Hi 2015.

I made you a mixtape with a CDs worth of my favourite songs from 2014.

1. The Bug - Function
   
2. Girl Talk & Freeway - Tolerated (feat. Waka Flocka Flame)
   
3. Architecture in Helsinki - In the Future
   
4. Röyksopp & Robyn - Do It Again
   
5. Sia - Burn the Pages
   
6. Milky Chance - Down by The River
   
7. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Runners In The Night
   
8. Manchester Orchestra - Every Stone
   
9. Lykke Li - Gunshot
   
10. M∅ - Fire Rides
    
11. Tycho - Montana
    
12. Caribou - Can't Do Without You
    
13. Spoon - They Want My Soul
    
14. Run The Jewels - Blockbuster Night Part 1
    
15. Busdriver - Ego Death
    
16. Cold War Kids - First
    
17. White Sea - Prague
    
18. iamamiwhoami - Blue Blue
    
19. Trust - Joyland
    
20. Foster the People - Ask Yourself
    

Maybe I'll see you around some.

I went into town tonight wearing shorts and I was granted access to four out of the four venues I attended.

This is definitive proof that on a Friday night you can get a into every open venue in Adelaide whilst wearing shorts.

This gives me hope for society in 2015.

On January 1st, 2014 I woke up a twenty-something in the spare room of our friends house, at the time it was my temporary residence. Since then much has changed, I'm now a 30 year old with a house, a dog, a new job, another year of marriage and I'm connected to the NBN.

So what did I achieve in 2014? I mean, the less important things obviously.

I...

was best man in a wedding. I didn't lose the rings.

taught myself to bake Twisted Delights and got slightly fatter. I also made fairy bread with Nutella and sourdough.

changed an engine's oil for the first time ever. Totally worth it. Apologies to my old lawn mower, wherever you are now.

changed circular fluorescent light globes for the first time ever. The moment I truly felt like a homeowner. It was easier than the engine oil.

didn't go to Sydney for the first time since 2009. Although I might have flown briefly across the south-eastern tip of NSW.

ate more yogurt than I ever had before. Enough to justify a spreadsheet.

swam with the oysters in Port Lincoln. I didn't see any while I was in the water, but they were around there somewhere past the sharks.

retired from Basketball. Although I still watch the NBA.

ran a lot. Including my longest distance ever and my most runniest calendar month after which I was slightly less fatter.

So I got one of these Smartphone Gorillapods so that I can take movies with my phone on a tripod. This helps me take videos on my phone which aren't super shaky. This means I can focus on taking videos of my dog in hopes of monetizing her cuteness via YouTube to pay for her ear infection vet bills. Actually, Pet Insurance covers that so the YouTube ad money will go towards the Pet Insurance.

Here's the first video I made with it. See how stable it is!

I also got one of these camera dollys, sadly my giant phone does not fit into the clamp. Fortunately I found a solution for that too:

I decided that today I would be the change I want to see in the world and I wore shorts to the office. I figured that if I could wear shorts and get into the Talbot Hotel on a Friday night then 2015 was surely the year that office shorts will join better ICT security as key issues facing Australian IT shops.

This decision had absolutely nothing to do with my contract being changed into a permanent position just before Christmas.

Early next year I will celebrate my decaversary of spending (most) weekdays in an office, and this was the first time I've ever shown up for work in shorts. Not even on the most casual of casual Fridays had I considered it. As I strolled through the corridors this morning towards the kitchenette to deposit my lunch in the office fridge I felt so self conscious that I might as well have been walking around with my genitals flapping about. By lunchtime I'd gradually become settled with the sensation, and I passed a few others also sporting shorts which helped on what was most definitely a shorts-weather kind of day.

Ultimately I think that so long as my productivity doesn't suffer, and I don't have any client facing meetings, that there is no reason that shorts are any less acceptable than skirts in an office environment. I think my productivity was actually increased today thanks to my increased comfort and the lack of morning-walk sweat I brought up the elevator with me. I assume my productivity will continue to increase in shorts, except for maybe an initial blip while I take a longer than normal lunch break to check the January sales for my office appropriate shorts.

