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LiveJournal for Damien Wise. View: User Info. View: Friends. View: Calendar. View: Website (My Website). View: Memories. You're looking at the latest 20 entries. Missed some entries? Then simply jump back 20 entries.

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 11:21 pm. Mood: bouncy.

Because everyone needs airships. Heavy-lifter hybrid-'copter airships. Boeing to build combo airship-copter flying cranes Still haven't seen the new Batman film, but here's how it may have panned-out: Michael Bay's Rejected "The Dark Knight" Script Speaking of comics-to-films, Ive been holding-off commenting here on the new "Watchmen" trailer. Quite simply, it's magnificent, despite with the whiney music, despite my quibbles about the casting/outfit change to one or two two characters, and despite a technical nitpick over camera-work / special effects near the end. *rocks back-and-forth* Please, not another "Judge Dredd". Trailer at official website. If this film is as good as this trailer makes it look, it'll be my favourite for 2009. It looks right, shot-for-shot. Delia Derbyshire made some amazing music at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the best known being the theme music for "Doctor Who". Although Ron Grainer scored it and got official credit, Delia Derbyshire arranged and recorded the piece and made it so memorable (Ron Grainer wanted to share the credit when he heard it). They've found some of Delia Derbyshire's old recordings. Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer. In a move that I'm sure Delia Derbyshire would approve of, I experimented with the music to layer-up something new and good-sounding. Goto the Experimental Dance Track from 8 seconds in, just after she says, "Forget about this, it's for interest only." And cue-up "Blue Veils and Golden Sands Demo" at 1:06. Then pay them both together. :-> More info in the comments thingy with the onomatopoeic URL. :) Here's some IRL Dinosaur fun. Love the comment said in the background a little over a minute in. :-> Iain M. Banks answers some fans' questions in an online interview...I'm still yet to read his new Culture novel, "Matter", but should soon (review here). Anyway, the interview is nifty. Beaker performs that bit of Beethoven's 9th. Meep!

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Subject: Chili Doom Time: 11:21 pm. Mood: hungry.

If I perish during the night, I have succumbed to the Curse of the Chili Doom. It's been nice knowing you. ( Herein lies an account of an experiment that Chairman Karga would be proud of... )

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 7:30 pm.

Gah, another day of scraping the frost from my keyboard and de-fogging the screen before I can type. Okay, it's not that awful, but I'm thoroughly sick of Winter. In a press-release from Magnum Opus Press during the week, it was announced that Dragon Warriors ("The ultimate Roleplaying Game", according to the cover of the first edition) is set for a re-launch later this year. It's been on the cards for a while, so it's wonderful to see a release date, a number of titles official news, etc. News and blurb One of the people behind this second edition (besides the original authors) is James Wallis, who, completely by coincidence, popped-up during the week in this amusing RPG related video: 'Brave Noob World' (No, you don't have to play MMORPGs to find it funny...for that matter, I've never played WoW and I, erm *shuffles feet*, LOLed). The Book of Accidents is an exquisite look at the types of accidents that befall naughty, young children. The illustrations and tone of the writing reflect the era many think Edward Gorey came from. Who can go past the defenestration on page 20?! ;) 'D' is for Damien, 'venged by a teazed [sic] dog. One of the best films of all time is also one of the oldest. There are two popular versions of Fritz Lang's masterpiece, "Metropolis," floating around (one with a soundtrack by Queen), but both are far from a complete cut. Key scenes have been rediscovered. The original footage requires some restoration and will complete things, returning roughly a quarter of the film. This video came to me via some fellow Tech Writers: Stephen Fry, ever the wit and gentleman, gives a grammar lesson to Alan Davies. Here's Joe Cocker impersonating Alan Davies singing "With a Little Help From My Friends". For your benefit, it's captioned for the clear-headed. K-mart has a prominent display of Christmas-trees...cos, y'know, there's not many shopping-days left this year.

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 10:45 pm. Mood: cold.

