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There appears to be a sooty footprint on the ceiling above my desk. I've no idea how it got there, but I'm sure it would make a great story.
Six days remain before my second luniversary (?) at the flat. My agent chose to celebrate the occasion by organising an inspection. Personally I'd have gone with a cake and booze, maybe some paper hats, but perhaps I'm just odd. "Most people I know think that I'm crazy" ...
Saturday was spent washing clothes and watching Firefly. Not a bad way to relax. On Sunday sis dropped by and helped me clean up the place in exchange for dinner. She's a professional cleaner, which is to say she gets paid to clean things (I just get kicked). Which is to say, she's really good at keeping things clean, whereas I'm just good at being kicked.
She's too damned fussy, though. Turned up with presents — "Here's some dishwashing detergent, because I knew you'd be using a brand I didn't like." (I am. I'm using Black & Gold. We can't all afford fancy "Earth" stuff.) "Here's some liquid soap. It looks neater than dowdy old bars, and real estate agents prefer it." "Here's some soap specifically designed for zero-G kitchen use." "No, don't use that stuff to clean the floors. Here, look what else I brought."
I was torn between being grateful, outraged, and amused. The real estate agent's note — "apartment is being kept in excellent condition" — confirms it, though. I'm going to have to practise making that pasta sauce sis really likes.
» 08.04.2008 @ 1837 | navel housing |
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Lotes databases are great. I've started referring to them as "free time generators". The periods when Notus is frozen have given me plenty of time to catch up on my thumb-twiddling. Productivity, what's that? I'll work harder, not smarter.
Every Easter for the last several years, Dad and I and two of our junior umpires have headed down to Melbourne for the annual boys' softball tournament at Dandenong. It's always great to go south of the border from time-to-time, witness new ways of doing things (particularly Victorian drivers). After visiting for so many years, our Spanish is starting to get quite good, too.
This year we broke with tradition a little by inviting my sister along. She had been to Melbourne years before to play in the girls' tournament over at Waverley, but had never been as an umpire, nor attended the boys' event. It was an interesting experience for her. The major benefit was probably that she experienced Victorian umpire coaching for the first time (the Mexicans tend to be more brusque, but also more effective, than us in the ACT).
As for me, I had more fun than I think I've had at this tournament in years. I suspect part of it is being a Level 5 umpire now; you aren't treated any differently (the players don't know what level an umpire is, nor should they care), but I think I may have approached the tournament with a different attitude from what I have in the past. Perhaps less worried about screwing up and more worried about enjoying myself.
A highlight (or lowlight) of the tournament: I heard, in my three morning games, the three worst things a catcher can say to an umpire: 1) "I feel sick, and I really don't want to catch today, I told them I didn't want to play catcher, I want to go back to bed"; 2) "I'm so hungover right now, I can barely see the ball" (somehow this excuse never quite cuts it for an umpire, though); 3) "You look pretty tough, that's good, because you'll need to be with this pitcher". Want to see my collection of bruises?
» 01.04.2008 @ 1848 | softball work travel |
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Today someone asked me if they would need a stairclimber to carry a RAM chip. That is the single most awesome thing to happen this week. Possibly I'm just easily-impressed.
I have a 3 Mobile broadband modem for work now. The Internet access in the project offices is worse than dial-up (no, really, we checked. As a result, the Project Director offered us all free modems. They're to be used whenever we're on a project where Internet access is hard to come by. I think this fits the bill. Whenever we overload the office connection again, we just need to whip out the USB modems and log in to 3. Bliss. The ideal for us all would be some sort of prepaid plan, so we could pay money to use it when we're on a project that needs it, and not pay when we're not. But 3 Mobile don't give you that. They're clearly the best of the lot, though: $50 a month for 4gb a month, and you can cancel and resume at any time with no penalty. Not quite prepaid, but not bad.
I had a bit of trouble signing up. The fifteen-minute activation procedure took about fifty minutes, most of which I spent arguing with the activation guy. Because I'm already a 3 Mobile customer with my personal phone, he couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to direct debit my modem use fees from my personal bank account. But because I'm damn near broke and anyway the company will be paying for this, thank you very much, I couldn't understand why he couldn't understand. When he finally understood it was for work purposes, he then asked me for the company ABN (which I don't know) and hinted that he'd like me to set up an official company account with 3 Mobile. Yes, that's not really an option, either.
But the little modem works beautifully. I have a great connection almost all the time. And why would you go over 4gb in a month for work? That's a lot of email.
» 28.03.2008 @ 1848 | work gadgets |
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Some of the tools the company prescribe are really useful in increasing one's free time. That is to say, the long freezes they inspire in Notus Lotes lead to plenty of time to do one's own thing. Provided, of course, that "one's own thing" is not defined as "going home, drinking a bottle of vodka, and collapsing in bed", which is about the way I'd like to define it right now. There's a trap there: vodka is not very appropriate today. As a young lad of Irish descent, I should be drinking beer, or at least whisky. I guess I'll just add that to the list of things I'm getting wrong these days.
Eh, it's not so bad here. I mean, I'm gasping for a drink, but I have some lovely jazz blaring out of my computer, a friendly co-worker on company IM, and ... well, there's not much else going for me at the moment, really. Oh, well. There could be killer bees in here with me.
Easter hols coming up soon. It will be interesting to see how work deals with this. It's not looking pretty. With luck, though, by 0630 on Friday I'll be on the highway, heading down for a weekend of delight and debauchery in that most wonderful of cities, Melbourne. Well, to be more accurate, I'll be umpiring softball. Where other people will use Easter to give thanks at Mass, or even just spend time with family, I'm off to a foreign city to cop abuse at the hands of incompetent coaches. It's traditional! I've been at it for 10 years now; soon I'll have spent more Easters at softball than not.
And with that, and one more incredibly-long freeze, I think I might just give up and go home. It can wait until tomorrow. And if it can't, well, there's only so many hours of work they can expect from me. So, "thrrp" ought to sum things up well enough. I'm for bed.
» 17.03.2008 @ 2341 | softball work navel |
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Surprise! I am still alive, and 'blogging from work. I don't really have any choice, because there is no Internet access at home. That's right, I moved out. I've been in the new flat nearly for one month now. I'm also nearly broke. I don't think it's a coincidence.
