Friday

Last night you’ll recall that Dwayne said “there is no snooze”. There I was hitting the snooze on my alarm this morning.

Dwayne kicked my candy ass out of bed, earlier than usual. Sure I also remembered my Mum flying down to Melbourne this afternoon. 

Leave early – 8:57 train. Arrive work 9:58.
Scream silently.

There’s a deep story here about two ways to interpret the events that caused an early start to be wasted … You’re not getting that today.

There was a PokeWalk from Jolimont (is that anything like getting off at Redfern?)
Two new catches! Silver lining and all that. 

A wise person may or may not have said “Lord give us caffeine to change the things we can change, alcohol to accept the things we cannot change and the Mushrooms to know the difference”

Short walk at lunch went, err, long. Because pokemans.

Dined at Docklands. Fireworks, food & funnies.

Good luck Hayley, looks like you are going to need it.

Publish or perish : two days in a row!

Thursday, 25th August 2016

Trying a new thing here – capturing some thoughts of the day.

Careful, topics will vary since this is A Dog’s Breakfast.

A comment about my walks getting longer from an accountability buddy on my fitness tracker (Jawbone UP2 for anyone that cares) lead to a long walk at lunch, with three hill sprints! I blame the weather (Spring is close, I feel it in my bones) and that comment.

On the bright side, I caught a lot of Magikarp walking along the riverbank.

Despite the exercise, I didn’t get into the groove of the day work-wise. Managed to get a few brainless things done, a longer list of those will be handy next time brain decides to get-up-and-go.

In all the wandering mind moments, I recalled Merlin Mann talking about a new album in the old school prog metal genre on Back to Work “286: Secret Rap Name”

That’s how I discovered Dead Revolution by Hammers of Misfortune which I’ve listened to a few times now. It also lead to a nice exchange with @hotdogsladies himself (which is a thrill unto itself 🙂

Listening to Dead Revolution by Hammers of Misfortune on #AppleMusic.https://t.co/VQvtguSlIA because @hotdogsladies pic.twitter.com/wkmUrqI3HW

— Matthew Hall (@aDB) August 25, 2016

Staying on the music front for a bit : Heavy Music Magazine on Facebook noted that Metallica’s “…And Justice for All”, their fourth album, was released on this day, 25 August in 1988.

Wow. So many memories. Remind me to tell you about “seeing them on tour, getting the t-shirt, being in a car rolling off mountain in that t-shirt and surviving” sometime.

 

Work day done I walked, as I do, over the bridge to find a tram or train. This sight stopped me : I paused for a moment of gratitude and snapped a pic. I love living in Melbourne, especially when it shares moments like these.

Watched Dwayne & the Rock Clock on Graham Norton : originally aired on Friday 10th June 2016. Thanks Australian TV for random repeats in primetime. The Rock Clock is Dwayne’s app to help you reach your goals. Cute. It has an alarm and no snooze button, just The Rock saying things like “get your candy ass outta bed!” That was in my head the morning after!

Late to bed. Slept OK but.

Christmas is going to be DIVINE at the Astor

Christmas eve in Melbourne – a little something special from our beloved Astor Theatre.

Watson makes (your) it elementary

VentureBeat writes:

Big Blue tonight announced the Watson Discovery Advisor, a cloud-based tool that will let researchers tap into Watson’s big data processing smarts to speed up their work.

Remember Watson? It is the computer system built by Big Blue that understands natural languange. So much so, that it competed and won on Jeorpardy! against real human opponents.

Now available to researchers, some luck students, startups and anyone with a good idea (and presumably deep pockets!)

How long before we all have Watson-like tech in our pockets?

Starting to sound a lot like Her. 

You know you’ve been neglecting your blog when …

The last post you had was from last year’s conference.

Which is on in two week’s time.

[blushes]

Yes, it is time for Australian Blogging conference put on by Darren & his amazing team over at Problogger Events – I bought the ticket way back in March!

Accommodation was booked a few days ago and flights just yesterday.

Let’s hope I got them all correct – I certainly was distracted when I booked the flight up to the Gold Coast, since I was stung by the $8.50 fee the airlines love to charge when you don’t use the very specific payment method they like. This leg is on Tiger and I plain forgot to use the Mastercard. Duh.

Just quietly – the process of booking flights is exhausting. Navigating through all the options, upgrades and upsells was just nasty. Which, I suppose, is the point. They’d love you to cave in at some point and just book whatever they stick onto your fare.

Such a shame they can’t be a bit more friendly to the customer.