da Scriffles

Whale Drac. The Oil March. Free Wallpaper. Blog Action Day. Water.

2009-07-04T04:24:00Z

Net console - Dear Rabbit

2009-07-05T03:15:00Z

I was horrified to see my former best friend from high school rushing towards me in the supermarket with her youngest daughter in tow.
So glad to see me she spilled her life's story out there at the checkout.
She thought it was great to see me. Eventually, she wondered what I'd been doing for the past few decades.
The betrayal this woman had committed - let's just say, my head spun around like she'd hit it with a baseball bat.
I have never understood it.
New century, all sins forgiven? No sir-eee. Not a chance!
I could have faked excitement for her benefit but my thoughts floated in space in slow motion, while she nattered on and on, while flashing her toothy grin.
High school ended and so did our friendship - with not even a word or explanation.
We had sat in classes together for years, played sport together. Shared thoughts and dreams. I thought we were friends.
I tried to keep in touch, even though our lives moved in separate directions. I was at uni. She went straight to work.
She never made time for me.
And here she is at the check-out trying to re-establish contact.
I gather all my conscious being up to be polite to her - not thrilled to know that she lives in the same suburb - just blocks away.
She's a really smart girl. Smarter than I ever was. More popular than I ever will be.
She was my best friend through senior - we were in the same home class in Year 8.
The dereliction of a friendship smarts every time I even think of her. Some hurts never fade.
High school was the longest time I stayed in one school: I never spent more than two years in a primary school.
Moved in Grade 2, moved in Grade 4, moved in Grade 6 - that was another big one but I found my best friend from Grade 5&6 and we do keep in touch.
Just watch Stand By Me to see why it's a big deal. A really big deal for kids.
Friendship, Belonging, Betrayal. The last one doesn't belong in the same sentence.
I found a photo I took of my nieces with their pet black rabbit, Sparkle = :-)
Sparkle died last year.

He used to sit beside me in the sunshine when we were by ourselves - just being together.

I never really thought much of rabbits before him. Now I think that rabbits are just as good as dogs.
He really did have a Sparkle personality. His death hit everyone hard. Very unfortunate circumstances.
He died under the knife. He had a broken leg. The vet told my sister that rabbits don't react well to the trauma of operations but he wouldn't have lived without one.
It is believed that he fractured his leg when her littlest girl tripped and fell while carrying him. I never got to say goodbye.
Nothing to be done. I found a photo of him yesterday and cried - his big feet, that toothy grin, and he was wearing sunglasses.
We all used to have such fun being together!
Well, anyway, last week I went to a different supermarket. And guess who I saw? No, not Rabbit.
She coolly walked past me and my trolley, with her youngest daughter in tow.
I'd seen her out walking in the mornings too. I crossed to the other side of the road or just smiled without stopping to chat.
She got the message. I don't want to be friends now. I do believe in turning the other cheek.
But when you still feel the knife in your back...
And well might you say that she didn't intend to hurt my feelings.
All I know for sure is that no one was to blame for the death of Rabbit.
As they say, Shit Happens.

My First Blog Post

2009-07-05T09:48:44Z

Twittervision

2009-07-06T23:36:00Z

Sat up last night to watch the live feed from London of Reboot UK. One big question came up which seems pretty serious. The bulk of all public cultural, arts, media funding goes to large conglomerates like the ABC, the BBC, Channel 4 and yet everyone knows that the action is happening elsewhere - beyond the control of the controllers.
I listened to the author of We Think, Charles Leadbeater, find him on Twitter @ WeThink, say that today's tiny start-ups were going to change the world.
Everyone knows that, just look at Microsoft, Google... Giants grow from seeds.
The other thing which seems to be a problem is that these seeds are viewed by "The Establishment" as weeds to be controlled.
But Leadbeater told them that it was the pirates, the scallywags, those who even seem "bonkers", the mavericks who will lead the way.
Perhaps he had just watched Ice Age 3 where the crazy hoon returns the herd to safety also.
Truth in Fiction.

And then, via Twitter, I discover that a Lord Drayson - a British minister is not just Twittering he's actually consulting twitterers for their visions of a better Britain. Are we seeing the start of something here? Twittervision!

Twittervision 1

I have to say it's a little better than pandering to the bidding of Rove McManus "It's Twitter Time!" - as Kevin Rudd did last week.

Go Banksy Go!

