Feeling: relieved

I submitted my first substantial piece of written uni work in close to fifteen years yesterday afternoon - a timeline of the history of the use of I.T in Education over the last 100 years or so based on a set of readings we'd been given.

As I think about it I consider all the elements that I left out - Open source software, RSS and much of the whole Web 2.0 thing (Flickr, YouTube et al) - but I think it was comprehensive enough to scrape a pass, possibly a credit out of.

As the first piece of writing I've been required to do, it was something of a battle to get stuck into - the required readings seemed just as interested in the minutiae of which professional organisation changed their name in 1923 from the Visual Instruction Association to the AudioVisual Instruction Association (I know this is wrong but you get the gist) as they were in how the advances in technology actually affected people on the ground.

That's academia I guess. (Fortunately my other subject deals with multimedia and seems somewhat more grounded.)

Watching: Battlestar Galactica (end of Season 2)

Wow, just wow. I'm reluctant to say too much in case you haven't seen it yet - there are some major changes, which is refreshing in a series in general - but it sets up for a most interesting season 3.

(Ok, just a short one today as I reeeallly have things to do - hope you have a great weekend)

Quick update - this is just too nerdy not to include here - Digg.com discussion of who would win a fight between Battlestar Galactica and the Enterprise (Star Trek).

One of the comments sums it up perfectly - read the comments imagining the voice of the comicbook guy from the Simpsons.

http://digg.com/television/SciFi_Smackdown_The_USS_Enterprise_vs_the_Battlestar_Galactica

Theatre-going: Noises Off

Noises Off is a classic farce with many doors opening and closing, zippy dialogue and a sometimes confusing but funny mess of lots of simultaneous physical comedy.

It takes a play-within-a-play structure and focuses on the carry on behind the scenes of a production of a farce called Nothing On. This is a bog-standard farce with all of your typical farce ingredients, the aforementioned calvacade of opening and closing doors, coincidences, mistaken identity, bothersome props (a plate/s of sardines in this case), an attractive woman who spends most of her time in her lingerie and a man with his trousers down around his ankles.

We take a step back to see this firstly as a dress rehearsal, complete with actors stuffing up and questioning their motivations, then from backstage as a matinee a few weeks in to the season and finally from front of house as an evening performance right at the end of the season. (By which time, things have completely gone to pot).

After the first act I'd had a few smiles (particularly having done a little theatre in my day) but wasn't guffawing like most of the audience (largely comprised it seemed of the silver-haired set) but as the second and third acts progressed and the whole production descended into impressively organised chaos I found it funnier and funnier. I also grew more and more impressed with both the writing and the talent of the performers (and director) to manage such a complex amount of stage "business" and overlapping plotlines and dialogue. I'd be quite surprised if anyone stayed still for more than 20 seconds at a time in the final act.

I must admit that I've never seen a farce performed before - I've seen farcical elements in film (most commonly the doors trick - one person exits a door just as another enters another door taken to ridiculous extremes) but I had some idea of what it was all about but now really feel as though I haven't been giving the genre (or perhaps it's just this particular play) it's due.

Bravo to the Canberra Rep and to the writer for getting it so right.

Noises Off is playing at Theatre 3 until Friday - definitely worth checking out.

More details on their website here

One of the things I was wondering (being the multimedia type that I am) during the performance, particularly given the chaos and the plotlines and physical comedy being played out often simultaneously, was how it would translate to film.

Rapid cutting seemed the obvious option but perhaps a little too structured - too focussed on drawing attention to each individual act of madness at the expense of losing the sense of overall mayhem. Some kind of split screen approach (possibly up to four screens, Timecode (Mike Figgis 2000) style.

Apparently there is already a film version available, directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1992) that I might just have to check out.

Update - Good ole YouTube comes through once more (to a degree) with a clip from a (significantly) lesser production of Noises Off which will nonetheless give you some idea of some of the dynamics of the play.

This is taken from the final act where the whole performance has completely lost it - cues are being missed, props are missing or just wrong, performers are at each others throats, some try to improvise their way out of the mess while others just stick steadfastly to their assigned lines

Picturing: Golden Plains

Ok, so a more fully formed overview of the festival is still to come - possibly not that soon either, I'm really starting to question my sanity at having dived into higher education at this point in time - particularly studying two units by distance.

Anyways, here are some initial pics snapped at the festival over the weekend. As ever, I have gone with the trusty camera phone for two reasons - portability and also the simplified image that it provides.

Now maybe this is pretentious arty wank talking but there is something about the less than perfect image that really appeals to me - in an age where photos are getting more and more ridiculously sharp and detailed (check out some HDR pics for example), they seem simultaneously more constructed, more stage managed and more designed to push emotional buttons.

The beauty of the camera phone is that it's immediate, it's a small lense and it doesn't have a great depth of field or contrast range. It's reassuringly low-tech (in spite of the fact that just the thought of being able to take a photo one minute and send it to someone on the other side of the world the next would have blown any photographers mind less than twenty years ago)

Anyway, here are a few views of the inaugural Golden Plains Music Festival, live from the Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre, March 2007.



Meredith has one big stage, purpose built for the festival. People find a spot at the start of the day and tend to camp out there through all the bands. There's a standing section towards the front that it's not too difficult to get into but ultimately, you just want a sit down. (Or maybe I'm just getting old.)



Further back is just a sea of chairs, old couches and the odd lampshade. (Not shown in picture but if you look carefully, the self same lampshade is part of the official Golden Plains artwork)



Is a festival still cool when people are turning up in Beamers? (Yes, even with Beamers)



Navigating your way around a massive campsite can be a challenge, particularly when you realise that most tents only come in about three colours (one of which is silver) and all look alike. Fortunately, the citizens of Box Factory set up next to us and their flag offered a welcome homing beacon. (That and the Norwegian flag near the toilets that marked the left turn to our campsite)



Ok, so there are points at which the phone camera shows it's limitations - but even then, it kind of looks pretty.



Saturday was a brilliant sunny day, maxing out at around 35C with clear blue skies and no wind at all. (Quite the change from the rest of the weekend, which was a much more Melbourne-like overcast and mid 20s which constant strong gusts.)



Sunset was kind of special though.

Quick music highlights:

The Drones (great passion and tight playing)

Ground Components (great attitude, rockstar chops and a sense of fun)

Presets (high energy, loud and fast electronic rock/pop and a definite sense of show)

Fat Freddy's Drop (very talented musicianship, a trombonist able to make the instrument cool and a good attitude)

Gotye (I didn't pick the Thom Yorke-ness of the singers voice until Eric pointed it out - also his observation that it was like Thom Yorke but with a purer sound - but this and the pop-rock sensibilities of these guys made me very keen to check them out)

The Slits (for me at least - noone else in the party seemed to agree but I liked their old-skool pop-punk sound and was prepared to overlook the massive chip the singer seemed to shoulder about not having been paid their dues by history. I mean, yes, they broke some impressive new ground but then packed it in after a couple of albums - then again, the same could be said for the Sex Pistols)

Yo La Tengo (I guess - I was a little hungover by this time but they sounded pretty good from where I was, just wish I was a little more familiar with their body of work.)

Less impressive - The Bellrays - musically tight but too slick, there was something offputting about the way that they made no effort to personalise the between song banter - it was all "You people are great", "Are you all ready to get down?" etc, essentially stuff they might say anywhere.

Comets on Fire - maybe if I'd been watching from a more central spot they might have sounded better but for the most part it just seemed like long winded wanky rock jamming. The Meredith organisers have a definite thing for the noisy rock band and hey, it's their festival but there was nothing new or interesting to it.

!!! - Unusual name aside (pron. chk chk chk or anything single syllable sound repeate d 3 times evidently) these guys started with some interesting sounds but wandered off down long-winded art-rock lane and never came back.

I was a little bit oldman and didn't stick around for the over night techno/dance party thing - hopefully Eric, Fabian or Pippa will be able to put in their two cents worth.

OMGing : They've launched Skynet.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | British Skynet satellite launched

Did these people learn nothing from the Terminator movies?

Fortunately, help is at hand.

It's call How to survive a robot uprising : Tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion and is written by a guy called Daniel H Wilson (who is actually a roboticist himself). (It's entirely tongue in cheek, just in case you were wondering - although apparently it has upset some in the roboticist community who hate any suggestion that robots could turn evil.)

Anyways, it's got a very cool shiny cover and the pages also have a very cool shiny metallic red finish on them (who says don't judge a book by it's cover :)

find out a little more on their site - http://www.robotuprising.com

(Yes, I know this is a little geeky but there you go. Like Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama) says, "There is no story that can't be made a million times better with a robot")

Blogged with Flock

Update - hey cool, that was my 100th post.

Regrouping: after a big, tiring music filled weekend.

