On the last day of 2008, I thought it would be prudent to sit back and look at the year that’s been. All told, Lauren and I have had a very big – and successful – year. After all, I started at Gizmodo, we got married, I travelled around a bit and now Lauren’s been promoted to manager of … read more

Today is a good day for us. After 8 months or so, we’ve finally paid off our wedding. It was hard work - I worked a little harder and longer than I otherwise would have, and we had to manage our money extremely carefully, not to mention going without a lot of nice little extras, but in the … read more

I’ve been brewing my own beer for almost two years now (my original kit was given to me for Christmas ‘06), and sadly I have to admit that the sight you see here isn’t that uncommon for me. Out of the dozen or so batches I’ve brewed, more than half have spewed forth … read more

I have just hopped on a train at Central after waiting for 32 minutes on the platform. At least, that’s what the board said when I arrived. The train is an old, smelly thing with only 6 carriages. I got a seat - but only just. If there was some kind of malfunction to cause this wait, I might … read more

We had our TV cabinet delivered last weekend. It looks great. Even better is that we went out and bought a new TV. Panasonics latest 50 incher. It’s being delivered on Tuesday. Now all we need is some surround sound and we’ll be cheering! (The photo above is the exact same TV, but a … read more

The past couple of weeks have been tough – From Hong Kong to Sarah’s Birthday to the Influence Conference in the Hunter Valley to a week of events, I’ve been running myself ragged. So much so that yesterday morning I woke up coughing up all colours of the rainbow (a pleasant enough …

Today has been a struggle. Hell, every Monday is a struggle, but this weekend was harder than most. Namely because our dog Simba spent most of Friday night and half of Saturday vomiting. It started about 2am Friday night. At 4:30am, Lauren and I decided that we’d put him outside (we gave him a … read more

www.youtube.com/watch There seems to be a real split in opinions over this ad. I like it – probably because it doesn’t actually try to sell me anything. It tries to entertain, and while it’s not hilariously funny, I actually had a smile through most of it. I think the lack of any mention … read more

Last night at about 7:30pm, there was a knock on the door. Naturally the dog sprang up and I forced my way out of recline to see who it was. Flicking on the front light switch I opened the door to be greeted by a young door-to-door salesman. “Good evening,” he said as I squinted through … read more

Funny thing happened to me yesterday: Lauren and I had decided to try a new recipe for dinner (Lion’s head meatballs, for the curious) which required dried chinese mushrooms - not something we keep a lot of lying around the pantry. So anyway, I went to get my haircut yesterday morning in … read more

So, hello from The Broughall Shuffle. I’ve just finished importing my previous “it’s pronounced bruffle” blog, so bear with me while I set everything up properly. The reason for moving was twofold – number one was I wanted my own domain name, and “it’s pronounced … read more

For the past two weekends, I’ve been painting the loungeroom. I would have been done after the first weekend, but for the fact that the previous owners did such a dodgy job that you could see their patching on the cornices. So ok the weekend, along with bottling beer, I painted the cornices on … read more

The latest batch of homebrew (a Bock) has been bottled, and is now waiting for that magical process of secondary fermentation to take place, giving it the bubbles that make beer so enjoyable. But among the success of this batch of beer is tragic news that the local home brew store (Jay’s … read more

How frustrating! Imagine training your ass off for 10 years to make it to the Olympic Games, only to have a hardware malfunction ruin your first opportunity. Yesterday that happened to Chappo my old school mate who’s rowing for Australia in Beijing at the moment. The Men’s VIII was … read more

At 7:40pm Australian Eastern Standard Time on Sunday 10 August 2008, an old school friend of mine by the name of James Chapman will be rowing for Australia at the Beijing Olympics. A long time ago, in what seems like a different life, I used to row with James. While part of me wonders what could … read more

Wow – I knew it had been a long time since I updated here… but a full month? I guess that just goes to show how busy I’ve been. Crazy. At the moment, I’m battling a cold after two long weeks of working too hard. There was the Sydney Apple Store opening, which was great for Giz, … read more

For the second time since the inception of the Super 12 Rugby competition (and its migration to the Super 14), the NSW Waratahs have made the final. What’s more, they actually look like they can win. They’re playing good rugby. The forwards are going forward and the backs are hitting … read more

Normally I don’t have a problem at the dentist. The drilling, the grinding, the scraping… so what? But today I saw something that made me cringe. And it wasn’t just the bill (although that wasn’t anything to smile at either). It was my wisdom teeth. Or more to the point, the … read more

It was a pretty busy weekend, which started with dinner on Friday night with mum, Matt and Lauren and Aunty Sue and Uncle Curl. We went down to the Italian restaurant near mum’s place – she had a hankering for lobster after I sent her the picture to the left there. The food was lovely, … read more

Look at this dog. Does this look like the kind of dog that would greet you in the morning with pile of poo and a puddle of wee? Because that’s what the little bugger did to me this morning. Not that he’s in trouble – I gave him a bone yesterday for the first time in a while, and the dog … read more