2009-07-07T20:47:00Z

An artist who rips it up like Salvador Dali, like Turner, like Degas ... Banksy is my hero! At the Bristol Museum

"The unknowns were rampant" when the Eagle landed and man first set foot upon the moon

2009-07-08T20:49:00Z

This NASA multimedia is so cool.

Hear the TWITTER between the Earth and the Moon in historic audio grabs.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11_40th.html#

Every person has the power to do great things

2009-07-10T08:54:00Z

"What inspired you to produce animation?"

British producer Alan Dewhurst had just finished describing to an auditorium full of aspiring animation students at QUT the herculean effort of putting together a deal that saw in this world the Oscar-winning short film Peter and the Wolf. http://office.breakthrufilms.co.uk/peterandthewolffilm/about_us_alan.html

He had a young director who had never made a feature-length film before. They worked in a spartan conditions through a freezing European winter in an unheated warehouse with camera equipment that the Polish animators had stolen from Berlin after Hitler was defeated in 1945!

Several million for a short film of a breathless, terrible beauty.

If you have heard Sir Peter Ustinov narrate Peter and the Wolf you'll understand that even without images it's quite frightening.

And Dewhurt's version looks even bleaker, so no, the film has not even broken even - he remains undaunted though.

What keeps him going? What inspired him to foolishly go down this insane path?

The answer was Richard Williams, the animator who created the 1971 classic retelling of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

"It was all hand-drawn," Dewhurst cooed.

As a lad, he hunted Williams down and landed work as Williams' go-for.

So I come home, google it and watch A Christmas Carol. I remember watching it on TV as a child.

And, for reasons of my own, I jot notes: "Every person has the power to do great things".

Yes. "Fall seven times, get up eight" - says the Japanese proverb I tore out of a newspaper long ago that sits beneath a magnet on my fridge.

But the difference between the verb "to do" and the verb "to be" is as great as the difference between nouns wisdom and knowledge - I think.

To be great you have to do great things, don't you?

A lot of people aspire to "be great" - add a dash of reality TV to YouTube.

Unfortunately, you can't recoup a few million dollars on a short animation that way.

Perhaps construct an online persona, every time you Twitter you see your photo and every utterance published for the world to read? Nah. Won't work.

Meanwhile, in some back room, in some warehouse, in some laboratory, some eager beaver with a purpose decides to see something through, even if it takes 20 years.

In the past week, I've spoken to several really interesting Australians from various backgrounds.

On Thursday, I spoke to the 2006 Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Frazer, a Scottish immigrant, who talked about the fact that science, progress, is not an individual pursuit. Scientists build upon what others discover. Without Galileo there would be no Hubble. It took Frazer 20 years to get a vaccine for cervical cancer on to the world market. "Every person has the power to do great things". A seemingly insignificant discovery could lead to a huge leap in human knowledge.

On Wednesday, I spoke to a commercial lawyer, Heath Ducker, who's written a book (A Room At The Top) about his childhood. He was raised in abject poverty, one of 10 children, and he also believes in this idea that "Every person has the power to do great things". He hasn't read Charles Dickens. His is Pip's story from Great Expectation s.

Centuries away from Charles Dickens who wrote "...to hear an insect on the leaf" - another phrase I jotted down from A Christmas Carol.

The founder the Trading Post, who kept self-help group Youth Insearch afloat as an anonymous donor, paid his uni fees.

Friday comes and I'm interviewing an Aboriginal activist, Sam Watson, who has written a play about one fierce woman, a poet who had such a way with words. She was Watson's aunty, blood relative. And even for him, her poems are particularly poignant because they marked the first time the Aboriginal story got a mention in Australian school curriculum. He'd only ever heard Australia's European history taught in school. He learned Aboriginal history around the campfire on Stradbroke Island at the feet of elders such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Kath Walker. In the 1960s and 1970s, a black woman in a white man's world dared to raise her voice and demand justice. Watson's put her words on stage and hopes to tour it around Queensland and maybe Australia to tell the stories and show that "Every person has the power to do great things".

So these scrawls I made while watching A Christmas Carol, I've just noticed them pinned on my calendar.

Ignorance and Want cowered beneath the billowing garments of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

These two things my father always sought to eliminate for his family. These two things Ducker works to eliminate for disadvantage youth.

Kath Walker fought to defeat ignorance and want. The Ghost of Christmas Present - the world grappling with cultural revolution, financial crisis and climate change.

My father died in April. And on his grave he had engraved, for reasons of his own..."Never compete, create".

Our opinions differed on many things but he'd chosen the words of a philosopher I admire, Bertrand Russell, who wrote Education and the Social Order.

