Watching: Web 2.0 - the machine is us/ing us

My mate Jerry reminded me about this video the other day - it's a pretty clever examination of how the internet (and the way we use it) is reshaping our society, hopefully for the better. (Of course, this is unless SkyNet decides to use all this information for nefarious purposes :)

Hope you have a great weekend, the Lodge (official residence of the Oz Prime Miniature) is having an open day on Sunday so hopefully I'll be able to share something about that next week - not sure what their policy is on cameras though. (Just wish I'd thought to order a Kevin 07 tshirt before now)

Looking forward to: Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian

I know virtually nothing about this movie as a result of this trailer but I want to see it.

Looking forward to: Shaun Micallef's Newstopia

Shaun Micallef is a bit of a hero of mine - brilliant and hilarious and seemingly a genuinely decent person, he's been doing tv comedy in various capacities in Australia for more than 10 years.



This is why I was pretty happy this morning to read that he has a new news satire/review programme starting on SBS next Wednesday called Newstopia. The prospect of Micallef in some kind of Jon (The Daily Show) Stewart role gets the mind a-boggling.

There's a pretty decent interview with him about it in The Age today - here are a couple of quotes of note:
Firstly about the show -

Enter Newstopia. Screening every Wednesday after Anton Enus' World News Australia, the half-hour satire will take aim at politicians and other bigwigs, and at the way we see ourselves on the world stage. Are we part of Asia? The 51st state of the US? Or do we still cling to the apron strings of Mother England?

"The conceit of the show is that Australia is the best possible place to judge the rest of the world because we have no control over it," Micallef says. "But we're desperately concerned about what the neighbours think of us."

His thoughts on John Howard (Oz Prime Minister, not his Seachange co-star) are an indicator of his insight:

"I've met him a couple of times and found him to be a man of enormous charm," he says. "His greatest strength is that everyone seemed to underestimate him. You can see how Kerry O'Brien's attitude towards him has changed over the past 10 years. He's getting on quite well with Howard now and even having a laugh. He understands he'll never break down that impenetrable wall. But if you get a crack, you've scored a point."

Not that he endorses Howard's spin-laden sound bites. "He's extremely conscious of how his words will read in the paper the next day. It's like he's always got one eye on that history book, on that series of biographies, which is not a great way to live. He's like a dad who watches his kids play through the viewfinder of a Handycam instead of engaging in the moment. But he's survived as a politician partly because he is so careful."

His work on his ABC programme - The Micallef Program is probably his best, here are just a couple of examples if you're wondering what the fuss is about

Updating: Day 107 of the No Shampoo challenge

It's been a little while since I've updated my progress on the no-shampoo front but I'm happy to report that things are still going well. It's still thick and shiny, soft and healthy and I'm assured it doesn't smell. I've also found that it seems to get itchy less than when I was using shampoo.



I rinse it thoroughly each day and try to give it a good brush most days as well - I've been bike riding a fair bit more recently too and this doesn't seem to be making a difference.

In other news, the PC tried valiantly for something like 8 or 9 weeks before packing it in - she has longer hair and it just wasn't coming good. So I guess it's not for everyone but it's definitely at least worth a go.

Enjoying: Raymond Crowe's shadow puppetry

Sometimes the simplest forms of entertainment are the most effective - this is a beautiful video by Raymond Crowe, a guy who calls himself Australia's only unusualist.

Nice, different, unusual.

Playing: songs for Monday Sunset

Like the 309 Johnny Cash 4:35 American V: A Hundred Highways
Jealous Girls The Gossip 3:39 Standing In The Way Of Control
Rosa The Devastations 5:10 Yes, U
Dream In Color Grant-Lee Phillips 4:26 Strangelet
Perfectly Ordinary Rastawookie 4:01 Perfectly Ordinary
Binary Love The Rakes 3:45 Capture/Release
Apple Blossom The White Stripes 2:13 De Stijl
Troubled in mind Konrad Lenz 2:20 Living with the spirits of the dead
Swampland Scientists 4:10 Blood Red River
Young folks Peter Bjorn And John 4:39 Writers block
I love my leather jacket The Chills 2:54 Topless women talk about their lives
The Ship Song Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 5:14 The Good Son
If Looks Could Kill Camera Obscura 3:29 Let's Get Out Of This Country
The Beast I Came To Be Beasts Of Bourbon 2:14 Little Animals
In Front of Me Tzu 3:37 Smiling At Strangers
Indecise Coralie Clement 2:35 So Frenchy, So Chic (Disc 2)
Jolene Dolly Parton 2:41 The Very Best Of
Black, White And Dead Zombie Ghost Train 2:51 Glad Rags & Body Bags
Chinito Chinito Ry Cooder 4:52 Chavez Ravine
Being Followed Rocket Science 3:53 Being Followed
Fuzzy Grant Lee Buffalo 4:59 Fuzzy