More to come soon on the Golden Plains Music Festival (including possible special guest reports) as well as the shortcut that should never be spoken of again. :)

Setting off: to the Golden Plains Festival

Featuring

THE BELLRAYS, FAT FREDDYS DROP, YO LA TENGO, !!!, THE PRESETS, MAD PROFESSOR, GOTYE, THE AVALANCHES DJ SHOW, COMETS ON FIRE, DEXTER, THE SLITS, SEBASTIAN AND KAVINSKY (ED BANGER TOUR), DARREN HANLON, THE DRONES, EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING, SHOOTING AT UNARMED MEN, DUDLEY PERKINS AND GEORGIA ANNE MULDROW, MUPH AND PLUTONIC, GROUND COMPONENTS, RIOT IN BELGIUM, NICK THAYER, GEORGE RRURRAMBU AND BIRDWAVE, MOUNTAINS IN THE SKY, SUNWRAE ENSEMBLE, SLEATER BROCKMAN, JAMAICA IRIE WITH RUCL AND JIGZIE CAMPBELL, MUSCLES AND MORE.

Check it all out at http://www.goldenplains.com.au

Pics and stories when I get back on Tuesday

Have a great weekend

Celebrating: International Women's Day

Well, ok, I'm not doing anything specific just yet (but you never know) but it seems like an important thing to acknowledge at the very least.

There are a bunch of events happening this week - tune into 2XXfm 98.3 if you are in Canberra for announcements or check out this website - http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

(There are 109 events in Australia alone listed - see what's happening in your area here)

Revisiting: Behind the lines - The years best cartoons

Earlier this year I attended a great exhibition of cartoons from the last year. Given the number of crappy things that happened in 2006 (Cronulla riots aftermath, AWB scam, Workchoices Industrial Relations "reforms", war in Lebanon, climate change debate, Iraq war) it was a bumper year for it.

While responding to a comment from Stuart (who seems like a top bloke, incidentally) about Conservapedia, I was reminded of a cartoon dealing with perceived left-wing bias at the ABC and managed to trawl through the archives of the National Museum of Australia website to find it.



Lo and behold, you are able to wander through the whole show - a show, ironically enough that had the right-wingers ranting about more left wing bias. (But then again, I guess it's easier to attack the messenger than to actually deal with the issues being discussed and the fact that most of them are wide open to ridicule)

You can check out all of the cartoons here and here are a few that I particularly liked. (Click on the images for fullsize view)

Putting on the back burner : Lights, Canberra, Action 2007

Ok, so after a few days consideration, I've decided that this isn't the right time to go full tilt into a Lights, Canberra, Action project.

Time is the main factor - with heading off to Meredith for the Golden Plains festival on Friday, the project would need to be submitted on Thursday night at the latest, leaving effectively two and a half days to script, shoot and edit the thing.

The theme of the competition this year is Canberra's Best Kept Secrets.

The ten locations are:

The sound of the whistle on Canberra’s Powerhouse in Kingston

The Braille on the exterior walls of the National Museum of Australia

Redpath Shoe Store in Garema Place, Civic

Bert Flugelman’s Tetrahedron sculpture in Commonwealth Park

The Berlin Wall at the Harmonie German Club in Narrabundah

Any second hand bookshop

A tunnel (any tunnel in Canberra)

All Saints Church in Ainslie

The Lobby Restaurant near Old Parliament House

The ABC News Building Northbourne Ave, Dickson

While I have three workable ideas, the simple practicalities just seem a little too insurmountable.

Just for the record, the ideas are as follows.

1. Abstract impressionist montage of the 10 locations - approx 40 secs each location - with each clip showcasing a fragment of music by a local artist (probably electronic)

2. Welcome to Canberra guide revealing TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) - The Secret Language of Canberra. The mockumentary will show how TLAs are everywhere in Canberra, from the Public Service (ABC News building) to weddings - (Do you C.R.S take R.S.M to be your L.W.W? I.D.O). From menus (the Lobby) written entirely as TLAs to art critics talking about sculptures, from people in shoe shops (CFM boots) to braille.

3. An attempt to call a cab using an apparently automated booking service which repeats back the callers desired pickup location completely randomly. It ends up that it's not a computer at all, just a guy with an attitude.

Any of these three would have worked but as I say, time is just too much of a factor now and if I am going to take my distance study for my Masters in Education seriously, I need to spend the time doing the work, not sidetracking on other plans.

Alas.

Browsing: Conservapedia (Wikipedia for Conservative Christian Americans)

I have a theory that in this world the powers that be try to maintain control over the population by keeping people divided, lazy, greedy, angry, horny and misinformed.

Particularly misinformed.

This theory has received something of a boost in recent days with my explorations of Conservapedia - a conservative version of Wikipedia

(Please note that I've found access to Conservapedia a little patchy over the last few days - there has been a surge of interest from the nerderati I suspect which may be overwhelming their server capacity)

Wikipedia is a publicly editable online encyclopedia, working on the premise that its articles are kept up to date and accurate by the ongoing, often simultaneous scrutiny of thousands of members of the Wikipedia community.