The day we got Nash she was given a pink Puppy Kong as one of her first presents.

Somehow it's managed to last nine months while hundreds of other toys have died, some literally in seconds.

Finally this week Nash decided to destroy the Puppy Kong, which I assume this is her way of telling us she's a grown up now.

It's been nine days and I've now come up with my new year's resolution. Not very efficient, I know, but last year it took me 364 days and 18 hours to come up with a resolution, and that resolution was not to be bitten by a snake in 2014. I did come up with that one right before walking through some dry scrub on the way back to my new years eve party, but it goes to show that allocating a lot of time to think about resolutions does not equate to high quality resolutions being made.

Anyway, my 2015 resolution is to write a terrible novel. You probably can't write a great novel without first writing a terrible novel... unless you're talented or something. So if I want to write a great novel I need to practice and write a terrible novel, or else I might end my life being very good at writing only the beginnings of novels.

The third in my series documenting my past foot commutes brings us to Sydney Olympic Park. Photos in this set were taken in October 2013 after overnight rains. If you're wondering why I've decided to post photos of my old Sydney life on this night, it's because I had some good journalling momentum but not much content.

The first thing I'd see on my walk to the train station would be the inside of the lift as it dropped me 19 floors to ground level.

Neighbouring our apartments was a large construction site where another trio of large apartment buildings were being built. These ones were circular, ours were square.

Once I'd passed those future buildings most of the remaining steps were through pleasant parkland.

Thanks to this bridge I didn't have to cross a single road in the first 90% of the walk.

Then I'd walk through this arch of trees. I liked this part because it was shady. Many other stretches of the walk were not shady. Sometimes in the evening trip home I would need to walk around groups having wedding/engagement photos taken here. It was quite a popular location. Sometimes I decided I'd just be in the photos.

After the tree arches I had to walk past the water feature. Every morning I would choose to walk left or right around it. I mostly chose left.

At about the halfway point was this lookout tower, I could use it to see if my train was coming, although in doing so I would miss my train.

Behind the lookout was steps down to the next bridge. This was a relaxing part of the trip because once again there was shade, and it was a brief stretch where I didn't have to stay alert for cyclists speeding on a beeline for my backside.

Across this bridge was the picnic area, the basketball ring and then the exit to the park.

The river stretched a long way. Sometimes when the tide was out it smelled like poop. One Monday I saw a bicycle under the water. It might still be there.

This was the bridge where I would allow myself to check my phone to see how late I was running for the train. I welcomed its shade from the sun/shelter from the rain. There was a freeway above, a lot of the time it was gridlocked.

Outside the park there was just one leafy suburban street to walk up until I reached my train station. Because I only went into the office a couple of times a week I would then have to wait in line to buy a daily ticket, looking over my shoulder in case the train was coming.

I could see my house from the train station! It was usually an uplifting sight at this stage of my return journeys.

The End.

Over the Christmas break I may have attempted to grow a beard. It didn't start of intentionally, just a series of serendipitous circumstances lead to me starting my break with a few days growth already. Given my lack of office meetings, general summer day apathy and the knowledge that my 30s would probably offer few if any opportunities to walk around with pubescent bumfluff on my face. I lasted about twelve days before admitting defeat and removing it from my face before 2015 started.

None of this is important. I mention it though because of what happened next. Doubtlessly you will recall in vivid detail my entry on June 21, 2011 where I described in detail my new shaver. The ES8249s is still going strong today, although sometime early last year it did develop a fault with it's LCD screen. All of the sprites in the LCD display would turn on when running and it meant that the time and battery level readouts were both incomprehensible. Seeing as neither piece of information is required for shortening the hair on my face I decided I'd just live with the risk of running out of battery mid-shave, and never knowing when I set a PB.

That's how I lived for months, then I grew a beard. Then I shaved that beard, and like magic the moment it was down the drain my shaver's LCD display works again! I assume it was a magic beard.

Only need a tiny amount of toast?

Buy a breadroll.

