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Occaisionally when surfing channels I’ll wind up on the Comedy Channel watching shows like the Colbert Report. He has some interesting guests but an annoying tendency to continually interrupt them in order to get his jokes in. Anyway, here’s an interview he does with my favourite Bishop, N T Wright, about his latest (excellent) book Suprised by Hope. Good interview, funny in places, annoying in others, but in general Tom holds his own and gets his point across (sort of). Take a look…
This movie has kinda crept up on us without a lot of buzz or hype - the new CGI Star Wars movie which will be released on August 14th in Australia (one day before America). I first saw the preview in the cinema just a couple of weeks ago but before that hadn’t heard anything about it. Apparently this will be the lead in to a new series on Cartoon Network.
Here’s the preview which I just found at Hello Internet. As Ben points out it’s a bit strange seeing Lucasfilm and Star Wars with a Warner Bros intro instead of 20th century fox
Much has been made in recent years of people filling out their religion on census forms as ‘Jedi’
Well here’s what you’ve been waiting for - a documentary examining the inside workings of a Jedi church. They seem like Calvinist Jedis though, “I wish I could tell everyone they can be saved but they can’t. If you don’t have the midichlorians God doesn’t want you - it’s that simple.”
Worth a chuckle - I especially like the bit where Darth Maul goes forward for the altar call
It’s been some time since I’ve posted any videos of Mia so here’s a quick clip of her from yesterday. Also enjoy the music, which Luke created (with a little help from me) using Apple GarageBand.
I walked into the study this morning to find our two boys Owen and Luke sitting at the computer laughing their heads off. The video below, which they had discovered themselves on YouTube, was the reason. See what you think…
SO can you accurately locate Bolivia, Ivory Coast, and Turkmenistan on a world map?
If not then you have some catching up to do. Take a look at this video of a 2 year old geographical prodigy. I would bet that the vast majority of our high school students wouldn’t come close…
Came across a video similar to this one on cnn.com today and thought I’d go on The Google and see if I could find a YouTube version to post for y’all. This is not exactly the same but it’s essentially the same basic story - classic Bushims! Ain’t the internets a wonderful thing!
Well I’m back to working slightly longer days this week after doing half days for the school holidays. For the second half of the holidays it didn’t seem all that slack though as I still had babies being born almost every day which meant early mornings and late nights and other hospital visits in between. This week has been a little quieter on the baby front although I’ve got my second one on the way today (no idea what time she will deliver though) and work here in the surgery is reasonably sedate. I do have a smallish pile of paperwork to get through but rather than doing that I’ve been putting my time to us catching up with some episodes of the Amazing vlog show on YouTube. This is an almost daily video blog produced by Mr Internet and his compadres. The episodes are well produced, funny at times, and interesting. At least I found them interesting but I know most of the guys who are doing it so maybe if you have no idea who they are you might not be so enthralled.
Anyway here’s the first episode - I’ll leave it up to you to check out the rest if you want…
Just upgraded my blog software to Wordpress 2.5. I think I’ve been stuck in 2.1 for quite some time now - for some reason I never bothered to update to the versions in between. Upgrading to 2.5 was pretty quick and painless, and certainly the interface seems much nicer with more powerful editing and management features. And most of my plugins seem to work quite well.
The remainder of this post will be a bit of a test post to try and make sure some things are still working… but read on nonetheless…
To test the YouTube embedding, here’s a video clip from Nickel Creek, one of my favourite bands at the moment, and part of my ongoing journey into bluegrass…
Here’s a quote from one of the books I’m currently reading :
Our life’s dance is not painted for us in footsteps on the floor. It’s not laid out so we know where to place our next step. We simply have to judge which steps best fit the rhythms that we hear.
~ Paul Marshall Heaven is not my Home p62
And the new version has tags. I’ve never previously bothered to use tags on my blog, choosing to stick simply with categories. But since wordpress 2.5 supports it natively, and the rest of the web is going that way, I guess I’ll be tagging my blog posts from now on…
It’s taken me a little while to get around to it, but here is Mia’s first YouTube video, from her first few days in hospital. Starting with footage from minutes after she was born, then meeting her brothers, her first bath, and her impression of a frog. Enjoy.
