So here’s a recap of my Christmas… I hope you are sitting down and have a nice cup of coffee handy cause this could take a while.

Ok, the intro to this post was a little unfair. In all honesty, I love each and every one of the families I’m involved with and it’s always good to catch-up with everyone. It just irks me that it all gets squished into a few days of back-to-back activities.

But before I get to that, the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were really very exciting. We went to see Arj Barker perform at the Powerhouse. As expected, he was awesomely funny, but I didn’t expect that his warm-up act would be equally as funny. So, if you hear of a guy named Joel Osborne touring (and not the one who’s an internet marketer who’s obviously used his online marketing skills to outrank the comedian of the same name), go and see him cause he’s great too. After the show, we bought a couple of Arj’s DVDs which he personally autographed for us.

The following weekend (or maybe two… I’ve lost track now) we had the Kintek Christmas Party. For those of you who don’t know, my web hosting company works closely with a number of web development firms and one that we’ve done a lot of work with over the years (and in the process become close personal friends) is a mob called Kintek.

The party was held at one of our joint clients – a wine bar called Bar Barossa. The food was great, as was the wine and their selection of international beers. After a lot of great conversation (that I’m sure became progressively more entertaining as the night went-on) Kristy and I were honoured to accept an offer from another client of mine – Chester’s Boutique Hotel in the Valley.

I’ve done a lot of stuff with the owner and helped him get a number of his sites online and in return he said that if we were ever in the area and needed a place to stay, just let him know. So the week before the party, I asked if the offer was still available and he hooked us up.

The room was awesome – in fact, the whole place is spectacular. It was once the owners personal residence that he converted into a guest house and now it’s grown to be a fully licensed boutique hotel. It’s quaint with about a dozen rooms which gives it a very warm atmosphere, but at the same time is classier than most hotels I’ve stayed at. Despite our stay only being overnight and still being in the same city that we live, it felt like we were on holidays.

That was the build-up to Christmas… this is when it starts to get hectic.

On Christmas Eve we went to Church with my folks. This year Dad was in the choir and Mum tried to encourage my brother and I to join him. We both politely declined, but Dad did a great job with the singing and I must admit, I do enjoy the Christmas Church service.

Then we grabbed some Macca’s, went home cracked a beer and opened our presents. It was pretty cool – this year I got some Skeleton Keys, Ice Invaders, some new board-shorts, Prototype for the PS3, a cooling base-station thingie for the PS3 and a computer screw-driver set in a novelty grenade casing.

We had a few more drinks, watched some Christmas stuff on TV and went to bed.

Got up early the next morning and headed over to Kristy’s Mum’s place for breakfast. Had some food, chatted, exchanged presents then it was back home to quickly make a salad and grab some wine and then head down to the Gold Coast for lunch with my family (this year it was at my sister’s new place).

Lunch was good and my family are always a very entertaining group of people to be around. Dad jokes, Tom’s new dreadlocks and the Woodford Folk Festival. After eating a little too much and the kids opened their pressies, we headed back home again. More beer.

Next day we went over to Kristy’s Auntie Sue’s place for lunch and then afterwards we caught a bus into town for Kristy’s old school friend – Bexta’s birthday which she was having at The Exchange. They had a deal where you could buy two cocktails for the price of one up until 9pm, so we built a decent stock-pile of mojito’s. Bexta had a great turn-out of people and as it so happens (and I’d like to throw-in a joke how Ipswich being a reasonably small town, it can be a little incestuous… but given Ippy’s reputation, that comment most certainly would be taken the wrong way) I went to primary-school with some of Kristy’s old friends – so it was great catching-up with everyone. Kristy has some great old school mates. Caught a maxi-taxi home with a bunch of them and ended-up drinking some more at Andrea’s place and somewhere during that time I passed-out on her couch.

Kristy woke me at about 5:30ish and we caught a cab home. Had a few hours sleep and then it was off to Kristy’s other good friends (these ones from Dancing) – Trish and Dave’s. Had lunch with them and they gave me a great little book called Twitterature – basically classic literature, as it would possibly be told today using Twitter.

