As you can see from below I am alive and well. Behind the cat.

Daily operations are very very busy at the moment making everything work at work. All the clever looking at monitors I described in my last post seems to have taken several months to work on.

In brief news wifeface fell out of a window and survived and is now known to all as hobble-a-long. It’s a fairly traumatic story but she is doing well now so we won’t dwell on it.

I went to my first music ‘festival’ since Glastonbury 2000. Saw some great bands at Soundwave but I would barely call it a festival. Not enough camping, mud or Echo and the Bunnymen to really compare to Glasto.

Some kind of normal sporadic service of semi-iregular blogging to return soon. I only remembered this because I was showing the the guv’nor what Wordpress looks like.

Deep shame. I can barely call myself a blogger.

Sometimes, dear eye listeners, a person is so very important that they get to have a second desk in a completely different building from the one they usually work in. At the moment your humble narrator is a multi-desk VIP.

Not only do I have two places of desking I also have about 1000 monitors. I need to look at many many things all at the same time. You can see some of them in the picture accompanying this typey. The picture is of my most recent desk. Next time I return to my usual place of sitting I will take a snap of the millions of monitors and computers I have over there.

I need to have desks in different buildings so when I do different types of clevers I can be around the right other clever people to help with my clevers. In my new desk I am trying to absorb computar clevers from the fine chaps of the Faculty Computing Brigade. Their customs are strange to us and I haven’t quite mastered their dialect but for the most part the natives of this region are a good bunch.

My biggest fear is that they will discover I am actually a Tech Services Spy sent to steal all their sekrets, GIGS and RAM. My cover is probably safe as long as the savages don’t have any internets.

If you don’t hear from me by sometime in March avenge my death.

Welcome to the future my learned chums. I hope your festive seasons were grand, even the southern hemisphere dwellers amongst you who would have had stupid hot festivities.

2010 will be the year of the robot. Lucky for me I am actually friends with a real life robot. He is pictured here for your viewing delight. His name is Tubby the Robot and he is awesome.

Other things that might happen this year include regular gym attendance for me, getting drawn on as much as I can afford and finally getting back into a band.

Due to us having not spoken for a while and me no make typey on here I will make the following statements which will answer questions for you (which you were dying to ask):

I have seen Avatar, in 3D, which had the same plot as FernGully, yet was pretty awesome despite the glasses annoying my nose quite a bit.

Sherlock is Holmes and good, haven’t read the books, didn’t hate Jude Law as much as usual, tweed aplenty and great fight scenes.

Yes I did cook a turkey in the BBQ and my world famous RoastPotatoes. They were well received.

30? Yeah in April. Let’s not talk about it.

Nothing, I hate going out on New Years. Did play guitar hero with sis-in-law and her Jimmy.

That should just about cover it. Anything I missed hit me up in the comments (I love to pretend that people read this).

25th October – 14th November 2009

All the way from notsunny England, Mother and Father came to visit. On a quest for sunshine and to see kangaroos they occupied a hastily converted office/music room for 3ish weeks.

Their visit included trips up the Sunshine Coast, down the Gold Coast and to Sydney. We went walking in rainforests, driving up mountains, sitting on beaches and other touristy pastimes.

The become fond of ice cream coffee and getting the catamaran into the city. Highlights included some excellent scenery at Kondillia Falls and Lamington National Park. We also went to the koala sanctuary which I probably wouldn’t have done without visitors but actually quite enjoyed. Was worth it to see Mother’s joy when she paid to hold a koala!

I am getting quite fond of Sydney, this visit being my third now. Now I know my way around a bit down there I quite like the city. It is better than Brisbane.

We managed to be there for a 40 degree day, most of which I spent taking odd pictures of the Opera Hissue.

Was good to see the parentals, it had been nearly 3 years to the day. Now if only my siblings would make the effort to make the short hop down here to Oz!

Also in this time Alana and I celebrated 5 years of the married. Go team us.

15th November – TODAY

Since the departure of the olds things have been pretty quite. Straight back to work the Monday after they left.

I discovered the garage gets to many heat to use the treadmill in there any more so I have done a join at the gym by work. I have only been once but it isn’t my fault. For reasons that are none of your business I had to not go for 2 weeks until I am told I am allowed to go. Looking forward to getting stuck into it properly.

I have had a very cool photoshoot with the lovely Miss Drea which I will share with you soon. I also have pictures from the band shoot ready to share.

I can’t even think about eating an apple any more without my insides squirming and trying to flee.

I have reached the end. The end of apples. I will perhaps consider them in a pie or a crumble but as a stand alone item of fruit – no more.

I shall move onto oranges.

Bye bye apples, bye bye.

When I spend too many hours at work because everything is bork eventually I can recover those hours by not going to work. I made choice that today would be one of those not go to work days. I have some arrangements to make regarding the visit of the parentals and also day’s off are nice.

Before I reveal my Grand Plan I thought I would show you the octobox I once typespeaked of. As I mentioned briefly before I have a shoot this weekend using some location lighting gear that I haven’t used before. Last night I thought it might be a good think to connect it all up and check for working. Here is what it looks like:

The octobox is essentially a softbox that will give roundish catch lights rather than square or rectangular ones. The clever thing about this particular one is that it can be assembled in about a minute. Usually these things come packed down as a set of poles and pieces a bit like a tent and can be a real pain to put together. This one just pops up using an umbrella type mechanism. Very handy and will be great for location work.

Also shown and being clever in it’s own way is the Tronix XT power pack. This little beastie means I can use my studio lights where there is no mains power. A lot of people do clever things with small battery powered flashguns but I have never really got on with them. The people or the flashguns.

