Light My Fire: White Bay Hotel burns to the ground
on Sep 7, 2008 in sydney hotel pub fire Every morning, I walk down Victoria Road in Rozelle, to get onto the Anzac Bridge. If I get up early enough, the sun rising over the Harbour Bridge, cloaked in hissing morning mist, is a wonderful sight. When it rains, though, I scramble for cover on...

Creating high quality LaTeX figures in Octave instead of MatLAB
on Jul 29, 2008 in octave latex linux publication math If you're into writing technical documents, I personally don't think there's anything better than LaTeX. People often make the mistake of comparing it to Word, but there's a crucial difference: Word is a word processor, LaTeX is a docu

Decay and crime in Glebe
on May 21, 2008 in sydney crime decay glebe When I first came to Sydney, I didn't know anything about Sydney - other than that shot of the Opera House in "Finding Nemo". I had a small road map, though; rather than spending money on a taxicab, I decided to walk to Sydney Uni,

I was interviewed and it turns out that I smell terrific!
on Apr 29, 2008One of my part-time jobs is writing movie reviews on 20/20 Filmsight, and it has gotten to the point now where I'm getting a fair amount of traffic. If I post an unpopular opinion, I usually get hordes of comments insulting my intelligence and sexual

Atonement is not a good movie
on Jan 10, 2008 in criticism atonement hate film Despite the crazy raving by most of the English-speaking critics out there, including the reviewer I usually agree with most, Roger Ebert, - despite all of this - I hated Atonement. My review of Atonement. It's unfair to just curse profanities at a

Talking with Australians
on Dec 28, 2007 in australia story funny commentary On Canadian TV, there used to be an outrageous feature on This Hour Has 22 Minutes called Talking to Americans, a satirical piece where a Canadian interviewer would ask Americans questions that would expose their ignorance about Canada. It was funny...

Talking with Jerry Seinfeld
on Nov 23, 2007 in posts film review preview I've been pretty lucky recently... I was fortunate enough to get to review Bee Movie, and as Jerry Seinfeld was in Sydney to open the movie, he walked down the red carpet and spoke to me. Good handshake, firm handshake. I asked him one single questi

IPod Nation
on Oct 17, 2007 in ipod nina simone music A couple of weeks ago, I was walking in Surry Hills and asked a passerby where a certain street was located. I said ‘Excuse me!’ first, but there was no reply, so I had to give him the tap-tap-tap on the shoulder. At this invasive human conta...

Jorge Cham Lecture
on Sep 11, 2007 in humour speaker lecture funny comic This week, I had the extreme pleasure of attending a talk given by Jorge Cham, notable writer of Piled High and Deeper, a comic about graduate student life. The comic strip has gained massive popularity at campuses around the world, perhaps because...

Running out of time (or quickly turning 30)
on Aug 31, 2007 in humour ago comment list funny 30 I'll be 30 next year, which brings continual waves of delight to my girlfriend. 'Oooooh no,' she cooes at me as I groan and brush my teeth, 'you're turning 30. You're no longer a young man. You're 'middle-aged'