A few weeks ago I accidentally stumbled across a piece of software called Rosetta Stone which, for those who don’t know it, is a very clever piece of software used to teach you a foreign language. With this software I also obtained all the French CDs and have been quietly working my way through the course to brush up on my French.

Although I’m still only a little way into the course I do feel it is improving my French in leaps and bounds.

As a supplement I thought I probably should also find some audio recordings that I could listen to in the car or on my MP3 player at lunchtime. After some searching around and trying a few out I again accidentally came across something called the “Michel Thomas Method” - at first I was sceptical based on all the glowing praise about how incredible it was. I’ve always been sceptical of those motivational courses and how to become a millionaire course etc so, with all the comments about his method, was a bit dubious this was all just some marketing for some run of the mill french course.

Anyway, I decided to try them out…. OMG!!!! I’m converted…. Michel Thomas is an absolute genius! The way he teaches French is incredible and after listening to only 4 of his CDs so far I’ve learnt more from him than I ever learnt in the classroom when I was back at school learning French. If I had this guy as my French teacher back then I would be speaking French fluently by now I’m sure!

I rarely am prepared to give the tag “Genius” to anybody but this guy truly is one… his knowledge of language is incredible and his ability to explain how language works and his teaching method generally is just something truly special! Given that he died in 2005, aged 90, I’m so happy that he recorded his teachings so that his legacy could continue.

RIP Michel Thomas, you have my greatest respect and I’m only sorry that I never discovered you sooner…. preferably before you died so that I would have been able to thank you!

As an aside though I must say that his accent and mannerisms on the recordings sounds like Serge Gainsbourg (another rare individual I would class as a genius…. also deceased). I therefore do find it a little funny that I feel I am being teached French by Serge Gainsbourg sometimes when I listen to Michel Thomas’ recordings!

Anyway… if you want to learn French I would truly recommend you check out Michel Thomas…. together with the course I’m doing through Rosetta Stone I feel I’m making great progress in finally unlocking the French language that has so fascinated me for so many years.

I’ve been away for a few days in Adelaide to attend a tax conference and although it is technically the first month of Autumn here, I’ve just endured 2 days of around 40c! Actually I probably shouldn’t say endured because actually I enjoyed the heat. Admittedly though the strong winds down in Adelaide were not so nice and hence the city is on high alert for bush fires as a consequence of this.

Anyway, whilst sitting on the plane going down to Adelaide, I noted on the back page of the newspaper I was reading the temperatures of cities around the world and Adelaide topped the list… only Mecca came close with a temperature of 38C! Therefore I think it is fair to say that I have just spent the last 2 days at the hottest place on earth!

Oh well, back to ‘cool’ Canberra for the weekend? Hmmm…. Well with a temperature forecast here in Canberra of 35C tomorrow I suppose it will only feel slightly cooler! Looks like we’re definately having a late summer - hopefully it can keep it up for Easter next weekend too!

Well if it’s good enough for Jamiroquai it’s good enough for us… We’ve just had the Kia in the garage today to have an overhead DVD player fitted (Clarion OHM 107VD) and a new MP3 player (Clarion DXZ676USB) fitted into the Kia. The nice thing about having both fitted at the same time was that the installers have connected the two units together thus, with the overhead DVD monitor the kids can either listen to the movies on their wireless headphones or we can select AUX on the MP3 player on the dash and have the sound come out of the car speakers.

I’m also particularly pleased with the DVD player as it appeared to be one of the few good make DVD players that was actually capable of playing XVID files which will make it very useful to squash a lot of material on one single DVD for those long car trips.

The MP3 player also appears to work beautifully too so overall I’m very happy with the new pimped up Kia! Now we just need to go on a long drive to make use of all this new hi-tech gadgetry!

Luckily my wife is a great cook and it is very seldom that, other than being an occasional kitchen hand, I do any cooking myself. Tonight however, with my wife at work (she does some shelf stacking at Woolworths not so much to earn money but more so as a compulsory gym workout and for some time out from the kids) I decided on the spur of the moment I would do some cooking. My original intention was to do some peanut slice but the recipe book fell open on Anzac biscuits so I figured what the hell, I could find all the ingredients in the cupboard so why not try it…

Here’s the result… they smell good and they’re cooling now…

Will hopefully be nice with a cup of tea later and will no doubt be a surprise for my wife who is usually in a snackish mood after work

Today we made a brief visit to Floriade, an annual flower festival event here in Canberra.

It was a nice day and the flowers, even if I am NOT a garden enthusiast, did look nice… but the thought that came to my mind, whilst walking around floriade was in connection with all the other visitors, most of whom were clutching cameras and taking photos of numerous flower scenes.

The event tends to attact 300,000 visitors a year, and if I just assumed half of these visitors had a camera and each person who did have a camera took only 10 photos (which is actually likely to be an under estimate), that would mean there have been over 1,500,000 photos taken at floriade this year.

All these people taking the photos will no doubt take them home, upload them to their computer and, quite likely, never ever look at them again… millions of photos taken for no purpose? And this is just one single event… can you imagine how many photos get taken on this planet per day and the chance that, other than one initial quick viewing, they will never ever be viewed again.

Regardless, as creatures of habit, we will no doubt all feel the need to keep taking and hoarding these photos….

At least I’ll share one on the blog even if the other 47 photos I took today will now do nothing more than take up space on my hard drive.

After taking delivery of the Kia Carnival on Friday we decided our driveway was rather narrow to drive the vehicle up thanks to a hedge that was growing much wider than it should.

Therefore, armed with a chainsaw my dear Muppet took it upon herself to prune the hedge to a more reasonable width only to, after literally 5 minutes, swing around with the chainsaw and cut straight through the power cable! Oddly she seemed more surprised than electrocuted by the incident!

After finding a new cable and discovering the chainsaw wouldn’t work I decided to go and plug it into a socket in the kitchen where, to my surprise it started up without any problem. It was only then that it dawned on me that not only had Muppet simply cut through a power cable but that she had also blown the fuse and taken out all the outdoor and rumpus room electricity!

Argh! What did this mean? A trip to Bunnings on a Saturday afternoon to get a new fuse (sorry, circuit breaker as they now appear to be called!)… and to say I hate Bunnings is an understatement! With all due offense to any Bunnings employee who reads this but you are 99% staffed by morons!

Anyway… suffice to say I did eventually find a staff member who could help me and I did get the power back on. At least I always get a little bit of a giggle going to Bunnings as a STOP sign as you leave Bunnings has been subject to a graffiti attack whereby some witty individual has written “HAMMER TIME!” underneath the “STOP”

And, although Muppet has lost probably another one of her lives by cutting through the power cable at least I have not been left as a single Dad with 3 kids! Now that thought is VERY scary!

This weekend we made a major purchase and brought a new car! I don’t pick it up until next weekend but we’ve just brought a new Kia Grand Carnival for Muppet to drive the 3 mini muppets around in. It is certainly a car they can grow into given it has 8 seats! Also means we’ll have plenty of room for those long road trips to the coast and up to Queensland

I also particularly like the idea of having the Grand Carnival (aka Sedona in some parts of the world) because the middle row of seats can all be removed, the third row can then fold into the floor and you are effectively left with 2 seats and a HUGE van like area in the back… could prove very handy if I should ever decide to buy another arcade cabinet or pinball table!

The deal also means I kind of get a new car too as I traded in my old Hyundai Excel against the Grand Carnival and will now take Muppet’s Ford Falcon for my own. This car is probably not economically sensible for me to just use to drive backwards and forwards to work with but screw economics… the Ford Falcon is more comfortable than the Hyundai and has an MP3 player! It also doesn’t have a dint in the front wing nor sun damage to the seat from being left outside too long!

Anyway, this will leave us with 2 big fuel guzzling cars… geez, we could be in America!

Well today should be noted as being an important landmark day in the life of Wuggle.

Why? Because today I officially became an Australian citizen!

I have my official citizenship certificate, my little wattle plant and an Aussie flag to wave! It also means, amongst other things, that I can officially get an Australian passport, attempt to try and keep Little Johnny in a job, serve on an Aussie jury, or join the Australian defense force.

I realised last night that my UK passport was due to expire in August 2007… I checked… and it expired 8th August! Yikes! I can no longer just hop on a plane out of the country should I so get the urge!

I therefore decided that the time had come to do something I should have done a few years ago but had not done only due to sheer laziness on my part! Yes, it’s time to become *DRUM ROLL*… an Australian Citizen!

Off to the immigration website I went, application forms completed online, parted with my $120 application fee and must now go and find myself a photo booth and get a passport sized photo. The next step, once I have this, and armed with birth certificate and passport, is to make an appointment with the immigration office and see if I’m worthy enough of the honour of being an Aussie citizen :p

I want an Aussie passport…. I want to vote!

Will update the blog about this subject again no doubt after things progress a bit…

Ok, I have nothing better to discuss today so I thought I’d post to the blog the contents of a poem that has been stuck to our fridge via magnets for the last 4 or so years… basically all the time we’ve had children! It’s been pulled off by little people several times and is looking rather tatty and worse for wear but it seems to have become a permanent fixture to our fridge and will no doubt stay there for a while longer yet…

Today I left some dishes dirty,
The bed I made at 3:30,
The nappies soaked a little longer,
The odour grew a little stronger,
The crumbs I spilt the day before,
Are staring at me from the floor.
The fingerprints there on the wall,
Will likely still be there next fall.
The dirty streaks on those window panes,
Will still be there next time it rains.
“Shame on you, old lazy bones” you say,
“And just what have you done today?”
I nursed a baby till he slept
I held a toddler whilst he wept
I played a game of hide and seek
I squeezed a toy so it would squeak
I pulled a wagon; sang a song,
Taught a child right from wrong.
What did I do this whole day through?
Not much that shows, I guess its true.
Unless you think that what I’ve done,
Might be important to someone,
With bright blue eyes and soft blond hair.
If that is true, I’ve done my share.

