Seeing as it is now Spring and that is exciting, and those two facts made me decide to not use an umbrella on my walk home, I have decided to try something new.

My next significant entry will be one of the following. Which one it is depends on which one gets the most votes in the comments below.

I'm also allowing negative votes. You get one positive vote and one negative vote per person.

Only votes posted in the comments count, so people who talk to me in real life about what I write, but who never comment, now is your time to shine.

The choices are as follows:

A new music round up with my take on new music, with mp3s.

A Lego Phocumentary

A Dale Story

A paragraph of general mumblings and complaints about cold weather

A regular Phocumentary

A new colour scheme

Finally, if no one votes I'm going to write more about the penisless baby. And Dale. Maybe they will meet each other and mope about life a whole bunch together.

Happy Spring!

I needed to visit the shops today to pick up a few essentials, bread and milk and bacon. Normally we do our shopping at a Woolworths in Gilles Plain, up North-East Road because their fresh produce is always so cheap, basically consistent with my understanding of supply and demand when it comes to the Northern Suburbs. Around our place food is much more expensive.

However, when I only need a few things I will visit the Coles in St Peters which is a shorter drive.

For those less familiar with Adelaide's geography, St Peters and the inner eastern suburbs are home to most of the mansions and other expensive real estate close to the city. At the Coles in St Peters I once saw green capsicums for nine dollars a kilogram!

Anyway, when I usually visit St Peters I put on jeans, because I fear that I won't be accepted if I walk into the shops and all the rich, elderly ladies and manservants see me in tracksuit pants and they might not serve me. I also fear that they'll monitor me suspiciously and they'll notice that I pull the stems and stickers off the truss tomatoes and get them for the price of the regular tomatoes.

Tonight, I decided to wear track pants. Alex just returned from America and he brought me home a birthday present: Dallas Mavericks warm up pants, the kind of tracksuits that have pockets but that you can also grab by the waist and rip off in less than a second thanks to a well-greased zip down each side. I wasn't planning on actually ripping them off at Coles (it takes about 30 seconds to reassemble them after), but I was already wearing them and they were warm and comfortable. And I was feeling cocky.

I walked through the automatic gate at Coles, pushing one of those shallow half-trolleys you only get at supermarkets visited by the well off who don't buy in bulk, and immediately I was regarded with distrust and revulsion. As I surveyed the yogurt section, looking for any low fat, 'reduced to clear' passionfruit yogurt a lady with a two year old wearing a private school uniform stared as she walked past, and then held her nose up. Later, when I was examining the price per kilogram of all the different frozen berries an elderly lady with too much make up and long, gold earrings came up to me.

"Why are you wearing those?" she said, emphasis on the those like she was trying hard not to spit.
"I know, I'm sorry..."
"You reckon the Mavericks are good?"
"I'm just a big Dirk fan." I said "I don't really follow his team."
"Heat are going to fuck you up!" she said.
"Well, maybe. It's yet to be seen what kind of chemistry Lebron, Wade and Bosh will have when they're all on the court at the same time..."
"FUCK YOU UUPPPPPPPPPPPP!" And she jabbed me in the leg with her walking stick. Then she reached into the freezer and grabbed the box of berries that come with the servings individually packaged, for like a 200% mark up in cost.
"Go Miami!" She said as she shuffled away. "JJ Barea should fuck off back to Cuba!"
"He's from Puerto Rico..." I started, but she had already left the aisle.

For the first time in half a lifetime I decided to go to the show, to deliver to the many celebrity and non-celebrity readers of Bradism.com a Phocumentary.

I set out to take many photos, not just snapshots. Like, see how I deliberately left that light in the corner of this photo, that's what makes it art.

This one doesn't really say anything, it's just a really proper exposure.

The Show is a colourful place, and you can still get this many Bertie Beatles for pocket change.

Continue Reading Show Day...

Many entries ago I posted about using Sunsilk's For Men range, and discussed how good it was. Apart from the occasional hiatus when I stay at a hotel and steal all the mini-toiletries bottles - after four and a half years - I still use that shampoo. And it's still good.

The one thing that bothers me, though, is that Sunsilk cannot seem to decide how to design the bottle. By activating my tightarse powers I tend to only buy shampoo once a year, I wait for it to go on special and I buy a handful of bottles. When it finally comes to restock I have to spend minutes scanning the shampoo aisle because the colour and shape and logo on the bottle have changed.

This isn't much of an annoyance really. Not worth journalling about anyway. Today I finally started using their most recently designed packaging. I had a shower between losing the C Grade Basketball semi final, and being disappointed that the Ped Egg was not as fun as it looked on television. Anyway, as I showered I read the back of the new bottle and discovered that this time not only did Sunsilk change the exterior but they also retooled their shampoo itself, with the expert guidance of Thomas Taw. Imagine my discontent when I learnt that Thomas Taw was not a world renown chemistry genius, or pharmaceutical scientist. He was a hairdresser! What kind of input is a hairdresser going to have to the ingredients of my shampoo? "You should make it easier to massage into the scalp."

Yeah...

And also, on the subject, can you imagine being a shampoo scientist? Like if that was your job and someone asks you what you do at a party do you tell them or do you lie? Does shampoo technology have a ceiling? Do you come home from that job at the end of the week and feel like you made a difference? At least at my job I feel like I make a difference. I keep servers up, reports running, applications in the green. Also today I won a RedHat Polo shirt at a seminar for answering a question, even though I answered the question wrong and mainly went to the seminar for the free breakfast.

It was an enlightening experience listening to the feedback of the vocal reader base of Bradism.com. After analysing the wants and dislikes of those who submitted suggestions, it became clear that people wanted more photos and shared no love for me writing about Dale.

And I listened.

So here's a Lego Phocumentary I made today.

To Dale, the water cooler wasn't just plastic and polystyrene and bonded hydrogen and oxygen. When Dale visited the water cooler he wasn't just filling his cup with liquid, he was running a tap of time wasting; drinking down procrastination. For some in the office water cooler conversation was feared as a momentum killer. Dale, however, sought out water cooler dyads like they were a healing balm for a particularly veracious skin rash, something cool and purifying to take away the warm, itchy dullness that was his career.

...

Just shitting you.

After a long winter the sun - which has been flirting with me for weeks now - finally made clear its intentions to bend me over against a railing and violate me with months of sunshine. I was obviously pleased. Because on the first day of Spring this is what happens: flowers bloom, critters come from everywhere – most fornicate in front of you - and it becomes time to reap fruits and vegables.

Wrong. On the first weekend of Spring in 2010 Adelaide received a month's worth of rain, the wind blew my fence down and as I tried to keep my car on the road during the storms on the drive back from Middleton towards Mt Compass, Spring laughed heartily at my optimism and threw a gigantic tree across the road. Obviously, as I slammed on the brakes, my first thought was 'Gee, I should recreate this moment in Lego.'

Since then though, Spring has been hitting its straps. Which does not leave much to dictate via Lego, really. So, as today is the two year anniversary of me waking up with the bones in my arms separated, and as Lego lends itself so nicely to exploring bio-mechanical follies, I'll continue the trend of the last Lego phocos.

My wrist is still a source of much discontent, but that's weakening as it gains strength. Sometimes, like when I'm at the gym and lifting more weight than half the population ever would with their left hands, I feel like I'm making progress. When I'm not paying attention though, I regularly find that my body treats my whole left arm like it's no longer attached, and if I don't consciously redirect action through that limb it might as well be room decor.

That's how Spring works, I guess. The joy of new life plus the risk of things fucking you. Hopefully the sun will now only shine, but I'll knock on wood for luck like I almost did last weekend.

I did something today I haven't done in probably two years. I wrote new code for Bradism.com. Many years ago I was trying to overhaul much of the site when I broke things and my development environment wandered down a completely different path to production. I'd done so much work that I couldn't bring myself to revert to the production version, and I never ended up fixing the problems in the dev build.

Fortunately time heals all wounds, or in this case makes you forget about what you tried write and couldn't fix all those years ago. Writing new code was fun, mainly because I had to remind myself how everything worked. Fortunately I write amusing comments in all my scripts to help me through the puzzling times.

Most of the changes have cleaned up internals, but I did take the time to add a button to the menu that lets you "Like" Bradism.com on Facebook. The point of doing this is minimal, but it will mean that your Facebook news feed will update you when I post an entry, in case you find RSS feeds a little too 2005. If Facebook had existed in all its Web 2.0 glory back when I first started you can be sure it would have been one of the first features I added. I also posted the first of probably many "Behind the Scenes" photos. Actually, that's what motivated me to create the whole fan page in the first place.

I feel quite productive now, really.

I guess I will also say: if there are any features you've wished existed, or problems you have using the website, you can mention them to me and something might actually be done about them.

We had a team meeting at work this afternoon. I arrived ten minutes late because no one had told me it was going to be held in the coffee franchise next door. As I quietly took a chair one of my co-workers used body language to indicate I should go buy a coffee like everyone else on the team who were sipping large lattes. I shook my head back, and she looked at me a little sadly because she thought I couldn't afford five dollars for a coffee.

Well, maybe I could have if I hadn't spent that five dollars on this at lunch:

I somehow doubt I'll be seeing any used, paper coffee cups in a phocumentary on their journals sometime soon!

If I took as many shots in a normal game as I did tonight, my team would have dragged me.

After being eliminated in the Semi Finals last Thursday night, I took my camera back to Blackwood to document the grand final, featuring the team that beat us the week before, and team TBA populated with a bunch of past team mates.

TBA (in light blue). Scott dribbling the ball at a fast pace towards the basket.

Kobe with his best impression of his favourite MJ moment.

Chris Tilley, running another TBA offensive play.