Cos I haven't posted here in ages and have a bunch of tabs open: This helped to confirm that "I need to go traveling" itch. ...even if Richard Watts did a double-take when I said I remembered him from the days of The Ergot Derivative gigs at The Punter's Club (now reincarnated as Bimbo's Pizza). Killjoy Cooking With the Dungeons & Dragons Crowd Sad but true. :-P I realise this comment is possibly in poor taste, but the latest anti-gambling posters/billboards don't carry the message I think the designers intended. When I saw the grainy B&W photo tonight and read "The machines always win in the end", I thought it was to do with a "Terminator" spin-off... When your culinary needs get fractal, reach for the Sierpinski Biscuits. Did you install Firefox 3.0 on Dowload Day last week? If so, type about:robots into the browser bar thingy and see what happens. Speaking of Firefox 3, here's a tweak to give it spot-on colours if that's the sorta thing you're picky over (at hte cost of some performance), Firefox 3: Color profile support (oh the pretty, pretty colors) Here's some good news in the fight against cancer: Cancer patient recovers after injection of immune cells Precis: patient is cured after eight weeks from having a bunch of his own white blood cells genetically reprogrammed to attack tumors. Ten best lightsaber mashups. My faves are the "Lord of the Rings" and "Yojimbo" fights (and not just for Sam yelling "Herr Froodooo!"). LOLcat gets philosophical: True Heroes

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Subject: Computer modelling says: Time: 6:25 pm. Mood: entertained. Music: Regina Spektor: "On the Radio".

June 2008: Citizens demand more roads. They are not content with their sprawling, environmentally-conscious rail system. The taxation rate fluctuates wildly. Economic progress hinges on ignoring complaints about pollution and warnings about environmental damage, all the while continuing with constant growth. Incredibly, between two thirds and three quarters of the populous say the government is doing a good job, and their chief complaint isn't with the grey smog that permanently rings the city -- they're twice as concerned about how much they're taxed. The government can't spend its money quickly enough; it simply piles-up. Instead of the predictable Law of Supply and Demand, people will slowly and inevitably fill-up available land as it is zoned. The population is approaching 200,000 and growing swiftly...this and the inflation of prices are the only areas where Will Wright didn't get it quite right when he designed "Sim City" roughly 20 years ago. Apart from those metrics (prices and population numbers), the progress of this simulated city from 1900 to today is eerily accurate. SimCity was one of my favourite games years ago, and it's good to get back into the swing of things. :) It's on the freebie disk from the Game On exhibition (excellent but you need more than a couple of hours to appreciate it all) at the ACMI. The disk also has a video/advertisement for Spore, soon the be released...looking forward to that one, since it looks like an extension of the Sim line and sorta merges in theme and style with "Populous", "Flow" and a few other great games.

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 3:00 pm. Mood: still bit sick, but recovering.

Steven Moffat to be Doctor Who Lead Writer and Executive Producer. Yup, Russell T Davies will move-on and take his wonky scripting with him. In his place, we'll have the guy who wrote "The Empty Child" and "Blink" (and the upcoming "Tintin" film). Sigur Rós will be in Melbourne on the 1st of August. Yay! :) Remember this photo? I just saw that it's been given an "Award of the week" thingy by a group admin on on Flickr. Sure, it's a small, obscure group and web-awards are all-common but I'm pretty chuffed. Really need to just get out there and take more photos. Often, I just don't have the time, or I'm not in the mood...or I'm right there with the camera lined-up but everything's rushed or the light's all wrong, bla, bla, bla... And, jeez DXO-Optics Pro is unstable! >|-[ When it works it's absolutely brilliant for processing digital photos, but it cashes at just the wrong moment and loses heaps of work. ARGH! I've started (several times) on the photos from Katie&Andrew Bowie's wedding. Many are alright and some are even good. :) I'm pretty happy with them in a technical sense. They're sharp where you want it focused, soft backgrounds, natural/warm colours, minimal grain. And, there's no flare or ghosting, even when shooting into the setting sun, as the last pic shows -- and getting the exposure right in such circumstances is tricky cos the camera's going "Argh, bright light!" and wants to turn everything down so far that the faces are accidentally reduced to silhouettes. Meanwhile, you're trying to hold the camera steady at full zoom from the opposite side of the hall and waiting for a good moment...luckily, Katie&Andrew had a lot of good moments on their wedding day. ;) Here's a few of the better shots processed so far: Katie&Andrew outside Montsalvat click for full-screen size Katie the resplendent bride click for full-screen size Katie's Bouquet, a crop of the previous photo click for full-screen size Katie&Andrew (just after they'd exchanged vows?) click for full-screen size

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 10:46 pm. Mood: sick.

