November 30, 2001
New Home

Drizzle like fine confetti that disappears as soon as it touches your skin. Can raindrops be dreamed of? Cold. 12°C says the Richmond Nylex clock.

Sick. Coffee nonetheless.

The Davis Cup is happening.

A new computer. Monstrous HP P4 with half a gig of RAM. Not much to look at, but very much grunt. It's what is inside that counts. Time spent outfitting, tweaking preferences, reinstalling programs, trying to work out what else has been missed and forgotten.

It's like moving into a new home.

Posted by sniffles at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2001
Defiance

New Antipasto entry: We love cricket.

Elyse writes brilliant poetry.

**

Me: Not sure what to write about tonight
Him: me!

**

It’s been a day full of meetings, it seems. Second last day before our other Web developer leaves, and we wanted to make sure there isn’t a major loophole in our knowledge. My tasklist has doubled, but it feels so much more than that.

And then there was one.

**

Feeling sick didn’t stop me from having a coffee at the office in the morning, even if my body was disgusted by the thought of even consuming one. My usual half a cup at breakfast is compulsory, but I’d found that I can do without coffee for the rest of the day without too much trouble, depending on how I feel.

It made me think of an episode with a friend not too long ago; he laughed at me when I ordered a cafe latte within minutes of telling him that I’m lactose intolerant. I guess these are a kind of self-inflicted discomfort.

Maybe it was an act of defiance. Maybe it was because I wanted hang on to a seemingly habitual act of normality.

Posted by sniffles at 09:56 PM | Comments (1)

November 28, 2001
Black

New Antipasto entry: Black.

Everything and nothing to report.

Posted by sniffles at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2001
Mindlessness

New Antipasto entry: Viral illness.

And a "Yay!!" for Mike who's a finalist for Diarist.Net's 'Best Design' award for 3rd Quarter 2001 ;)

I'd forgotten to mention that waferbaby's been back a few days. That means you can put your heads up once more ...

Posted by sniffles at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2001
The electronic bag

Two new Antipasto entries: Monday and She.

**

He said, "You haven't updated."

So I let the cat out of the electronic bag, "I've got one poem ready to go ... and another I'm finishing ..."

"Write more too," he said. "Instead of hiding behind poems."

"I'll write horrible things if I write more," I said. "Some things are not mine to talk about."

**

One of those days that existed purely so it could be forgotten. I lacked patience. I lacked my usual tolerance for people. He told me I sounded like someone completely different, but I think he sometimes forgets I am human.

Some days, I am a deep, bottomless well that everyone shouts into, just to hear the echo of their own voices.

Posted by sniffles at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2001
The lake

"Make a poem," he said.

But I haven't got the words.

Posted by sniffles at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2001
Being alive

**

We walked around the city for most of the day, beneath weather that was exuding its Melbournian personality (i.e. indecisive). It was threatening to rain at times, but never actually did. Just as well, because neither of us could be bothered carrying an umbrella.

We seemed to have spent most of the time poking around in bookstores and obeying my appetite (for food! whaddya think?!). And we found a neat little literature store tucked off in Flinders Street, which I will no doubt visit a fair bit from now on. Oddly enough, I didn't buy any books today.

Melbourne is starting to look dressed up for Christmas. Maybe it's just because I haven't had time to notice before today. We popped into the Town Hall to look at the Chinese Tibetan Historical Exhibition, though first, we had to get past people from the Australia Tibet Council. They were handing out leaflets saying that the stuff inside was really propaganda - that China is really destroying Tibetan culture by having instilled Chinese as the main language, destroying buildings, works and text of historical and religious importance. And well, it was propaganda. With words like "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" and "riddance of backwardness". Most disturbing ...

Double scoop of ice cream (and double cone, cos the guy broke the first one) from Charmaine's at South Bank, sitting in the sun and bopping along to a four-person music act doing cool renditions of songs by Frank Sinatra, The Manhattan Transfer, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" - including several seconds of attempted head-banging in the appropriate bars.

Being alive, and living it.

Posted by sniffles at 11:29 PM | Comments (2)

November 23, 2001
The morning before

The morning is bleak washout grey. Featureless, directionless, as if time has stopped, as if the world peeked out its bedroom window but retreated under the covers, uninterested.

I woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep regardless of how tired my body was.

A shaky journey on an old train that should probably be an exhibit in some transport museum. Lifeless landscape rolling by like faded ribbons.

A man has a book on Photoshop 5.5, but he is really trying to read the newspaper in the hands of the guy next to him.

The overwhelming sweet sickly smell of someone's strong perfume.

A woman who thinks thick bright purple eyeshadow is a good look.

Humidity makes my skin weep; my mind, my heart, my soul flutter elsewhere.

Posted by sniffles at 08:39 AM | Comments (3)

November 21, 2001
Chinese whispers

New Antipasto entry: Heavy diet.

Another one of those random thoughts occurred to me today ...

It began when Leon pasted me a short joke over IM:

A lady opened her refrigerator and saw a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves.
"What are you doing in there?" she asked.
The rabbit replied: "This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?" to which the lady replied,
"Yes."
"Well," the rabbit said, "I'm westing."

I found it rather funny at the time, but then it occurred to me that I haven't actually seen this joke before, which is a rare occurrence in itself. After you've been online for a little while, you expect to have seen every joke at least a couple of times. Maybe this was embedded in one of the mails from certain people that I used to just filter out to /dev/null ...

Anyway. So I looked up "Westinghouse rabbit" on Google, and the joke was found on around 10 websites, maybe more. So where did this joke came from? A book someone wrote? We can obviously restrict the possible time frame to after the fridge had been invented, and well, after whenever Westinghouse started building fridges. And why a rabbit?

If you looked at the Google results, the joke remained mostly intact. Once upon a time, stories and folk tales were passed from generation to generation by means of song or speech, before writing systems were devised, before printing systems. I can't remember where I read this bit of detail (hah!), but the idea is that your traditional bard didn't actually memorise songs; instead he remembered the plot and the shape of sounds - when you have rhymes, for example, you restrict the number of possible words which form the song - so he just made the song up within the given bounds, dramatising a certain aspect or two, if it pleased him. Hence songs and stories had plenty of room to evolve.

These days, we have electronic "copy and paste". Does this mean then, that because everything is so easily reproducible without too much margin for error, that, in effect, we have more of a constancy in preserving songs, stories, myths and so forth, in their original presentation?

I'd often thought that the convenience of technology means we don't use our memory as well as we humanly can. And while it allows room for new forms of art and expression, I'm now wondering if it also limits our imagination to be innovative with old material to a certain extent.

Posted by sniffles at 11:05 PM | Comments (5)

The weary poet

Last night, Tara said to me, "You're in poetry mood these days, aren't you?"

And so I am. How do you guys feel about poetry? You're quite allowed to tell me that my poetry is crap :)

Recent poems: Earthbound, The Halflight, The Pyromaniac Mouse, The Wait.

Posted by sniffles at 09:00 AM | Comments (3)

November 20, 2001
Soccer fever

New Antipasto entry.

Coming home via Richmond Station in the early evening, and already, people garbed in green and gold were noisily and cheerfully making their way towards the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Behind me in the underpass, a crowd of enthusiasts expelled patriotic shouts of "Aussieaussieaussie!" "OI!OI!OI!" [1 - see comment]

I couldn't help but smile. From the platform, I could see that the pub across Punt Rd was making good business, with patrons overflowing onto the pavement and into the narrow alley beside it.

The much advertised and anticipated soccer World Cup qualifier between Australia and Uruguay is on as I type (still nil all, at this stage, with about 20 minutes to go.)

Crazy, yes? I'm not a fan of soccer - but it's just cool seeing the number of people who are excited about it. All 90,000 packed into the MCG.

Update (22:05) - Yay! Australia won! 1-0. :)

Posted by sniffles at 09:43 PM | Comments (2)

Suddenly

So if I am suddenly different to you, would you freak? Would you question, would you cry foul, would you feel betrayed? Would you reject me as a voice? Would you think me queer, strange, bizarre? Would I be a crybaby, would I be some loveless lunatic? Would you see me alien, the some other, the half other incomplete?

Would you think me worthless?

**

Sometimes, I hang around the hospital for a little while. People here are not whole. They are here because they are not whole. Some others who seem to be whole are not really whole because people they know and love are not whole. That's why they are here.