I figured I'd still be able to 'blog occasionally, since The Company have a fairly enlightened Internet use policy. They say: so long as you aren't downloading pornography, supporting intolerance, or supporting terrorism with the company dollar, you can use the Internet for whatever you like — this means, of course, that watching a movie of KKK members building a bomb in the nude will result in instant sacking. Other than that, they don't seem to mind what you do, provided you get your work done.
And there's the rub. "Get your work done" tends to involve leaving the office at eight or nine o'clock — even later sometimes, like tonight. By that time I haven't the energy to goof off on company equipment. I have just about the energy to go for my walk and get on home, and very little else. The only reason I'm 'blogging from work now is because one of the tools I'm using to complete today's to-do list takes forever to load and freezes up Notus Lotes while it's loading, so I may as well goof off for the ten minutes I have to wait.
I've now been here long enough to have proof that the "after hours" lights work on a timer (I didn't need proof, but now I have it, so that's kind of nice), and I've listened to two complete sets of Jazztrack. And if I wasn't so high up in this building I could probably look out the window and see people enjoying themselves and drinking. Instead I can look at my reflection and see someone feeling sorry for himself in an incredibly dreary and uninteresting way. Hey, it could be worse. There could be killer bees in here with me.
Updates may be sparse, at least while my current project lasts. I'm sure my only reader is heartbroken by this information. But it could be worse: there could be killer bees in there with him.
» 07.03.2008 @ 2205 | work webby navel |
comments (52)
I actually had occasion to use surfactant today, but I held fast to my principles. I'm not certain my replacement, thingamajig — you know, whatsitcalled, was quite le mot juste, however.
I think I can legitimately claim to have finished work at 2305, because that's when I shook hands with the courier and wished him bon voyage. It's not like I worked straight through until eleven, though. At eight we left work and went for a walk to Parliament House and back. We do that a lot anyway, but it was particularly interesting in light of the morning's event. On the way back we lingered for a while at the Tent Embassy, and enjoyed scones at the Rainbow Chai Tent. Strolling around the Parliamentary Zone and eating scones probably doesn't count as the sort of exercise we'd planned, but I'm hoping the scales will overlook that.
This morning, the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia finally said sorry for the Stolen Generations. His speech was not at all bad. He's about thirty years later than he should have been, but fair suck of the sav, an apology has only really been on the agenda since the early Howard days. From my attitude here you might assume that I'm a fan of the "just bloody apologise already" option. That's not an unjustifiable assumption. Midnight Oil: "White men came, took everyone".
There are many reasons not to say sorry, of course. People argue that Australia today is very diverse, and most of the people living here now could not have had anything to do with Aboriginal suffering. This is true. If you looked at my own family history, you might find immigrants and refugees, but you won't find oppressors of Indigenous Australians. Why should I say sorry? The theft of Aboriginal children, if it occurred on the scale commonly believed (if you're a devotee of Keith Windschuttle, you will argue it did not), ended more than thirty years ago. This was well before many of us were old enough (or Australian enough) to influence politics; it was well before many of us were born. This, too, is true. Why should I apologise? Any apology would inevitably be followed by claims for compensation, claims which should not be paid for by modern Australians. Another excellent point! Why should I admit guilt and make reparations?
The answer, of course, is that I should not. I have nothing to apologise for. Neither does Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard or Peter Garrett or Brendan Nelson or Pauline Hanson. Probably John Howard could be excused, too, but if that little rodent can't bring himself to say sorry he could at least start practising some other apologetic lines, perhaps something along the lines of "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned ..."
There are people alive today who were alive during the heyday of the Stolen Generations. Some of them are even to blame: public servants and lobbyists and politicians and right-wing commentators and do-gooders and racists and others of their ilk, who must fiddle in the affairs of others they can't quite see as human. We'd all love to see a few apologies fall from the lips of those people at some point. They're not the only ones, though. I said that Kevin Rudd need not apologise. He needn't; he's done nothing wrong. He's not harmed any Aboriginals. Kevin Rudd should not be apologising; the Prime Minister of Australia, however, must. The 2008 Rudd Government has not harmed Aboriginal interests; the Commonwealth Government, however, has.
The Commonwealth is the Commonwealth is the Commonwealth. The Government is the same government we had at Federation, and with any luck will be the same government we will have long after Rudd and Howard and you and I are crumbled to dust. The Commonwealth Government can change its mind, and apologise in 2008 for wrongs it inflicted in 1968. We might have had a different Prime Minister, a different government-of-the-day, a different population, but the Government of Australia was still the Government of Australia. If we are expected to respect the laws passed by one government-of-the-day even as we elect another, then we can expect each successive government-of-the-day to take responsibility for the actions of its predecessors. Perhaps we can even expect it to pay for past mistakes. Sure, its tax revenues are now our money, not our grandparents'. But if we the people of my generation can get through life and count this as the worst instance of paying for our predecessors' mistakes, we can count ourselves very lucky indeed.
It's a very small thing, and inexpensive when you consider what governments usually do. Three hundred words for healing compared with billions for hurting. The risk of a few compensation lawsuits lost compared with the use of laws to bludgeon those of the wrong colour. Maybe it's a waste of taxpayer funds. If it is, at least this government-of-the-day is wasting them in interesting and exciting new ways. I'd like to see more of it.
» 14.02.2008 @ 0126 | work politics canberra weight-loss news |
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I'm not going to talk about work, because there are some words I'd like not to use on this website. Actually, there's quite a lot of words I'd rather not use on this website, including surfactant, but in the case of this particular word, there may be delicate ears reading. Or something like that.
I'm nearly through consolidating the music libraries my brother and I have amassed over years of annual-income-twenty-pounds-annual-expenditure-nineteen-six. Being good, innocent boys, the main idea was that no matter who turned his speakers on first when we inhabit the same room, the music will be tolerable to the other lad at least half the time, probably more, since our tastes overlap (a co-worker recently described overlapping musical tastes as "significant synergy in acquisition of compositions", and I think it was a joke). As it's taken me so damn long to rip every CD we both own, it looks like I'll be leaving the household the day after we start to realise the full benefits of having all discs in a single digital library. On the other hand, I can now just leave a copy on his hard disk ... and we get all each other's music. Don't tell the RIAA.
