Looks like I’ve managed to give myself another headache.

Medication is holding it at bay for the moment, and I’m about to send in reinforcements. But I have a feeling it isn’t going to disappear without a fight. It could be a long and painful night.

But what’s really frustrating is I have no idea what caused it in the first place.

It’s not dehydration. It’s certainly not caffeine withdrawal (it’s been one of those days). And I haven’t had a late-night drinking session since before Christmas.

So I’m guessing it’s something that happened at work (or maybe something that didn’t happen). If I could think without wincing I might be able to work it out. But right now all I want to do is take some more medication and go to bed.

We have one of those thermometers at home that you can just rest on your forehead and it instantly tells you the temperature. (Well it did until the voice part went kaput. Fortunately it still shows up on the display.) Well, I’d like something similar that can tell me why I’ve got a particular headache so I can stop it happening again.

Or better still, something I can press against my forehead in the morning that will tell me if I’ll get a headache so I can avoid it altogether.

If there’s already a gizmo on the market that can tell me, let me know.

But for goodness sake, do it quietly.

Today I finally caught up with a friend of mine I haven’t seen in months.

We met about five years while she was doing some PR work for our organisation. (That’s one of the great things about doing IT work—you get to meet pretty much everyone in the place.) We got along straight away, and she quickly became one of my closest friends. I was quite upset when she left for another job a year later, but thankfully we’re stayed friends ever since.

So it was great to catch up with her for lunch on her day off, especially after the meeting I had before I left the office. (I won’t go into the details, but let’s put it this way: the relaxing ferry ride across the river couldn’t have come at a better time.)

A lot has changed since then. We’re both parents now, and so I got to have lunch not only with her, but also her 15-month-old daughter. (We worked out we’d last seen each other on her first birthday, so it’s been a while.) And I realised just how much of a parent I’ve become.

A couple of years ago the phrase “relaxing with a small child” is something I would have only used in a humour column. But now that I’m a dad I realise it’s actually possible. As we ate our lunch we chatted about our families, our work, and how much things have changed at work in the past five years. And apart from the occasional pauses while she fed her daughter it was just like old times.

In fact it was better, because I could actually help out. When her daughter started crying on the way to the park I didn’t hesitate to carry her and sing a few silly songs to try and cheer her up. Two years ago the most I would have done is make silly faces from a distance. Hold her? You’ve got to be kidding!

(And in case you’re wondering how I know everything changed two years ago, it’s my son’s second birthday tomorrow.)

Maybe that’s why it’s so great being a parent. You can sing silly songs. You can play on the swings (which I did). You can be a kid again, and rediscover the world through their eyes.

To my friend (who may be reading this) and your beautiful daughter, thank you for lunch, for the chat, and for the chance to be a kid for the afternoon.

It’s just what I needed.

So you’ve got a new mobile phone. Congratulations.

I can understand you’re excited. Chances are it has a million more features than your last phone, and you’re eager to try them all out. So go ahead, play with the compass, the GPS, and whatever else it has.

But please, wait until you get home before you start trying out all the ringtones.

Don’t try them out on the train as you’re heading to work. It’s early, and most of your fellow passengers are still waking up. (Why else would they be snoring in the seat beside you?) Start making loud noises and they’ll probably try to strangle you with their ID pass to make it stop.

Don’t try them out at the office. Thanks to the endless phone calls, meetings and other interruptions we don’t get a lot of time to actually work. So when we do finally get the time, we don’t want to spend it trying to drown out the latest ringtone you’ve downloaded from the Internet.

(Oh, and in case you’re thinking it’s okay because we’re all listening to music on our headphones, not even the latest noise-cancelling headphones can block out Crazy Frog.)

And for goodness sake, don’t play them all to your co-workers, especially if they work in IT. The sounds may be new to you, but chances are everyone else has heard them all before. And even if they haven’t, they really don’t care.

Don’t try them out on the train on your way home from work. Chances are everyone else in the carriage is on their way home from work as well, and after listening to managers and clients droning on all the day the last thing they want to hear is more droning from your damn phone.

