Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid

It’s been over two months since my trip to Madrid and I still haven’t posted anything about it here. Life gets in the way of blogging.

Anyway, all I can really say is that a week was no way near enough… especially considering that the overwhelming majority of that week was spent working. Madrid is a very beautiful city and I look forward to going back there later in the year, and hopefully, I’ll get more time to do touristy things, like take lots of photos… didn’t take nearly enough photos.

Just watched Australia’s opening football match of the 2008 Olympics against Serbia on Channel 7 and have been "inspired" enough by a few things to get me out into the bungalow on a cold, Melbourne, winter night to vent blog about it.

Firstly… Channel 7.  The nerve of them to broadcast this on a delay of TWO HOURS.  If they didn’t want to do a proper job of broadcasting the games, they shouldn’t have bid for them.  I vaguely recall being equally disgusted with their efforts four years ago with their coverage of the Athens Olympics.  A sign of the standard we’re to expect of the next two weeks?  Let’s hope not.  At least the guy commentating the game for Ch7 was okay.  Knew the game and made an effort to pronounce the names correctly (got most of them right too).  That brings me to my second point.

Secondly… ABC’s radio commentary was of the game was SHOCKING.  I listened to about 15 minutes of the match and one of the commentators (David Morrow I think is his name) didn’t know the game and couldn’t pronounce his mothers maiden name if it wasn’t "Smith".  He was clearly a rugby commentator as he kept referring to the goal-line as the "by-line"… and on several occasions during the time I was listening, he made negative stereotypical comments about the sport.  Made me want to write to the ABC and complain… thought I’d vent here instead.

Finally… the match itself .  What can I say about the Olyroos?  Uncoordinated, uninspired, unbelievably lucky to come away from this with a 1-1 draw.  Their play had "Graham Arnold" stamped all over it… when will the FFA realise that this guy is a dead weight around the neck of the sport for this counrty.   Get rid of him already.

Giraffe Casts a Long Shadow

Much of my online time of late has been spent at DPChallenge and I’ve been considering changing this blog to a photoblog.

Just thinking about it at the moment…

It seems as I continue to neglect this site… question is, will a photoblog fix that. Will this site give me anything I don’t get via my DPC portfolio, or my Picasa, Zoomr and Flickr accounts?

Need to think about this some more.

I stumble across one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a LONG time.

A bit of background first, so you don’t get any ideas about what it is I spend my time on the internet looking at.

I was inspecting the last few days of links over at HotLinks where I followed a link to a livecasting video of a Penny Arcade being illustrated - something that interested me as I

1. like Penny Arcade
2. have always been impressed by people that can draw well.

Anyway… while watching the video, the music backing it was a version of Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back“. I quite liked the version, and was amused by the style so I went and googled “Baby Got Back”. While working my way down the list I found “Baby Got Book” at a site I’d never heard of… “GodTube”? Despite my reservations I checked it out… and it’s hilarious.

“My minister tried to console me but that book that you’ve got makes me so holy”
“My bible study don’t want none unless you got book hun’”

Good to see religion and comedy together… best way to combat fundamentalists.

Just upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 and thought I’d attempt a post to try out the install…

The image above is a drawing a friend did of the band I was was in back in 1995. We were called “The Frying Dutchman” and played at the Punters Club in the RMIT heats of the National Campus Band Competition. Hard to believe it’s been more than 12 years…

Anyway… came across the drawing when I was looking for my music books after I bought myself an acoustic guitar a few weeks ago… thought I’d share it.