Amsterdam is full of tourists! It's been getting fuller and fuller for the past couple of weeks, but they're everywhere now.

Went down to Utrecht last night, it took two hours because a train was on fire at Utrecht Centraal.

I've checked my evolt mail account for the first time so I could check out their webmail interface, and there's spam. Incredible.

Richmond won the footy, we rock!

One last thing: the results of the in-depth statistical analysis of minke.com hatemail: Celine fans bear the biggest grudges, with 78.04% of all hate mail. Tom Hanks' fans are apparently an insipid bunch, barely managing 7.31%. General hate mail made up 4.87% of the rest, with Shania fans making up the last 4.87%. Shania fans have an excuse because her pages are newer, and generally, their mail has been more interestingly wacky.

Disappointingly, absolutely no-one has taken offense at the suggestion that George Bush and Tony Blair were having a torrid homosexual relationship and survived a nasty breakup.

Well, I'm outta here. I'll only be updating every few days until I get a job. This might take a while. I'm going to Prague and Barcelona, so look out for remote updates and new travelogues.

In the meantime, there are four tragic years of archives to browse, including classics like cheese on toast.

My last day at work. I'm going to miss the internet access but I really can't wait to be out of here.

It's a beautiful sunny day. It's the first time I've had an Easter in spring. It's always autumn in Australia, so all the 'new life' stuff never really gelled.

The Dutch-English translation tool I've used to translate all those notices about the company going bankrupt has moved to http://www.ibiblio.org/dbarberi/ote/, just in time for me to translate one final notice about the company going down the gurgler.

Salon.com's cool review of the Oscar's presentation says almost everything I wanted to say about them.

ABC site about mapping local Australian slang. I wonder if terms like 'window licker' have made it in. Most slang is rude, I wonder how they're handling that.

News just in: apparently our last month's salary isn't going to be paid.

I got spam from Urban Outfitters today. I clicked through the unsubscribe link since I figured they wouldn't be selling email addresses back to spam databases, and sent them this grumpy email:

"Hi,

I received this unsolicited commercial email from urbn.com. I have never signed up for this email and consider it spam.

I used to buy your clothes, but since I don't buy from companies that send spam, I won't be buying any more products from your company."

New hate mail! I think my second last day in an empty office is the perfect time to analyse the proportion of hate mail I've received.

Guy Pearce as he probably doesn't want to be remembered.

Worlds collide: Australian actors fan site uses pictures from one of the Melbourne Museum sites. A reminder that I should be getting on with my portfolio? Nah.

All this nostalgia. Oddly enough, a Dutch page mentioned "The Nargun and the Stars", which I remember as a creepy kids book and tv series.

I've opened a whole can of worms. Did you know there's a Karl Kennedy fan site?

I think I'm going to develop an obsession with 'Secret Valley', an Australian kids series from the 80s, to fill the rest of my empty week at work.

I have a theory that between Secret Valley, Neighbours, and maybe the Henderson Kids (for the bonus Kylie points), you can find the early performances needed to embarrass any Australian actor. Since these SV and HK were made in the 80s, you get maximum bad hair points if you can find photos of cast members.

IMDB, via a possible fellow obsessive, an idiot in london, has surprisingly good coverage. I've finally found some classic photos of the evil kids from Secret Valley, and a not-contemporary photo of the goody-goodies..

Check this series summary: "A series about the children who run a holiday camp in Bildarra called 'Secret Valley' and the problems they have with a gang led by Spider McGlurk and the man who is determined to close their camp down Councillor Claude Cribbin."

The real beauty of the show that its holiday camp setting meant they could get in a whole new bunch of child actors every week, but the cast lists I've found so far only list the regular characters.

There's also The Henderson Kids, The Henderson Kids II and of course, Neighbours. There's enough 'whatever happened to...' there to keep you going for weeks.

An actual link, thanks to Caroline. The Bladder, "New Yorkers devastated by Carey affair" story combines mock September 11 reportage and the Australian media's hysteria over Wayne Carey.

I should be working on my portfolio but instead, I keep wanting to find discussions on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which I finally saw last night.

Oddly, it was full of Australians. Not just Naomi Watts, but Melissa George and Marcus Graham.

I might have to rip apart the template so I can get something that'll validate to xhtml. There seems to be a bug in blogger atm so I can't update the settings and get the right timezone (gmt +1).

I'd love to get that 'comment' thing that other blogs have, but maybe it's not a blogger thing.

First post at blogspot.com. Not sure how it's working out yet.