so my plan is — to give up any pretence of art practice & do an MBA while dropping out & becoming a kung-fu/database-fu zen hacker master user with a cycling fetish while simultaneously moving to new york, melbourne, rome & the country & riding my new ducati across canada in my luxury apartment & playing playstation games in my hermetically sealed cave of solitude while dressing fabulously with my new & old friends sitting on the back porch looking over the garden & learning how to play the drums & building robots while doing tai chi in the snow on the beach… it’s a simple life…

p.s. i’m also going to blow up the bloody carillon…

a poem — howtowritepopsongswithouteventrying…

big week — yoink. another week disappears [cue whooshing sounds]… lots of stuff happening at work, most of it interesting, but yeah, too much of it… current taxonomy of my things to do list:

1. overdue crucial tasks
2. crucial tasks with lead time remaining
3. everything else

note: taxonomy in state of constant refinement due to simple fact of items in category 2 moving into category 1 on nigh daily basis…

can’t be arsed — temporarily taking text generation functions off-line… enthusiasm level at new low… simply cannot be arsed for the moment…

i’m gonna fight ’em off — a seven nation army couldn’t hold me back…

buh buh buh — buh buh… buh buh buh… buh… buh buh… it’z a kold chaynge, peepul…

fantastic weekend — five a.m. start on saturday morning daihatsu express all the way to canberra pouring rain ’til gosford then clearing & fine cool weather got there at nine met up with dave & fiona & meghan & then barbeque around twelve with chris & linda & jimbo & simon & everyone & drinking & talking then the matrix at night & more talking & f.a. cup then sleep wake up it’s pancake time then wander about buy CDs more coffee more talking some DVD then drive back to sydney grinning like a loon as the skyline comes into view & down the hill to coogee…

phew — long day, lots happenin’… for example…

so much for plan A — aye carumba… full on official training session today for the new database… we’re just about to start user acceptance testing… about a month & a half from going live… all the core users in attendence… things going really well, the system’s a little slow, but there’s still a lot of optimisation to be done, so it’s not really a drama… until, that is, the dbas decide the middle of the training session would be a great time to take the database server off-line to tweak some parameters… doh. cue drama. didn’t anyone think to tell them? apparently not. oh well, it’s a bit embarrassing, right, but if we take an unscheduled coffee break & restart the server things’ll be sweet, yeah? good theory. cue more drama. the server won’t come back up properly. think pig. think crashing, snarling, spitting pig with severe acute respiratory syndrome. on fire. it’s kinda funny, in the way that riding your motorcycle off a mountain road into a huge ditch is funny… (“yeah, i remember seeing the speedo as i sailed over the handlebars & thinking, wow, that’s fast…”) sigh. [momentary sound of blissful sailing through the air. loud thumping noise. ow.]

as bright as bright can be — grrr. it’s not that buses are noisy, or slow, or uncomfortable, or crowded, or stink like a sauna full of wet, stinky dogs… it’s that they’re all of those things at once… & this morning, as an added bonus, i scored the bus driven by beepy the bus driver, who seemed to have his own personal algorithm for when to beep the horn:

if (car == in sight) horn = beep…

i dunno what his problem was, i mean, most of the cars he was beeping at were so far away they posed neither conceivable threat nor potential inconvenience… mebbe he was just very social, & knew every single driver between coogee & newtown, but you know, i doubt it… it’s been nice to have some rain, but i’m over it… more cycling weather, please…

& yeah — i know, i know, i’ve gotta waterproof jacket, waterproof bag, etc, etc… but like, the old man is totally snoring…

the rain insane falls mainly in the brain — two days, two headaches… ow. ow. mebbe it’s the lighting at work or something? (there were two fifteen or so second glimpses of sunlight yesterday, & thus far today, zilch, zip, zero, nada… overcast to the max & we’re running on these dodgy fluoros…)

dot matrix — without exception all the reviews i’ve seen have been somewhat underwhelmed… which has been serving as a nice corrective to my anticipation levels after seeing the trailer the other night… hopefully, this will lead to an experience unlike that of seeing x2, for which i saw only glowing reviews that had me anticipating something more than i finished up with… mebbe i just need a little mnemonic to remind me not to hope for too much… johnny mnemonic… that should do it… in cyberspace, no one can hear you howl… [btw, check out johnny dogtronic’s back to the future official website… for additional credit, compare & contrast 1995 with 2003…]

from the Zodiac as Conspiracy school…

Friends may not be as accepting of your plans as you initially hoped. If you’re involved with something slightly shady, you should put on the brakes now, while you still have a chance. Moving forward with this project could put a permanent wedge between you and your loved ones. If this is just a matter of trying something new and different, you may want to keep your activities a secret for the time being.

for the record — i am not currently involved in anything that could be termed either “slightly shady” or “new & different”… sad, but true… (of course, that could just be a smokescreen, since i’d obviously be keeping my activities secret…)

slow news day? — you betcha…

no, really — “giant laser”

rainy — wet, windy & blah this morning…

incipient road trip — off to canberra this weekend…

and now… a walk in the black forest…

sunny newcastle — caught the rattler to newcastle last wednesday night for a two day database workshop… stayed right on the esplanade, & had a great view back along the beach… the workshop was fine, caught up with some friends, made progress on the issues we were hoping to make progress on, etc… i stayed over on friday night as well & spent most of saturday wandering about newcastle, which i’ve never really visited for any length of time before…

recent reading — i’ve read a few things lately that i’ve really liked:

• dave eggers: a heartbreaking work of staggering genius — well, it kinda is, really… it’s a bit harrowing in places, & quite aggravating in others, but yeah, i found it totally engaging…
• william gibson: pattern recognition — in which william gibson finally realises he’s been writing the same novel over & over again [joke] & writes a slightly different one… no, actually, i really loved this… it’s a mystery/thriller, not sci-fi, but the texture & the style are still to die for…
• china miéville: perdido street station — absolutely stunning… bought it to read on the train & yeah, wow, it’s worth a look if you’re into any kind of steampunk/alt-sci/baroque/goth fantasy… it’s brilliant… one of the blurbs on the jacket compares it to mervyn peake’s gormenghast trilogy, & i can’t really do any better than that…
• richard morgan: altered carbon — read this on the train back to sydney… it’s a cyberpunk potboiler, teched up to the eyeballs & not minding a bit of the old ultraviolence, but yeah, it’s a whodunnit with a pretty convoluted plot, & every once in a while i found myself wondering if it was really worth the effort… which is not to say i didn’t enjoy it, but yeah, slightly outclassed in this company…
• greg egan: schild’s ladder — not my favourite egan, but simultaneously engrossing & perplexing all the same… i dunno, i’d probably read the telephone book if greg egan had written it (although, if he had, there’d undoubtably be some lengthy digressions explaining the maths &/or the physics behind the whole thing…)

x doesn’t quite hit the spot — went & saw x2 last night, & was entertained but a little underwhelmed… didn’t think it was all that good, to be honest… i’d read some reviews that were quite taken with it, praising its hidden depths but, well, if there were hidden depths they were hidden too deeply for me… i thought the characters were (takes deep breath) just too cartoony… the villain struggled to be one-dimensional, & the mutants were pretty much just ciphers… even wolverine, who supposedly centres the whole shebang, was disappointing… (psychotically cute, sure, but disappointing…)

origins schmorigins — i mean, the reviews were making a big thing about wolverine uncovering more of his past, but really, a handful of acid flashbacks with virtually no informational content were pretty unsatisfying… what did he learn? nuffin… he’s some kinda supersoldier with metal for bones & a nice line in healing quickly… check. but, uh, didn’t he know that already? & yeah, a couple of scenes showing wolverine wandering about in the snow at the apparently deserted secret military base didn’t really stand up as much of a quest… (& wow, how dumb is he? didn’t think it might be an underground installation? who wasn’t paying attention in mad military scientists 101?)

flashes & bangs linked by a catalogue of annoyances — there were a lot of other things i found annoying, although possibly none more so than the particularly gratuitous product placements… i guess it’s good to know that mutants drink dr peppers & drive mazdas, but really… in the end, i just didn’t care about any of the characters… wolverine either wandered about or got riled & slashed things up, magneto was his usual urbanely evil self, mystique hadda whole lotta morphin’ going on, storm got glassy eyed a few times, the mutant kids were cutesy, worried, &/or indignant on cue, & patrick stewart struggled to impart a bit of gravitas to professor x, who spent much of the movie hallucinating & without fail got saddled with the worst bits of the script… a smattering of eye candy, but not much else…

on the other hand — i did get to see the trailer for bulletproof monk… what can i say? it’s already got my money… as does the matrix: reloaded, which (as everyone on the planet who has access to any form of media no doubt already knows) looks like it’s gonna be stunning… i mean, it could well be dumb, too, but wow, it totally has the style turned up to eleven…

ah, crap — just got out of a moderately-powered meeting to discover i’m having one of those My Hair is a Cry for Help days…

astrological guide to better living:

You’re starting to realise the importance of a sensible health regimen. Take this opportunity to research fitness clubs or nutritious recipes that will help you to feel and look your best. You may find that even the slightest adjustment to your diet makes an enormous difference. Try replacing a starchy breakfast item for one that is rich in protein. This simple shift could ward off depression and make you more productive.

could it be that simple? although i’ll have to add a starchy breakfast item before i can replace it… but who has time for breakfast starch when there’s all that caffeine to consume?

born from an egg on a mountain top…

wham! it’s wintery! woah. suddenly it’s rainin’ & freezin’…

ow — i’ve done something intensely ouchy to my left shoulder… dunno what i did to it (the number one suspect is simply sleeping on it funny), but on saturday it was totally restricted & kinda throbbing…

added bonus — it’s insanely painful on the bike… to the point where i hadta do this weird body english thing to be able to move my hand from the bar ends to, for example, use the brake… (which still wasn’t enough to stop me going for a ride, though in retrospect that was probably kinda stupid, in so far as the ride totally aggravated whatever it was i’ve done…)

mending? had a quiet day at home yesterday, & the shoulder started to get a bit better, & today it’s a bit better still, but yeah, can’t lift that arm over my head let alone play any of the contact sports i don’t usually play… bonza. so yeah, i’m on the bus today… on the plus side, i got caught in the rain & i’m covered in linament, so at least i stink like a wet dog balmy tiger…

queasy does it — feel kinda woozy today… thought maybe i was coming down with something, but then i remembered that bottle of merlot i drank most of last night & belatedly put two & two together…

thought for the day — i’ve never seen you do anything really good, i’ve only ever seen you do things quickly…

hmmm — actually, that’s probably fair enough…

woohoo — well i feel ’eavy metal…

ex-mopentrope — strike a pose, there’s nuffin to it…

the saga of pergolapalooza recounted at lexifab… featuring the amazing exploits of the wheelbarrow to the stars… (& probably soon to scroll off the lexifab page into the depths of obscurity, because el davebot ain’t done got no permalinks set up…)

yesterday — helicopters. everywhere. all afternoon. helicopters.

andrey sends robots…

this is not a topic heading — &, by extension, this is not explanatory (or obfuscatory) text…