Wines - they are achanging

.. well, packaging anyway. First they started to do away with corks in favour of screw tops. Now they're going to sell a range of wines in aluminium cans. And we only have to wait until September for Baroke to have them on shelves in NSW. The 250ml cans will sell for $3.99 each according to today's Daily Telegraph. The RDTWs (ready to drink wines) have been a hit overseas apparently, especially in Japan where they can be found in over 1000 convenience stores. Here, you'll have the choice of four carefully blended wines including a carbonated Cabernet Shiraz. Mmm. Oh, and it appears they'll have quite a high alcohol content - the pic in the article shows a can with a 13%ALC/VOL.

Rats!

The new Harry Potter movie hits cinema screens in Australia tomorrow.
One of the characters is Scabbers, Ron's rat. Scabbers was played by 2
rats, both of which were adopted at film end by the actor playing Ron.
Perhaps not so fortunate are the mice which may be the reason for
the RSPCA threatening to take a Queensland hotel to court. The hotel
ran a competition involving eating two live mice. Although it seems
two men took part, hoping to win a Gold Coast trip, it is not known if
they ate the mice, or thought them nice.

Drats!
On the way home this evening, I noticed some commotion (okay, it was
one camera flash) and crowd outside a theatre in town. If I hadn't
been running a bit late, I would have investigated - and had a photo
of something big and green and Shrek-like to post here. The ogre, and
glitterati, were out for the Australian launch of the sequel. Oh well
... perhaps next time. Sigh. I wonder if Princess Fiona was in
attendance.

Brother ...
This week's mystery guest on Channel 10's Big Brother is Maria. Recent
regular 10 viewers may recognise her as Miriam - the not quite as
"she" as is made out in 'There's Something About Miriam' where men
compete for her affection, unaware they are being had. So 'had' did
they feel when they discovered Miriam is a 'HE' that they sued for
damages and, if I recall correctly, were awarded nearly $2million.
The house mates won't know Maria/Miriam's 'secret' ('Something About
....' started after they went into the house.)
When asked about the ethics of Maria/Miriam's placement, someone from
10 said: we've had no complaints. I was horrified. I had been so
sucked in by the manipulative nature of the exercise that I hadn't
thought to speak out against it. And who would have thought that any
one would be waiting for input. You can learn something every day ...
like the most recent evictee is comfortable 'wearing naked'.

Choristers in waiting

Found this on my phone - I took it in the choir room the other week as we got ready for the concert. Don't we look dapper in academic gowns?

Turning over a new leaf?

I haven't read a book in a while. This is not to say that I haven't been reading - just that I've been doing it with electronic books (aka ebooks). I was thinking about this the other evening as I luxuriated in a steaming hot bath, perusing the latest edition of "The Readers Digest". As I leafed through the pages, being careful not to get them wet (my partner has only recently recovered the previous issue which had drowned and then plunged unceremoniously down the wall side of the bath - making it extremely difficult to recover! But I digress ...) I wondered if people feel more of a sense of completion when reading a paper book - knowing they are half way through, or closer to the end. You don't really get this with an ebook. Sure you can see from the scroll bar how far you've come, and how far there's still to go, but there is nothing as satisfying at the end as closing the back cover and putting it down. Done. Complete. Finished. With an ebook you might delete it, or save it onto a memory card for later reference, but you don't pop it onto the bookshelf as a book you've read. And they're certainly not easy to share around! But you can read them in the dark, and they're very light to pack!

Infestation

I don't know where it came from but I spent some time last week trying to get some insidious "thing" off my computer. I'm not sure what the right term is but everytime I used Internet Explorer, closing the active window would cause a pop-up message saying the program had closed, and did I want to send an error report. A couple of pop-ups kept happening - did I want to synchronise the clock on my computer, and did I want to optimize my computer. Close the window and bingo, the program closed and wanted to send an error report. I cleaned out cookies, I cleaned out files, I looked for new, unfamiliar programs. Zilch. But finally, I found them, 5 programs downloaded on the same day last week according to the details. Not quite sure how it happened - just knew that it was when I was using the computer - and finally decided it was when I was searching for a program - clicking links off to various sites, when the system was compromised. But I thought the firewall was suppo!
sed to stop that, and surely the virus program should have kicked in at some point? Obviously I need to understand this "stuff" better - so I have a new project for the coming month. And were there really 340 instances of these investations (as the Adware program suggested). I guess so, but at least they're all safely quantined now.

Last meal?

The Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend (5/6 June 2004) carried a picture article about "Last Meals", and the choices made by prisoners executed in America. What would you choose?

What's In A Name?