On second thoughts, don’t try them out at home either. Your kids will definitely have heard them before (they may have even “bought” some of them for you, which is why your phone bill is so high). And your partner may end up lunging at you with a kitchen knife—especially if they’ve been looking after the kids all day.

So where can you try them out? Well, if I had my way I’d say never. Just stick with whatever it came with. If you can’t tell when your own phone is ringing, you need more than a new ringtone.

But if you must try them out, how about doing it in a soundproof booth? Don’t have one? Call this number now! Operators are standing by to take your order.

Well, except the ones who tried out their ringtones in the office.

One of my greatest childhood discoveries was being able to pick up one of the local television stations on my FM radio. I was soon hooking up to my father’s cassette recorder to tape my favourite sitcoms. (We only had 60-minute tapes, and so recording movies was way too much trouble.)

This was my first taste of being to replay a show (even though I only had the sound), and to re-live the emotions from when I first saw it. Admittedly this was the late 70s/early 80s, and back the emotional scenes were about as subtle as a sledgehammer. But it still amazed me that I could feel happy or sad at the push of a button. To me, it was a bit like magic.

Years later, when I moved out of home and got my very own VCR (my parents didn’t get one until my final year of high school) I recorded hundreds of movies. Most of them got played once before I recorded over them with another show. And some didn’t even make it past the first scene before being overwritten.

But every so often I’d record a movie that made me feel happy, sad, heroic, romantic, etc. When that happened I’d quickly pull the tab on the video cassette so I couldn’t tape over it. (Well, not easily. Anyone else do the sticky-tape trick when they couldn’t find a blank tape?) And if I ever felt down I’d just put the tape in, press ‘Play’, and by the time the show was over I’d be feeling a lot better. Again, magic.

These days I do most of my movie-watching on DVD, which means I no longer have to worry about tapes wearing out. (And believe me, a few of them did.) It also means I longer have to watch the entire movie to get that wave of emotion washing over me. Sometimes it’s a particular scene that does it for me, and now I can go straight to it.

Sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you need everything that comes before the scene for it to have the full effect. But sometimes a scene can stand alone, and it’s all you need to see for the magic to happen.

The good news is I can now put these movies on my iPhone, and with a few taps I can make the magic happen wherever I go.

So if you see me sitting somewhere looking at my phone with my headphones on and a huge grin on my face, don’t worry.

I’m just enjoying a little bit of magic.

It was D-Day for me today—Dentist Day.

It was actually supposed to be last Friday, but I had to stay home to look after my son. And of course, paranoia quickly set in. “You’re delaying it another five days? It’s already touch and go whether they’ll be calling you ‘Gummy’ by the end of the month.”

So I worked through “lunch” (I didn’t actually eat anything), and then made my way into town for my 2:30pm appointment. (Yes, that was the actual appointment time. Tooth hurty. Just like in the joke books I memorised when I was a kid.)

Tip: If you’re going to make a dentist appointment, make it in the morning. I didn’t want to eat and rock up with bits of food in my teeth. But by two o’clock I was close to passing out, so I ended up eating something anyway.

I sat in the chair, and the dentist lowered it to a position that so he could peer at me from above like the aliens always do in sci-fi movies when they’re performing experiments on someone. I opened my mouth wide, and he did the usual poking around.

“You’ve got a lot of tartar build-up,” he said.

I pretty much knew that. One of life’s simple pleasures is running your tongue along the bumps on the back of your bottom teeth. But I couldn’t feel any bumps, which is the usual sign that I need to see a dentist. Or possibly get a life.

But then he decided to show me what he was talking about, using a special camera hooked up to the screen above my head. And while I’ve seen “Finding Nemo” a hundred times and heard Gurgle say “Oh, the human mouth is a disgusting place” just as often, I never really took much notice until now.

I may never have a full night’s sleep again.

Then he started clearing it all away with the tool that makes the really annoying high-pitch squeal (much like kids when they get excited). This was pretty painful, not because of the noise or what it was doing to my teeth, but because I had to hold my mouth open for what seemed like hours. (On second thoughts it might be worth eating beforehand, because you might not have the jaw strength to chew after the event.)

It was all good in the end, although we decided I should visit every three months instead of every six because of how quickly the tartar seems to build up again.

