magicdog.com: magicdog vs sydney
(performed by experts under controlled conditions)
Monday, January 31, 2000
normal service has resumed -- & we're back! greyhound pioneer deposited us safely at central station yesterday afternoon. a couple of loads of washing & a walk to the post office box in dulwich hill were all i needed to get me back into the swing of things. thanks again to jimbo & dave (& fiona) for putting up with us for the last few days.
bad kitty bushes -- what is it with those bushes in canberra that smell like cat's piss? there's a heap of them all over the place. the obvious solution (cats are pissing on them) just doesn't seem likely - there can't be that many cats in canberra - so it's gotta be the plants themselves. hmmm... i think i can feel some research coming on. or is that gas?
apart from the bad kitty bushes (& even they're kind of weirdly amusing) i enjoyed canberra this time around. of course, in part that might just be because i've finally broken the hoodoo & managed to stay healthy! my sickness to canberra ratio has dropped to 2:3 now. <grin>
from the andrew says department -- "...the ideal movie set in Canberra would obviously be a cannibal zombie apocalypse movie. Luckily, all the zombies are cannibals so they only eat each other (presumably like the CHUDs). Or maybe a Western. A Western? I want to do a film in Ravenshoe (or is it Ravenswood? I get so confused. The ex-mining town of ghosts) but perhaps Canberra will do in a pinch. Perhaps a road trip movie - from the bustle of Sydney to the deserted suburbs of Canberra? It would certainly ooze atmosphere. Well, Sydney would ooze atmosphere, but then it would rain, hopefully." <grin>
excellent! now my website has CHUDs on it! twice! <grin>
& i think the town andrew's thinking of is ravenswood, which is roughly between townsville & charters towers, on the road to the burdekin dam... i'm pretty sure part of my family used to live there (a couple of generations or so back).
XHTML 1.0 -- the world wide web consortium has released the XHTML 1.0 spec. it's basically HTML 4 written with XML syntax... why is that important? well, it'll render as normal HTML with version 4.0 browsers, but it's actually XML... looks like the future is now. more stuff to learn. excellent!
phew -- just finished reading the last of the 107 messages that were sitting in my inbox this morning... time to make some coffee & start working through the rest of my task list... <grin>
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Friday, January 28, 2000
in canberra today: science -- we made an early start (well, early for us) & headed off to see some of the sights. our first stop was questacon, which is kind of like a giant science playground for kids. i had a huge anxiety/vertigo attack on the three or four storey ramp you're expected to climb to get to the first gallery, but once i got over that i had a reasonable time.
the feature exhibit at the moment is spiders, & it wasn't too bad. interesting, but i didn't find it all that informative. i guess i'm all documentaried up on spiders or something. & the displays are all really aimed at kids (one giveaway: the optimal height for looking at the displays is about four foot nothing). after we worked our way through the spiders exhibit there was a seemingly neverending succession of interactive displays. my favourite was the "explore the wonders of static electricity with only a glass-topped box, a piece of sheepskin, your index finger & a heap of styrofoam beads." catchy title, i thought... <grin> although the tesla coil in a cage was good, too...
a handy hint for questacon visitors -- don't expect too much from the cafeteria, even if the food does have nerdy science themed names. i had the 'einstein' baked potato (with mounds of extra-bitter lettuce sidesalad). linda had the baked foccaccia of the day (which may or may not have had a scientific name -- i don't recall if it did or not). jimbo had a super hot dog, & it definitely didn't have a scientific name. in fact, just the look of it had me convinced that there's absolutely nothing scientific about hot dogs... <grin>
in canberra today: art -- after lunch we visited the national gallery & spent a few hours wandering about. the gallery is neat, the building itself is quite dramatic & i was surprised at the sheer size of it. we saw the gallery's newly acquired hockney ("a bigger grand canyon") which was okay i guess but didn't really do much for me...
we decided we liked "blue poles", & there was a cool magritte & a couple of things by duchamp (including a reconstructed "bicycle wheel") that were good to see. i dunno, i just like duchamp. <grin> there's also some very cool & very old funerary pieces in the asian collection that are quite trippy...
we made our way out through the sculpture garden & took a couple of photos near bert flugelman's "cones", which is a huge stainless steel assembly. i thought it was incredibly beautiful for some reason. i'm not much good at estimating distances but at a guess i'd say "cones" would be easily somewhere around ten or so metres long & somewhere between two & three metres tall. i dunno much about it, but i've decided i really like sculpture. i'll have to do some reading...
