Hi 2015.

I made you a mixtape with a CDs worth of my favourite songs from 2014.

1. The Bug - Function
   
2. Girl Talk & Freeway - Tolerated (feat. Waka Flocka Flame)
   
3. Architecture in Helsinki - In the Future
   
4. Röyksopp & Robyn - Do It Again
   
5. Sia - Burn the Pages
   
6. Milky Chance - Down by The River
   
7. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Runners In The Night
   
8. Manchester Orchestra - Every Stone
   
9. Lykke Li - Gunshot
   
10. M∅ - Fire Rides
    
11. Tycho - Montana
    
12. Caribou - Can't Do Without You
    
13. Spoon - They Want My Soul
    
14. Run The Jewels - Blockbuster Night Part 1
    
15. Busdriver - Ego Death
    
16. Cold War Kids - First
    
17. White Sea - Prague
    
18. iamamiwhoami - Blue Blue
    
19. Trust - Joyland
    
20. Foster the People - Ask Yourself
    

Maybe I'll see you around some.

I went into town tonight wearing shorts and I was granted access to four out of the four venues I attended.

This is definitive proof that on a Friday night you can get a into every open venue in Adelaide whilst wearing shorts.

This gives me hope for society in 2015.

On January 1st, 2014 I woke up a twenty-something in the spare room of our friends house, at the time it was my temporary residence. Since then much has changed, I'm now a 30 year old with a house, a dog, a new job, another year of marriage and I'm connected to the NBN.

So what did I achieve in 2014? I mean, the less important things obviously.

I...

was best man in a wedding. I didn't lose the rings.

taught myself to bake Twisted Delights and got slightly fatter. I also made fairy bread with Nutella and sourdough.

changed an engine's oil for the first time ever. Totally worth it. Apologies to my old lawn mower, wherever you are now.

changed circular fluorescent light globes for the first time ever. The moment I truly felt like a homeowner. It was easier than the engine oil.

didn't go to Sydney for the first time since 2009. Although I might have flown briefly across the south-eastern tip of NSW.

ate more yogurt than I ever had before. Enough to justify a spreadsheet.

swam with the oysters in Port Lincoln. I didn't see any while I was in the water, but they were around there somewhere past the sharks.

retired from Basketball. Although I still watch the NBA.

ran a lot. Including my longest distance ever and my most runniest calendar month after which I was slightly less fatter.

So I got one of these Smartphone Gorillapods so that I can take movies with my phone on a tripod. This helps me take videos on my phone which aren't super shaky. This means I can focus on taking videos of my dog in hopes of monetizing her cuteness via YouTube to pay for her ear infection vet bills. Actually, Pet Insurance covers that so the YouTube ad money will go towards the Pet Insurance.

Here's the first video I made with it. See how stable it is!

I also got one of these camera dollys, sadly my giant phone does not fit into the clamp. Fortunately I found a solution for that too:

I decided that today I would be the change I want to see in the world and I wore shorts to the office. I figured that if I could wear shorts and get into the Talbot Hotel on a Friday night then 2015 was surely the year that office shorts will join better ICT security as key issues facing Australian IT shops.

This decision had absolutely nothing to do with my contract being changed into a permanent position just before Christmas.

Early next year I will celebrate my decaversary of spending (most) weekdays in an office, and this was the first time I've ever shown up for work in shorts. Not even on the most casual of casual Fridays had I considered it. As I strolled through the corridors this morning towards the kitchenette to deposit my lunch in the office fridge I felt so self conscious that I might as well have been walking around with my genitals flapping about. By lunchtime I'd gradually become settled with the sensation, and I passed a few others also sporting shorts which helped on what was most definitely a shorts-weather kind of day.

Ultimately I think that so long as my productivity doesn't suffer, and I don't have any client facing meetings, that there is no reason that shorts are any less acceptable than skirts in an office environment. I think my productivity was actually increased today thanks to my increased comfort and the lack of morning-walk sweat I brought up the elevator with me. I assume my productivity will continue to increase in shorts, except for maybe an initial blip while I take a longer than normal lunch break to check the January sales for my office appropriate shorts.

The day we got Nash she was given a pink Puppy Kong as one of her first presents.

Somehow it's managed to last nine months while hundreds of other toys have died, some literally in seconds.

Finally this week Nash decided to destroy the Puppy Kong, which I assume this is her way of telling us she's a grown up now.

