Nath @ Nath @aussie.zone

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2 yr. ago

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So I was the pied piper on the weekend and took a troop of kids to see the Minecraft Movie. It was an experience.
The movie itself was pretty typical middle-aged kids' fare. Fairly awful dialogue and cliched characters. Jason Moama was a surprise, I thought Jack Black was the only famous star in it. I have a feeling that in the right role, Jason would have some wonderful comedy chops. This movie was not it. Stiffler's Mum was funny, but all I could see was Stiffler's Mum. I think the two female leads were great and a good foil for the Jack Black/Jason Moama antics. Pity the girls didn't really have a lot to do in the plot.

If I'd been watching it on Blu Ray or streaming, I might have turned it off. As a movie, it's not great. However, watching it in a cinema on opening weekend in a room full of kids really made it wonderful. They were cheering at obvious fan-service references that I didn't get. Screaming out at "Chucky Chicken!" and I can't remember other bits. But you get the idea. The energy in the room was great.

So while I didn't particularly love the movie, I loved the experience of watching it.

Amaze! Jazz hands!

It's fascinating how some of these questions are phrased.

Should Australia spend more or less on its military?

I have no idea what Australia spends on its military. I don't know whether it's too much or insufficient. I wouldn't feel qualified to answer this question, so I abstained.

But abstaining from this question appears to have affected my compass result. It appears to read it the same as "about the same". Which isn't what I said or meant. There are a few I abstained from and I think that by doing so, it has put me a lot closer to center than is probably accurate.

I used to think of myself as fairly central. Only "central" has seemed to move over the past 20 years and while I don't think I've changed all that much, I'm considered more left these days than I used to be.

Do we have this chart for just WA? Because it feels like we were well above average. It hit 40⁰ a week or so ago, and that whole week was 35⁰+.

Ha! A day later, I see the thing! It's real all right:

I love the free space. Some things are just a given.

His deteriorating health was big news when the second Top Gun movie came out and we found out he couldn't actually speak any more.

Adobe Haven’t these dickheads been charging Australians more for their products than anyone else for decades?

I think it's more aligned these days. But it used to be cheaper to fly to the USA, buy a copy of Adobe creative suite, go to Disneyland for the day and then fly home than it was to buy Creative Suite in Australia. It's all subscription-based, now.

Such an underrated film. Everyone in it is great.

Ha! It'd make a great pursuit car, but I expect maintenance costs and risk of repair after rough treatment excludes it from that role.

Val Kilmer died.
We knew it was coming, but all the same this is a sad thing.

When I was a kid, the doors on our trains in Perth were open on trains all the time. They could close, but it was all manual and nobody bothered unless it was raining. So, I'm not too bothered that anyone was in actual danger.

Transport Minister John Graham said the incident was the result of a manual override of the door and the matter would now be the subject of an investigation.

It sounds from this like the door was out of service and not talking to the train, but some dimwit manually opened it somehow.

No. Read past the headline. While they don't like it, Google is like the only US company actually complying with the Australian media code.

Getting lumped in with the others because you are a member of the same association is like me getting blamed for the actions of my local member of parliament because he represents me.

Fun fact: about 50 people in WA have GMT+8.5. Just for funsies.

I didn't say that. You've interpreted my words as that. That's on you.

Not going to lie - I love daylight savings and would vote for it if it came up again. The biggest draw for me however is to stay within 2 hours of the rest of the nation. If sucks to not be able to raise colleagues in Sydney/Melbourne after lunch. Meanwhile, they're waiting until after their lunch for me to show up online. I know it's only an hour difference, but it really feels like half a day professionally.

I also like the sun setting after 8pm, but that's less of a deal for me. If NSW/Vic/ACT/Tas stopped Daylight Savings Time, I'd stop caring all that much.

Take a look at Softmaker Office. It's not free, but it's loads cheaper than Microsoft. Home version is $50/year or $5/month. They have a free trial so you can have a play with it and see whether it'll break your spreadsheet.

I've only used it a little (I have MS Office through work stuff), but I found it to be very usable.

About Catfishing?

Basic I know, but search for stuff you're interested in. I get Aviation and Naval history, Some Marvel, whatever is going on at DashCams Australia, British Panel shows/Taskmaster and maybe some Star Wars/Trek stuff mostly.

What you don't click on matters as much as what you do. Oh, I always mark Shorts as "Not Interested", even if I would actually be interested. I despise short-form videos and would disable them entirely if I could. I can kill them for 30 days at a time on my iPad.