Portable Film Festival

Click here for losta really weird but cool short free films. One of my favourites, out of the few that I've watched so far, is Soap Opera. Hands up, Your Betel Nut or Your Life is pretty good too.

These are all movies designed to be watched on phones, iPods etc etc.... Can download them into iTunes and stuff too.... Great idea I reckon!

You have to sign up to watch them, but it's gotta be one of the easiest sign ups I've ever seen!

So go and check them out, great for procrastinating!!!

P.S. Check Maestro out too.

The pretexts are always found in some spacious appearance of a real good.

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history ... In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind ... History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites ... These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogative, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some spacious appearance of a real good. - E. Burke

Click on the link

101 Uses for a John Howard

Proud aunty procrastination

These were taken at easter, when everyone was down. Look at how much the boys have changed and grown since then!!!! (comparing with the pic from yesterdays' post that is!)






Mum and Rohan (who was smiling at Ashar)














Mum and Rohan












Yoda Rohan











Dad and the crew

















Dad and Ashar












And here's Arrigo, their cousin with Ashar (penguin top), Rose and Rohan. Arrigo is about the same age, but was born at the right time, not 10 weeks early like Ashar and Rohan.

The boys at 6 months

I'm procrastinating in a serious way, avoiding writing my history by doing other uni work (that takes real committment) so I thought I'd share a recent pic of the boys. Aren't they beautiful?

And for everyone who has troubles understanding the Bible (are we gold or clay?):

When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated. - James Madison

Well I'd best be off to keep on reading.... and writing. It's only 750 words, but it's just SO hard!

Kat's off today too... The day after major airport security shuffles. Timing!

I was actually a little bit angry before the start of the game. I thought our haka lacked a bit of intensity and spirit...

So says umpire of the New Zealand basektball team, on their loss last night to the Australian Boomers. I heard him say that on the news, and I hope he was not entirely serious - his tone of voice was ambiguous, but it's a rather funny thing to say...

Well uni's back, I'm looking forward to the next set of holidays already, although it is nice toe be spending time in the Ref sitting with people watching them play silly card game all the time again, while I do my odd German homework about a lady who has to shave her face..... (well you try and decipher the pictures!) I like that bit of uni - the bludging around in the Ref, practising group procrastination.....

Results, yeah, pretty good, I was happy, although I'm not sure they were really good enough for our Advanced Honours co-ordinator (AdHon is the weird thing I'm doing that means I got a good score at the end of school and they want to keep me in Arts as long as possible and make an arts degree look vaguely acceptable. What they don't know is that I'll probably end up doing ArtsLaw, so all their scheming is in vain - I can't do a combined degree and AdHon... Mwha mwha mwha). Apparently I must be 'pretty pleased' with my Law and German results, and my History and English results were 'pretty impressive' as well.... Personally I thought it was the other way around, but there you go.... The trick will be keeping that high praise coming after the next exams.....

Anyway. Life. Yeah. Good. It's there, I'm living, did my first aid course last week, so I'll know if I'm not.

But the main point of this was really just to say THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE THAN WORRY THAT YOUR TEAM'S HAKA IS NOT INTENSE AND SPIRITED ENOUGH........ And I can understand that it's all symbolic and stuff of power etc, but really, the anxiety in this guy's eyes when he said it (and he's American or Canadian, so it isn't a native thing for him anyway).......

Well Done Socceroos!

You made them fight for every touch of the ball. Well done.

(Well I had to mention it didn't I?)

Phew, Kewell's in...

And Australia breathes a sigh of relief. I too was a little worried, although really he shouldn't have lost his temper like that - Germany isn't Australia, they take hooliganism far more seriously than here...

Hmmm.... Apparently there are such things as 'brown outs' and south hobart has been getting heaps lately... Hence the fried mother boards on our computer and printer, sick router and other things that have been going wrong lately - my powerpack that wouldn't charge properly, slightly flickery lights etc etc.... Argh! And now that we've got new houses being built on our street, and electricity coming from Victoria, I don't think it's going to get any better.... I suspect Aurora would say it's all our fault...

And something my Mum said a couple of days ago got me thinking. There has been talk about introducing new rules for wood fires - that the smoke can't be seen 5 metres away or something, obviously trying to get people to go onto electric/more efficient heating, but where's the power for that coming from? With BassLInk it's not as though all our power is clean green hydro power anymore. That really is passing the dirt on...

Cleared out my top cupboard today, that was a bit scary, although i now have a lot more room for clothes - i cleared out 5 shoeboxes of accumulated junk, plus other stuff!