Still sick as a very sick thing. My lungs still wheeze sometimes. The rest of the time they erm, bubble. Gah! Thorne's made a good post about panoramic photos, which includes this nifty panorama of the Walhalla Cemetery he made. See more at Panoye. By coincidence, over the past few days, I've been reading a fair bit into panoramas. Here's some relevant links. Along similar lines to Panoye, GigaPan looks interesting. Slightly slicker interface, though it lacks Panoye's built-in GoogleMaps tagging/metadata. It hooks into Google Earth and lets you zoom into a panorama, as shown here I'm considering purchasing AutoPano. It's based on the algorithms of AutoStitch but has a much more powerful interface. If you want pano software that's free (as in "free beer") and as automatic as loading a bunch of files straight from your camera and pressing "stitch", then this is the way to go. In some cases, it has problems with distortion of non-linear architecture, odd textures or extreme perspectives. Generally, though, AutoStitch is brilliant (and it's tiny and free). AutoPano gives you back some of the freedom that AutoStitch removes when it helpfully does everything automatically. While AutoPano will find control-points (co-incident features of neighbouring, overlapping photos), the horizon, lines of perspective, etc., it lets you tweak those parameters. It does a few other things that some people might like, such as processing photos in RAW/NEF format, and generating HDR images from bracketed photos. High-resolution panoramas from SLRs wre used as the basis for visual effects in "Speed Racer". When Cinema Meets VR - John Gaeta Talks about Speed Racer It's long and Gaeta's language is a little flowery/arrogant but it contains some interesting info, great examples, and pointers as to how the future may pan-out (pardon the pun). I'd sen some of Greg Downing's panoramas a few years ago, and it's good to se they used his pioneering work with Quicktime VR in the film. Rumours of a "Neuromancer" film circulate from time to time. Usually, they feature a script from the book's author. He may be the grandfather of the cyberpunk genre, but history says he's not so good at adapting his books to film (or writing for TV). No, it looks like the Neuromancer film is doomed by its casting...not off to a good start. <edit>Fans of steampunk and stop-motion animation films, go here and rejoice. :-></edit> Now for some weird science: Bionic eyes implanted in blind patients. Been keeping an eye (so to speak) on this project for a while, and it come a long way over the past five years or so. Nifty! Audio interview here'Both men were truly blind' Art and science make an odd combination sometimes. MoMA exhibit dies five weeks into show. Found that via Curator euthanizes living leather jacket made from human mouse stem-cells The comments on respective forums say a lot about the way things have been interpreted. I always thought that good art makes an impact and provokes thought...not merely: "Personally, I liked it better when artists painted pretty pictures and carved sculptures that looked like something," as one commenter says.

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Subject: "The Hobbit" film Time: 11:05 pm. Mood: ecstatic. Music: [Mental jukebox] The Ergot Derivative: "Hobbit Song".

Guillermo del Toro Chats with TORN About ‘The Hobbit’ Films! Damn fine choice of director to turn my favouritest book of all time (a touch more favourite than "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) into two films. And Peter Jackson is confirmed as Producer, which is about as good as it gets after things went pear-shaped between him and the studio. And, look who's saying they've been cast to star as Gollum and Gandalf...awesome! In the interview, Guillermo del Toro says he'd like to increase the amount of state-of-the-art animatronics (in preference to being over-reliant on CGI), and essentially stick with the visual and special-effects style established by Peter Jackson. I expect the scripting/storytelling style to be the same, though I'm not sure what they're going to put into the second film, since "The Silmarillion" was a little light on detail about what happened in the 50 years between the end of "The Hobbit" and the start of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring". Elsewhere, he made reference to Smaug and the giant spiders of Mirkwood. They're already getting to work on reconstructing/re-planting Hobbiton. I can hardly wait until 2010. :) Idle speculation and wishful thinking: given the state of facial motion-capture software, I think it should be possible to have a fully animatronic, life-scale Smug moving-about with real actors on the set while a mo-cap actor (hmm, Andi Serkis is on the project, how about that?!) acts in the wings in front of a video-camera and computer. No time wasted with rendering, no multiple re-takes, no compositing, no mismatched lighting, no dodgy stand-ins, etc., and the actors can get-on with acting instead of squinting at a blue-screen and swapping riddles in the dark...

