As a new home owner, I now have to understand Reserve Bank interest rate announcements and how they affect our loan etc. Ross Gittens has a great piece that explains a few things about today’s rate increase. We’re on a fixed introductory rate that’s unlikely to change prior to settlement, so we should be sweet. But still, it’ll take a few of these announcements for me to stop feeling just a little anxious…

Well after a stressful couple of weeks, I can finally announce that I’ve just bought an apartment! The news came through at 4.30pm today, giving us 30 mins to scramble the deposit cheque to the agent. But the deed is done!

We picked up a one bedroom loft-style apartment right in the center of Newtown (just near the RPA Hospital for those that know the area). We move in very early December (we’re not sure on the exact date yet). It’s a 20 min walk to work, so I’m looking forward to that too - clearing my head, listening to podcasts and avoiding overcrowded buses - ahhh bliss…

This is the first apartment/house/home that I’ve ever owned - so it’s quite exciting and quite daunting all at once. But I’m really looking forward to having my own space, without having to deal with housemates and real estate agents and all the baggage that comes with share-housing. I’ve had a pretty good run where I am now (except for the dampness and cold in winter), but it’s definitely time to move on.

David Suzuki was just in the WWF Sydney office!!!! He was gracious enough to make time to talk to our CEO Greg Bourne for a video interview (hopefully the results will be available online in time for WWF’s next monthly email bulletin) and then talk to the team in the Sydney office.

A few years ago now, well before I was actively interested in the environment, I read Sacred Balance and it totally changed my view of nature and the environment. I’ve since read Good news for a change which was a real eye opener as well - and got me totally inspired. To see him in person was soooooooo cool!

His short talk to us was inspiring - his advice? Don’t burn yourself out. He also suggested that it will take approx. 20 years for our energy infrastructure to be transformed - and given that it’s pretty clear we are running out of oil, we need to move quickly.

He was so down to earth and completely inspiring. And he looks about 20 years younger than he is - an amazing person.

WOW!

Just a heads up that I’ve posted two new demos (recorded with the full band) over at our MySpace profile.

On Sunday night I plucked up the courage to ask Angela if she would like to marry me. For some strange reason she said yes! So we are now engaged And I have had a smile from ear to ear since… I wonder when that wears off? :p

No further plans had been made as yet (we’re ring shopping at the moment, and will probably work out a date for the ceremony over the next month or so). But it all seems so natural to be where we are in our relationship that I’m sure it will all work out very smoothly.

But we’re both very happy and looking forward to whatever’s next…

I’ve been busy doing an end-of-year review of the WWF-Australia website as part of a broader performance review and I’ve been busy doing charts, reviewing stats, and trying to work out why our search engine traffic jumped significantly over the past three months (yes, probably boring to you, but I really wanna know why that happened).

It’s mostly good news - the site performed above our targets on most fronts ($$ raised, visits + visitors etc.) - so I’m pretty happy with how we’ve gone in “year one”, so-to-speak.

The net result, though, has been not a lot of posting here. Although most of that process is done, I’ve still got heaps on which means posting might continue to be a bit light over the next few weeks.

But in the meantime, a couple of quick things:

• I was stoked to see that The Devoted Few are supporting Eskimo Joe (dates and venues here)
• We’re tracking drums and (hopefully) guitar for a demo with my new band tomorrow
• Bush finally succumbs to the pressure of actually obeying the law (for once)
• Loving Something for Kate’s “Desert Lights” - my fave lyric is from Impossible: "And I don’t want to be the rain/Falling on her impossible parade/So as sure as I can believe in anything/I will bite my tongue and believe in impossible things"

Anyways, ciao for now…

Congrats to Sean on his new job!

In amongst everything else that’s been going on I forgot to mention that I’m doing a talk tomorrow night (with one of my former colleagues from WWF-Australia) on my experience with open source CMSs.

So I got my iMac back from the shop last night. The guys at TRS humoured me and tested the Presonus Firebox on a couple of other iMacs to work out what was happening with the power issues.

Works perfectly on an Intel-based iMac. Same on an “old” G5 iMac (the ones without the iSight). But it fails to boot on any of the last G5 iMacs. We think we’ve worked it out - the built-in iSight is powered off the firewire bus, and must draw just enough power to be underpowered for the Presonus boot process.

During the conversation with the techs there I also discovered that the last G5 iMacs are an absolute pain to service. The original iMacs made a big show-and-dance about how easy upgrades were. Seems that marketing requirements outweighed good design with the new case designs.

So, not only is my computer half the speed of the new Intel iMacs; not only now worth (at least) $1,000 less; but poor design decisions mean that the firewire bus is underpowered and it’s a shit to upgrade. Splendid!

Can anyone spell dog?

It seems that all of a sudden one level of my spam filtering has become a bit overly-anxious and has blocked a bunch of emails from folks at gmail addresses. I think I’ve got them all out, but just wanted to say sorry to anyone that I’ve not replied to that was expecting one.