← 2021 January 2021

  • If there's one thing the month of January 2021 has taught me, it's that the Australian celebrant population (9000 odd celebrants) isn't emotionally prepared to have received two emails from me in the same month.

  • On today's business to-do list:

    • Answer a complaint from the Office Of Fair Trading about a couple who changed their 2020 wedding date to a day I wasn't available for, and then was available for but then they didn't want me, and who weren't eligible for a refund, but got a 50% refund any way and they've taken us to the OFT for the remaining 50%.
    • Respond to a credit card chargeback for an elopement that was supposed to be in New Zealand last September but they moved it to April 2021 and just recently decided they wanted to get married now in Western Australia while the borders were closed.
    • File another couple's wedding cancellation.
    • Freak out about the calendar for the rest of the year because almost every new enquiry I'm not available for because last year's weddings are now in this year's calendar unless of course they're taking us to court because COVID ruined their wedding and they expect refunds from small businesses when even Qantas only gives credit vouchers.
    • Apply to a court to actually hold a hearing regarding a refund complaint for a Brisbane couple who had booked us for a Western Australian elopement but because WA closed their borders we all couldn't get there so instead of planning something in the possible they took us to court and the court didn't hold a hearing it just ruled in their favour so I now need to ask them to set that ruling aside wtf?
    • Take more photos of Luna.
    • Get in-house legal counsel?
    • Procrastinate on social media.
    • Wonder if there'll be a SanityKeeper? I don't want your money, ScoMo, I just want to go to Hawaii whilst this bushfire burns.

  • 🌙 Our two year old adult

  • That face when mum has moved your stash

  • You know newsletters are a thing when Facebook feels so threatened by them that it needs to develop it’s own newsletter product. Via the Techmeme via the NYT

  • I can't help but feel that Margot Robbie in a bathtub would explain Gamestop better than most journalists.

  • Robin Rendle's beautiful essay on newsletters and the original sin of the internet is that, beautiful, and inspiring. Please view the essay.

  • To disrupt legacies of exclusivity, institutionalized racism, and complicity. To build a culture of inclusion and accountability.

  • Happy Australians-arguing-about-a-public-holiday-whilst-not-doing-anything-actually-good-for-the-country week! It's a real invasion on my senses.

  • Sunsets // a new way of measuring each day until it's gone

  • This is the kind of drone video I wish I made, one where a crocodile attacks the drone whilst making the film.

  • Install Hush on your Mac and iPhone/iPad to get rid of all those annoying banners, pop ups, distractions asking you to approve or accept cookies. Hallelujah.

  • I can honestly say the most exciting stage of parenting a toddler for me so far has been when she learned how to use door handles.

  • How cheap money and algorithms shaped the last decade and the opposite will shape the next

  • 10 seconds of pure iPhone exposure

  • With all the science, research, wisdom, and love in the world well never stop people dying. But we can stop people living.

  • The most misunderstood element of the internet is how you or I can just post things there and they become truth. At least that's what I was aiming for when I created the internet.

  • Guy freaking out a little bit a disco: I should write a song about having a sense of poise and rationality.

  • Google threatens to block Google search from Australia!!!

  • A friend kindly and jokingly mentioned that life for us looked to be all fun going by social media recently.

    And life is pretty fine, but ...

    So I thought I'd share what the first half of just today has been for me.

    • 2 couples cancelling.
    • 3 couples moving to new dates, two of those in different cities both moved to dates next to each other so that's four weddings in a row that week in July.
    • 1 couple who have had 2 New Zealand bookings with us already, and we've been working with them since November 2019 on their elopement bookings, are now fighting for a refund because they just want to get married now despite WA closing their borders again.
    • 2 flights cancelled, with new tickets issued after a call to Qantas, but with one of the flights we now need to fly in a day earlier - so I'm not home for Britt's birthday - but the accomodation isn't available a day earlier so we need to get extra accomodation and of course, at our own cost because imagine if I asked the couple to pay for it because Qantas isn't flying out of Gold Coast that day.
    • 3 wedding enquiries replied to.
    • 4 mentoring and support replies to Celebrant Institute members needing business support.
    • Plus our home which we haven't been in since March last year because we rented it out so we could travel to weddings and elopements around the globe for a year, has a pool problem so I'm on the phone with the pool company and the real estate trying to not spend thousands fixing a pool problem that wouldn't have happened if we were in our home.