Here was a man (my dad) "not educated in this country" - as my dad was fond of reminding us - who knew more about a lot of things than most people.

He knew because he was interested.

He would have liked to have had an education - but I don't think he believed enough in himself to do it.

"I'm a simple fitter and turner," he would say. If something broke, he could fix it. If the house needed painting, he'd do it.

I'd say the equivalent of a 1950s fitter and turner may be a 2009 web developer.

You probably don't know any fitter and turners - there aren't many around these days - but if something was just a millimetre out, if something was not square, if something was amiss ... have you ever tried to get a graphic designer past the fact that something on a draft isn't quite lined up yet? Just line it up and be done! There's no way around it.

My migrant father learned to read English by reading the newspapers. He learned to speak English by going to the picture theatre and watching what are now called "old movies". That's how important popular culture was back then. Today we think advertising culture. I wonder what would Dickens think? All of this is now found in one place on the world wide web.

As a family, we watched every BBC production that the ABC ever showed on a Sunday night.

"You'll never understand me because I'm from a different culture," my father'd say.

It was an argument I could never win because I just disagreed. If he could understand Dickens and Australians, I could understand Tolstoy and him!

Anyone know who Tolstoy was?

A small band of us followed his casket to his grave - my father's not Tolstoy's. There were no songs sung, no fabulous celebration of his life with celebrities galore.

His voice was not heard around the world. He quietly went about his business, he started out in poverty working several jobs to put food on the table, he worked six or seven days a week all his life, and he gave each of his children the best education that was of their choosing.

He died at home, as peacefully as could as a man who could barely breathe. And the last words he heard on Earth were Papa. He provided opportunity. He chose it as his reason for being and saw it through and through all the circumstances beyond his control. So we continue his story. "Every person has the power to do great things." The day before he died, aged 72, I came in to find him sitting in front of the computer opened at the stock market. He also loved to dabble.

Billt's #webat20 Boo: RT @billt http://boo.fm/b40267

2009-07-10T22:19:00Z

New Media pioneer Bill Thompson created this short audio boo of his #webat20 Talk.

@billt | http://www.thebillblog.com/billblog/

Quick transcript:

Web: provides access to knowledge.

available to 20 percent of the world.

It's the evolution of a new human sense, development human eye, you see stuff that's out there but didn't have access to before.

It's much bigger than TV and Print.

the fundamentals of printed text have not changed that much.

audio boo: Billt.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/40267-webat20-talk-cut-off.mp3">Listen! http://audioboo.fm/boos/40267-webat20-talk-cut-off.mp3">Listen!

BBC Digital Revolution Blog link:

Hear the man who invented the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners Lee, explain the past and the future of the www.

A world where TV stations will become defunct as random access to programs on the net becomes the norm.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/07/tim-bernerslee-and-the-w...

Twitter snap - Obama's speech twittered as it happens

2009-07-11T13:01:00Z

Twitter snap 2 - White House twitters Obama's Ghana speech as it happens

2009-07-11T13:23:00Z

Cool isn't cool any more. It's colourless...

2009-07-13T10:41:00Z

"Who's colourless?"
"What! Whoa? That's harsh."

Two little seven-year-old girls giggled in the backseat of the car.
It was kids' silly hour, after a long day of tigers leaping, feeding kangaroos, watching crocs open their eyes, falling from 90 feet up and swinging 90 feet up on The Claw - "Oh, yeah!"
Almost Heaven is ... for my niece ... boarding The Claw while singing along to Taylor Swift's Love Story playing in the background.

A day at a theme park with cousins, aunts, uncles, parents and your best-ever friend who you knew even before you both were born because your mothers were friends.
"They knew each other when they were pregnant with us," the girls happily declare.
Swift thoughts. Smiling eyes. Gleeful shouts. But not quite fearless.

Fear didn't stop her from riding The Wipeout.
She sees this demon as we walk into Dreamworld.
Lucky she had me because no one else would've gone. I'm a cool aunt. Smug.
This is no aeroplane ride that goes around in circles I'm talking about here.
She has a moment of doubt as her mum walks off to take the other kids on tamer rides and we wait in line.
But our turn comes and she runs along the gangway and plonks into a seat with a broad grin.

"Are you OK?" - I scream as The Wipeout flips and twists and spins, rises and falls.
"NO!" she screams.
"Close your eyes!" - I scream, the whole of theme park hears it all ... I keep my eyes closed to keep the panic down.
"Are you OK?" I repeat.
"NO!" she screams.
"Hang on!" I scream, knowing the little daredevil would be just fine.
The attendant gives us a look of concern.
I ask her if she closed her eyes.
"No." No tears. No problem. Next ride.

We end the day on a playground swing except this swing, The Claw, arcs up into the wide blue yonder, swivels and dives down towards the ground from a very great height - higher than old-growth forests I think.

Better than The Wipeout, we agree.

So I'm offended, puzzled, hurt when the backseat rappers stop rapping and start talking about: colourless, overweighted, old lady?
Euphoria dies and paranoia takes hold. Who are they talking about?

"C"-"o"-"o"-"l" - that's what it stands for : colourless, overweighted, old lady.
It's an acronym the little friend had made up at school. It's a word game. Silent relief, thankfulness and amusement.
Cool doesn't mean cool ... interesting.
From Taylor Swift to gangster rap: Yo! Dawg! This Place Is Rockin' ... Yo! Dawg! This Place is Rockin'..."
No R-rated lyrics. Lot's of things to be thankful for.

Just how did Leonardo Da Vinci get a weasel (or is it a mink?) to sit? :-)

2009-07-14T11:02:00Z

Global Warming needs a Chris Columbus to cast it in Harry Potter comeback!

2009-07-15T10:05:00Z

Ok, here's the theory.

Rosario Dawson, this hot chick who played Mimi in the musical Rent

directed by Chris Columbus in 2005, she'll play a character called

Climate Change in a movie called Two Degrees 2 Dooms Day.

She needs a hero, of course. Who's the hero?

(Columbus directed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

and Harry Potter and the Sourcer's Stone.

He's also produced the Night in the Museum flicks.)

So Harry Potter? The museum attendant?

Obama will do, I suppose.

But he doesn't have much time to save the girl.

But here's why he'll try....

If only there was a way. Wait!

Gamer. Mind control. Never send a man to do a boy's job.

Gamer comes out in September.

But here's the link for the trailer:

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/05/10/must-watch-explosive-trailer-for-gerar...

A boy controls an avatar in a first-person shooter, called Slayer,

where the avatars are real people.

Now, if children and young people were controlling the

players at Copenhagen who were deciding their future ...

they'd save the girl - wouldn't they?

But to win they'd have to beat the system ruled by the

Castles of the world (Castle is a character in Gamer

played by Dexter's Michael C Hall - interesting casting, isn't it?)

Dexter is a TV show about a serial killer who's a cop.

Game over.

Let's try again: Global Warming needs a Chris Columbus to cast it in Harry Potter Comeback!

2009-07-15T10:09:00Z

Ok, here's the theory.

Rosario Dawson, this hot chick who played Mimi in the musical Rent

directed by Chris Columbus in 2005, she'll play a character called

Climate Change in a movie called Two Degrees 2 Dooms Day.

She needs a hero, of course. Who's the hero?

(Columbus directed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

and Harry Potter and the Sourcer's Stone.

He's also produced the Night in the Museum flicks.)

So Harry Potter? The museum attendant?

Obama will do, I suppose.

But he doesn't have much time to save the girl.

But here's why he'll try....

If only there was a way. Wait!

Gamer. Mind control. Never send a man to do a boy's job.

Gamer comes out in September.

But here's the link for the trailer:

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/05/10/must-watch-explosive-trailer-for-gerar...

A boy controls an avatar in a first-person shooter, called Slayer,

where the avatars are real people.

Now, if children and young people were controlling the

players at Copenhagen who were deciding their future ...

they'd save the girl - wouldn't they?

But to win they'd have to beat the system ruled by the

Castles of the world (Castle is a character in Gamer

played by Dexter's Michael C Hall - interesting casting, isn't it?)

Dexter is a TV show about a serial killer who's a cop.

Game over.

Even Nine-year-olds lose memories...

2009-07-16T09:52:00Z

Sad. They are demolishing the chairlift at the Ekka.
Took my godson Alex last year to the Exhibition.
And the best part was the chairlift at night.
He remembers it - my dad took us on the chairlift
when I was about Alex's age too.
The traffic moves slow and redevelopment moves fast
in this damn world that destroys heritage and
memories without thought for what people love.

The Ekka Chairlift 2007

2009-07-16T10:36:00Z

Scribbles: Do you walk across the grass or use the footpath?

2009-07-17T09:04:00Z

I was reading this blog from a 21-year-old designer named Dustin Curtis. I read it to the end.

You need to set aside a good 20 minutes to enjoy this experience - he covers a lot of ground, from behavioral science to the compatibility of creativity and large companies.

