Our new friends the kangaroos

Our new friend the possum

Heading home after 1st week at the new office

Doncha love it how newspapers are always bitching about how blogs steal their content, yet have no issue with stealing it from blogs themselves? Of course, Giz US is creative commons, so it’s not quite the same, but anyway, I digress… The SMH has an agencies story that ACTUALLY LINKS OUT! Stop the presses! That’s gotta be a first. The problem is that the sub editor completely failed, and the link is to the “Gizmodo Tech new site”. Continue reading →

Saw this driving home the other week. Not quite the sexy car I’d expect with that kind of license plate. Continue reading →

Wow, it’s been 3 months since my last post. That’s pretty poor form. I’ll have to do something about that. At the moment I’m in The Eastern Hotel at Bondi Junction, waiting for a 7pm screening of the new Transformers movie. I’m very excited. Excited enough to write a post on the Shuffle… The room is currently filled with beautiful people who I assume are used to attending movie premieres. I, on the other hand, feel very out of place. Continue reading →

Last weekend saw Lauren and I celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. I know - how quickly did that year go by?

We tossed around a few ideas of where to go to celebrate our first 12 months as a married couple, but with Lauren’s pregnancy and budgets, we decided that we would return to Crystal Creek Meadows in Kangaroo Valley.

It was an amazingly relaxing weekend spent pottering through the valley, enjoying some incredibly fine food at Cafe Bella and Jing Jo restaurants, and a little bit of bushwalking around the river.

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Well, maybe not your Daddy, but a Daddy. That’s right - Lauren and I are having a baby! We’re both incredibly excited, as you could imagine. We’ve just passed the 13 week mark, so there’s still a long way to go, but so far everything has gone as smooth as we could hope for. (Although Lauren might argue that last point, considering she can’t really eat during the day). Continue reading →

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t neglected the Shuffle in recent weeks. There’s just been so much going on. So here’s the plan: Three short, sharp posts detailing a few of the big events of my life this past month or so… Stay tuned! Continue reading →

The question is: What exactly is in a Wookie Cookie? Bantha Fodder? Cream of Ton-Ton? Jar-Jar Binks? Well, we can only hope that the last one is true… Star wars Cookbook Wookie Cookies Features Recipes Like Boba Fett-Uccine | Star Wars, Edible Geek, shopping | geeksugar - Technology & Gadgets. Continue reading →

It took about a month, but I’ve finally got our new bookshelf. It’s massive. Now I just need to put our books in there.. Continue reading →

This week, I found myself without a decent working loaner laptop for the first time in a long time. And I needed to head into the office. And I needed to work on the train. So, I was left with no option but to pull out my old Dell Inspiron from 2002… Yes that hideous thing you see above. Considering that it was slower than a sloth on Sunday, I decided to give Ubuntu a good old college try as my OS of choice. Continue reading →

Yesterday Lauren and I headed over to the Big Day Out, courtesy of HP (who had a stand at the event). The only way to describe the experience come from the immortal words of Danny Glover: “I’m getting too old for this shit”. For a start, it was bloody hot. Even though I had sunscreen on every conceivable part of exposed skin, it seems that wasn’t enough - my scalp feels well and truly sunburnt… I guess my hair is thinning faster than Amazonian rainforest at the moment. Continue reading →

So this week marked my one year anniversary at the helm of Gizmodo… and what a year it has been! Here are some figures to mull over: Monthly unique browsers in December 2007 – 220,240 Monthly unique browsers in December 2008 - 678,311 (and keep in mind that December is a slightly quieter month thanks to Christmas/New Years. November 2008 had over 800,000 uniques). Monthly pageviews in December 2007 - 967,297 Monthly pageviews in December 2008 - 2,964,645 Continue reading →

[vimeo vimeo.com/2809991] I love this. It completely made my Friday. Continue reading →

We spent the better part of the past week painting the study. While it’s still not the perfect home office – I still need some decent shelving and we haven’t moved 90% of what we took out back in yet – it’s so much nicer. It’s actually a workspace, rather than a child’s bedroom. I didn’t take any photos of the room prior to painting, but I do have some pics from when I made a short film for a story in T3 which should give you an idea of just how horrible an office environment it was to work in. Continue reading →

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 her work. Not a bad year for a couple in the penultimate year of their 20s… Continue reading →

So I turned 29 last week, and one of the presents my lovely wife gave me to celebrate my slow and deliberate approach to retirement was a copy of the graphic novel Watchmen. You know: the one they’re making a movie of.

Now despite my slightly geeky disposition, I never really threw myself headfirst into comics. When I was a teenager I did start collecting X-Files comics, but that was more an obsession with the X-Files than with comics themselves. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve always been a fan of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and their superhero kindred, but more their on-screen and merchandising aspects than the comics from which they are based.

So it was with some surprise (to me, at least) that I initially found reading the graphic novel format a bit… well, a bit weird. For someone who reads as much as I do, the notion of actually taking time to take in each comic square - both pictures and text - took some getting used to. But the end result is one of fascination - not only did I absolutely love Watchmen, but it has become something of an obsession - I find myself constantly thinking of the characters, the imagery, the awesomeness that is Dr. Manhattan…

It’s also gotten me very excited about the movie. I’ve probably watched the trailer half a dozen times since finishing the book. And pretty much every scene in the trailer, I can picture the illustrated frame in the book. Considering how bad movies based on novels tend to turn out, I’m hoping that the opposite happens for this graphic novel.

I’m also hoping to read even more graphic novels, although I am a little bit lost for somewhere to start. Any suggestions for me, people of the Internet?

And if you’re a bit like me at the moment and can’t get enough of the Watchmen trailer, click through to watch it again… :)

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What’s the deal, Activision? I’ve been looking for Guitar Hero: World Tour (full band kit) for the Xbox 360 for about three weeks now, and it’s sold out everywhere. Not only that, but apparently stores aren’t getting the next delivery until January. Meanwhile, you can pick up a full-band Rock Band at pretty much any store you walk into… Now, I did a fair bit of research before deciding what I wanted, and I decided on the 360 GH:WT because you can a) play Rock Band on the GH Instruments and b) there is sooooo much more downloadable content for both games on the 360 as opposed to the PS3. Continue reading →