I'm in an exciting period of maturity right now where I learn more advanced things about simple topics. I'm talking specifically about everyday things that humans start doing from their teenage years and continue doing for most of their lives. Like hanging out clothes after you wash them. I'm sure most people in their early 20s tried the whole "let's see if my load of washing will dry inside the basket if I don't hang it out all weekend." Maybe it just needed more time? These days I hang my shirts up the moment the washing machine tells me it's reversing. That was maturity baselined. Even more recently I've worked out that I should also hang my shirts in the wardrobe and shut the door as soon as they're finished drying. This stops them from drying out, fading and needing to be replaced. Being old enough to have lived through a complete "fashion cycle" now, nothing appeals to my above-average maturity than having the same polo shirt in good condition for when polos come back in a second time.

Surprisingly this entry is not about laundry, instead it's about another advanced strategy I have found when it comes to drinking beers during a day. This year Australia Day and the Hottest 100 countdown were on a Monday. This was pretty un-Australian, and I don't recall it ever happening that way when Gillard was in charge. Six years ago I probably would have attempted to moderate my beers from midday, decided Bundy was a great idea around 6pm and had a very unpleasant 27th. Now, with my above-average wisdom and maturity I planned a day of BBQ eating and music listening while drinking every second beer from a pack of mid-strength stubbies! Streuth! It worked perfectly. I woke up this morning feeling chipper and my current bottle of Bundy remains unopened and waiting for an early afternoon session that doesn't precede a work day. Meanwhile, full strength beer drinkers tend to validate my theory.

I filled up with petrol yesterday and it was only 99.9c a litre.

I like to think I have an average-to-good understanding of the basics of economics, politics and marketing so this wasn't particularly amazing.

I'm too busy to work out if it's recycling bin week or green waste week.

Bullshit.

That's weak.

Not a lot bothers me, but right up there is every Australian neighbourhood's lack of critical thinking when it comes to which bin night it is.
Is it really that difficult to remember which bin you put out last week? When you feel the resistance in your brain when you try to recall, and you succumb to it, can't you feel your memory muscles slowly atrophying?

Don't Even.

The recycling truck is not going to come a week early just because you're a sheep.

Don't get me started on the stubbornness of folks who continue to live in denial and leave their mistakenly placed recycle bin on the curb well into the next evening, even after bringing their rubbish bin back inside.

"Well, I guess I can leave it out for next week, it's only six days away now."

I feel like this is a stunning microcosm of modern society's FOMO.

Sometimes I think about replacing bradism.com with a new online journal system. One that is more stable, looks better on multiple devices, is probably way less hackable, easier to update, integrates instagram and facebook, and has cooler features than this home cooked and completely unique web content management system.

I don't think I ever will. I've pretty much learned all the shortcuts, the idiosyncrasies and the manual workarounds to make it do what I need. Plus I'm too lazy to change. That does sound exactly like me. Given that I make up 99% of my own readership I can't see any kind of revolt occurring unless some technological breakthrough occurs that renders PHP generated HTML obsolete. Even now, almost ten years after I made it, this website manages to look good on mobile browsers. Although that may say more about the talents of today's mobile application developers than it does about my pre and post-nightfill battering of the keyboard in the summer of 2004.

The frequency of my updates has definitely decreased over the years. My first 500 entries are spread over 836 days. The next 500 came over 1176 days, exactly 168 weeks. The most recent 500 took 1974 days or 282 weeks. That's over five years! (For some reason all of my quincentennial entries have fallen on Fridays.)

I guess these statistics could seem confusing. I mean, the past five years of my life has almost undoubtedly been the most significant of my post-journal creating existence. There's been marriage, puppies, moving, travelling, national and international work, multiple new jobs and experiences. But then, I never journal about anything important, so really the numbers make sense.

Last year was clearly my worst year for writing things that aren't important (or at least posting them online), and I intend to rectify that this year. This will occur probably not with extra introspection, more likely I'll just cross post my instagram uploads and Facebook status updates. Plus who knows what else. I'll evaluate it in another 500 entries.

Shouts out to all my regular readers, I do this for you.

How nice it was to receive some feedback from readers after my 1500th entry yesterday. I enjoyed the theories about why the frequency of entries has trended down over time.