in canberra today: shopping -- with our brains well & truly overflowing we piled back into jimbo's car & headed into the centre of canberra in search of food & shopping. pausing only to devour a round of pancakes smothered in maple syrup (or was it just maple flavoured syrup? i rather think it was), we went for a wander through the canberra mall (does it have a name? i dunno) & found (& i know this is out of character) a couple of bookshops! i finished up with a copy of eric hobsbawm's age of extremes: the short twentieth century 1914-1991. i dunno if it's going to be any good, but i seem to be developing a bit of an interest in history lately & the book was on sale so what the hell...
not sure what we've got planned for tomorrow... the weather was great today, kinda hot i guess (maybe high twenties?) but really fine. it's supposed to be ten tonight & it certainly cools off pretty quickly once the sun sets. ten degrees? in summer? excellent. <grin>
hmmm. i've done the news & the weather, so now i should do the apparently obligatory human interest story, huh? if only i had one. i guess i could mention the busker in the mall... we walked past a woman who was singing a capella... she was in exactly the same spot last time i was in canberra (a couple of months ago). she's got a great voice but her material's all middle of the road, although i guess that comes with the territory if you're busking...
okay, well, that about wraps it up from the nation's capital this evening. ted nielsen, cannnnbbbrrraaaa...
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Thursday, January 27, 2000
greetings from sunny canberra -- well, it's sunny at the moment. it was pretty much pissing down all night. <grin> we've spent the morning kicking back & relaxing & patting dave & jimbo's cats after listening to triple j's hottest 100 yesterday. as usual i didn't vote for anything that made it into the top ten. after the smoke had cleared, my card looked something like this:
18. sonic animation: theophilus thistler (an exercise in vowels) 53. beck: sexxlaws 55. diana ah naid: perfect family 58. regurgitator: i wanna be a nudist 71. the muttonbirds: pulled along by love 83. custard: hit song 88. moby: run on dnp. tim rogers: i went & left my heart all over the place dnp. custard: the new matthew dnp. killers on the loose: tamarama doorslammer
linda's plans -- linda looks to have sorted out a supervisor & an area of research for her phd, so she's feeling pretty pleased about that. she's going to be working on genetic algorithms...
of course, our more immediate plans are a little less research-related... i think we're going to head off & do some exploring shortly. canberra suburbs are really weird after sydney. i walked down to the local shops this morning to grab the paper & a loaf of bread & the place was deserted... apart from the people at the shops, i saw one car on the way back & that was it... i felt like i was walking through a ghost town, or maybe a movie set, although i'm not sure what sort of movie you'd make here... what do you think, andrew? <grin>
have a word to marketing, would you? -- despite getting a thorough pasting from their own movie reviewer not twenty pages earlier in the magazine, stigmata somehow managed to make the "rolling stone recommends" list in the issue i was reading yesterday... the same issue also had some pretty harsh words to say about the film's soundtrack... i just hope i never have to sit through anything the magazine doesn't recommend...
oh well, that's enough of this for now. i'll post some more news anon... ted nielsen, cannnnbbbrraaaaaa <grin>
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Tuesday, January 25, 2000
woah! ken jumps the transfer! -- go ken! (say, who are those old skatepunks anyway?) <grin>
what a silly bunt indeed -- news (& advice!) just in: "Try using the letter 'k' instead of the letter 'c'..." uh, more information please... wha? oh, i see... hey! excellent! & now, courtesy of chrisT, if you would be so kind as to allow me to present johnny sokko & his flying robot! (although i was sure it was giant robot, dagnabbit...) if you want the facts about johnny sokko (& you know you do) then prepare to be amazed. i don't know what you thought of that, but it certainly cleared up a lot of my unanswered questions... <grin>
go johnny go! -- something else brought to you by the letter 'k'! how big is that robot?!? evildoers & ne'er-do-wells had better look out!
deep breaths, deep breaths -- in other (which is to say non-skating &/or giant robot related) news, today is my first anniversary at work. the 23rd was my first anniversary in sydney. how are things going? well, i never seem to have enough time to get through everything, but i'm learning a lot & still enjoying it, & the people i work with are great. i really like living in sydney, too. i even like the weather! (we had a heat wave at the end of last week -- it was 28-30 for all of two days! it's been back down around 24-25 this week... ah, summer...)