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 11:00 am. Mood: bouncy. Music: Muse: "Starlight".

Been a while, so here's stuff quickly... Last weekend, I attended the wedding of Andrew&Katie at Montsalvat. Gorgeous setting, beautiful ceremony and fun reception. It all went smoothly and was very "them"...which is fitting for such a great couple. :) Yesterday, snarkpuppie and I had a trip to the zoo. Lent her my camera and by the end she was shooting like a pro despite the tricky conditions...what can I say -- fast learner and inspiring subjects to click at. :) Neither of us had been to the Melbourne zoo in years, and were a bit surprised at how much things had changed. Highlights were the otters, lemurs, big cats, reptiles and meerkats. Awesome day. :-> This morning's been ace, too, and there are plans afoot for tonight, tomorrow morning and tomorrow afternoon. I'm kinda enjoying this long weekend thing. Have recently discovered Dagoba organic/non-GMO chocolate (not to be confused with Dagobah, the swamp plant that was Yoda's secret exile in "Star Wars"). The Xocolatl flavour is a smooth dark chocolate (not overly sweet) with a bit of a chili kick and tiny, curnchy cocoa nibs (ground-up innards of cocoa bean). I'd have preferred a little more chili but that's probably cos my appreciation/tolerance for chilies has grown a fair bit over the past few years. The Chai flavour is milk chocolate (again, not overly sweet) that has a warm cinnamon taste and tiny, crunchy chunks of crystalised ginger. The ingredients list also includes "essential oils" -- I can taste clove and nutmeg, with a faint aftertaste of pepper and anise...which balances the Chai mix really quite nicely. Like any good vice, both are highly addictive and don't come cheap. ;) It looks like "Blake's 7" is set for a return to our screens: Blake's 7 poised for Sky comeback. I loved the storylines and characters...and forgave the dodgy sets and appalling costumes. It was 80s BBC sci-fi, mostly done by some of the writers of "Doctor Who" and in some cases was made with cast-off props/costumes from Dr Who. It was darker, more serious and made more overt social commentary (they were hit-and-run freedom-fighters in an Orwellian future that looked a bit like high-tech Thatcherism with the wonders of a galaxy-spanning military-industrial complex). Like the new "Dr Who", I'm hoping improved production values and a decent budget will let the series shine, and get a new generation of fans hooked. Looking forward to seeing how it turns-out, since this there have been many attempts over the years by fans and some cast-members to get a sequel series off the ground, and it finally looks like it's official. No idea yet whether this will be a continuation from the original series, or a re-start.

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 6:20 pm. Mood: bouncy.