Of course, the really painful part is usually when you get the bill. But today my health cover paid for the lot. So I have clean teeth and a (relatively) full wallet.

Oh, and of course those bumps on the back of my bottom teeth to rub my tongue along.

In primary school I had a friend who was really good at athletics. Whoever was up against him would aim for a ‘B’, because they knew he’d get the ‘A’. I was really jealous, and would have given anything to be as good as him.

Years later, in high school, I found out he was just as jealous of me because I was in the higher maths group. Now I didn’t think anyone would be jealous of a maths nerd (yes, I was quite definitely a nerd back then), but he was. From his perspective, being good at sport got him the sports card with all the A’s circled, but it didn’t make school work any easier for him.

These days my “talent” is writing. But it’s one I’ve had to work really hard at, because I sucked at English in high school. (My final English report card had five words written on it: “Fewer jokes, more work Bill”.) But even though it’s something I’m relatively good at, and that I’m damn proud of, I still get jealous when I see what other people can do.

Funnily enough, writers aren’t at the top of that list. Sure, I can name dozens of writers I’d love to be able to write like. (Does that sentence seem awkward to you?) But those writers inspire me more than anything else, because if I keep practising I may just get there. Even if I never reach their level, they teach me something and help me become a better writer.

No, the people I’m most jealous of are the ones who do things I’ve never been able to do: play a musical instrument, read music the way someone reads a book, draw something beyond stick figures (I must be the only person who runs whenever someone says the word “Pictionary”), paint a picture…

… and design a website.

I’ve got a heap of books on how to use CSS to do all sorts of magical things. I have hundreds of Photoshop tutorials sitting on my hard drive, just waiting to be devoured. But my blog still looks like someone stole all my crayons. (For those of you thinking, “Oh, he’s gone for the minimalist look”, it’s nothing like that. I just have no artistic ability whatsoever.)

I’ve thought about paying someone to do the design work for me, but then I realise I don’t even have a clue how I want it to look. So I go back to adding more posts, and hoping that one day the words will be so good people won’t realise they’re sitting on a blank canvas.

The funny thing is, whenever I tell graphic designers and web designers how much I hate them for what they can do, they come back with, “Yeah, but you can write”.

I wonder if they were good at athletics in primary school.

Yesterday’s post almost didn’t happen.

It was looking pretty good to begin with. My son fell asleep pretty quickly, and I was in front of the keyboard by nine. Given it takes me about an hour to write a post, I figured I’d be in by ten at the latest—something I haven’t managed to do in months.

At a quarter past eleven, with little more than a title (and a bad one  at that), I was ready to give up. I even tapped out a few paragraphs about how I couldn’t think of anything to write about, just so could post something up. But then I spotted the book I bought last night, connected it with an idea I had a few weeks ago, and the rest was frantic typing.

This happens a lot when I write. I’ll have a topic I want to write about, but it needs something else before I can get it to work properly. Once I find the combination that works, the writing is pretty easy.

But last night I had nothing to begin with, and nothing leapt into my mind to fill the void.

What I needed was a list of ideas I could draw from. I have one of those lists. In fact, I have dozens of them. Unfortunately I can never find them when I need them most.

Last year I bought half a dozen or so spiral-bound notebooks. The idea was to have one in my pocket at all times so I could write down ideas whenever they popped into my head. (“Bring pillow to next budget meeting.”) Unfortunately they kept snagging on the mesh pockets of my shorts, so I stopped using them.

(And before I go any further, the shorts were your standard, run-of-the-mill shorts, okay? It was the pockets that were mesh.)

At one stage I had a digital tape recorder, and I thought it would be a great way to store my ideas. But I felt really stupid talking into it in public, so that idea didn’t last very long at all.

I now have an iPhone, which I can use to type out my ideas. But it can be a real pain to whip out and start typing on, especially if I’m in the middle of a game of Line Up.

And of course I have dozens of ideas in files scattered across my computer’s hard drive (with meaningful names like “Ideas” and “Stuff”).

