It’s been party-time lately
Over the last few weekends, it has been time to P.A.R.T… why? Because we gotta!
It all started a few weeks ago with Scotty’s 25th which was a themed James Bond Casino Royale party.
There were Russian Spy’s, suits, tuxes, bow ties, cocktail dresses and one very large golden gun (no pun intended – Scotty’s best mate Tucker turned-up with a Hellboy sized golden toy gun). Was an awesome night with cocktails freely flowing, poker playing, guitar heroing and as the night was drawing to a close, we thought it might be fun to continue partying-on with some uni students who were having a gathering a few houses down the road. Unfortunately our stealth efforts and smooth talking failed miserably and mission ‘uni student party crash’ was aborted very quickly.
The following weekend I had a (very) belated 30th party. Wanting to bring-out the geek in everyone, I themed my party around Internet Phenomena, which basically translates to anything that has gained mass popularity via the Internet.
I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it turned-out a lot better than I could have ever imagined. We had friends turn-up dressed as myspace, the “net”, lol cats, ask a ninja (me), home star runner (Kristy), hotmail, twitter, google, red tube, there were demotivational and other internet-related T-shirts. I was honestly surprised we didn’t get a ‘trent from punchy‘ or a ‘star wars kid‘ and very thankful we didn’t get anyone thinking they were Beyonce.
As the night got-on and after drinking a lot of beer (including a rather potent Quadrupel beer from the Netherlands which was given to me as a gift from the Kintek crew) we thought it’d be fun to have a go at this:
Kristy’s MacGyver skills quickly turned some fence paling’s, a piece of elastic, some string and a bag of marshmallow’s into our own back-yard version of the gameshow above. And these were the results:
A few days after the party, I headed down to Sydney for the Annual Search Marketing Expo / Conference – SMX Sydney. As far as search marketing conferences go, this is one of (if not THE) best and attracts some of the most knowledgeable guest speakers from all around the world.
I won’t bore you with all the search geekiness (if you want that sort-of stuff, you should read my work blog) but the minute that the last speaker finishes, all search marketers (regardless of where in the world you’re from) share another common interest – DRINKING!
Needless to say, it was a very big three days of learning and business networking, followed by three very big nights of partying. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, you can see the photos from the event on there or follow the many Twitter references to SMX.
This coming weekend is Easter and other than catching-up with my family for a BBQ, it should be a quiet one and I’m really looking forward to doing nothing!
Read MoreBirthday cont… Things that looked cool, but I didn’t do… and Caleb’s birthday weekend
On Thursday I got a birthday call from Con… we’ve been best mates for 20+ years and over that time, I don’t think he’s managed to successfully work-out what date my birthday is. Well, this isn’t entirely true, he usually narrows it down to a couple of dates (one being my actual birthday and the other a few days afterwards) and knowing how he consistently mucks-up the dates, he’ll often get the correct date, and then think “no, that can’t possibly be right” and will opt for the incorrect one.
Some may find this annoying, although it’s sort-of become part of my annual birthday experience. If he actually got the date right, it just wouldn’t be the same. Although this year he didn’t do too badly and was closer than usual – but I contribute that purely to the fact he’s on the opposite side of the world and the differing time-zone helped.
Talking about catching-up with Friends for my birthday, I had lunch with Mel on Friday which was really good. The thing I love about catching-up with Mel and other old school friends is that we often have the most interesting conversations. With friends I’ve made over the last few years, there’s always interesting stuff to talk about, but at the end of the day, the conversations usually gravitate around the reason you were friends in the first place (perhaps it was because you worked together, were members of a club or sporting team etc). But at school, there often wasn’t a reason to befriend someone – it could have simply been that you shared similar subject-choices and sat next to each other in class everyday.
I like to think that my eclectic group of school friends had closer ties than just sitting together, and with all groups, some people are closer than others, but in all honesty I can’t think of anything specific that we all really liked or did that kept us together. So in a way, it surprises me that I’m still pretty good friends with a few of these people today and although we don’t catch-up regularly, we still keep in contact despite having very little in common, and it’s always a tonne of fun when we do get together.
