The SquizLog

Back from Crescent Head again

Another year has passed and our family has enjoyed yet another April holiday in the sleepy, beautiful village of Crescent Head. It's such a perfect place to recharge the batteries.

The weather was mixed but despite wet and windy periods this magical pocket of the NSW mid north coast was photogenic when the sun came out!

More photos here.

Bushfires and Climate Change

Have the recent horrific bushfires in Victoria indicated that it is time to take climate change deadly seriously?

John Martyn, May You Never be Forgotten

This evening my wife called me in from the garden to show me this in the Sydney Morning Herald. John Martyn, the wonderful Scottish folk singer and guitarist, dead at the age of 60.

How time passes. John Martyn's lyrical music has always struck a chord with me. I thought it was particularly appropriate that my wife let me know the news of his passing. After all, I clearly remember back to May 1987, when, as my best man and I drove to Green Point, where Lynda and I would be married, we made a special point of playing a tape of John Martyn on the way.

"May You Never" must be one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever sung. Simple maybe but hauntingly beautiful nonetheless. "Solid Air" is another of Martyn's earthy songs which seem to evoke the essense of what it is to be human.

John Martyn, may you rest in peace. As long as I breathe and am able to recall anything, I shall not forget you or your music.

Hip Gadgetry meets Diabetes Monitoring

Yesterday I caught up with my endocrinologist for a chat. Partly social because we get on well and he's been helping me manage my diabetes since I was diagnosed nine years ago.

But he did manage, in his disarming way, to get me to rekindle my commitment to monitoring my blood sugar levels. Living with diabetes can be a bugger of a thing. It's not the sort of condition you can take a holiday from. If it's late at night and I feel like crashing, an inner voice says to me, "hang on, you've got to have your injection and supper before you can hit the sack". Bugger! Or I may be on holidays and feel like a break from my normal routine, a chance to totally relax. Again, that voice chimes in, "not so fast buddy! - you know you need to inject four times a day and if you're serious about managing this thing you should be measuring and monitoring your blood sugar levels as well." Bugger, again!

However, as I said, my friendly endocrinologist lead me to conclude that a return to better monitoring would be in my interests.

What has this to do with "hip gadgetry?" To answer this, I need only name two pieces of technology - one hardware, one software. The iPhone and Twitter. To be fair, there's another piece of software that is integral to this story - the web application that is SugarStats. Now, so long as I am in a location where my iPhone has service, I can easily record my blood sugar levels and insulin injections via Twitterific on my iPhone. Because SugarStats exposes sugar and med entries via Twitter, what I enter on my iPhone - provided I enter it in the correct format - ends up in my SugarStats account.

To me this is a wonderful, enabling use of technology. Whereas I've used SugarStats in the past via a web browser, it has always been a bit of a hassle to have to remember to find a computer after taking a reading or injecting. With the iPhone/Twitter/SugarStats interface I think there's more likelihood of me maintaining my efforts to manage my diabetes.

The word "squiz"

What does the word "squiz" mean? Anyone born in Australia instinctively knows what it means to take a squiz but perhaps readers from other parts of the globe are less familiar with the word.

ABC News Radio's Kel Richards has an informative piece about the likely derivation of the word. As Kel notes, the earliest recorded use of "squiz" is by CJ Dennis in 1913. Kel notes:

As for the word itself, well, the most probably source is a blend of the words “quiz” and “squint” – making a squiz a “questioning look”.

I love Aussie slang and much prefer a "squiz" to a "look" or a "glance".

Crazy Debut for Krejza

It has been a bizarre debut for Australian off-spinner Jason Krezja so far at Nagpur.

The most runs ever conceded in a debut innings of a Test Match is an unenviable achievement. However, Krezja, the 404th Australian to represent his country in Test cricket, was selected to take wickets and take wickets he has. Eight of them in his first Test innings! 8 for 215. Only Bob Massie has also taken eight wickets in the first innings on debut for Australia. I was lucky enough to witness Massie's extraordinary debut at Lords in 1972 when he went on to take another eight wickets in the second innings. It will be interesting to see what role Krezja is able to play in the second innings of this match, a Test that Australia need to win to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

One can only wonder what the future holds for Krezja. Will he go on to greater heights? Will his career fizzle out like Massie's did? Or will he, like Gavin Robertson and Nathan Hauritz before him, not be invited to play for his country outside the sub-continent?

Whatever happens, at least Krezja has brightened up what could have been a dull conclusion to the series. And he has made a major contribution to a critical component of winning a Test match: taking 20 wickets.