For the past two hours I have been keeping one eye on BBC Online’s live World Cup coverage and the other eye on my work. It’s Australia’s first soccer World Cup for 32 years and this match against Japan, our first of the tournament, was doubly important because we also have Brazil and Croatia in [...]

London is a city where virtually everyone comes from somewhere else. There are a few native Londoners around but they are a rare breed. There are plenty of Brits living in London but they’re probably from Manchester or Glasgow or maybe Surrey. Last night I caught the Tube home around midnight after an industry bash. [...]

Well 6/6/06 (666 – the mark of the beast, dontcha know) passed without the end of the world coming to pass. It did make a motza for the marketing geniuses of Twentieth Century Fox, who chose the date to release the remake of the 1976 film The Omen. And in my world it passed quietly [...]

Guy Goma, the man who won his fifteen minutes of fame being interviewed on BBC News 24 after he was mistaken for an IT expert with the same first name, is now auctioning off the blue shirt he was wearing at the time. He plans to donate the proceeds to Oxfam whose work he has [...]

When it comes to dystopian visions of the future, George Orwell’s 1984 gets all the attention but I think Brave New World is the superior book. It’s thematically very cogent with a strong central argument and it’s also scarily prophetic with many of Huxley’s darker imaginings coming true. I read this book virtually in one [...]

My friend George has been blogging for ages on the proposed privatisation of the Snowy River Hydroelectric scheme. She knows the area well and felt passionately about the issue and since my consumption of Australian news is slightly sporadic I have followed most of the ins and outs of the debate via her blog. It’s [...]

Your 2005 Song Is Hung Up by Madonna “Every little thing that you say or doI’m hung upI’m hung up on you” You’ll be rockin’ in the New Year in your croch-o-tard! What Hit Song of 2005 Are You? (With thanks to George for the link. She got Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz – way [...]

I’m still in Italy on holiday and having a wonderful time. We were in Rome last week and are spending this week in Florence. We saw Michelangelo’s David today, which was simply beautiful. We have a few more days here and are planning a night away in Pisa as well. On Sunday we fly back [...]

Television is not something that really features in my life but sometimes I try to catch up on particular shows on DVD. For some time I’ve been meaning to watch the revival of Doctor Who. Last night I did and I have to say it was quite a disappointment. The first episode with the shop [...]

Book publisher Random House has pledged to increase the amount of recycled paper in its books from 3 per cent now to 30 per cent by 2010, while coffee table books are to contain 10 per cent recycled material. At the moment they have only announced plans to do this for their US books but [...]