air traffic control delays holiday take off — well, it was a good plan… industrial action by air traffic controllers delayed my flight by twelve hours, so i’ve gotta bonus day of stooging around in elizabeth bay… on the plus side, i scored extra karma points for being the first prospective passenger not to shout at the person on the check-in desk upon learning the news this morning… so yeah, checked my bag in, & don’t hafta be back at the airport until seven tonight… & i’ve gotta window seat, so i’ll be able to look out at the darkness…

but otherwise still on schedule — the good news is that this won’t affect my eta in rome, although i do miss out on my overnight stop in japan, which i was looking forward to… but, you know, it could be worse… & it does mean i’ve more time to spend savouring the excitement, even if this morning’s post turned out to be a little overly optimistic…

locked & loaded — woohoo! airport in the morning, narita in the evening, rome tomorrow night!

expect updates to be sporadic until april 22 — although you may see the occasional picture from time to time… taking the camera & the cable, so i can fill keri’s laptop up with images… <grin>

someone warn rome — i’m on my way!

the health issue! in which we discover there’s apparently nothing like a sick weekend to bring on a bout of corporeal introspection…

slightly shakey sunday — still a bit under the weather yesterday (& wow, yesterday was hot in sydney) & i’m not a hunnerd percent today neither, but generally i seem to be trending up… (if only my wardrobe could say the same… although i remain convinced black t-shirts never go outta style…)

legs eleven — i’ve been experiencing a really uncomfortable pain in my lower legs off & on for a few years now when i run, or when my usual meandering pace picks up to something approaching a (low) power walk… it often gets so bad that i have to stop walking & pretend to be interested in the nearest shop window… & sometimes it happens during yoga, though, interestingly (well, i think it’s interesting), not when i’m cycling…

my fascia are compressing my micro-vasculature — so i did a bit of research & discovered that my symptoms are a perfect match for chronic anterior compartment syndrome… so at least i’ve a fair idea as to what it is now… although i’m not too thrilled about the prospects of a fasciotomy, so i guess i’d better do some more research & try to find out what sort of stretches i should be doing to manage it… & then, obviously, i should do the stretches…

caffeinator — trying to cut my caffeine intake down a bit, too… the fact that there’s not much in the way of yummy coffee to be had within a ten minute walk from sydney uni is helping a little… although that’s been counterbalanced to some extent by the extremely yummy coffee to be found barely a thirty-second stumble out my front door in elizabeth bay… but yeah, i’ve discovered that i’m sleeping better now that i’ve stopped drinking huge cups of flat white after seven in the evening… who’da thunk it?

m.c. breakfaster — jumped on the scales yesterday & discovered that i’ve lost about seven kilograms over the last couple of months, which suggests that my return to regular cycling & playing squash a couple of times a week isn’t just having a psychological effect… although i think paying attention to what i’m eating (in the sense of eating less & eating better, as opposed to simply gazing ravenously at whatever it is i’m shovelling down) is also playing a part… so yeah, seven kilos down, thirteen to go… i’m even starting to enjoy muesli…

non-health related thingy — what’s wrong with this picture? look closely. it may take you a minute. [warning: it’s dumb, but i thought it was funny.] — via zeldman…

if you are reading this webpage, then i am ted — urgh. saturdays are officially the worst days on which to be sick. woke up this morning with a totally acute, stabbing pain in my head & neck… must’ve slept on it very wrong i guess… but yeah, just couldn’t shake it. painkillers & vomiting ensued… spent most of the morning in the shower, as i often do when i’m sick (is that just me, or does everyone do that?), happy that i’m not still living in my old flat, where the hot water only lasted for about ten minutes max, then fell asleep about three o’clock this afternoon, still nauseous & hurtin’…

better, man — happy to report i’m feeling much better now… my neck’s still got some low-level soreness, & i generally feel like i got run over by a bus, but yeah, my head’s okay again & i’ve stopped vomiting…