On the topic of fun things… there have been a couple of events that happened recently that looked like they may have been interesting to get involved with, but at the time I either had stuff on or just couldn’t be bothered… I’ll have to make more of an effort for future events.
The first one was Pecha Kucha Night (or here’s the brisbane edition’s website). To paraphrase, here’s some info about the evening and the concept:
Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. But as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you’ll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.
Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a† demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.
The other event that sounded pretty interesting was The Brisbane Twestival (Twitter festival) with live blogging and Twittering done by one of the organisers iReckon. This evening featured local bands, art displays and auctions, other artistic acts and presentations with all money raised going towards improving the quality and access to fresh drinking water around the world.
So maybe next time something like this is organised, I’ll go along…
The big news from the weekend was Caleb’s Birthday – he just hit the double digits and turned 10! The day started with breakfast at McDonald’s, then Granna came over… then it was over to the other Grand Parent’s place (Grandma and Poppie’s) for lunch. We came home, played with some of Caleb’s new toys (the main one being a mobile phone… which seems a little ridiculous, but unfortunately somewhat important in today’s society) and then it was out to dinner at the Pancake Manor.
On Sunday we caught-up with Caleb’s Granddad (and family) for lunch and then Kristy went to a Tupperware party allowing me to play some PS3 and watch The Mighty Boosh Live DVD I got for my birthday.
Read MoreGo, trig boy! It’s your birthday!
Yes, today is my birthday. Nothing particularly incredible about it, other than the fact that I’ve just turned 30 which is somewhat of a milestone… I recall when I was a little kid, I used to think that middle-aged was about 30-35… it’s funny how opinions change as you get older 
Although not technically for my birthday, I had a really great weekend – we went to the Game On Exhibition – An action-packed celebration of videogames culture tracking the development from the earliest computer games to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion-dollar industry. With more than 100 playable games, as well as rarely seen consoles, controllers and collectables, it was a showcase of games history like no other. I was in heaven!
On Sunday I caught-up with a couple of search marketing guys who I met at a conference last year. It was good to share a few beers and have someone to talk to about geeky search stuff (the stuff that would put most people to sleep)… and on the topic of search marketing, I owe a HUGE thank you to everyone who got behind me and voted on my T-Shirt design for the Search Engine College competition. If you have no idea on what I’m talking about, check-out the build-up to it here.
I have to say I was honestly amazed at how far word spread and the number of people that voted. I had family, friends, the families and friends of friends, it was promoted via Facebook, on Twitter… emails were flying around from people I haven’t seen in years saying ‘nice design’… it was quite literally incredible and I honestly had trouble believing how many people voted.
What’s better yet – I won!!! So that was a nice little birthday present. The prize is some search training material, a ticket to an expensive search conference in Sydney later this year and the proud honour of knowing I’m responsible for the T-Shirt used to promote the Search Engine College for 2009.
Due to my general lack of organisation, the fact that there has been a lot happening this month I didn’t quite get around to arranging a birthday party for me… but all is not lost – in the next few weeks I’m going to have a geeky celebration like no other. The theme of the party will be Internet phenomena – those people and events that have gained famed and notoriety as a direct result of the Internet. Some are tragic, some are incredibly funny and most are just plain wrong. It should be a fun night – I might even advertise it on MySpace
So that’s it for me… I’m off to the movies to see The Wrestler.
Read MoreCar batteries, BBQ’s and Casino lunches
Over the past couple of weeks, my car has been a little bit like a mobile phone, or more accurately a life-size remote control vehicle – it works for 24 hours, but then you need to recharge it’s battery.
