The Vandal – Derek Haines

It’s been a little while since I vented my spleen on some of my favourite annoyances. While my first post on this topic was intended to be a one off, I liked the idea so much that I just had to write a second. Even after two I felt unfulfilled, so along came a third annoying post. Then all of a sudden this morning, I felt an urge to write a fourth episode in my annoyances trilogy. Yes, I know it should be limited to three, but dear Douglas Adams got away with five parts to his trilogy of Hitchhiker books, so I reckon I still have one more up

As a young apprentice lithographer, I recall the first book I was entrusted to print. It was a book published through a small publisher in Perth Western Australia, The Fremantle Arts Society. The book was A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey. Hardly destined to be a bestseller as the first print run was 1000 copies. Just enough for the local Perth market. Checking the entry in Wikipedia entry, I found that it skipped over the initial editions of the book. I recall very well printing at least five further short run editions of the book before it was finally picked up by a major publisher. I have fond memories of

Yes I know, there’s nothing epicurean about the humble sausage. Whether it be beef, pork or whatever the butcher fancied to fill it with, the poor sausage rates pretty low on the Michelin star rating. But wait! There’s a simple and delightfully tasty way to quickly turn some ordinary sausages into, well, something palatable. All you need are two ingredients and a subtle change to your cooking technique. So here we go. Grab your sausage (if it’s big) or sausages if they are small, and throw them head first into a hot frying pan that has already been treated to a little (very little) oil. The idea here is to

It is only a very short time ago that Apple’s ‘wonder god’ CEO Steve Jobs stated that the Kindle would fail. He was quoted as saying in January 2008 that ‘people don’t read anymore‘. Well, it would seem that even ‘wonder gods’ can get it wrong. Perhaps now after three years he is rethinking the Kindle success. Strangely though, with all the hype about Apple’s successful iPad, the iBooks e-reader component appears to be a flop. The iBookstore is still only offering ‘free’ books outside the US, and sales of ebooks via the Apple bookstore are far from impressive. Added to that is the screen glare of the iPad that