hmmm — this time next week i could be vomiting in italy… although, obviously, hopefully not… & yeah, looks like i’m just gonna hafta try to fit all the stuff i was going to do this weekend into tomorrow…

let’s dust me selecta, c’mon — the only less than awful thing about the day was having gerling stuck in my head on high rotation… although, after a while, even that got kinda annoying… & i’m really hoping that i haven’t inadvertently built up a mental association between “dust me selecta” & vomiting in the bath (the way, for instance, “i won’t let you down” always takes me back to the lobby of the hotel i stayed in with the north queensland under fourteen basketball team during the national championships in adelaide in whatever year that was…

haruki murakami links — “When I’m getting more and more serious, I’m getting more and more weird. When I want to write about the reality of society and the world, it gets weird.”

• salon interview (1997)
• the world of haruki murakami (unoffical homepage)

takashi murakami links — “[Poku culture] is sophistry in order to market my work by doing presentation regarding subculture.”

• journal of contemporary art interview (2001)
• profile (at the hiropon factory)
• takashi murakami — at creativetime.org

disassociated — weird. this time next week (eleven-thirty pm) i’ll be in rome… well, maybe. i mean, i’m still not too sure about the time thing… actually, i think at eleven-thirty pm sydney time next friday, i’ll still be in an aeroplane… i’m supposed to get to rome about eight-thirty on friday night, which i think will be around six-thirty on saturday morning in sydney… i guess i’ll get there when i get there… although it still feels like i’m watching all this happening to someone else… which is one of my normal modes, so i guess that’s okay…

so yeah — had another busy week preparing grant applications… at work until after ten last night… but yeah, i dunno, it was good… busy, but not insanely stressful… a kinda warm, productive feeling…

field of dream — remembering more dreams than usual at the moment… the best one from last night was just walking through this endless, grassy, high tech meadow (uh, that’d be just an otherwise unremarkable grassy meadow with a distinct high tech feel to it…) with a heap of teddy bears who were all walking along with me… just me & some bears walking through a high tech grassy meadow… nothing to see here…

greg egan & stephen baxter: sf’s new hard men — at kuro5hin

mo’ betta rollovers — css rollover technique at a list apart…

from the (mostly) unannotated department…

• diesel sweeties
• destroy rockcity
• ot-to: the critter corporation — take the tour! (fast connection best: there’s a biggish flash movie to download, but it’s worth the wait…)

bet they got the cool shoe shine: funkymunky in harajuku

move xii: (dud root)

next time i want a silver jacket,
platform sneakers, & no hips.
a thirty centimetre waist
&, if not a spiritual calling,
then at least the capacity to believe
in the spirit. or maybe a train set,
yeah, & some kind of sculpture garden.
relationships will be easy, we’ll get pissed
& watch every deadline slouch off unwanted,
surplus to requirements. even my bowel
movements will be regular & if i have an idea,
it’ll be a good one, shimmering
above the pastel city, sexy as free money.

hey — 7.00pm, still wurkin’… [brief sanity break in progress… do-de-do… hum… slurp of coffee… tappity-tappity-tap… hum… fidget…]

alrighty then — i now return me to my regularly scheduled deadline…

ooh! (two views of capricornia, no. 1)

An imaginative writing project allows you to work out problems that have been weighing on your mind. Don’t bother with plotting out your story; just let your inspired pen move across the paper. The same is true when it comes to an intuitive business plan, go with the flow and let things develop naturally, you will be surprised at the results.

intuitive business plan? my new monkey farm is gonna be a huge success!

uh oh… (two views of capricornia, no. 2)

A partner or close friend keeps vowing to change, but then reverts to their old ways. Your complaisance is actually encouraging this behaviour. Until you actually follow up on your threats, this vicious cycle will continue. Be prepared to put your money where your mouth is, no matter how much it hurts.

