Dugie’s Pensieve

Ahhh, I do love the week between Christmas and New Years day.  A week to reflect, plan, prioritise, and reconnect with your passions that make you you — bikes, media centre, xbox, photography, things that go boom and of course Scotch.

And so every year about this time, I get ready for the Paris to Dakar, the Annual Phantom Comic,  review my GTD buckets, empty and refill my Pensieve archive – and most importantly clean out my scotch collection!!

I keep a running score of the scotches I’ve enjoyed.  Well actually it’s more of guide than a score.  Some bottles were greatly enjoyed in the company of friends, so have a slightly higher score.  As I finish off a scotch, I give it a ‘weighting’ - did I enjoy it (as a whole experience) more or less than something else  - it’s a personal thing.

So as this year ends, and another [is about to] begins, here is the score so far [from left to right] with duplicates removed:

• Glenfiddich 12
• Glenfiddich 18 and Glenfiddich 18 (Special Reserve)
• Glenfiddich 21
• Chivas Regal 12
• Chivas Regal 18
• Dimple 12
• Dimple 18
• Carhdu 12
• Knockando 12
• Glenlivet 12 and Glenlivet 18
• Penderyn

And the 4 special bottles in front:

• Some homebrew 5 day special scotch; bloody aweful, but a great gift and I had a great night drinking it with friends
• Old St Andrews; Loved the shape of the bottle; again great night w/ friends
• Chivas Royal Salute 21 – drank far too much of this in Tokyo; and bought home some as well
• Glenwood 8; saw this a while ago, and promised myself to buy another bottle if I saw it.

Ahhh, bring on 2009!

Before I sign off for the year, I’d like to take a moment to share a heartfelt thanks to everyone I’ve met throughout the world in 2008:

• Thanks to all the new friends, who stepped outside their comfort zone, and introduced themselves   (=
• Thanks to everyone who helped make usergroups and communities and the success they are,
• Thanks to everyone who took time out from their busy schedules, and share wisdom and advice – you know who you are!!

With that, a very Merry Christmas to everyone; and safe travels to those who have to.    …and if you see Santa, put in a good word,

Again special thanks to everyone who dropped by over email, twitter, facebook and over coffee; I’m looking forward to catching up, and doing it all again next year, in 2009.

It’s been a big and busy couple of weeks, and amongst building a new website, moving to hosted exchange, and a whole bunch of other stuff (more blog posts to follow) I’m also planning a roadtrip.  The road trip is about ~1200 kilometers (or 750 miles) from Brisbane to Sydney via a couple of scenic detours.  The round trip should take me about a week.

This trip should come to you live, uncut an uncensored, because I plan to get the bike to plot my progress as go along.  This has been on my bucket list for months, but haven’t had the time to make it happen =)

Enough jibber-jabber, here is where I am at:

• After an unfortunate mistake, I have a new phone, it is the HTC TyII (with a GPS), it should have been a HTC Touch Pro - but alas I got raw end of a bad deal; Oh well, a lesson learned.
• My new phone is going to need juice for the trip, so I’ve already bought a Car Charger, and fitting an accessory line to the bike.
• I’ve also got a 8Gb memory card, full of music for the trip (my bike helmet is already blue tooth equipped)
• I’m still building a bracket so the phone/camera can sit behind the windshield; I have a bad feeling it may require drilling holes.
• Hopefully I’ll be able to easily take photos tagged with location; whatever I use, it will have to be clean and simple.
• I’ve also sorted my TwitPic account and BrightKite account as well
• After looking at a few options, I think I’ve settled on Inca-X, as the brains in the phone for this.

Hopefully I can pull this all together and somehow get an autotwitter, photo (no video) and update of my last know location as I drift in and out of data coverage.

It’s no big secret, I don’t watch [live, if any] Television — I haven’t done so for 3 nearly 4 years now, it’s an inefficient use of what very little spare time I have.  When I want to wind down (or wind up), it needs to be short, sharp and on my schedule.    ….but then again, I don’t listen to the radio either, or read printed newspapers.  Instead I prefer a web browser and podcasts. 

I do struggle with mainstream media; it’s like persisting with bad coffee, after a while it’s just easier to go without it.  Alas I’m getting off topic.

I was reading a post  on Seth’s Blog, and the following snippet really hit home with me:

TV is over. If people are interested, they’ll watch. On their time (or their boss’s time). They’ll watch online, and spread the idea. You can’t email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn’t to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we’ll choose to watch it and choose to share it.

Uh-huh, I agree Seth, you nailed it nicely buddy.  The media tide is turning, exciting times ahead!

Yes, I went camping [again] and it rained [again] – but I refused to admit defeat, and managed to keep a campfire burning; even when it was surrounded by a 2ft moat of water:

…and continuing with my camping tradition, I also cooked a mighty fine shepherds pie; even if I do say so myself.   And yes there much much drinking of good scotch, and lazing around reading a good old fashioned novel or two.

Ahhh camping.  Lovely.  I’m already looking forward to the next trip.

John Troyer from over at VMTN Blogs has justed added me to the blog roll. 

So to all the folks who are visting my blog, a very big hello, and thanks for stopping by!

You’ve caught me in the middle of a server move, so in the mean time, check out the post “The website is down (sort of)” and check out my “home baked arcade machine” =)

Well it’s been a big few weeks, and in the words of Wayne’s World, “I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve hurled”.   …ok, maybe not the last bit, but there has been of lot of blood, sweat and tears, as well as a trip to tokyo, lots of yummy food, and incident involving a motorbike, some stairs and an elevator.

But moving on, the web site is in the process of moving again.  So whilst I sort that out, check out this totally hilarious video from www.thewebsiteisdown.com:

Oh yeah, virtualization makes an appearance too =)

Long Zheng, just twittered this video clip, called “Where the hell is Matt”.  I know I’ve been under a rock for a little while,  but this clip is a decidedly beautiful little video.  (I have no idea how I could have missed it?!)

If you have time, I recommend going to check it out:  Where the Hell is Matt (2008) on Vimeo

You can find out more about Matt Harding, over at Wikipedia.

Yeah ok, you lot.  So I’m back blogging on a regular basis - and you lot return the love, by poking fun at me.  *chuckles*  Figures, serves me right!  =)

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m going to blog all those little [virtualization] questions.  The ones that I get asked every day about interop with Windows in Virtual Machines.  The type of questions, that you often assume, that everybody knows (like Ctrl+C with a messagebox, or F7 at the command prompt)

So sit back, relax, and enjoy all the snippets the follow.

Ahhh, Scotch.  If you’ve spent any time on my blog, you’ll know just how much I enjoy a “wee dram“.   Each year I go through and clean out all the bottles that I’ve kept (and enjoyed) from the year before.  The scotch itself I may not necessarily have enjoyed, but I will have enjoyed it in the company of good friends - so it gets added to the shelf.

Well, I’ve cleaned out the shelf, and here they are (duplicates removed):

• Dalwhinnie 15
• Johnnie Walker 12
• Johnnie Walker Green 15
• Johnnie Walker Blue
• Glenlivet 12
• Glenfiddich 12
• Glenfiddich 15
• Glenfiddich 18
• Glenfiddich 21
• Glenmorangie 10
• Glenmorangie 18
• GlenDronach 12
• Talisker 10
• Ardbeg 10
• Glenwood
• Cardhu
• Suntory - MattO has this bottle
• Laphroaig - went camping never made it back

Here’s “bottom’s up” to the year ahead!