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Grose Valley in Australia’s Blue Mountains

Last weekend in Sydney, thousands of buffed individuals ran a half marathon around the Sydney central business district. Feeling a little guilty about my lack of participation — or inclination to do so — I started reminiscing about the last time I had blisters worth talking about. Sadly, it was over a year ago, after a two-day hike through the Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains National Park.

According to a local website, this walk is of a ‘medium’ intensity — and I’m sure this would have been the case had we followed directions. Instead, we set off late on the Saturday afternoon (with a bottle of red wine and some cheese in tow) and subsequently, didn’t make it to the first campsite by nightfall. After spending the night on a mosquito-ridden riverside, we then realised we’d also tackled the walk in reverse, which meant a four hour climb up a seven hundred metre incline — carrying our empty wine bottles, tents, clothes and sleeping bags. While my legs were sore, and the blisters were very painful, the morning sun did make for some very beautiful photos. Half marathon? Pfft!

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Mr & Mrs Smith launch Down Under

I was lucky enough to attend the recent launch of the new Australia and New Zealand Guidebook by Mr & Mrs Smith. And let me tell you, if luxe travel is your thing, this is the book. Travel guide publishers have copped a bit of flack recently — especially after Thomas Kohnstamm wrote his hedonistic, “tell all” book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, in which he alleged that most of the content he wrote for Lonely Planet’s Brazilian guidebook was either fudged, or written in a drug-induced stupor. However, with Mr & Mrs Smith, Kohnstamm’s version of travel writing couldn’t be further from the truth. Read more

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50 ways I blew $50K

Spending a huge amount of money is easy when you’re without a mortgage, kids or a full time job. To ease my financial guilt, I recently put together this list of fifty fun, bizarre and slightly mad ways in which I managed to blow $50K over the years — buying myself nothing but amazing memories and the odd persistent stomach bug.

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Sun, tapas, and more tapas in the Basque Country

For a seriously good summer holiday destination, it’s pretty hard to beat San Sebastian on Spain’s Atlantic coast. Set on a gorgeous piece of coastline in the heart of the Basque region, this buzzing seaside town certainly packs a punch. It’s got three divine beaches, hundreds of tapas bars (apparently more per square kilometre than any other city in the world), a vast selection of historical buildings and churches (if the urge to sightsee takes over), clubs, boutiques and countless festivals all year round. Plus, if you’re really into your tucker, the area surrounding San Sebastian is arguably the best in Spain for gastronomy – boasting several of the world’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants. Read more

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Ryan Riss, aka Craptical, is firmly rooted in the grotesque school of pop art, drawing heavily from horror comics, drug culture imagery, and the work of Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth. Beneath the irreverence and sophomoric imagery, however, is contrastingly well-controlled line work and a mature sense of design and composition. Read more


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Alkemie Jewelry, the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Ashley Lowengrub and Dara Gerson, is a Los-Angeles based company who make socially responsible pieces of jewelry. Their entire collection is made from 100 percent recast metal in the USA. When leather is used, Alkemie obtains the leather from cattle ranches that uses all of the animal, and are dyed with eco-friendly dyes. The current collection for Alkemie is named The Maiden Voyage, inspired by the Art Noveau Movement.

Google recently demonstrated their ability to predict flu outbreaks across America weeks in advance of the outbreaks themselves. It would seem that they are more than just a pretty search engine. And as if that wasn’t enough, they’ve now teamed up with Life Magazine, what was the cornerstone of photojournalism for the Twentieth Century, to digitize 95 per cent of their image bank that never saw the light of day. Now millions of photos stretching from the 1750s to the present day are available on Google Images at the click of a button. Read more


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Richard Colman is one hell of an awesome human being. I go back and forth on whether or not I enjoyed him more in his drinking days or post drinking days. I guess there are pros and cons to both scenarios. He is a very talented man and a close friend. We have exchanged ideas over the years and pushed each other in the true spirit of oneupsmanship. He’s proven to be a great source of inspiration.

Kirk brings Molly to meet his family for a pool party but she doesn’t have her swim suit. Kirk, an average Joe, can’t believe his luck when gorgeous babe Molly falls for him even though he’s the first to admit She’s Out of My League. In cinemas April 1.

This amazing looking thing can be found wandering the streets of Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Japan, dishing up ample servings of Coca-Cola and gripping the city’s teenagers with a sudden fear of the future.

Anyone who thinks black metal is too rigid and narrow a genre to have room for innovation would do well to check out Lifelover, a Swedish band that defies every convention of black metal while still remaining miraculously kvlt. The sextet wafts between languid, hallucinatory grooves that channel Iggy Pop and latter-day Cure to unhinged freak-outs that sound as if they’re emanating from the deepest, coldest forests of Norway.

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Creative advertising packaging

Despite the intentions of many, it’s not so often that advertising — as an industry — truly thinks outside the box. Yet, when executed well, clever eye-catching advertising actually works. It does. As these examples will attest to. Read more

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Scanners’ new single Salvation

I love this track by London based rock group, Scanners, which is off their latest album, Submarine. Having toured with acts such as The Horrors, The Wedding Present, The Charlatans, Electric Six, and Juliette & The Licks, Scanners could well blow up in 2010. Figuratively speaking, not literally. No, that wouldn’t be fun.

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Car from made ice

Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.

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Diane Koss’ recycled bottle monsters

Check out Diane Koss’ amazing handmade stuffed monsters if you’re looking for a last-minute gift. Her mostly cycloptic creatures are fashioned from felt made from one hundred percent recycled plastic bottles. Read more

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Code Organ

The clever folk at Code Organ made a sythesizer that turns webpages into music. Just enter a URL and listen to the sweet, sweet sounds your site produces.


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Junior Massive is a newly launched Australian boutique t shirt label making limited edition tees using only Australia cotton. It’s street meets indie; design meets durability; edgy fashion meets edgy fashion. We have them for sale in the Lost At E Minor online store. Read more

WIN

The new Runaways movie looks at the formation of the seminal girls’ group which spawned Joan Jett’s career. We have a Runaways prize pack to give away, including Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, the Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Greatest Hits CD, the film’s soundtrack, and Joan Jett’s photobook with Todd Oldham. To enter, just leave the name of the city you live in! Read more


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