One thing that's made the job quite interesting is my brother's habit of putting discs back in any random case he happens to come across. Thank goodness for the inerrability of iTunes' CDDb-pull feature. He asked me to burn "backup" copies of two of his discs this evening, and it was only after he left that I remembered that the discs he'd asked for weren't in their cases. I'm sure they're somewhere in the pile ... I've ripped one of them, so I can just burn from the digital versions, but the other is His Problem to find. Much as I love some of their music, I'm amazed that Creedence are willing to have certain songs (you know which they are) described as their "Greatest Hits".
Two sleeps to go until zero hour (H-minus two sleeps?). Coincidentally, two sleeps to go until payday. Clearly I planned that one quite well; I certainly won't be able to jump the gun on this one, because I'm flat broke. Was it worth it? Ask me in twelve months.
» 13.02.2008 @ 0038 | work music navel housing |
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Diverting things on the Internet ...
Adrian points to The Jennine Wekipaijua, which description is hauntingly familiar.
Magnus Manske, who is not praised enough, has produced an editor activity generator. Essentially it picks up a random Wikipedia article, and tries to suggest ways to improve it. The program is not, of course, foolproof, but it deftly handles more foolishness than you'd expect. In other words, it's a great addition to the toolbox, and one day I may even find the time to use it.
» 04.02.2008 @ 0048 | webby gadgets |
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The course — how to manage projects without becoming a menace — finished late on Friday afternoon. I passed. We went out to celebrate, and separated after a couple of hours. Somehow I got lost and ended up on Pitt Street. It was an accident, I swear. I walked along, haemorrhaging money as I went, and came face-to-face with a Borders. We have one of those here, in the awful new Canberra Centre. For months I had shied away from entering the place, because I feared I would lose my soul ... or at least my credit rating. Finally, at the coaxing of friends, I crossed the threshold of that dreaded emporium. They had promised to hold my hand for the entire experience, and if necessary provide covering fire for an emergency retreat should the allure of commercialism prove too strong for me.
Their ministrations were not necessary, however. The shop sucked. It didn't even pass the Wodehouse Test (the awesomeness of a bookstore can be expressed as A = W, where A is awesomeness and W is the number of works on the shelves under the name of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse). It would not be at all an exaggeration to say I was disappointed. I may even have ventured to tut disapprovingly. But, let's face it, there was also an element of relief in there, for I had managed to enter a bookstore — no, not a bookstore; this was, I had been led to believe, the bookstore, the Ultimate against which all bookstores are measured — and come out empty-handed. This was an invigorating thought, and I took it as certification that, deep within my core, I possessed the strength to fight any bookshop and win.
So it was that, standing before this Bookish Mecca, wearied by aimless walking and emboldened by purposeful celebration, I convinced myself I had no reason to fear. Accordingly, I rushed in, nearly tripping over a couple of trembling angels on the tread.
I think it would be fair to say that the Borders in Canberra is but a pale shadow of its namesake on the Harbour. I may have felt safe and confident as I experienced the Canberran shoebox, but the Sydney store is far more sophisticated. At the door complex infra-red scanners hum into life, immediately divining one's tastes, lifestyle, and socio-economic status. My wallet was taken from me, and I found myself compelled to donate a modest percentage to the Borders Shareholder Retirement Fund. Immediately upon divesting myself of my wallet, I was accosted by two burly, shaved-headed men who each towered like the Colossus of Rhodes, only more bronzed. Although firm, they were not unkind, and appeared concerned that I should adopt only the most befitting books the store had to offer, in recompense for the extortionate amount of money already stolen from my accounts.
Half an hour later, I staggered outside, my clothing disheveled and an expression of imbecilic wonder on my dial, clutching to my breast hard-won copies of several books whose titles I cannot remember right now, and whose contents will consume much of my time for the next several weeks. I tell myself that I have been privileged to experience an unusual delta of pleasure, disturbance, and spiritual awakening, not unlike being pampered with rare perfumes and oils by killer bees as uplifting hymns play in the background.
If you ever come across me in the City of the Coathanger, do not suggest a trip to Borders, for I am subtle and quick to purchase.
» 04.02.2008 @ 0017 | work books shopping travel |
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Yesterday had all the makings of a Very Bad Day. It started with remembering that I hadn't confronted the scales in a while. As I fronted up before the daemonic, digital visage, I felt a horrible premonition.
"Premonition" is probably not the right word. It implies that the knowledge just suddenly hit me, a bolt from the blue, a message from above. It wasn't anything of the sort. In fact, the idea that the scales might not be my friend that morning was not so much a vague foreboding as a bloody certainty. The information didn't come from the planets. My ancestors and spirit guides were mute. God didn't whisper in my ear, "My son, you may not want to do this today." No, the reason I was reluctant to approach my measuring master was the sudden realisation that, however many calories I thought the whisky I'd drunk last week contained, I had underestimated. Then there were the pies I scoffed down in lieu of breakfast on Saturday morning. Then there was the pizza from the local greasy that composed dinner on Saturday night. Then there was Mum's delicious chicken kiev, which contains more calories than I would normally eat in three days, served with beans and high-carb white bread on Monday night.
Dad's scales confirmed my fears: my adiposity was undiminished. In fact, I had gained 2.5kg. 2.5 kilos! In one week! That's a month's worth of losses! I spent the rest of the day walking gingerly, in case by lurching suddenly I might unbalance the ground and tip us all off into Outer Space. I tried to ignore the way the ground shook as I walked, or the crowds in Civic using me as a portable wind shelter. During the ten minutes I took for lunch, I actually attracted a Greenpeace patrol boat, packed to the brim with hairy hippies anxious to protect me from the Japanese. Now that's a bad day.
I'm on a course at the moment, which is why I'm sitting in a hotel room in Sydney working (okay, 'blogging, but I'm just taking a quick break). The course had a pre-requisite online thingy, of which I did half on the weekend. I attempted to do the other half at work on Tuesday, but the damn thing wouldn't load. So I just jumped right in and took the final exam. It's quite difficult doing an exam when you've done the online equivalent of wagging every class. It's even more difficult when you're interrupted every couple of minutes by colleagues wanting you to work on something. I think I'll claim the hour I spent on the exam back to my project. After all, it's not like I stopped working to complete it; I just used the time I would normally have spent breathing and blinking to do some supplementary company stuff. Or, to put it another way, I utilised the corporate teaming online collaboration environment to leverage my synergy in a client-oriented context. Still passed first bloody time, too, and you have no idea how difficult it is to sit an exam while leveraging synergy. My head barely fit out the door after that effort, and I had to carry a lead weight to get my feet back on the ground.