we went out for dinner with andrew last night to the thailand thai restaurant in newtown. i'm not sure what andrew ordered (red chicken curry was it?) but linda & i both had vegetable penang curries that were very nice indeed... we met up beforehand at goulds' bookshop, a huge warehouse full of second-hand (& some new) books... i bought a biography of charlie chaplin. i dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time...
www.cheapass.com -- now there's a url that leads to a site that isn't at all what you might think it would be... <grin> it's a games company that makes these really low budget (but very good) games... i bought bitin' off hedz yesterday afternoon! dinosaur racing! at last! <grin>
the product name -- well, we're as packed & as ready for canberra as we're gonna be... i've decided to be optimistic & not pack a hankerchief... <grin> we're taking my big paklite duffle bag that has an internal frame connecting wheels at one end to a handle at the other... big enough to fit in clothes & stuff for both of us for five days (not to mention all the videos & things that we've borrowed from dave, jimbo & simon over the last twelve or so months) but still easy enough to lead up the hill to the bus stop & manouever around on public transport... when on vacation, the staff of magicdog.com prefer to use paklite luggage. the product name? yes, the product name. <grin>
so yes, we leave at 6.00pm tonight & get back late on sunday afternoon... i'll try to take some pictures (if for no other reason than to finish off the roll of film with our zoo excursion on it) & i'll see if i can't send back via blogger some dispatches that might go some way towards beginning to capture even a hint of the various excitements that go together to make up the cavalcade of extravagance & wonders that is life in our swinging capital...
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Monday, January 24, 2000
four (spread)sheets to the wind -- why is it that i always feel as though i need a monitor that's about a metre wide when i'm working on spreadsheets? a 17" screen is okay (certainly much better than the 12" screen on the old mac i used to use), but i always get the sense that there are patterns lurking in the data just off the edges of the screen... if i could only see all the columns next to each other then everything would make sense... even with splitting the window i can never get enough rows & columns on screen at the one time... maybe one of those giant apple display panels would be a good start... although i think they'll only connect to a G4... oh well, i'd better order one of those as well... hmmm... & an A3 duplexing colour laserprinter... <grin>
oh my stars! -- continuing the theme of my horoscope considered as an interpretive rather than as a predictive tool, i've been trying to see what this has to do with what happened yesterday...
By now you should have figured out that everyone is in this together. A unified effort transcends the small, insignificant labors of individuals. Believe in what you're doing, and you may get somewhere this time.
... but i just can't make the connection. & anyway, if my labours are small & insignificant (& i'm not saying they're not), what incentive is there for me to believe in them? & what chance that they'll get me somewhere, even in a team context?
my course starts soon! -- i'm looking forward to going back to classes. i wanted to enrol last year but it just didn't happen... i'm gonna do (i hope) some programming & database subjects... i think i have to jump through all the official enrolment hoops next week sometime... or is it the week after? (well, you know, i'm excited about the course, i just don't know anything about it...) <grin>
flashback -- close to midnight on one of any number of days in 1985... me doing bad ascii art at one VAX terminal while ken sits at another VAX terminal & tries to figure out why my FORTRAN assignment won't compile (or, if by some miracle of syntax it does compile, why it just won't do what it's supposed to do)... don't worry ken, i'm a bit less incompetent (& much more interested) these days... i'll only ring if i get really stuck... <grin>
summer holiday -- we're off to canberra tomorrow to visit dave & jimbo for a few days... we'd visit simon too, but he heard we were coming & promptly headed interstate. chicken. i'll try to snaffle some computer time while i'm out there & see if i can post some holiday news...
monitoring my symptoms -- i realised yesterday that since i booked our tickets i've gone into some kind of intense self examination mode... i've been to canberra exactly twice, & both times i got sick, so the last few days i've been worrying every time i've wanted to sneeze & popping vitamins & drinking orange juice (well, okay, i've been drinking tang, but you know, it's orange...) things appear to have reached some kind of bizarre resolution(?) last night when i had a dream about going on a tv show where some guy infected me with cholera... (it's okay mum, it was kind of a comedy dream...) <grin>
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Sunday, January 23, 2000
scalable vector graphics -- here's an introductory overview of something i'm following with particular interest. SVG sounds like it's gonna be way cool... although so did DHTML & CSS... okay, how about this? if the browsers provide decent (i.e. consistent, standards-based) support for it, then SVG is gonna be loads of fun.
