Author: admin-blog

Ah, fire safety. There are a few rules which, apparently, you should follow regarding your house. If the area around your house is clear of high trees, you can actually stay in your house while the fire front passes, then come out and put out spot fires started by embers.

Here in The Blocks at Mt Nebo, that doesn’t apply. There are many, many trees near us. We don’t own all of them. We’re at the top of a long hill. Fire travels faster up hill. But here’s the fun bit: the big red fire trucks will not come up into the blocks if there’s a fire. The big plan in case of big fire: evacuate early. Wa-hey.

Anyway, I’m spending my time at the moment writing a new Advanced Photoshop course, to be run soon at the Design College of Australia. Looking forward to teaching it; should be fun. More teaching at QUT should be good too, plus more stuff for Infinite. It’s all good, though the free time is dwindling. I look at my calendar and can’t see the numbers any more. Naah, I’ve got free time, but it’s all fractured. Every week is different, which keeps it interesting and lets me work from home more. Cool.

But… need… broadband… now.

First: if you haven’t heard from her directly, Becki is OK.

Whatever I say about the bombing in London will be out of date by tomorrow. This Wikipedia page won’t: 2005 London transport explosions.

The fear of horrendous shit like this is part of why we left. Sympathy to all affected.

There are a few fonts out there which are used far too much, and all come as default fonts with Windows machines. Times New Roman is just bad; an dated, old-style font that nobody likes. Not pretty on screen, killing it for print use too. But it’s not the prime offender, as not many people like it.

Probably the most used font on the planet, Arial is an ugly ripoff of Helvetica which never deserved its current status. As most sans-serifs are better on-screen than most serifs, they’re going to be more popular, so the default generic sans with the default generic system wins. But it’s not the worst popular font.

No, that glorious title goes to Comic Sans. It’s popular because people think it looks “friendly”. Think it’s “fun” and “casual”. I’ve seen it used in conference posters, in scientific documents, on shop signage. It’s shit. If I can be even more blunt and opinionated:

If you use Comic Sans, it makes your documents look like they were written by a seven year old. It’s unprofessional, ugly, and makes it clear you couldn’t afford to hire a real designer. So please, please don’t use it.

Something else: just noticed on the Live8 broadcast while Coldplay/Richard Ashcroft are on stage, there’s a visual effect going on in the background that looks a lot like a horizontal/vertical version of my composition Abstracted. If anyone out there knows who did the visuals, and if it was connected, let me know. It is free to use and Live8 is a good cause; just wondering.

Hey there. Back from a great weekend in Sydney @ the Sydney Film Festival, for the world cinema premiere of my short animation Airport. You can also see it in the left hand navigation bar. Staying with my friend L, meeting her friends H & JP, enjoying long chats with all three about art, computers and everything else over Thai food, coffee and tea. I think they have some connection to the staff at Aunty Holly – Fabulous Feline. Big thanks to L for the hospitality and the welcome.

So that was fun. Then flying back (damn your late flights, Qantas, kudos to your pleasant one, Virgin) and straight to training on the Sunshine Coast, which was nice for a change.

Now back in Mt Nebo with another half day of training complete, relaxing in front of a fire, having enjoyed great wine (Hamelin Bay) with great food (pork glazed with honey/ginger/lime) followed by great sweets. My terrific sister (that’s B) has sent some excellent German treats over; we dug straight into the stroopwafels. Yes, they’re traditionally Dutch, but these were good too. (Thin toffee-covered waffles. Mmmmmmmm.) Much more to go yet, so props to you, Boo. Let us know what we can send in return.

Tripping back, a couple of happy moments. In the airport, killing time, I found a book I’d expected to find sooner or later: Belle de Jour‘s first tell-all novel, as mostly seen on the blog above. Felt part of the club that knew about it before the spotlight fell. Flicked through and read stuff that rang bells about the golden covering of the crushed autumn leaves on the coated road by the Natural History Museum in London. Great.