Enjoying: the labour day long weekend

Hope you are too (if you're having it)

Attending: Scientific Lense opening

A workmate of the PC had some photos in a new show that opened at PhotoAccess last night so we cruised along to check it out.

The show combines work from five scientists and is intended to show that even though science and art generally aren't spoken of in the same breath, the extensive use of photography in science can result in some particularly beautiful/interesting art.

There was a fair bit of variety in the work, some was was impressive and other images were a little average and felt like filler. Putting the photos into an art space brings some expectations I guess and given the explosion of images that you get at your fingertips now through Flickr and the ilk, you expect to see something extra special if it's stuck up on a wall in a gallery. I did particularly like a number of the turtle (tortoise?) pics though.



It's well worth a look if you like science, nature or just photography in general.

Reading: Nerds gone wild

Nerds gone wild! is a pretty cool zine from Melbourne that comes out sporadically in comic book shops and other such places and features a great range of commentary and reviews.

Unsurprisingly, it focuses on geekdom, with feature articles so far including:

• If nerds are cool now, why aren’t I, Mum?


• William Shatner: ham bites back


• Scrabble geeks and grandmasters


• Windows Vista: all right or just a piss-weak OS X?


• The Orcs in society post-LotR


• Angel: if he’s immortal, why does he get fatter?


• The complete guide to pretending you always loved Doctor Who


• Obsessed nerd tells all: TV satellite hacking and my life


• Jesus was basically and X-Man


• Snowy versus Brain: dog challenge


• Astroboy: why I always liked his sister better


• Magicians: the first nerds?


• The Sexiest Nerds Alive


• Hallmark Attacks


• Complete guide to LAN parties: dos and don’ts


• Gingertrek Men: high-fat LAN snack recipes


• Operation McFly


• R2D2 versus Everything


• Why it’s fun to hate Sony!


• Special guest writer: Daniel Kitson

Best of all, previous issues are available as freely downloadable PDFs.

Bless their nerdy hearts.

There's also a discussion board there but it's a little underpopulated at the moment

One thing about the Nerds Gone Wild! title is that it always reminds me of the Girls Gone Wild series of videos, best explained by this great clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm:

LOLing: uh LOLCATS slide show

Found this on myPlick slideshow sharing site - enjoy

LOLing (and Supporting): the GetUp Govt climate change ad parody

GetUp! is an Australian activist organisation that uses the web really well to campaign on a huge range of issues. These lean toward the left (which suits me just fine) but GetUp! isn't aligned to any particular party. It has board members from community organisations alongside people from big business.

Their latest effort is a parody of the governments multi-million dollar ad campaign to greenwash their ongoing hopelessness in dealing with environmental issues.

Here's an example of one of the govt ads



(Funnily enough, the Dept of the Environment appears to have blocked commenting on this video - which stopped me from posting the link to the GetUp! version)

GetUp! is looking to run their interpretation of this during the AFL Grand Final this coming weekend. I couldn't embed their version (I guess they want everyone to view it directly through their site) but here are a couple of stills and you can watch the whole thing at https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateCleverer&id=126 (and donate too, if you're of a mind) (Couchmedia put in $50)





It's a little hard to see but the lab girl is cleaning the coal in the clean-coal shot with a brush.

(Don't get me started on this clean coal bollocks - it's essentially just the process of reducing the polluting effects of the worst form of coal to the second worst and is regarded by virtually everyone without a financial or political stake in coal as a total misnomer. Interestingly, when you search Wikipedia for Greenwash, clean coal comes up as the second top term in the search list)

As far as the ad plan goes, I'm actually a little surprised though that there are any slots available, I would have thought that they would be booked up weeks or even months in advance - maybe they already booked it and now have to pay for it?

