Friday, August 31, 2007

Another great quote

'I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.'

Jorge Luis Borges


(Thanks for sending this over LN!)

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Word of the Day: Sesquipedalian

Sesquipedalian
1. A person or thing a foot and a half high or long.
2.a. Of a word - polysyllabic
b. Characterised by long words; tending to be lengthy or ponderous in speech


(thank you The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 4th Ed, Vol 2, pg 2791)

Work Intranet Weirdness #2

Once again the intranet E-bay has got a corker:


For Sale - Into Creepy Crawlies? SNAKES For Sale
3 Adult Coastal Carpet Pythons, Easy breeders. also 2 adult male spotted pythons. Various fully equiped large cages also available, with lights all wired up. Licence required. Contact Nicole via email. Thanks.
Price: $Various

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Cory Doctorow Speaks Sense at Melb Writers' Fest

In a session called "Free and Easy" Cory Doctorow did his best to share his knowledge and insights to a motivated and interested audience through the obstacles of Charles Firth's ignorance and bull-headedness. There was also an annoying woman MC who added no value to the proceedings (sorry whoever you are, but you should have just given the man the stage and stayed out of the way) particularly given that the topic was about copyright, reproduction and making a living in the digital age.

I'll own up right away - I haven't read anything about him or by him. I didn't know he had his own wiki page (which he does) I just knew that I'd shelved his books a *lot* at kino and here he would be talking about making a living but giving away copies of his books for free on-line. It's true - they're available under the creative commons right there at the bottom of his wiki entry.
The Melb WritFest (MWF now, ok) have this weird thing going where they charge you to go to nearly any session!? What the!? When you've flown 2000kloms to get to it, and then had a closer look at the fine print, this feels like a rude shock. I know $20 isn't much in the context of the flight and travel costs and everything, but it seemed weird on principle. Having said that, if I could have paid more to just get an hour of download & QA from Cory (sans the interruptions) it would have re-wired my brain.

Enough gum flapping.
(there's a lot of paraphrasing here - my notes are shot, don't blame him for any crappy expression.)

He opened with a short take on the information economy - what is it really - in little ways it's people finding a plumber on google, or using a satnav to find the airport, or Facebook to choose a restaurant. These are the meaningful, personal ways that the information economy has started to become a reality. Reality is always messier than the theory expects it will be. Bits of stuff have value and cost cash but bytes of stuff flow around protection. Pirated movies anybody? The economy for a while (about 70 years) has been predicated on controlling the copies and being able to sell them, and as we all know, this system is flailing about right now. Cory drew an interesting line to the resurgence of the vaudeville model - where the "charismatic" performer takes the stage and access to the event is controlled and a dollar is charged at the door. Those same people who about 70 years ago got told to stop touring and produce records - which would do all the touring for them. (I hope he got a decent cut of the $20 I paid to see him then!).

Creative types still need to put bread in the toaster and kibble in the bowl - so what is there to sustain them if all the copies are free?
How does the rent get paid?!

Well, for Cory Doctorow, the rent gets paid for by (leaving other speculations aside) people buying copies of his books. People buying copies of the same books that are available for free on the web. Free books with no encryption, no time-outs, no dodgy sample chapter set up. Whole texts. Buying, with actual cash.

Here's how this works in his own words:
"Most people who download the book don't end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience. A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free e-book as a substitute for the printed book--those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the e-book as an enticement to buy the printed book. They're gained sales." (Read the whole article).

Anyone who's worked in sales or a bookstore or ever just been honest about their own buying habits is going to get that line of reasoning right away. Charles Firth didn't. (That's the last time I'll mention him. No need for my pain to be your pain).

But we're in SF world. A *special* world.
Cory again (from the same Forbes article)
"How did I talk Tor Books into letting me do this? It's not as if Tor is a spunky dotcom upstart. They're the largest science fiction publisher in the world, and they're a division of the German publishing giant Holtzbrinck. They're not patchouli-scented info-hippies who believe that information wants to be free. Rather, they’re canny assessors of the world of science fiction, perhaps the most social of all literary genres. Science fiction is driven by organized fandom, volunteers who put on hundreds of literary conventions in every corner of the globe, every weekend of the year. These intrepid promoters treat books as markers of identity and as cultural artifacts of great import."