Still doing a little bit of catching up with a few blog posts… Last Sunday we went to a local Communities @ Work event at the nearby Tuggeranong lake.

It was the usual free family event that Canberra does very well. However, as well as the usual free bouncy castle, face painting, kids craft areas etc this time there was a presence from a local riding school who were allowing children to have free rides on their donkeys and ponys.

Now quite coincidentally Zoe had been asking Muppet about having a ride on a pony only a week or so ago so we obviously couldn’t resist letting her have a go… being only 2 (well nearly 3 now) we were not sure whether she would enjoy the ride or absolutely freak and not want to go on the pony. I’m glad to say she absolutely loved it!

To show that the pony ride had made an impact on Zoe, the next day at home she arranged the Little People toys in the lounge to specifically make a fence around a couple of unicorns which she proudly showed me as being her ponies and that she had “made this all by myself”.

After watching another episode of Heroes last night I surfed around Wikipedia to learn more about the cast members and was particularly interested to note that Masi Oka who plays Hiro on the show also works as a special effects technician for Industrial Light & Magic. He is obviously a very clever guy and according to a further article I read he supposedly has a IQ of 180!

If you are not aware of how good an IQ this is, check out “What different IQ scores mean” where you will see 180 is way off the top of the scale!

Anyway, this made me interested as to what my own IQ was so I took an online test courtesy of IQTest.com.

My resulting IQ was 141… which according to the page noted above “Over 140 - Genius or near genius”… Ok, so am I a genius or is this test flawed? Interestingly I remembered I had taken a similar test online before so dug deep into my emails to find the result of a similar test I took about a year ago to be 137. Yay! I’m 4 IQ points more intelligent this year?

Given the fact I’ve taken two tests and scored relatively similar in both tests I’ll assume I have a near genius IQ! Makes me feel good anyway!

With such a high IQ maybe I should now plot to take over the world? *HA*HA*HA*HA* (Evil laugh!)

When browsing back through my blog the other day I noticed a post entitled Feeling Hot Hot Hot… that I posted back in mid October 2006.

This posted commented on the fact that the weather on 13 October was 31c in Canberra which was one of the hottest October days on record for Canberra. Although my fears that this would mean a very hot summer proved to be false (it stayed around 30-35c rather than hitting 40c much this year) I note it is interesting that yesterday, 11 March 2007, the temperature here was 33c.

Why interesting? Well October, November, December, January, February, March… all six months have had temperatures exceeding 30+. I personally consider 30+ to be a warm summer day therefore this means, although not technically correct, we have had a 6 month summer?

We took Quinn, Zoe and Leon to Canberra’s Skyfire last night. This is an annual firework display over the lake in Canberra every year put on by the local radio station.

Leon slept through everything in his baby pouch whilst this year, unlike previous years, it was Zoe who complained it was too loud and was ready to go home whilst Quinn was the one who really enjoyed it. Funny how every year that we take the little people to the fireworks they react differently to it.

This year the firework display commenced with a F11 Fighter plane zooming over the lake with a full afterburn effect. Incredibly loud and an extremely impressive way to start the firework display… not sure how they will top that next year although I believe next year is the 20th anniversary of this event so I’m sure it will probably be even more impressive.

Anyway, took the camera and actually managed to get some quite good photos of the display… here’s an example…

Today is a public holiday here in Australia…. ‘Australia Day’

And we’ve certainly tried to wear our little guys out today with visits to the National Museum of Australia, Canberra Centre and Commonwealth Park to enjoy all the free events that were available.

We’ve painted faces, made necklaces, made jelly fish, Quinn won a race carrying a blow up shark!, bounced on two bouncy castles, visited a house of balloons, been to a petting zoo, had lunch in Canberra and even had time for a little bit of shopping… the little guys MUST sleep well tonight!!!

Just a quick note to convey my excitement today at being able to fill my car up at a rate of AU$0.989 per litre!!! After suffering high fuel prices in 2006 up to around AU$1.40 per litre it was very nice (especially to my credit card) to be able to see the figure less than a dollar again!

Although sad in some ways at parting with a piece of my Mylene Farmer collection, I have now converted the Giorgino soundtrack boxset pictured to the right into AU$260 (less EBay and Paypal commissions of course!)

As I write this, the boxset is on it’s way to Russia! Well done comrade, you won the item… have yourself a glass of Vodka to celebrate!