Anyway, good on them for the idea, it's a great ad. (Just a shame they aren't prepared to make it web-publishable)

KEWLing: Croquet - the virtual world

At times I wish that technology would just sit still for a minute - I'm just catching up to Second Life and its possibilities when along comes this video for Croquet (an open source virtual world system) that seems to do a dozen things that SL is missing.

(Mainly the ability to browse the internet from inside the game but also a few other things)

Seriously,watch the video, it's so worth the five minutes.

Watching: the world clock

The PC sent me a link to this site (http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf) which offers a little perspective on the world.

If you click on the Now button, you can see (statistically at least) a whole bunch of the crap things that are happening in the world (but at least, presumably, not to you)

Watch those barrels of oil flow - nice to see at least that more bicycles are being made than cars.

Baking: Choc-chip cornflake bikkies

Had a good day in the kitchen yesterday after helping the PC move in on Saturday - a good solid clean and organise of the cupboards and all the pots and pans and assorted plastic containers. (Oh yes, the fun never stops in the Flanders house).

One of the things we came across was a bag of slightly old choc-bits (but really, does chocolate every really go off?) and so in saying that they were fine I pretty well set myself up to prove it and the great bikkie challenge was on.



They turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Thanks for the recipe PC and the advice. (Beating butter and sugar together is more complex than you'd think :)


250g Butter
1 cups caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
As many choc bits as you want (I put in about 150g)
2 cups self raising flour
5 and 1/2 cups cornflakes

Beat the butter and sugar together
Add the vanilla essence and eggs and beat until fluffy

Add the flour and mix it in well with your hands
Add the choc bits and cornflakes (don't crush up the cornflakes too much)

Bake on a greased tray at 180C for 20 mins.

This made about 25 biscuits (some might call them cookies)

Watching: Radiohead meets Eraserhead mashup

This is a bit of a no-brainer for me - OK Computer is still one of my favourite all time albums and David Lynch's Eraserhead is still my favourite bizarrely surreal film.

Jsmash has done a pretty nice job cutting this clip together - I like the tiny jumpcuts in particular. If you haven't seen Eraserhead, check it out - just don't go in expecting the story to make sense, treat it more like an abstract painting and just let yourself experience the feelings it provokes.



Here's a short clip from the film to give you some idea of what to expect - if you're overly squeamish you might give it a miss. I remember reading somewhere that Lynch came up with the idea for the film when he was feeling anxious about the upcoming birth of his first child.



(Oh and if you're a Twin Peaks fan, you might have noticed that Henry is played by Jack Nance, who played Pete Martell in the show)

Playing: Tunes for Lost Highway

There are a few personal faves in here but I made an effort to find a few artists that I've been meaning to investigate more fully so hopefully it's a good mix.

No place to fall (Townes Van Zandt) Lisa Miller Car tape 3:19
Helpless Nick Cave The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young 4:32
After the Gold Rush The Flaming Lips The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young 4:14
It's Just That Simple Wilco A.M. 3:46
Harry Was A Bad Bugger Tex, Don & Charlie All Is Forgiven 5:19
Salty candy Adam Green Friends of mine 1:39
Woke up this morning Alabama 3 Last train to Mashville 4:03
Chelsea Morning Joni Mitchell Hits 2:31
Blue Spanish Sky Chris Isaak Wild At Heart 3:59
Step In Step Out Weddings Parties Anything They Were Better Live (Disc 2) 4:29
Brown Bessy The Fuelers Hot Dang 2:20
Dirty Water Randall Blair And The Wedded Bliss Tattoos And Taillights 4:46
What If Lucinda Williams West 5:41
Make it Count Barb Waters & Kim Salmon Rosa Duets 3:35
A Fond Farewell Elliott Smith From A Basement On The Hill 3:58
Sweet Jane Cowboy Junkies The trinity sessions 3:35
Hold On, Hold On Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings The Flood 2:46
Our Sunshine Paul Kelly With Uncle Bill Smoke 4:22
Little Animals Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 5:14
New Day Of The Dead Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 5:17

Seeing: The Beasts of Bourbon - ANU Bar Canberra

Confounded study (and nerdiness) kept me from seeing much (or any) of the support acts - Roland S Howard and Magic Dirt - but I saw the Beasts of Bourbon play one of the most chaotic, shambolic and yet utterly ROCK shows I've ever seen last night.

