Celebrity Sighting #3

I do not know if I am just more observant that I used to be, or I hang out in more glamorous place or I simply travel more often, but I see a lot of celebrities lately. Of course, it could be that celebrities are drawn to me. Then again, I do see most of these people in bars...My latest sighting came last night at the Tank Stream Bar in downtown Sydney. Niall and I had slipped into the trendy bar before most people come and found it empty except for two strange looking blokes hanging out with models. This peaked Niall's interest -- rightly so, it turned out -- and after he came back from the bar, he knew why: it was Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead (Simon above over Niall's shoulder and Nick hiding outside behind the shutter).Apparently, they were in Sydney for the Australian premiere of Hot Fuzz, their new movie, and decided to grab a quick drink before the actual festivities. The bartender said they were actually staying in the hotel.

Third Space Analysis

Although I don't usually link to other site's articles (how many other websites have actual farm animal and tiny car pictures ?), this one did catch my eye:

How Starbucks And WiFi Are Like Movie Theaters And Air Conditioning

I like that they talk about Panera Bread, where I find myself hanging out often times, and comparing their strategy around "third space." I have to agree though, I think Starbucks is more about customer throughput than keeping people hanging around all day.

P.S. Yes, you will hear me using "third space" a lot from now on.

Farm Animals At Breakfast

Goat, originally uploaded by /k.

I forgot to post about this when I uploaded them to Flickr, but they probably need a little bit of explanation. On the last Sunday of my most recent trip to Melbourne, I decided to get up early and get breakfast over in Prahahn. Prahahn is a kinda nice neighborhood in southern Melbourne with a lot of cafes (and loud gay bars, but that's a different story entirely). So I wander over to the Prahahn Market, which is a indoor/outdoor market in the center of the neighborhood. I order my big breakfast (a standard staple of the Aussie breakfast menu) and sit down in the courtyard. And then I hear barking. And whinying. Crap, I thought I was back home. But no. They had a farm animals in a small pen in the courtyard for the kids. Which, although entirely too close to my breakfast, was a lot of fun. You can see the other photos over at my flickr page, but goats, rabbits, chickens, herding dogs and ponies were all represented. The best part of the little show was the herding dogs -- he definitely wasn't amused by the rabbits running around causing trouble. Eventually, he rounded them all up into a little wooden triangle area and kept guard of them for the next hour. I need to teach louie to do that.

Woot!

We're up to TWO smiles per hour !
Along those same revisionist lines, I take back my previous car choice. I want this now:both images captured on St. Kilda Road here in Melbourne.

Dorks Down Under

I am happy to see that my adopted homeland of Australia is not too proud to succumb to the dorky pleasures of the Segway. Of course, I am afraid this may create a Segway arms race with Canada and Las Vegas.

WiFinder

Arriving home from Melbourne on Friday, I found that Plazes sent me a cool wifi signal finder, The Kensington Wifi Finder Plus.It detects wifi signals, bluetooth and even has a weird light. It kinda sucks (reviewers hate it), but plazes sent it all the way from Germany for free, so I'll try and use it. It should be useful for my travels.

My Next Car

Back To Melbourne

After a fun week of meetings in Sydney, it's time to get back down to Melbourne.

More Robots

Jim and I have been searching for something to do tonight, it being the day after Australia Day here in Sydney, and thought we had a winner in Devolution. It was described as a performance piece exploring technology and art. Cool, robots. And Jim likes the whole performance art thing. Fine. As long as there are robots.We cruise down to the theater which is a converted factory. The space is pretty cool, and they serve beer, so I am good. However, this quickly goes south when I find out we can't take the beer into the actual seating area.
This gets worse when I figure out that "performance art" is actually code word for "fruity dancing." Lots of fruity dancing. And some nudity. Male nudity. There are some robots: two tyrannosaurus rex thingies, three ETs and several spider looking things. They were good. But I can sum up my review for the "piece" in two words: More. Robots.
The night wasn't a total loss; We stopped at the 3 Wise Monkeys on the way home.

Tokyo in San Francisco

In recent years, I have noticed that San Francisco is becoming more and more like Tokyo. Of course, this could be happening everywhere, but I guess I notice it the most here. Some of this is good (Toyko is very cool), some of this is bad (I don't think I could live there). In the good column are vending machines. Everything in Japan is available via a vending machine: beer (even mini-kegs), espresso, books and all sorts of food. San Francisco has picked up on this trend mostly on the high end.You can now find vending machines that sell mobile phones, iPods and headphones. The one above sells Motorola Razr phones and accessories. Below is one that sells iPod accessories (and aspirin).I was pretty close to picking up these iPod speakers (so that I could rock on the plane -- yes, I am that guy), but the machine at SFO was broken.