Double Take

I swore this said it was the best curry cafe in Melbourne's CBD. I didn't actually answer their question, but I will honestly say, "I don't know."

film clip

Film clip I helped collaborate on. They misspelled my name, but it makes it more mysterious that way.

broken cameras and broken dreams

In Japan there is a common promotion where significant discounts are given if you bring in another model of whatever you are buying. So, for example, if you are buying a digital camera, you can often get a few thousand yen off the retail price if you trade in an old digital camera. So when my wife found a prehistoric digital camera for a few hundred yen at a flea market, she jumped on the chance to buy it. It didn't seem to work, but that was not its purpose. We just wanted an old camera that we could trade in whenever a good deal came up.

After doing a little bit of tinkering I managed to get the camera working. Well, working if you carefully held in a plug from another adapter at a certain angle. To my delight there were some photos still recorded on the internal memory. I started to get worried when I saw a theme emerging. That particular them was of (apparently random) women's legs. What was even more fascinating was that they seemed to be pretty ordinary legs- the photographer wasn't targeting school girls or ladies in mini-skirts. Perhaps I should have handed it over to the police. Anyway, what do you think?

Review of Myles Barlow

Yes, I've turned the tables around and done a review on the man who reviews all facets of life, the one, the only, Myles Barlow.

To read my review Click here

If you've never seen him before, have a look at this.

Waltzing Matilda in Kriol!

I read about this in the Weekend Australia and checked it out before finishing the article. I love the word for "jumbuck" and I love the fact I can hear similarities between the Kriol and Bislama/Tok Pisin!

Check out the newest newspaper

I've got a few articles posted (and more coming) on the recently established Newsbytes online newspaper. It's a JSchool newspaper and it was featured (albeit briefly) in Monday's Australian.

Videos from Press Freedom event

I took the videos on my snapshot digital camera tonight in Brisbane. The video shows my new journalist friends from PNG singing about press freedom and corruption. The song about press freedom is in English and the corruption one is in Tok Pisin.

ANZAC Day 2010 in Brisbane.

I went to the dawn service this morning to check out my first Anzac service in over 15 years. There was a specific question I wanted to ask people: "what can we do in our daily lives to ensure that ALL the people who lost their lives in armed conflict are honoured?" Unfortunately I forgot to switch on a certain switch and as a result the audio is terrible, but I thought it was worth posting anyway.

iJackass 2.0

I've always wanted to ride down a hill in a (relatively clean) wheelie bin but now I'm having second thoughts after reading this story.

I want more of these

In the margins

Please have a look at my good friend David LaMotte's recent essay entitled In the Margins.

I attended my first Brisbane City Council meeting yesterday. It was, ahem, enlightening. Some parking tickets were given to cars parked in a certain area at 2:00 am. The opposition used this to attack the Lord Mayor. It's well worth watching for conscious citizens. 157 Ann Street on the 6th floor from 2:00pm. Don't tell them that I sent you. And, don't take any banners- they'll take them off you.

Ask me a question at formspring

A new web service I've just discovered today where you can ask me anonymous questions. Please click here to ask me some interesting questions.

How to report the news.

I really wish I had seen this earlier. It's important for everybody who watches news to see this video. You'll never look at the news in the same way!

Australia Day 2010.

People never used to wrap themselves in the Australian flag. The first person I remember doing this was Pauline Hanson. I've been pretty concerned about this sudden upsurge of so-called patriotism on Australia day that spirals quickly into drunken shenanigans. So I spent the day trudging around Brisbane city with my large video camera and tripod.

Australia Day in Brisbane 2010 from DDS MEDIA on Vimeo.

Smuggling.

As a kid I would have loved to have access to the Australian Customs' media room. You'd see exactly all these plans that were, ahem, hatched. Take for example the interesting T shirt below. The product of an ambitious TAFE design student? Unfortunately not. This individual who was wearing this wild garment is alleged to have stuffed these pockets with bird eggs. The customs writers had a little bit of fun with this media release noting how they cracked the egg smuggling attempt.

Which came first, the pigeon or the egg? What disappoints me about this episode is that no photo was taken when the pigeons were concealed. I can't imagine even the most junior customs officer failing to notice the bloke with funny looking calf muscles. Pigeons must have enjoyed an elevated status- if you are worth smuggling, it has to count for something right?

The male passenger below took a less conspicuous approach to (allegedly) attempting to smuggle some "roids" into the country. He seems to have outranked the pigeon smuggler in common sense. But in the end, he too was caught. Don't smuggle stuff! Customs will make bad puns about you if you do.

All pictures courtesy Australian Customs and Border Protection Service.