A couple of weeks ago my car mysteriously wouldn’t start. Kristy gave me a jump start, I took the car for a long drive to recharge the battery and all seemed good again… for a week. Then over the weekend I didn’t drive around much only to discover my car wouldn’t start again on the Sunday. So later that evening, we did the jump-start thing again, I drove around for a couple of hours and all was good again… until this weekend. I sensed a pattern. So my car’s battery could hold a charge for about 24 hours, but if left undriven any longer, it’d die.
To indicate how much I know about the mechanics of a vehicle, it dawned on me this-morning that car batteries usually have water in them, so I open the little screw things on top of the battery to discover it’s as dry as Victoria… when really it should have been as wet as Cairns.
After consulting with my friend and business partner Glen (who knows considerably more about cars than I do) he informs me that since it’s been dry for this long, the batter is most likely screwed, so until I get the time to get the car into a mechanic to replace the battery, it looks like my daily tasks will now be – recharge phone, recharge laptop, recharge mp3 player, recharge car…
I don’t know if there was anything particularly exciting that was happening 9 months ago, or if it was just a really boring month, but there seems to be a lot of birthday’s around the month of February (mine being one of them).
Over the weekend I helped celebrate two of them – my Mum’s and Vicky’s (and sorta my sister-in-law Lyndal’s too as hers was only a week ago). For Vicky’s birthday, she had a small group of family and friends over for a BBQ. As things were quietening down, we decided to head-home, but put the offer-out to anyone if they wanted to come back to ours for a few evening drinks. Skye and Scotty accepted.
Other than the drinking, the highlight of the evening was their sushi machine that they bought along to demonstrate. It basically looks like a slightly larger version of a bike pump. You open the cylinder and line the sides with rice and then place your chosen ingredients down the middle. Seal it up, which makes the rice form a nice tube while compacting it all together… then you take the bike-pump handle and squeeze the rice log onto your seaweed… roll it up and slice. Presto – a perfect sushi roll without having to stuff around with bamboo mats and getting rice stuck everywhere.
What makes the experience even more fun is when you try and do this after a few drinks.
While we were drinking and making sushi, Caleb was at a sleepover birthday party at one of his friend’s places. When Kristy picked him up in the morning, he had done me proud… it was a games night, so he and a few of the lads made it their business to stay-up all night playing computer games.
At breakfast, Caleb was adamant he wasn’t tired as he kept drifting-off between each bite of his eggs.
After breaky, I went into the city to help my Mum celebrate her birthday. My folks headed into South Bank to have a ride on the newish Ferris Wheel. Not sure if it has a proper title, but it’s sorta been dubbed the Brisbane Eye… and like Brisbane, it’s not very big – but like they say, it’s not the size of your Ferris wheel that matters it’s the size of your… um… not sure how that should finish, but I think I should stop now before I take my Mum’s birthday from the Ferris wheel to the gutter.
After the ride, we all (as in my siblings) met up with Mum and Dad for a buffet lunch at the Casino. Only place where you can get a nice smorgasbord with all you can eat at a fairly reasonable price and then finish the meal off with a game of blackjack.
So that was my weekend… next weekend is valentine’s day and to quote something geeky I saw online:
Ladies love techie romantics… cause we give ‘em what they like. E-cards, E-mails and public forum posts saying ‘I lubb U Baby, XOXO, @}–,— x 12′
Then a couple of days later it’s my birthday… and Glen’s, then Caleb’s birthday which also coincides with my nieces and probably a whole bunch more that my sieve-like mind can’t think of right now.
Read MoreAustralia Day Weekend
A few days ago was one of my favourite public holidays – Australia Day.
This year the holiday fell on a Monday which was a little awkward since the traditional celebrations usually involve drinking copious amounts of alcohol knowing you have a long-weekend to recover. So the celebrations were shuffled back a couple of days to accommodate.
But before any of this happened, on Friday afternoon Kristy went to some farewell drinks for one of the US contractors she worked with who was heading back to the states. As the work group shrunk, leaving only the more interesting team members (aka the alcoholics), Kristy called to see if I wanted to join them. So I did… and it turned-out being a bigger night than we had all anticipated.
