The Jamjar

Much like ducks

Last day of February - thank goodness I chose a short month to blog every day because I don't think I could've last another day! Bloggin' is hard! and I mostly posted links!

Hardly blogging is so much easier :)

And while I don't think I have a blog post inside me for every day of the year, I do have words to share a couple of times a week, and that suits me (and you, probably) much better. So we will now return to our regular schedule.

I do have a project for March - remember 26 Things Photographic Scavenger Hunt thing I've done before? (one and two) Tracey is putting up a list for March, and David and I are going to do it. To even things out a bit because David has a film camera, I'm going to do my 26 Things with film too - so there won't be much to see until April so March won't have very much so show for the project but much like ducks, paddling furiously underneath March will be the go.

Sing-a-long Friday

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

"It's a small, handwritten volume reputedly bound in the skin of the extraterrestrial entity that plagued Benjamin Franklin's ass over six nights in Paris during his European travels. Benjamin Franklin wasn't some nancy-boy novelist who wrote sensitive books about aliens sticking things up his rectum, you know. On the seventh night he got right up and killed the little bastard with one punch." I didn't want to move. It felt like I was trapped in a room opposite a mad weasel with paintstripper daubed on its nipples. One false motion and it'd stop ripping itself to shreds right in front of you and go straight to chewing your head into a stump. He just wouldn't stop talking. It was horrible.

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

Macropinna microstoma

Today

I lack luster.

[EXTRA] Happy Birthday Charlie Lily - welcome to Australia! all 6 lb 13 oz of you. Well done Scots - congratulations on becoming parents.

Cuppa: 2108

The vacuum transporter system made its customary whoosh sound as the ThermaFlask™ arrived.

She lifted the brushed metal container from the receiving cradle, its cool touch protecting her hands and insulating the hot liquid it contained. She held it protectively to her body as she moved slowly towards the food processing counter. Placing it carefully on the opaque counter-top, she checked over her left shoulder, then her right, checking she truly was alone.

Her ancient hand slid slowly down her robe, her arthritic fingers finding the small soft bag of tea deep in her pocket. She looked behind again as she removed the tea bag from her pocket. She knew the penalties for possessing and consuming non-registered food - even though she would argue tea was not a food - she also knew the authorities wouldn't tolerate that particular debate. They sent you food; you ate it. That was the rule. They controlled your health, your weight, your diet. Old timers like her could remember a time when people had a choice about what they ate, when they ate, where their food came from. But old timers like her were a dying breed - literally. The sheep of the present world let the authorities regulate even their basic human needs.

She reached for a beverage container, setting it onto the countertop and carefully placing the gauze bag containing the black tea inside. Unfastening the TermaFlask™ she gently poured the steaming liquid into the cup. She recalled her Grandfather at that moment, all the times they had shared a cup of tea and conversation when she was much younger. He had often said that no other people in history would see the changes he had seen in his lifetime - he'd lived through the 20th Century. The Great Depression, two World Wars; he’d seen the development of the car, of the aeroplane, of spaceflight. He would have called anyone crazy if they’d suggested potable water would be so regulated, so expensive that in the future it would have to be requested, approved and delivered by the cup. She had saved credits for 5 years to afford this cup of boiling water. She was pleased that her Grandfather lived in his century, and not hers.

The hot water soaked into the bag and began to discolour. She watched the tea claim the water, releasing its flavours and aroma. She inhaled slowly, unlocking memories from gentler times. She would savour this, her last cup of tea. There weren’t enough years left in her life to save for another.

Event: Topfest '09

Tropfest is regarded as one of Australia's most iconic cultural events, and the largest short film festival in the world. The annual short film competition is open to anyone who wishes to enter – regardless of their background or experience. 16 Finalists are selected from an entry pool of an average 650 entries and compete for more than $100k worth of prizes. Tropfest films are unique in that they have all been made specifically for Tropfest, will premiere at Tropfest and include the Tropfest Signature Item (or TSI). The TSI for Movie Extra Tropfest 2009 is “SPRING”.

