taken place in ruling parties, both were Labor. The other was when Tony Abbot replaced Malcolm Turnbull as the leader of the Liberal Party. It seems to happen all the time these days.

And people get upset because they are ignorant to the way our government works, a shame in a country where voting is compulsory. In a way I guess the ignorance is fuelled by the parties. In the 2007 election Labor was present to us as “Kevin ’07″, a catch-cry that lead them to victory over the Liberal Party who had governed the country for 12 years.

The other sign of ignorance that seems to be surfacing revolves around the fact that Julia Gillard is an unwed woman living with her partner of many years, with no intention of bearing young and no intention of getting married. There are comments everywhere from people making statements that a woman like that can no possibly represent them as she is too far removed from their way of life. What a crock of crap.

I trust the Australian Labor Party, lead by Julia Gillard, will do the best job they can for our nation. I believe that our ruling party and the Prime Minister that leads should be wise enough to look at everything that comes across their desks and decide how it will impact the people they serve and to make the best judgement call based on the facts.

The best person for the job would actually be a totally impartial party, but that’s never going to happen. It would be a party that has no ties or allegiances to unions, churches, gender, groups etc, but that’s never going to happen.

So until we live in a perfect world, let’s try to understand how our system of government works and stop looking completely stupid when we talk about it in public.