Coming home last week, I passed glowing orange fairy lights at Jolly’s Lookout. The national parks/firefighters/etc. department been burning off all day and the smouldering embers remained, sparkly orange beacons in the night to distract the unwary driver. One lone tree sparked further up the hill, a vertical bonfire mostly hidden. A great excuse to turn the lights off on the dark drive home.

I’ve got to go. Nic’s just brought me a cup of tea and everything’s just a bit too great. Hope your life’s going well too.

I remember that Fred Schepsi gave a speech at my graduation. I don’t remember much of what he said. I’d like to think that I’d remember it if it had been anything like this,

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ from Steve Jobs. Cool.

This one’s great: please read Dave Eggers’ short short story this week.

This post is rated MA. Not recommended for mothers. You have been warned. OK, I’ll just hide the whole thing in white text. If you want to read this, just select the blank area below with a click and drag.

I’m sorry to admit that I just really enjoyed Big Brother. Not just any Big Brother, but Big Brother Uncut. We watched much of BB in Britain a couple of years ago, but I don’t know how anyone could give a fracking crap about it after watching this.

Most Big Brother shows turn into he-said-she-said nonsense, like a live reality soap opera, but this show takes the nudity, masturbation, sex talk etc. that you’ve never seen and shows them in a one hour show. The shower room in this BB is built for voyeurs, so they show compilations of naked people rubbing their breasts or shaking their dicks.

There’s a chat in the bedroom between a few of the girls, one of them saying how good an electric toothbrush is on her clit. There’s another scene where they’re masturbating in the spa with a hose and then their hands. Finally, a fabulous scene where a particularly thick, drunk girl is cavorting in a bath covered in rose petals, moving like a bendy dolphin with big boobs, while the guy she’s brought into the room eats pringles and pretends not to notice.

Obviously this is all part of the grand plan, to lock a bunch of horny singles in a house and get it on. That’s not unique nor a surprise. But in the UK, one stray breast is front page news in a slew of tabloids. This show, despite how steamy it all sounds, wasn’t presented as a tawdry ooh-aah nudge-nudge affair. It all seemed pretty healthy and normal for a bunch of horny singles locked in a house together. It seemed unrepressed, Australian, and funny. You don’t agree with everything they say, but you don’t need to.

Extremely hilarious, compulsive pervy fun.

Returning to normality: aren’t kittens great?

I’m sitting on the back deck at home, Sunday afternoon. Three Kookaburras just started singing in the tree directly above me, with another two in a nearby tree. That insane cackle that I can’t describe if you’ve never heard.

Then they moved. Five in a nearby tree, just one above me. The bell birds still tinkling in the distance and a cool breeze blowing. Fab.

Oh, if you’re trying to register interest in ADSL on Mt Nebo, Telstra have moved the page and (under some conditions) screwed up the redirection. Go to http://www.bigpond.com/internet-plans/broadband/availability/lodgeprospect/ instead. It’s worth doing, but bear in mind that political and other realities are important too: Closeburn exchange has just recently been enabled for ADSL, and they hadn’t reached the target just a few months ago. So register, then sacrifice a goat and cross your fingers.

In Battlestar Galactica, which ended a couple of weeks ago, they characters swore. Just like in Red Dwarf, they used a made-up word instead of everyone’s favourite F***. Why not just swear? People’s mothers could be reading. Frack it all and smeg you.

Oh, and then see Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s wonderful. Jim Carrey’s very good and the execution is great.

Saw a great movie on DVD recently, I ♥ Huckabees. Great DVD extras, including the weirdest thing I’ve yet seen on a DVD, an infomercial for Jaffe & Jaffe, the (fictional) Existential Detectives played by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffmann. Very authentic. Jon Brion just sitting in the corner with a tiny guitar. The above web address advertised. Cool.

Also some great public service announcements from Open Spaces, another thing from the movie. Seeing a rock dropped on a daisy is a pretty effective five second conservation ad. Anyway, grab it, watch it, it’s great. Geek me says: multi-coloured DVD buttons: fancy. Mmm.