Yeah! But what about books that aren't SF? What do you with your future-dude glasses see for the daggy, non SF writers and this on-line world. I love SF, but my attempts to write it have always been lame. I can write other stuff though - how can I pay the rent? Google ads? Is that my best option?

The long tail takes a long time - I'd like to earn some money in my lifetime. Sure, the value (be that entertainment, education, whatever) of the work is the longer-term purpose, but the day to day of spending my hours toiling in a job for someone else is the issue.
I think that was going to be his next point though ... that the long tail does take a long time (the great enemy is obscurity) and that free distribution escalates finding your audience. It also begins to create a market for you the writer. Yeah you. What is writing after all but one of the ways that you put your thoughts into an order and have them tussle each other? You'll have to deal with the idea that your writing might lead you to blogging, or talking or teaching or being interviewed by Forbes Magazine.

The session kinda deteriorated towards the end, but apart from the content that I have tried to capture pretty faithfully above, the best thing I got out of this was inspiration. I sat afterwards and watched probably 20 people line up and buy one (or more) of his books and get them signed. Ka-Ching! But we all know how lush it is to hold a book, and feel the grain of the paper, and when you've stood in the line and had it signed - well - it's special. Even for the person who eventually buys it on Ebay.
We buy the books we love - that's the new model. I expect the luxe-model Hardcover to emerge soon and be a hit - but only for titles that have proved themselves in the tail. Remember how gob-smacked we were when DaVinci Code came out - after 4 years in the large format illustrated hardcover - and had another spike?! Well that's a taste of things to come.

Books that earn their chops will find a place on the shelf rather than the harddrive.

It was inspiring because he was totally credible. This wasn't some suit-monkey sprouting shit from an online MBA. Authentic reporting from the frontline. I'm grateful to him for kicking me over into thinking about my own life and my own creativity within the context of post-scarcity economics.

In short then, a really great session. Plus, I was so wired from it that I got talking to someone else from the session (Melbourne is so friendly, in Sydney she would have called security) and learnt a whole lot more again. Hopefully as I return into this mundane orbit, loads of it will stay with me and the dream will keep breathing.

Facebook Ate my Life

Two hours I've just spent on there.
Gibson help me.
I can't believe that it is that distracting - the toys! The pirates! the endless movie reviews.
I learnt something important tonight. I can't help but have an opinion on far too many things, and this is not good for me.
Do you know there are people who are using this tool for thinking !? For building better communities and sharing knowledge. Damn them! How do they do that!?

Let me try and find my train of thought again ....

Monday, August 27, 2007

All good things must come to an end

There's been Dave Eggers and Cory Doctorow at the writers' fest, art art art, and Oh the cake!!

What a brilliant trip. It's not quite over yet, flying out this arvo, but I certainly haven't finished rolling around everything I've seen and done. Isn' that the brilliant thing about travel - turns you upside down and shakes everything about.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Glorious Melbournia!

oh arduous journey!
Up at o-dark-hundred and manymany hours later ere I am... winding down the the lovely frabulous Allan, snuggled up with puppies, to the soundtrack of snoring form the couch (not me this time - I may have snored on the plane...) after a GIANT dinner in a great Vietnamese place in Fitzroy (which, sadly, out of habit, we inadvertently referred to as Thai on three separate occasions... oops... very understanding people, Vietnamese restaurant staff).
Anyway, I digress.
By several thousand kilometers this time, and what a world of good it's doing me. I feel younger, more interesting, stimulated, hopeful (but no thinner - how many bottles of wine got "knocked over" tonight?). Ah.
On the walk to the dinner-food-place we passed art stores, and bookstores, and a hat store, and a vegans place and and and! It was just great.
I am so grateful (as always) to Allan and Craig's generosity in letting me make their palatial home a bit messy in one corner - (Lee - listening?) so many great friends who have all invested very wisely in very expensive and well upholstered couches. Life is good.

Well tomorrow, I hope to catch up with a long-lost uni buddy who I have gotten back in touch with through FACEBOOK. Yes, after all that stupid ranting, it has borne tasty fruit immediately. I welcome our new robot overlords.