Anyone is able to contribute to a Wikipedia article and anyone is able to edit existing content - changes are noted and trackable and articles can be reverted to earlier forms if it is seen that someone is posting incorrect information.

Conservapedia works on a similar basis but has been developed as

a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia.

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

I guess this makes sense - after all, as Stephen Colbert says,

reality has a notoriously liberal bias

There have already been a swag of great (and hilarious) posts about Conservapedia in the blogosphere, so rather than re-invent the wheel (please note that the wheel, just like gravity and evolution is only a theory), I might just offer up some choice quotes from the commentary to date.

Actually, before I do this, I think I need to directly quote the "Gravity Controversy", just so you know I wasn't just being sarky.

Gravity controversy

Some have criticized gravity, reminding us that it is only a theory, and that no scientist has ever seen a graviton or a space curve. Furthermore, experiments done by NASA prove that the Moon is receding (moving further away) from the Earth at a rate of 3.8cm per year, directly contradicting the theory that masses attract one another[1].

Indeed, astronomers can observe that all stars in the universe are moving away from one another. The considerable disagreement between scientists about the theory of gravity suggests that, like evolution, the theory will eventually be replaced with a model which acknowledges God as the source of all things, the Prime Mover, and the only real fundamental force in the universe.

Ok, so back to the blogosphere - Jon Swift in particular has a great post about this - check it out here

For years homeschooled children have had to rely for all of their information on Wikipedia, which is full of dangerous ideas that homeschooling was supposed to prevent from seeping into the home.

Now, finally, there is an alternative, which doesn't have any controversial ideas at all: Conservapedia. Conservapedia is based on good Christian values, unlike Wikipedia, which I gather from the name, is based on Wiccan.

In Wikipedia, according to the founders of Conservapedia, "Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance." But Conservapedia gives Christianity its due for being so supportive of the work of Galileo and Copernicus.

He goes on to highlight about a dozen articles from Conservapedia, including this doozy

Theory of Relativity: "Nothing useful has even been built based on the theory of relativity.…'All things are relative' became popular as atheists and others used relativity to attack Christian values.

There remains enormous political support for the theory of relativity that has nothing to do with physics, and Congress continues to spend billions of dollars unsuccessfully searching for particles predicted by the theory of relativity."

Now it's easy (and fun) to draw attention to the unconventional opinions of others (and boy, how deep did I have to dig to phrase that politely) but the scary thing is that not only are there a number of people out there who will take the "information" they glean from Conservapedia as fact, they believe (are led to believe more accurately I guess) that people with different view points are "the enemy".

Conservapedia also posts a list of the Conservapedia commandments (I'm surprised that there aren't 10) which are meant to ensure that content is accurate and impartial.

Check this out.

The Conservapedia Commandments

This page is the only rule page on Conservapedia. These guidelines are kept simple in order to avoid the arbitrary and biased enforcement that is rampant on many other websites. If you would like to propose an amendment to the Conservapedia Commandments click here

Ok, so let me just be clear - more rules leads to arbitary and biased enforcement?

The Commandments

1. Everything you post must be true and verifiable.
2. Always cite and give credit to your sources, even if in the public domain.
3. Edits/new pages must be family-friendly, clean, concise, and without gossip or foul language.
4. When referencing dates based on the approximate birth of Jesus, give appropriate credit for the basis of the date (B.C. or A.D.). "BCE" and "CE" are unacceptable substitutes because they deny the historical basis. See CE.
5. As much as is possible, American spelling of words must be used.[1]
6. Do not post personal opinion on an encyclopedia entry. Opinions can be posted on Talk:pages or on debate or discussion pages.

Edits which violate these rules will be deleted. Users who violate the rules repeatedly will be blocked. A blatantly inappropriate entry, such as vandalism or obscenity, can result in immediate blocking without warning.
Notes

1. ↑ You will only be blocked for violating command 5 if you repeatedly change words from American spelling to another spelling.

This is probably my favourite aspect - we don't care what the hell - sorry, heck - you say about any topic under the sun, just make sure you don't use that deceitful foreign spelling. (And when I say foreign, of course, I mean English, coincidentally enough the name of the language.)

I will make one important (and serious) point here - I respect everyone's right to hold dear to whatever set of beliefs, ideas and values that they choose. This is a big mysterious universe that no-one has all the answers to and there is room enough for all manner of ideas.

I also believe that people have a right to politely try to share these beliefs with others - the development of culture and civilisation comes from the spreading of ideas and knowledge.

Knowing that we don't know everything is the greatest knowledge we possess - it's not necessarily very comforting or easy but (in my humble opinion) it should lie at the base of all ideas.