Tropfest website

Take a look at the Tropfest 2008 finalists' movies.

List of the 16 Finalists for Tropfest 2009.
2009 Winners - Fox's favourite came first, my favourite came second. Go us! to celebrate this, I've made a video of the gloriousness of Tropfest's intermission. It isn't good, but it is short!

Meerkat pups

Why do Meerkats have pups, wouldn't you think they'd have kittens?

Sing-a-long Friday

The Girl in my Room

I woke up in my overheating bedroom at about 1:30am last Thursday morning, in a tangle of duvet and pillows. I rolled over and saw her sitting on the floor between the wardrobe and the door. This girl had long dark hair, parted in the middle. Her face was pale and lifeless. Her legs were tucked to the left and she was just sitting there - quietly, in my bedroom.

I was startled. Quite startled. Good sense told me I must be dreaming, strange dead girls don't go around sitting in strangers bedrooms outside horror movies. But then again, I was new to this room, it might be her room, I might be the stranger. No, this was a dream, a vivid, detailed dream, but I do often dream that way - like that time when I was 6 and I thought I had a pineapple Fruju in my hand and couldn't believe my luck - but upon lifting my sleepy head from the pillow and trying to take a bite of the tasty cool fruitiness, it dissolved into my waking state to find my hand held nothing.

She was vivid and real, this girl sitting in my room, but split second reasoning told me there was no way could be there, I must still be dreaming, she must be inside my head – was I trying to convince myself? What if she really was there. She might be real. I elbowed myself up and shook my head to rattle my senses back into place, squeezed my eyes shut and marvelled at my how detailed this vision was. I was also pretty impressed with how calm I was being considering how anxious I was feeling. I opened my eyes expecting to see her gone, but she was still there!

Now I was really quite frightened. I blinked and blinked again and sat up. She continued to sit, staring into the darkness - not at me, but past me and at nothing. She reminded me of the bedraggled well-drowned girl in The Ring, she wasn't scary as much as disquieting. She definitely didn't look alive even though she looked very real.

I reached my hand out towards her. Was I going to feel her hair? her shoulder? was she going to have substance? What would I do when I connected with her? Would I panic? I was pretty close to doing that as it was.

She remained still and staring as my hand slowly extended from my bed towards her. The fingertips of my outstretched hand connected with something solid though it didn’t feel alive, in fact, it didn’t feel like the shape I was looking at all. It was my Crumpler camera bag, it’s thick strap draping down a stack of boxes and realised it was an illusion of shapes and shadows.

I growled myself for being silly and humpfed over, pulling the covers around me, my back to the shadows against the wall. Still afraid of the dark, Michelle. Still able to scare myself into a nervous wreck from the comfort of my own bed after all these years. Would I ever actually grow up?

But I didn’t really feel any better for knowing she was a pile of boxes. I turned a little, and looked again. She was still there – I knew what she was, she wasn’t real. But I was too anxious to sleep with my back to her. I rolled over again to face her, and closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep.

I woke again at 4am and she was still sitting there. More dead girl and less boxes than ever. She didn’t need to sneak around in my dreams, she was in my real world.

The next morning I dismantled the pile. She was gone, I thought, but she haunted me during the day. Even though I could no longer see her in my room, the thought of her kept me from sleeping. Tangled, overheated sheets woke me up night after night and she was my only thought. It’s crazy: I’m an adult. I know from real – I tell myself over and over but, feelings and thoughts seem to occupy different parts of me – one part I can control, and one part I can’t.

Over the last week, I have learned to sleep with a dead girl in my bedroom.

Wednes Day Links

• VIDEO: Why Men Don't Talk to Women
• PORTFOLIO: Temporary Areas - the portfolio of Vincent Moon
• ARTICLE: Lost in Space: 8 Weird Pieces of Space Junk
• PODCAST: This American Life: Plan Bs ( click "Full Episode" in the left menu to listen )
• VIDEO: Barry Schwartz: The real crisis? We stopped being wise
• ARTICLE: The Rules of Gunfighting

Event: Web Standards Group

Chloe Isabella

Chloe born 10.31pm NZ time, weighed 7lbs 3 ounces.