Before I go too much further, I just want to point-out that this simple gift really took me by surprise because (and this may only apply to me… I’m really not sure) but generally when you receive a gift from a friend of your partners, it is most often generic. Something that they think you might like, but often turns-out wrong – like buying a bottle of bourbon for someone that drinks scotch. There’s always good intentions, but they often fail to hit the mark. For this reason, I’m always thankful and grateful for the thought, but expect that I’ll never be able to use the gifts I receive in such instances. But in this case, it was perfect.

So back to lunch – which was good (although I wished I wasn’t quite so hung-over because I’m sure the afternoon would have been more enjoyable if that were the case). I then headed back to the shopping centre bus terminal near Auntie Sue’s where we left my car the day before to go into town for Bexta’s drinkies.

Grabbed the car and then headed straight over to Caleb’s grandparent’s place for dinner. Fortunately, by this stage, I was feeling less hung-over enough to make it through the evening.

Next day it was over to Kristy’s Dad’s for a BBQ. After we ate and the kids exchanged presents, I found a nice comfy spot on the couch and fell asleep. Kristy was out the back chatting with her Dad and the kids were well engrossed with the PlayStation and their new toys, so no one really noticed and it was great to actually have a break for an hour or so.

Went home, drank some more, played some Prototype and then went to bed. Next day was our first day off since Christmas Eve. Enjoyed it by doing absolutely nothing. I think I spent most of the day sleeping in our newly air-conditioned bedroom.

The following day Con came round and we caught-up before Kristy and I had to head over to my brother’s place for dinner. I say this every time we catch-up with my family – I don’t do it enough because we always have such a great time when we’re together, but I suppose the months between visits is part of the reason it’s always so good to catch-up again.

Then the following day was New Years. Kristy had some stabbing stomach pains and despite the fact I give her a hard time, she’s a pretty tough cookie, so when she said that she might need to go to the hospital, I knew it must have been pretty bad. After a short wait in the emergency ward (read: a couple of hours) and a few tests later, they determined that Kristy may have a tiny gallstone.

They couldn’t find it when the doc did the ultrasound, but based on the results from the blood-test and the symptoms, they were convinced that was the cause of the pain. It also made sense that the pain had subsided because it only hurts when the stones move and once settled, you can go for months or even years without them bothering you again. Just in case, he subscribed some pretty hard-core pain killers and suggested Kristy gets a proper stomach x-ray.

Despite feeling a lot better, Kristy wasn’t up to a big night, so Con came around and we spent the night catching-up, talking a lot of shit and drinking a lot. By the time mid-night rolled around, Con decided it was time for his proverbial drunken phone calls and for the first time ever it was fun to be on the sending end and not the receiving. Other highlights of the night included us trying to climb one of the trees in my backyard. Not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Fortunately, we were too drunk to get anywhere (despite crafting a primitive pulley out of a rope that Caleb plays, and sometimes swings from the tree with).

So overall, was a quiet night with my closest and best friend filled with ample amounts of beer, moving onto lots of nice scotch, some PS3, failed tree climbing incidents and most likely a hefty phone bill. Which, in my books equates a pretty good way to see-in 2010.

Two days later it was back to work. While I wasn’t looking forward to working again, the backlog of Christmas / New Years work seemed like a quiet walk in the park when compared to the explosion of family and festivities over the previous week.

Since being back at work I’ve set a bunch of goals which include reading more, blogging more regularly (well, the blogging I meant when the goal was set related to work blogs, but if I’m work blogging more, I’ll inevitably blog more personally too) and generally doing more social media stuff.

To help the whole motivational process, I’ve decided to jump onboard with a photo blogging experiment called the 365 project where I have to take a photo every day for a year and upload it… so here goes…

So, that was my Christmas / New Years… how was yours?

So it’s been a week of surprises – my weekend in the mountains (without mobile phone or internet coverage) was really good. My sister, Karen introduced us to a game where you take a random object and pretend it’s something else. For instance, you take a shoe, hold it up to your ear and everyone has to guess that you’re pretending it’s a phone. Although simple, the game actually gets rather interesting once all the obvious scenarios are done.

Karen explained to us that the game was introduced as a study to identify how lateral a child’s mind is and to some extent, gain an indication of their overall quick-wittedness and intelligence. Sort-of like a word association game, but instead with objects. All I can say is that my family (and myself included) are rather inventive, quite funny but I’m not so sure about intellectual

Then on Monday night I did my first-ever public speaking gig which also, surprisingly, went really really well. I’d go as far as to say that it went so well that I’d happily do it again. If you’re interested in reading some of the geeky SEO things discussed, you can check it out at my work blog.

Then in other news this-morning I hear that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are both dead… not related and their deaths don’t really have any impact at all on me personally – sure I liked some of Jacko’s music and think his title of ‘King of Pop’ is justified considering his career… although he also is the King of Crazy amongst other things, but I won’t go into that and I’ll avoid making any jokes [for now] as I think that anyone who passes deserves at least a little respect for them and their loved ones (yes, even the crazy ones).

So in honour of his death, here’s a homage to MJ via Darth Vader:

While we’re on the topic of music (how was that for a segway?) PlayStation have just launched a new, free, music video service VidZone which looks pretty cool. Now if you’re as geeky as I am, you’re probably thinking that since PS3 has a web browser and supports media servers, why would you need a dedicated music service when there’s YouTube and other streaming options via your PC? Well, I agree, it isn’t necessary, but from a quick play lastnight the quality seems good and it’s easy to use, so it ticks all the right boxes… and I imagine that it’s targeted to people who probably don’t use their PS3s to stream YouTube so with that in mind, it looks like a good little service.

Last thing related to music… the following clip was sent to me via a Twitter buddy and I have to say I really like the song and the filmclip is awesome:

Moving away from music and onto photos… This is photo bomb – a website devoted to the delicate art of inserting ones self (or finding someone or something distracting) into other’s seemingly legitimate photos. Or if you’ve got family snaps like those found on this next site, you don’t even need photobombing: Awkward Family Photos.

And finally, last photo-related thing, I stumbled across a project started by Ze Frank called Youngme / Nowme. The site is dedicated to replicating old photos, so you get a photo of you riding your first bike, or sitting on the potty or something typical of kids, and then you try and replicate that photo by wearing a similar outfit and get a snap of you trying to ride a kids bike… it sounds a bit silly, but I love the concept and some of the photos are pretty funny.

Do you like coffee and robots? I certainly do, so if you’re like me, then check-out this super terrific Japanese coffee making robot thing (I think that’s the correct term for it if my translation skills are accurate):

And last, but certainly not least – I like obscure comics / cartoons and years and years ago I was a big fan of the short-lived series The Maxx. Much to my delight, I just found you can watch full episodes of the show at MTV’s Maxx website.

That’s it from me peoples – have a good weekend if I don’t post anything beforehand!

Last weekend I spent a lot of time playing PS3 with Caleb and one of the demo’s we downloaded was for a game called inFamous and it was awesome. So I was quite pleased when one of my fav game reviewers gave it a thumbs-up (or at least what could be best described as a thumbs-up since this guy would struggle to say something nice about his own mother)… here’s his review:

We’ve also had the coldest day this year and it hit zero degrees at my place. There was ice on my windscreen this-morning when I left for work. ICE! Now I’ve seen ice before, I’ve seen snow… I’ve even been snowboarding (or more correctly I had a snowboard strapped to my feet as I rolled down a ever so slight hill in the ‘childrens practice slopes’ a few years ago in Switzerland)… but here and now I’m in Queensland – a place affectionately referred to as the sunny state of Australia. The place where it’s beautiful one day and perfect the next… and I had ICE on my windscreen. This certainly isn’t perfect, it’s not even good… ICE!

Even now as I look out the window it looks like a beautiful warm day, yet it’s not… sure the sun is out, but it’s not hot, it’s not even warm. My fingers are like little frozen sausages as I try and type. Normally I bitch about the heat and how hot, humid and sweaty it gets in summer time and I’ve said more than once how much I like the colder weather, but ICE… in June… in Queensland? C’mon people… where’s the global warming now? I should start burning tyres using an lighter and as many aerosol cans as I can strap together (and as a side-note kiddies, I’m not condoning the raping of our environment just because I’m cold and I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone tries to create a mega flame-thrower by strapping a dozen aerosol’s together… but if you do, can you please upload the results to YouTube as I’m sure it’d be funny and definitely put you in the runnings for the next Darwin Awards).

