Cameron Reilly’s done a podcast followup to his Age article encouraging people to “get off the bench”.

Listening to it reminded me of something I once wrote:

“Every person has the potential to create a great work of art; to work for the benefit of humanity; to become a spokesman or a great leader; to do good. Your role as a member of the human race is to reach your potential, and to help others to reach theirs.”

– Me, obviously feeling philosophical, January 1996

PS. Call me an imbecilic philistine, but I didn’t know Moleskine is pronounced “molly skeena”. But apparently they’re Italian, so fair enough.

PPS. Cam’s helping to run the MODM (Melbourne’s Online Digital Media) gatherings to talk about various aspects of this new digital thingamebob age we’re living in. I’d hoped to go to the meeting next Thursday night, but alas something else has clashed with it. Maybe next time, it sounds kinda interesting.

I used to be such a fast typist. From memory, in uni I could top 80 wpm.

I seem to be slowing down, or at least, my accuracy has dropped. I’m not sure if it’s due to

a. getting old

b. the crap keyboard I have at work, which periodically seems to ignore what I press, and has annoyingly unclacky(*) keys

c. lack of practice because I never use ICQ/IRC/any other chat thing anymore

Or all three.

But actually it may be my imagination: I just tried an online typing test and reports I’m still up at 73 wpm (net). So maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Actually it’s probably just (b). Maybe what I should do is replace that keyboard at work with a better one.

(*) That’s a technical term

From the Daniel’s been playing around with web stuff in his copious spare time and trying to learn PHP and here’s a blatant plug department:

You know how sometimes you go to the cinema and you can’t remember which membership card you need to show to get the discount? Is it the RACV card? Or some other card? Does the cinema around the corner give a bigger discount? And what’s that deal to get cheap train tickets? Or if I’m going sightseeing in Sydney, is there a discount for the Sydney Tower?

www.findmydiscounts.com (Alpha)

See what you think… Is it useful? Would you use it? Leave a comment here…

Yeah it mostly concentrates on AU/Vic at the moment, but if you know of other cards that give discounts (anywhere in AU for now), email …

And tell your friends if you think they’d like it.

Ah, it’s the long weekend… perfect for sleeping in, reading the paper, lazing around the house and… updating your blog. I’m doing some tweaks, to upgrade the software (to get anti-spam filters working properly; you should see the amount of comment spam I get), fiddle with the template etc. So if you notice it looking funny or not responding momentarily today, you’ll know what’s going on.

10:44am. Did a database backup. Uncompressed backup files: 18.3Mb. Total published posts: 1932. Total published comments: 6185.

11:18am. New version of Wordpress and template installed. Some tweaking still required, but that’s the main stuff. Going to look at Akismet for spam filtering.

1:30pm. Akismet spam filtering installed. Neato. And found some comments from my old school friend Konrad that had been incorrectly labelled as spam. Odd, since he wasn’t trying to sell me Cialis…

Yesterday afternoon, reminiscing at ACMI’s Hits of the 80s video game exhibit — free at Melbourne’s Federation Square until May. While most of the games were running on Spectrum or C64 emulators, this copy of Way Of The Exploding Fist was running on a genuine machine. And just as it was back then, one of the joysticks was quite frustrating to use.

We also had a go at The Hobbit. They had a cheat-sheet beside the computer, but it only took you as far as the trolls’ dungeon, and I couldn’t remember how to get out. Move the sand? Smash the trap door? It reminded me of why I sometimes found text adventure games just a tad annoying, unless one had a cheat-sheet.

They also a display of some of the Horace games (I was never a great fan) and a separate exhibit of more recent Astro Boy games. And just like in a more conventional gallery, an attendant would wander around explaining things to visitors — including how to progress in the level you were playing, if you looked stuck. (How does one get a gig like that?)

Well worth a look.

In Christmassy terms, I had a very successful couple of days — on Friday I managed to get my Christmas cards (and annual letter) to UK relatives into the mail. I’ve gradually reduced the number of cards I send every year as more people get email. I’ll do some kind of email card in the next couple of days to most of my remaining relatives, but most of the UK ones remain steadfastly offline. With a bit of luck, the paper cards will reach them all in time.

On Saturday I braved the fray at Southland. I didn’t actually find of the presents I’d gone looking for, but did find a couple of things for various people.

And I found something for me. It seems an almost inevitable part of Christmas shopping that I’ll find more cool stuff that I want than for anybody else.

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to track down a magazine, an air-lifted obscure one. The distributor’s web site said it was available through only a few newsagents around Melbourne, and the CBD ones quoted were all sold out. They listed one in Charman Road, but at the time I couldn’t recall where that was, so decided to forget about it.

But I found myself in Charman Road, Cheltenham on Saturday while I was walking from the station to Southland, and saw a newsagent — the very one listed. Doubting they’d still have the mag (apparently it sold very well, and very quickly) I nevertheless nipped in to check. They still had three copies. Apparently, despite their stocking of obscure overseas airlifted magazines, they don’t sell all that well in the burbs. Score!

The mag? A retrospective issue of Edge, the videogame culture magazine. Why had I wanted it? Because I’m regaining my interest in games, and this particular issue, flashing-back to 1993-94, goes back to about the point I started to lose interest post-uni, so it serves as a nice catch-up.

Edge is an inestimably cool magazine. The format, the quality paper and printing, the research, the articles, the whole package. It ain’t a straight review of games, like its predecessor the much-loved ACE. It goes deeper, into the culture and creation of gaming. In the past I haven’t bought it often, maybe once a year, but it’s always had interesting stuff in it.

Imagine my surprise when, on the way home, reading the article therein about the founding of the magazine, I discovered one of those who was heavily involved in creating Edge, the founding publisher, a bloke called Steve, is someone I know through my sister.

Freaky.

The innanet connection was down this morning. It put something of a dampner on the morning’s blog/check news/check email/check blog comments activity I’ve become used to.

Having had either cable or ADSL for some years now, it’s always a rude shock when this happens, a bit like getting no signal on the television. And it’s a reminder of just how much use of computers involves online activity these days. If the Net’s down, what am I going to do? Stuck with writing documents which nobody but me can then read, or playing games.

It turned out to be an ISP problem that took quite a few hours to resolve, and as it happened it affected their own web site, making it difficult to find out what was going on. They’ve had a few problems recently. I wonder if it’s time to start shopping around?

Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t choose today to work from home.

So I was waiting for a train, while reading the geek history “On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore” (which — in my humble geeky opinion — really is excellent). The station host lady looked at it, and (given its lovely hardback binding and olde booke looke when it’s out of its dustjacket) asked if it were some classic piece of literature or history.

I said no, it was a history of electronics. (I dumbed my answer down a tad.)

She paused, her interest in it completely quashed, totally pounded without mercy into the ground. It would be a cold day in hell before she’d even consider glancing at such a book.

Then as politely as possible: “We really are all different, aren’t we.”

I couldn’t help but agree.