the draft spec for SVG -- hmmm. where did i put all my notes on the Xtensible Markup Language?
the weekend thus far -- lots of sleeping in yesterday & this morning after a couple more late night bouts of starcraft broodwar... although i did raise myself sufficiently early yesterday to pay the rent for another fortnight... how expensive is living in sydney? well, there's a tv ad that's been running recently that says "$400,000 doesn't buy you much in sydney, right?" the ad goes on to list the benefits of a house & land package for a mere $395,000... hyuck. back war ah came frum fella cood buy damn near haff a city block fer that much cash-money...
did a spot of grocery shopping in dulwich hill, read a bit more of beyond lies the wub, the first of five volumes of the collected shorter fiction of philip k. dick (published by millennium books)... i used to borrow some of his collections from the aitkenvale library when i was, what, twelve, fourteen? i hadn't read any for (oh my god can it be close to twenty years?!?) & was pleased to find the stories are even better than i remembered... the other four volumes in this particular series are: second variety, the father thing, minority report and we can remember it for you wholesale... looks like i've got some reading ahead of me... <grin>
other than that it's just been a bit of tidying up & some chores around the... oops! hang on a minute!
[sound of footsteps receding. a door opens & closes. someone runs down a flight of steps, leaves the building & walks away along the path outside. time passes. footsteps are heard returning along the path & up the stairs. the same door opens & closes again. the sound of footsteps coming closer, & of a laundry basket being put down on top of a box full of books.]
web journal reminds man to fetch the washing! -- did i mention i was doing the washing? our block of flats has a shared laundry, & i forgot that i'd started a load of washing just before i sat down at the computer. fortunately no one was queuing up & muttering darkly about the idiot who couldn't read the "please don't leave washing in the machine as it inconveniences your neighbours" sign. <grin>
am i avoiding mechcommander gold? -- i salivated over mechcommander when it was first released, but didn't have a computer that would run it... now we've got speedpig, & i've got mechcommander gold, but i've only played it once & i just don't seem to be all that interested in it... sigh. maybe it's because it came in a great big box that only had the cd in a jewel case... no printed manual, just a pdf... i guess it makes the package cheaper to produce, but there's something about being able to sit down in a beanbag with the manual to read through the various unnatural shapes & positions that the game designers believe you should be able to keep your hands in for hours at a time that i kinda miss... oh well, maybe if i read up on my mechcommander strategy i'll get enthused again...
what is it about giant robots anyway? -- personally, i blame watching episodes of johnny socko & his giant robot when i was really young. i couldn't find any good links to johnny socko pages (the tv show, not the band), but i did find a snippet of background info... was the show called js & his giant robot? i seem to remember it was, but some other pages i found via metacrawler & hotbot suggested it was js & his flying robot... i guess maybe it could've been both? oh well, let me know if you happen to bump into any material on johnny & his giant/flying robot...
what is it about giant robots anyway? (part two) -- my theory is that the giant robot (especially if it's a piloted mecha) is simultaneously (or by turns) both a womb & a penis... in its womb aspect, the mecha cradles its pilot & keeps the pilot safe from the outside world... in its penis aspect, well, let me present the following picture...
still, mechs! woohoo! <grin>
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Friday, January 21, 2000
astrological retrospective, cont'd -- continuing this week's mania for interpreting the events of my life with the aid of yesterday's horoscope:
Your action doesn't warrant such an extreme response -- does it? Perhaps in your eagerness, you pushed harder than you thought. Apologize for your oversight, but be clear that you intend to continue on your present course.
wha? now i'm really confused. that doesn't resemble anything much that i remember from yesterday... unless it's talking about all those annoying questions about electronic organisers i kept asking the sales assistant at dick smith electronics last night... ("what's the difference between the eight function KGB3700A with 128kB of memory & the eight function CIA8401B with 128kB of memory?" "what kind of battery life would you expect?" "can you stop it beeping?" "why is the FBI0085C more expensive?" "how does the memo function work?" "would i use a password-protected global clock?" "does this come in any other colours?" "could i look at that other one for a minute?") <grin>
officially rather clever -- linda's marks have finally been released... you'd have to think first class honours isn't too shabby a result... <grin>
cool java stuff -- the third part in an interesting series of articles on using java to do real-time image processing has appeared in gamelan's technical workshop.