The Vatican's Internet site is powered by three host computers named
after angels -- Raphael, Michael and Gabriel. Raphael stores graphics
and navigation paths, Michael protects the site from hackers and
Gabriel interfaces between the other two computers and the outside
world.

Survival Rule of 3s

Humans can survive for: 3 minutes without air; 3 days without water; 3
weeks without food (but only just). Well, that's in real life. In
the disaster movies it's quite a different scenario. We saw "The Day
After Tomorrow" last night (were they really pumping freezing air into
the cinema?) and noted that the main characters (those who were still
alive at the end of the film!) had survived on candy bars and potato
chips. I guess that doesn't really count as being "without food" but
it certainly wouldn't have made their dentists happy! It's amazing how
people see different things in movies, isn't it? I noticed that while
the NY library characters were busy burning books to stay warm (that
isn't much of a spoiler!), there seemed to be a few chairs lying
around that could also have been used for fuel - unless of course the
wood was chemically treated and they might have been killed by the
release of toxic fumes. My partner noticed that at one stage a
policeman's vest had letters obscured and now read, simply, "ice".
Nice touch. Of course, "The Day After Tomorrow" IS a disaster movie
so doesn't count as "quality entertainment" but it's worth a look -
the special effects are amazing! - and it does carry a message, as
long as people choose to listen. Maybe some governments who have so
far resisted could warm to the idea of the Kyoto Accord?

Marriage Acts

There is a move within the Australian Government to change the
definition of marriage so it excludes all but men and women ie
same-sex marriages will not be an option. Overseas marriages of
same-sex couples will not be recognised here. But ... what of the
rest of the definition? Will they change that as well if and when it
suits the Government of the day? For example, under section 46 of the
Marriage Act, civil celebrants are required to explain the nature of
the relationship before solemnising a marriage with words to the
effect that marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a
man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered
into for life. Hmmm. For life. Imagine if they enforced that!

Standard rate of commission?

Have you been a victim of the Russian mafia? This is a question
Sydney's "The Daily Telegraph" asked 1 June (pg 13) in a story about
Westpac customers who had been duped into visiting bogus internet
pages and revealing their account, security numbers and passwords.
According to the report, the bank is about to start reimbursing an
unknown number of its customers several million dollars. The scam was
apparently engineered by the Russian mafia. So why are the Russians
targetting Australia? Who are the "mules" - "individuals recruited
with offers of a 10 per cent cut" of the action - who withdrew the
money from the halfway accounts where the victims' funds had been
transferred and forwarded it to Russia. And have any been caught?
And if not, how could anyone know what their cut was? Or is 10% the
standard rate of commission?

PINs

As I carefully sheilded my PIN entry from prying eyes at the automatic teller machine this morning, my partner quietly leaned over and informed me that she already knew what it was! "I do this all the time, not just because you're here," I explained, before launching into a PIN safety talk.
And talking about PIN safety - did you hear about the inflatible boy who took a pin to his inflatible school, and his inflatible headmaster told him "you've not only let me down, you've let yourself down and you've let the whole school down!" (Boom boom - as Basil Brush - and nephew Patrick who told us this joke - would say.)

Look! Up in the sky ...

On the afternoon of Tuesday 8th June 2004, for the first time in over 120 years, Venus’s dark silhouette will pass across the face of the Sun in of astronomy’s rarest and most famous events: A Transit of Venus. For more info, click here.
Thanks to Lizzie for posting info on this on her blog.
If you're placed to see it - don't look directly at the sun! You'll do yourself a damage. And the transit has been responsible for enough:
The Transit Of 1769: James Cook - The most celebrated transit of Venus is that of June 1769, The voyage to observe the 1769 transit is especially significant to Australians for, after successfully completing the observations, Cook opened sealed orders from the Admiralty to search for the unknown southern continent. He did not find this mythical land, but did claim New Zealand and New South Wales for the British Crown.

Curious I am. Will there be SPAM?

Will GMail have effective spam filters? I ask that because I went in to have a look at my new GMail account this morning. Why would I do that when it's a new account and I haven't given the address to anyone yet? To see if it will go the way of my other accounts - spammed, spammed, spammed. Even the one account which I don't use on any newsgroups etc etc etc, is now being spammed - admittedly only once or twice a week - but it's still spam, and not at all welcome. As GMail places advertising based on message content, what will happen when the messages are for male member enhancement pills
procedures, or the other products that spam usually offers?
Oh ... If you're thinking about signing up for GMail if you get the chance - it seems you can only access your mail via their web page at the moment; you can't yet set up your email client to access it.

Mmmmm ...