That's why I'm here.

Posted by sniffles at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2001
Cancel me this

New Antipasto entry.

How's that? No journal update for four days!

Apologies to those of you who have been trying to access Dandruff or Antipasto, or anything hanging off my domains prior to 6 hours ago. The beloved machine which hosts this site (amongst a number of better and more wonderful sites!) was offline for some 24 hours.

Hope you didn' t miss us too much. :)

Posted by sniffles at 10:23 PM | Comments (3)

November 17, 2001
Doodles

I would have posted this last night, but I was way too tired and braindead after two days' worth of conference.

And if I was truly functional last night, I'd probably have done the cheesy thing and posted "Leyton Hewitt is now World #1!!" the minute he became so, seeing as I was actually paying attention to the tennis on TV for once. :)

Here lies a present for waferbaby:

And this is what happens when Steph gets bored at conferences:

**

A wedding today. It has become a joke amongst our particular group of friends that three couples now have their anniversaries in November (mine included ;)). The wedding was lovely and relaxed, and above all it was great to catch up with friends we haven't seen for a while.

Posted by sniffles at 10:19 PM | Comments (2)

November 15, 2001
Disoriented Wino

I was at this today.

So if you're in the vicinity of Melbourne and are doing Web stuff, get your butt down 'ere tomorrow. Or something :)

**

I came home feeling completely disoriented, and I swear it can't have been due to the single red wine I had. I stopped reacting badly to wine quite a while ago ...

At the end of today's conference program, after some drinks were served, there was an additional presentation by a couple of students who re-did a Flash website into an accessible website[1]. It also meant that after the presentation, the audience began a quite lengthy open discussion into accessibility related issues.

I had one single point to make - and I got my chance eventually. What I began saying was that webdesign as a field is seen as being "easy". I have no bloody idea what I actually said after that, but a fair number of the audience nodded vigorously in agreement, so I guess I musn't have been too far off the mark.

It disturbs me when I forget things even before I remember them.

We were talking about the education of web developers in order that accessible websites can be more commonly developed. What I meant to say was that because web design as a field is seen as "easy", most developers believe in "quick and dirty" delivery, that accessibility is not even considered, or is put aside and disregarded as an afterthought. Y'know, I think web design is so misunderstood and yet overrated as a profession? Even worse, most people who are out there teaching web design related courses today probably don't know enough about Web standards, nor do they know enough about making accessible websites. To fix the problem, we have to go to the roots ... and educate those who educate to teach the right things.

Anyway, a lady came up to me afterwards and said, "I liked what you said! But I can't remember what it was!"

Oh dear ...

It occurred to me today that certain conferences are rather like evangelist church services. You come and mix with like-minded people to be inspired, to be reminded of your beliefs. You become reminded about the "thou shalt nots", that there are sinners to be "saved", and you sing praises about the good things that have been done. (Now, please don't come commenting to me about churches and Christianity, I've probably heard it already. I'm just drawing a parallel.)

And it is a good thing, to be reminded about what you stand for, to have your ideals reinforced, to feed off others' enthusiasm in order to keep going with what seems to be an eternal struggle. It is good to be fired up about worthwhile causes.

**

It was disastrous trying to get home. My normal train route was disrupted (overheard that there might have been an accident) so we had to sit on a train to a particular station, from which we had to be put on a bus to be driven to another station further down the line.

There was a Japanese girl on the train who was quite worried. She didn't speak English fluently, and later I learned she'd only been here for a month and she didn't really know her way around. So I talked to her for the rest of the way, about this that or the other. What did she like best about Australia? What did she dislike most? And so forth.

Then I had to take a taxi home because normal buses had stopped running for the evening. It was almost 9pm when I got home. Haven't had dinner, didn't feel like dinner ... but I ate eventually something anyway.

I don't think it was the red wine. It was just a strange day.

[1] Check out the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.

Posted by sniffles at 11:30 PM | Comments (3)

November 14, 2001
A cheesy poem

New Antipasto entry. Thanks to all who helped me with rhymes. ;)

A card was being passed around at the office. This time, it's for a colleague who is getting married over the weekend.