andrew not dead! -- hey! email from andrew: "I've stopped throwing up and everything." excellent news! i was beginning to worry. although his message finishes with the apparently casual but in fact extremely ominous "I had some more movie ideas when I was feverish." hmmm. okay, i've officially started worrying again. in dulwich hill no one can hear you scream. (although that's mainly because of the techno. what's that you said? doof doof doof doof? yeah, totally...) <grin>
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Thursday, January 20, 2000
hmmm -- well, i guess things are looking a bit better than yesterday. today's horoscope says:
Someone volunteers to turn your solo act into a team effort. An odd couple develops an oddly effective working relationship. Maybe it's the right moment to diversify your spectrum of activities.
wait-a-minute... is my horoscope is coming on to me? oh well, negotiations make strange bedfellows. (eeek! it is coming on to me!) <grin>
uh oh -- there's a slight complication... on closer inspection (which is to say, on paying attention to what was staring me right in the face) the horoscope info appears to be a day out of sync... it's not predicting the future, it's describing the past! gasp! this changes everything!
Wisden Cricketer's Almanack Australia -- yay! more cricket! for when too much cricket is barely enough! hmmm. when was that again?
consume! consume! -- i've been thinking i want a palm pilot... the IIIx currently has my attention... but i think what i really want is my own server with a permanent internet connection & a cheap paper notebook... hey! i've got about two hundred & fifty paper notebooks! well then, i guess all i really want is my own server & a permanent internet connection... & maybe a skycar... <grin>
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Wednesday, January 19, 2000
excellent error message -- part of a response to a message sent out on one of the mailing lists i administer at work:
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at xxxx.xxx.xx. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
badman's tropical fish page -- here's some aquarium info linda tracked down... we're now past the "looking at & thinking about a fish tank" stage & have begun the "saving up to buy something big enough for fish to turn around in" stage... the current frontrunner is a two foot (whatever happened to the metric system in the aquarium trade?) tank on a fairly solid looking pine stand...
what we'll be trying to avoid -- a darkly funny account of one man's attempts to set up a tank... we'll have to remember to avoid crayfish... & african claw frogs... <grin>
get well soon, andrew -- we were planning a trip to the movies last night, but andrew came down with some kind of bug & spent the day being violently ill instead. hope you're feeling better today, andrew! (you sounded like death yesterday. & NOT THE FUNNY, UPPERCASE, TERRY PRATCHETT KIND OF DEATH EITHER...) <grin>
woah! - i've signed up with anyday.com, a web-based calendar/day planner type service. i like it, it's well laid out & it loads quickly & sends me email reminders of all the things i normally forget... like bills, for instance. <grin> i noticed today that it also provides a daily horoscope, & i just couldn't resist having a look. my stars for today?
Evasive moves are still your highest priority. Ultimately, it's more important to save your skin than your dignity. Humiliation isn't worth much among people who barely notice it.
hmmmm. sounds like their astrologer has been following my <irony> glorious </irony> starcraft career quite closely... <grin>
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Tuesday, January 18, 2000
no sign at this time department -- yesterday's sign has vanished so i guess UTS must have found a mainframe with the aptitude they were after...
some rules to work by:
- there's always more to do than time in which to do it
- tasks always take longer than you think they will
- most people don't expect the superhuman
- howler monkeys will mess up your desk
that last one is just so true... <grin>
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Monday, January 17, 2000
amusing signs department -- stuck to the column just inside the sliding glass doors at UTS this morning: "mainframe computer aptitude test". "no, i'm sorry, your mainframe computer just doesn't have the set of skills we're after. next!" <grin>
low clouds & intermittent showers in sydney this morning & the city looks incredibly beautiful in the rain... looking out at petersham & enmore from the bus, everything in muted grays & blacks... jimbo & the simonster say that what's striking about sydney is how filthy everything is, but that's kind of the whole point about the city... one of the points, at least...
how was your weekend? we had dinner with andrew at the cyclops pizzeria in dulwich hill last night... he spent some of his weekend video editing, we spent some of ours reading, tidying up, shopping, & playing networked starcraft... (hey! i finally won a couple of games! although they were close-run things... of course, in the games i didn't win, i didn't win them big time!) <grin>
linda & i are thinking about setting up a freshwater aquarium... let me know if you know of any interesting tropical fish websites...
not much else to report, really... although now that i've moved interstate i notice the townsville crocodiles look like making the play-offs for the first time ever... still haven't managed to get to a kings or razorbacks game, but you know, one day...
oh yeah, the timelapse project i was talking about a week or so (or was it a couple of weeks?) ago is still ticking along, it's just taking a little longer than i thought it might...