"Did you ever think that, when you first started Bradism. you had a backlog of things to say? Maybe that's why the first 500 entries appeared so much faster."

Unlikely. Particularly given that the first 100 entries were actually ported from my old journals and many of the rest were about contemporary issues like the weather, petrol prices and cricket results.

"Did you ever think that maybe your entries decreased because you stopped being funny?"

:(

"Your 500th entry was in 2006, shortly after you bought a new camera. The 1000th entry came in 2009 right before you bought a DSLR. There's an expression 'a picture says a thousand words', have you extrapolated your image posts out and compared the total created content between the three periods after taking that into account?"

It is true that it took me until late 2006 to start posting entries with pictures in them, and until 2010 when I started posting multiple photo entries with any regularity. But that probably has more to do with me being too lazy to write image uploading code and an image album feature than anything else.

"Post more Lego photo stories about boring office stories, please."

Okay, now I know these are fake.

Awww shit.

Photos of the Month July 2007... No, wait... In memory of all those months that passed without content.

January 2015 in Adelaide has been a mild one.

Continue Reading Phone Photos of the Month - January 2015...

Our recycle bin did not get collected by the council yesterday morning. I rang up the waste hotline and asked if it was because of my journal entry last week. They said no, they didn't know what I was talking about.
The whole street got skipped. I think it's unlikely someone from every household made an arrogant post on the internet about how good they are at knowing which bin to put out, especially seeing that half of them put theirs out incorrectly last week, it was more likely because of some roadworks.

My call to the Waste Hotline lasted less than sixty seconds. I went into the empty boardroom, dialed the number, told them my address and they said they'd send a truck out today or tomorrow. I was like, hmm, this is what it's like being in senior management.

There's an old man who lives down the street from me. There might be one who lives down the street from you, too. Every day that I pass his house I see him, sitting on his porch, or by the rusted front gate. He's never with company; always alone. I see him early in the morning, late in the afternoon, any time of the day. He sits, idling, watching, lonely. He's passing the rest of his time on this world with the nothing for entertainment. Nothing except passersby and jobless birds. Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.

Sometimes, when I see him, the orange glow of sunset on his blank, wrinkled face I wonder if anyone in my neighbourhood has ever had the courage to talk to him. To say, "Hello". To ask him the obvious questions, "What's wrong with your internet connection? You're locked out of your house, aren't you?"

I was in Adelaide this week and I bumped into someone I knew. We didn't have much of a conversation, they just asked, "Did you see anything at the fringe?"
"Yes!" I said, pleased I could respond positively. "I did see anything at the fringe, at somewhere at the fringe."
"That's great! Isn't it wonderful that local, national and international acts like anything at the fringe come to Adelaide?"
"Oh, definitely. It helps me feel hip, kind of makes up for spending the rest of the year getting my culture from American television and reddit. Plus I get to be a part of this citywide festival that everyone else is taking part in too. So when people ask if I saw anything at the fringe I don't have to admit that I spent the whole month at home."
"What did you think of somewhere at the fringe? Wasn't it so Bohemian?"
"Oh, it was the quirkiest, the atmosphere totally suited seeing something at the fringe."
"Would you recommend it?"
"Definitely, I give anything at the fringe five stars just because afterwards I can say, 'I saw anything at the fringe' and it was amazing."
"Wow. Did you see any other shows at the fringe?"
"No."

I feel a stronger than usual sadness that this summer is fading to an end.

Maybe I'm just sad because tomorrow might be the last acceptable casual Friday I can wear shorts to work for a little while.

In 2010 as I was nearing completion of my wrist rehab the physiotherapist gave me a piece of strapping I could use as a brace during physical activity.
"It's a bit pricey," he said. (Eighteen Dollars). "But hopefully you'll get a few uses out of it."
In 2015 I decided to replace that strapping.

The difference is incredible.

Had to come up with dinner tonight using fridge randoms.

After frying it all up it smelt like a baked beans pizza.

Garnish with some Parmesan cheese.

Should have used the Ham Sauce baked beans.

It was on this date exactly ten years ago that I made my first official post on Bradism.com. Prior to that all my entries had been made manually by editing HTML in notepad and uploading it via FTP.