Ready for another session of coffee making ... the cups are a gift (found at the Zoo) from my partner's brother Chris and wife Sandy.

The perfect cup of coffee

... has yet to emerge from the espresso machine I currently have on loan (thanks Sarah!). But I am trying. Some days it all seems like a bit of a production to make a cup of coffee - fill up the water reservoir of the machine, turn the power on to allow it to heat for 45 minutes before measuring out the coffee; then tamp it, insert the holder into its groove, turn to lock, put a cup under the spout to catch the coffee and then turn on the water - and then take cold milk from the fridge, put it in the frothing jug, put the jug under the steam arm, and then open the valve. And remember - steam is very hot and it will scald you if you break your concentration for a moment (like when you realise the coffee has filled the cup under the filter and is about to start overflowing!).
But the brew is getting better, especially as I am now using a new batch of coffee (Columbia - still full-flavoured, but mild) from the local coffee emporium, ground to the right consistency for the coffee machine. (And no, I was told, don't keep the coffee in the fridge - just an airtight container at room temperature will maintain it for a few weeks ... Oh, and 200gm is the smallest quantity you can buy at a time.)

Gmail

Well, I have taken the plunge and started a Gmail account, the new
Google initiative, via an offer through Blogger. Gmail offers
1gigabyte of storage, which seems to be funded by targetted
advertising. It will be an interesting exercise - and at least I
didn't have to buy an account off eBay. I read last week that some
people in the original testing could invite a friend to join, and they
were selling the invitations. Enterprising solutions (all round).

The new Krispy Kreme Doughnut store in Sydney

... there have been queues so long that the colleagues who have ventured out for a doughnut have come back empty handed (d'oh). 

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

Have you ever wondered why they're spelled "dough"nuts?
dough Noun
1) (food) a flour mixture stiff enough to knead or roll
2) (possession) informal terms for money
Synonyms: shekels; gelt; bread; dinero; lucre; loot; pelf; moolah; cabbage; kale. (SlovoEd 4.13 - dictionary for Palm)
Krispy Kreme (finally!) opened it's first store in the Central Business District in Sydney on Wednesday. The first customer was to receive a year's supply of doughnuts. As it was raining the night before the store's opened, chances are they were looking forward to a hot cup of coffee and a warm shower as well!)
My partner's boss dutifully joined the queue yesterday to buy a half dozen original glazed doughnuts - only to find they were selling for $1.90 each - or $11.40 for 6; he decided the 12 for $11 was a better deal.
What are the ethics of marketing, effectively, via bigger portions? There's a documentary just doing the rounds here ("Super Size Me") about a guy who, for a month, lived on McDonalds. I'm not sure whether this was before Maccas introduced their healthy menu items - or if he chose them if they were available - but the result is not something that's likely to have people eating there on a regular basis. It's also not likely to increase Maccas -or Krispy Kreme's -turnover unless they change their fare.
Krispy Kreme reported Tuesday that it lost $24.4 million in the first quarter, its first quarterly loss since going public in 2000.
Part of the loss was attributed to people deciding a more balanced lifestye (read: diet) is appropriate for them. Strategies to adopt to this changed and changing consumer environment include the company's doughnut shops selling a low-sugar doughnut, mini doughnuts and doughnut holes (!!!).
Scott Livengood, Chief Executive of the doughnut-maker said: "And we make our plans and do things in a, call it a worst case scenario. I think there is always a real possibility that people are going to decide a balanced lifestyle is appropriate for them ....
"But on the other hands we're not going to take anything for granted."

We're "Orff"

Our Carmina Burina concert is almost upon us. The last 13 or so weeks of practising 3 hours on a Wednesday evening have paid off and we are about ready. Dress rehearsal is Friday evening, and the concerts are Saturday (evening) and Sunday (afternoon).
I am sitting in rehearsal as I write this - a bit tricky as I try not to miss the next Soprano entry. It looks like we're doing a run through ofthe whole piece - which means I'll know what little (hopefully) sections need independent revision.
But it will be good fun. I've sung this piece before and it's a bit like meeting up with an old friend after a long absence.
If you're near the Great Hall, Sydney Uni when we're due to perform, feel free to come along (with money for your ticket) and support the choir. Otherwise, how will you be able to tell your friends about the amazing tenor cooking swan solo?

Gift Idea

Looking for a gift idea? For her father's 80th, Suzanne assembled a "this is your life ... so far" photo album. It looked at all the key points in his life - using the roles he's play - baby, brother, husband, father, grandfather, fisherman, sailor, veteran ... to name a few. It's a great way to capture a glimpse of times past and it was a way of showing Bill how much of an influence he's had on those around him.