And if you play defender I could be your hyper space

catching up in melb

2009-06-14T04:42:53Z

If melb peeps want to say hi, I can meet up at the lounge on swanston tonight (sun) from about 630

Hope to see some of you then.

photos from Batu Caves.

2009-06-09T00:35:42Z

first batch of photos from the trip uploaded here:

From Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur

hello from kuala lumpur

2009-06-02T07:31:37Z

Oddest experience of the trip so far: sitting at dinner with the former Malaysian PM Mahathir. I was, of course, wearing an old google australia tshirt and jeans. There were a bunch of photos taken which will be online later, will post links to prove it happened.

The people here are lovely - so many people are asking to have their photo taken with me, it's kindof freaky. The conference food is also yummy Malaysian food.

Wifi access here is a little too flaky to try and upload lots of photos, will have to do it when I get home.

Oh, and talk went well, despite horrible jetlag.

wootsauce

2009-05-25T02:27:29Z

Free upgrade to business. Yay qantas

anthonybaxter @ 2009-05-25T10:30:00

2009-05-25T00:35:00Z

Off shortly to San Francisco for Google I/O and to catch up with App Engine folks in the SF office. Next Sunday I arrive back in Sydney. For about 7 hours, then I'm off again to Kuala Lumpur where I'm presenting the opening keynote here.

Oh, can't remember if I mentioned this, but I moved house successfully. Everything's unpacked, new furniture acquired (goodbye to the last of the crappy old ikea stuff, hurrah!)

The other bit of fun was losing my glasses last Thursday night. The wind literally blew them off my face, into someone's front garden. I spent ages hunting for them, and went back the next day to look some more. To no avail - other friends also looked. Turns out you pay quite a bit extra to get next day service :-(

anthonybaxter @ 2009-05-01T10:53:00

2009-05-01T00:53:56Z

(via Andrew Sullivan)

anthonybaxter @ 2009-04-27T11:59:00

2009-04-27T02:06:17Z

Saw Jerry Springer the Opera on the weekend. Twice. One of the best bits of musical theatre I've seen in years. The sheer childlike joy of seeing every possible boundary of good taste and decency gleefully crossed, combined with a great score and impressive singing. That it was in the Opera House added even more fun - I doubt that building has heard such bad language and tasteless lyrics sung in such quantities before. Highly recommended - hopefully it will tour other cities in Australia. Note though, that the easily offended probably want to pass on it. It really does push back the boundaries of taste. And hey, tap dancing klan!

Moving house tomorrow - moving to Lord St, just a block away. The cats are off at the vets for a couple of days until the move is done. The househunting was extremely stressful, as it was at the same time as my project finally launched. Yay App Engine Cron.

Back to writing slides for the talk tonight. Last I looked, over a hundred people have RSVPd for it so far.

it's moving time

2009-03-16T23:33:39Z

So we moved into our new offices yesterday. No pictures yet - they've asked us not to post any until the official opening - I'll send around some then. It's very nice here. I'm sitting in the "Under The Sea" area of the office, with a nice view of the fishtanks. In other news, my lease is up at the start of May, and my house has been sold. So it's time to look for a new place to live, too...

watch this

2009-03-13T08:33:08Z

http://blog.indecisionforever.com/2009/03/13/jon-stewart-and-jim-cramer-the-extended-daily-show-interview/

Trust me. If you want to see an exercise in brilliant, wonderful interviewing. Just watch this. Everything you wish someone would ask "what the fuck, man, just.. what the fuck". Stewart does it.

anthonybaxter @ 2009-03-01T04:07:00

2009-02-28T17:08:33Z

This amuses my inner 13 year old

anthonybaxter @ 2009-02-08T17:30:00

2009-02-08T06:30:53Z

CFA website is melting under load. Co-workers put this up: http://mapvisage.appspot.com/fires/FireMap.html (updated)

Requires Flash > 9.
Updated every 5 minutes.