Fundamentalism - the absolute belief that your set of ideas are right and anyone who doesn't share them is foolish/pitiable/damned at best and a sworn enemy at worst is where this world has gotten things rather wrong. (And I apply this equally to all forms of belief from organised religions to Atheism as well as political ideologies).

Now of course, this is just my opinion and I reserve my right to hold it and to mock express wonder at those of others.

Update: Ok, while perusing the Examples of Bias in Wikipedia page on Conservapedia, I did note that they deny the Theory of Relativity post that I quoted earlier in this posting.

On examination, the Conservapedia article doesn't read like that any more - although, given the nature of Wiki based encyclopedias, it may well have at the time that Jon Swift and the Wikipedia crew were looking at it.

Watching: Some like it hot

Some like it hot is one of those films that pops up high on the critics lists of all-time best comedys and also all-time best films. (Let's put aside for a minute the fact that these are all invariably American and British films that get chosen).



It also seems to crop up time and time again whenever you speak to someone who did any kind of cinema studies at uni. In spite of all this, it's been one of the "classic" films that I've never quite gotten around to seeing until last night.

(The closest we got to it at uni was another classic Billy Wilder film - Double Indemnity)

If you haven't had a chance to see Some Like It Hot, it tells the story of two male musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) who witness the St Valentines Day massacre in Chicago, 1929. Their only chance to get out of town and away from the gangsters who are chasing them is to disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl band heading to Florida.

They meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe - I'm starting to see what the fuss is all about now) as well as a quirky millionaire, the gangsters turn up at their Florida hotel for a mob convention (Friends of Italian Opera) and things get crazier from there.

A lot of Some Like It Hot moments have passed into pop culture history, so that even when you haven't seen the movie, scenes jump out at you from the dozens of references you will have seen. Marilyn doing the boop-boop-be-doo thing, Lemmon and Curtis trying to get used to walking down the train platform as women and even minor characters like the randy bellhop (as seen in the Mindy episode of The Simpsons)

The humour holds up well - Jack Lemmon in particular is an astonishing comic performer and Tony Curtis backs him up admirably, the pace is brisk, the dialogue witty and even the bedroom farce style of the piece (people rushing around in and out of doors in chase scenes) seems fresh.

There are also a few post-modern moments - I'll admit I only found out about them in reading trivia about the film afterwards but noticed that there was something about them at the time. George Raft, playing the lead gangster, mocks a minor gangster with a habit of flipping a coin with the line - "Where did you pick up that cheap trick?"

It turns out that George Raft is well remembered for his role in the original (1932) Scarface as a hood with a habit of flipping a coin.

There has been so much written about this film that I'm sure that my offerings aren't going to add a whole lot to the discussion but I will say that it is definitely deserving of it's classic status and is well worth a look if you haven't yet had a chance.

Next time I'll tell you about another new film I've discovered that you may not have heard of - Citizen Kane ;)

Preparing for: Lights, Canberra, Action

Well, perhaps preparing is a bit of an exaggeration - at this point I don't have much of a clue what to do or how to do it. There are still 10 hours though so nothing to sweat about.

Lights, Canberra, Action is a short film competition run as part of the annual Celebrate Canberra festival - a 10 day extravaganza dedicated to showcasing the many interesting things about ONC (our nations capital).

The competition allows you 10 days to make a short film of up to 7 minutes and must include 10 items (generally locations) which are provided at the start of the competition. Extra points are given for working to the theme of the festival - this year it's "Canberra's best kept secrets".

I've entered this competition each time it's been held - in 2004, 2005 and 2006 - with varied results. (Unsuccesful finalist in 2004 & 2005 - though in my humble opinion criminally robbed of best screenplay in 2005)

The 2006 effort was a brave failure - far too ambitious for the time frame. I tried to incorporate machinima, sequences of still photos animated, relatively complicated commentary on the Cole (AWB scandal) inquiry and Flash animation into the one thing and just didn't get there. (As far as I'm concerned, it's still unfinished)

Some of the lessons I've learnt over the last three years - group scriptwriting generally doesn't work (someone has to take the lead), the more people relied upon the more difficult organisation is, Flash animation is a bastard to convert to video, a simple story well told is better than something with layers upon layers (don't be too clever for your own good), don't affectionately take the piss out of Canberra in a festival that is part of the celebrate Canberra festival and do spend the time getting your script right.

Other lessons are that there are some fantastic people out there who are reliable, helpful, surprisingly talented and giving of their time.

I haven't yet had a chance to put these works online but when I do I'll pop them up here.

Thoughts for this years are, as I mentioned, fairly vague. Even though I'm pretty sure also that it's only you, me and the cat reading this blog, I'm still a little reluctant to put them up online just yet.

