AFL Books Not Likely to Sell

On those rare occasions that the Essendon FC loses, I head straight to the Bombertalk forum to commiserate with fellow supporters about the game. The site used to be hosted on the official EFC site but for a variety of reasons it was closed down last year, and is now administered by a dedicated group of volunteers. I enjoy the site much more now that club-imposed rules (eg don’t bag players!) are not zealously enforced. In general the community is quick to jump to the defence of any players unfairly slagged off. (Kepler Bradley vs Collingwood did not have too many defenders…)

A lot of the threads are pretty club specific, but there are a few more general ones that may be of interest to all AFL fans.

One of my favourites is this post, which has now spilled onto its 12th page. It contains many humourous anti-suggestions for AFL Books that are unlikely to find much of a market.

For example How to Reed and Right by The Collingwood Football Club.

You may also wish to check out this thread, which talks about some of the fun I had at the Richmond President’s Dinner last week.

Comedy toll continues to mount

My Top 5 Comedy Movie lines post has now grown to over forty entries.

Call in and take a look at the latest additions if you get a chance.

Imdb is a great resource to get the exact wording of any quotes you haven’t quite remembered verbatim.

Hans, this is Igor…

My favourite prank phone call of all time is the classic ‘Hans, this is Igor’, which I have attached for your listening pleasure in the Shared Files section at the bottom of my sidebar.

I play this every afternoon at work, just to get me in the right mood for some accounting skulduggery.

Apparently the masterminds behind this comedy gold are a band called CKY. From what I can gather one of their albums has a bonus disk of prank calls.

Sutha and I are currently trying to find a suitable photo of ‘Hans’ on the internet – the one at the top of the post is the most likely looking Hans I have found so far. (Criteria = outwardly jovial but with an underlying angry streak).

“Let me know” what you think…

Oils Frontman in Bean Bag Scandal

Spotted at the MCG on Saturday night, former Midnight Oil frontman, and now Labor MP, Peter Garrett, dressed in a “stylish” chocolate brown corduroy suit.

Some fashion watchers have queried whether it may be the very suit that Graham Teasdale famously wore to the 1977 Brownlow Medal.

I beg to differ – from my close observation, it appears that Garrett, proud environmentalist and card-carrying greenie, has put his money where his mouth is, and recycled one of the chocolate brown bean bags that used to grace the floor of my parents’ house.

The crowd noise made it difficult to hear, though I suspect Garrett would have been accompanied by a Seinfeld-like ‘pfft, pfft’ noise whenever he walked.

I was pleased to note that Garrett is a proud Bomber supporter, participating in a bit of excited fist pumping as the siren sounded to end the match. Alas, no pogo dancing to the strains of ‘See the Bombers Fly Up’ to really top the night off.

Are you the office Team Player?

This impressive looking model is courtesy of Jessica at the wonderful Indexed site.

Talk about a picture telling a thousand words.

Do yourself a favour and check out some of Jessica’s other drawings – they are equally as thought-provoking.

Simpsons Grammar Game

One of the assignments in my Editing class this year was to develop a fun and interactive way to teach grammar to students in Years 7-9. (i.e. aged 12-14 years).

With the help of Wakes from Wakelin Solutionz, my team developed a computer game based on characters from The Simpsons which runs along the lines of the TV show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The game runs on MS-Excel and is simple to use. I think it turned out really well. If you’re interested in having a look, you can download it from the ‘Share Files’ section at the bottom of my sidebar (file size approximately 1.3mb).

When you run the file, make sure you ‘Enable Macros’ – otherwise the code won’t work.

The file sharing widget is courtesy of Box.net – I installed it especially for this game – let me know what you think.

PS – I haven’t asked Mr Murdoch for permission to use The Simpsons characters – hopefully he will be OK with this, given it is for educational purposes only!

This “site” is very “funny”

I have become quite the grammar Nazi this year. What choice do I have, with my Editing lecturer Marg in one ear every Wednesday, and the words of Lynne Truss’ Eats Shoots and Leaves ringing in the other?

This site, about the “inappropriate” use of quotation marks, appeals to my sense of “humour” – hope you enjoy it.

Best Web Freebies

This great article was in today’s Melbourne Age newspaper.

It reviews ten of the best free software packages available on the Web, including Open Office, Primo PDF Writer, and Paint.NET 3.

I must say I’m surprised that Firefox didn’t rate a mention, (or any non-IE browser for that matter), as I’ve been extremely impressed with the functionality and stability of Firefox since installing it a month or so ago.

The whole Google suite has also been an eye-opener for me. I started with Gmail because Hotmail’s spam was doing my head in, not to mention the crap storage allowance they provided at the time – this led on to Google Calendar, Picassa and most recently Google Reader. I have found all to be stable and with appropriate functionality for my needs – and the best part is the seamless integration between the various Google modules. I even checked out Google Spreadsheets and was pleasantly surprised by the look and feel. (Not rushing out to replace Excel just yet though!)

I used to be a bit skeptical about free software – worried about bugs and poor functionality – but my recent experiences with WordPress, Firefox, Picassa and the myriad of other programs, widgets and gadgets that I’ve come across since joining the blogging fraternity have got me wondering what other great stuff I am missing out on.

I’d love to hear your feedback about any of the programs reviewed in The Age article, or on any other great free software out there.

A shirt that will only make enemies

Check this out, over at Nerdgasm.

For those loud mouths who like to spoil the ending of movies…

Drinking Adventures in Japan

I found the Gaijin Tonic – Drinking Adventures in Japan blog yesterday, which I enjoyed immensely.

Check out these two great articles:

Why not to ask your friend to phone in sick for you

Bizarre bar names

I must say I also enjoyed these t-shirts!