Several people have made comments to the effect that "it's sad to hear that you had such a crap week in melbourne"..

Thanks for the sympathy.. but actually, I had a great week - when I wasn't in net cafes trying to get things to work.

Amongst the goings on:

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This is the card I bought DM for his birthday.

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Central Queensland University.. in Melbourne? Nutty..

(as an aside: It's amusing that Dave Winer, despite his constant rants about how everything should be "free" and "open", has no public way to leave comments on his site. It's also amusing to see how quickly he takes dislike to wikipedia after one of its articles briefly didn't kiss his arse quite as much as he liked (actually, any reference to him was removed). He's done nothing but whinge about wikipedia ever since. What a wanker.)

(Another aside: Zach is a 16-year old blogger in the US. His parents are sending him to a brainwashing program designed to "cure" him. Go read his blog, it's hearbreaking. Sam, aka QueerPenguin, gives good commentary on the situation. I sympathise greatly - I had a fundamental Protestant upbringing and was in denial for years, then in hiding from my parents for years more. When I eventually came out, my parents offered me contact details for similar "services" here - but fortunately I was well past the stage where they sould force me into anything).

Getting back to Melbourne,

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I got bored in a cafe one day and started balancing coins...

I spent a lot of time at a lot of cafes. I noticed they have funky cool rotating knivesashtrays. I wondered why they were so common, while I've not seen them here. Turns out there's...

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some organisation devoted to getting the things around - they're windproof, apparently..

Whilst in melbourne, I ran into a guy I know from... well, high school, but I met him much earlier - our mothers knew each other, so I met him at about age 3. I have vivid memories of a bookcase in his house and being fascinated by some of the books, and also of paddling in his pool, while hiding from a hornet that was buzzing around and being annoying.

Unfortunately, unlike Bridget Jones, there's no romance in this story; but I *did* run into him on a corner in Melbourne.

Met up with friend X and friend Y in Melb, at the same time. X and Y know each other from years ago - were catching up on movies they'd seen together and such. Hopefully they'll spend more time together again..

My belly is far too big. Exercise is needed.

A movie is planned for tomorrow, but details at this point are sketchy. A star party is planned for 2 July - there's a nice conjunction of several planets. Unfortunately, it's rather low on the western horizon - best viewing time is around 5:30pm. We need a good venue - somewhere with an unonstructed view of the western horizon...

Not unrelatedly, I saw Jupiter for the first time last night - not just as a point of light, but as a disc. I could make out bands of cloud! I could see 3 moons! I could see it visibly moving as it crept across the lens.

I shall go away now.