Yes, I know this jubilee seems kind of reminiscent of my 10 years of journaling in 2011 - when I first created that html file in notepad - but it's kind of different too. Like how the AFL celebrated its centenary in 1996 and then celebrated 150 years of AFL in 2008.

The second most frequent question I receive about Bradism is "When is the book coming out?" Well, for the first time I have an answer, 2016! Obviously I was aiming for today... but things have been busy lately. Surely my continuing ascent into my thirties will offer me more time to trawl through the Bradism archives for best-of content than my late twenties did, right?

I saw the show "Leo" at the Fringe tonight.

It was an incredible hour featuring a solo performance of amazing, acrobatic feats of balance and endurance. The human body, pushed to its limits.

Obviously the Menagerie venue's seating was not designed for people of my proportions.

I kind of want to climb Mount Everest. Due to my above average height, and the movement of tectonic plates, I could claim to have been the highest person on the world.
But I know the moment I do it some Sherpa is going to use my backpack like a step-ladder, clamber onto my shoulders and steal my glory, leaving me with little recourse and an awkward silence the whole way back home.

We've officially reached that point in the year where I have to remember which flavours of Cup a Soup I like. And I have to use the BOM radar to plan my runs.

Over the Summer there was a news story about a Hepatitis A contamination afflicting a certain brand of frozen berries. Sometime in the previous twelve months prior a poor, sick person in China had defecated and his or her shit was then harvested and used to fertilise some raspberries that would be snap frozen, transported thousands of kilometres on a boat, sold with double FlyBuy points and then blended into a dessert smoothie for some unlucky Australians. What a time to be alive.

I never had my Hep A vaccination as a child, but I tried not to involve myself in the resulting societal panic/trending hashtag that followed. It was like the Sydney Siege all over again (Omigod, I walked through Martin Place during a family holiday in 1995 - it could have been me!) I was pretty sure I hadn't eaten any of that brand of berries (...Where do they source the berries for jam from? And pastries with that raspberry filling? That berry flavoured shampoo and conditioner that costs less than $2? Jesus Christ.) I primarily knew I'd avoided them because there had always been cheaper brands available and the berries in those packets were sourced from Chile where they probably also have a lot of poverty but they seem to have higher standards about what poo they apply to the berries. At least the ones they export to Australia.

Also, it's a whole lot easier to live in denial rather than tempt fate by getting a blood test.

A while later when everyone had forgotten about berries and was focused on fretting about metadata I figured the lines at the GP would be short again and I decided I should do something about my Hepatitis vaccinations. It doesn't take nostradamus to predict that I'm probably going to consume a lot more imported food/feces as I grow older in the modern world. To be honest I also made the GP appointment because I/the internet had convinced me that I had a hernia in my groin (nope - just a classic soft-tissue exercise injury). As a man it's not worth me spending 15 minutes receiving free health care unless I have at least two things to have seen to.

After I'd pulled my pants up the doctor sent me off for blood tests to determine my official hepatitis infection/resistance status. A few days later the results came back and he confirmed that I was free of the disease as well as the antibodies and so I could have the vaccine. Then his tone changed and he pointed out some other metrics in my test results. I was low in iron, he explained. Oh no. I explained that I'd let Sam Neill down and I had been eating pretty much only chicken lately for ethical and thrifty reasons. He nodded, but wasn't satisfied and he retrieved some plastic tubes from a draw and handed them to me. Faecal haematology tests. Three days worth. Each tube contained a tiny plastic sword which I would have to poke into my human poo.

If you have never skewered your shit before you might not know that it's not allowed to touch the water first. The doctor suggested that I could lay a few sheets of toilet tissue on the surface of the water before I jettisoned my 750g daily surpluses. Sure, he's been through medical school, I'll trust in his wisdom. A short lived trust, the splash proved.

Day two and with a lot more strategy and toilet tissue I was able to achieve my undesirable desire and provide a sample. Three consecutive days I did this, wondering what I'd done to deserve this. Oh yeah, I'd gone to the doctor about my concerns about avoiding contact with human excrement.

The irony was not lost on me.

I wasn't looking forward to a day of a low-fibre diet.