Alternate maps available from http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/02/mapping-victorian-fires.html

why I don't post about politics much

2009-01-30T04:14:14Z

Compare and contrast:

http://newmatilda.com/2009/01/29/unmistakable-smell-decay

vs

http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/46
(some of the assholes mentioned in this piece are now NSW MPs)

some suggestions for melbin friends

2009-01-29T12:38:53Z

Take a 1 litre carton (milk, juice, whatever) that's empty. Wash thoroughly. Take a kg of sultana grapes, pick them off the stems. Stuff into the carton, top off with water to fill the gaps. Put in freezer. On hot day, take the carton out, and slice off an inch thick slice of yummy frozen grapes. The cardboard carton acts as a way to hold it without getting too sticky. om nom nom nom.

Option 2: Google for "White Sangria". Had this in Barcelona, very yummy.

Hope you're all not too melty in the heat.

anthonybaxter @ 2009-01-27T23:05:00

2009-01-27T12:07:04Z

via Richard - Being Human. Werewolf, Vampire, Ghost. Dark, very dark. Funny. And christ, the first episode alone features use of songs like "Smack My Bitch Up" and Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt". Go, seek it out.

anthonybaxter @ 2009-01-23T02:44:00

2009-01-22T15:46:03Z

Ok, seriously? Sydney? You can fuck off with this ridiculous 2am heat and humidity.

... goes back to sitting in front of airconditioner.

not the onion

2009-01-22T14:54:20Z

"Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle"

more

anthonybaxter @ 2009-01-22T00:44:00

2009-01-21T13:52:04Z

Wow. I haven't posted here for a month now? Time flies. Anyway, still alive, hi, hope you all enjoying your 2009. And to my merkin friends, enjoy your new-found Bush-free country. Congratulations to all of you.

So no real excuse for not posting, other than I've just been busy and not keeping up with things like LJ. In an attempt to try and keep track of what I'm up to on a day-to-day basis, I've now become the latest person to start using twitter, - I'm sure you can find me there easily enough if you care to. Didn't feel like I could justify the time for LCA this year, I have some stuff coming due at work soon. Will be at Kiwi Foo and almost certainly at PyCon, though. Not speaking at PyCon, although may pull together a lightning talk. I think I worked out that I did something over 15 talks last year - I think this year I will take it a bit easier.

Other than that, here's the Team Fortress 2 guys doing their version of Where The Hell Is Matt?

my evening

2008-12-19T18:04:20Z

... was spent with friends seeing musicians playing a wonderful gig. Including what, for me, is the pop song of the year.

Dear Santa. Please deliver a gift wrapped Ida Maria to me on December 25th.

Between this and Slumdog Millionaire on Monday, the year has ended pretty damn well.

one for the arrested development fans

2008-12-16T12:12:48Z

also, following up on last night's post about Slumdog Millionaire - I should point out that if you're a pathological cynic, it might not be the movie for you. If, however, Where the Hell is Matt made you smile and happy, it's totally something you should get out and see. In addition, having grabbed it today, soundtrack=killer.

anthonybaxter @ 2008-12-15T23:09:00

2008-12-15T12:16:02Z

Go see Slumdog Millionaire. I've liked pretty much all of Danny Boyle's movies so far, but this one is so far ahead of the rest it's not funny. Trailer is here and although it contains no real spoilers, I had even more fun walking in knowing almost nothing other that it was
a) Danny Boyle
b) set in Indian, with Indian stars
c) fucking good.

All of these things are true.

And stay for the closing credits. They got a second round of applause from the audience at the preview tonight.

anthonybaxter @ 2008-12-11T01:36:00

2008-12-10T14:40:38Z

btw, if you're not watching Leverage yet, you're missing out on some of the finest heist/caper stories you'll ever see.

Yaaaaaay!

2008-12-09T01:10:04Z

My original project at google is finally launched:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-in-labs-tasks.html

[update: to make it clear - this is not "my" project in the sense of creating it, others did that. I only worked on it when I started at Google. A bunch of people worked on it, I was merely one of a team of trained monkeys getting it done.]

oh yes, I am that cheap.