We woke the next day feeling very seedy, only to realise that Skye and Scotty’s Australia Day BBQ was on later that afternoon / evening.
So we sobered-up, did some last-minute shopping to grab a few Aussie accessories, picked-up Marty on the way through and did the truly Australian thing of celebrating Australia Day (two days early) and hung-over.
To reinforce how Australian I am, I rocked-up wearing a rather short pair of Ruggers/Stubbies (or for the uninitiated, basically a short pair of workman-style shorts), a Bonds singlet, a bucket hat and thongs. This was topped-off with a little fake Aussie Flag tattoo and accompanied by a stubbie cooler that said ‘Top Aussie Bloke’. There were a few photos taken throughout the evening, so as soon as they surface, I’ll put them up here.
The evening consisted of drinking, BBQing, Guitar Heroing and lots of very wrong, yet very funny conversations.
Sunday we discovered my car battery was flat for no apparent reason (or at least not one that I’ve figured-out yet… which isn’t surprising as I know just as much about cars as I do about nuclear physics)… so I jump started it and then proceeded to drive around aimlessly for a few hours to charge the battery again.
Monday, we decided to go to Ikea and bought some picture frames so we can finally hang some of the prints we bought back from overseas.
And that, my friends, was my Australia Day weekend.
Read MoreA weekend of brief catch-ups
I was hoping to get into the city (where all our servers are) and upgrade the RAM in a couple of the machines as they’ve been getting busier and busier as things continue to grow… but the RAM didn’t turn-up on time, so I ended-up staying at home, pottering around the house and watching movies.
It’s a good thing I did as I had a couple of unexpected (and a couple of expected) visitors over the weekend.
My sister (Karen) who has been living over in New Zealand for the last couple of years has just moved back as her husband scored a job at a school at the Gold Coast. I believe they’ve been thinking of moving back for a little-while, but the timing was never quite right until now. Over the last week they’ve been house-hunting, purchasing a car and everything else that comes with an international move. On the weekend my folks were helping-out with the babysitting Karen and Ged’s daughter Caitlin and Dad thought she might like to come-over and meet George.
George loves all kids… scratch that, he just loves any attention he gets, and Caitlin is an adorable little thing so it was quite fun watching them play.
As they were heading-off my old work-buddy Cameron popped over. With the Christmas rush, I haven’t caught-up with him in ages, so it was good to have a chat. He’s been managing the IT services of a local car yard and gets to ‘borrow’ cars from the lot. On this occasion he had a new Subaru Impreza WRX and when we went for a drive – that thing is an absolute beast!
When I told Kristy I wanted one, she pointed-out that if I had one, I’d lose my license within a week and if I didn’t it’d only take another week or two before it was written-off. And I couldn’t argue with that.
On Sunday my brother and sister-in-law (Brett & Lyndal) came over for lunch. We saw them at Christmas, but as they were the hosts for last-years family Christmas get-together (that consisted of 25 people), we only really had a brief time to catch-up with them as there was so much happening, so it was good to have a proper catch-up.
I’m not sure how the topic came-up, but we started talking about Nintendo Wii’s. As Lyndal is a yoga instructor, she was interested in the yoga component of the Wii Fit, so we pulled ours out and had a play. Needless to say she was pretty impressed and is now looking into getting one.
After they left, Kristy and I spent the afternoon playing Wii Fit. By the end of it I was buggered and had discovered a few things – I have even worse ballance than I originally thought and when doing the hula-hoop exercise, I look a bit like Mr. Bean dancing.
Sunday night Kristy and I went out for dinner and as we felt like a good steak we decided to head to The Oxley Hotel aka The Ox. While it’s certainly not gormet dining, their steaks are good, the decor is nice, the staff and service are really friendly and the place has a good atmosphere.
Came home and watched another movie, dicked around on the net and went to bed. Overall, a great weekend of catch-ups, movies, Wii and steak… mmm steak.
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