Trying to piece some decent words together, I noticed that someone had already written, "Enjoy the wedding and the rest of it."

**

Fatigue, weariness.

I'm getting headaches constantly every day from my chronic neck problem (don't be fooled by its apparent elegance in the photograph). The stress isn't helping, either, I guess. But I'm alive, yay.

Posted by sniffles at 10:11 PM | Comments (1)

November 13, 2001
The halflight

New Antipasto entry.

Very tired. You'd think I'd be wise enough to get to bed at a sensible hour. :)

I finally caught the TV footage of the NY plane crash today on the ABC news after 7pm, having heard of it on the morning news but not awake enough to pay attention at the time. I hate not being able to feel anymore.

Posted by sniffles at 10:59 PM | Comments (2)

Peeping cow

I got listed for The Head Project[1] (head 15, the one with my little cow peeping over my shoulder):

cos says: you've got your hair up.
sniffles says: yah I sure do
cos says: so like, it's not natural :PPPP
cos says: at least, not for here :)
sniffles says: out of the shower it is :P
cos says: ah
sniffles says: :P
cos says: speaking of which, "Back of Your Head" (Cat Power/Moonpix) is quite a good song
sniffles says: haha

[1] Link since removed, seeing as waferbaby decided to redo his site. (14/11/2001 10:21 pm)

Posted by sniffles at 09:59 AM | Comments (3)

November 12, 2001
Bites

My head hurts, but I don't think it's due to the lack of caffeine this time.

I'd thought that one of the best ways to hold the world to ransom is to stem the global supply of coffee and other caffeinated substances. For a start, IT departments around the world would go haywire, and surely the rest would follow ...

The Head Project[1]: reveal your natural geek habitat.

A CD I'd heard a fair bit about turned up at the communal work "jukebox":
The Power & The Passion: a tribute to Midnight Oil (2001) by various Australian (and NZ?) outfits.

Understandably, Records Ad Nauseum posted an unflattering review. Things go rapidly downhill after Something For Kate's version of Dreamworld (which doesn't differ too much from the original apart from more modern-sounding guitar noises). Nothing worth mentioning until Regurgitator's ultra-cool treatment of Stand In Line, and nothing worth mentioning after that. I will admit to liking Augie March's Beds are Burning - a sharp contrast to the disappointing preceding guitar-band attempts - being trancelike and bittersweet. But yes, rather unsatisfying.

This is kinda cool, if you're patient. (Ta, Peter.)

[1] Link since removed, seeing as waferbaby decided to redo his site. (14/11/2001 10.32pm)

Posted by sniffles at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2001
Mute

New Antipasto entry.

This paragraph is intentionally left unblank.

Posted by sniffles at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)

November 09, 2001
Revolt

New Antipasto entry.

Cos bought his 1400th CD. Derek has a journal that he didn't tell me about until today. :)

I said to Cos (with reference to this) that we could always round up a bunch of friends, and just casually saunter into various record shops one after another over some period of time and suggest that they display the CDs in the racks on their side so we can read the spines easily, "just like in Singapore and in New Zealand!"

So eventually, if enough of us do it, they might change. To his credit, Cos thought it was dishonest. :)

Posted by sniffles at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2001
The First Orange Test

New Antipasto entry.

Orange is the sponsor of the current cricket series between Australia and New Zealand. Check out the Day 1 Scorecard, if ya like. :)

Posted by sniffles at 09:39 PM | Comments (1)

A present

I received a present from a friend from 'round the other side of the world ...

Isn't he pathetically adorable ;) He's also rather huge - that's a 21" monitor he's standing in front of.

Meet Mr Snow Shoe Hare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by sniffles at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2001
Modern evils

New Antipasto entry.

Not truly about modern evils. Then again, most things are "evil" if seen from a particular perspective. Did I just do the fortune cookie thing again?

**

Thoughts like butterflies
Wingbeats flutter, hovering
The storms rage elsewhere ...

Posted by sniffles at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

Saving the world

A card was being passed around the office for a colleague whose wife recently gave birth to a daughter. After some six days of intensive debate and deliberation on bringing up children, I don't know what to write ...

"Congratulations and best wishes!"

**

Today's Leunig. Yesterday's Leunig.