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Thursday, January 13, 2000
legend of the three wombats -- so, how many wombats did i get to pat last night on the zoo tour that linda booked us on for my birthday? i'm still a bit ambivalent about the whole zoo thing, but at the moment i'm just a little too impressed by the whole wombat experience to think straight... wombats! <grin>
what else did we see? well, you know, boring animals like lion cubs & giant geckos (geckoes?) & a pantomime wildebeeste... okay, okay, we didn't see a pantomime wildebeeste... but we did get taken behind the scenes of a lot of the enclosures & saw some of the areas that you wouldn't normally get to see. did i mention the wombats? well, the final stop on the tour was a photo opportunity with a baby wombat that was about the size of two cats strapped (carefully) together... it was way cool... all it did was eat grass & ignore everyone! excellent!
& after the tour was over we went back to the regular wombat enclosures & saw two adult wombats, one of which was kinda sleepy & the other one of which was just wandering about trying to bite people... it was just too cool! <grin> stay tuned for some photos as soon as i can get them processed & scanned... assuming they turned out okay... if not, i'll see if i can rustle up some stock footage from somewhere... <grin>
lousy stupid integrated applications -- the biggest problem with an integrated browser & email client? when the browser crashes (& you know it will) it also takes out the email client & all the email messages you've just spent the last twenty minutes writing... & if our hapless correspondent (let's call him ted) happens to be in the habit of working on several messages at any given time, then they all get hosed when the browser crashes... i know, i know, i should be saving each message as a draft every time i leave it... say, how come email clients don't have an automatic save-as-draft function equivalent to wordprocessors' autosave capabilities?
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Tuesday, January 11, 2000
zine in an hour #3 (actually, this one was more like a couple of hours, split up over a couple of days. i think you'll quickly see that the extra time didn't really generate any extra quality...) <grin>
a big magicdog.com hello to Ken in townsville! hi Ken! how're things? are you still rollerbladin'?
& who's this dapper (or do i mean disturbing?) looking fellow? could it be the ceo of 21st century shellshear? is he really partying like it's 1899?
went & saw bicentennial man last night... it was about as good/bad & bad/good as i was expecting, although linda thought Asimov might have approved... i dunno... andrew the robot (robin williams) is either wile.e.coyote supergenius or cletus the slack-jawed yokel depending on the needs of the narrative at any given point in the film... & how many research scientists are gonna be livin' & workin' in their Wrong Side Of The Tracks junkyard robolabs in the future anyway?
plus, as in so many sci-fi films that use sweeping panoramic views of matte-painted future cities for transitions between scenes, when it comes time for a more tightly-framed shot of the characters the whole thing suddenly feels cheap & claustrophobic & gives me a flashback to logan's run... check out the market scene where robot williams first lays visual sensing devices on stupidly funky galatea for a particularly fine example... it's the whole "pretend these five actors are the french army, & these five actors are the english army, & let's get ready to rumble" type of deal... you can get away with it on stage, but in a multi-million dollar film that's supposedly creating a believable future, a "crowded" market "full" of about fifteen extras just doesn't cut it...
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Monday, January 10, 2000
oops! -- hey jimbo, the sydney big day out is sold out... maybe we'll just have to spend our ticket money on beer instead? who wanted to see all those lame bands anyway?
metropolitan weather -- hmmm... wasn't that an ice-cream flavour? oh no, that was neopolitan. hmmm. was that even a flavour, or was it more of a style? i guess it was three flavours set side by side, so i figure it's probably a style. or a mode. hey yeah, an ice-cream mode. (heh, i think i'm in ice-cream mode most of the time...) <grin> what? oh yeah, the weather...
Sydney Metropolitan: For Monday
Cloudy periods with an early shower or two,
clearing to a fine day with lengthy sunny periods.
Light to moderate southeast to northeast winds.
Precis Forecasts and Temperatures:
Sydney: Early shower, then fine.
