TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

1x1m Pressed Plastic Sheet made from recycled, shredded plastic waste. Photo: Precious Plastic website. A s much as plastic is bad for the planet it's also an extremely useful raw material for thousands of products. There in lies the problem. Plastic product waste. Precious Plastics Foundation is based in the Netherlands and is a non-profit organisation that is working to solve the plastic problem by turning plastic waste into a valuable resource that anyone can harness with their open-source Plastic Sheet Press. Using the press anyone can melt down shredded waste plastics and press it all into a plastic sheet that can be used as decorative abstract art (at its most basic level) or be used as a raw material to build new products from the sheets such as furniture, construction blocks, art sculptures, and more. Below is a video from Precious Plastics documenting the development of the Plastic Sheet Press and how organisations and businesses worldwide are using it to recycle plastics...

New Leader of the Australian Greens, David Shoebridge. W hen I first heard Larissa Waters was resigning as leader of the Australian Greens party I cynically thought 'f**k, what scandal is she caught up in?' because I'm just so used to leaders from all sides of politics resigning amid scandal or being metaphorically knifed in the back by some impatient or disgruntled successor. Thankfully Larissa is putting her health first, though she's only resigning as leader at this stage, not resigning from her seat. Still, a little disappointing for everyone, as she hadn't been leader for that long, but at least seems to have been around long enough to steer the party into a new era of clarity and unified messaging. As highlighted by my previous post, The Australian Greens Show How a Political Campaign Ad Should Be Done - More Parties Should Use This as a Template . While the Greens democratically elect their party leaders it was likely a surprise to no one that David Shoebrid...

Lanterns - HBOmax P ersonally I think the new DC Studios, Lanterns series is one of the best DC shows in quite some time. It even edges out The Penguin for me (just barely) because it has likeable characters. Don't get me wrong, The Penguin is a standout drama series for sure, but I prefer heroes to villains (or anti-heroes for that matter) even if villains get the better monologues. It's nice to have a show like Lanterns, where the heroes are the most interesting part of the story, and you hope they triumph in the end. That said, I have never really been a fan of the Green Lanterns. I don't have a preferred Lantern. The character was always just one of the lesser cool members of the Justice League to me. The only reason I even know Hal Jordan's name is due to the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie. Prior to that I just knew the character as Green Lantern. The only reason I know of Guy Gardener is from the Superman movie... and the only reason I know John Stuart is ...

Thumbnail from Australian Greens, Tax the 1% Campaign Video. L ong time readers of this blog may know that I'm a woke liberal who isn't on the extreme left by any means but, thanks to Australian Labor being so much in the center these days, supporting the Greens will make anyone seem like they're on the 'radical' left. I point this out up front because the Greens recently launched their Tax the 1% campaign with a campaign ad, Time's Up - Here's How we FIX our Economy , that I think is a model for any political party to emulate.  Immediately I know you're thinking, I'm just showing my political bias, because I've been first preferencing Greens candidates in every election for at least the past decade, however, watch the ad below then hear me out. Time's Up - Here's How we FIX our Economy Whether you agree with Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens, assertations in the above video or are standing with your back to the video in pr...

W riting this blog is largely both a labor of love and a discipline. Since about 2006 (the blog started in 2004) I have written a minimum of two posts per month. Sometimes I've posted more, particularly in the last 4-5 years, where I've tried to write and post at least one article a week without fail. Unfortunately it's not a niche blog, unless the niche is things that interest me. Which means my blog is either too broad to have regular readers or too niche to have anyone other than my mum reading it. Which she does (hi Mum) as we established back in January of 2014 in the post Ya Mum Reads it... That said, this blog overall regularly gets 6-7k views every month, mostly through people finding various articles through search engines. By far the largest traffic source is 'Other' which is basically unknown sources. I'm willing to bet a large percentage of that is the dead internet. Bots testing my comments to see if they're spamable or Illuminati spammers. Whil...

F rom the moment it was announced, I knew I was probably not going to see Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu in cinemas. The Mandalorian Disney+ Series finished it's story with no real pointers towards where a future story might go, beyond 'the further adventures of...' There was nothing to really hook me in. I did enjoy the series but it never got me invested in the title character or his cute prodigy so much that I wanted to see more.  Unlike the original Mandalorian, Boba Fett, who I was eager to see more of, until he got his own spin off series. Then I just wondered who wanted this particular story, that clarified everything about such a cool and mysterious character until there was no mystery left? Then we got the trailers for The Mandalorian and Grogu which  confirmed it was just a new adventure as a standalone film, with the purpose of introducing the characters to people who hadn't watched the series. I don't regret not seeing this in cinemas. It's a ...