2008-12-03T13:57:43Z

So a while back, OSDC contacted me and asked me to do the conference dinner talk. I went "sure" (because, you know, inability to say no + standing in front of an audience talking shit = gold).

Last week, I realised "wow. I really should think about something to talk about". It gets to Wednesday last week, a week before the dinner. Hm, what have I done that a) I can talk about b) would be suitable for a half-pissed audience of geeks. Nothing comes to mind. Through a rigorous process of

* screaming
* pounding my head on the desk
* wondering if I "accidentally" got hit by a bus, I could get out of it

I realised something. What do I do well? Hm, coding, yes, but nothing obvious there. Hating and snarking, hmmmm. There's something there, I'm sure. Then I recalled some of the utter crap I've seen on the internet with reference to internet businesses and the like. Ok, fine. So, tentative talk title number 1: "A Tale Told By An Idiot of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing" is replaced (ala Friends) with talk title number 2: "The One With Anthony Being Mean To Marketing People". (note: I don't think I ever made it through a full episode of Friends, but I liked the utter laziness they brought to their episode naming).

Ok. So I have a vague idea of what I'm going to talk about. Spent Thursday thinking of things to hate. The weekend comes, I'm down in Melbourne for the recent wedding, plus various birthday related things and socialness and whatnot - really didn't feel like working on it. Gets to Monday. Still have no structure, have a bunch of jokes about various things. Spend 2 hours scanning through the last 6 months of techcrunch, looking for buzzwords to hate on. Lose will to live. Still have no structure. Whine over IM to Nat Torkington that all I have is a collection of hate, not sure I have a talk here. His response, and I quote here:

"are you mad? it's easiest to be funny when you're full of hate."

followed by:

"have you figured the organising principle for your talk?
e.g., chronological, n thematic areas, or even alphabetical. hmm, one for each letter of the alphabet ...."

And suddenly, it all clicks. New (and final) talk title number 3: "The One With Anthony Being Mean To Marketing People, in Alphabetical Order."

Rocking. Can start really churning now. Of course, various friends received IMs over the last few days of the form "can you think of an Internet business trend or buzzword starting with P that is really crap?" which I'm sure has been confusing for them. Still, I'm getting there. Have most letters worked out, have slides on the way (People who have seen my talks know that I loves me some cheap jokes using all the technology on my laptop that I can).

Hits Tuesday night, night before conference proper starts. In pub with one of the organisers. "Have you looked at the venue for the dinner? I'm not sure there's a way to display slides there."

Ooooo-kay.

Sit for a bit, cursing life in head. Wonder again about bus accidents. Have brilliant plan.

All through the conference rooms, I had noticed those tripods with big pads of butcher's paper attached (the ones where can scribble on them, you flip the page over the back and keep writing). Oh yes, oh yes. I can go somewhere with this.

Today arrives. "Oh, we should have a projector sorted out, will find out what's going on".

"Actually, don't bother. I have another plan".

I steal the two with the largest pads of paper out of conference rooms and a bunch of large pens, sneak away into the dinner venue, and copy slides to pages. It turns out that drawing a lolcat when you have no artistic skill whatsoever is kinda hard. As is the O RLY owl. Also, I have the handwriting of a natural typist.

I presented my little alphabet of hate to a half-drunk audience of geeks, and it seems to have worked. Hurrah! It was full of cheap jokes and stupid references. I got through two full tripods full of paper. Probably the slowest rate I've ever gotten through slides in years - the fun drops when you have to hand write every slide in giant letters.

birthday drinks this Friday

2008-11-26T00:45:22Z

sorry about the late notice - busy busy busy. Anyway, I'm in Melbourne this weekend for B and Rob's wedding, so I figured what with my birthday on Thursday, I'd have some drinks on Friday evening. Say, starting from around 6-ish, at Pause in Balaclava? map here. It's just near Balaclava Station, for those on PT.

Hope to see some of you there!

geeking

2008-11-24T12:42:49Z

OMG 30 Rock and Steve Martin? Hold me now.