Max: 23
what i could see from the bus this morning seemed to be in agreement... although it felt like it might be going to be a bit warmer than 23 today... oh well, it was kinda cool yesterday... i fell asleep under a blanket in my bean bag in the lounge room...
then, when i woke up, i got my butt thoroughly kicked up & down the starcraft broodwar universe... i bought the broodwar expansion for MacOS on friday & we set up an IPX network using our little ethernet hub... is it called a Hubby or something? i can't remember the brand... we've had it for a while but hadn't set it up... worked pretty seamlessly though... apart from the whole butt kicking thing... still, at least i didn't get all sulky about it... <embarrassed grin>
next step is to get the network set up so we can actually do some productive stuff... trying to scrounge up an old pc that we can whack linux onto & stuff a big hard drive into to use as a fileserver... & a CD-ROM burner for backups...
by the way, i really do suck at starcraft... <grin> i think the overall running total is something like 5-1 with one game called off due to lack of interest... & it's not like i'm putting up much of a fight... the phrase "disorganised rabble" springs to mind... also the word "incompetent" & the expression "inclined to panic"... <grin> maybe if i put in some intensive study of the starcraft compendium strategy guides? i coulda been a contender... <grin>
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Sunday, January 09, 2000
complicity -- linda & i went to see the complicity exhibition at the australian centre for photography yesterday with keri, francesca & john. complicity features the work of several photographers including nan goldin, whose work keri likes, plus larry clark & william yang & others. complicity turned out to be mostly portraiture (i knew nothing about it before we got there), & there wasn't really all that much of it. trying to squeeze something like six or seven artists into a relatively small space didn't really give much of a sense of the work...
from the sydney festival's website [go to events, then search by location for the australian centre for photography]:
Spanning four decades and four continents, Complicity challenges the conventions of documentary photography and the morality of the conventional. Specially curated by the Australian Centre for Photography for the Sydney Festival, this exhibition brings together powerful and poignant work by Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Carol Jerrems and William Yang, presented alongside new talent from Europe, Asia and Australia. Rejecting the notion of the objective record, these artists conjure a highly personal and at times disturbing insight into their environment and their peers - communities which are on the periphery, outside the everyday.
on a more prosaic note, the great scooter quest was cruelly frustrated by the caprice of commerce when the bike shop we walked past on the way to the exhibition was closed when we were walking back... they had a scooter in the window & everything...
later on we swapped urls over a late lunch... john has some of his projects online & so does francesca.
yesterday's narrative appears to be reconstructing itself in reverse in my head at the moment (or is that my head reconstructing the narrative backwards?) & i can't be bothered editing it into chronological order... anyway, we met up at ariel bookstore before we walked up to the acp... i scored a copy of twenty prose poems by baudelaire. a quote: "And what is the good of carrying out a project, when the project itself gives me pleasure enough?" well...
random thought: is memory a vector? random answer: if you want.
speaking of projects, my magicdog.com Things To Do list currently has about twenty-five Things To Do on it, not including writing this, so maybe i might go & do some of them.
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Friday, January 07, 2000
sixty minutes i'm never going to get back.
phew -- made it to the end of the first working week of the new year... despite staying up until 3am last night reading perl documentation... <grin>
apres VRML -- from webreference.com's 3D Animation Workshop, a discussion of the future of 3D on the web... forget plug-ins, the future (& stop me if you've heard this before) is apparently java applets & XML... of course, having experienced some of the joys of VRML over the last eight months, i say bring on the java-XML frankengrafx... <grin>
linda's threatening to write a page on why nobody in their right mind should touch VRML with a pointy stick. unless it's a really pointy stick. with angry bees glued to it.
ps. from jimbo's tips for better living:
to fail an english lit exam, you might consider beginning your essay answer with the following observation: fankenstrein was a bad monster...