There is a chance I'll take out the PXL2000 though - a toy video camera released by Fisher Price in the late 80s which uses audio tape to record video. It produces very pixelly black and white images and I've really been hankering for a chance to make something with it for a while.



This is a bit of a prime example of putting the technology before the story though, always a bad idea, so we will just have to see where it might go first.

The timeframe this year is going to be a little compressed though, as I'm off to the Golden Plains music festival at the end of next week (heading off on Friday) and the films are due on the Monday, so whatever I/we do, it's going to have to be pretty easy. This is where a good story will make all the difference.

LOLing: Death Star conspiracy revealed

Ok, even I think this is a little geeky but it's a story that has to be told.

There are simply too many unanswered questions about the destruction of the Death Star and the "established facts" of the case. (This is a Star Wars thing, for my less sci-fi enamoured friends out there).

This website - Websurdity - lifts the lid on a range of issues that must be told.

5) Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader, one of the highest ranking members of the Imperial Government, suddenly decide to fly away from the Death Star in the middle of a battle? Did he know something that the rest of the Imperial Navy didn’t?

There are also a range of very funny (and admittedly some disturbingly geeky) comments about this site here on Digg.com

Questioning: my colour perception

I asked my housemate Eric this morning if he had seen my green cycling vest/jacket/doo-dah. (Ok, I didn't say doo-dah).

We found it and then he and two others said that it wasn't green, it's yellow. (Possibly a yellow-green but definitely more yellow than green)

I'm not saying that it's pine forest green but I have always considered it definitely a fluoro-green. (I could even go so far as to say that it has yellowish qualities but would never call it yellow over green)

This is it. (Yes it's a cam-phone picture but I think the colour is still fairly close)



Now I have never had any problem passing the standard colour blindness tests and I have no particular dislike of yellow but the fact that I alone seem to consider this green has me wondering.

(I asked a guy in the office when I got here and his first word was yellow too)

I kind of wished that I had my camera a little more easily accessible as I was riding to work - passing the Treasury building I was behind a guy with a similar vest and a distinctly yellow helmet and panniers. The difference to me seemed strikingly obvious - of course there are different shades and blah blah blah but it's just strange.

Two possible options present themselves directly to me - I'm right and everyone else is wrong (my preferred option), possibly due to some extra mysterious powers of colour sensitivity OR my conception of the difference between some greens and some yellows is out of whack.

Help me out here please - quick response in the comments - green or yellow?

Investigating: Babe you turned me on

Riding to work this morning, I had a couple of fragments from a Nick Cave song (Babe, You Turn Me On) floating around in my head. It's not a song that I normally pay a lot of attention to, even though I consider myself a bit of a Cave fan.

The lines were -

Like an idea babe,
Like an atom bomb

and

Babe, you turn me on

You can listen to a small part of the tune here (unfortunately it doesn't contain either of these lyrics)



Taking a look at the rest of the lyrics I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it - I mean, as with all Nick Cave songs (including his new work with Grinderman - released this coming Monday) it's a beautiful thing but a little on the obscure side perhaps.

Or rather it was until Wikipedia came to the rescue.

Babe, You Turn Me On is taken from The Lyre of Orpheus, one half of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' excellent 2004 double album Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus.

Wikipedia (or possibly just some nerd with a theory) tells me that The Lyre Of Orpheus is a musical retelling of the ancient Greek legend of Orpheus, a great poet/musician who invented/perfected the lyre, and his wife Eurydice.

The story goes that Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus played a tune so sad that the gods wept and gave him advice on how to get her back from the underworld.

He went to the underworld and his music so charmed Hades and Persephone that they agreed to let him take her back to the surface, on the condition that he walk in front of her and not look back at her until they got back.

As they walked back, in his anxiety that it was a trick, he broke his promise and looked back and she disappeared forever.

Well now I'm just going to have to give this album a good re-listen - probably just as well, as it is a cracker.

So here is the Wikipedia take on the songs of the album and how they fit into the story.

Connection to the Orphic myth

The album's second disc, The Lyre of Orpheus, can be interpreted as an abstract retelling of the original orphic myth, separate from the version in the title track. Breathless could be seen as Orpheus grieving for Eurydice, whilst Babe, You Turn Me On is his memory of the moment of her death -

We stand awed inside a clearing.
We do not make a sound.
The crimson snow falls all about,
carpeting the ground.

Easy Money is a version of Orpheus' bargain with Hades, with heavy emphasis on the theme of the ease of getting what you want, as long as you are prepared to pay the price. Supernaturally could cover several bases, interpreted as both the protagonist's drive to rescue his wife, and as a lament for his failure to do so.