It's been nine days and I've now come up with my new year's resolution. Not very efficient, I know, but last year it took me 364 days and 18 hours to come up with a resolution, and that resolution was not to be bitten by a snake in 2014. I did come up with that one right before walking through some dry scrub on the way back to my new years eve party, but it goes to show that allocating a lot of time to think about resolutions does not equate to high quality resolutions being made.

Anyway, my 2015 resolution is to write a terrible novel. You probably can't write a great novel without first writing a terrible novel... unless you're talented or something. So if I want to write a great novel I need to practice and write a terrible novel, or else I might end my life being very good at writing only the beginnings of novels.

The third in my series documenting my past foot commutes brings us to Sydney Olympic Park. Photos in this set were taken in October 2013 after overnight rains. If you're wondering why I've decided to post photos of my old Sydney life on this night, it's because I had some good journalling momentum but not much content.

The first thing I'd see on my walk to the train station would be the inside of the lift as it dropped me 19 floors to ground level.

Neighbouring our apartments was a large construction site where another trio of large apartment buildings were being built. These ones were circular, ours were square.

Once I'd passed those future buildings most of the remaining steps were through pleasant parkland.

Thanks to this bridge I didn't have to cross a single road in the first 90% of the walk.

Then I'd walk through this arch of trees. I liked this part because it was shady. Many other stretches of the walk were not shady. Sometimes in the evening trip home I would need to walk around groups having wedding/engagement photos taken here. It was quite a popular location. Sometimes I decided I'd just be in the photos.

After the tree arches I had to walk past the water feature. Every morning I would choose to walk left or right around it. I mostly chose left.

At about the halfway point was this lookout tower, I could use it to see if my train was coming, although in doing so I would miss my train.

Behind the lookout was steps down to the next bridge. This was a relaxing part of the trip because once again there was shade, and it was a brief stretch where I didn't have to stay alert for cyclists speeding on a beeline for my backside.

Across this bridge was the picnic area, the basketball ring and then the exit to the park.

The river stretched a long way. Sometimes when the tide was out it smelled like poop. One Monday I saw a bicycle under the water. It might still be there.

This was the bridge where I would allow myself to check my phone to see how late I was running for the train. I welcomed its shade from the sun/shelter from the rain. There was a freeway above, a lot of the time it was gridlocked.

Outside the park there was just one leafy suburban street to walk up until I reached my train station. Because I only went into the office a couple of times a week I would then have to wait in line to buy a daily ticket, looking over my shoulder in case the train was coming.

I could see my house from the train station! It was usually an uplifting sight at this stage of my return journeys.

The End.

Over the Christmas break I may have attempted to grow a beard. It didn't start of intentionally, just a series of serendipitous circumstances lead to me starting my break with a few days growth already. Given my lack of office meetings, general summer day apathy and the knowledge that my 30s would probably offer few if any opportunities to walk around with pubescent bumfluff on my face. I lasted about twelve days before admitting defeat and removing it from my face before 2015 started.

None of this is important. I mention it though because of what happened next. Doubtlessly you will recall in vivid detail my entry on June 21, 2011 where I described in detail my new shaver. The ES8249s is still going strong today, although sometime early last year it did develop a fault with it's LCD screen. All of the sprites in the LCD display would turn on when running and it meant that the time and battery level readouts were both incomprehensible. Seeing as neither piece of information is required for shortening the hair on my face I decided I'd just live with the risk of running out of battery mid-shave, and never knowing when I set a PB.

That's how I lived for months, then I grew a beard. Then I shaved that beard, and like magic the moment it was down the drain my shaver's LCD display works again! I assume it was a magic beard.

Only need a tiny amount of toast?

Buy a breadroll.

I'm in an exciting period of maturity right now where I learn more advanced things about simple topics. I'm talking specifically about everyday things that humans start doing from their teenage years and continue doing for most of their lives. Like hanging out clothes after you wash them. I'm sure most people in their early 20s tried the whole "let's see if my load of washing will dry inside the basket if I don't hang it out all weekend." Maybe it just needed more time? These days I hang my shirts up the moment the washing machine tells me it's reversing. That was maturity baselined. Even more recently I've worked out that I should also hang my shirts in the wardrobe and shut the door as soon as they're finished drying. This stops them from drying out, fading and needing to be replaced. Being old enough to have lived through a complete "fashion cycle" now, nothing appeals to my above-average maturity than having the same polo shirt in good condition for when polos come back in a second time.

