2017

Update

Hi all, I am still spending my days and nights applying for jobs. No luck yet, though plenty of close calls. I get the impression that I am either vastly overqualified or vastly underqualified – depending upon the job. As of today I am also re-learning programming. Some of you may be aware that I was a software engineer a long, long time ago. Unfortunately around the time that .NET

Perks for Politicians and Public Servants

Hi all, Today’s post a fairly parochial, so please forgive me. In recent times Australian news has been filled with stories about politicians and public servants getting “freebies”. Some of these may be from lobbyists. Some may be from commercial interests. The general consensus seems to be “It’s not fair that they get such freebies.” Such freebies include overseas trips, dinners, attendance at sporting events and so on. I wish

Today's activity: Finding Aphenous Long #Genealogy #Ancestry

Just a little tale of my activities today. Between writing, creating art, singing, and reading, I like to spend down-time researching my family history. It is a long term project that I have been working on since my late teens. In those days I was reduced to wandering dusty university libraries (ah, I still remember the delightful aroma of leather-bound tomes) looking for old digests and annuals that might provide

#Writing: changing a character's gender to improve a scene

For each chapter I write little notes beforehand, telling me what I am trying to achieve. Then I write to fulfil this goal. So I have a chapter. It’s intended to introduce a character named John Sutton. My note reads: Meet ex-mercenary John Sutton. He has just made camp with the rest of the expedition. There is tension between Sutton and Lord Trickett, whom he suspects is up to no