Been so busy lately. Also, been sick for the past fortnight or more with some sort of energy-sapping, mind-numbing snotty virus...but I'm finally getting over it. Back to eating and sleeping (semi-)normally and it's wonderful to be a bit like my more usual self again (and a tad embarrassing to look back on things for the past fortnight - apologies to anyone I was bleary/braindead at). Highlights of the past week or so included seeing "Princess Cabaret" at the Comedy Festival with a goodly bunch of friends. Very witty combination/send-up of a collection of popular stories/fables, with good acting, piano accompaniment and singing. Also, saw The Medieval Imagination Illuminated manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand 28 March - 15 June 2008 Open 10am-5pm daily (to 9pm Thursdays) And, it's free! :) Much fun was had by myself and snarkpuppie (and to those who couldn't make it (you know who you are), go see it! *poke* :-P ). Afterwards, I had the odd experience of seeing some of my photos getting printed. Maybe "odd" isn't quite the right word for it, but I've seen very few of my photos anywhere other than on my computer's screen. Gotta say, it's re-ignited my interest in getting a printer that'll print photos with high-quality colour-reproduction and large. Looking at an HP DesignJet and wondering how to best import one to cut the cost. US war robots in Iraq 'turned guns' on fleshy comrades This sounds a little hyped, if you ask me. They had a glitch with one of their prized TALON robots. I wonder if we'll ever know the full cause? My money's on -- what's the polite term for it? -- "Operator Error". More info and pictures here: Combat Robot Attempts Rebellion Against Human Masters in Iraq, Army Pulls Plug for 10-20 Years Shades of "RoboCop" or "Terminator", anyone? Seriously, though, I'm all for de-toothing the rabid killing machines that our armed forces have increasingly become (it seems to be a race to invent more efficient ways to kill each other), but it saddens me to see one overblown slip-up put so much robotics research back so far (though you could easily argue that the research could be better directed). Speaking of research, BMJ is one of the world's best known medical/research journals...and this article is very clever/funny: The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute "There is no spoon!" More info on Resistentialism here: Report on Resistentialism by Paul Jennings (probably of most interest to philosophy-herberts such as polly_jl_morgan and qamar).

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 11:15 pm.

Very cool: andricongirl has made it into BongBoing with this nifty and macabre piece of art: This bunny has been rescued from scientific labs . Unfortunately his brains sometimes pop out. Heh...seems like it's only a few days since I ranted about book-publishers not learning from the ARIA vs music debacle. Looks like tehy're changing their tune (so to speak)...Publishers Phase Out Piracy Protection on Audio Books If they do the same with the text of books in electronic form, they might just have a chance. Usually, when retired politicians pop-up to say something, they make it worthwhile. J.Ho is an exception: Apology was a mistake, says feisty Howardpitiful, little man The Chaser has an obit for Gary Gygax. I reckon he'd have a laugh at it. :)

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 3:00 pm. Mood: restless. Music: NIN: "Ghosts I-IV".

Ugh, what a crappy morning that was. At least it's warm and sunny this afternoon. And, I've gotta say, i do like the idea of four-day working weeks. Public holiday today, Good Friday next week, Easter Monday the week after that... :) Seems I've been joking about the power-nap for the past few years as a "Nana-nap," when, in fact, the irony-free version was "Disco-nap" all along. I, however, prefer the alliteration and joking comparison with old age, and can't imagine restful micro-napping taking place at a disco. Besides, bedrooms should be a disco-ball-free zone. :-P Was talking with my brother and Snark the other day about getting a portable 2.5" hard-disk thingy to back-up photos and music. It, however, falls short of some other wants/requirements I've been considering lately, so I think I'll flip-flop to my previous plan of getting a laptop (and stick with memory-card&USB-adaptor for ultra-small, solid-state portability...I carry that gear everywhere with my camera, anyway). A laptop is more bulky, costly and heavy...but it's convenient, mobile computing and means I can put-off upgrading this desktop's hardware and operating system. For large-scale, long-term storage/back-up, I'm still dreaming of something that attaches to a network and has a RAID of three or four 3.5" disks. Thoughts, anyone?

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 12:55 am. Music: [MentalJukebox] The Ergot Derivative: "Zimbanana".