I was on my way to the City of the Coathanger when the real estate agent rang (next on FOX: "When Real Estate Agents Attack, Volume II!"). She'd spoken to my references, and was willing to give me not just the key to a flat, but also the key to the city, her heart, and the Royal Mint. I suspect when I return to Canberra I'll run across a couple of rental referees gasping for a pint. And why not? I definitely owe them. I was a bit worried when the agent asked me, "Is it true you used to be Queen of Zamibia?", but I think I dealt with her questions deftly and with my usual aplomb. Royal blood tells, you see.
I wonder how the scales will read when I get home. Probably before facing the merciless machine I should prepare a cocktail of vodka, ice cream, Panadol and chocolate. Then I'll be prepared no matter what it says.
» 31.01.2008 @ 0028 | diet work navel weight-loss housing |
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Now there is a cool watch. Not sure I'd ever wear anything so cheesy, but I can certainly admire from afar.
» 29.01.2008 @ 0005 | webby gadgets |
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I heard a nasty rumour yesterday that the new Bond film will be called Quantum of Solace. It turns out that it really will. Ouch.
» 28.01.2008 @ 0115 | films |
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The dedication many Wikipedians show towards Freedom is impressive. Admittedly, most of the Wikipedians who seem to be upholding the idea of Free Knowledge and Copyleft and blah, blah, blah, are in fact just doing it because Da Rulz say they should, and they're too dumb to think otherwise. But there are many editors who passionately believe that Information Wants to be Free, and not bound by patents or insane copyright terms forever.
It goes a bit far sometimes. Angela Beesley pointed out that some user on the Wikimedia Foundation website enthusiastically deleted an award the Foundation had received, because the image wasn't free. And the single most awesome behind-the-scenes thing to be posted to Wikipedia in ages was deleted recently, although in this case I think it was a Da Rulz-inspired breakdown of common sense (Wikipedians will nod sagely and understand when I point out that the culprit is a member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit, which group never met a Clue it didn't lack). I couldn't let it die, so here's the image:
It's a letter from an American student caught damaging Wikipedia entries for a joke (his name has been removed, naturally). It's typewritten; the school revoked his computer privileges and required him to use a typewriter. Now, if you've ever edited Wikipedia much, you will be aware of two things:
- Vandalism doesn't cause much damage; everything that is done can be undone.
- Vandals tend not to be malicious, but merely fail to understand that Wikipedia is not an elaborate game.
The reason the note is exciting is because we see non-Wikipedians seeing vandalism as their problem, too. Vandals don't just create work for volunteer Wikipedians. They're pissing in the community's drinking water, (temporarily) damaging the Sum of Human Knowledge for kicks. Every time a non-Wikipedian gets upset about vandalism, we see another person waking up to the importance of this resource, and realising that vandalism is something we can all fix — not necessarily by history reverting or hitting rollback. You don't have to be an administrator; you certainly don't have to be a member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit. You just have to spread the vibe, the meme that Wikipedia is Important, Damn It.
As The World Wakes Up, this will have several consequences, mostly good. As vandalism is better-known, and less-liked, by non-Wikipedians, it will stop being something you can do for fun and brag about to your mates, and start to become a real faux pas. That's not enough: after all, if being considered rude was a deterrent, we wouldn't have teenagers doing burnouts in the Inner North. Heck, we wouldn't have smokers any more. But if it won't stop the problem, it will at least reduce it.
It's great to see the idea that Wikipedia is a precious resource, not to be messed about by bored teenagers, taking hold. This does bring danger with it, though, and it's something that was inevitable as the overall quality of content improves (naturally, the content I and my mates provided has always been solid gold). We're starting to see three groups emerge. Wikipedia has writers, readers, and vandals: choose which one you are. The better the content becomes, the less likely readers are to think, "Gosh, I could do that," and the more likely they are to say things like, "I wonder who writes this stuff; they're very clever." That's, of course, a Bad Thing. We still need people who aren't out there writing top-drawer articles but could help clean up some of the terrible articles that still exist.
» 28.01.2008 @ 0054 | webby |
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Two weeks in a row I ruined the "morning after" tradition, this time by waking up at 0700 on a Sunday morning. I must be getting old. Yesterday was nice; this morning was not. Both days were quite different from what I had planned: what was in order was a nice, quiet day, finishing off some work, maybe with a trip out to see the fireworks early in the evening. Glass of warm milk, cookies, et cetera. That didn't happen. I didn't get any work done. In fact, I didn't even spend any time at home. Whoops.
I spent the morning at a nerd convention. We had expected it to be a terrifying, yet deeply spiritual, ordeal. A chance to reconnect with our geek roots, check out what's been happening since we abandoned the world of wargames, and maybe see some fat guys in velour capes. All told, it was slightly disappointing. Most of the attendees were overweight, certainly, but if I wanted to see an unadorned fat guy I'd look in the mirror. Fat guys are entirely uninteresting, except when they wear capes, and there was not a cape in sight. There was a young lady wearing an old-fashioned dress and fairy wings, but given that she'd set up a stall and was flogging drawings of fairies in old-fashioned dresses, this doesn't really count as an expression of Nerd Pride.
Most of the attendees were depressingly normal. Many of them, in fact, were more normal than we were. Some of them even looked and smelled better, and there's nothing more depressing than attending a nerd convention, intending to Sneer, but coming across nerds who are better-adjusted than you are. The stall operators had also expected the attendees to be crazier than they were. There were terrible books, computer games you couldn't give away, overpriced fake weapons, and one sad bloke with a very low opinion of the Aspberger's Crowd, trying to interest people in children's military books. Someone was even trying to shift a Doom 3 board game. Yes, really.
Eventually our resolve wore away, and we blew the dust of our wallets. My companions emerged with a bizarre collection of role-playing games, and I was shocked to discover, as we walked out, that I had somehow lost $40 but somehow gained possession of a game that features heavily in a certain novel. I'm weak.
We headed back for lunch, then spent hours watching music countdowns and, eventually, Firefly. I don't know how I managed to avoid this show for so long. I don't know why.
