The only-known video footage of Anne Frank in existence. Anne would have been 80 this year.

Modern postcodes are 50 years old.

What I like about UK postcodes is they give you at least a rough idea of where the person resides (such as SW2 being a certain part of South West London).

Battleship Island – Japan’s rotting metropolis.

These days the only things that land on Hashima Island are the shits of passing seagulls. An hour or so’s sail from the port of Nagasaki, the abandoned island silently crumbles.

…

The punishment for being caught visiting Hashima Island is 30 days in prison followed by immediate deportation. But the other week, after getting up before sunrise and cutting a secret deal with a local fisherman, some friends and I landed on Hashima Island.

This is great.

In 7 weeks my little brother (I say ‘little’; he’s 33 now, but since I’m 37 he’s still my ‘little’ brother) is visiting from Australia for five weeks. It’ll be good to see him again and get to hang out, even though it’s only 4 or 5 months since we were over there in Brisbane. I only have 7 days of holiday left, so I’m taking them spaced out over the 5 weeks – a mid-week day here, a long weekend there. It’ll be good.

Neither of us has a great deal of money, so we’ll be doing as much free or cheap things as possible; hoping we can spend time walking around the city checking out the sites that even after over 7 years living here I’ve not paid much attention to.

It’s weird that all my life I dreamt of coming to England, and once I made it here I quickly grew weary of the place. That’s what comes with living in the inner suburbs of a big city, I guess – you get beaten down. I’m trying to get out of that now, though; I realise time is always limited, and I need to make the effort to put some quality into my life.

Anyway, until my brother turns up we need to spend time sorting out the flat so he has somewhere to sleep, and I also need to spend time training and getting my weight down. For the last few weeks I’ve been following a strength-building program – StrongLifts 5×5, which is a basic gradual-progression compound lifts program – and it’s been really good. I’m pleased with my progress so far, and where it’s heading.

Work has been interesting in a dull way (or dull in an interesting way). We’re not rocking the Casbah with the projects we’re doing, but at least they’re contributing somewhat to a good cause (I work for a cancer charity). Better than making for-profit sites for shitty, shallow companies and people I guess.