Event: MSO, Free Concert

The Bowl turns 50

Pour vous

Black Friday

"Excuse me Lady."
I looked at him with my "Not today, Buddy." ready to go; he looked right at me as if daring me to give him the brush-off.
"Hi." I said instead.
"I was wondering if you could help me," he started.
"I wonder if I can." I said.
"Me and my friend need 8 bucks to get to Canberra," he continued.
"8 bucks to get to Canberra, wow, that's a cheap trip."
"We need 8 *more* bucks," he explained, "we have the rest already."
I dug into my pocket, I knew there was money in there, I'd paid for a glass of wine with a $50 note not long before at Horse Bazaar's Mobile Monday. I filtered the change from the notes. "Canberra huh?" I said, counting the change, "Makes a nice change from Bendigo." I handed him the change, "Sorry mate, all I've got is 4 bucks." I lied.
"Thank you lady," he said as he moved forward to hug me, I saw my roommate grimace over his shoulder - we weren't that fond of strangers in the street touching us but it happened from time to time.
"I've had a shit night," he said as he released me from his appreciation, "got beat up by a bunch of gooks, see?" he pulled his top lip wide to show my roommate the gash on the inside of his cheek.
"Don't be racist." my roommate said.
"What?" he asked,
"Don't be racist." she repeated, crossing her arms and looking right at him.
"They're Japs, what else should I call them?"
"Australian, they're Australian." she said.
He spat aggressively on the ground, "Does that" gesturing towards the foaming hoik on the ground "make me an Abo?"
"It makes you Australian." she continued.
"And what are you?" he challenged. The spaces between the three of us grew slightly, the dynamic suddenly unpredictable.
"I'm Australian, You're Australian, We're Australian," she continued.
We were then joined by his mate, who wanted to know what we were talking about. "This Lady was telling me not to be racist," the first guy said. His mate said "It doesn't matter what the colour of our skin is, it shouldn't matter," he brushed the skin of his own arm, "we're all the same!" The mate's manner was lighter and the situation diffused in an instant. "We need to get more money." he said.
"Nah, we got it all, these Ladies gave us some. So now we can go to Canberra."
"Canberra?"
"Yeh," said the first guy, staring hard at his friend, "_Canberra_"
"Oh, right, yeh.. _Canberra_"
They begin to move off, walking backwards, thanking us and saying goodbye, assuring us the money wasn't for Heroin, "Honestly, you can check my arms Lady." I didn't much care what the money was for.

Life Goes On

At the end of our exploration we take stock of what we now own. All that remains intact are the plastic pegs on the clothes line out the back. Maybe bush fires have a sense of humour. A police team arrives. They ask us who we are and seem surprised when we tell them. They say we are still officially listed as missing, feared lying dead in the ashes under our feet. We assure them we are very much alive. They continue on their grim task, heading towards a nearby property where we know death came on Saturday.

No phoenix of hope arising from the ashes of the Victoria bush fires, Gary Hughs

Chaz showed me the article in the local paper featuring the burnt out remains of his farm house. The wreckage of deformed roof iron and bewildered plumbing, and the four lone chimneys are all that's left of his 115 year old farm homestead: Roslyn.

People tell him he's lucky he wasn't at the farm that weekend, to thank goodness he's alive. They're right, but it's cold comfort at the moment as he nurses a broken heart. He sees the end of a era of wonderful times and good friends at the beloved homestead.

Our Head of Department stopped by this morning to say that one of our Clients, a man who had been in the office last Thursday, a staunch advocate of our Department, had been at his home which turned out to be in the bush fire path. He has been unaccounted for since Saturday, his death confirmed earlier this week.

I heard a fireman say over the weekend, when asked by a reporter how big the fires were, "Basically, a third of Victoria is on fire."