From the small part of the set that I heard, Magic Dirt were tight and loud - and it appears fortunately that they're moving away from their much poppier sounds of the last few years.

But the show was all about the Beasts - (check out my thoughts on their new album here)

Tex Perkins, even off his tits as he appeared to be, positively exuded charisma - and this in the face of spitting on stage, regularly dropping the mic (not in a clumsy way necessarily, just not caring), breaking off midsong to banter with the band and spectacularly falling backwards off stage (like a scuba diver entering the water) halfway through the final song. For all of this, my friend Jo, veteran of rock shows, left the venue feeling even more gooey about the man than ever before.

So how did he pull this off? A combination of rock theatricality, good naturedness and just being generally piss-funny as well as bursts of rock'n'roll brilliance from the band. There was a sense that at any moment that whole stage could just totter into complete chaos, only to come back from the brink at the last moment - as a show it was compelling.

The hand gestures and showmanship, the running gags about how "tight" the band was and the seeming fascination with doing that tip the mic stand with your foot and bring it back (which the man is clearly a guru at) kind of brings to mind the Drunken Master kung-fu style.

I guess the ultimate measure of how good a show was is that I bought two tshirts - which I don't think I've ever done at a gig before.

(and all this with them not even playing Chase the Dragon - which members of the crowd had called out for all night. My thoughts at the time were - look guys, it's their big number, it'll have to be the final encore song, just relax - but then it never came. I was left with a feeling like the end of the final episode of The Sopranos - is it brilliance or is it wrong. Brilliance came out trumps)

Wondering: Are lolcats infiltrating the Herald Sun

I noticed this image on the homepage of the Herald Sun (Murdoch's Melbourne tabloid) last night and was struck by the similarity of the font to that in lolcat images. Maybe it's a new genre - polcats?

LOLing: Workplace Ad Parody (hmatkin)

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of the mashup - remixing or re-editing one existing media product to give it a new (often funnier or more accurate) spin.

This YouTube clip by hmatkin is a fantastic example. Our conservative government radically changed industrial relations laws recently to move workers away from collectively negotiated agreements to individual contracts - and they've spent tens of millions of dollars trying to sell this to an increasingly unhappy public.



There are a lot of things I like about this ad - it's brazen and funny, it's just as political as the supposedly apolitical tax-payer funded version and in spite of some slightly rough editing it makes the point very well.

One of the things it made me think about is the way the government ads use post-it notes to convey their message. The way I see post-it notes, they're very temporary things, generally whipped up very quickly with little thought and they're easy to change. If I had the time, I'd explore this - something along the lines of "Your rights - guaranteed by post-it note" - this isn't exactly it, but you get the gist.

Alas, I has uni work to press on with.

Here are a couple more hmatkin clips.

Marvelling: Happy reading Art Bear

There's often something slightly sugary, kitsch or poppy about the elements of "Western" culture that you find crossing over to Asian culture - this was the label of the water bottle that came when I stopped in at the Senior Crocodile Thai cafe in Sydney last week.

It's a little hard to read (the phone-cam doesn't like low light so much) but it says "happy reading art bear, I hope you will enjoy reading my stories". I like it - it went well with the young kidult vibe of the place, which included the ubiquitous "beckoning cat" statues that seem to be popping up all over the place and the wall to wall concert footage of who I think were the Pussycat Dolls.

Actually, I've just read up on the beckoning cat or maneki neko - which I'd initially called the waving kitty and it's much more than just the latest kitsch cartoon character based trend - it's a traditional good luck/come-in-and-do-business thing apparently.



Makes me realise that I'm getting on a little (just about to leave the cherished 18 - 35 demographic) but that's ok.

One other interesting thing I've discovered while writing this is that if you can hold your drink well in Japan, you might be referred to as hidari-kiki (left handed). Given that left handedness often has negative connotations in most languages - sinister, gauche etc - this is interesting.

(Maneko image borrowed from elissadariel on Flickr)