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Thursday, January 06, 2000
all sleep & no waking makes dog late for work -- new (concrete) jungle saying.
blogger -- i'm using blogger to write magicdog vs sydney. blogger's a way cool web-based tool that allows you to write & publish from a web browser... (assuming, of course, that you've already got some web space somewhere... hmmm... open offer to interested friends with unused webspace courtesy of their ISPs: give me a yell & i'll come up with some html & grafx & you can set up a blogger site of your very own... it's easy... i mean, why shouldn't you be taking up bandwidth too?) <grin>
excuse me, i think your drafts are showing -- i'm working on a new project using blogger -- tentatively called time lapse, it's gonna be a long web-based poem that i'm gonna work on on-line. i'm not convinced this is a completely good idea (if you think the stuff i try to publish is obscure & nigh incomprehensible, you should see the stuff that doesn't get past our internal quality control <grin>) but i'll see how it goes... i did some rough grafx/layout for time lapse last night, but i wasn't 100% happy with it... come back & have a look for it early next week if you're interested.
a list apart -- a list apart (ala) is a mailing list/web site that i really like. clever, thoughtful, & well designed (IMHO, whatever that's worth)... & if you've got a few spare hours, outside reading is ala's page of links to interesting sites & articles... (educational alert: there's a strong possibility you could learn stuff!)
hey, i'm working with blogger's archiving features... it might take me a little while to figure them out, so my apologies if things seem to be appearing & disappearing over the next few days... <grin>
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Wednesday, January 05, 2000
doh! -- 482 runs & a heap of wickets & the test match is all over... despite our best efforts to cheer on the indian team yesterday afternoon, they didn't make it to the fourth day... oh well, a day at work can be just as exciting as a day at the cricket. today i'm going to be doing some filing... <grin>
my own y2k bug -- hey! check out my own y2k bug! a few years back i wrote a couple of little Javascripts to return the current date & the date a page was last modified, but the way i did it was obviously (ahem) less than optimal. <grin> ken pointed this out to me, what, two years ago(?), but i couldn't be arsed to fix it... today is 05 January 19100... oops. <grin> part of the problem is that my code's kludgey, the other part is that Javascript 1.2's getYear() function returns the value of the specified year minus 1900... i'll fix it by & by...the date last modified script still seems to be returning the correct result, but i can't help thinking that luck is playing a significant role there...
hmmm... jcu are on the ball when it comes to reclaiming their ex-students' old server space... it's been almost 18 months since i was last enrolled up there... <grin> i guess a Mb here & there doesn't add up to much, & they did disable my passwords pretty quickly.
lunchzine. it keeps me off the streets.
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Tuesday, January 04, 2000
back to work -- ah, back to work... <grin> as the bus was going through enmore this morning i realised i was looking forward to going back to work... (careful readers will note that this realisation didn't occur while i was trying to convince myself to wake up & get out of bed...) so does this mean that i like my job, or was it just relief at slipping back into a familiar routine? six of one, half a dozen of the other? & now i've made it to lunch time! how many more working days does that leave until the next lot of christmas holidays? <grin>
six & out! -- went to the test match yesterday to watch the cricket & had an excellent day, drunken yobs & their attempts at humour notwithstanding... in fact, we had so much fun we're going back again tomorrow... watched justin langer score 167 (or thereabouts) while mark waugh whacked a huge six & then got out a couple of balls later for 32...
wired news' vapourware 99 awards -- here's an interesting mix of, well, not quite products... promised products?
grrrroooowwwrrrr -- oops! sounds like i'd better go in search of food... wish me luck!
[time passes... disgusting sounds as of a pig at a trough... more time passes...]
civic duty -- well, i've performed my civic duty for another year. in no particular order of preference other than the alphabetic (sense make no? up chopped syntax? sorry i am, yes), allow me to present the magicdog.com hottest ten for 1999:
- diana ah naid - perfect family
- beck - sexx laws
- custard - hit song
- custard - the new matthew
- killers on the loose - tamarama doorslammer
- moby - run on
- mutton birds - pulled along by love
- regurgitator - i wanna be a nudist
- tim rogers - i went & left my heart all over the place
- sonic animation - theophilus thistler - an exercise in vowels
now, no sneaky voting for the songs i voted for. (wait-a-minute... winner of competition must vote for number one song...) ahem. scratch that. everyone vote for the songs i voted for! or maybe i should just cut my losses & go back & vote for something by the offspring...
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Saturday, January 01, 2000
happy new year everyone! & hi dave & anne, your present arrived! it's neat! <grin> what else has been happening? not real much. although magicdog.com has had a bit of a face lift.
& i'm still on some kind of scooter jag... now i'm thinking that a VIZA Razor would be pretty cool... (mainly because it's kinda like rollerblades with a set of handlebars -- exactly the kind of rollerblades i always needed!)
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