opinios

R.I.P. Nigel McFarlane

Thankyou Nigel for inspiring in me, and others, the potential for what the web can be, and for communicating your passion for technology in such a humorous and self-deprecating manner. You will be sadly missed.

Ridiculous Dreams

I hardly ever remember my dreams. Ever. So it surprised me this morning when I woke up with a very vivid recollection of one of the most bizarre subconcious recollections I have experienced.

The dream involved one of the cats we kept when I was young (incidentally this cat was named 'Poo' by my cousin Nick in place of it ever being given a real name aside from just "Kitty". No that wasn't in the dream, that was real). Poo had given birth to not one, two, or three, but thirty-seven (yes, 37) kittens.

Only they weren't kittens. They were piglets. Miniature ones. That could talk. And sing. As a choir.

I think this may have been somehow spurned from our move to the new house the other weekend. One of the boxes I unpacked contained card games and board games and the like. One of the games was "Pass the Pigs" where you have to throw a couple of little plastic pigs, and score points based on how they land (it is most commonly played along with copious amounts of alcohol). I remember unpacking the game and thinking "Hmm, haven't played that for a few years" and promptly placing it on the bookshelf to collect dust along with all the other crap I haven't touched in years.

Anyway, so there I was marvelling at my new menagerie of miniature singing pigs who had just arrived on the scene via my cat and who spoke perfect English, when I discovered that one of the pigs had some kind of Fantastic 4-style power which meant that he was entirely 2-dimensional and could be rolled up into a cylinder.

And so I promptly picked him up and used him as a baton to conduct the rest of them in the singalong. And then, to top things off in true geek style, I think I went out and registered the domain 37piglets.com (or was that singingpiglets.com?)

I mean honestly, wtf?

A Life Less Frantic

Things are happening. Lots of things. All at once.

Work is frantic. People making demands to get bugs in software products fixed immediately, with out-of-hours conference calls to support lines in the US and Canada, anxious managers prompting for updates every 3 minutes, and functionality in other products that was working six months ago stopping working for no apparent reason. In the mean time I am trying to juggle the next project that I will move on to, prepare to deliver an educational presentation on web standards and accessibility to my department at our next team meeting and manage all those other little web side-projects that I have on the go.

But that's not enough. We get the keys to our new home tomorrow. You know, the one that we bought, that we own. Surreal. Half of our stuff is packed in boxes. Tomorrow will be spent packing the rest of it. The removalist arrives Friday morning to help us transport everything. We have a couple of days off work to unpack and settle in and start to make the place our own.

And then I fly off on Tuesday to Sydney to speak at a lunchtime seminar. It seems the last presentation that I gave on Open Source technologies at the Enterprise Java seminar here in Melbourne was well received, as they have asked me to give the same talk again at the Sydney meeting. If you do a spot of Java/J2EE development and are in Sydney, come along. I'll post the slides here afterwards.

Then on Thursday night is our next Web Standards Group Melbourne meeting. I am a bit more organised this time around - I know how to use the computer projection screen properly this time, the meeting spot is less ambiguous, and I will pick up pizza on the way to feed the hungry masses. Please RSVP if you are coming so I know how much pizza to buy, details on the WSG site.

Oh, did I mention that I am studying two nights a week at the moment? Yes Monday and Tuesday nights I have class, and things are really ramping up as we are getting close to the end of semester where all of our portfolio work is due. Whew.

Then, in case it wasn't a big enough week, my parents are in town from Thursday. My Dad, a sculptor is the recipient of a scholarship and is being presented his award at a dinner here in Melbourne. I'm very proud of him as he has sculpted some amazing creations lately so it is great to see him getting a bit of recognition. Plus we'll get to show them our new house and spend the weekend with them, which I don't get to do often enough as they live in Adelaide.

Yes it's hectic. But of course I wouldn't have it any other way.

The following Monday is a public holiday. And on that day I think I'll do absolutely nothing.