Life Starts At...

Archives 

Show All

  • 2010
    • September
      • Bicycle helmets save heads
        09/23/10
        There seems to be a lot of bollocks being flung around that bicycle helmets are dangerous. The argument being that statistics say so, and Swedes, Danes and Dutch don't wear them so they must be bad. However statistics lie, and northern Europeans love their freedom of choice more than their head

    • January
      • Birds of a feather flock together
        01/11/10
        That saying probably came about because of the observations I'm about to mention, but after attending a couple of festivals recently I noticed it was happening to quite a great extent. Girls in small groups seem to very often bare a remarkable resemblance to their friends.

        It is not

  • 2009
    • September
      • Marilyn McCord Adams on Optimism and God
        09/09/09
        Marilyn McCord Adams is a religious philosopher. One of those people who is religious and tries to rationalise it. On this episode of Philosophy Bites she put forward an argument that you can't be rationally optimistic without believing in a higher power.

        The argument goes a littl

    • August
      • Hitch Hiking
        08/01/09
        We visited Taroko Gorge for a couple of days, which is totally packed with tourists, but as with most of these touristy places there's a good reason for it. It's quite beautiful. However it's the kind of place you want to have a scooter to get around and there's no scooter hire

    • July
      • Alishan
        07/24/09
        Millerine and I have only about 5 days to get in some sites after the frisbee tournament, so we left the day after to the mountain area of Alishan. We caught the train to Chiayi and found that there we were too late for the trains to Alishan and had just missed out on the buses. We went to hire a

      • The Tournament
        07/23/09
        The World Games was a very busy time. We had scorers down on the ground and up in the control room for the big electronic score board, but Stu Sinclair and I shared the work for scoring for our system.

        A day or two before the tournament started I visited the main stadium to check out the

      • Influenza
        07/18/09
        I'm on a holiday at the moment in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where the World Games are being held. We're here to watch the frisbee, which I love. I love frisbee so much that I forget to not play when I shouldn't. The night before leaving I had to get my last frisbee fix for two weeks, an

    • June
      • Accidents happen
        06/08/09
        A couple of days ago I had a small accident whilst riding my bike. I was riding behind a hatchback up to a right hand turn when they stopped suddenly. It's amazing the number of conscious thoughts that can go through one's head in a small amount of time, when there is an impending disast

      • Walking down the red carpet.
        06/04/09
        No I didn't walk down any red carpet, but I saw some others doing it last night at the opening to the Sydney Film Festival. It's yet another thing about people that I just don't understand. Someone walks down the red carpet and stops in the middle for a few photos. Onlookers stare

    • March
      • Homebrew beer - 5 months on
        03/09/09
        I got back into homebrewing about half a year ago. I've made six batches since I started in October:
        - Coopers Lager
        - Coopers Real Ale with strawberries
        - Coopers Lager with honey
        - Coopers Stout with chocolate and cocoa
        - Coopers European Lager
        - Brewcraft Premi

    • January
      • Don't buy something to save the environment.
        01/20/09
        We live in a society already obsessed with consumerism and well on it's way to obsession with the environment. This is pretty funny as it leads to ads which say "Buy a hybrid Honda Civic and help save the environment." It gets better when you realise that people believe it and buy a

      • Environment Vs Economy
        01/05/09
        I seem to have come across quite a number of climate change extremists recently, from both sides of the fence. Those that think the environment is so important we should ignore the financial costs in fixing it and to not do so is stupid, and those who think climate change is a myth and we should ig

  • 2008
    • December
      • Fitness and the Melbourne Hat
        12/15/08
        The Melbourne Hat was on the weekend. It's one of the three big tournaments in Australia, but differs from the two national championships in that drinking beer is the main activity rather than a distant second to playing ultimate frisbee. This year playing was particularly left by the wayside

      • Lift Etiquette
        12/08/08
        I'm not a big fan of corporate lift etiquette for a couple of reasons. It can make exiting the lift a study in inefficiency, and it's all about making people your bitch.

        The basics of lift etiquette are fairly simple - allow women to enter and exit the lift first. It seems har

      • Running
        12/01/08
        I'm not much of an athlete but I try to keep fit, both to aid in my ultimate frisbee performance and to offset the amount of beer I drink. Drinking a standard drink a day is healthy, but to drink more you have to pay it off with Beer Credits, which are earned by doing exercise.

        I fi

    • November
      • Homebrew beer
        11/15/08
        Well the home wine was a bit of a failure. It certainly made alcohol, but it wasn't the most tasty. Maybe if it had been given a few months to age it would have been drinkable.

        Anyway, I've moved to something I know I can do - homebrew beer. My second batch has just been bre

    • October
      • My shed just burnt down
        10/01/08
        I've just been for a delightful run as the sun was rising. I wouldn't normally be awake at that silly hour, but fire waits for no man.

        We woke up at about 4 to find the laundry, which is a shed a few metres from the house, well ablaze. Millerine called 000 and we tried to wake

    • September
      • Is religion such a bad thing?
        09/28/08
        I've just gotten back into reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and this in turn has gotten me thinking about religion again. The issue to ponder is not whether a god or gods exist, as that's an easy one. Either they don't exist, or they just don't matter. If you belie

    • August
      • Coaching ultimate
        08/01/08
        In my few months in Estonia I was given the opportunity to do a bit of frisbee coaching. I was a little out of practise so it was hard work to begin with, but was much easier (and more rewarding) by the end.

        My first stint was coaching about 30 Estonian kids, a range of ages but around 1

    • June
      • Making home wine
        06/28/08
        I'm having my first attempt at making home wine. The most helpful resource I found was this website, because it's simple and practical. Most recipes require you to have all sorts of equipment that I don't have, and ingredients that I don't have. These ones don't.
      • Coffee sucks so bad
        06/07/08
        I drank coffee to be naughty because I was drunk, and now I'm suffering. The Estonians always speak Estonian around me, and I sometimes don't quite get what's going on. I understand the Sünnipäev means birthday, but I didn't get that it was Millerine's brother in law�

    • May
      • The beginning
        05/08/08
        Since my employment with Qantas has been terminated I'm taking a few months off work and spending some time in Europe and North America. This blog is designed to describe the goings on in my life (it's all about me) which for the moment makes it a self obsessed travel blog.

        Hoor