The great digital photo conundrum

It was a long overdue computer overhaul that brought to my attention we had a combined database of images (jpeg files) totaling more than 100,000. Gee willikers as they used to say in the 1950s sit-coms, to express amazement (today expressed as WTF or Holy F*** Batman, etc). Gee willikers is described in the Urban Dictionary and elsewhere as a ‘minced oath’ – like the perfect gentleman turning a forming curse into Jeepers, Jings or…

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Four in 10 Australians Move Every Five Years

You were warned that FOMM would be ruminating about the not-uncommon human need to periodically pack up and move on. We are not alone. Over 40% of Australians moved house at least once between one Census and the other and the ratio is higher still for younger people. According to the 2016 Census conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 43.4% of the overall population moved house between 2011 and 2016. Young people (20-29) were…

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Is vinyl just a fad?

The first reference that came up when I searched ‘vinyl fad’ was an advertisement for high waist stretch vinyl leggings (only $15.60 from boo-hoo Aus.). That’s not a plug, you understand, just an observation on the randomness of internet searches. Vinyl records, or LPs as they were known in my youth, have indeed made a comeback, after being superseded by compact discs (CDs) some 30 years ago. In the US, where such trends usually start…

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Junk Drawer Quest For Missing Key

The small stuff autumn clean-up starts with a simple search of the junk drawer for a missing filing cabinet key. I recently shifted my office downstairs and in the shifting, all the things which were in places known to recent memory have been displaced. But it gives me a good chance to clear out what we call ‘the drawer of drawers’ – a small, deep drawer in which we throw stuff which has no particular…

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