Also added a few more photos to my flickr page, like the ones below.. what I haven’t uploaded though is the video which follows of Owen taking off driving round the house with Mia on his lap!
This Mexican duo are amazing - Rodrigo y Gabriela. And if you like this, you should definitely check out their album, which includes a version of Metallica’s Orion amongst other things. But for the meantime, enjoy Stairway to Heaven…
Much has been said about Barack Obama’s talent for inspiring lofty rhetoric - but it’s perhaps even better when set to music. Check out this video where hip-hop artist will.i.am has used Obama’s New Hampshire speech as the basis for a new song “Yes We Can” (and no - it has nothing to do with Bob the Builder).
Here’s the second part of the video from our weekend in Denmark. It really is a beautiful spot down there - lovely countryside and some great coastal scenery.
So far it’s been a nice relaxing start to the year. Spent most of the day at home taking it easy with the kids. Got a few jobs done including taking the Christmas tree down and Jen has started setting up the nursery (which has been a storeroom for the last 2 years since we’ve moved in) - needless to say there’s lots of pink stuff
Two trips out in the new Prado today - one to the hospital for the first birth of 2008, and one to Bunnings with the boys to grab a few things. Yesterday we spent the morning down at Rockingham Beach playing around on the family boat, enjoying the new SeaBiscuit tube that Kyle got. Here’s some film of it :
Well we had a great Christmas Day yesterday. Plenty of time just relaxing with family, an excellent church service, and time in the swimming pool. It was a pretty hot 40.7 degrees Celsius (that’s 105.26F) yesterday but today looks like it’s going to be even warmer 41 degrees! Might be a good day to spend inside in the air-conditioning watching the cricket, and maybe jump in the pool or take a run to the beach later in the evening. The only potential problem with that is that I am on-call for obstetrics, and already have at least one patient in labour…
EDIT : just had a newsflash while watching the cricket. Apparently Perth has it’s hottest Boxing Day on record - 44.3 degrees Celsisus (according to the BOM site) - that’s 111.174 degrees Farenheit. In fact it’s the hottest ever December day also. Yesterday was the second hottest ever Christmas day 40.7, but certainly the hottest in my lifetime since the previous was in 1968.
This video is of a stand-up comedian called “Pablo” who performed at the concert we went to in Kampala, Uganda, in October. I think it’s the sort of thing that’s more funny for locals or at the least visitors to Uganda, but take a look and see what you think. In this clip he’s discussing the genesis of various styles of music…
I’m gradually working my way through some of my video footage from the last 6 months, so expect to see more of these YouTube clips over the next few weeks. Working with iMovie on my Mac makes it so easy to produce these - it literally took only about 5-10 minutes to put this clip together, whilst watching a DVD with the kids. Otherwise life is way too busy at the moment. Work is getting fairly hectic, lots of other functions on, plus we have Owen’s surgery this week. Tomorrow is our church’s big Aqua Carols event at the local aquatic center - swimming, eating, and just generally having fun whilst our church music team provides the entertainment. I’m playing and singing in about three different bands - rock, acoustic, and country style! Should be a good day
Continuing to work with my Mac - now starting to deal with connectivity to various devices. Firstly I was pleased to find that I could get my Windows Mobile 6 PDA phone to sync with my MacBook without too much difficulty. All it took was a download of a beta version of a program called Missing Sync and within minutes I was able to use Bluetooth to synchronise my calendar, contacts, to-do list and more with the relevant applications on my Mac. Changes were reflected accurately in both directions. It also enables you to sync a whole lot of other items including photos, videos, call and sms logs etc, but I haven’t really explored that. But being able to get this working so quickly was a bit of a bonus. I hadn’t expected it to be so painless.