Apparently, working for a bureaucracy is no excuse, just don't take no for an answer. Easily said. Only the brave, the chosen, or the incredibly naive or stupid that way go.

I was captivated by the discovery of a designer who can write!

He's put together a compelling series of 13 pages of seemingly unrelated articles except, like Socrates, he was constructing an argument, a logic.

If you swallow his premises, you'd sign up to follow him on Twitter.

It is an experiment.

It followed a simpler language experiment he'd conducted testing the effectiveness of asking, as opposed to telling people, to follow: be forceful, just tell them to follow by clicking here.

You'll get almost 13 per cent better results if you say "You should follow me (click) here", Curtis says.

He makes this revelation in 13th chapter.

Somehow I read the last chapter first so I knew the end of the story - though I didn't realise it.

So when I read "You should follow me here" (at the bottom of his webpages), I was willful. I didn't. He was making me jump a lot of hoops here.

I wanted to know if it was worth it.

I was waiting for the pay-off - not realising that I'd already read it.

I'm the kind of person who waits until the end of the film before I make up my mind on whether it's good or whether I like it - one exception: Portrait of a Lady.

A good ending makes everything OK in my books.

But this rule doesn't apply to novels which are infuriating if you reach the end only to discover it's a dud!

Sometimes, I'll listen to a door-to-door salesman just to hear what he has to say and then I'll say no.

But sometimes I'll even say yes - this is extraordinary to anyone who thinks that actually know me.

When I was about Curtis's age, I too learned about Pavlov's dogs, in Psychology 101 - along with the fact that conformists use footpaths.

From that moment every time I was confronted by a footpath, I consciously chose my path ... sometimes the footpath (if I feel conformist) or not.

I like choice. Except when I'm standing in front of the porridge section of the supermarket looking at a trillion flavours and I just want the plain, dependable porridge.

porridge, porridge...

So as a consumer I want to be surprised, I want to be entertained, I expect to benefit from the experience and I want it to work - that goes for websites or supermarkets.

So why didn't I follow Curtis on Twitter?

Don't know. I didn't chose that footpath I guess.

You should read Dustin Curtis's blog, here : http://dustincurtis.com/index.html

Scribbles: Paper Toys

2009-07-18T13:34:00Z

Following written instructions my nine-year-old nephew makes a paper toy: the Monster in a Box.
I was more of a hindrance to him - I just helped by reading out some basic rules of construction from the front of the manual.
Glue this tab to that tab with the same number - fold here etc...
He learned his ABCs at two - from a computer program.
Now, his favourite author is Roald Dahl.

"You Can't Switch The Brain Off" - Dr Michael Rich : http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25076980-5018793,00.html

Scribbles: Paper Toys (repeat) - larger file

2009-07-18T21:46:00Z

http://abduzeedo.com/40-cool-paper-toys-samples

Paper art animation: Very entertaining : http://www.bitrebels.com/geek/paper-art/

Alex & Me

2009-07-19T03:10:14Z

Scribbles: Ubuntu's looking for its inner Koala

2009-07-19T10:05:00Z

So I put some photos up on Flickr in the Ubuntu Artwork Group:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40566121@N07/

Ubuntu has called for public submissions to find new screen savers for the

forthcoming update of its software - an operating system called Karmic Koala.

I don't know anything about Ubuntu. So I Google. It's a community-developed

open source software.

For those of you who doubt my qualification for writing about operating softwares -

I totally understand.

But I do know what open source software is: freeware - everyone likes free downloads.

Ubuntu, though, has a greater purpose than promoting itself like other market forces

which attract customers and readers using giveaways...

free Flash icons, free typeface, free music, free wallpapers, free slideshow programs,

free audio editing programs:

bla-blaa-blaa! Listening to the Twitter it's obvious that free apps make

the world go a round and a round...

It's the word itself - Ubuntu - which unsettles me. Certainly not friendly like an apple.

Turns out Ubuntu is a Zulu word meaning "humanity to others" which Wikipedia

says is at the heart of the Ubuntu philosophy:

"I am what I am because of who we all are".

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/philosophy

That I like. "Ubuntu." Sounds better now. Though not as good, Mazoombi.

It's a bond - like a pinkie promise or a secret handshake - between us

initiated into a tribe created by my nieces.

Squeals of hello, quickly followed by a hushed whisper of the password: "Mazoombi".

GRINS from ear to ear. Contact established.

Iconic brands have that connection with their customers.