Spell is about the doubt slowly taking over Orpheus as he ascends the stairs out of hell - about his uncertainty regarding Hades' intentions to honour their bargain - and about the final confused moments before his climactic turn—

I call you by your name, I know not where you are.

Carry Me is the album's climax, the point at which Orpheus turns to look upon Eurydice, breaking his bargain with Hades, and condemning her to being pulled back into the underworld. The song could almost be described as a duet from one mouth, the chorus (possibly from Eurydice's point of view) asking Orpheus to either give in to his doubt or stick to his word -

Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
Turn to me and drink of me
Or look away, look away,
look away and never more think of me

Orpheus also speaks of -

The many voices
Speaking to me from the depths below
This ancient wound
This catacomb
Beneath the whited snow

In the end, of course, he turns, and she is carried away.

O Children, the album's coda, describes the grief of Orpheus, and his death by his own hand, as well as a plea to be forgiven for his sins and to be allowed into heaven.

Here are the full lyrics to the song.

"Babe, You Turn Me On"

Stay by me, stay by me
You are the one, my only true love

The butcher bird makes it's noise
And asks you to agree
With it's brutal nesting habits
And it's pointless savagery
Now, the nightingale sings to you
And raises up the ante
I put one hand on your round ripe heart
And the other down your panties

Everything is falling, dear
Everything is wrong
It's just history repeating itself
And babe, you turn me on

Like a light bulb
Like a song

You race naked through the wilderness
You torment the birds and the bees
You leapt into the abyss, but find
It only goes up to your knees
I move stealthily from tree to tree
I shadow you for hours
I make like I'm a little deer
Grazing on the flowers

Everything is collapsing, dear
All moral sense has gone
It's just history repeating itself
And babe, you turn me on

Like an idea
Like an Atom bomb

We stand awed inside a clearing
We do not make a sound
The crimson snow falls all about
Carpeting the ground

Everything is falling, dear
All rhyme and reason gone
It's just history repeating itself
And, babe, you turn me on

Like an idea
Like an Atom bomb

thanks babe.

Applauding: Printable cold sores

I'm a big fan of a good culture jam - there's nothing quite like turning the marketing tools of big business back on them and their insidious attempts to warp our view of the world for fun and profit. Individuals and organisations such as Adbusters have been doing this for years now.

The most recent of these that I've come across is http://printablecoldsores.blogspot.com/ - offering downloadable images that you print onto sticker transparencies and put onto billboards and other advertising posters etc to highlight the unreality of corporate images of beauty.



Geek Graffiti - the creator of these - makes the point that defacing advertising etc is illegal and encourages people to put the stickers on, photograph them and remove them - which seems like a reasonable enough degree of legalistic self preservation. (And obviously I would neeeever encourage people to knowingly break the law either and leave them there.)

Almost makes me sad that Canberra is a city with a ban on public billboards.

Great work Geek Graffiti.

Making: phonecam videos of the storm

Parts of Canberra (and particularly my suburb Turner) were hit by a pretty fierce storm last night with lashings of ice cube sized hail that lasted at least half an hour and probably longer. (Now that's the kind of detail that good journalism demands)

Here's a screenshot that was snapped from the Bureau of Meteorology weather radar as the storm was passing overhead.



These are a couple of photos that came around on the email this morning - a view of the storm from Yass (about 60km from Canberra). (I don't know who took these originally, so if it was you, let me know - they're fantastic)





The first thing that I noticed (after the noise of the hail made watching telly impossible) was that a bunch of hail was collecting in the chair just outside my room. Great opportunity to continue experiments with the phone camera, so I shot this video.



It's kind of murky but hopefully you get the gist.

A rising pool of water outside the front door was the first real concern - we have about a 15cm step up to our front door and are at the bottom of a slope from the street. The water came to within about 2cm of flowing through the door, so it was touch and go for a while there.

These clips show some of the limitations of the phone video camera in low light but I still like the high contrast and the way that everything disappears into the blackness. The white stuff is ice that had flowed down the hill with the water.



With the water flowing steadily to the door, it was interesting to see that enough ice/hail made it along to form a small dam, diverting most of the water under our side gate and into the garden. This isn't really visible in the clip but you can see the curve at the top of the ice that the water was following.

Again, I really like the degenerated quality of the video, the way the colours bleed into one another and the high contrast.



After a while, this got a bit boring (which if you've now watched these clips, you're probably vigourously nodding in agreement with) but there was more excitement to come.