A different story with my Digitech GNX4 guitar effects board. For many months I have had problems with this since Digitech were extremely slow in releasing drivers for it to work with Vista (they finally have within the last few weeks). And now it seems I can’t get it working with my Mac. Not sure if this is a problem relating to the new Leopard version of OSX or what but it’s quite frustrating. Not only can I not install the X-edit software for editing my effect presets on the GNX4, but I cannot even use it as a recording input via USB. It shows up in audio preferences and I can even “see” the sound when I play guitar on the little input meter - but when I load up recording software like GarageBand or Audacity it complains of MIDI driver clashes and refuses to work. Very frustrating - mostly I blame Digitech for this - releasing a product and not providing adequate software support to ensure it works on all platforms. I’m still exploring the forums and hoping for a way around this but I’m not holding my breath.
Finally I’ll just mention the cool iSight camera that is built in to the MacBook Pro. Very handy for recording little video clips like in the intro to the video below of Luke playing piano. The picture quality is very good and it’s quick and easy to use. The iChat software for video chat seems pretty cool, with some fun background and picture effects the kids enjoyed playing around with. Sadly it is not compatible with MSN which is where my few chat contacts hang out - but I’ll see if there’s a workaround for that. I’m not a heavy duty chat user anyway, but this camera may well come in handy for other things.
One of the news stories that has been sadly neglected in the midst of our current Australian election campaign is the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which is taking place in Kampala, Uganda, at the moment. I was hoping to see reports of our Prime Minister attending and some news coverage of Kampala, but sadly John Howard has more pressing issues on his mind. At present the Queen, Gordon Brown, Canadian PM Stephen Harper and a host of other world leaders are descending on Kampala. To date I’ve seen one story in the Australian media, who are understandably pre-occupied with our own election tomorrow. Might have to check out BBC news later to see if they have any stories. Anyway, here’s a view of Kampala that the Queen and other CHOGM delegates will most likely never see - the view from the back of a boda-boda motorcycle taxi. These are the quickest and easiest way of getting around Kampala and weaving through the often chaotic traffic. Although on this video, filmed by Watoto team member and lab guru Dennis and myself, the traffic is pretty mild. You will get to see some of Kampala’s nicest streets in the CBD, cleaned up “getting ready for CHOGM”
This is my first video edited on my MacBook Pro in iMovie (is it just me, or does Apple seem to have copyright on the letter i ?) Took me a little while to get the hang of it, but I’m pleased to say there was not a single crash or even a significant delay in the whole process, which is a huge contrast to my efforts with Windows Movie Maker a couple of weeks ago on my Vista PC. I’ll be playing around with the video capabilities of my Mac more over the next week or so as I upload more of my Uganda videos.
One day to go before the election, and here’s a cool you tube clip I found. Admittedly it’s a bit biased, casting the Howard government in the role of the Empire defending against Rudd and his band of rebels, but I still found it pretty funny, and well done. Don’t know if it was intended or not, but the father vs son parallels here are interesting. Apparently if you get tired of (or depressed by…) the election coverage Channel 10 is just showing Star Wars so it’s something to keep in mind…
In other election related news, I just read The Australian’s final editorial, which ultimately in a close decision between two “worthy opponents” advocates a vote for Mr Rudd. This is surprising from The Australian, which usually sticks to a relatively conservative line in contrast to leftist media like the Melbourne Age. What is even more surprising is that they advocate a change to Rudd without any compelling reason why. The discuss the many similarities and minor differences between the parties, highlight the key difference on IR and mention some of the potential economic dangers in Labor’s IR policies, yet choose to put their trust in him nonetheless in what is almost a leap of blind faith. Seems like the editors at The Australian have fallen under the spell (or force) of Labor’s messiah, Kevin Rudd. Seems like he’s pulling off some kind of immense Jedi mind trick on the whole country…
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for…
EDIT : ok a little more browsing YouTube and it’s full of these kind of things. Here’s another one - Kevin 007 - The man with the golden jaw. I also found a Kevin Almighty clip, but the execution is not a clever as the idea. Anyway, enjoy Kevin 007…
Here’s something to keep an eye out for - the annual Country Music Awards happens tonight in Nashville (hopefully it’ll be broadcast on the Country Music Channel). Aussie Keith Urban is up for best album with his Love, Pain, and the Whole Crazy Thing, which is an excellent country/pop/rock album with some great tracks. I had the misfortune of hearing a Phil Collins version of the Leo Sayer classic “Can’t stop loving you” whilst driving around Johannesburg and was horrified at the anaemic 80s sound. Keith does a far superior version on this album. “Stupid Boy” is another of my favourite tracks from this CD.