Over dinner we had a big chat about the possible Orwellian horrors of Google morphing all it knows about our dirty secret searches and face book accounts and dodgy second email setups (et al) and what kind of a future will it be when Bush and Howard merge it all into one database! Frankly, i just kinda feel sorry for the poor Level 2 temp who'll have to wade through the morass of shit i pump out on a nearly daily basis (The Eagle Has Landed) and try and figure out of I'm a terrorist (for the Chaser), a try-hard wannabe, or just a garden variety nutbar. Yay. Bring it on.

Okeydokey, enjoy the rain, culture, movies, bed - where ever you are, whatever you're doing - I'm sending you mellow vibes of goodness.
Love
J9

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Extreme Wind Warning

Despite the news talking-up this "severe low off the east coast" (another emo joke on the way?) and the big news that the beaches have been closed (OMG!! REALLY?!?!?!?!?! - yes, that's the Queensland mindset for you) we can all breathe easy - the planes are still flying.
The planned orbital mission to the great and enticing planet of Melbournia is now only hours away! Still in double digits, sure, but hours. One sleep.

Like all deprived children, I am counting on this trip to solve all my problems and make me a shiny, happy person again.
hahahahahaaa.

I've gotta go pack.

Caved

I've lasted less than a week.
Yes, Facebook has another member.
I can't believe how many of you are already on it!

Will it all become clear? Is there a real point - maybe like all newbies I've accidentally navigated into a corner and am starting a a blank wall going, "i don't get it...".

Anyway, no gloating please.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Quoteable Quote

"Australia is the Brisbane of the world."
Mrs (formerly Dame) Edna Everage

By the Numbers

The last few days have been "doing it by the numbers" - structure and habit can really do the heavy lifting sometimes.
Get to work, even log-on and start responding to the dripping water-torture of email and not until the second cuppa realise that another day is well underway.
Nightmares the last two days have alleviated the stress and boredom of work. Very graphic dreams about murdering endless numbers of faceless people with my favourite kitchen knife, interspersed with grappling armed gunmen for survival does tend to make fretting about website copy sign-offs processes seem less intense.
Need I say that I am very much looking forward to a long weekend off interstate?! Off to embrace the delights of Melbourne and a long-overdue visit to see my beloved cousin.

The amount of writing at work seems to have decreased a lot in the last few weeks. Perhaps it is seasonal as is our publishing schedule. The other managers seem reticent to get me to draft things, and unwilling to change to a more chirpy/sales like patter. Hence our bookings remain low, responses to our ads are poor, and we get more of the same (mediocre) outcomes. This is actually a win because poor as it all seems to me - apparently this is better than how things were before. A little dispiriting.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Peer Pressure

It seems having a blog is no longer enough to sate the digital connection-lust. First it was email, then a mobile, then a website (that passed thankfully), blueberries, blackberries, I skipped the avatar thing altogether, but I hear it's bigger than toothpaste, Ipods, then blogs, and now already a facebook. Well I'm not convinced. I was never able to delete that stupid orkut thing which is still sitting out there somewhere like a fridge turned off and gone bad. Hermetically sealed yet full of things long transformed from wholesome fun into evil sludge.
Sure, it's all good intentions.
Sure, it's all meant to help people stay connected and feel the love.
All great things.

But how many of these are we each serving? Got a personal email and a work one? Got a personal phone and a work one? Got a blog (or two or more for each of your idea sets, friend sets, forays into an alternate identity)? Yeah, you probably do. Got a pile of books you haven't read? Don't remember the last time you lay under a tree and watched clouds? Went somewhere or visited someone *spontaneously*?
Time time time time.
So very valuable, so unique and slippery like a tongue. Time. I want to spend less time with things that are electric and more time with things that are organic. Simple rule - hard to implement. And obviously the immediate response is that all these tools assist in process of the goal and sometimes the outcome. I am a late-adopter, that's cool by me. I am behind the curve and hard to convince. I am often wrong too, but I am at least also (largely) honest. I am barely writing, am barely regular with this little tool, am slack at returning emails, and am hard to reach by phone. Moody, irregular and difficult. Very loving and loyal, sure, but what I'm saying is that I know I'm not up to it. Parts of the world are passing me by (avatars!) and even though I think they're way cool (just like in Snow Crash!) I've got to draw a line - a line of reality - I can't do everything. In fact, turns out I can't do most things. This was never clear to me in my 20s.