I figured maybe today could be the day I give in to that gnawing feeling to binge eat cinnamon donuts that they now sell for $3 a dozen in Coles and Woolworths.

I was grumpy from my lack of Weet Bix, and I was not pleased to find that supermarket donuts do not taste good anymore. Maybe they never did? Or maybe the price drop has also seen quality of ingredients go down, down.

There was once a Weet Bix marketing campaign where successful athletes would challenge you to answer how many Weet Bix you do. Well, now that I'm 30 the answer is typically somewhere between 1 and 1.5.

Today I did nine shitty cinnamon donuts. It was a foolish plight to distract myself, because as soon as I picked my dozen I saw only twelve brown, puckered arseholes facing up at me.

My first Lego Pirate Ship and my first colonoscopy preparation. I never expected that these two things would happen on the same day.

Coming up on ten years I have been signing off my work emails with:

Cheers,
Brad

A week ago I decided to drop off the comma.

I send about 50 emails each day. So far this week I have already saved enough time to type an extra 250 characters!

Coff-a-Soup. It's a thing I invented at work where you make a coffee at the start of the day, get too busy to wash your mug, and then at morning tea-time you decide to make a soup because it's chilly and through the windows outside you can see nothing but gloomy clouds.

Because I know what will fix BPM configuration issues, it's rehydrated creamy chicken and herb soup, with a hint of Blend 43.

Coopy. This is a drink enjoyed in the afternoon, pretty much anytime after 3pm and whoever is talking to you and asking questions goes away. So, pencil in 3:15. It's a drink where you make another mug of instant coffee and try not to fill it up all the way to the top where the leftover flakes of chives are dried on.

Coff-a-Coopy. So, when you get to work the next day and you really need a coffee..

It's rare to experience a day so warm and sunny this close to the winter solstice. And on a weekend too!

The possibilities were endless. A full load of washing dried AND I got to mop the floor. Winning.

Only downside was delaying my soup making until tomorrow night's storms.

Killing it.

Critical Thinking is one of the greatest things attributes of humanity, and dolphinmanity, and some types of crow and ravenity. Drawing on experience as a basis for making logical connections and decisions is pretty cool.

I was pondering critical thinking just the other day, at about 2:45 in the morning while trying to sleep in a hotel in Cairns. This hotel was modern and well designed, with the rooms on each level encircling a large, open courtyard and access between them on open walkways. It was architecture which created a sort of futuristic space-station vibe. And I digged it, until I realised that having no walls between every room and floor of large hotel on a Friday night is a bad idea.

Basically, somewhere in the hotel a woman was locked out of her room and was trying to rectify this situation by banging a gate against its metal frame and screaming, "Billy" as loudly as possible. Other variations included, "Billy, let me in." and "Billy, I need my fucking phone."
The gate banging and yelling continued for quite some time, but not with enough rhythm to effectively filter it out and get back to sleep. It reminded me of trying to sleep when neighbourhood dogs are barking. Just when you think the yapping is completed another burst occurs.

During this banging and yelling I thought about what I would do in this situation. The obvious answer was to go downstairs to the 24 hour reception desk, ask the receptionist to call Billy, which would hopefully wake him up, and problem solved. "Critical Thinking!" I thought to myself, pleased, between rounds of banging.

After a few minutes had passed it seemed like Billy's girlfriend also had a moment of critical thinking. The banging paused, and then returned with doubled volume and frequency. This lasted another few minutes and then it all stopped entirely. I suspect her solution may also have been effective.

I was already home from work and in my slippers when I realised that today might have to be the day I drive to Dick Smith for my click and collect package. Click and Collect truly is a compromise of convenience. You're saving money for your order to be delivered to a shop somewhere near your house. As opposed to paying for your order to be delivered via paper-slip proxy to a post office somewhere near your house.

My mood was instantly lifted as I reversed out of the driveway and the radio turned on to the opening bars of Ratatat's Cream on Chrome. It literally could not have been better timing. The Jeep cut through dark, wintry streets as the first crescendo built. The guitar slithered in, the synths soared. Traffic lights stayed green just long enough for me to squeeze on through. Well, then I reached a level crossing as the boom gates were just coming down.

