Category: Musings

I’m burnin’ up

Yep – yesterday was a day for trying to cause severe flame related damage to myself. Burned my hand while trying to cook the simple yet delicious spinach and feta pasta (thx to Louise for that recipe). Yet again regretting not buying that A$3 colinder from IKEA so will deffo be making a trip down there next week for that. Luckily the meal turned out alright and much beer was drunk to soothe the pain.

Then later down at the Misty bar near Federation Square (a very cool little place down an alley like most of the cool places in Melbourne) t’other Matt tried to set fire to the whole bar with his flamin’ sambuca. Sometimes he really can’t hold his drink… literally. Noone was seriously injured although Dom was surprised I hadn’t got my camera out to take photos of the cool burning – I did point out that I was slightly pre-occupied moving out of the way of the burning fluid coming straight at me. Guess I’ll never be a photo journalist if I continue to put my personal safety in the way of a cool photo.

Mos and Brock rounded up our posse of ten around midnight and we all minibused over to Kensington for Jodi’s house party. This was actually the house that we looked at but didn’t move into a month ago – luckily they got someone else! T’was a great party with a nice brazier burning in the backyard and plenty of wine and beer flowing, thankfully none of it alight even though we’d brought a bottle of sambuca with us. A good time was had by all and eventually staggered back home, well taxi’d anyway, around 5am, making that officially the latest night in Melbourne yet. Hadn’t even gotten to the next party that Mos moved onto. My head is feeling suitably chastised this morning as I try to recover enough to head out to the Livid festival…

Toys

For some reason I was reminded yesterday of my old replayTV (well, Stephen’s old replayTV to be honest). This was a really cool device that recorded TV by you simply telling it stuff like ‘record all episodes of Simpsons’. This may not sound like much but in America you get three episodes of Simpsons on weekdays, none on Saturday and two on Sundays – so that would have been a lot fo recording setting otherwise. Once set, the replayTV would sit there quite happily until the show came on then start recording it. At some point in the future you’d come back to find ten or so episodes of Simpsons sitting there on the machine ready to watch (assuming it hadn’t run out of hard drive space of course). Then I’d just happily sit down for a few hours of mindless high brow entertainment and learning of words such as ‘specious’ and ‘crisortunity’ – deleting episodes I’d seen already straight away and just watching ones I hadn’t.

That wasn’t all though – you could also simply skip through ad breaks, which again in America could save you 10 minutes per ‘half hour’ episode of Simpsons. Sweet. Wait – there’s more. They had this cool thing call ‘ShowStopper’ where you could pause real time tv when the phone went and then go back to watching it where you left it, fast forwarding to catch up with real time again during the ad breaks.

Bizarrely this was back in 2000 that it was first released and not everyone has one yet! It totally revolutionizes the way you watch TV – and gives an indication of what it would be like with on demand TV (ie, where you just say ‘I want to watch Simpsons episode blah’ and you pay directly for that – probably a lot more money for an advert-less show than one with adverts).

The reason I mention this now is that on BBC News today I see that Sony’s next Playstation will incorporate one of these toys in with it. So I’m sure Stephen will be very happy indeed, especially on top of the major congratulations for his engagement. Cheers!

Grrr…

Bollox. Just wrote a big long post about my Great Ocean Road Trip last weekend and it got lost on the way to my site. Bloomin’ Internet.

Ah well – check out the photos in the meantime.

In Summary though – t’was a great weekend and amazingly beautiful. The torrential rain held itself off for the most part – especially on the first day when we really thought we’d have to cancel the trip on the way out of Melbourne. Saw loads of waterfalls, heaps of koalas (one of which was actually moving! I thought koalas only sat still in the fork of a tree wedged up their bum). The scenary there is stunning and it’s so much nicer to have your own car than to be stuck on a tour schedule.

In unrelated news – the continuing grey rainyness here has been useful in keeping me working on Tripsta. This is my new travel site concept which I hope to get up and running end of October. Everyone I’ve talked to about it seems pretty excited by the idea so fingers crossed it works out. In the meantime though the huge amount of cool open source software I’m getting to use again is getting my brain back into shape.. and getting me in trouble with the local internet cafe for slamming their download limits. Sorry guys!

ps, also chucked up some photos of my Melbourne gaff if you’re interested. It’s just changed around ‘cos the Chriss’se’s”s have moved back into their room rather than the sitting room (big thanks to them again for doing that for us).

The fight – norman mailer. Another great book, I’ve been pretty lucky recently on that front. Not read any Mailer before, and not into fighting at all so strange choice to pick up. The atmosphere Mailer conveys of the Ali/Foreman fight as an insider to Ali’s camp is wonderful. You really get a sense of how the fighters prepare themselves mentally and physically for beating the crap out of each other. Poetic and violent at the same time.

Nearly God

Big shout out to Chris (the smaller, Welsh one) for lavishing fascinating Japan facts on me the other night in the Black Cat. The one to share with you today, and it sounds like a cool place to go visit f’sure, is that all Japanese design incorporates a designed flaw – ie, something the designer knows isn’t the best it could be but has put in on purpose. The reason for this is simple – only god can achieve perfection, therefore for any human to attempt perfection is sacriledge and should be avoided. Think I might use that as my excuse for failing to achieve perfection on a regular basis…

Icky-a

One of the joys of moving into any new place when you have no furniture is, of course, the trip to IKEA. Even when you have to carry piles of unnecessary (but cool and cheap) crap back on a crowed, rush hour tram it all just seems so much fun. Ah, how happy it is to be part of the IKEA generation.