I am hoping that although it is now very clear to me, it won't be the restriction is initially sounded like - and a liberation to do the few things that I can do, very well and with a lot of joy.
Another simple goal that could take a lifetime (and make a life worth living in the process).

Love youse all, but it's going to have to be my way.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Happy Birfy Ma!

Ma is 60 today!
Yay for her.
She's off to the shops to spend her vouchers (and the ones she hoarded since chrissy) today and as she's had this week off work is in quite a gleeful mood.
Dinner tonight with some of the sisters and nieces to celebrate. I'm making pavlova - baked the meranguie bit last night (used a mix) and tonight it's just adding the cream, cherries, kiwifruit and bananas.
Yummo.

Craptacular!

Well the last two days were a crap blitzkrieg at work, but funnily enough with the GBS now having come under the spell of the roids, some new rockin' tracks on the pod thing, a good sleep and a satisfying dvd experience - it just doesn't seem as bad.

Plus, we got a shower of rain!! OMG - it went for about 10 minutes and then there was another short one later!! Wow, great news. Really. I think officially it came to just over 1mm in the measuring thingo. Mum is gloating about her 'waters' being on the money. Dad's been calling her Uri Geller - it's almost funny.

In other news, I inspected a house yesterday with an 'eye to buy' as they say here and it was a real money pit. An absolute stinker. Apparently the owner is "very negotiable" on price, yet has a full-price sticker on it... got a very Sydney feel to the market here at the moment, but all this brouhaha with sub-prime doodads ought to calm it all down to slightly more reasonable values. I'll be looking at another one on Friday. This one has no yard, but is well within my affordable range. It's a town house, two beds one LUG. Hmmm.... decisions decisions.....

Well, the sun is out, it's morning tea o'clock and I love youse all.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Bowser Rage

How horrible to be so strung out that when someone cut-in on the bowser queue this morning I honked and was angry - with the chopping hand gestures and everything.
Turns out that they could see that the next one up was disabled, but they needed the diesel/premium bit. I was worried Audrey would conk out in line from being on the red the whole way in. Why is it that when I'm stressed about work, I rush to get there? And rush in that mindless anxious way. Well it's no good for me and it's no good for the people around me. Sorry smug couple in the expensive new car, I am uncool and I apologise. It would have been much better if I could have recovered myself quickly enough to apologise at the time, but that's life huh?
So, Bowser Rage. We didn't conk out, I still got to work early, I've dealt with the fiddly tasks and general sense of unease that I had and now am tallying up the karmic damage. I initially considered opening with Jayne's beautiful line "She's damaging my calm" but sadly I couldn't honestly say I had any calm this morning. I can't blame the drugs (coming off the 'roids man!) and I can't blame my pent-up frustrations at still living in a box out of a suitcase and being tired and empty. This day is the very life of life. I must face this and face it down.

Friday, August 10, 2007

More Eating Stories

Fresh Cauliflowers actually taste good.
Wow - I'd forgotten all about caulies - having so often gotten those slightly rubbery, almost woody tasting things from woolies. I'd kinda given up on them.
Peter bought round two he'd just picked from his garden late yesterday arvo. The leaves hadn't even wilted. They were beautiful. He handed them to me and I could smell the delicate, light scent of fresh cauliflower. Yum yum yum. I was just planning dinner and it didn't take much to swerve from mashed spuds (oh god not again) to steamed caulies in a white sauce. I made a pot of it to go with the tomatoe and lentil bake. Tonight I'll make a pie with them and some corn and carraway seeds.
I can't wait to plant tomatoes for summer. Freshly grown food really does taste so very good, and it is inspiring to have it sitting on the bench and filling the kitchen with smell ideas, rather than bundled in plastic in the fridge/morgue going slowly creepy.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Massive Oversight

can you believe that we don't have a recipe for RUM BALLS in this house?
Mum pulled out *every*single*one* of her books last night.
"I've found loads of pavlova recipes." she says. Guess what she wants made for her birthday? Great. Still no Rum Balls idea. Thankfully, the internet has been invented....