Apple doesn't even have to work to sell the i-Phone. i-Phone = "Mazoombi".

Something not only Ubuntu aspires to. But is Karmic Koala ... "the way?"

Software freedom, based on the greater principle of public benefit to all humanity.

It's the same principle people use to argue when they oppose the patenting of

genes by those who would prevent competitors from using their work to progress

science and humanity.

Most people don't acknowledge a lofty ideal until they walk

smack bang into it like a closed glass door.

To walk through the door they have to open it.

I acknowledge the door but I don't want to walk through it.

">I"> paid for software that works why would I download Ubuntu?

People don't like the bugs in Microsoft and they fear what they will

find in something called Ubuntu.

It's all about the bugs ... that's the upshot of what I'm picking up on.

Instead of Karmic Koala, Ubuntu should release the Karmic Swine -

a black pig, a viral campaign to spread Ubuntu around the world faster.

The Ubuntu Artwork group on Flickr has over 900 photos vying to

become new Ubuntu screen savers, and right now I think my gum

leaves are the only entries that have any association with Koalas.

It's more about zen and peace, sunsets, spirals, calm seas and angels sing.

I'm looking at Ubuntu's Artwork Catalog I don't think my gum leaves

are what they're looking for at all.

"Find your inner Koala": https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Catalog

Now I'm thinking: when lazy Koalas're awake - and that's AT NIGHT

when they're grunting LOUDLY - they're not that serene at all.

I had a dachshund who died at the hands of a sharp-clawed

koala in the middle of the night.

((( And yes, I know!! More koalas get ripped up by big dogs

than little dogs get ripped up by Koalas - BUT!...!!!)))

Whatever.

The open source software group is looking for new wallpapers

for it's forthcoming edition which they've called Karmic Koala.

Have a look: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ubuntu-artwork/ Find your inner Koala.

Scribbles: Dial the Devil

2009-07-20T12:55:00Z

For many years now, I've fought tooth and nail to keep the

same phone number at work.

I just love the silence, the shock, the amusement...

each reaction is different, but there's always a reaction.

"For it is a human number.

"Its number is the Six Hundred and Sixty Six."

Author David Seltzer quotes Revelations at the front

of The Omen. It's such a GREAT story.

I picked it up from a second-hand bookstore:

Great Horror Film Stories: The Omen, Rosemary's

Baby, and Salem's Lot.

666

It's the only story I've read in the book.

I watched Rosemary's Baby with Mia Farrow years ago and

was almost sick at the sight of her eating raw meat. Still

can barely think about it.

And there's no way I'm sitting up a night reading Salem's Lot.

I read Stephen King when I was teenager.

One night I was reading Cujo and I almost died when the

wardrobe door creaked a the same time as I was reading

about something creaking. I swear.... I still can't stand

the sight of a clown or a drain thank's to his novel It.

And yet I cling to my number.

I don't believe we choose our curses.

Our curses we can't escape.

The ironic thing is that people looking for the help desk seem

to dial 666 rather than 660 - it's the thought of people in

hell ringing the Devil's number for help that makes me chuckle

inside when I they interrupt my train of thought with their

wrong number. :-)

Scribbles: Dial 666 the HELP desk

2009-07-21T10:10:43Z

Scribbles: Seeing the Light

2009-07-22T12:17:59Z

You can't stop the tide from turning.
You can't catch a moonbeam.
You can't step into the same stream twice.
You can't ... paint with light ...
But you can photograph it through a painting.
Part of a series I did on light.

A Which - What - Who?

2009-07-24T08:16:34Z

Two good sources of information about life:

Everything flourishes; each returns to its root
Returning to the root is called tranquility
Tranquility is called returning to one's nature
Returning to one's nature is called constancy
Knowing constancy is called Clarity.
_ The Wisdom of Lao Zi (Translated Dr Han Hiong Tan)

"I WISH that I had DUCK FEET ... you can splash around in duck feet..."
_ Dr Seuss.

Scribbes: Zac's frauding!

2009-07-25T09:31:00Z

"Zac's frauding!" - screams Emma.

She'd just asked me if she could put her name to my drawing and I told her that was fraud.

She laughed and said,"Yeah, I know."

Then she says: "You know the lion on the wall in the computer room? I did that. Go and have a look."

Zac screams after me: "NO, I did the lion!"

And Emma screams: "Zac's FRAUDING!"

