Contemplating the great unknown

Last Wednesday, I attended the funeral service of my uncle, who passed away only a few days before after succumbing to cancer. Ok, for those you might be sticklers for technicalities, he is technically my 1st Cousin once removed (see this Wikipedia article for an explanation), but as families go his family was very close to my mother's from her earliest memories, and my brothers and I have always considered him to be an uncle. I was quite sad to hear he had an inoperable condition, and saddened even more to hear how quickly the cancer moved in to rob him of is vitality. I was glad to hear that my uncle had put up a good fight, and with the greatest of care, love and support from those closest to him, he managed to live much longer than doctors would have given him credit for.

While I am saddened at the thought of the pain his wife and children will be feeling as a result of his passing, I cannot help but feel glad for him that there is now an end to his pain, and that after living the life of good and decent human being, that he had a chance to make his goodbyes and to pass on to whatever may come next.

Another day when nature fascinates me

Today I found myself once again fascinated by nature and the incredible creatures which exist in our own back yards.

Ok... quick diversion to a minor point of technicality, it was yesterday, but as I find myself still awake at 12:30 in the morning, I'm sure you can forgive my moment of temporal displacement... where was I?

Right, so I was about to feed my cat when I noticed out the window that there was a wasp, and it was just putting the finishing touches of it's little death moves against this rather largish spider.  I should probably show you a photo at this point...

Enjoying a thundery day

It's Christmas day, and I find myself sitting at my laptop, with an urge to write about anything and nothing. I've just returned from dropping my boys off to spend the afternoon with their mother, and my lovely wife is chatting with her family online, and giving an English lesson to her nephews in Russia. The day has turned from simply humid to being quite thundery, and I've been thinking about how amazing sound is.

Today I witnessed what may have been a Darwinian moment

So I'm driving along a road that runs between a couple of shopping districts near where I live, when I happen to glance at an older gentleman who was about to trim the edge of his lawn.  We have these green strips between the foot path and the road that we call "nature strips" here in Australia, and he was standing just on the road edge and getting ready to do a little trimming along the bit where the grass looked like it was attempting to make a break for the other side before the owner notices...

Time, and the "art" of Procrastination

There are days when everything just seems easy, like you've really got your shit together and everything is working exactly the way you want it to.  Not today it seems.  It's amazing just how many little issues creep up on you when you take a little holiday, and fool that I am, instead of dealing with all those issues first, I manage somehow to add a heap of new stuff that needs to get done.

First Post

Yeah, it's lame.  But we all have to start from somewhere.  I've often thought about this whole business of blogging, but never really been able to commit to it.  Still, every now and then I like to list random thoughts and ideas, or express an opinion. Never really sure who'll be interested in this stuff, and never really caring one way or another what anyone else might think about it.  Still, like so many out there, I have this urge to write, get a little creative, that sort of thing.  I'm not really into talking about the minutiae of my life, so I expect I write occasionally of the big and important things that happen, or about stuff that I feel interested about.  I had this idea of having somewhere public to link to some of my photos, or to write an article or two about my experiences fishing, diving, or writing software.  Somewhere even to link to the occasional piece of software that I might create on a whim.  I'll see how it goes, and hope that someone somewhere out there in the Interwebz finds some of this crap useful, interesting, or possibly even entertaining.

So here's to officially losing my "blogger's cherry"!

Cheers!