Moved onto a different group for the evening, and we watched a bit of telly, a bit more Firefly, and the Hannibal Lecter origin story, Hannibal Rising. I think it would be fair to say that Hannibal Lecter doesn't really need an origin story. The film certainly failed to jibe with my own ideas of what Lecter is, how he should have developed, and how he should behave. But who are you going to believe, me or Thomas Harris? The answer isn't as obvious as it seems: after all, Harris liked the idea of a Hannibal film without Anthony Hopkins. Perhaps I should be the one to write the next Hannibal screenplay. I promise it won't be the pornographic orgy of pointless violence we see in this flick. Oh, boy. Tripod – Maryanne: "The smell of dead flesh put the kibosh of romance."
So, this means Australia Day and New Year's Eve were both spent in the nerdiest way I could manage. That bodes ill for the next major holiday. And we didn't see any fireworks. Did anyone go near the City? What was it like?
» 27.01.2008 @ 2151 | work canberra films navel shopping housing |
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Generation Y has been copping a bit of a beating in the press over the past couple of years, particularly from the Packers. We're lazy, inarticulate, selfish, disloyal, easily-bored, self-centred leeches without any self-control. Well, obviously. I don't intend to argue with much of what is said about us: some of it is so blatantly incorrect it doesn't warrant further examination; other bits are simply inarguable. You may enjoy a nice little drawing by Jess Hagy.
The Bulletin has been particularly cruel, as we see in this outstanding piece of journalism from late 2006 (punctuality never was my forté). Some elements of that story that I found striking were: disloyalty to employers, distaste for politics, immunity to advertisements, and particularly interesting in my situation, refusal to leave home.
The article makes a big deal of the way people of my generation view their jobs. We tend to want more money than our forebears, expect to work less, be more ambitious, be less likely to stay in one job for a long time, and have less respect for their employers. Gen Ys expect the workplace to be a fulfilling and educational experience, and they want more to show for their time served than a couple of year's pay. To this, the obvious response is: well, it only goes to show. We're seeing the inevitable result of decades of The Invisible Hand of the Market at work. Big deal. Do I expect to work every day of my life from now on for the same company, day after day after day for forty years until I retire with a small pension and a whip-around from my office mates? Well, something approaching it might be nice. But my company may not let me work for it for that long; most companies wouldn't.
Why should Gen Ys be loyal to their employers? Many of our preceding generations showed exemplary loyalty, and received a right rogering with the rough end of a pineapple at the first sign of economic downturn. We've learned better. We don't expect Mother Company to look after us through thick and thin, but in return, we'll show them the same disloyalty they show us. I like my employer, and think it's one of the better companies worldwide; but I don't pretend to expect to keep my job if an HR hack's Christmas bonus is on the line. In such an environment, why shouldn't I also act in my best interests if another company promises to treat me better?
All our lives, we've been told: you must be adaptable, flexible, ready to face change. The business world wants us to flit from job to job like a frightened gazelle, and is prepared to pay us handsomely in return. We're better-educated than any previous generation, and have less job security. All other things being equal, we're better workers — I'm a better worker than my experience-equivalent from a past generation; I am older, better-educated, more adaptable, more energetic. There are companies that see the value in this and are willing to give me more money and better conditions. If your company isn't one of them, that's your problem, not ours.
My generation's job-periods are short-term, because that's the way most bosses like it. We come together for a short time, and nobody is tied down: you give us lots of money and educational opportunities, we give you some of that Gen Y magic. Then we move to something better. If this was a problem, it's your fault. The casualisation of the workforce was once a tragedy for the workers; now we've evened up the scales a little. Where's the problem?
The political aspect, I think, ties in strongly with the advertising. Advertising has never been as pervasive and invasive as it is today, and we grew up with the foul menace at its worst. It's only to be expected that we should be immune to the worst of its effects; we've developed a resistance. How is a twenty-something like a super bug?
. We're cynical; that's a natural consequence of repeatedly being lied to. Politics, too, reached its nadir during our lifetimes. Never before has politics been so connected with marketing; never before has it been so disconnected from reality. Whether you choose to look at the blatant lies of Little Johnny on our sea-girt shores, or cast your eyes to the East, where the American Far Right tend to froth at the mouth and do very little of use to anyone, it's undeniable that our politicians have never been less trustworthy.
Despite this, many of my contemporaries are still to be found engaged in more politics than is healthy. To use a typical example, you can still find passionate greenies, twirling their armpit hair and toking up, and they're just as virulent as their 70s counterparts. Joking aside, there are political Gen Ys of all types out there, and if they're not as populous as they once were, well, we can only guess at why.
It wouldn't be accurate to say Gen Ys are totally resistant to marketing lies, whether in the service of corporate bastards or politicians. We pat ourselves on the back and talk about how "savvy" we are, while older generations faint in horror at the spectre of such an independent, arrogant demographic. But at the end of the day we'll buy a big lie almost as readily as anyone else. Here we see a young lady not only frothing over the insulting "campaign for real beauty", but doing so with the help of words like "proactive":
"I respond to companies who do the right thing and are proactive about their cause, like Dove with the Real Beauty campaign," says 21-year-old Amy Malpass, assistant publisher at ymi, a magazine for Gen Y.
Yes, you can tell she will never be played for a sucker.
The bit that interested me the most, of course, was the emphasis on Gen-Y-as-leech-on-society. Because these freeloaders refuse to leave home, run to their parents at the first sign of trouble, and expect society ultimately to bail them out. In this piece, we aren't the only targets of vilification: our parents, over-protective Baby Boomers stunting our social growth to feel important, come in for stick as well. I don't understand what the author is getting at here. It's clearly something she feels strongly about. I feel strongly about it, too.
I'm twenty-three. I'm ready to leave home, and will do so as soon as some real estate agent, somewhere in Canberra, thinks I'm worth a set of keys. Until then, I'll be living at home, contributing to the household as best I'm able. Leaving home at the moment is more difficult than ever; housing prices and rent are criminal; the competition for every shoebox in every city makes every application a crapshoot. I wonder what influence the previous generations' love of "investment properties" has had on our troubles?
The Bulletin somehow came across 30 particularly poor examples of our kin, and drew from that to argue that all teenagers and twenty-somethings are leeches. Why, just look at how many live at home! I don't think Gen Ys are much more likely to stay at home longer than our forebears; surely no more likely than is explained by the sheer difficulty of moving out during this era where demand outstrips supply and prices leave common sense far behind.