What I need is a way to bring all this stuff together in one place, and have it with me wherever I go so I can refer to it when I need an idea, and quickly add ideas as they come to me. It needs to be easy to use, small enough to fit in a pocket, and preferably waterproof. (You have no idea how many notebooks I’ve lost in the wash.)

If you know of such a thing, please let me know. It will help me not only write better blog posts, but also catch up on some much-needed sleep.

A friend of mine once told me the difference between guitar players and keyboard players. Guitarists usually have a favourite guitar they’ll play until it literally falls apart in their hands, whereas the keyboard player buys the latest model as soon as it comes out. For the guitarist it’s all about the sound. For the keyboard player, it’s all about the buttons, dials and gadgets.

When it comes to word processors, I’m very much like the keyboard player. Whenever a new version comes out I’ll grab it in the hope it has some new feature that will make writing easier for me. I’m up to Word 2007 now, and out of the thousands of features it has I probably only use half a dozen.

And I’m trying to bring that number down by one.

The real-time word count is probably what I love the most. It’s great to look down and see the words slowly building up. (Very slowly in some cases.) Of course, this is a blog and so word counts don’t really matter—I can write as much (or as little) as I want. But I seem to be averaging around 400 words a post, and so I always try to get close to that number.

The grammar check is nice, but I’ve learned to ignore those green squiggly lines. Word’s telling me the second sentence in that last paragraph has a problem (probably because it’s sentence fragment), but I think it works.

But there’s one feature I’m actually trying not to use—the readability statistics. I use it all the time at work, mainly to confirm the document I’ve been asked to edit really is as awful as I think it is. (“A hundred percent passive voice? You’ve got to be kidding me.”) It’s also a good way to see if I’m heading in the right direction by comparing the before and after stats. (And if I should start getting paid for every word I shorten them by.)

But I’m learning to avoid it here, because sometimes the numbers are scarier than the words.

In one of my earlier posts I wrote this paragraph:

I won’t miss the mad rush to get our son to day care in the morning. We’ll still have to take him (my typing can only entertain him for so long), but at least there won’t be a mad rush to get him there early enough so I can get a park at the train station because if all the car spaces are taken where on earth would I park and OMG I don’t know what to do!

According to Word, that second sentence is 62 words long, has a Flesch Reading Ease of 47.0 and a Flesch-Kincaid  Grade Level of 22.1. That last number in particular would frighten the hell out of me at work (I try to bring it down below 10). But again I think it works.

And to me, that’s what’s most important.

I’ve just realised my Internet download quota resets at midnight, and so I’m madly downloading anything that looks remotely interesting to use up what’s left.

If you’ve ever seen those competitions where some has five minutes to grab as much as they can from the supermarket shelves, you’ll know what it’s about. Thankfully the Internet is a little bit easier to control than a shopping trolley.

But unlike the supermarket scenario, chances are I’ll never get to actually use what I download. I’ll just add it to the collection of useless stuff already cluttering up my hard drive, which I’ll then delete down the track when I need more space. What I really need to download is some free time (or maybe a babysitter).

(I’ll now pause for the obligatory cry of “There’s an app for that!”)

For those of you wondering what all this quota talk is all about, we don’t have unlimited Internet plans in Australia. Instead you buy a plan that gives a certain number of gigabytes (“Not enough”, “Nowhere near enough”, “You’ve got to be kidding”, etc.) each month. Go over your limit, and either your connection gets slowed down to dial-up speed (ah, the nostalgia) or you get charged for every megabyte you go over. One download too many and you can kiss your house goodbye.

I’m on one of the “nostalgia” plans, so if I go over the limit I won’t lose my house. Instead my wife will probably leave me (she really hates being stuck on dial-up speed for three days because I’ve blown our limit) and then get the house in the divorce settlement.

Yes, I could just let it go and not worry about using it all up. But the stubborn part of me is saying, “You’ve paid for it, so you really should use it all”. Sometimes I’d like to lock the stubborn part of me in a cupboard for a few days and see what happens.

So here I am, downloading trailers for movies I’ll never get to see and subscribing to even more podcasts, despite the fact I already have enough on my hard drive/iPhone to keep me occupied for years.

Which may be a good thing, because my wife will probably get the TV in the divorce as well.