TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

The footbridge from which the gunmen primarily conducted their attack (pictured in 2019) By Philip Mallis from Melbourne - Pedestrian bridge across carpark, Bondi , CC BY-SA 2.0 , Link A s I write this, it is the day after the 2025  Bondi Beach Shooting . Sixteen people were killed, including one of the two gunmen, and 42 others injured. I feel for anyone who had to live through this, and particularly anyone who was injured, or died from a criminal act by cowards. I'm not going to speculate, or even give air to the gunmen's motives, nor am I going to contextualize their targets. While neither are irrelevant, people will use one or the other to pick a side. Use it to justify their spin on the day's events. Use it to create division. Whatever you may think about globalization there is one truth that should be global, without question. The human right to life. In my opinion, the moment you are causing people to lose lives with purposeful violence or attack, is the moment your...

My home made 'curb' board slider. S eason 02, Episode 01 of my ten part, Second Sunday Skate Sessions Series is here. I'm still working to master the tricks of Braille Skateboarding's Skateboarding Made Simple Volume One, however, this season will be more focused on my 'curb' Board Slider, that I built, and seeing what tricks I can learn on that. If you're actually interested in following my full progress of relearning to skateboard, the first season can be viewed in these posts: Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions - Doing Less to Skateboard More Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 3, 4, and 5 - Definitely Seeing Progress Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 6, 7, and 8 - Shuv-its On Lock (Pretty Much) Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 9, and 10 - Shuv-it Revelation and Did I Improve? In this episode I do a quick run through of Skateboarding made simple tricks just to sh...

I  am surprised I did not review Merry Little Batman (2023), the animated movie from Amazon Prime that clearly proved to be so popular they turned it into a ten episode series titled, Bat-Fam (2025). While neither the film or the series are intended for adults, they're still very watchable for older fans. Making them a great family experience for parents looking to introduce their younger children to the more fun aspects of Batman lore. Both kind of fill a similar space that Adam West's 66 Batman did, except I don't think, even young children, would take Bat-Fam as seriously as young kids took the 66's Batman series back in the day. It's been a couple of years since I watched the original Merry Little Batman movie (but it's a fun Christmas movie, and I highly recommend it), so I'm not going to review that here. You don't need to have seen it but it does give you some context for Damien (Yonas Kibreab) being 'Little Batman' rather than Robin. Be...

I 've previously written about why I didn't see Fantastic Four in cinemas , essentially the movie being released too close to Superman  (2025), to which I gave priority. Since I have a Disney+ subscription for this exact reason (to watch Marvel movies), I've finally seen Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025). I'm not disappointed I chose Superman to see in cinemas. Set during the 1960s, Fantastic Four is a cliff notes origin story for Marvel's first family before they are thrust into solving world ending events at the hands of a god-like alien, Galactus (Ralph Ineson), who is heralded in by his assistant (I guess?), the Silver Surfer a.k.a. Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner).  While this movie is definitely a step up from previous Marvel films of late (though I'll maintain Thunderbolts  (2025) is a better film than this on a character level), it's kind of a return to the Marvel Phase One Superhero formula too. That is, set up who the heroes are, bring in the threat, ha...

Image: OpenArt AI and TET. P urely as a personal observation, and with no research of any kind at all, I feel part of the problem with today's politics in general, in western countries at least, is that it's become something of a team sport. At least people seem to treat it that way. I'm aware there is such a thing as generational support, particularly in conservative households, where families have just always voted for conservative values. Likely more common with Christian, faith based families. That's fine. However, in modern politics the discourse seems to be, you pick a side. Choose the political party that you feel most aligns with your view point and then stick with them, no matter what. There is no room to look at what anyone else from outside your party is saying and think, "Yeah, they made a good point." If they're not on your team, they're just wrong. That's it. Which is not how politics work. A good politician, and by extension, politi...

1X's NEO, The Home Robot, Tends some Plants. Image: 1X website . J ust over a year ago I wrote about new robotics start up, 1X and their Plans to Build 100,000 Humanoids by 2027  in the form of their NEO Home Robot  household assistant. About a year later and NEO has undergone a bit of a makeover, and you can pre-order your own NEO in one of three stylish colours, for delivery some time in 2026. At USD$20,000.00 the price is a bit of buzz kill but 1X does offer a $499 monthly subscription plan as an alternative. Unfortunately the launch hasn't been the show stopper 1X might have hoped for because NEO isn't a fully realised, autonomous robot just yet. While it can learn to do tasks around your home autonomously, there's a bit of a learning curve between when you first receive it, and when it actually becomes useful in a meaningful way. Which was not helped by a video released on The Wall Street Journal's YouTube channel,  I Tried the First Humanoid Home Robot. It Go...