Ratatat's instrumental scores are sometimes the absolutely best thing ever. Listening to them when you're doing semi-automatic things like driving or strutting makes you feel like Kanye West must feel inside his head when he does mundane things.

This entry is not going in any particular direction. This week I bought my first mechanical keyboard and I think I'm just typing for the sake of hearing my own voice.

It wouldn't be a fucking Monday without arriving at the office and hearing dozens of dyads echoing each other with complaints about the weather. Like the one I overheard as I left the elevator:

"It was so cold this weekend!" "Omg, this weekend, so cold!" "Yes, so cold." "Cold. So cold..."

It makes me laugh at how egotistical we all are. The difference in Adelaide's 8:30 AM air temperature and our core body temperature varied by only 0.00005 percent of the range of valid temperatures possible in the universe, and yet everybody immediately starts whining.

So that problem with my phone's camera focus turned out to be a cracked lens, and not a software bug. I tried to fix it by smashing out the glass with a knife and replacing it with new lens glass. This… did not go so well. Afterwards I had a camera that worked, but was incapable of focus. Well, I could focus by moving my feet.

It didn't stop me from trying to send Snapchats though.

Continue Reading Cameraphone Photos of the Month - June 2015...

Sometimes, when it's the middle of winter and the camera on your phone is broken it feels like life is too drab and dismal to demand journaling anything.

Then it hits you... What if dismality is directly related to your dearth of journaling?

Plus, you never know when a journal entry will come in handy later. For instance, today I went to buy a new pen and was able to make a better decision by finding a journal entry from 2012 where I posted a photo of a pen.

You ever decide one day to deprive yourself of something you do regularly and love? Like, going a month without beer, or no-added-sugar, low-fat yogurt. Just to see if you can do it? Just to see if it makes you feel alive? And it makes you really appreciate what you've been taking for granted, even though you're plainly aware that you enjoy it.

I've gone a month without taking photos with my phone. And, amazingly, I've found my life has actually improved by... Shit. I can't lie, it's like the worst thing that's ever happened to me in the post-Snapchat age. You practically can't live in society these days without taking photos with your phone. As far as July 2015 goes it may well have never happened as I have no photos to prove it. I'll have to rely on my fitness tracker records and my Fly Buys account details purely to remember that I was even alive.

If I really grasp at straws, however, I can kind of say that one advantage of having no phone camera is that for photos of the month I can describe the amazing photos I would have taken, had my camera not been busted, instead of actually taking them. Plus, I didn't have to get into the weird postures to take these photos at the right position/angle, nor endure strangers wondering what kind of weird selfie I could be taking facing the camera away from me, and with no meal in sight.

Here are text descriptions of the July 2015 Cameraphone Photos of the Month.

1. Shiny, blue early morning dew on overgrown green grass.

2. Vibrant stalks of lavender growing along the footpath, the sunrise in the background

3. Adelaide oval under lights and a downpour, from high in the western stand.

4. Gus at night at Steve and Kristen's house-warming, wearing a fashionably knotted scarf / rollover for Gus in a sunlit front bar watching The Showdown with a fashionably knotted scarf.

5. Grange beach after a winter run, the clouds approaching sunset reflected in large puddles on the dirt path behind the dunes.

6. A grainy photo of our quiz-night answer sheet at the Curious Squire, showing the cartoon drawing of the quiz master.

7. At Henley Beach square, A large sign on temporary fencing that reads "Business as Usual" and through the fence the destruction of construction clearly illustrating that things are not as usual.

8. Something I cooked or baked

9. Claire and Josh's roaring fire.

10. Cowan eating a blue frosted cupcake on the Fourth of July with a big, goofy smile.

11. Nash after a bath looking equally fluffy and unimpressed.

12. North Terrace office towers glowing in 5pm golden sunset. Rollover for Parliament House post-sunset with orange and black clouds of dusk filling the background to the horizon. (If dicking around in Photoshop makes the colours and dynamic range particularly sharp, post as separate photo rather than a rollover.)