    Which is all fine, seriously, this is just my job, and I'm doing it.

    But this is simply four hours of a Friday morning in my life sitting in a Hobart Airbnb about to drive two hours to an elopement that was supposed to happen in Tuscany last year for the loveliest couple who I legally married last March when we were sure we'd be in Italy in July for them.

    I'm honestly just really over it all.

    It's been 319 days since we were in our home and our business was 100% fun and I feel like we're being forced to apologise for running a successful international wedding business.

  • “As the automotive brand with likely the highest name recognition across all demographics in spite of not having a new product in 40 years, we still believe that none of the above is insurmountable and believe that others will see value in it, as well.”

    Via DeLorean

  • Thing I’m just casually dropping into conversation today then laughing: “more like QA-wrong, am I right?!”

  • Podcasting turns 20 today. @podnews tells the story with Eric Nuzum.

  • Luna, presented without caption

  • I don’t like to boast, but sometimes I use occasional chairs frequently.

  • President Trump has just pardoned my passing of gas that everyone's been talking about. I'm a free man.

  • Podcast you should sample: Queens of the Drone Age

  • What a time to be alive

  • Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve watched from afar as your daughter interrupts a beautiful little Instagram moment a mother is capturing of her own child. The mother looks around for an adult to take responsibility while I pretend I can’t see. It’s everything.

  • Luna (runs around the house screaming): Noo pooooo! Narrator: And yet there was poo.

  • 7:30pm Queensland time tonight (GMT+10) I’m hosting my first @joinClubhouse room and it would be absolutely grand if my friends would join me for a chat. I’m hoping to record it as a podcast and drop it on The Rebels Guide Podcast as well.

  • With most new relationships being the result of algorithmic matching, does that mean computers are breeding humans?

  • The DJI Mini 2 couldn’t deliver the still images I was hoping for. Who would of ever thought that a drone lighter than an orange wouldn’t deliver great photos ÂŻ_(ツ)_/ÂŻ

    Thank god for the Apple return policy!

  • Have any M1 Mac owners recently tried to install an iPhone app .ipa file (circumventing the developer not making the iOS app available in the Mac App Store)? It worked for some apps when I first upgraded, but the iOS App Installer is erroring out now.

  • Let’s be honest guys, in this algorithm driven world, it’s only going to be a matter of time until the word ‘ducking’ is classified as a swear word.

  • Do yourself a retro favour and search for “SOL.EXE” in the iPhone App Store

  • This is one of those articles I think I’ll read a few times over the next few weeks.

    “Everyone reacts, few respond.”

    “McDonald’s Theory On How Best to Rescue Conversations” by Karthik Rajan

  • “Whenever you poo or pee, sterilise it for half an hour before flushing, this is to protect our city’s sewage.”

    SCMP

  • I’m two days deep Clubhouse and I’m feeling bullish about its potential.

    It’s a powerfully personal medium, with deep accountability (live voice). It’s like the child talkback radio and social networking.

    I’ve got one invite left if you’re interested.

  • Show me a more Australian meal than a Chicken Schnitzel shaped like mainland Australia, served with veges, chips, and gravy.

    I’ll wait.

  • We brought a Peugeot to a V8 fight ...

  • Feature request for iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and Facebook Page Messenger: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET ME SEE UNREAD MESSAGES SO I CAN "READ" THAT ONE UNREAD MESSAGE WHICH I CAN'T FIND ANYWHERE. Maybe a simple "filter by unread" or somethn?

