Bloglines users: the problem preventing you reading from Bloglines has been fixed. (Mea culpa, it was my fault.)

For those who asked how I did the desk animation, here’s an explanation.

I’ve done a lot of TV interviews on location, but never in a studio, until today. Community TV station Channel 31 did an interview for tonight’s “C News Focus” story on public transport. The interviewer guy asked a couple of curly questions, so hopefully I acquitted myself well. It airs at 10:15pm.

A few observations:

If I look uncomfortable, it’s because they asked me to put the microphone lead inside my shirt.

The interview went for 6 minutes, but they were intending it to go for 5. So it may get edited down a bit.

They put some makeup on me, but they didn’t try and hide the pimple below my mouth. I’m hoping it was out of shot most of the time.

A lot of people get pretty bad channel 31 reception. Amusingly, so does their office, with big TVs in the foyer tuned to their channel appearing very fuzzy.

PS. 11pm. Not too bad. Having watched it, the only glaring slip-up I noted is that the host made a comment about the PT system costing $1.8 billion per year, and I didn’t pick him up on it (because I didn’t have the correct figure in mind at the time). This is not the case — it’s about $500m a year. It should be cheaper (it was only about $374m a year in the 90s) but it certainly isn’t $1.8b. The higher figure appears to come from an opinion piece by a road lobbyist in The Age last week, which inflated the numbers.

The old desk, to my utter surprise, reached $137.50 on eBay. It was bought by a guy from a few suburbs away for his daughter to use for studying. She seemed happy, he seemed happy, and I certainly was. Win-win. That’s why I like eBay.

He came to pick it up on Australia Day. I disassembled it with my newly purchased drill/driver, and in the heat, we managed to load it into, and on top of, his stationwagon. He tied it up with coaxial cable (! — he said he had way too much of it) and gingerly set off down the road.

I grabbed a beer and one of the new desks out and set it up. The second desk waited until today, when the kids helped.

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It all looks heaps better than before. The new desks look snazzier, and more importantly they fit the space much better.

PS. Yes, I know I need to do something about the curtains…

If you want to see the Margaret Preston exhibit at the Ian Potter Centre/National Gallery of Victoria, you’ve got until Sunday. Marita and I went on Australia Day — a good escape from the heat. Good stuff, a reminder that Preston didn’t just do floral illustrations (though they were certainly prominent) but also dabbled in portraits, Aboriginal influences, and portrayals of wartime Australia.

Tucked away in one corner, like a special feature on a DVD, is a “making of” section, showing Preston at work, and some of the source material. Good stuff.

Dear sir and madam,

Welcome to our city. I could make a remark about thumbs that are sore, but that probably wouldn’t be polite. Please enjoy your stay.

Happy Australia Day.

Outrage in the office. A note at the scene of the crime, the fridge:

Further investigation revealed that in fact two victims had had their yoghurt go missing. It seems there is a serial yoghurt thief among us.

Dream from the other night: I woke up with huge hair, sticking straight out for about 30cm in every direction from my head. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “How can this be?” I thought “I only had a haircut last week…”