Another contender for best album mentioned in the article above is These Days, a four disc opus from Vince Gill. I haven’t come across this album before but looking at the names of some of his colloborators it’s definitely one I want to check out. Might be perfect for my drive down to Busselton this weekend with the boys if I can find it by then. I may have to source it on iTunes though, since our music stores here in Western Australia generally have a pitifully small country music section.
Anyway, speaking of Keith Urban, here’s a video I posted on my facebook yesterday of him performing with Australian roots band The John Butler Trio, originally from Perth. They are another of my favourite bands so seeing John Butler and Keith Urban performing together is a real treat. Anyone who doubts Keith’s ability on the guitar just check this out…
As promised, here is the first YouTube video from my recent Uganda trip. It’s a demonstration we had when we visited the equator - water really does go down the drain in opposite directions in the northern and southern hemispheres!
More videos coming soon. This one was made using Windows Movie Maker, and although the quality is not too bad it crashed about 11 times in the process. I don’t think it handles the Quicktime files that my camera produces very well. Can’t wait til I get my MacBook and see how good that is…
Fairly quiet day at work thus far. No babies being born and plenty of gaps between patients. Which has given me plenty of time to catch up on some internet jobs - paid a few bills and started tidying up my Flickr photos. I’ve now given titles to all the photos in my Africa 2007 and Africa 2006 sets. As promised I also have a bunch of short video clips taken on my camera which I will upload to YouTube soon. These include videos of the lions in Johannesburg, kids in Uganda, church at KPC, riding a boda-boda motorcycle through town, and from the concert we visited. Because they are all in Quicktime MOV format, I’m just waiting til I get my new MacBook in a week or so because I think that will be easier to do than on a PC. But I promise to get them up ASAP. Watch this space.
Yesterday was the first match of the season for Owen’s soccer team. We won’t worry about the scoreline, but they had a lot of fun as you can see in this clip…
This is awesome. I found it this morning via Phil Baker.net and immediately thought of my mate Joel from our band at church, who’s a bit of a Pachelbel fan. I must say though, the music/mix just seems a little bit too good to be just some dude playing along in his bedroom, but then again there are just enough wrong notes to make it seem authentic … anyway enjoy…
EDIT : after browsing YouTube a bit more it seems this guy (”FunTwo” aka Lim Jyong-Hyun from South Korea) is a bit of a phenomenon. There’s quite a few videos of him playing on there as well as a CNN story about his rise to fame. Inspiration for bedroom guitarists everywhere!
It’s bound to happen in every TV show and perhaps every political career. And it looks like Kevin Rudd’s dream run has finally come to an end - he’s hopped on his water-skis and jumped that shark. A Labor leader taking his party to the center, standing up to the unions and moving into the 21st century in Blair-like fashion sounded too good to be true … and indeed it was. The commentators are having a field day following the weekend Labor conference, and Paul Kelly’s article above is right on the money…
At this point Labor loses the goodwill of big business, the hope of winning small business and the dream that it stands for entrepreneurship. Rudd’s election strategy is to pitch to working families with the claim that an arrogant Howard has abandoned them.
The stage is set for a bitter election over the industrial model that Australia needs for its open economy, an issue unresolved for a generation that now approaches showdown time.
In his speech, Rudd said Howard had launched “an assault on Australian family life” and that Labor would “restore the balance”.
This is neither a credible nor accurate statement about the totality of Labor’s policy. This policy goes far beyond any family friendly test. It is better described as union friendly. The details and the scale of Labor’s package transcend any effort merely to restore fairness to the workplace.
