Fish Piper » random

Halloween

Sam Freney — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:12:22 +0000

Does anyone claim Halloween for their own? Like Christians do with Christmas, against the commercialisation surrounding it?

Are their Wiccan groups around who have billboards outside their meetings reading ‘the reason for the season‘?

Water, water, everywhere.

Sam Freney — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:38:06 +0000

If you ever find yourself on King St, Newtown, parched, the furthest you’ll have to walk for a beer is 250 metres.^[1] If you happen to be in this particular dead zone — the corner of St John and King — go with gravity and walk downhill towards the Union. The uphill option, the Sandringham, is decidedly seedy.

The news is better elsewhere. The average trip to a watering hole is only 170 metres.^[2] That’s 13 pubs over a stretch of just over 2 km.

Of course, if you’re after coffee, or Thai food, the average walk is about 3 metres.

[1] This excludes the ‘dry’ section of King St between Carillon & Missenden streets – yes, the part taken up significantly by Moore College. If you’re here you’ve got up to half a kilometre to walk before you get to a pub. Poor dear.↩

[2] Including said dry section, and not including walking off to visit pubs not on King St.↩

People are weird

Sam Freney — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:41:55 +0000

As I understand it, most blogging software reports on common searches that turn up hits to your site. Every now and then, the search terms are pretty wacky.

An example:

Wha?

Ancient Hebrew & Ultimate Frisbee happen to be two of my interests, but not even I think they go together.

UPDATE: As it turns out, this site is the 2nd hit for Google’s search on that term.

Confidence

Sam Freney — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:24:40 +0000

Feeling down? Need a pick-me-up? Perhaps you need to ask yourself a question.

Am I Awesome?

Best. Website. Ever.

Choose Wisely

Sam Freney — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:53:04 +0000

It matters where you do your PhD.

It may not be something you’re thinking about now, but when you’re part of a teaching faculty, such as the illustrious Moore College faculty, for example, sitting on a stage in your academic finery (as they were tonight for the graduation ceremony), you want to look your best.

Sorry, Paul Williamson, but crimson, baby blue, and royal purple are not a great combination. Strike out Belfast.

And a big maroon-ish-purple overcoat is pretty bad too: strike out both Sydney’s own Macquarie University (Campbell, Gibson) and London (Bolt, Barnett).

Turns out that Cambridge is the place to go (Salier, Höhne, Rosner, Shead): sharp and simple.

What's in a name?

Sam Freney — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:08:28 +0000

Lots of words, apparently.

From the SMH today:

A British teenager has changed his name to Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined. Or Captain to his mates.

…

Explaining his decision to change his name, the formerly mild-mannered 19-year-old music student George Garratt, from Glastonbury, told the London Telegraph last week: “I wanted to be unique.”

Awesome.

An awesome, awesome idiot.

Assessment

Sam Freney — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:55:10 +0000

In Newtown the other day a woman stopped me. Main street, broad daylight.

Her:

Hi. A bit of a strange question… but do you take acid?

Me:

Uh… No.

End of conversation.

DVD Extras

Sam Freney — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:37:45 +0000

I found a DVD box set containing all the Die Hard movies in a shop today. It was the added extra that came with the DVDs that caught my eye:

More info is on the side:

I’m pretty sure that phrase is famous for being a little more … colourful.

UPDATE: Now running for president! You can support the campaign.

The mind boggles

Sam Freney — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:34:02 +0000

The types of competitions people around the world come up is really quite extraordinary (cf. crazy Japanese game shows, as seen on Youtube).

The following picture comes from an amazing blog you should subscribe to: the Boston Globe’s Big Picture. It’s ‘news stories in photographs’, sourced from news feeds & agencies from all over the world. The pictures are staggeringly good: thought-provoking, heart-warming, shocking, fascinating.

This last set of photos was of surfing competitions from around the world. One example:

The caption on this photo?

“A boston terrier participates at the 3rd Annual Loews Coronado Bay Resort surf dog competition (the largest surfing competition for dogs) in Imperial Beach, south of San Diego, California, on June 28, 2008. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)”

Note that? The largest surfing competition for dogs.

As in more than one.

Wow.

Pong

Sam Freney — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:28:13 +0000

Ping pong.

Bible college pastime, ministry aid, tool of international diplomacy.

Penny Arcade reports: parts one/two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Gold.