Wishing Well Fulfilment

Four years ago I attempted to walk the Wishing Well track in the Watagans, but had to abort half way when my children got tangled in some thorny undergrowth (minor inconvenience) which unfortunately was atop a bull ants nest (major drama).

Today, with two of my children, with plenty of resolve, and much attentiveness, we finally completed the walk.

Cave at the end of the Wishing Well track in the Watagans

Cave at the end of the Wishing Well track in the Watagans

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Favourite music

Thanks to iTunes, sqlTunes, SQL Server and my inner nerd(*), I can report definitively that my top three favourite music album purchases of 2011 were:

  1. Songs Lost and Stolen (2011) – Bella Hardy
  2. Angel Station (1979) – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band
  3. Punching Air In the Nyah EP (2010) – Back Back Forward Punch

(*) who am I kidding with “inner nerd” – I’m nerd all the way to the surface. Here’s the SQL that gave me the results – note the use of various keywords that I added to track comments in iTunes in order to exclude singles, partial albums, or bonus tracks from the computation of ratings.

select album, artist, AVG(Rating) as Rating, COUNT(*) as TrackCount
 from Track T
 where
 ISNULL(Genre, '') <> 'Classical'
 AND ISNULL(Genre, '') <> 'Podcast'
 AND isnull(Comments, '') NOT like '%Single%'
 AND isnull(Comments, '') NOT like '%PartialAlbum%'
 AND isnull(Comments, '') NOT like '%BonusTrack%'
 AND Album is not null
 and (select MAX([Date Added]) from track T1 
      where T1.Album = T.Album and T1.[Date Added] 
      between '1 jan 2011' and '31 dec 2011') is not null
 group by album, artist
 having count(*) > 1
 order by AVG(Rating) desc

[This content was originally posted to Google+]

Disgusted / Delighted

Currently disgusted by … institutions like Google and NASA who resolutely avoid mentioning “Christmas” and use the horrid and hollow phrase”Happy holidays” instead.

Currently delighted by … Her Majesty the Queen, who in her 2011 Christmas address ends with a great reminder that Christmas is about Christ our Lord, who brings forgiveness.

Her Majesty speaks of families, friends and communities in this year's broadcast to the Commonwealth.
[This content was originally posted to Google+]