Anyways, despite being cold and bored and not wanting to do work, I don’t really have anyone to delegate my daily tasks to and if I don’t get them done, I’ll have twice as much to do on Monday, so I better get off my ice-cold butt-cheeks and do something productive.

I’ll leave you with this one final thing I read about a few days ago which sounded pretty cool: The MP3 Experiment.

Being the geek that I am, part of this whole ‘vegetation’ process involves dicking around on the internet and in doing so, I’ve made some more random finds.

For starters, I discovered that today is the iconic computer game – Tetris’ 25th birthday. To celebrate, I wasted some time playing this cool little free online version and found this homage on YouTube:

Whilst on YouTube, I also stumbled across this ‘literal’ version of Bonnie Tyler’s song – Total eclipse of the heart:

And this cool Nintendo Wii preview of their game Wario Land – Shake It. It’s probably best if you view this on the YouTube website itself for the full effect. Very cool.

On the topic of cool stuff, this guy made a whole song only using iPhone apps. The song itself isn’t fantastic, but considering the only instrument used was an iPhone, it’s pretty impressive:

Hidan – Timeline Music for iPhone from Paul Higham on Vimeo.

A couple of days ago Simon sent me a link to some cool computer programming-related web comics. You have to be a bit geeky to get most of the jokes… ok, you have to be geeky to get all the jokes (I especially liked the guide to understanding flowcharts… in flowchart form).

Something else you’ll need to be a little geek to appreciate is Despair’s latest social media t-shirt (so true, and I think I want one).

And last, but not least, something you don’t have to be geeky to enjoy (simply a little juvenile.. like me)… but here’s a site dedicated to Things I Did Lastnight.

Now I’m going to go and watch some TV and chuckle to myself as I imagine your response when you click on that previous link.

Completely unrelated to the local and global economies, over the last 12 months we’ve also had some of the heaviest storms and rainfall that has happened in nearly 20 years and to top it all off we’ve even had a couple of burglaries that unfortunately targeted ours, and the surrounding, suburbs. But what was even more troublesome than the break-ins was the painful process of sorting-out the insurance claims that followed.

Fortunately we used this as a learning experience and improved the security on our home and purchased a fearless guard dog – George. Ok, perhaps he’s not entirely fearless… or more accurately he gets scared by most things that move (including his own reflection). And given the fact that he’s not much bigger than a Rugby ball with legs, he wouldn’t intimidate someone suffering from acute paranoia. But all that aside, bringing him into our family was one of the best things we’ve ever done.

So in our first year of home ownership a lot of crazy stuff has happened, but to be honest, I wouldn’t change a thing. With each financial, environmental and personal challenge (and everything in between) we’ve learnt some really valuable things and everything has always worked-out well in the end.

Now that I’ve gotten that heartfelt story off my chest, let’s move onto a bunch of meaningless links and other random internet finds…

The New Scientist has launched the first ever Scientific Twitter Experiment to determine if random users from around the world can accurately guess a location using nothing but mind power. The concept sounds a little crazy, but also quite fascinating, so it’ll be interesting seeing the results once the study is complete.

Last year a street-art project was launched where miniature hand-painted people were placed in various locations around London and then left to fend for themselves. The project, titled Little People is very cute and cool and the collection of photographs collected from the experiment have been collated into a book, you can purchase prints or go and view the photographs (and possibly even some installations) at the Andipa Gallery in London.

If you work in an office environment it’s difficult to make it through a day without being inundated with countless facts and figures, reports, spreadsheets, graphs or other (seemingly) important data. Now I don’t know about you, but I always find data a lot more appealing when it’s presented in an aesthetically pleasing way, like these 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization.

And on that note, I’m going to check my email, web-stats and have a quick skim through the latest updates on Twitter and Facebook, then I’m off to bed.

During the week Vicky sent me a couple of things that were funny and useful.

The first one is Stuff White People Like, which is a site written by a white guy who points-out all sorts of things that white people like. In some respects, it’s kind-of-like reverse racism without any racial under-tones (other than the name and the constant mention of ‘White People’) but the guys quirky approach and accuracy with a lot of things that white people do generally like, well… it makes it somewhat accurate and an interesting read.

The other one she sent me was Run Pee – a site tells you the best times during popular block-buster movies to run out of the theatre / cinema to go and pee.