13. Vanessa wearing a pompom-beanie and two jumpers under a furry blanket and a cute, pouty face.

14. Chow at Lucky Lupitas presenting a trunk of beers to the cook to say thank you for years of feeding him Mexican food (Chow description of a cameraphone photo of the month.)

15. A couple of ducks sleeping in the midday sunshine on the bank of the Torrens River, with caption "Stop being lazy and make the fucking ducklings, ducks. I need some Spring."

Well Journal, I think I might have missed a trick. I've only just realised I've been missing out on enjoying granola. I was in Bondi yesterday waiting for Vanessa to run the City to Surf and while she was running 14km I spent a similar amount of time finding the best Granola in Bondi. I found it first go, at a little cafe a few streets back from the beach and run by a collection of European backpackers who had arrived sometime in the nineties and never left.

You only get so many breakfasts in life, and I have to admit I might have WASTED some of mine buying bacon and egg rolls or omelettes from cafes which go rubbery and cold on windy days. Granola can't go cold and tasteless. The Granola was crunchy and creamy. Sweet and savoury. It was a vegan Granola with gluten-free poached fruit and yogurt raised in barns, not cages. And it was delicious.

Sometimes I will describe to others the things which I do between nine and five on weekdays as "system administration". Other times, particularly close to tech seminars on new technologies with free beer and food I'll refer to myself as DevOps.

What is DevOps? To me, it's the difference between fixing or deploying something (operations) manually, versus coding a script or application (developing) that does the operation (operations) for you, usually automatically.

Tech seminars usually make me feel ignorant because the bleeding edge technologies which are presented always seems so far from what I can actually work with in whichever current enterprise client I'm working for. In Adelaide, however, they do reunite me with clients that I worked with many years ago. It does make me feel accomplished when they say, "Hey, it's Brad. We're still using his scripts from eight years ago to deploy our apps."

Being able to leave a legacy of automation as I move from job to job helps me to validate myself as DevOps. I always think, if I'm using the same journal code a decade later I must be doing something right.

Well, another year older and not much to say about it.

Today I went for a lunchtime run to try and keep myself fit and youthful for as long as possible into my plummet into old age.

My phone camera is still broken. So....

Drank a banana and strawberry smoothie for breakfast while listening to Boston. I feel like since I turned 31 I have developed an insatiable appetite for classic rock. Could just be Spring doing it.

In the evening I spilled rice all over the floor and then I felt like I was in a vacuum cleaner commercial.

Later I listened to Enya to make me feel like a child again.

I wait eleven months a year for days like today. Cool mornings, nice in the sunshine when there's not a chilly gust. I have long-sleeve T-shirts in my wardrobe literally hanging out waiting for this tiny sliver of weeks where they're appropriately comfortable.

Alas I must have read one too many El Niño doomsday articles during that 35 degree weekend at the start of October. I believed the hype and for some reason I picked out a polo shirt before I walked out of the house today to gray skies.

I instantly regretted it. To add to the insult I was swooped by birds on the way to the train station who spotted my short sleeves and goosebumps from a hundred metres away and felt the need to give me haircut to remind me it was still Spring, mofo.

I was heading out of the office for a lunchtime stroll and I had already put my new noise cancelling headphones on. They're like polarised sunglasses for my ears. It's amazing.

As I walked towards the exit I passed a co-worker who said something to me. I heard none of it, due to the noise cancelling. I turned back, took the headphones off my ears and I asked him to repeat.

He told me he has the exact same headphones, and that their noise cancelling power is amazing.

It was pleasant small talk, but I'm not sure if it was ironic.

I was expecting another Summer of banana and honey smoothies for breakfast every day until fate intervened. A single pineapple ring that hadn't fit onto the previous night's pizza was left in the fridge. I substituted the honey's sweetness for the pineapple today and I discovered a WHOLE. NEW. WORLD.

On pretty much the final night of Winter 2015 I was taking off my ugg boots before bed and the sole ripped right off the left one.

It was such perfect timing. I was going to write a journal entry about it, but I'd shut down my computer only seconds earlier.

Anyway, this was months ago.

I feel like if I hang up some big, blue ribbons on the front of my house I could blow people's minds.