In short: I'm now blogging back at my own website, Robyn's Secret Passage. Come on over.
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So, I last updated my website design in early 2001. Then a few months after that I started making a new one. I wanted to have a cool design held together with CSS, and I wanted all the content stored in a nice, neat database.
But whereas HTML is easy and anyone can do it (just like playing the guitar), CSS and PHP and SQL made my brain hurt so I put my apparently lofty ideas on hold.
Then in late 2002 I started a LiveJournal account just cos everyone else had one. But soon it appeared that putting stuff up on LJ was a million times easier than sticking it on my website, which involved hand-coded HTML and uploading the files via FTP. So LJ became my default place for putting stuff I'd written.
But then a funny thing happened. Technology caught up and my lofty ideas from 2001 weren't so lofty after all. WordPress came along and seemingly had it all, and eventually I found myself with what I wanted.
Over the last few months I've been furiously tweaking it to get it working, and at last it is ready for public consumption.
This means I won't be updating here no more, but I have made a LJ syndication feed (because I love you), so if you still want to read my stuff on your LJ Friends page, you can: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/robyngallagher/
And as a bonus - and this is perhaps slightly more exciting - I have a Facebook account now too!
The Auckland final of the 48Hours film competition was on Thursday, and it was a brilliant evening.
Fractured Radius didn't make it into the finals this year, but that doesn't matter cos that's not what we're there for, man. So was just able to enjoy a selection of 12 of the best films from Auckland teams.
The winner, Camp Fear by Mukpuddy, was a really well done animation about two monsters at a camp. When they accepted their award, one of the Mukpuddy dudes gave a shout out to James, Faith and me for the reviews we'd done on the 48Hours forums. This was such a nice feeling - all that sleep deprivation, Civic numb-bum and having to sit through the less than awesome films in the heats was worth it.
But if you want to see Fractured Radius' film "The Big Job", here 'tis. I get blown up in it, which was a rather freaky experienced to endure on set, if you know what I mean.
I also highly recommend Gun Man by team Bald Faced Cheek. They have a similar sense of humour as fRad, and this year paid special tribute to fRad by using our catchphrase, "shit my balls". I especially recommend this film if, like me, you are hot 4 Yorkshire accents.
I like 48Hours, and being able to spend a few months a year embracing my film geekness.
It's that time of year again. The time where I spend a perfectly good weekend running around making a short film with the Fractured Radius team for the 48Hours film competition.
Director/producer/editor/all-round awesome dude Dylan has a timeline of what we did. The bit where it claims "everyone sleeps" on Saturday night is slightly a lie. I only got about four hours sleep that night, which made Saturday a challenge. But I guess that's why one of the competition's sponsors is an energy drink.
While sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen, I started to make up (unnecessary) back stories for characters in the film, like this one:
A corrupt scientist was working for a criminal genius, contracted to clone the criminal genius' favourite thug. Unfortunately the cloning process was a little impure, meaning that each clone had something slightly wrong with him. One had no hand, one had a permanently clenched fist, and one had something odd growing inside his mouth. Never mind - they could still all be put to work...
We had various industry pros working in post-production - a composer of the musical score (every main character had his or her own theme tune); a graphics guy; a pyrotechnician (but you've noted this refers to post-production and are perhaps pondering what a pyrotechnician would be doing in an edit suite - exactly); and a sound mixer.
While these dudes added truly professional-looking and -sounding touches, we kind of worried if the slickness of these effects would make the rest of the film look rubbish in comparison.
But in the end, the usual quality of Fractured Radius' writing and act0ring skillz shone through. Uh, well, something like that.
I had heaps of fun. In previous years there has always been the thought in the back of my mind, "Oh, wouldn't it be nice to win," but this year I don't really care all that much. While it would be nice to win, I don't think winning would be as cool as the experience of making the film.
Interested parties can see Fractured Radius' crime flick, "The Big Job", on Tuesday May 29, 7.30 at the mighty Civic.
Meanwhile, here's a photo of The Tree Guy in the scene where... Oh, if you want to know what happens, you'll have to see the film.
So, wasn't the 2007 Budget, like, really awesome? I find myself rather excited about the bonus money going into KiwiSaver (which I'm going to spend on a plasma TV I've carefully disguised as a humble suburban house).