This dude can do some awesome acrobatics:

We all know how much I’ve been talking about Twitter lately, so here are a couple of fairly accurate clips of what Twitter is really like… although I love these clips and think they are sooo true, I still like Twitter:

If you’re as geeky as I am, you might also find this pretty funny – http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/. I don’t spend my days playing Halo, but I have had similar phone calls and it’s just painful. Webguy – I feel you’re pain!

Oh, and talking about Geeky, it doesn’t get much geekier than this: http://konamicodesites.com/ – a website that won’t let you access it until you successfully execute a Konami code.

Moving right along – so, you’re in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn’t have sex with you anyway. Sounds like you could use an easy-to-follow guide to getting her to have sex with you.

You are probably aware of those ‘capcha’ codes that are used on websites to stop spam bots filling-in web forms. Those little boxes that display some random text that you need to enter before being able to submit the form… well here are some of the best/worst: 15 of the Meanest CAPTCHAs ever.

Last week there was a brutal shooting in Sydney and the police interviewed some eye witnesses. As a result, one of the girls interviewed gained some instant popularity, but then it went pear-shaped when it was discovered she had made-up the whole story. You can read the full article here or just watch the clip (cause despite the atrocity of the event, the clip is kinda funny):

And last, but not least – please DONT PANIC, and set aside a moment of silence with your towel (and no, I don’t mean that in a dirty way) – today is International Towel Day. An annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.

There are some photo’s on the Courier Mail News website of some of the flooding and other water damage throughout Brisbane.

Some could say it’s raining cats and dogs… which I’m going to use as a segway into talking about pussy. No, not the rude kind, but instead the energy drink variety of pussy. Yes that’s right – there is an energy drink called Pussy. From looking at the website, it seems like this has been around for a while, but has only just found its way to Australia. The drink was being distributed at the Pussycat Dolls Brisbane show.

Makes me wonder if there are health warnings on the cans advising how much pussy one can have within a 24-hour period or if pussy shouldn’t be consumed by those with heart conditions or under the age of 18?

Now onto a completely different kind of pussy – this one being a rather geeky, retro, cool pussy – you can now buy Transforming USB Flash Memory sticks… how cool is that?

And one final cat related clip – this one was sent through to me via Twitter (and sorta reminds me of what I’m like when you put me on a treadmill):

And if cat’s aren’t your thing, maybe you’ll like this Slow Loris clip. To be honest, I had no idea what a Loris was until today… and well, I still don’t know that much about them, but I can tell you that this guy is very cute:

And finally, I’ll leave you with a little music clip I found that makes karaoke so much more appealing… a little bit rude, so be careful if opening at work:

To kick things off, here’s a very funny little site where users can submit EPIC FAIL stories about their bosses. Some very funny stuff there – I’ve secretely added a couple of posts about old bosses I’ve had under a fake name… which is one of the great things about the site – you can vent and rant as much as you like and no one will ever know it’s you

On the topic of jobs, this guy obviously has it tough:

I have no idea what this song is about, but I do know I like it and the animation is really interesting too (give it time to load… it takes a bit): Labuat

I asked what she’d rather see on here – more regular posts (perhaps 3, 4 or more times per week) or the usual once a week update of what I’ve been up to.

Her response (and this is in no way intended to insinuate she doesn’t do any work because she does… and lots of it ) was that she’d rather see lots of information posted on a regular basis because it’s more entertaining to read than online newspapers as her work blocks a majority of other sites on the net (somehow, mine has managed to slip through the cracks).

At first I thought this would be incredibly challenging because I don’t write anything of great importance anyway, so how was I going to increase the frequency… then I realised – I read a bunch of rubbish every day, so all I needed to do was keep a log of stuff I’ve read and then post it here. So here goes:

This lady has a magical vagina
Perfect tool for each time I make a bad joke
Tetris Furniture : Video Game Inspired Shelves, Sofas and Beds
Nothing new here, but spent some time on F*MyLife again (but it was semi-work related… really… you’ll see)
When all else fails, enjoy some lego mashup’s
I’m not really into home decor, architecture, yes, but interior design… not so much, but some of these Kitchen space saving ideas are pretty cool

So, if this is the type of thing you’d like to read on a regular basis, or conversely if you think this is the worst idea ever, let me know so I can maintain the few loyal readers I have