Water had started vigourously flowing through the heating duct in the ceiling of the lounge room - not just a drip but a full fledged stream. This started about 30 mins after the storm did and continued for about an hour after it had finished. (where the water came from I'm a little puzzled but hopefully the handy guy will sort this out. One of the joys of renting I must say)



I think that the flickery quality of the picture came from the use of the energy efficient bulb we are using. Yes, a more sensible person would probably have turned the light off - but the water seemed to be confined to the heating duct.

Getting up this morning, damage seemed pretty light - a couple of chunks taken out of the window mounted brake light housing on my car, possibly a few small roof dents but that was about it.

Riding to work was eerie - at least the first part - ice everywhere and a mist rising to about 4 feet high as it melted. Here's a pic I found on Flickr which gives you some idea.


There are a swag of other pics on Flickr - best bet is to check out this search - http://flickr.com/search/?q=canberra+hail&s=int

Spotting: Kaftans

As a teenager in the 80s, you were pretty much expected to be savagely cruel about all aspects of 70s fashion (oh, how little did we know - and don't even get me started on 90s fashion, I'm looking at your Mr Happy Pants*) - moustaches, flares, disco wear, massive collars, powder blue safari suits and most of all, the Kaftan.



For those who came in late, the Kaftan is a big, shapeless, full body, one size fits all tentlike structure which was particularly popular in the Ottoman empire and was introduced to "the West" in the late 60s by globetrotting hippies.

Fast forward to now - ok, last night - sitting around the kitchen table idly flicking through the weekend papers and chatting to my housies when I suddenly exclaimed WTF!
(in real-speak though) and could only hold up the Sun-Herald tv guide in amazement. (Click on the image for a full-sized version)



Yes, someone out there has been sitting in front of the sewing machine, patiently waiting for the day the Kaftan might return and recently they decided that time is now. Alternately, they have just woken from a 30 year coma and picked up life right where they left it.

The text in the ad leans towards the latter for me -

Pretty enough for Candlelight dinners

Made from lush pure 100% polyester

flatters every figure

These shiny caftans are so elegant you can wear them while entertaining or even for a candlelight dinner for two

(Someone hasn't been getting enough candlelit dinners methinks)

As a multimedia guy, I have a bit of an eye for proportion in images - noticing whether things look right. My housemates have come to know (and mercifully tolerate) my need to change the picture scale on the telly depending on whether something is 4:3 (standard tv ratio) or 16:9 (movie/widescreen ratio). (It just looks wrong Goddamn it :)

Looking at the images of the woman modelling the kaftan, the first thing that struck me was the fact that she looks stretched vertically. Not noticably but enough to look wrong. This says Photoshop to me.

Now there are two equally reasonable explanations for this - they needed to squish the image in slightly to make it fit the layout OR they were trying to emphasise the whole "Flatters every figure" aspect of the kaftan.

For the sake of curiosity, I stretched the image a little to see if it looked more natural - click on the image for a full sized version.



The difference isn't that significant but to my eyes, the image on the right seems more real.

Ok, well all this TodayTonight style minnow-busting is quite tiring, if only I had a comfortable yet stylish piece of clothing to lounge around in, perhaps even sleep in.

Update - Just been chatting to my friend Marg whose hubby Choo has just returned from Malaysia with - you guessed it - a male Kaftan. (But I bet it's not leopard print)

* For the record, Jeff (The Big) Lebowski is the only person who can get away with Happy Pants

Battling: wireless adsl modems

Well, one anyway - I'd hate to exaggerate :)

Our old modem was reclaimed by its owner late last week and initial attempts to set up our long dormant (but faster) spare modem and get it talking to our internet connection proved unfruitful.

Sunday was crunch day though as I had office work to get done - working on the weekend is not a common occurrence, fear not, I'm still a happy public servant - so after a fortifying breakfast, I girded loins and looked the beast square in the blinking lights. (Um, this is coming out far geekier than I might have expected - bear with me)

After an hour or so of working through the automated setup and then onto a small amount of guess work, I tried tech support. As the account is still in the last guys name (I'm getting to it Tim, honest :) they were able to tell me that there was a problem with the password that we were using, just not what it was.

Spool forward two hours during which I've been exercising every possible option I could concoct to reach him (mobile turned off and moved interstate en route to UK) and I find out that the password is in fact correct, it's something else.

Anyway, to cut a slightly dull story (to me it was an epic, frustrating, maddening quest but perhaps you had to be there) to a slightly shorter length, after trying the same thing I'd tried at least a dozen times before, it suddenly decided to work.

Of course, then I decided to try something else to make it more secure, stuffed it and spent another hour trying to get back to the original working state, with success, I should add.

Modem 1 - Col 1.

(Another indicator in my SkyNet theory that the machines have reached awareness and just like messing with us)