Principal filming for the "Watchman" film is compete. While they spend the next year on post-production, we'll get an increasing stream of hints...such as these character photos. I completely agree with the reviewer's opinions. Keep an eye on The Watchmen production blog (where, for example, artist, Dave Gibbons, gives his stamp of approval). There's also a new "Wallace and Gromit" film on the way. According to the blog, the animatic is sorta there, and the first shot has been signed-off. The finished, half-hour film is due at the end of this year. In a change from previous W&G animations, they're shooting it digitally (DSLRs, not ancient Bolex 16mm film cameras), and using the Australian-made StopMotopPro software (to which they contributed feature-requests and testedgave it a hammering). There's a "Get Smart" film on the way. If the trailer is anything to go by, it could be quite good. :) Sigur Rós have released a film and, besides selling it in shops (and online), have put it on youTube. All 97 minutes of it. The film is partly documentary, partly concept-album and partly music-video, and features many of their better-known pieces performed live or remixed in some way. The photography/film style's really quite nice, and Iceland looks stunning. Sigur Rós: 'Heima' Last weekend, Bowie and I were talking about the future of music sales. At the time, I was ranting about DRM-crippled e-books and said major book-publishers would go the way or ARIA and record-labels if they didn't get their act together (this was prompted by the Neil Gaiman release or "American Gods" for download). I thought it was a good analogy. Then, life imitated art imitating life...a day or two later, NIN released a new album to the internet. Some tracks are free, while you can get the while lot for $5. Rewind to Andrew Bowie's comments on Saturday night. He said that die-hard fans would pay stacks (hundreds?) for the super-deluxe limited-edition release with the book, good packaging, signed gizmos, and so on. NIN did just that...and raked-in three quarters of a million dollars in just two days from those die-hard fans (ie: before you consider all those $5 editions sold). theweaselking has a very nice opinion-piece here with some links. Interesting counterpoint to show how far things have come: One of my all-time favourite bands, The Ergot Derivative, did a similar trick with one of their albums. It was a few years ago and, unfortunately for them at the time, the internet wasn't quite what is is today. They were the second band in the world to do such a thing. Same $5. It was way more than the miserable amount they'd get from it being sold in a shop after the retailer and record-label took a bite. It was in MP2 format since MP3s hadn't yet been invented. :)

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 11:50 pm.

NIN has a new album! Instrumental. A gadzillion tracks. Download it for a pittance and be assured that the money (a far greater cut than they'd otherwise get) goes to the band, not to some useless record-label. Dear ARIA and record-labels, when will you realise you've been pwned by Teh Intertron and just die? My internet-tubes are still a little knotted and slow...maybe later. It's getting near to The Melbourne Comedy Festival time again. I only saw one or two shows last year but stuff was good...must see more this year! :) Anyone got experience with upgrading a Windows 2000 system to Windows XP without the pain of doing a complete wipe and reinstalling from scratch? Going to buy some photograph-processing software and it's WinXP/Vista only. Have they improved XP's memory-management yet for aps that hog memory / use large files? Opera last night was good. Ta for horngirl for the freebie (dress rehearsal) to La bohème. That production needs faster set-changes. And Puccini needs an editor. Musically, it's nice but four long acts?! FFS, Mimi was coughing and falling-over in the first act; does she really need to take the entire fourth to die? :-P Still, with a voice like that, she makes a fatal case of consumption sound good.

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Subject: Random stuff update... Time: 5:30 pm. Music: Nick Cave and P.J Harvey: "Henry Lee".

Happy birthday (a couple of days ago) to geekweevil, and before that, Mim. And, congrats to Thorne&Erin on getting engaged (though, you lose half a mark for announcing in on Facebook before your blog(s) :-P ). "Love" looks like a fun game in the making. It's all a bit vapourware-ish at present but might be worth keeping an eye on. It's a multi-player first-person virtual world, but a bit more abstract than your typical MMORPG. Hard to believe it's all been done by one person...these screenshots have a fantastic, painterly style and, what's more, they move/animate in 3D. Since geometry is done in realtime, you can do in-game editing. Art and scenery are generated procedurally by the game-engine (meaning, nobody sat down to draw/design each tree -- the entire landscape is made by an algorithm, which decided where to position that tree, how many branches it has, where its leaves go, and so on). RockPaperShotgun has an overview. Looks like it's a "sandbox" game. The other bits (VRML editor?) are usable but take a bit to grow accustomed to. More info and a video/interview here. Niel Gaiman's "American Gods" is online as a free e-book. He even name-drops Corey Doctorow in his blog as a proponent of distributing books in electronic and dead-tree format simultaneously. The reaction in the press has been interesting. Publishers still don't quite get the parallel business-model, though. Don't cripple e-books with DRM! Look at digital music and learn from its hideous mistakes before you evolve yourself out of business and into irrelevancy (as the major record labels are). And, please don't do that, since I think there is a place in the market for a dual approach -- an inexpensive or free electronic format, plus the traditional printed/bound format (for those like me who like the look and tangibility and smell of a good book, the texture of good paper, the appearance of a collection on a shelf, and the ability to curl-up in a sunny spot and bliss-out). This is pertinent, since I recently shelled-out for the beautifully crafted Absolute Sandman volumes (you can buy both on Amazon for the price of one locally in Borders). As for story of "American Gods" -- I read the book a couple of years ago and liked it. It's good but not brilliant, and it's kinda predictable if you've read/seen his other stuff. In this case, take the blurb and extrapolate it to: "This is how Niel Gaiman would write a contemporary fantasy story about gods walking around in America" and you get the idea. If you've not read it, now's your chance...for free. :) Earlier in the week, I had a bit of a play-around with my new wide-angle lens. Really quite nice. Not too heavy to wield with one hand, sharp focus, and so wide you feel like you're falling into the scene. Annoyingly, I'd chosen to leave my gorillapod/tripod at home that day...but managed to improvise pretty well, given the circumstances (balanced atop random packaging box and glad-wrap roll, plus held a couple of magazines to the window with the other hand to cut internal reflections from back-lit double-glazed window). Photography's often about problem-solving. Reckon I managed to get some acceptable long-exposure shots, up up to 2 seconds, over the course of a few hours as the sun dipped below the horizon and artificial lighting rose. And I shot in Raw/NEF format, not straight to JPG...so there's more room to play with post-processing. It's going to take a bit of learning before I'm comfortable with the conversion/editing tools, but it should be worth it.