So, doing some research this morning, Gourmet Traveller failed me, (more often than not actually, but when they do come through it's good, very good) but this is good anyway because it means I have discovered this little gem of a website:

http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/10/rum-balls-recipe.html

What a ripper! Really good quality clear instructions and photos. I'm not sure I'm going to put pineapple in my carrot cake anytime soon( http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/carrot-cake-recipe.html ) (no matter how long I am in Queensland) but this website will be helping me get some more classics under my apron tie!

Yay!

Through the love of Mez and back issues of BUST magazine, I've met the very enjoyable Amy Bugbee (met in an internet way - I've read her blog/s and laughed at her antics. She wouldn't know me from turtle poo), and she is the woman behind "Hellraiser Homemaker" go and meet her yourself - she and her husband rock!

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Happy Birfy Dad

Dad's birthday today and he got a cup of tea in bed and loads of goodies. Last night i asked him what kind of cake he wanted, and he said "vanilla sponge with chocolate icing" so that's what I made for him, using my new heart-shaped pan (mucks around your cooking time - bakers beware!). He got to sit in his chair and watch stupid tv while I bought him the beaters to lick, then the bowl, then I found an icing recipe that concluded with "eat directly from bowl" so that's gotta taste good, and it did. He's all set for a great day.

The weekend included a large donation of kitchen goods and homewares from Wazza whose mum sold her house so she could go into a home. I got some very lovely baking pans (that's where the love-heart shaped cake tin came from) a big oval casserole dish (must be about 3 - 5 L) and a 4 piece china dinner set. It was very kind of them to think of others at that point.

The new season of calves have started hitting the ground, which is fun, but quite sadly we decided to send all of last year's calves (the weaners) off to market because with no rain even the dead grass is now gone and there's just nothing for them to eat. The new calves are very sweet and adorable. There's something fundamentally gratifying and spring-like about seeing tiny mammals cavorting and learning about the world. Plus, this is the only time you can pick up a cow. Mum and I had to do that on the weekend when one of the new ones got separated from her mum and ran out of puff and just collapsed. Her mum had wandered off, and so we had to pick up the little one and carry her (well I couldn't hold her so I ran and got the wheelbarrow!) and take her to her mum. There was a tense moment when we waited to see if she smelt too much like humans to be recognised again by mama cow - but she licked the icky smell off her and got her sucking again, and all was well. Yay.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Three Magpies on a Branch

They warbled me awake and the dawn was golden on the gum's pale branches. I like the mornings here when the breeze sighs through the leaves and a birdcall can sit on the air.

August opened with the first calf of the season. A tiny little thing seen from the bathroom window, cavorting around in the fog on wednesday morning. Ma and I stood and watched - a lovely moment. Of course being the beginning of August meant that July was done, and we could look back and say "not a single drop of rain fell on our property during the month of July". We wouldn't say it, not out loud anyway. We all know it. We live and live and live with it. So apart from the newly painted house, we're a thousand shades of brown now. Even the brown is looking browner, drier, paler. Deader.
Mum is acting pretty confident that it's going to rain next week, but I think she's either full of shit, or hopeful to the point of being criminally insane. I mean I hope she's right, but I left off how her reason for this rock-solid belief was that she could "feel it in her waters." We don't have any waters. That's the point. You've got no water to feel it in woman!! Had she said "I can feel it in me whisky bladder" I would have put money on it.

Other great news (it's all about me) is that it looks like I'll be able to work towards a film program here next year. I know that's vague, but trust me - that's nearly 6 weeks of pained discussions to get to the position where we've agreed what it is NOT to be, when it is not to be, and that we will discuss at a later time what it should be a lot more like, and who we want to come. This is a solid win! I also took away from this meeting the implicit understanding that this could get to within a chook's tooth of happening and get cancelled/completely co-opted. That also is just how things are here. Despite sounding like a horrible meeting, in a sad, Ipswichian way, i believe it is all actually a desire to protect me from innocently harming myself, and really a sign of trust and expectation in me and my abilities.
Or a setup. We'll see.