Said lion:

Scribbles: Saw Balibo today

2009-07-26T07:34:00Z

I don't believe that a journalist is just a bystander. When a reporter is sent to a cover a story they become part of that story. As a reporter, I've rarely felt like a bystander over the years.
I think the reason people don't want to do hard core reporting - like police rounds - is because it makes them feel uncomfortable - they are no longer bystanders.

Not everyone is capable of doing a death knock.
Interviewing devastated young parents in the cold night outside the smoldering husk of their home in which their baby had died - I didn't feel like a bystander.
It's a little different covering lifestyle, IT, TV and entertainment - when they don't really care if you tell the story well, just as long as their name is in the paper because they're so special that they're bothering to talk to you. It's called PR.

Balibo is about a death knock.

A journalist named Roger East, played by Anthony Lapaglia, investigates the disappearance of five Australian TV journalists who'd gone to cover the Indonesian invasion of Portuguese East Timor in 1975.

Anthony Lapaglia (who's from Adelaide) is nominated for an Outstanding Actor Emmy for the American TV drama Without a Trace:
http://www.hitfix.com/galleries/2009-7-15-emmy-nomination-preview-2009-outsta...

Journalists who go to war definitely are not bystanders. They see themselves mostly as soldiers of truth, shining a light into the darkness of propaganda and misinformation.

There's two moments in the film where I heard echoes of the Australian film classic Galipolli: the end, and the moment where the actor playing East Timorese leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta tells the Australian journalist Roger East that the Indonesian helicopter hunting them down knows where they are because of information provided by the Australian Government.

( Ramos-Horta link: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1996/ramos-horta-cv.html )

I suddenly had visions of the English generals having tea in safety while the Aussie troops were breathing their last before going over the top ... it's one of those clinical but seething ... "bastards have blood on their hands" moments.
Balibo is written by playwright David Williamson (who wrote Galipolli) and Balibo director-producer Robert Connolly - and they don't mince words - they even get a light-hearted Republican dig in at the constitutional monarchy which is lovely.

But I came away from the film thinking that East Timor's story (it's now a independent democratic nation) would have been very different had the Indonesians not murdered five white journalists in Balibo.

The Indonesians ran a line which had the United States and Australia on side - they said East Timor's freedom fighters (Fretilin) were Communists.

(Fretilin link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Front_for_an_Independent_East_Timor )

They didn't send troops into East Timor - they already had Vietnam - but they apparently gave the Indonesians helicopters and support.
But whether Australia and the United States actually sanctioned the murder of innocent East Timorese civilians (women, children, the elderly and six Australian journalists) is a contentious proposition - which this movie does tend to suggest.

Like Lapaglia's character says Australians (therefore Australian editors) weren't really interested if Indonesians massacred a village of "brown" people - the Indonesians relied on that sentiment.
Figures quoted at the end of the film say 180,000 East Timorese people were murdered - as compared to six Australians but even this movie about their fight for freedom would not have been made had those five not paid the ultimate price.

On a lighter note though, I don't think anyone will lament the passing of that diehard Aussie fashion statement they sport in the film: Stubbies. Thank goodness for long boardshorts.

Scribbles: Cooking Quiche! Want the recipe?

2009-07-27T11:04:52Z

Done.

Scribbles: 2.7 second cure for frown lines ( } :-(

2009-07-28T08:07:00Z

Don't give a damn. That's the secret cure. If you don't care, you don't frown. Ergo: no wrinkles.

I'm clutching at straws here, I know - and I'm not saying that Peter Shankman or anyone in particular does or doesn't give a damn, either has or hasn't got frown lines...

But! Some of the stories I read today have got me thinking about the words of my ballet teacher (many moons ago) and my grandmother.

Funny how words echo through the centuries ...

Don't fro-ow-n...ow-n...ow-n.... ...!

One Peter Shankman: http://shankman.com/about/ CEO / Entrepreneur / Adventurist / social media guru : says people today have an average attention span of 2.7 seconds.

(See: What's the Point of Social Media. http://www.examiner.com/x-2673-NY-Entrepreneurism-Examiner~y2009m7d27-Whats-t...

This picture appears on his webpage. Is he trying not to frown?

Cause that's the face I'd make when my ballet teacher would tell me - as I tried to hold arabesque and leap on one foot - "Don't frown Lisa!".

And my grandmother tried unsuccessfully for years - along with others concerned with marriage-ability and such things - to stop me from frowning.

Don't frown, don't wear sneakers, don't run around barefoot, don't slouch, don't wear dresses too tight, or too short, or short shorts,

don't wear jeans, don't swear, don't laugh too loud, don't point, don't drink ... there's so much more... sounds more like Iran or the Taliban doesn't it?