hmmm. i’m happy to report that no pain ensued from spending a few minutes with a five dollar bill held against my face…

useful — my rules of information by marylaine block (practical tips for finding stuff out…)

internet annoys boy — so after way too much stuffing around i finally managed to extract some jpgs dave sent me from where i’d (somewhat impetuously, as it turned out) saved them in yahoo’s ever so helpful All Your Files Are Belong To Us (although i think yahoo refer to it, for reasons best known to themselves, as the myYahoo Briefcase. briefcase? Nigh Impregnable Document Vault maybe…)

anyway, without further ado… baby photos!

anne & dawn on the beach at heron island

 

a career in marine biology beckons…

 

& an early promotional shot from jaws 5…

close encounter of the dave kind

 

italy getting closer & closer…

gee, thanks — while i maintain a moderate interest in alternative medicine, i don’t think i’m in any hurry to respond to this morning’s spam — a limited time only special offer on a product styling itself as herbal viagra… among other things, it claims to Dramatically Enhance Organism… which i can only guess must be a typo…

worker drone — kewl. the stuff i’d set four or five hours aside to get done at work today got done in three, so i’m off to the shops…

pathograph

aropax made me want to smile & kill
& now i’m not happier just chemically balanced,
skipping through surrey hills,
hard-on in my plate-glass pockets.
chromium fingers & acres of discotheque
lead you through the assumption
of all you despise (why won’t the landscape tradition
just fucking stop it?) guttural littoral
& the famous artist, incontinent on television,
while calcium deficiency & the hands
that make your head spin write letters to the editor.
nothing wrong with a bit of transcendence, eh?
it’s the impoverishment of the contemporary image,
i reckon. like thinking tales from the river bank
then a taxi runs me over.

go pigs! the west sydney razorbacks sent the sydney kings out of the playoffs tonight by giving them a good old-fashioned 128-122 kicking… the kings were leading the league up until xmas, but have since managed to conjure one of their trademark late season fadeouts, winning just four of their last seventeen games…

centenary pig — sydney started well & led by about eight at the first break, & the pigs were behind for most of the game, but they kept hanging in there & just turned it on in the final quarter…… derek rucker celebrated his 100th game as a pig by top scoring with 35 points… (hey, weird… the two pigs’ games i’ve been to this year have both been 100 game milestones — the first was the pigs’s 100th game in the league, & then i turned up again tonight…)

ah, crap — finally get around to an update, & the blogger servers are down for maintenance… sigh… okay, a temporary update via ftp & i’ll post it properly up when they’re back up… hmmm… on the bright side, i guess this is a chance to use blogger pro’s Post to the Past feature at some point over the weekend… [saturday night: okay, let’s see if it works… uh… yep. kewl.]

weekling — another ultra-busy working week, but without the emotional crash of a deadline at the end of it (that’d be next week)…

reasons to look forward to my holiday…

• i get to see keri
• i get to stooge about in italy with keri
• i’ve never taken four weeks off work before (assuming, of course, you don’t count the years from 1990 to 1997, during which i quit my full time job, did my arts degree, then spent a few years hanging out in postgrad land… which i guess was pretty much a seven year holiday when i stop to think about it, so yeah, let’s not count that…)
• i get to spend a couple of days stoogin’ around in tokyo with rob
• work is totally full-on at the moment
• did i mention i get to see keri?

woah — andrew busts a webcomic move: cesura…

last action(script) hero — wow, my actionscript dreams are starting to come true… collected actionscript: the definitive guide from the mysterious lyle yesterday afternoon, who ordered it for me at a substantially discounted price… it rocks… thanks heaps, lyle…

miscellaneous linkage…

• rubberband machine gun — via boing boing…
• cool robot of the week — includes marsupial robots…
• crazy apple rumours — ok, so i added a u… sue me.
• the banana splits episode guide — no, really…
• brute propaganda — via designmeme…
• the encyclopedia of arda — tolkein ’bout my generation…