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Subject: Jesus and Mary Chain in Melbourne! Time: 1:00 am. Mood: bouncy. Music: [MentalJukebox] JAMC: "Sidewalking".

Seems I was extolling the virtues of this Scottish alt-rock/punk/guitar-noise band only a day or two ago...and now I discover JAMC will be touring in a few weeks. I thought they broke-up almost a decade ago (apart from a recent live thing where Scarlett Johansson put in an appearance to sing with them for "Just Like Honey", which was the perfect song for the closing titles of "Lost in Translation"). Tickets go on sale on Friday. So who else is going? trayce? Bueller?

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Subject: Valentine's Day and saying sorry to the Stolen Generations Time: 12:30 pm.

Bah, humbug! That's my attitude to Valentine's day. It's not that I'm completely incapable of displays of mawkish sentimentality, but the artificiality of the day really grates. If you must buy roses, do it on some other day of the year. Give a card/gift to celebrate a more meaningful occasion. Make time for an important friend instead of hoping Hallmark's trashy, cookie-cutter sentiments are an adequate proxy. (More cards like this sample here.) If you want to see what real wuv looks like, qamar has a ready supply on-tap this-a-way. Onto something entirely more serious and diametrically opposed to "humbug" -- saying sorry to the Stolen Generations. See Kevin Rudd's speech here. It's spine-tinglingly well written and presented. I used to think Paul Keating was a great writer and orator (his Redfern Address is great stuff...the YouTube description says This speech was recently voted as the most important speech ever given in Australia...and, as powerful as that speech is, Kevin Rudd's is vastly superior. Nelson could have followed-up Rudd's speech with the shortest, most magnanimous speech in the history of Australian politics. It would have taken just five words: *Walks to podium, positions sheaf of prepared speech-script...and then proceeds to ignore it* "Mister Speaker, I wholeheartedy concur." *Returns to seat* Instead, he bollocksed it up with a mean-spirited speech laden with, well, humbug. While it could be argued that it was disrespectful to turn their back on him while he was speaking, I think that those in the parliamentary chamber and thousands of others in capital cities (approx 6,000 in Federation Square) who did so made an appropriate, low-key and non-disruptive response that got the message across. The old attitudes are changing and we, collectively as a nation, are putting them behind us. Great to see so many ex-PMs from both sides of the political fence in the audience, lending their support. John Howard was conspicuously absent. As his very first official duty as PM, Kev did in one day what J.Ho failed to do in eleven years. A day later, now that the dust has settled and we can start thinking about practical concerns, Michelle Grattan offers this incisive and balanced analysis in The Age: A good start, now shoulders must be together at wheel. Presently, outside the window of my study, a possum is making noises that suggest it is regurgitating Cthulhu....

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