So the battle lines are drawn - the scene is set for the next election. Either Rudd has shown his true colours or has shown his weakness in this capitulation to the union movement - either way he’s jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned (and to think I was starting to like the guy!) The big question remains though - will the Australian public be fooled by this “family values” line and maintain Rudd’s high ratings, or are Kevin Rudd’s Happy Days drawing to an end? Stay tuned…
Looks like it’s a week now since I’ve posted any kind of YouTube Video on this blog (and some of you are probably saying that’s a good thing), but I’ll make up for it now. It’s not a video of the kids or scenery this time but rather a demonstration of the latest product from Fender. Now for me, as both a guitarist and a techo-gadget-geek, this new VG Stratocaster seems to be the ultimate toy - a fully fledged American strat with the discrete addition of a small Roland pickup and two small control knobs which allow you to instantly change the tone and tuning of your guitar. No additional effects or special midi cables or anything required. Check out the demo :
I’ve already been wanting to get hold of a strat for quite a while now but this new product looks awesome! Time to start saving hard and praying that the exchange rate holds up and maybe, just maybe, I can check one of these babies when I hit Nashville in a couple of months. Sweet.
Also here’s another good demo video from the NAMM 2007 convention. The guy demonstrates how you can play all the parts to Stairway to Heaven just by flicking a switch on your guitar
It’s like we’ve only just discovered our neighbourhood, after living here for well over a year. Took another walk/bike ride today and couldn’t resist doing some more filming. Don’t know if anyone likes watching them but I’m sure finding making these YouTube clips quite addictive Once again we visited the high lookout dunes and I filmed another slower panorama. This time if you look you can see the big Kwinana grain terminal where I used to work in the north, as well as a good view of the suburbs and shoreline of Rockingham. I couldn’t quite zoom in on our house (mostly because the sun was in my eyes) but you can see the bush and golf course nearby. Overall, today has been a good one.
Monday mornings are supposed to be when I return to work after a refreshing weekend with the family. Well I can’t say that I feel particularly refreshed right about now. The weekend was my monthly on-call for obstetrics and it turned out to be one of the busiest I’ve had since starting work down here. I had 9 babies born over the weekend, all except one I think were born at night, meaning I averaged less than 4 hours sleep the last 3 nights. Still there are some plusses - none of the births were very stressful or complicated - only one required a vacuum extraction but it wasn’t super emergent. The other big plus is that the more babies that are born the more I get paid, which might help a little towards addressing my huge tax debt and paying for our trip later this year.
Since the babies were all born at night, it meant I had plenty of time to spend with the family during the days (no time for sleep though) Saturday was looking like a warmish one and after we got back from a kid’s birthday party the boys asked to go to the beach down the road from our house. Since I wasn’t busy and this might be one of the last summery days I thought why not. Unfortunately it ended up raining but not before the boys had a good dig and splash, as you can see in the clip below. This is also Owen’s debut on commentary duties, which mixed results (hard to understand him at times). Hopefully it’s a little more entertaining than it would be with just music alone… At the end of the video, I also pan around and label some of the places along Warnbro Sound…
Sunday afternoon we again went out for a walk, and Owen got to ride his new bike. This time we explored some of the paths through the sand dunes near our place - we’ve been there for over a year and have never made it to these paths before (pretty slack hey) but it was a really great place to walk. Aside from marvelling at some of the massive homes nestled amongst the dunes (who knew there were such fancy houses a 4 minute walk from our place?) we also discovered a great lookout on the top of one of the highest dunes, giving panoramic views of Warnbro Sound, Port Kennedy, and Rockingham. I took a quick video of it on the digital camera and added some of the photos from the weekend (mainly because I was enjoying the music clip I put with it so much and wanted to make it last a bit longer) Anyway enjoy.
