December 2006 Archives

The last week or so I have really been getting into creating slide shows and converting some of my old video to DVD, I originally started off wanting to put some of my favourite pictures of Romilly to music onto a DVD that friends and family could view (see here). I also had some video footage of Annabelle's friend Pip and her baby Elijah that I wanted to get onto DVD for them as they dont have a video camera of their own.

A week later and I have now finished two other projects - a DVD of old video footage and a photo collage of my niece Erin, and a DVD's worth of video footage of the band I am in (ARC) - taken by me before I was in the band - old long story.

Eitherway - I am ripping through the hundreds of gigabytes of AVI data that has been sitting on the hard drives for years - infact the ARC footage is over 10 years old. I must say that I am impressed with the results - its looking very professional..

Whilst there have been some half hearted attempts - and some random successes getting half of the way - today was the first time that Romilly was consistently able to roll over and then roll back again. Cue fanfare! Woo hoo!! Another mile stone reached and passed, another gold stamp in her achievement book.. officially 12 weeks and 3 days old, or 5 days short of 3 months old.

Romilly would also like to thank all of her family and friends who went completely overboard at Xmas time :) (Special mention to my brother for the Steiff teddy bear - its already a clear favourite of hers).

This is a common question - and Im sure I have answered it before on the website. But here goes again. Just why the "Shallow.End"? Because Im shallow? Well no - I dont think so, and nor do those who really know me. But it is part of it I suppose.

This website was originally called "arena" - which incidentally is the name which I have always tended to use for my websites and bulletin boards (remember those? The good old BBS - if you dont then you probably didnt know what it was like to dial up on a 9600 baud modem waiting for that last file of Castle Wolfenstein). But when I set this website up I felt it needed a fresh name, arena had had its time and it was time for something new.

I spent quite a bit of time going through other names - as shown here and here.

But I finally decided on Shallow.End. This is my original post in relation to the name and why I found it fitting.

I like the irony of the name - the Shallow.End. With many blogs or weblogs you think that you are going to get an deep insight into the authors inner deepest darkest thoughts. Why would anyone ever think that? Its an online diary - its written knowing that its an online diary - the author is only ever going to share with you what they want to share - they arent personal at all - they are a slice of the authors life that they are willing to share with you. If anyone thinks any weblog or public diary is anything other then that then they are fooling themselves.

Having said that - the additional irony of the shallow.end is that you should never ever dive into the shallow.end - you can never ever be too sure of just how deep or shallow it is - contradiction to what I typed above - sure. But isnt that the point?

The final word on this is that if you have come here looking for the deeper darker side to me, or if you think I am shallow - then that simply means that you havent yet got to know me very well and you really need to work harder...

[plus the shallow end is a cool song with a great bass line by a band called Morcheeba - and if you really knew me then you would know that I am easily hooked by good strong bass lines]...

Failing to plan is planning to Fail

After many requests (Erin!) - I have updated the Pictures of Romilly on Romilly's World. Enjoy.

One of the things I promised myself when I put this website back on line was that I would regularly update it. I am failing. I dont know where all of my spare time goes - it seems that there is no spare time. I look back at the birth of Romilly - and thats now 11 weeks ago. My daughter is 11 weeks old? How did that happen.

Anyway - I have put together a video of some of our favourite photographs and memories of her first 10 weeks - you can download it here :

Free to good home.. 1 x ragdoll cat, 2nd owner, low mileage, at times can be squeaky and meows a lot, toilet trained, comes with its own 'floppy ear' as a result of a run in with a dog (previous owner). Answers to 'Romeo" and "you little bastard'. Interested parties enquire within.

Three minutes to a better Australia - visit Getup @ www.getup.org.au - stand up, be counted and have your say. Isnt it about time?