I'll post later on the beers I (and Katie) sampled, and I expect a similar post from Dave soon.
I just wanted to post quickly to indicate how much I enjoyed the event.
From my point of view it was a fantastic day, very professionally run, with an amazing list of quality beers. The crowd seemed mostly to be beer enthusiasts there for the taste, not to have a cheap drink. Security were friendly and professional and did what seemed to be a good job of organising the crowd.
Happily Dave managed to grab the couch upstairs for our four butts. Otherwise it might have been a much less comfortable (but no less fun I'm sure) day.
A similar event will be run in October.
Outside of the concept, the quality choice of beers, and the excellent staff and venue, my highest praise is for the timing of the event.
I've always wanted to go to the beer events at Federation Square, but I'm really not up to enjoying myself at any after work event. A lazy Sunday afternoon is far better suited to sampling beer with a clear, relaxed mind.
Key points:
If the Australian Tivo has two HD tuners and a large hard drive, the price is comparable to other products (around the $600 mark).
My remaining questions:
The last point is really all Tivo has against any competitors. Tivo will have access to program guides updated directly by the TV channels. I have to assume this means they'll be accurate, it's in the channel's interest. However, based on the guide that flows through automatically on digital TV, I have my doubts.
The concept of subscribing to a TV show, or even to an actor, really really appeals to me and if I can see that working well, I'll buy.
Unskipable in menu adverts any longer than a couple of seconds (that is, two seconds) would kill it. I don't mind the lack of auto-ad-skipping, as long as it has a VHS-like fast forward function. I've yet to see a DVD player or media player with a fast forward function that works anywhere near as well as VHS.
How does Tivo deal with their product breaking? How do they deal with irate customers ringing up complaining they've lost two weeks worth of unwatched TV that irreplaceable (ignoring bittorrent)?
But bittorrent is hard to ignore...
My script is almost the same. I'm not going blind, it's just the coating coming off my glasses. Something that happens every two years, but I forget. Their efforts to clean my specs made them much much worse. So I'm living in blur-city for two weeks.
[Although I've just remembered I have a spare pair, I should use those.]
My lazy eye is worse, but this isn't something the optometrist can see and so doesn't much care about. However, because it's worse, and because my glasses have been so bad, I've ignored the fact it has been blurrier than usual. Turns out it has been drying out at night and when I open my eye, bits of skin get ripped off. He took a photo of little patches of damaged skin on my eyeball. Eyeball photo!
So now I must take drops before bed. He thinks this problem might be something my old optometrist was trying to chase down all my life, but I'm not convinced. The little graphs with circles on them were my indications of where the darkness was in my lazy eye, not blurriness. But at least we're sort of on the same page.
Drops. My attempts to deliberately put things in my eye failed. Perhaps I should be happy my automatic defence systems work so well. My eyelids got well lubed. I had to ask Katie, who had no mercy, but still didn't do so well.
I always find it hard to explain my "lazy eye" to people. I think the Wikipedia article on Amblyopia does a pretty good job (Strabismic amblyopia):
Strabismus, sometimes erroneously also called lazy eye, is a condition in which the eyes are misaligned in a variety of different ways. Strabismus usually results in normal vision in the preferred sighting eye, but may cause abnormal vision in the deviating or strabismic eye due to the discrepancy between the images projecting to the brain from the two eyes. Adult-onset strabismus usually causes double vision (diplopia), since the two eyes are not fixated on the same object. Children's brains, however, are more neuroplastic, and therefore can more easily adapt by suppressing images from one of the eyes, eliminating the double vision. This plastic response of the brain, however, interrupts the brain's normal development, resulting in the amblyopia.
If I "let" my right eye join in the fun with my better left eye, I have double vision. If I remove my glasses and deliberately focus, my eyes cross.
Somehow just talking about this makes me feel ten times nerdier...