But what got me the most excited was news of the establishment of the news Coronial Services Unit. This is cool for three reasons.
a) Coronial sounds like "colonial" pronounced by someone whose native tongue has no separate sounds for R and L. This in turn brings up the idea of a "colonial services unit", which sounds like something that would be in existence if the British Empire was still mighty and powerful today. The Colonial Services Unit would ensure there was enough tea in the empire.
b) Coronial Services Unit can be shorted to CSU, which makes it sound like an elite crime-fighting unit that could (should?) have an action/drama series made about the hard-working men and women behind CSU. Then there could be a spin-off called CSU: Auckland. Oh no - a man fell off a boat and drowned... or did he? It's time for the team at CSU to hold an inquest and issue a decision! Then a rogue coroner can be called into the Chief Coroner's office. It'll be like Quincy, only better, cos it will be called CSU.
c) The example of the Los Angeles Country Coroner could be followed, with a range of Coronial Services Unit/CSU merchandise. Think how awesome you would look in an pre-shrunk, 100% cotton CSU T-shirt!
All this from one budget! Those people who complain about petrol tax and threaten to move to dry old Australia, they just don't know how good they've got it.
Today at work I had to search for two things on Google that would, in most workplaces, trigger various alarms and may even require a sit-down meeting with management to discuss inappropriate interweb use.
First, I had to figure out how to spell cockring. Now, if you look up cockring in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, you won't find it, so this requires heading to the internet to figure out how it's generally spelt by the people who do use it.
So I Googled cockring, cock-ring and cock ring. In the end I settled for cockring, although I didn't feel wholly comfortable with that and perhaps I should have gone for cock ring.
Then later I needed to check the spelling of Robert Mapplethorpe's name. I Googled it, and along the top of the results page were three images from Google Images, including one called "Lou, N.Y.C"- a Mappelthorpe photo. It depicts a bloke - Lou presumedly - with his little fingertip inserted in his urethra. Eeeeeeeee!
Because both these searches were totally work-related, it's OK for me to do it, but I wonder if somewhere there's some silent interweb alarm that has been triggered, profiling me as a gay man who is abusing his internet privileges.
Sometimes I think the universe is conspiring to make all my dreams come true.
For example, discovering that there was a metal/hardcore/other band in the Hawke's Bay called Gunt, and episode one of the BBC's language series "Balderdash and Piffle", where they looked at Polari, the 1960s gay London slang, while Morrissey's "Piccadilly Palare" played.
And I have found another instance. It's this plate:
It depicts Trellick Tower, a block of council flats in London, designed by Erno Goldfinger in 1966. It is in the Brutalist style, which I ♥ very much, though many people don't*. So I'm glad to see it's been immortalised in china by the People Will Always Need Plates potters.
Sadly they don't have a stockist in Aotearoa, but just knowing it exists makes me very happy.
The strangest thing just happened outside my flat.
I heard a scrubbing sound and voices - someone saying they needed more water - so I peeked out the window. There were three teenagers - they looked Chinese - who were scrubbing chalk marks off the footpath with water and a broom. Next to them was the neighbourhood old drunk guy who kept saying, "Chalk? You don't have to do that. Don't bother doing that."
Then suddenly all three of them stopped and took off across the road, all sprinting in different directions, taking shortcuts to get away fast. It was as if they were running for their lives.
The old drunk guy staggered off home.
Checking the footpath, there was just a wet patch where the water had been, and a rogue chalk X they missed.
WTF.
UPDATE: It was Christians!
This morning I examined the scene of the scrubbing. There were smudged chalk marks and a few X's all along the footpath, as if forming a route. The marks continued around a corner and down a side street where I found this written:
But this doesn't explain why they suddenly sprinted off so quickly.
Last night I went to Dylan and Melanie's stag do/hen night, which for convenience's sake we shall call Melyn's hag do.
We started off at the Pearl Garden Chinese restaurant in Newmarket, and had many plates of many delicious foods. I think my favourite was the cashew chicken, but then I'm a Pakeha, so I would.
Unlike stereotypical stag dos and hens' nights, there were no plastics boobs, blow-up sheep, nylon bridal veils or penis necklaces. No, the hag do was far more civilised than that. We had 10 pin bowling.
We went up to the bowling alley atop the car park on Khyber Pass. From the outside, the bowling alley stop the car park is somewhat of an architectural monstrosity, but on the inside it's got everything you need for a good night out.
I played a couple of a games, got a couple of strikes (see, all that Wii bowling has payed off), but also managed to suck. I shocked the lads with my left-handed bowling. OMG. I'm left-handed.
After that we taxied up to Forde's bar on Anzac Ave. I've always been curious about Forde's. It's on the top floor of the old Station Hotel, offering panoramic views of Foodtown, the stadium and some apartment buildings. But, due to a quirk in downtown Auckland's coastal geography, it's also on the ground floor, so there were no stairs to climb.