Well I'd love to have something intellectual to say for the end of my post, but i don't, so I'll just stick with a message for my austrian friends

Es ist 'foi' super das ihr endlich aus der Schule seid! Nie mehr Schule! Keine Schule mehr! Hooray! Kongratulieren fuer euere ausgezeichnete Noten! Viel Glueck Bibi fuer August, du wirst es sicher schaffen! Schoene Ferien, habt viel Spass in Barcelona usw! Und ich habe 40/40 fuer meine Aufsatz bekommen!!! Danke Dina! Danke Maria!! Ich koennte dass sicher nicht allein bekommen! Aber ich habe nicht SO viele Fehlern gemacht... :-p Wollt ihr meine Deutsche Pruefungen schreiben?!?

Nutella Nibbles

Here's a good unhealthy study food aid:

Take one piece of mountain bread
Spread with Nutella
Fold bread lenghtways a few times, so it's about 5cm wide
Cut into fingers/pieces
Put in the fridge for a while
Eat!

Yummy!

Some procrastination for you who need that 10 minute break every hour.

They arrested my orangutan.

Throw the paper in the bin game

Silly Walks generator

A very cool bookself!

This is my kind of book shelf! CAVE

But this is so sad. Censorship in Colorado Springs

In other news, i'm officially on swatvac now, so trying to do lots of study....

Kannst du mein Monster halten? Kannst du?

Exams must be coming...

... I feel an insane urge to tidy my room like never before...

Evolution of dance

The evolution of dance

Thanks Clare for this one!

Will take a while to download, but quite funny if you have the time to wait! If you don't have the time to wait, then you're just too stressed and you'll spend the 6 minutes too worried about what else you could be doing to notice that the guy is scarily good at hip isolation....!!

Look at them now!!

Here are the twins, at 17 weeks. Aren't they so cute!!! I think the yawner is Rohan and the smiler is Ashar, but I can't be certain.... They're starting to look alike and like normal people, not the prem boys they were before!!

Hooray Hooray!!

Thanks for this Imo (K)!

Albino Black Sheep

Very cool! Give it some time to load, and it's worth it!

The Tasman Bridge

This was taken at the Hobart Regatta earlier this year, at about 8:30pm, while we were waiting for the fireworks! That's the Derwent, our river, with the Tasman Bridge, and lots of boats, also waiting for the fireworks!

CrossEyed...

CrossEyed is our youth group/ministry at BayWest. It's all very cool, we went disco bowling last week, I pretended it was just like golf, lowest score wins...

The website's just been updated, all looks very cool... Check it out... There are pics of us smashing the car there too...!!

Learning to pout...

I emptied my camera just before, if you're wondering where all these photos are coming from!!

Like us learning to pout....


Sexy....














Is this a ... bad... photo of Ruth? It's a miracle!












Don't give me that look Kath!












Of course you're innocent...














Pucker up Ruth...













Yes... georgeous














And textbook pouting...

Oh dear...

My niece...!

:-P

Some pretty pics!

Here are some pretty sunset pics I took recently, of 2 different sunsets... They were just out off the verandah and the upstairs window...

Both were pretty vivid sunsets... I love a good sunset...

Is busy an emotion?

"How are you?" anyone might ask a friend. "Oh, busy, and yourself?" might be the reply. And what does that tell us? Is this person happy that they are busy? Stressed? Uncomfortable? Is there a reason they're busy? Are they avoiding something or just taking too much on?

Why do we treat business as an emotion, as something we should aim for? Everyone knows that people generally are taking more on to do in a shorter amount of time, but does that mean we forget about emotions? That busy and not busy are the only emotions we register...

Usually when I ask 'how are you' I don't mean "how occupied are you?", I mean "how's it going? how are you as a person dealing with your environment? Are you healthy?"... And Busyness isn't really an answer to those questions...

Now people can argue (and arguing is good, it takes your mind off that busyness for a moment, giving it a break) that replying 'good' to the question is just as non-emotive, and I can't quite think of why I prefer being told that than 'busy'... Maybe someone else knows...

So busy as an emotion... It's just a thought, reminds me of Newspeak somehow, actually all of Orwell's Oceania... No actual emotions, stating only the facts... Are we going to be called to Room 101 if we state "yeah, I'm alright, feeling a little tired, but that's just because i'm horribly tired"?

I don't know... My point really is just that it seems crazy that busy has now become an emotion, and it's one of those emotions that if you don't have it, there's obviously something wrong. Unhappy people are questioned on what's wrong, should we do the same to people who don't say they're busy?

"Hi! How are you?"
"Yeah, not bad thanks, just getting over a cold. And yourself?"
"So you aren't busy then?"
"Not particularly, just handed in all my assignments, so I'm alright."
"Hmm.... you need a job... and why don't you volunteer at this function for lame kids... and shouldn't you be studying for the exams? Would you like to play in my hockey team?"
"Well not really... I need a break after those assignments... Yeah, I know, exams... I'm getting there... What are you up to these days?"
(said with pride)"Oh, keeping busy.... uni, exams, sport, work, church..."