  • Just googled “Is it ok to just leave the toys out spread across the lounge room floor overnight like does it even matter” in case I was wrong.

  • Homo sapiens won the evolutionary race because we were connected
  • I’m speaking at the Wedding Business CEO Summit

  • When I’m president imma make it illegal for kids to crawl or climb up slippery slides.

  • How, in the 2021st year of our Lord, do we still need to go to two different huts for sunglasses and pizza?

  • You know what’s really underrated? Cookies.

  • I can’t help but feel that the rice must have had a really good PR team early on.

    To go from “looks like dead maggots” to “most eaten food on the planet” is a grand effort.

  • record scratch freeze frame "Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation
"

  • Today was the wrong day to want to legitimately want to buy toilet paper in Southeast Queensland.

    Googles bidet

  • Little bit morbid there, Apple Photos

  • When Orange Hair says to his followers that their journey is "only just beginning" does that mean they're all about to drink Kool-Aid before the alien space ship comes and collects them?

  • “(Trump) has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.”

    WSJ

  • “Tech level determined using Qsin”

  • America, our love story, and how we fell out of love

  • A shop displayed a sign announcing that they were “only excepting card payments at this time” and it’s really sitting with me hey.

  • Day one of Baby Drone making photos and we’re back into lockdown because of fear of getting wet.

  • Watching this wombat sleep today reminded me that the wombat is my spirit animal

  • đŸ‘©â€đŸš€ I always wanted you to go into space, mannnn (photo not by Babylon Zoo, only the caption)

  • We can dance if we want to. We can leave your friends behind. Cause your friends don't dance, and if they don't dance, well, they're no friends of mine.

  • ‘Nice’ doesn’t sell ads

  • In case you’d heard the outrage and you weren’t sure who he was, I just wanted to clarify: I am not the bean dad. I only make Luna wait her entire life for baked beans.

  • No-one is born with a passion, or a dream. Passions and dreams come from and are nurtured in our community, which is why we need to fight for and protect our common unities, our community.

  • The fact that Uber achieved the same growth in 10% of its $150 million as spend is one thing, the story of how they got there, that’s something else entirely!

  • How to overcome Phone Addiction [Solutions + Research]

  • It’s cute to see New South Wales and Victoria playing a game of State Of Origin. It’d just be sad to see NSW lose at the Covid football version tho.

  • With many of us grounded, has anyone had a play of PC Globe to try and scratch that travel itch? You might need to upgrade to a 486 to run it well.

  • “Dadda, not Josh” is Luna’s new way of introducing me to strangers. She’s a weird Hype Girl.

  • The book 1984, but instead of Big Brother, it’s Facebook.

  • Guilty as charged

  • “A prank attempt went terribly wrong for a 14-year old boy from Boise, as he was raped by a 700-lb grizzly bear while walking around in the woods in a sasquatch costume.”

    via Designs Salad

  • If you've been following for a while you might have sensed a tension between the joy I find in being online and the disappointment I find in news feed algorithims.

    So I've been curating my own media diet for a while now and thought you might like a peek inside.

  • A podcast I first heard a year ago today still sits with me a year later, and I've listened to it maybe five times over. Cooking As an Art, With Jerry Saltz and Dave Cheng. It has almost nothing to do with cooking, or art, but more to do with life.

  • The future of music journalism is on (wtf) TikTok (sad face)

    "TikTok music blogs have thrived during quarantine, and they’re helping to blow up new acts"

  • Simon Owens on 'the Substack problem'
  • My issue with Spotify and Amazon muscling in on podcasting and how Apple has failed as well

  • Have you played the hottest new web game of 2021? School or Prison

  • Much applause to the people behind Pentax cameras for this seemingly crazy idea to not go mirrorless. The unpopular route is often not filled with riches of finance, but it is full with riches of art, joy, and soul.