You can think and say what you like about President George W Bush, but you have to admit the guy has a sense of humour (or at least his speech writers do!). Check out this entertaining speech from the Radio & TV correspondents dinner in which he pokes fun at himself, his opponents, and especially Dick Cheney. Can’t wait for the Dubya gets his Groove Back pop-up book
For any of you who doubt that the Ukelele can be cool, check out this awesome video by Jake Shimabukuro. I came across it while searching for the music/lyrics to one of my favourite Beatles’ songs, and was absolutely blown away. Makes me want to put my guitar down and pick up my uke, aside from the fact that I’m a total novice on the instrument. Anyway check it out - this guy is phenomenal!
Owen is five and a half, but to date has never had a proper bike. So on Friday we went down to the local bike shop and got a nice shiny red one for him. And I was half tempted to get one myself - they had some very cool looking bikes in there. Considering I do vitually zero exercise it might not be a bad idea.
Anyway once we got home, Owen got straight on his bike for a trip to the local park, with Luke trailing behind on the old tricycle….
Yesterday me and the boys, along with my dad, brothers and their families, spent a great day at Adventure World, Perth’s main amusement park. The kids are now starting to get old enough to go on more of the rides and get a lot more out of the day, especially Owen. Luke was not to be outdone however - even though he was a few centimetres too short he managed to sneak onto the Bounty’s Revenge swinging ship ride. And he enjoyed it just as much as the rest of us. Here’s a taste of the top day we had…
Edit : apologies for the picture quality. It was perfect before I uploaded it (took over an hour to do so) but now it’s a bit pixelated. Still finding it difficult to get really nice quality videos on YouTube, despite searching through any number of forums and trying a few different software programs. If anyone has any good hints I’d love to hear them…
Just uploaded another video to YouTube. This one is from our trip to Uganda last year. When we visited the Sanyu Babies Home, Owen and Luke got to join the babies’ song time. Not only is it very cute, but it demonstrates just what a good job they do at looking after these orphan babies. Hope you enjoy it!
Another quiet day at work today, although I have a patient in labour at present so it’ll probably get busier.
Thought I’d play around with my mobile and YouTube to give you a sneek peak into the place where I spent most of my day’s - my consulting room. The quality isn’t perfect as it was filmed using my Palm Treo, but I hope it’s clear enough to get a bit of an idea of what my room looks like. And it’s relatively tidy at the moment too!
This is the blog of Paul Baggaley.
I'm a Christian family doctor from Perth, Western Australia, with an interest in obstetrics and paediatrics. Married to Jennifer, we have three great kids Owen, Luke, and Mia.
The content of the blog can range to just about everything, but the most common subjects will most likely be Christianity, books, medicine & technology, as well as updates and stories from my life. Look forward to having you along for the ride!
Listening to a new bluegrass CD, "Secrets" by Sierra Hull. Young girl with a sweet voice and plays a tidy mandolin too! 4 days ago
Was checking out the new QANTAS frequent flyers scheme... lots more ways to use points. Looks good.. 4 days ago
Finally fixed some longstanding syncing issues I had with contacts between my Windows mobile phone and my Mac. All working sweetly now :) 6 days ago
Just realised that I already own a Jim Wallis book I bought at Koorong - for some stupid reason they changed the name of it for Australia :( 1 week ago
Dinner at an Italian place in Mt Lawley, after being turned away from 2 other empty restaurants because we didn 1 week ago
At Koorong bookshop - between us all we have a very full basket of books as usual 1 week ago
A new record for me - just cost $270 to fill our Prado with petrol! 1 week ago
At Owen's soccer game. We are winning 4 nil in an enjoyable game. 1 week ago
Listening to Bowie LP - Ziggy Stardust... very cool 1 week ago
Listening to a crappy dance song where the singer uses the phrase "Voodoo Child" - No one after Hendrix should be allowed to use that phrase 1 week ago
Lunch at the tavern again. A nice steak today with a glass of red. Nice quiet place and good food :) 1 week ago
At this point Labor loses the goodwill of big business, the hope of winning small business and the dream that it stands for entrepreneurship. Rudd’s election strategy is to pitch to working families with the claim that an arrogant Howard has abandoned them.