Forde's is an awesome bar. If I was going to be an alcoholic and I need a regular, this would be it. Mr Forde, the proprietor, is everything you want in a pubman.
We all played a bit of "I have never", with the unsurprising conclusion being that we are all awful people.
Afterwards the party was reduced to me, Melanie, Dylan, Morgan and this guy called Glen. We all wandered down to Showgirls, and this is where things got really exciting.
There was a large group of girls standing outside Showgirls. Now, having spent a year catching the 11.40 bus across the road from Showgirls, I know that usually the only people who stand around outside it are the sort of men who are regular at Showgirls, and strippers on fag breaks. So it was obvious that something was up.
Lukas is really short and I could totally beat him up. He was surrounded by heaps of excited girls who all seemed to want to have sexual relations with him. Why? He's short. He's not hot. It can't just be that he was on the telly and he was in a band.
Knowing that nothing could really top that, we had hot chocolate and then called it a night. And a rad night it was.
Now that the New Zealand iTunes Store has opened, I expect that downloading music will finally become less teenage/geek and more mainstream. But this will mean that people can buy one song without having to buy the whole album.
Well, you know what's happened? CD sales are down. Smaller, independent music shops are closing down because it's just no economical to stay in business any more.
Today Mr Slack alerted me to this piece at Ars Technica about the possible reasons behind the decline in CD sales.
The writer theorises that music buyers aren't just switching from CDs to a digital formats, but instead of buying a whole album, they're just purchasing the individual songs they want. This probably means happier customers but it results in fewer overall music sales.
But what impact will this have on the sort of music that musicians put out? Will bands stop releasing albums and just release singles? Will this put an end to those awful, unfunny skits on hip hop records? And will this bring back the concept album, daring the customer to be considered an uncultured oaf if they just buy one song?
Over at Digg, in a discussion on this subject, a fellow named catfud shares a solution that we can all use:
if you arnt listen to full CDs you may want to think about changing the kind of artists you listen to i listen to only the best metal and every album a band comes out with is 100% awesome
im talking bands like nevermore, pain of salvation, dream theater, blind guardian, death, dragonforce, katatonia, ,astodon, meshuggah, symphony x, wuthering hights, and communic just to name a few
In this spirit, fans of Hamilton's premier rock act, Prime Devastation, will be pleased to learn that their upcoming album "Night of the Beast II: Rock 'n' Roll Terrorist" will now be 110% awesome and have no crap tracks.
If you're like me, you've probably often wondered what your face would like painted on a poppadom, which is then cooked and puffed up, distorting your likeness into a 3D landscape.
Rad, yes? This is part of Blow, which is part of AK07. I went along because my cousin Sue is, along with Tracey Collins, the designer and curator of the project.
The genre they work in is basically set design, but this is taken to more arty extremes, working with space.
Blow it's based around a number of large, blown-up globs. Then a number of designers have designed their own thing with each one. Some had DVDs playing inside, some had stuff attached, and one had a fellow wearing a pair of bacon goggles, painting portraits on poppadoms.
I guess the main reason I went along was to support my cousin, but once I got there and started experiencing it, I was really drawn into it. I had so much fun exploring it. There was a lot to see, hear, feel smell and taste. It was engaging and challenging and totally drew me in, and I like that with art.
Plus, I got to eat my face.
It's on display at the BNZ Foyer of the Aotea Centre from 12 to 24 March. Go and see it and get the poppadom guy to paint you!
Corned beef, dognuts and representing the Western Springs
[Mar. 10th, 2007|10:12 pm]
I went to Pasifika. Man, it was hot. Ideally I would have gone there with an entourage holding a parasol over me and fanning me. Instead I had to make do with a sun hat and fanning myself with the information brochure.
As usually, there was plenty to see and do and eat (including fresh dognuts). I was on the look out for arts and crafts, and ended up getting a ceramic jandal.
One of the stages had an open mike singing situation. One singer came up and had this banter with the emcee.
Emcee: And where are you from? Singer: (In a loud, proud voice) Yo, yo, I be representing Westside! Yee-yah! Emcee: All right. Whereabouts out west? Singer: (Sheepishly) Um... Massey?
I came a across an area where some guys were having traditional Samoan tattoes chiselled into their legs and backs. It looks so painful, but none of the guys showed any signs of pain. In fact, the most painful part of the experience was the improvised rapping coming from an nearby stage.
I was handed a flyer for an upcoming movie called The Tattoist. It's a thriller about an American tattoo artist who rips off ethnic designs, but learns a lesson when he steals a Samoan tattooing tool and angers the gods or something. It sounds AWESOME.