Map of Victoria Bush Fires

Wednes Day Links

• FLASH: Collection of Flash preloaders
• VIDEO: Learn jquery
• MOVIE - Coraline: Official site, marketing, special effects and Neil Gaiman talking.
• ARTICLE: 10 Things Science Fiction Got Wrong
• PHOTOGRAPHY: For the love of spiders

More Neil Gaiman talking, if you like that kind of thing.

Terrible Days

Photographs from the bush fires in Victoria, Australia.

Terrible Days

It is a fiery hailstorm from hell driving relentlessly at you. The wind and driving embers explore, like claws of a predator, every tiny gap in the house. Embers are blowing through the cracks around the closed doors and windows....We start coughing and gasping for air. Life is rapidly beginning to narrow to a grim, but inevitable choice. Die from the toxic smoke inside. Die from the firestorm outside.

How my family survived, Gary Hughes.

Terrible Days

Death toll rises from bushfires

Fifteen Melbourne

I've been squealy and excited all week. Fox, Willo and Jet bought me a 4 course degustation meal at Fifteen Melbourne for Christmas, and today was the date of the meal. I'm a Huge Jamie Oliver Fan (HJOF) and even the thought of going outside on Melbourne's hottest day in recorded history (46.4°C) wasn't going to stop this much anticipated meal.

Fifteen is down a flight of stairs off a Collins Street laneway. I'm not sure if their air conditioning was failing, but it was a bit warmer than we would have liked - our waiter, Elliot apologised for the temperature but I didn't catch a reason for it.

The meal was lovely, if a little confused in course and drinks order at the beginning - our entrees arrived before our predinner cocktails - and things felt a little rushed, but Elliot was ever present, making sure we were okay - amiable, and relaxed, and the meal smoothed out to a delicious pace.

The company was sterling, as usual. Fox and Willo are such wonderful dining companions. It really was a very very nice Christmas present.

Sing-a-long Friday

Adobe REFRESH 09

I'm at the Seibel Albert Park today at Adobe's REFRESH showcase thingie.

The seats are uncomfortable, the coffee is terrible and the crowd is subdued. My work colleague has gone back to work, not interested in the current and future development of industry products we use in our everyday work. I am here for the afternoon session with my belly full of steak sandwich, an internet connection and The Killers being piped through the sound system. I'm looking forward to this afternoon's session and hearing more about the work-flow between Adobe Flex, Flash and Blaze.

I was going to "live blog" but really - there's not much to say. There are no prizes, no hoopla, no tshirts.. not even Adobe pens!! for goodness sakes.

There are more women here than I had expected (it's more a developer audience than design) but we are still very out numbered. I'm not complaining, mind you: it is a room full of men and that's not the worst thing that could happen to a girl on a Thursday.

Oh, in case you didn't know: you can produce AIR apps from Fireworks CS4. What will they think of next!

PS: someone tell Craig his entry for the Adobe Web Premium package has been submitted as requested however, the caveat is that the winner must be here for the draw at the end of the day. If Kinky's name is drawn, I will put on my best butch walk and Scottish accent and try to claim the PC version on his behalf.

ooo gotta go: Periodic Table on the screen. BBL.

1422: Flex 4 brother, codename:Gumbo - available via the labs.adobe.com site, download nightly builds and have a play.

The Cocomo example was interesting - the dude created an authenticated module containing a chat pod, collaborative white board and user list in under 20 minutes with a few lines of code.

So many products, half the battle is knowing which tool to use and when.

It's afternoon tea time but the thought of that stuff they label "coffee" doesn't thrill me.

ION: the image of the Centaur for the latest ColdFusion release makes it look like the software has finally told it's parent's it prefers same sex relationships.

so neither Craig nor I won the Web Premium suite from Adobe. bugger.

I'm full of doziness and ideas and had a pretty good day. Nothing really exciting happened here at the Seibel and Refresh 09 from Adobe, but it was well worth sticking around.