We've seen a lot of profiles of This Fascinating New Generation, and What's Wrong With It, but we're not so different from our forebears. Certainly the differences we manifest are easily explained, easily predicted. What's the fascination?
» 24.01.2008 @ 0151 | politics navel news |
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The site was live for three weeks before I noticed an error in the code. It's such a bloody stupid error, really, that it can't justifiably be called a "bug". Basically I'd somehow managed to set the comments-form to always try to post comments to the same weblog entry; even worse, that entry doesn't exist yet. Er, whoops. Anyone trying to post comments here, um, I'm sorry. Bonehead at the wheel. See, kids, that's why we don't do programming or web design while drunk. Right?
I've also made a small change to the design, removing the all-lowercase thing. Because that was just dumb.
» 23.01.2008 @ 2237 | design webby programming |
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'Blogging from work. Oo-er, naughty! But I figure if you're still working at 1930, you're allowed 5 minutes' break. Plus, company Internet policy says it's okay. This is a very Enlightened company in some ways.
Things I haven't got around to doing yet: book some time with O'Brien to get my window fixed. Apparently they'll also remove all the broken glass for me. That's nice to know. I wonder if they'll catch the bloke who broke into my car, then go back in time and remind me not to forget to remove the bloody Navman from the glove box. Idiot.
» 23.01.2008 @ 1939 | work navel |
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It's after midnight, and I'm still at work. This is unusual, because my job is theoretically a full-time business-hours forty-hour-a-week number. As such, I shouldn't be working after midnight on Monday morning. In practise, of course, we work much more than forty hours, and I have achieved Minority Status by never working on weekends. I work long hours during the week, and colleagues chide me for still being in the office at seven o'clock or later ... but they work weekends, and I don't. Go figure. One way or another, the company gets its money's worth. As for why I'm working on this weekend, well, I have a Deadline. it's self-imposed, but I'm freaky like that. I should have been finished this morning, but I couldn't face starting work until early this evening. And then I got distracted ...
In my defence, I've had plenty to distract me. Some co-workers and I went out to dinner on Friday night, detouring before the main event to inspect a very nice cigarillo case in Watson, a place I yearn to inhabit. Dinner was, I think, lovely. I don't recall. My memory tends to focus on the moment I returned to my car, parked securely in the underground secure carpark underneath the secure National Convention Centre. The only thing that wasn't positively secure about the experience was The Silver Bullet herself, sporting as she did a gaping hole in the rear passenger-side window. Not that I noticed this straight away, of course. No, I strapped on my seatbelt, started the engine, and adjusted the stereo. Then I found myself trying to remember if I'd left my glove-box open, with all its contents strewen across the interior of the cabin. After a quick internal debate, I decided that, no, in fact, I hadn't. And that's when I noticed the window. I had kept my GPS device in the car during Nationals, for the benefit of interstate umpires. I don't know why I hadn't bothered removing it from the car. Fortunately, our friendly neighbourhood thief handled that for me. He didn't bother relieving me of the stereo or the car itself, though. I squealed off to the City cop shop, where the nice constable behind the counter informed me that ACT Policing don't investigate such trifling issues as thefts and burglaries these days, unless it involves a nice juicy murder, drug ring, or illegally-downloaded mp3s. Then I called the insurance company, and found that "comprehensive insurance" isn't, and that, as my boss had joked recently, the excess really is more than The Bullet is worth. Not a good way to end Friday.
I don't remember much of Saturday. I'm pretty sure I spent most of the day moping, and most of the night getting drunk. But we were quite careful, much more so than usual. The threat of work on Sunday morning, and a general lack of good "going out" money in the budget, was all that was required to keep us honest. We're good boys like that. We went to Kremlin, and Phoenix, and Bar 32, and Uni Pub (long after the Dara crowd had left; punctuality is not my strong point). And I danced. I rarely dance, certainly not without at least a dozen standard drinks inside me. One more layer of Fat Guy Insecurity dropping away? I'm fairly sure I wasn't the most welcome sight on the dance floor, but I didn't make anyone sick, either. I mean, there were sick people there, but the hairy guy with a leather coat and no shirt has to take his share of the responsibility there.
And so I awoke Sunday morning. As a matter of policy, I never wake before two o'clock after a Night Out, because the best way to avoid The Morning After is to sleep through it. But there I was, clearly awake, and there the clock was, clearly Ante Meridian. And not at all hung over. See? Good boys. So I was in the perfect mood to ring and find out I will not be living in the cigarillo case this year, and to stay up until two hours past midnight not doing the work I had scheduled for Sunday morning. And in the morning (Monday morning), I'll need to decide the fate of my car window. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just say to the Universe, "I don't want to!" And then the Universe might say, "That's all right, then, Mark. I'll fix it for you."
» 21.01.2008 @ 0209 | work canberra navel weight-loss housing |
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A couple of years back I waddled into Best & Less and bought a bunch of very large, plain t-shirts. Black, navy blue, blue, pale green, grey. There was no logo (though I've never been the logo type), no pattern, nothing but a wall of navy blue. They sent a very clear message: "Pay no attention to the man wearing the curtain."
I still wear those t-shirts a lot, around the house or at the gym (I'm wearing the black one now). Once they were reassuring: big and loose, they disguised bits I really didn't want noticed. The shirts also made it much harder to notice me: doubly-effective camouflage! They're not quite so useful now. The sleeves are so big and flappy that, at the gym, I almost get tangled up in them when doing weights or (ahem) skipping songs on my mp3 player. Wearing them out in public, I find that, where once they disguised layer upon layer of disgusting fat, they now billow out strangely and suggest the existence of layers I've long been rid of. I now rarely wear them outside, except on Laundry Emergency days, and because I'm not quite ready to wear smaller clothes to the gym.
I've found that, since I started losing weight, I'm paying a lot more attention to clothes and shopping than I ever thought I would. I can't afford to keep up (though I've spent an embarrassing amount on Threadless), and consequently almost everything I wear is much too big for me. Not as big as The T-shirts of Insecurity, but still quite big. I umpired 7 games under the microscope at this year's National Championships wearing uniforms that didn't even come close to fitting. At times I was more worried about how I looked in my ridiculously-billowing clothes than about whether or not I was passing my practical examinations. I prefer my new clothes to immediately become too small than to fit well for a while, though: it shows I'm still making progress. I expect to be human again in a year or so, but utterly incapable of clothing myself.