excerpt from “the introduction of the king” — you may call me Aragorn, son of Arathorn, wielder of Andúril, the Flame of the West, the Sword that was Broken but was Forged Anew, though some speak of me as He Who Walked the Paths of the Dead, & others know me as Strider, Chieftan of the Dúnedain, & some call me the King of the West, & some call me Elessar, the Elf Star, & some know me as He Who Led the Fellowship After Gandalf’s Fall, while others do call me Estel, & some do call me Hope, & some others speak of me as Thorongil…

set the controls for the heart of the sun — woah. still got work… italy minus 16 days? yikes… but yeah, i’m actually gettin’ somewhere, crossin’ things off the list…

sleep, that’s where i’m a viking — as nancy vandal once sang… & where, last night, i either didn’t dream of zombies, or did dream of zombies but can’t remember doing so… either way suits me…

lunchtime iMac — wandered into the local applecentre at lunchtime & finally got to play with one of the new iMacs… it was very nice, although i was surprised at just how big the base is (about the size of half of a basketball)… but yeah, it was a nice machine…

repopulated — wow, the students are back… i must be gettin’ old ’n’ crusty, coz the place just feels so much more alive with young people everywhere… <grin> actually, one of the big differences between usyd & uts, & something that keri’s said a few times — sydney uni picks up a huge vibe from the students, whereas any vibe at uts just gets drained away by the tower building…

weird zombie dream — had a weird dream last night (doubly weird, because i very seldom remember my dreams) in which i kept walking up to people & when they turned around to talk to me they were like, total, full on, icky gross (but expensive) special effect kinda zombies… which you might have thought would be a bit disconcerting, except i just kept walking up to people & they’d turn around & i’d be like, aw man, another zombie…

with high budget segue — & like, there was totally no narrative content, just a long series of me walking up to people who’d turn around & reveal their icky visages… i think some of them were trying to talk to me, but i don’t remember what they said or even if i could hear them… the other notable ingredient? every so often i’d get this weird segue, in which a huge high budget dragon’s head would rush toward me & breathe fire at me… (i mean, c’mon… a dragon’s head? i don’t even role play…) & then it’d be back to zombie vision, then the dragon, then more zombies, etc… you get the drift, i’m sure…

oh, great — according to the very reputable i’m sure myjellybean dream dictionary, dream zombies may represent a cry for help, while dream dragons may represent a struggle between my good & dark sides… nocturnal head noise… just what i need…

a second opinion — the dreammoods dream dictionary says that the dragon may signify that i need to exercise more self control, or might possibly be a symbol of good luck, but remains silent on the issue of dream zombies who aren’t actually you…

meanwhile, my microsoftoscope says…

You probably feel like you could use a break from all the various pressures in your life right now. Be sure to take good care of yourself, get enough rest and try to rid yourself of any unnecessary negative energies. And just realize that many of your most important questions should be answered before long.

ooh! answers to my most important questions! hmmm… mebbe i should work out what my most important questions actually are? hey, mebbe that’s one of them? ah well, to sleep, perchance to dream of zombies…

daddy’s gonna pay for your crashed car — spent yesterday crashing after a full on week at work… applications to one of the major research funding schemes closed last week, so we were flat out getting applications into their final shapes… ultra busy, but yeah, it went surprisingly smoothly… so i’m tired, but also quietly & intensely job-satisfied…

lost weekend — so yeah, didn’t do much besides the domestic blah yesterday… was planning to go & watch the mardi gras parade last night, but fell asleep on the floor during the tv news & woke up at nine-thirty with an aching back (my next living room floor is gonna be posturepaedic, or megapaedic, or ultracomfy, or something), so i just took a shower & tumbled into the sack instead… today? a bit more blah about the house, then some laps of centennial park on the deadly treadly in the afternoon…

recollections of jean-michael basquiat by john seed — via metascene…

lileks.com — via dangerous chunky… (don’t miss lileks’ the institute of official cheer, “where the past comes to life - so we can promptly beat it to death again…”)

tomorrow — one major funding round down, but we’re smack in the middle of another one (it’s just so cute the way they overlap their deadlines!), so more sleep time is in order… & wow, there’s just so much stuff i gotta organise before i leave for italy…