A large and eclectic post in celebration of actual, if minor, web achievements...

The promise to make the website look better is made good on. Ok, so I can't claim a lot of credit - in fact most of it goes to some bloke called Nikolai (his website is here). However elements of Ben are to be found - text got aligned from right to left, italics were italicised, text got made smaller (good idea Nic), and most satisfactorily, after 2 or 3 hours of solid effort, I succeeded in turning a hyperlink orange. (Finally, a worthy use of time spent at Armourguard.)

I must say HTML is a pretty good thing in the "looking at it logically and being able to work things out without actually really knowing anything about what you're doing" department, but then again it's also pretty good in the "OK, that's working now, but somehow in getting that working I have totally screwed up this part of the site which appears to be totally unrelated" department as well, which gets frustrating. The only minor problem even though accessing the site at work produces some kind of 'script error', but hell, this little problem never stopped the makers of Legionnaire...now it's all working and I feel extremely, in fact pathetically, contented, much in the manner of a fat housecat asleep in the sun - I'm full of jellimeat and cream and my text is aligned correctly, and in addition, I have a Playstation 2. All is right with the world. (Sunbathing cats are always musing upon better website layout and strategies for Tekken Tag.)

I think in light of the most recent game, I will have to go out on a limb and predict a 5-0 defeat of England in the O.D.I series.
Even given N.Z's established (but steadily reducing I think in frequency) ability to play spectacularly and inexplicably below par, and England's ability to play much better than they have to date, I think we are simply a significantly better team. I also think we should clean up in the tests, especially since England have stated they will send home Darren Gough (world's friendliest fast bowler, and clearly England's top player), thus reducing their chances considerably. If we do score a series victory, we end up a mighty 3rd on the ICC world test ranking board.
New Zealand near the top of world cricket again! Long have we waited for this day.

For a while now, I've been saying the word 'Crikey' too often. I don't know why or who to blame, but I catch myself saying it all the time, to the point where I'm sure everyone is getting very tired of it. But here's the thing.
I can't stop. I just say it automatically as an expression of surprise. This is very odd, not to mention slightly disconcerting. But I just wanted to reassure everyone who is getting bored with my constant pseudo-Cockney takes on unexpected or impressive events that I am trying to arrest them, honestly.

Now, the Listener is, to paraphrase a currently absent drinking companion, a damn fine magazine. However, it seems that someone on their staff has something against Split Enz. In the N.Z music week issue they had "10 N.Z songs We Definitely WON'T be celebrating" and they included "I See Red". This weeks top 10 list thingy list was "Top 10 Worst Pop Music Stinkers EVER" and it included "Six Months in a Leaky Boat". Huh? Even more inexplicable was the inclusion of "Outlook for Thursday" by DD Smash, which is a great song. I've been in enough arguments with Hamish to know that taste in music, like food, is totally personal, but these two choices seem fairly random. Maybe some wannabe guitarist who didn't pass the audition for either band has ended up drifting into journalism following their failed musical career, and remains bitter.

Everyone seems to feel a little bit sad at the death of Kevin Smith, who seemed to always came across as a modest, funny, nice man. He was a definite stalwart of all things theatre and TV locally, and always had nice things to say about good old New Zild too, which always gets points in my book. Apparently he had just been cast with a sizeable role in a Bruce Willis movie and was hoping to sort of raise the overseas profile he established with Hercules and Xena. Goddamn.
There seems to have been a bit of a rash of these weird things recently. Obviously, the famous people get all the press, but it just highlights this bad, bad situation of being a healthy person with a spouse, children, friends parents whatever, and then one day suddenly it's just - what? He fell off a building and is dead? Or, excuse me, you say he was shot by pirates? Arrggghh.
Death. Often random, inconvenient, and existing in an entirely separate sphere from the concept of 'fair'.

Hmmmm, bit of a morbid note to end on there. So instead, picture this: cute fuzzy little yellow ducklings.
Nice.