» 19.01.2008 @ 1825 | weight-loss shopping |
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I had a little trouble with sessions in this here CMS. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. I'm still not sure how that quite worked. Perhaps the system fell asleep on occasion and accidentally let me achieve something. If so, it strongly resembles the bureaucracy at work. Boom, tish.
A nice, helpful, and undoubtedly devilishly handsome chap on IRC pointed out that I was trying to start a session mid-way through a script. So? Well, as I damn well know and should have considered, you can't suddenly start sending headers after the browser has finished dealing with headers (e.g. when you're halfway through a script and the browser is already rendering output) ... and session handling uses session cookies, sent in headers. Whoops. Well, at least now I can reliably log in and post.
» 19.01.2008 @ 0241 | work webby programming |
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The motivational chap at 4 Eva Young has come across an interesting and funny presentation by Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet on new ways of looking at global health and poverty statistics. It's well worth a look.
Popular Mechanics' sponsors want you to learn how to be a real man. I'm not sure what purpose has the appeal to masculinity, but maybe that's why I'm not a sub-editor for a major magazine. A lot of the skills they list make a great deal of sense, and I agree that everyone should know how to perform them. Others are interesting, but only really for the entertainment value. You can decide which entries fall into which category.
» 16.01.2008 @ 0145 | |
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The last game of the u16B National Championships finished at roughly four o'clock last Saturday, but the tournament itself didn't end until the doughty boys from Western Australia had the opportunity to defeat their tormentors in a late-night arm-wrestling contest. Judging from the kids' expressions, slamming the odd New South Welsh hand onto a rickety wooden table was far more satisfying than hitting a home run could ever be. I'm glad they had fun; they worked hard all week against much richer and stronger teams, and they deserved some form of triumph. One just worries what might happen when they're old enough to drink.
My colleagues and I had reasons of our own to celebrate on Saturday. For one thing, the tournament was over, and we would soon be returning home, reminding our loved ones what we look like. More importantly, two umpires had, thanks to tireless preparation and a big leg-up from the other umpires present, achieved promotion to level 5, the first real national level. I was one of those umpires.
I wish I could say I feel any different. However, after 18 months of constant training, of working hard in the gym to become as fit as possible as quickly as possible, of travelling all over the eastern portion of Australia looking for different softball experiences and talking to dozens of senior umpires, I'm just bloody relieved it's all over. Returning to work straight away doesn't help (workmates: if I fall asleep at my desk this week, please don't wake me). I won't be umpiring again in our local club leagues up at Hawker for nearly a month now, either. Perhaps when I do it'll start to sink in. Or perhaps it's just not that big a deal any more.
» 16.01.2008 @ 0105 | |
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I will be away at the the 2008 National Championships for the next week. Luckily no-one reads this, or I'd be missed. In case anyone was wondering, I will be at the u16 boys' championships. This will render me incommunicado for the next week. See? It's an ill wind ...
» 05.01.2008 @ 0849 | |
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So, AOL have announced that they will no longer support Netscape Navigator. Remember Navigator? Yeah, that's the browser that people used last century. Who knew it was still around?
Navigator was released in 1994, and sustained itself as the Browser of Choice™ for half a decade through the power of sheer awesomeness. I didn't come across the Internet until early 1997, by which time Netscape was well and truly dominant. It was only underhanded skulduggery (as distinct from, of course, overhanded skulduggery) that allowed Microsoft's significantly inferior Internet Explorer to claw its way towards relevance during the heady '90s. We're all familiar with Microsoft bundling IE4 with Windows '98. When you can dictate the default browser on the world's most popular operating system, it doesn't matter that that browser is unconscionably bad: if most users are happy with the OS, and not technologically confident enough to seek out alternative applications, they're going to stick with the defaults. We can quibble over whether Microsoft abuse their power; it's hard to argue they don't fully exploit their monopolies. The thing I object to when Microsoft do try to use marketing to force-feed us inferior products is not that Lots Of People Use Microsoft Products, but that Microsoft deliberately breaks those products so that those of us who do know how to use third-party applications find our lives made ever-so-slightly more difficult because of ignorant weenies learning the Microsoft Way. It wasn't just browsers; two examples I can pluck out of thin air right now are audio encoding and .NET. Woo! I'm getting off the track here, but I think we can justifiably indulge in a little bitterness now and then.
Of course, Navigator's demise wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault. After all, by the time Navigator 4 finally dropped to a low enough point (not long after the release of IE6) that we all felt comfortable pretending it didn't exist, we did so with loud sighs of relief. Navigator 4 was better than its predecessors, but not significantly so. The gap between Navigator and Internet Explorer was closing. Part of this was that, with Explorer's building market share, web designers started building sites that broke in Navigator (partly because Microsoft were introducing bells and whistles to spur innovation in much the same way Netscape did, but mostly because Microsoft Way followers just full stop broke things, like they always do). Part of it was that there was growing awareness in the web design community of nifty things like CSS, and Netscape's implementation of such supposedly-standard web features was even worse than Microsoft's (Navigator 4's CSS rendering was based on its JavaScript interpreting code, and so incredibly buggy that advanced web pages made it crash). Further new versions of Navigator 4 added nothing of benefit to end users, but significantly increased the bloat of the application. Every subsequent version of Navigator was larger, more memory-intensive, and less stable. When your application crashes more often than Microsoft products, you've dug yourself a deep, deep hole.
Netscape famously released its Navigator code in 1998, asking for the help of the open source community. This code was rejected wholesale because it was so crap the programmers were better off starting from scratch. Ouch. AOL bought Netscape in 1999, and helped make a goer of this whole "new Navigator" thing. Netscape 6 was released in 2000, and didn't suck as much as Navigator. Fast-forwarding a little (hi, Mozilla Corporation!), Netscape today is little more than a re-badged Mozilla. Those of us who were inspired by Mozilla switched to Firefox years ago. Netscape today is irrelevant, unnecessary, no more than a name worshipped by an insignificant number of nostalgiacs. Evidently AOL agree with me; they don't see the point of supporting Navigator, not when you can cut out the middleman and make everyone happy.