What's wrong with taking some 'down time'? What compels us to announce proudly that we're
'keeping busy'?

Anyway, this isn't a snipe at someone in particular, just a rant at the answer I received several times today to one of our most commonly asked questions... Please just think what you're saying next time you answer, think about what the question's asking and why it's so 'good' to be busy....

two miners found ALIVE!

That's a true miracle.

Found unhurt, hopefully out by tomorrow, talking, it's amazing. 1km down for 6 days, and they're talking!

How amazing can God's work get?

Let's keep praying that they get them out, there's still some way to go.

And... I.... Die...

I remember that Susan and I wanted to stand up and applaude at the end of Franco Zeffireli's 'Romeo and Juliet', when Romeo has a wonderful death scene and declares 'now... I die' and carks it. Right now I understand a little of what Romeo was going through. I want to curl up into a little ball and sleep, catch up on what i missed out on last night, but i know that if I sleep now, I'll never sleep tonight, and that's very not cool!

Wow, way too many 'I's in that sentence!

Last night at CrossEyed (btw, have you seen the cool website? CrossEyed) we had our allnighter, and now I'm pooped. Two hours of sleep, broken into 30 minute blocks so isn't enough! It was fun, lots of movies, popcorn, stacks-on and general fun and games. Today is just so long! Started yesterday at 7:30am... I know I shoudl really be doing a law assignment, got the draft due on monday, but have jsut about finished that, and still have tomorrow!!

Ahhh... Just downloaded Firefox, so now I have all my options up the top - links, text alignment etc etc, Safari doesn't agree with Blogger fr some reason....

And just to prove that royalty are only mere mortals (well their drivers at least) click here

I updated my iPod today...

Don't know why, don't have any new music on my computer, just thought it was the right thing to do, I mean, you can't have an iPod and never plug it into your computer (other than for charging), right? This is coming from a girl who hasn't bought a cd in years, the last cds I got were burnt copies of German music, presents from friends there... But suddenly I'm a music techno-geek, well maybe i won't go that far, but with my mp3 player and iPod, it's certainly a little excessive. The thing is that I didn't want the iPod, I'd just opened my shiny new mp3 player, when I learnt I could get a free iPod with my new computer. The sales lady on the phone couldn't comprehend my reluctance, "but it's FREE" she exclaimed when I said I didn't need it. "But I don't need it! I just bought an mp3 player!" I protest. "Sell it, give it away, just take this FREE iPod!" is her argument. I give in. "Alright, but there really aren't any strings?" I feel I should still put up some resistance. I wonder why they're so desperate to give away these iPods. Are the new 1Gb Nanos such a failure?

I think I now know why they're free. There's so much STUFF, accompanying apparel, extra bits and pieces, accessories whatever you want to call it. All this MUST be bought, for one to own a present and correct iPod. So far I've only bought a cover, the cheapest available, but I was astounded to see the number of covers one could buy...Leather, plastic, solid, floppy, even packets of 5, so you can have a different colour for everytime people see you (do they think iPods sweat? Is it a social sin for it to wear the same thing two days in a row?). Then there are armbands, desk rests, speakers, etc etc. Then you get iTunes and the Music store which inevitably opens when you sneeze in the direction of iTunes. No wonder the lady wanted me to take the iPod. Apple banks on socially acceptable materialism, although that's no new news.

What's the difference between kleptomania and materialism? Both are an urge that one MUST have certain things (although I am no psych student, so I could just be making stuff up, but that's how I see it), but one is legal and the other illegal. One is theft, the other (technically) not, although think about what you steal from the labourers who are forced to make the latest things so that you can get your little hands on them as soon as you can get to the shops. Tenuous link, yeah, probably, but that's how my mind works!

Anyway, that's enough of a ramble, now my iPod is charged and ready for action, I'll leave you with a funny story about a gender challenged chook that caught my eye this morning as I was looking over the local newspapers of the world.


http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29&art_id=iol1145436193214C200

Look, it's Hobart!

http://www.rosebay.tased.edu.au/camera.htm

Well, I'm itching to travel somewhere, so i'm onto looking at webcams around the world, and newspapers and everything, and I found a webcam of Hobart from Rose Bay HIgh. This is especially for the benefit of my Austrian friends! Rose Bay is on the 'Eastern Shore', the city (and my house (which you can almost see here, you can see the hill, but not the house!) and the uni and shops and everything) are on the other side of this bridge!

Is very cool!

Will write at some stage! I want to, but keep on getting caught up in other things on the internet!