Continue Reading C Grade GF 2010...

It might be time for TBA to actually come up with a name now.

I'm glad taking photos doesn't involve any semi finals, preliminary finals or grand finals.

To celebrate a season of basketball ending, the mainstay of Dee Brown's Pumps went to Long Gully to do manly things like talk about sport, kick a football, cook a BBQ and take photos of flowers... I mean... shit.
Continue Reading Spring in Long Gully...

On this date two years ago I moved out. It was a good decision, not only because I had just turned 24, but because it brought so many adventures which I believe I shall unashamedly rehash now for current and future nostalgia binges. It seems like so long ago now...

Leading up to my first place of independent living, I'd dreamt of finding a place within Adelaide's bordering terraces, living in a flat where the Central Markets found itself in the straight line between my bed and the office. I was going to stroll through the markets on my walk to work each day, grabbing a handful of fruit for less than a dollar and some bread to munch on. I ended up in Mile End, an anticipatable distance away from the city but still with the same potential for high speed internet and a foot commute. I wouldn't be able to purchase fruit for breakfast, but my house had a wonderful array of fruit trees and vegetables growing in its narrow backyard.

I moved out with two others, people who I didn't know well but turned out to be pretty cool. The first days though I was alone. It was early Spring and the September sun packed warmth that year but when the sun set it plummeted rapidly and after a short burst of golden light came through the back windows, the house would suddenly be empty and dark. On one of those first nights I tried to watch the Brownlow medal on a television with no aerial. The sound was good but the video was all but unwatchable, it hurt my eyes and so I closed them as I listened to Adam Cooney's victory speech which ended in either applause or a burst of static. The house had a strange smell, but it smelt like adventure. Another night that first week I caught the bus home so I could arrive back before sunset to allow me to pick lettuce from the backyard which was to be my dinner – we didn't have a microwave yet and that was before Vanessa taught me how to reheat meals in a saucepan.

Moving out at 24 meant I escaped some of the excitement of living near the poverty line, trying to make ends meet on a nightfiller's salary. I did have a car loan though, and a lot of physio bills to pay which encouraged me to try and live as stingily as possible. I bought a microwave from The Good Guys and bartered the guy past his “pay less, pay cash” threshold. I started buying everything I could in bulk, for things like bread this backfired really badly. I had a handy income underway from recycling bottles and cans that everyone drank, and I felt like sometimes I was only inviting people over to socialise in order to collect their bottles the next morning. After I upgraded from the old fridge Sam's parents gave us we ran that one outside as a second fridge, and given its age it probably cost us more in electricity to run than we ever recouped from recycling its emptied contents. I also remember selling it for $50 on the day I last saw that house, but several days before Burge left, and having to leave his frozen pies and milk in the garage. But I think this just gave him a better chance of fulfilling his goal of eating everything on the menu at Café Villis.

Because we already had a TV in our living room I used a 32" plasma for my computer monitor for a month or two. I'm glad I stopped that because I think my eyes would have got pretty fucked up if I'd kept at it. The days soon became scorching and I realised that my awesome room had the drawback of being the furthest away from the air conditioner. On hot nights when the other housemates were away I tried to daisy chain fans to push cold air from the living room, all the way down the hall and into my bedroom.

Changes: - TV for Screen - Drank Pepsi Max - Nokia N95 - Tribulus terrestris - Wrist exercises - House Stays the Same: - Winamp Skin - Chair - Sub - DVD Spindle - Lego Construction Worker - Hiking sock ergonomic wrist support. - Bradism.com

The vegetables all went to seed and died. The passionfruit vine that had brought many hopes when we first discovered it, turned out to be decorative, and later quite an aggressive expander. The apricot and peach trees were each glorious though, and after walking to the nearby Bunnings on November day Burge and I tried to encase each of them with netting to keep the birds away. Unfortunately I cheaped out on the amount of netting and it wasn't very successful. I would have eaten many nectarines too but I didn't notice they were ripe until my Mum pointed them out to me when she came to visit once.

Those early days are long gone now. How far have I come since? I don't feel that different to be honest. I do have to clean more than I used to, but that mainly started after I stopped living with Emma who I think used to clean the bathroom twice a week. I do miss the hills and their foliage, but I also enjoy being so close to town, walking along the river to work and being able to get from my bed to my desk in 20 minutes, fifteen if I run. Of course, most of the rest of my life also changed at the same time as I moved out, good and bad. There was injuries and job changes which drove me crazy, and Vanessa who also drove me crazy... But in the opposite way to the bad things. That's been the most valuable thing to come out of independence, the chance to live with Vanessa. I think I was really only independent for less than a week.

It was near 6pm and warm sunlight still threw rectangles on the gym walls. Black Eye Peas and Taio Cruz could be heard from a distance over iPods played at hearing loss levels. Dozens of young men faced a wall of mirrors doing bicep curls.

It was Friday night. It was Spring.

I was doing squats.