Of course, the Web is not an either-or, "Mozilla-based or Microsoft" dilemma. There are many other fine browsers out there. Safari is quite good, Opera is excellent. Me, I prefer Firefox. But we have a choice. I won't mourn Netscape; wouldn't even if it was logical to mourn a brand (it isn't). The company that made it great died eight years ago. The people who made it great were rewarded. The brand is meaningless now; we have better things with which to concern ourselves. The Web today, and the web design scene, is as vibrant and as exciting as it has ever been. We're looking at unprecedented innovation. There are more people doing more exciting things with StyleSheets and JavaScript and things of that kidney, made possible by the adequacy of Internet Explorer and the excellence of engines like Gecko, Presto, and WebKit. Who could be sad?
The only thing one wonders about is what Microsoft's response will be. I've heard several opinions on this, ranging from "they won't care" to "they won't care", and everything in-between. However, I like the way BBspot think.
» 05.01.2008 @ 0841 | |
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So, the other day I came across a list of New Years' Resolutions for 2005. This is interesting for a number of reasons that I can't really go into right now. I thought it might be worth a butcher's, at least to see how I've stacked up since then.
- Quit smoking (I don’t smoke, but if I want others to quit I guess I have to lead by example).
Successful! It was a struggle, but I managed to quit smoking in January 2005.
- Accidentally win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Alas, the Nobel Prize remains beyond my grasp, although by never getting around to writing those books, I can at least say that any awards would definitely be accidents.
- Trap spammers in their secret caves in Afghanistan, then take ‘em out with laughing gas and lock them in a room somewhere without Internet access… forever.
I suspect I'll be hearing from my lawyer if I spread rumours about alleged illegal activity I've allegedly performed.
- Get a pay raise. [Looks into the distance, hears muffled Russian cursing] You’d better make that two.
Well, I got a new job, which was a payrise, then another new job, which wasn't (but was in a better industry). So we can check that one off, too.
- Resist any temptation to explain the poor joke used above.
What?
- Accidentally lose twenty kilos ("honey, did you check behind the fridge?").
Actually, I did lose twenty kilos. But it wasn't an accident. And I've still a long way to go.
- Finish Gormenghast (I’ve got about thirty pages of Titus Alone left to go), and not let my love for the first book be diminished by the idiocy of the third.
I don't even know where Gormenghast actually is, let alone how it ends. Actually, I'm reading half a dozen books concurrently right now, so Gormenghast evidently featured significantly more highly on my list of priorities than it does now.
- Stop describing everything I dislike as “idiotic". Just most things should do it.
I've gotten pretty good with this, actually. Maybe I've grown up. Maybe I'm just more subtle. Maybe my intellect has lowered.
- Finally send those bloody mix CDs I promised Nick many moons ago.
Oh, heck. Does Nick still live in the same flat? Does anyone else remember him? I have no current contact details.
- Marry Elle McPherson.
Alas, she still remains alluringly beyond reach.
- Single-handedly save the world from alien invasion.
I considered it, but I wasn't in the mood at the time, so Will Smith did it for me.
- And most importantly, buy more socks.
Successful! No-one can accuse me of lacking socks. Well, they'd better not.
So, that's 2004. Obviously I'll have to be more realistic in 2007. How does this sound?
- Needlessly quit smoking again, just to be a prick.
- Write that book. Heck, even manage to write the second chapter. Write more in general.
- Code more. The weblog was a good start.
- Lose another 20 kilos. Steadfastly refuse to check behind the fridge.
- Get a payrise. A good one, so I can buy more stuff. Then don't buy more stuff, so I've actually saved some money.
- Nick's CD. If he still lives there. Maybe throw in some Sinatra in case he's moved out and been replaced by some nice blue-rinser.
- Be less self-absorbed, but also less self-affacing. Try to cultivate exactly the right level of mindless self-preoccupation appropriate to a member of my generation, and no more or less.
- Give up on Elle McPherson. Really. I mean, gosh, kid, she'll be a grandmother first ...
Apart from the payrise, this list actually looks achievable ...
» 04.01.2008 @ 0008 | |
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I'm back. That statement on its own is nigh-on meaningless, but I'm good at that. Who is back?
My name's Mark. I was a 'blogger from 2001–2005. I don't know why. There's a number of very poorly-written weblogs in my wake: MarkWeb, infiniteBabble, do not use lifts, rent-a-lemming. You may have seen some of them. You probably didn't read them.
This is Form One Lane. Hopefully it will be better. It certainly won't drown you in babble, which was the stated aim of at least one of the weblogs I've listed above. There have been many changes since I quit; I got a new job, for one. In fact, I got a new job, then got jack of it, then got an even newer one. I think the current one is pretty good. Hopefully my employer thinks the same of me. I graduated from university, so there won't be any whining about classes any more. Isn't that good news?
I've done no web design (other than a fairly snazzy-looking uni project 15 months ago) since I quit 'blogging, so I'm pretty rusty. Even so, I think this design looks rather nice. It could have been worse. If you cast your eyes to starboard you'll see a list of links to other weblogs. No, I haven't been following the 'blog scene. These are the people I liked who are still around even today (good to see Grandfather Graham is still at it), or sites I ran across during random searching this past week, usually after getting sidetracked while researching some obscure PHP thing.
Anyway, nobody likes to listen to 'bloggers rant about themselves (or so I've heard). How are you doing?
» 31.12.2007 @ 0345 | design webby |
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Content management systems: so easy even an idiot did write one.
Form One Lane is powered by a very basic CMS written for PHP and mySQL by Yours Truly. Features include basic post-handling (duh), dynamic links, tags, and reader comments. However, I haven't gotten around to writing archive handling yet (so the tags are useless for now, although they were fun to write). Another feature it lacks is "smart paragraphs" (that is, interpreting spaces in the text areas as paragraphs), so if you want cute little paragraphs in your comments, you'll have to add the HTML yourself. Sorry.
On the whole, though, I'm quite happy with the effort here. It took me only slightly longer to write my own thing than it would have to wrestle into submission the templates of Movable Type or WordPress or whatever the cool kids are using these days, and it was good to do some programming for the first time in well over a year. Yes, I can feel the geekiness flowing through my veins again. It's been too long ...
» 31.12.2007 @ 0317 | design webby programming |
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![[This is not a weblog]](/uploads/kottke.png)