Wish I’d bought that cool blue colander though…

How long is a piece of string?

Back down in Melbourne now and boy is it chilly! Bit of a shock to the system after two or so months of hot sunny weather. Luckily the smiles in everyone’s faces are making up for that somewhat, as is being re-united with the large stockpile of warm clothes I left at my godparents house before I left. Oh, and being back together with my lovely little Dell laptop again after a long break. The poor little thing was feeling lonely, so I’ve been giving it plenty of TLC and also trying to overload her hard drive with ten CDs of saved digital photos…

Random aside: While I was travelling someone described a theory on history they’d read about. This theory was based on the analysis of a historian who checked the number of innovations and historical events recorded for humankind by year. What they found was that although we take history to be about 2000 years from the ‘birth of Christ’ in fact there is a large portion of that timeline where very little seems to happen – in fact almost 500 years. Now this could be explained by a relapse into barbarism or alternatively it was proposed that recorded history as we know it is wrong.

Apparently the Roman Catholic church is mostly responsible for our current understanding of history, with a pope a few hundred years ago pushing some scribes to ‘go away and get a proper written history together’. The historians postulated that, for some reason, these guys got something wrong with how they translated some of the earlier dates and somehow added in another few centuries. An easy mistake to make, especially when you’re under deadline pressure. This would mean we’re actually around the year 1500 and not 2000 as we think – good news as it means armageddon’s another 500 years off or so. Sweet.

I’ve tried to find some references for this but haven’t managed – so please drop me a line if you find some as this is interesting stuff.

Sidders

Another few days in Sydney is drawing to a close. Somehow six months have managed to pass since I was last here, much to Pablo’s surprise when I told him. Nothing much seems to have changed apart from the weather (it’s a bit chillier) and the building next to the Maze Hostel is a lot higher (which is good as the sounds of building work are a lot further away).

Managed to squeeze a lot in though. Monday night went to see my first ever opera, Otello, at the Sydney Opera House (with big thanks to Catherine and Alison for sneaking me in as a student for only $40). The Opera House is a lot less visually impressive inside, but the sound quality is amazing. I have to admit to being a little under-awed by the world’s “perfect opera” – I loved the singing voices and the ensemble pieces between Iago, Otello and Cassio but somehow found the music to be reminiscent of bad b-movie scores! Suspect this is because what was innovative for Verdi in expressing emotion back in the 19th century is now common place and hence less impactful. Good experience though.

Tuesday was a trip with Oz Experience up to the Blue Mountains, so called because of the pall of blue mist that comes from the tea tree oil bushes that pervade the area. The scenery up there is stunning and I ended up wishing we had more time away from our organised tour to do some hiking. I’ve noticed that I’m now a lot more blase about snakes and spiders than I was when I first arrived in Sydney, happily tramping around the paths with nary a care. Highlight of the trip though was the orphaned animals zoo where got to stroke koalas, wombats, cookaburras and a strange looking owl-like bird. Nothing like a good bit of tourist fodder sometimes.

Yesterday was mostly spent walking across the coathanger (aka Sydney Harbour Bridge) taking pictures. Again quite grateful for digital film to keep my development costs down. I’ve just been banned from taking any more pictures of the Opera House by the way. Bah. Also got to catch up with Jeremy and Aoife last night and see Mars through a big telescope as it moves further away from Earth again. Bit of a disappointment really as I was expecting a huge red globe type image as we keep seeing in the papers, but of course that’s what you see from Hubble. So of course we got to look at a large white dot, about 5mm across where you could just see a brighter bit of the ice cap and some darker bits on the surface. Cool telescope though with built in tracking adjustment motors that follow the planet across the sky!

Next stop: Melbourne, where I stop for a bit – put my rugsac in the cupboard and enjoy the Melbo cafe lifestyle. Oh, and maybe get a job I guess.

Byronic young man

Another year, another birthday – this time in the hippy paradise that is Byron Bay. Yes, I’m back in Byron after a gap of almost six months and nothing much has changed other than it is a lot less busy. In fact it’s pretty damn near perfect at the moment. The sun is shining and there’s a nice, dry heat going on. Dolphins have been playing near the shore as well as a humpback whale the other night. Again I’m staying at the Arts Factory, but this time with less slumming as I’m staying in one of the tents on the island enclosure – nice comfy bed and good duvet which is quite useful on the chilly nights.

Aside from my usual pie eating antics (yes Louise – I have been eating too many as usual, although Patrick has been putting in some late breaking French competition for the title to make up for his current losing streak in draughts, hee hee) I went out to Julian Rocks yesterday for two stunning dives. Go check out the picture of the grey nurse shark that scared the sh*t out of me as we came round the corner onto it and our guide threw himself back out the way. He admitted later he wasn’t initially sure what type of shark it was and being that it was over ten foot long he got out of the way quickly. Very cool to just float there and watch this majestic creature swim by. Grey nurse sharks are hugely protected at the moment and are the species used most in films to get that realistic “oh my god a shark!” look. Believe me, it works.

Tonight I head back down to Sydney and then onto chilly Melbourne. Yep, although the sunshine lifestyle is very tempting indeed the big city is calling me home…

Bulls – douglas rushkoff. Random purchase that has turned out to be really entertaining. The story revolves around a hacker who has found himself in the midst of New York Internet powerplays in brokerages. A lot of the tale revolves around the relationship between ideas, computers, power and money and is at times very scary in the ideas it presents. Good read, especially if you work in or around Internet business.