Wednes Day Links

• NEWS ITEM: Students call space station with home-built radio
• BLOG: E=mc^2... Your Views
• ADVERT: TUI Beer
• VIDEO: Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars
• TEST: The Geek Social Aptitude Test
• BOOKS: Jane Austin, made interesting and worth reading
• BOOKS: 100 Best First Lines from Novels

Losing it

I've lost a set of keys. The keys to the old apartment. The most immediate problem is that the new apartment's mail box key is on that keyring and we have mail in our letterbox - important mail that might need signatures and stuff.

The keyring also holds the magnetic swipe key for getting into the old apartment which will be costly to replace, as will the locksmith's fee for having to replace the lock and replace the registered keys.

FUCK.

In other news, my snow globe broke and saturated my new passport. Yes, the passport I had to pay double for because I left renewing it too close to traveling. It will need replacing, there's no way Customs'll let me through the gate with the amount of water damage over the front and inside cover.

I hope this isn't an indication of the levels of excitement that 2009 holds for me. I will put up with the first quarter of the Year (it actually all started on Christmas Eve and hasn't stopped since) being intense and crazy and full of change and challenges, but by crikey, not the entire year!

Shape up 2009, get your shit together! <= how about you get *your* shit together, Michelle? Yes, okay. I can't even blame anything else - it's all me.

Event: Moving House

We spent Saturday moving from one side of the street to the other. While the distance between our old apartment and our new one was minimal, the effort to get our stuff from A to B remained the same as if we'd moved from Melbourne to Timbuktu!

Our new apartment is a two-storey affair, with a couple of spacious decks; one off the open plan lounge-room and one upstairs off the bedrooms, it has air conditioning. Sweet, cool, air conditioning. What a god-send after a week where temperatures reached up, over and beyond 40°C.

We don't have phone or an internet connection yet, but thankfully there are a couple of unsecure wireless networks in the building so piggy-backing on our neighbour's broadband is the go for the next week or so - sshh, don't tell anyone!

Event: St Jerome's Laneway Festival

Guy: (after stepping back onto me in the overcrowded Little Lonsdale Stage queue) Sorry.. sorry.. you have to forgive me, I'm a little intoxicated.
Michelle: If I have to...
Guy: If I might say so, you look a little frustrated.
Michelle: Nicely noticed.
Guy: Hey, could you answer a simple question for me?
Michelle: I could try.
Guy: What would you do if a guy came up to you today in the queue and said "Hi there, how're you doing?" would you be civil and answer his question or would you be a snob and ignore him?
Michelle: Well as you're already talking to me I suppose I'd probably say "Hi" back. Why?
Guy: Because I said hi to that girl there and she snobbed me! wouldn't talk to me!!
Michelle: Ah, her? well, I can see why that might be the case.
Guy: Yeh? Why's that?
Michelle: Well, she's been standing in this queue for over an hour. She, like me, entered the queue when it was half way down Swanston Street so she's probably as frustrated and tired as I am by now, whereas *you* only entered the queue 10 minutes ago when you pushed in and queue jumped.
Guy: Oh. Shit. Yeh. Ha ha ha yeh. Um.. so.. why didn't you call me on that? Why didn't you tell me to go to the back of the queue?
Michelle: Because by the time you pushed in, I was beyond caring about anything anymore.
Guy: Oh. Right. Well. Now I feel bad. Here (un-velcroing a free sun visor frisbee'd into the crowded queue by TripleJ dorks a few minutes earlier) by way of an apology I'd like to offer..
Michelle: Don't you give me that fucking hat.
Guy: What. Why?
Michelle: It's a shitty cheap hat and I don't want it.
Guy: Oh right it is kinda shitty.

This story doesn't end with a good punchline, but then neither did the Laneway Festival. I was so close to throwing a wobbly after finally getting into the Little Lonsdale Laneway to find the sound system was so shit, I could barely hear the music - I just went home.

At least I'm shit-faced.

Young woman after her friend commented on the fact they'd been in the queue for over an hour.

AU$105 to queue for 2 hours (one 30 minute wait where I got so annoyed I broke the queue, one 90 minute where I manage to stick it out but wished I'd broken the queue) and not hear any music.

St Jerome's Laneway Festival : How shit was it? Extremely. Will not buy again.