Reflecting on 18 Years of Blogging With The Extraordinary Tourist, The Author of TET.Life

A photo realistic image of a man wearing a long coat in the middle of a road going into the distance. He is looking into a sunset.

It's been quite a while since I just wrote an actual blog about myself. If you're new here, I'm The Extraordinary Tourist or TET for short, a.k.a. David Arandle, the author of this blog. I've been posting articles, almost weekly, since 2004.

When I started this blog digital cameras were just starting to go mainstream, the iPhone didn't yet exist, and mobile tablet computing was an idea that just didn't seem to have legs despite a few tries from various companies not named Apple (Apple didn't invent tablet computing they just solved the issues that plagued the whole concept). YouTube wasn't a thing either.

This blog really is a labor of love, since the little money it earns from ad revenue is laughable for a website that's been around for so long. No really, it is laughable. In the last 30 days I've made AU$1.37 from ads. I know of many bloggers who are earning upwards of six figures from their blogs inside a year of starting them. This is because they serve a niche and they take advantage of sponsorships and brand deals as well.

Which is not to say no one is interested in this blog. In the last 30 days it's received 2.84K page views, and averages around 3K page views a month. The problem is I don't, and won't niche down. This is because I write this blog for me. Sure, I hope people read the articles that interest them but the purpose of this blog is so I can write about everything that is of interest to me (that isn't related to animation and video for which I have a completely separate blog). That's why it's called TET Life.

I'm pretty proud of how this blog has evolved from a newsfeed that originally was embeded into one of my websites so I could easily update it with my 'latest art studio news' to a stand alone 'lifestyle' website that I think is pretty interesting to explore. In many ways it's a history of the last 18 years through my eyes.

I'd encourage you to pick a topic from the site menu that is of interest to you and fall down the rabbit hole into the past however many years of that topic there are articles about. I'd particularly recommend Humor and Internet/Technology. Life Observations is also a good option - though you have to go into the sidebar and open up the Browse by Category link to find this. Browse by Category s actually a good way to see what topics I've written the most about as you can see the number of articles relating to each.

When you are scrolling down through the pages don't forget to check for the 'More Posts' link at the bottom to keep going back further in time. That link does get a bit lost in all the ads at the bottom of the page.

Unfortunately in a blog of this age there will be dead links, missing embeded videos and other such perils. I did start to go back into the early posts and update any missing information (and embed links to my RedBubble Store) but it's a slow process that I don't really have the time for.

By the way, if you enjoy some of my travel posts, the 2007 Australian road trip I took with my sister, Blonde Rose, I collected all the posts together into a physical book you can purchase from Lulu - should you ever want to follow our adventure.

Anyway, I think I'll leave it there. My blog statistics show that posts like this only get read by the most hardcore of readers, which is probably only my mother (hi mum if you're reading this). However I don't mind.

Sometimes writing a blog means writing filler articles like this so you at least have something posted that week. It may not do much for the readership of the blog but it does a lot for making sure I stay consistent with posting a new article every week.

Comments

Movie Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) No Spoilers

T his is another film that I would have liked to have seen in a theatre but, for whatever reason, didn't get to. Having now seen Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) almost a year later I'm glad I didn't. Which is not to say it's bad. Like its predecessor Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which I enjoyed in a cinema immensely, this film would definitely benefit from being on a big screen for the spectacle and epic visuals of it all. However unlike its predecessor there is so much going on, with back and forth between the waring parties, and Furiosa's story as well, you can't just sit back and kind of enjoy the ride. It's like writer/director, George Miller, wanted to cram in as many of his ideas as possible for the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max, because it's not likely he'll make another one, but whoever does, has a rich, detailed world of on screen source material to draw upon. The story begins with young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) and her journey from the ...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 3, 4, and 5 - Definitely Seeing Progress

TET, Episode 5 Heelflip attempt. C ontinuing my ten part series of Second Sunday Skateboard sessions , the series where I'm attempting to master all seven basic skateboarding tricks in Braille Skateboarding's Skateboarding Made Simple Volume One , over twenty weeks (or ten fortnights). Each episode is a short Sunday check in to show where I'm at after each two week period of practicing. Generally I aim for at least an hour practice session every second day if weather or my work schedule permits. These are the links to Episode One and Episode Two should you feel the need to see where I started. I'm not a complete newbie, having been a relatively hardcore skater through the late eighties and early nineties, however I was mostly a mini ramp and curb skater, and never really maintained my skills beyond riding and ollies. The explosion of council built concrete parks came a decade too late for me to maintain my mini ramp skills. Once we closed our own skate park in ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - Highlighting Some Minor Parties and Independents

W hile I am all for voting for minor parties and independent candidates, it can be concerning if too many of them win their seats. When independents hold the balance of power it gives them a lot of leverage to get their own policy ideas inserted into the mix. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing but it can slow everything down, and even sabotage policies and promises, that the government won the election with. It requires the government to work harder, and possibly make compromises, to get their policies implemented. Essentially they do what Australian pollical legend, and founder of The Australian Democrats, Senator Don Chipp, expounded in such simple terms, "keep the bastards honest." While I can't list and write about every independent and minor party candidate I can highlight a few, who already hold seats in parliament, and will no doubt be looking to hold onto them in 2025. The Conservatives Bob Katter - Katter's Australian Party There's a joke in the ...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog