Here is my wine collection
Here is my wine cellar collection. It sits up in the cupboard. My wine purchasing strategy is as follows:
- Buy the ones with the interesting looking labels (’cos I know stuff-all about wine)
- Because I don’t consume them at a rate of knots, I buy bottles of moderately cheapish wine, keep it for a few years, then drink it (this accounts for the many bottles of Hardy’s Regional Reserve…)
- Wait until the collection’s looking a little depleted, then buy 6 or 12 at once for a discount
- Buy a handful of the more expensive ones… ummm.. just… ‘cos
Move your mouse around over the picture to see descriptions. Post a picture of your wine collection… Link in the Trackbacks or comments.
For a rather more reasoned strategy to budget wine purchases, see Josh’s slightly dated wine guide.
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Have you ever seen?
I was watching an episode of the West Wing last night where one of the characters sees the body of a homeless man. And I recalled something I saw years ago.
I was on a train going to work out in Burwood, standing by the door. Mine was the next stop. There was an announcement of a delay, and we were crawling along. We passed stopped train, then I looked down to the next track, and saw emergency workers… and a body. It was fully clothed, and possibly covered by a blanket — I didn’t see any flesh. Almost more like a pile of clothes than a person.
It’s sad on two counts. It was not a location where you’d find yourself crossing the tracks to make a shortcut. Obviously that person had decided they wouldn’t be turning up to work that day, and decided to end it all. Once a person is in the path of a train, there’s nothing the unfortunate train driver can do. So that driver had their work day shattered.
Not something I’m in any hurry to see again.
I got off at the next station and walked down the street to my connecting tram, telling a lady coming the other way that city-bound trains would be delayed.
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The defective yearly
Today I went and got my defective Yearly Metcard ticket replaced. It stopped working a couple of weeks ago, after only 5 months, and I’ve finally got sick of having to find a human to get through the fare gates.
To get it replaced, you have to go to Flinders Street Station, find the door to the stationmaster’s office, and go up the stairs to the window.
The bloke behind the counter groaned — they’ve been getting a lot of these recently. He said the last guy had only had his for three weeks. According to a station host I’ve spoken to, a rogue batch of defective tickets are stuffing up numerous validators around the place, which in turn is passing their magnetic virus onto other tickets.
“Hopefully things will get better in 2007” the guy remarked. Ah, my friend, if only that were true. My ticket might work all year long, but I still expect to see fare evaders riding for free.
He asked me to fill in a form, and gave me a couple of weekly tickets to use while they process it. Then I’ll get the balance of my ticket in monthlies through the mail. This will give me a chance to use up the freebie dailies I got from compensation claims.
The weeklies are for all zones, even though my Yearly was only for Zone 1. I guess if I wanted to I could get a bonus trip to Frankston or Belgrave or somewhere. If only I had the time. Well, I’d have time on a weekend, but any weekly or longer ticket is valid in all zones on weekends anyway. Maybe I’ll save one of them for a public holiday jaunt.
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My Lego creation
My Lego creation from yesterday: (Captain) Jack Stone aboard the StrangeMobile.
It’s got a battery pack and motor, and yes, it really moves.
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The art of photography
Isaac’s a little unwell, so I’m at home today. I was clicking around one of the real estate web sites, when I came across this superb example of great real estate photography.
Funny angle, thumb in the way… weren’t digital cameras meant to solve these kinds of issues?
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Fiddling with formats
After trying to stuff the Business section into its main News pages, and apparently getting flayed for it, The Age has now tried to stuff the Metro section in there instead. They say that Metro readers were sick of looking through the Sport section to find it. That’s probably true, but will they be any happier looking through the News section to find it? Is ease of navigation really driving the change, or is the Age just trying to reduce the number of tabloid pages it produces for some reason? Will the Metro section mysteriously shrink in times of crises, as the Features so often do?
So far those who consume newspapers in their paper format are probably still in the majority. But this will change over time, and as readers move onto the web, it also changes how they read the news.
The paper version only lets you browse, of course. No keyword searching. And you get less story precis per page, because it’s not just headlines to click on, it’s all of (or most of) the story right there on that page in front of your nose.
On the web, the story that may be splashed across half the front page of the paper version is relegated to just another headline (albeit in a bigger font). Any text you spot and get interested in is unlikely to be in the body of the article, but will be the headline or precis. Pictures are there, but the text dominates.
But whereas visitors to the web site will still browse, those coming through Google News or other search sites will probably find articles by keyword searching. They’re unlikely to see anything they aren’t actively looking for (unless it’s a false search result).
Over time this will impact the old-school media more and more, and they’ll have to adapt to get their content onto the digital devices of the future. It’ll be interesting to see where it all goes. I wonder how long it’ll take before I’m on the train to work in the morning, reading a digital newspaper rather than a paper one.
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Snow!
Yesterday, Isaac, Jeremy, Marita, Adrian and myself piled into the car to head for the snow at Lake Mountain. It took about an hour to get past the Edge Of Known Suburbia (Lilydale), then about another hour via Healesville (quick rest stop) and Marysville to the slopes.
Not as much snow present as last time, and some mud on the toboggan runs, but still fun had by all.
(Mouse over the pictures for a description)
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Innocence lost
Right now, innocence is being taken by faceless government bureaucrats.
The Age: Back at school after being illegally detained
Immigration officers arrived unannounced at Stanmore Public School in March and removed Ian Hwang, then 11, and his six-year-old Australian-born sister Janey, after their Korean mother was arrested arriving at Sydney Airport with a false passport.
The family was released from Villawood on Wednesday night after more than four months.
… Ms Byers said her client denied that she asked for her children, who had been living with their aunt for three months while Ms Lee [the mother] was in Korea.
ABC 7:30 Report: Vanstone backtracks on Hwang case errors
IAN HWANG: I never want to go to a place like that ever again. It was really bad. I had to go through some really bad things, like where someone tried to commit suicide.
MICHAELA BYERS, FAMILY LAWYER: He’s spoken to me about his feelings about being detained and about how hopeless he felt. And he’s been deeply affected by witnessing the attempted suicides to the extent that he was contemplating that himself.
I can scarcely believe this. Did this happen? In my country? Officials from the government — MY government — did this? They didn’t check? They just went in, took the kids from school, and locked them up for four months?
Can it be that we have got so rabidly paranoid about illegal immigration that we’re now locking up children with no reason, apparently with the intention of deporting them as soon as possible? Perhaps the mother was on shakey legal ground, but they were cared for by the aunt. The younger sister was born in Australia fer chrissake.
I saw a little footage of Ian, now 12, on the news last night, being greeted back by his schoolmates. The poor kid must have lost the last vestiges of his childhood over the past few months. What the hell is going on that this kind of thing is happening?
More coverage of this story, via Google News
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