Surprisingly this entry is not about laundry, instead it's about another advanced strategy I have found when it comes to drinking beers during a day. This year Australia Day and the Hottest 100 countdown were on a Monday. This was pretty un-Australian, and I don't recall it ever happening that way when Gillard was in charge. Six years ago I probably would have attempted to moderate my beers from midday, decided Bundy was a great idea around 6pm and had a very unpleasant 27th. Now, with my above-average wisdom and maturity I planned a day of BBQ eating and music listening while drinking every second beer from a pack of mid-strength stubbies! Streuth! It worked perfectly. I woke up this morning feeling chipper and my current bottle of Bundy remains unopened and waiting for an early afternoon session that doesn't precede a work day. Meanwhile, full strength beer drinkers tend to validate my theory.

I filled up with petrol yesterday and it was only 99.9c a litre.

I like to think I have an average-to-good understanding of the basics of economics, politics and marketing so this wasn't particularly amazing.

I'm too busy to work out if it's recycling bin week or green waste week.

Bullshit.

That's weak.

Not a lot bothers me, but right up there is every Australian neighbourhood's lack of critical thinking when it comes to which bin night it is.
Is it really that difficult to remember which bin you put out last week? When you feel the resistance in your brain when you try to recall, and you succumb to it, can't you feel your memory muscles slowly atrophying?

Don't Even.

The recycling truck is not going to come a week early just because you're a sheep.

Don't get me started on the stubbornness of folks who continue to live in denial and leave their mistakenly placed recycle bin on the curb well into the next evening, even after bringing their rubbish bin back inside.

"Well, I guess I can leave it out for next week, it's only six days away now."

I feel like this is a stunning microcosm of modern society's FOMO.

Sometimes I think about replacing bradism.com with a new online journal system. One that is more stable, looks better on multiple devices, is probably way less hackable, easier to update, integrates instagram and facebook, and has cooler features than this home cooked and completely unique web content management system.

I don't think I ever will. I've pretty much learned all the shortcuts, the idiosyncrasies and the manual workarounds to make it do what I need. Plus I'm too lazy to change. That does sound exactly like me. Given that I make up 99% of my own readership I can't see any kind of revolt occurring unless some technological breakthrough occurs that renders PHP generated HTML obsolete. Even now, almost ten years after I made it, this website manages to look good on mobile browsers. Although that may say more about the talents of today's mobile application developers than it does about my pre and post-nightfill battering of the keyboard in the summer of 2004.

The frequency of my updates has definitely decreased over the years. My first 500 entries are spread over 836 days. The next 500 came over 1176 days, exactly 168 weeks. The most recent 500 took 1974 days or 282 weeks. That's over five years! (For some reason all of my quincentennial entries have fallen on Fridays.)

I guess these statistics could seem confusing. I mean, the past five years of my life has almost undoubtedly been the most significant of my post-journal creating existence. There's been marriage, puppies, moving, travelling, national and international work, multiple new jobs and experiences. But then, I never journal about anything important, so really the numbers make sense.

Last year was clearly my worst year for writing things that aren't important (or at least posting them online), and I intend to rectify that this year. This will occur probably not with extra introspection, more likely I'll just cross post my instagram uploads and Facebook status updates. Plus who knows what else. I'll evaluate it in another 500 entries.

Shouts out to all my regular readers, I do this for you.

How nice it was to receive some feedback from readers after my 1500th entry yesterday. I enjoyed the theories about why the frequency of entries has trended down over time.

"Did you ever think that, when you first started Bradism. you had a backlog of things to say? Maybe that's why the first 500 entries appeared so much faster."

Unlikely. Particularly given that the first 100 entries were actually ported from my old journals and many of the rest were about contemporary issues like the weather, petrol prices and cricket results.

"Did you ever think that maybe your entries decreased because you stopped being funny?"

:(

"Your 500th entry was in 2006, shortly after you bought a new camera. The 1000th entry came in 2009 right before you bought a DSLR. There's an expression 'a picture says a thousand words', have you extrapolated your image posts out and compared the total created content between the three periods after taking that into account?"

It is true that it took me until late 2006 to start posting entries with pictures in them, and until 2010 when I started posting multiple photo entries with any regularity. But that probably has more to do with me being too lazy to write image uploading code and an image album feature than anything else.

"Post more Lego photo stories about boring office stories, please."

Okay, now I know these are fake.