At one point I felt really dehydrated so I got a drink and made a beeline for the nearest shady tree. While I was resting, I heard a song being performed about how, yo, everyone should get drunk in the ghetto, and that you don't stop until it comes back up.
There were heaps of parody T-shirts there. I couldn't decide between "Samoa's Most Wanted" and "My Uncle Can Smash You".
I ended up with a sunburnt neck (a red neck?), so I was glad when an air-conditioned bus took me to Newmarket, where I saw the delightful and charming "The Science of Sleep" in air-conditioned comfort.
On Friday after work, I wandered up to Albert Park, and was just in time for the opening of the lantern festival.
I stood around with a group of people looking at a stack of double-happies rigged to go. In the distance someone was making a speech about diversity. Then a series of bangs echoed around the park, and the double-happies exploded. People took photos of them, but, well, you can't really photograph loud bangs. Visually it was a giant cloud of smoke.
The lights came on, so I wandered around and took photos. My amateur advice for taking photos of decorative lanterns at night boils down to these four points:
1) Deactive your flash. Your camera may be jonesing to flash, but remember, you're taking a photo of a light, so you don't need to bring any more to the party.
2) Get up close to the lantern. Don't zoom in from afar, physically walk as close as you can get. That'll help use all the light from the lantern and make nice bright, colourful photo.
3) Don't get in the mode of documentarian. Often small features of the lanterns are more interesting than taking a full-length photo.
4) If you're getting blurring, go with it. There's sure to be a Flickr group that is hot for Chinese lanterns with a bit of artful motion blur.
As I was walking around, I heard a middle-aged woman talking to her husband. They were passing a line of Chinese-clothing-shaped lanterns that were strung along as if on a clothes line. "Clothes line - a bit of a Kiwi touch there," she commented. Yes, because they don't have clothes lines in China.
There was a stand called No Chinatown, where visitors were invited to fill in a survey about whether Auckland needed a Chinatown. It could have easily been run by the council or a community group, but it was actually an art project. OMG - edgy. It seemed like they were taking the piss out of the idea that for Auckland to be a world-class city, it needed a Chinatown. Hey, forget a Chinatown - bring back the Hobson Street opium dens!
There was a stand giving out free books on Buddhism. I saw a group of 40-something woman all snap up one called "Diet and Health", which attempts to entice punters to the world of vegetarians with such anecdotes as, "When I first started on a vegetarian diet, I had blisters on my chin. They contained a very toxic liquid waste causing sores whenever it came into contact with the skin." Toxic waste?! What, was she eating veggies from the Love Canal farmer's market?
But most importantly, the pork buns were good, in a food stall kind of way. And that is as good a way as any to see in the year of the fire pig.
Ugh. I don't know what's up, but it appears that my webhosting therefore email are totally unresponsive. So anyone wishing to contact me by the mode of the electronic mail, should use my Gmail backup: robyn.gallagher@gmail.com.
I hate fax machines. Anyone using one should stop immediately. I thought they stopped making them in 1997, but it turns out that people actually still use them in this modern age.
Once I rang up my bank - which prides itself on its technological innovations - with a query. The call centre guy offered to fax me the information. I was like, "WTF? Has this phone call gone down a wormhole into 1986? Are you going to fax me information about the new GST tax that's going to simplify sales tax for New Zealanders?"
I know that '80s retro stuff is in vogue at the moment, but fax machines are not part of this.
I got on the subject of faxes when I was looking at videos of Sinead O'Connor* on YouTube. I found a totally awesome clip of her singing Mandinka at the 1989 Grammys, but I was distracted by Billy Crystal's introduction. He starts with, "If any of the winners are not here, we're going to fax them their Grammys." In 1989 this was hilarious because faxing was new and novel.
But it's now the new millennium. It's the future. We live in plastic houses and housewives heat up readymade meals in their Food-o-matic 2000 machines. We have the email and the interweb and therefore there is no need for faxing.
* I was comparing and contrasting Ms O'Connor with another famous addition to the lady baldo club. Coming soon, if I come to a logical conclusion.
The Page 123 meme was flying around LiveJournal tonight and I was tagged twice. Demands were made that I ought to...
1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions. 5. Tag 5 people.
I was at work when I first read it and tried to have a go during my break. The nearest book to me was the Concise Oxford Dictionary, but while page 123 offered much in the way of words, it didn't really do sentences.
I wandered off to find the next suitable book that came my way. Time Atlas, no. Maori dictionary, no. Trinny and Susannah's "What You Wear Can Change Your Life", er, OK. Except page 123 of that was a picture of the pair wearing nice clothes.