Quite importantly also shown is R2D2. As wifeface was not home and cats refused to sit still R2 became my test subject. Voice activated moving test subject that is. YES he is AWESOME. You can speak commands at him and he does them.

Moving on to the Grand Plan. Gabe is coming over in a bit, we will eat breakfast somewhere on Racecourse Rd, drive in the car to a games shop, purchase Halo ODST and then play Halo ODST. Grand hey?

http://www.myspace.com/theailmentband

I dare you to put that noise in your ears.

Will be the first time of testing out my new portable lighting gear and easy pop up ocotobox. It pops up SO easy.

There are a few photoshoots in the planning stage but not much before Mother and Father arrive for staying with us a few weeks.

I will post some band shots when I have them.

I won’t advertise this mini picture less post – I wonder if it will get read. Pretty sure Dubber is the only person I know who knows what RSS is and would be subscribed…

Oh dear eye listeners I have made a terrible assumption about each and every both of you. I have done the assume that you, like my learned colleague and close personal friend Dr Gregory Van De Busch (pictured to the rightways), thrive on neglect. I have treated you exactly how I treat the good employee-of-the-month-for-12-months-running Dr, with ignoring. I assumed that if you began to wilt Bob Matew, chief exec in charge of bird noises and coffee consumption, would place you in a bin full of water until you perked up.

It was only when I read a particular good blogging from Viper Pilot that I remembered that you probably are not plants. If you click his name you can read his words (click the name read the words, click the name read the words, click the name read the words) and they are great justice excellent swearing good point making attack on negligent idiot nasties. Homoeopathy is NOT medicine. Bravo Sir, bravo.

I have dusted off my camera again to make pictures and have begin to booking many photography shootings. Soon there will be much share of image. I have a couple of projects in mind, one is to make a collection of close up headshots. This is the first in the series and is my wifefaced wife. It looks like she is looking up and reading. She probably isn’t as the sweet little thing is completely unlettered. An illiterate beauty. You won’t see me again because when she makes someone read this to her she will kill me to death in the head.

Other projects involve some location shooting that I have wanted to try for a while. I have purchased a device for powering my lights away from the mains which opens up a world of opportunity.

In other news my parent arrive in less than a month for to make visit of sunny Ozland. Looking forward to showing them the wonder of sunshine. Sun was outlawed in the United Kingdom some years ago so it will be a welcome change for them.

They are not plants, they are not plants, they are not plants, enough repetition and the concept might stick causing me to pay more attention to you. If you were sandwiches I would never ignore you. NEVER.

Last night Gabriel Taylor Russ slammed poetry at an poetry slam. I had heard the piece he was going to perform before the event but this time he delivered it with much more loudy voice, handy gesture and conviction and angry face than ever before. He was much better than the other Gabe who thought A cappella meant dropping your lyric sheet on the ground. Our Gabe is better than yours and he was awesomes. Even though the judges where fools. I’ll give you a 6.7 beanie girl.

Wow socks I said to the wife who couldn’t help but agree. She didn’t even laugh at him this time. She did however laugh at several serious poems about the plight of children in war zones and the removal of limbs. She is a right piece of work I can tell you.

I had never been attendy at any kind of poetry event before and I must admit I quite had enjoyment for the good words. I did however have a large suffer of cringe shame for the really bad ones.

I wrote a words for my facebook status about the night:

The slam was slum,
A bearded man won,
But it wasn’t Gabe,
He shaved.

Perhaps I should have signed up to make speaky one of my masterworks for the poets.

In news that doesn’t rhyme today there was picture photographing of which I will leave you with to look at with eyes and enjoy with brains.

Instead of anything I woke up to headaches, achey pain joints, runny FACE (eyes, nose, ears (?!?) ). I dosed up on the cold’n'flu tablets left over from Alana’s brief entanglement with the snot monster but failed to feel any better.

Those adverts where the guys starts out as death warmed up, has a Lemsip and then makes the deal of the century are complete arse. It’s a lie. Cold and flu meds can take the edge of the symptoms but they do not treat the cause of the snot zombie infection.

Alana then preceded to spend most of the weekend out of the house. Well played madam,well played. If you turn your eyes upways and reconsider the picture adorning this postery you can see what did get drawn on her leg. It’s a recently beheaded French aristocrat. First the King then the Queen send them all to the guillotine. Why you ask? Who knows, try not to worry about it.

Saturday passed with intermittent Alana being at home and going out again, many episodes of Lost and me watching Full Metal Jacket. I’m not allowed to watch WAR when she is at home, it offends her delicate sensibilities.

Sunday was equally as snotty for me and be outy for Alana. She went to the Gold Coast to see India. A person to whom she sold a corset as far as I can tell. I was bored out of my tiny brain-basket with joints too achey and head too swimmy to play guitar/bass or listen to musics.

Oh and at about 4am Sunday morning I heard what can only be described as a ’suspicious noise’ which turned out to be, upon detective like investigation, the cats eating a packet of salmon, a loaf of bread and having a go at getting some chicken out of its wrapper. I don’t know how they got them out of the fridge. YOU probably left it open when you went to get a drink. I know what YOU are like. Jerk.

I hope someone left the fridge open because it will be the end of all things if they can open it themselves. I hope they realise that the people need to fill up the fridge or they will deem us useless and murder us all in our sleepy snooze.

Now it’s Monday and I have all the weekend symptoms that make me eligible to join the Snot Zombie Society plus a really awesome incredibly sore throat. I have stayed at home to spare my workmates the germs but can’t stop worrying about work.

Miracle cures and suggestions for ways to keep the spirits up in the comments PLEASE.