Golly. I think these rules are easier than today's rules ... No wonder people have attention spans of 2.7 seconds! Who can stand the assault!

How straight are your thighs (read thin), how broad is your nose (read fat), how thick are your ankles ... makes you want to hide online as photoshop avatar!

Never fear, evolution's here! I read today about an evolutionary twist in the story of humanity, a new process of natural selection, survival of the most beautiful.

Apparently, it is beautiful women who are having more children these days - which explains why the beauty of the world is so much more arresting in the 21st century.

See: Women becoming more beautiful: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25842040-23272,00.html

For some reason I now think of shopping malls where I can't walk apace because if you have two large-ish women pushing trolleys and prams in a row there's no overtaking space.

Has anyone strolled around Garden City or Carindale lately?

This 2.7 second attention span that Peter talks about probably has something to do with the fact that a lot of STUFF today may not even warrant 2.7 seconds of attention!

.... .... ..... .... what? huh? Sorry, my attention span just collapsed ... and now I'm frowning ... (} :-(

Perhaps this too is an evolutionary thing, this 2.7 second attention span, to eliminate the crime of frowning - ergo, beauty is preserved for the eyeballs of discerning observers.

And if you've reached this point then I've held your attention for more than 2.7 seconds. :)

Scribbles: Earth's last hope: trees.

2009-07-30T10:32:03Z

I stopped at a top little food nook that serves the freshest sushi in Brisbane, not in the mood to cook after gym.
I strolled out the shop door to wait for my food outside, away from the TV news, and walked right off the time spectrum - just for a few moments.
Trees have this effect - on me, not all trees, there's some kind of perfection that can be found in the shape of some trees.
Can't remember when this started - it's not an obsession. I don't go around hunting trees.
They just appear before my eyes like Gods.
Perhaps I was set off when I got my first oil paints and tried painting trees, studying their shapes in painting manuals.
Could've been years before when I was climbing 40ft pine trees - well, racing my brother and friends to the top.
The memory is vivid, rough bark, stinging needles, dizzying heights.
But this tree now ... this tree is small, shaped like a delicate bonzai - a leopard tree just starting to make its presence felt in this car park on the corner of a busy intersection.
The curves of its branches reaching into the dark night sky.
I'm not thinking about sushi or traffic or anything except: "Superb!"
The street light falls on the trunk and yet the leaves are just shadows.
I don't want to draw it. I don't want to hug it. I think I just love it.
And then I catch myself.
"Is this what people will think and feel when a tree like this stands alone, the last of its kind on earth?" - there's a thought.
Suddenly I'm conscious and I'm thinking and the moment is gone.
And the finale of Wall-E springs to mind.

That tiny little fragile hope of life on Earth - a seedling preserved by a funny little robot who sees the beauty of life.
I bookmarked Wall-E from the first moment I saw the awe in his eyes as he looked at the stars.
I look at a screen for most of my waking life these days - I love it and sometimes I get lost out there in a wilds of everything at once...now...now...now...right now! YES!
Intellectual life - it's just like sport these days. People sprouting the words of long-dead philosophers in 140-character tweets.
People spruiking themselves and their companies in cleverly disguised pitches. People searching for meaning.
Someone at gym tonight said: "To hear you've got to listen, but most people are too busy talking."
Really. I'm guilty of it. How many times I've kicked myself after realising too late the significance of what someone was trying to say.
Or the significance of silence.

I turn from the tree and look through the door at the TV showing the nightly news and read the subtitles - the sound is turned down.
Funny how text has such a powerful effect.
Words like revenge and slaughter rile me to silent indignation - and this is the sports news!
Michael Phelps broke his own world record without the use of a floatation suit.
That's wonderful, not just for him, but for all those who seem to feel that, by virtue of their shared humanity with Phelps, his achievements are theirs by association.
And they don't have to lift a finger. Shifty, risk-averse folks who are quick to judge and condemn and hide. They usually travel in packs.
The same dullards go on about how bad "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" is for mental and physical health.
From my observations, it seems that all of us navigate a "virtual space" we construct in our heads - and we call it reality.
As you can see, my reality's quite different from yours.
Once I was at the physio, thanks entirely to a little computer mouse and deadlines, my eye focused on a tree in the middle distance beyond an oval.
This was a tree you could have a beautiful picnic under - and you could pretend to be Helena Bonham-Carter in Room With A View or Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma.
And then I catch myself.