I am not a regular reader of the business magazine BRW, but in the last year or so I have found something fascinating in their rich lists. Where else can you find a template for how to live as a rich person? (Should that calamity befall you.)

Thanks to BRW Young Rich 2009, I know I need to cultivate my rags-to-riches story, crazy working hours and strange hobbies, like

• family (Ross Makris)
• “Work, prestige cars” (Wayne Ormond)
• Property investment (Simon Clausen)
• Luxury yachts (Ruslan Kogan)

Fun conversationalists they must be. Family as an “interest” is a strange concept indeed.

Kogan is actually someone I had heard of, as earlier this year I researched flat-screen TVs on Whirlpool.

Luxury yachts. It’s important to make that distinction, because the plebs are all over regular yachts.

Kogan’s BRW profile ends:

Time management is not his forte, he says, but for someone who works a 75-hour week, Kogan finds time to indulge a diverse range of interests. He is a keen tennis and squash player, made the finals in an amateur poker tournament at Melbourne’s Crown casino, participates in a philosophy club, and one day hopes to meet the woman of his dreams discover the meaning of life cure world hunger add a luxury yacht to his list of assets.

That’s how I’d like to be remembered, fo sho. Oh well, I guess it is honest if nothing else?

Anyway, something else piqued my interest, besides rich fish in lulz barrels. One of the articles is on “fallen stars”: people who have not just lost their previous fortunes, but done so in a spectacular manner (bankruptcy, administration, being sued etc). One of the most intriguing stories on former high-flyers is this one:

Gamers on the popular website gameplayer.com.au are waiting for answers — and so is co-founding partner of the website’s parent company Derwent Howard Media, Jim Flynn.

Updates on the group’s websites have been sporadic since late 2008, and in March 2009, report of difficulties manifested in Flynn’s co-founder, Nathan Berkley, travelling to Spain to visit his sick mother and not returning.

This has left Flynn with the legal nightmare of restructuring the business without the signature of his business partner who, for reasons that are still unclear, is not even in phone contact.

The Australian has a story about it which makes it sound much less interesting. But it’s an interesting little mystery, no?

[discussing Google Wave]

D: i only watched 20 mins
the vigorous audience applause after every little feature demo was a bit disturbing
but then my video got stuck. so u may want to download it first
me: hm, i imagine google fanatics are becoming like apple fanatics
D: yeh. except they dont fork out tonnes of cash
me: hm…they fork out lots of eyeballs and data
D: forking out eyeballs?! yegads!
me: ok that didn’t quite come out right :)

CSI New York “VB GUI Interface” – from Metacafe

Comment: “Its a bit like changing the windscreen to get your car started.”