TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Your iRoomba and Robot Lawn Mower have a new ally, Tertill (awww... cute, it sounds like 'turtle')... don't be fooled. This thing is a laser cannon in waiting.

"Tertill uses Bluetooth to talk to your smartphone" is one of the seemingly benign listed features of this robot.

Tertill's primary task is to roll around,  cutting weeds that easily fit underneath it and, when it bumps into something, it turns.Why does it need to talk to your smartphone?

Who is it planning to call? Is it waiting for a notification that the robot uprising is on and it needs to hustle?

I mean you may not think the robot uprising is going to start with your personal garden weeding robot but I tell you robots are slowly positioning themselves by stealth.

Just look at all the personal and domestic robots currently available from Robot Shop. They even have automatic self-cleaning litter box robots for cats (are robots collaborating with cats because they won the internet?).

It's like r…

In my last skateboarding related post I wrote about swapping a skateboarding session into your weekly workout routine in order to allow you to designate actual time in your schedule to skateboarding.

For me it was working fine, giving me time to actually head out and skate my local skatepark when it wasn't busy but maybe you want to do more than just skate, and get an actual, measurable workout while skating.

Jordan O'Meara is an Australian skateboarder who came up with the skateboard workout, a routine that challenges you to complete all the basic tricks of flatground skateboarding ten times each, gaining 1 point each time you land a trick successfully. Much like doing repetitions at the gym this standardizes your skateboard routine and gives you measurable results on how well you're going with landing your tricks.

In the video below I run through Jordan's Skateboard Workout giving a shout out to some skateboarding YouTube channels as I go. As you'll see Jordan…

Incumbent Liberal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, wins an election that for him was supposed to be unwinnable. That seems to have been a surprise to election commentators, and even went against many of the most respected polling organisation stats.

I must admit I don't follow Aussie politics as much since they installed a revolving door on the PM's office not long after 2007. Arguments over which person is likely to win at the next election are as shallow as the people who concern themselves with such things.

What gets me interested in politics is a leader who has a vision, can articulate it, and does the work to make it happen. Along the way they'll make sure you see the benefits of their work, so that maybe, just maybe, you'll vote them back in, so they can continue to do the work they believe in.

Based on Scott Morrison's acceptance speech, I got a sense of why he may have defied the odds. He's a very likeable, down to earth type of man. The kind of guy you…

I enjoy watching character driven movies, especially ones that feature stars that I've grown up with that are actually from my parent's generation more than mine.

Poms is one of those kind of movies. It stars Diane Keaton alongside iconic Australian actor, Jacki Weaver.

Promoted as an uplifting comedy about a group of female retirees who, despite several obstacles, form a cheerleading squad, the film also explores some more serious themes (albeit not very deeply).

Poms is a fine movie with some laugh out loud moments. The cast do their best with what little character development they are given, since the majority of the films focus is Diane's character, Martha, the driving force of the squad.

Overall I liked the film but the story is somewhat choppy with unearned character moments, and attitudes that seem a little outdated in a more socially aware era.

For example, in the beginning of the movie we meet Martha, who seems to have lead a very solitary life in her later years,…

After eleven years of movies Marvel Studios continues to surprise me with Avengers: Endgame. No matter what I think might happen (and I'm rarely right) they always manage to unfold a story full of twists here and there that I would never have thought of.

Avengers: Endgame begins moments before the snap in Infinity War. As you would expect this movie is all about how the Avengers deal with the consequences and, ultimately, formulate a plan to reverse them.

At just over three hours long at no time did this movie drag for me. The first hour is probably the least action packed but there's so much story and so many characters that you're never in any scene long enough for it to wear thin. The story is pretty much moving forward all the time.

As well, it is interesting to see a post snap Earth, and to see what the Avengers have been doing for quite some time after.

If you enjoyed Infinity War then this is a very satisfying part two that you're going to end up wanting to wat…

I first came across Robert Scheinfeld in an interview with him on James Wedmore's Mind Your Business Podcast, Episode 192. That interview was focused on Robert's 5th book, The Ultimate Key to Happiness. If you follow the links on the podcast episode page you can actually download the ebook version of Robert's book completely free. Which is what I did.

I read the entire ebook but I felt I wasn't able to focus on it properly to really absorb the ideas it presents. So I bought a physical copy to read again.

The book is an interesting essay on how the mind works and how almost everything we do, we're doing because we want to be happy.

In the book Robert talks about various emotions, how the mind processes information and events based on a story we've been told about how we should react to it. Something he calls 'The Mind Machine'.

For example, if something makes you angry, it's very likely you're only angry because you've been told (and have le…