As I’ve been very much in a video game mood again lately, talking about buying PSPs and Wiis etc, I figured I would perhaps do a stocktake and contemplate whether I have too many game consoles at the moment…

Arcade Cabinets
MAME Cabinet #1 - 26″ Arcade Monitor / AMD 3000
MAME Cabinet #2 - 19″ Dell LCD monitor / AMD 2000

Handheld Consoles
Nintendo Gameboy Advance
Nintendo DS Lite

Other Consoles
X-Box (with 160GB Hard Drive)
Dreamcast
Gamecube
Playstation One (An original old chunky thing)
Nintendo 64 (One in N64 demo stand, one in cupboard… and I think I may possibly have a third somewhere!)
Super Nintendo (One hidden behind N64 stand and used with that, one other boxed in cupboard)
Atari 2600 (Erm… I think I have about 4 in the cupboard, the best is one with 128 games built into it)

Ok, let’s contemplate… Too much? Probably… But I’m a hoarder! What can I say!!! I still want a PSP and Wii… I must say though, I do have no interest in getting a Playstation 2 or 3. I only have the Playstation 1 because I got some free playstation games so I therefore had to go and spend AU$20 in buying an old second hand playstation to test them on! That’s my excuse anyway…

I have had through my possession other older consoles like the Sega Megadrive and the NES but, with the ability of the MAME arcade cabinets to emulate these, I let them go. On that basis I really should dump the Atari 2600s and the Super Nintendo but, I do sometimes play the original SNES via the N64 demo stand, and the Atari 2600s are worth so little I can’t be bothered trying to sell them (with the exception of the rare 128 in 1 console which I am reluctant to part with due to it’s rarity) … Oh well, there we go, sounds like another good excuse!

Why am I posting all this? Yes, you guessed it… I’m bored… Muppet has gone out for dinner and the kids are in bed (although typically messing around and not sleeping). Oh well… I’ll go kick their little butts and then might wander off to play a few more levels of Yoshi Island DS which, btw, is a very cool game. If you have a Nintendo DS you really should get it!

As a New Years Resolution myself and Muppet have agreed to try and cut our swearing! And, to make things more interesting I suggested we had a ‘Wii Swear Jar’ whereby, if Muppet swears, she puts AU$1 in the jar and, if I swear, we take AU$1 out of the jar.

The aim, from my viewpoint, was that the proceeds of the jar will be used to buy a Nintendo Wii. Woohoo I thought! I’ll have a Nintendo Wii by mid January for sure! Only need about AU$400 in it and, with Muppet’s mouth this shouldn’t take more than a few weeks surely???

Erm… I think I miscalculated Muppet’s will power! No matter how much I’ve tried to annoy her I’ve only had comments such as “Oh Goodness!” rather than “For F#@*sake!”.

Admittedly she has slipped up a few times but currently the jar stands at minus 2!!!, Which is an improvement because I did go as low as minus 5 at one point!

Oh well… at least I should console myself with the thought that even if I did have AU$400 in there it would seem virtually all shops in Canberra have currently sold out of Wii’s.

I must also secretly admit, although perhaps not to Muppet, that I’m also in the market for a cheap Sony PSP if anybody in the Canberra area has one cheap for sale… firmware v1.50 would be preferred! (Those who know about these things will know why!)

I’ve been a bit slack in updating recently mainly due to the Christmas season. The last few weeks of work were very busy and then, on Christmas Day myself and Muppet got unwanted christmas presents… namely some nasty little bug that made Muppet vommit every 30 minutes or so throughout the night and gave me a very sore stomach cramp/grip that, although hasn’t made me sick, has now been annoying me for the last few days.

The good news.. the kids are good, and, after Muppet got so run down we decided to get the baby (now in it’s 35th week of pregnancy) checked out and all is ‘A’ Ok.

In other news, my second arcade cabinet is complete and I really should put up some final photos although to be honest, the few moments I have had on the computer in the last few weeks have been sorting out the frontend software side of things. Looks very good and, using Mamewah, is now running not only arcade games but also, Atari 2600, NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis and Gameboy Advance games. I will babble a bit more about this in a seperate post once I get things a little bit more sorted out… Arcade game of the moment is Snow Bros which, for some unexplained reason, is getting a new lease of life with me…

PC game of the moment, which I discovered accidentally whilst searching for arcade software is Hamsterball… if you don’t know what this is, check it out! It’s a marble madness type clone but that doesn’t really do it justice… it’s a great game in it’s own right.

Other than the above, I’ve spent quite a lot of time away from the computer watching films over the Xmas break. My favourites so far and which I recommend a viewing are ‘Flushed Away‘ for family viewing and ‘Crank‘ if you want a good stylish action flick.

Ok… I can now tick off update blog! I still have to update the kids pages though… which I WILL do before I go back to work! I have such good intentions!