So at home I tried again. The nearest book was "We Could Have Been The Wombles: The Weird and Wonderful World of One Hit Wonders". It sounds like, right, it could be a goldmine of choice sentences. Except page 123 offered up these three sentences:
Bud. Wise. Er.
This is an absolute shemozzle.
Instead I will muse upon the news that Robbie Williams has checked himself into rehab for addiction to prescription medicine.
Now, I'm not a Robbie fan in the traditional sense, but I bought his last album, Rudebox (and it's really good, in a born-in-1974 kind of way).
One of songs is called Good Doctor, and it's a cheerful, yet slightly dark, celebration of abusing prescription medicine. The song ends with this spoken bit:
See, Dr House is addicted to Vicodin, but he has a gammy leg and is a fictional character. Now, I'm not a doctor, but having just looked up all those drugs on Wikipedia, I can officially state that if you are a real person and write a song about desiring a shitload of powerful opiates, then rehab is probably a good choice.
Last night was another Public Address Great Blend event. This time it was held at the brand new venue atop the Auckland Museum. Initially the splendid panoramic views of Auckland city offered consisted of grey, rainy streets, but once the sun went down, the city lights looked completely awesome.
First on the evening's programme were Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, who did a look back at a good 10 years of "Back of the Y". I was delighted to learn two things:
1) The first film Matt saw on video was probably "Clue". This is one of my favourite films and one of the few I can quote dialogue from. ("Communism was just a red herring!")
2) The first "Back of the Y" TV programme on Triangle TV was based on/inspired by the Mega Memory infomercial from the mid-'90s. The infomercial was centred around "The Danny Bonaduce Show", which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of promoting Mega Memory. The house band, The Critics, were the vile inspiration for Deja Voodoo, and history was made.
Then it was time for the panel, this time discussing online media. The panellist were Ben Goodger from Google, Kristine Garcia from the Herald Online, Rob McKinnon of TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, and Rick Ellis, CEO of TVNZ.
So it was an interesting discussion, but a lot of the time it was Rob hassling Kristine and Rick. There's a bit of a gap between the geek idea of how online media would ideally work and how things happen when big companies make it so, but it seems that people are moving in the right direction, albeit rather slowly at times.
After the panel we were treated to some dancing! The lights went down and a small group of dancers came out wearing LED suits, looking like something out of Tron. It was completely awesome and tickled the arty and geeky parts of me.
And then it was time to stand around and talk with everyone, which is often the most fun part of these events. The evening wound down and I wandered off into the night, inspired and stimulated, and with renewed motivation to work on my new website thing.
But, hey, where were the saussies this time? It just isn't a Great Blend without a barbecue!
I spent the last few days on Waiheke Island with the whanau. Man, it was hot. It didn't feel like Auckland - more like a tropical island.
While Waiheke is rapidly being overrun by holiday homes and vineyards, there is still a core of residents, many of whom look like they live there because they cannot, for whatever reason, live in a city.
Waiheke has several Old Waiheke Men. Their look usually consists of a long grey or white beard, messy hair, a threadbare singlet, rainbow-coloured shorts, tanned, leathery skin, and bare feet.
While there is a parking warden, locals do not like getting tickets. One guy dramatically ripped up his parking ticket on the main street (or at least attempted to, because it was made of that thick plasticy paper. Another guy attempted to sweet talk his way out of getting a ticket for an expired WOF, but when that didn't work, he switched to verbally abusing the warden, before angrily driving off. Yeah, that'll work.
There are lot of Waihekeans sporting tattoos that were en vogue in the mid '90s. I saw one guy with an elaborate Nine Inch Nails tattoo, another guy with a Celtic snake wrapped around his arm, and many many of those thorny armband tattoos.
But for both locals and visitors, there was Sculptures on the Gulf. I trekked up and down and around looking the 2007 selection of sculptures, and I was very impressed. See hot pics at Flickr.
So I'd been wanting to upload a video to YouTube - or YouChoob, as we say in Aotearoa New Zealand - but I didn't have anything suitable.
But then I realised that among my bits and pieces, I had a short film dating from 2001. It was the result of Dylan and Ryan and me mucking around at a hippy festival in Basque Park. Dylz was on camera and Ryan was the roving reporter and I did some improv, and then later Dylan edited it together.
So here it is. (And, yes, the video is out of synch with the sound).
But obviously just posting a video to YouChoob isn't nerdy enough. I had to up the nerd factor, so I decided to add some accessibility and used my day job skills by captioning it. So if you are deaf or hearing-impaired or just curious, you can watch it with captions here.
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