Haruki Murakami talks about terrorism, having written two nonfiction books on the terrorist attack on Tokyo's subway - one about the victims (Underground), one about the the Aum Shinrikyo religious sect (The Place That Was Promised).

An Evening with Noam Chomksy: The New War Against Terror (thanks brooce). A transcription from audio. Long, probably old, but interesting nonetheless.

**

We discussed the war on terrorism, as you do.

"Sometimes I feel as if there are more important things we ought to be doing rather than churning out websites or keeping computers running," I said.

He muttered something along the lines of, "Well yeah" and then we reached an agreement that it is just as important to maintain the happiness of those around us.

"... and hope it spreads," he said.

"Yes. Happiness has a way of falling short."

As we made our way back, he mused, "... there's more than one way to save the world."

Posted by sniffles at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2001
Ethereal are those on wings of thought

New Antipasto entry. (added at 11:02 PM)

Melbourne Cup Day, but I missed the coverage of the race. Not that I'm at all into horse racing. Then again, I occasionally watch Aussie Rules football even if I don't like the game ...

A morning of conversation, both synchronous and otherwise, part of the ongoing thought-provoking discussion sparked some days ago by Tara when she voiced her opinion on one aspect of education, specifically with regards bringing up children.

A catnap in the middle of day, some hours whiled away fiddling with templates for this site.

Karl said, "Being free is a quest of being responsible."

And yet another haiku:

Semitones apart
A song sung in six voices
Harmony of noise.

Posted by sniffles at 08:34 PM | Comments (1)

November 05, 2001
Images

New Antipasto entry.

And a haiku:

Wild in the distance
Fields wide open and grasses
green and young like love

Perhaps we gravitate towards each other's beauty and sometimes mistake it as love. Beauty like a painting hung on the wall, cherished and admired until a thin layer of dust covers the frame and ever so slightly mars the glass, until the daily sight of it is the norm and the ordinary. Until the only time we truly notice it once again is when it is no longer there.

Posted by sniffles at 10:55 PM | Comments (6)

Lost and found

I have this problem whereby I can remember information that I absorbed fairly well, most of the time. Um, that's not the problem. The problem is that I very rarely recall where I might have actually read or seen it from.

Sometime in the past few months, I thought I read something about a particular difference between how black and white American parents bring (or used to bring) up their children in their earlier years. The white parent would speak continuously to the child - as we know, sometimes about nothing, sometimes echoing what the child might have said, basically including the child in conversation. The black parent would actually not speak directly to the child until the child itself is ready to speak.

Just to be clear, that was what I remembered and it might not be completely accurate.

After four or five days of trying to work out where I'd acquire that bit of trivia from, several evenings leafing through books trying to find the exact passage, and cross-checking with people to eliminate books and films I'd recently read and seen, it finally occurred to me that it might have been from a face-to-face conversation.

So I rang Lorraine. And what do you know? She named the particular study. And the author, Shirley Brice Heath.

I think there's something very strange about the way my brain is wired. I seem to keep images in my memory, even the ones which have been conjured up in my own mind as a result of non-visual mediums.

Posted by sniffles at 09:12 PM | Comments (1)

Defected

Mike tells me that I've gone over to the dark side with the creation of this blog. Perhaps he is right ;)

I managed to cut my hand again preparing dinner. Third time within two months, or something ridiculous. It hasn't stopped bleeding ...

Sunday nights are becoming my TV documentary nights. Of particular interest is tonight's story by Jeremy Bowen on Compass, an investigation into the time of Jesus' birth and childhood - the culture, the way of life and the political climate.

There were some very interesting points: for one, the Star of Bethlehem ...

Astronomers have been looking for remarkable phenomenon like comets or asteroids and haven't found anything significant. The documentary reveals that it was more likely to have been an astrological phenomenon rather than a necessarily astronomical one, seeing as astrology was very much advanced during the 1st Century.

Jesus wasn't born in 0 A.D, but 6 B.C, due to an error in the calculation of the Roman calendar. The constellation of Aries was important at the time because it signified the reign of Herod. The planet Jupiter was thought of as 'King of the Planets'. In about mid-April in 6 B.C., Jupiter was seen in the constellation of Aries, then Saturn, as well as the Sun and the Moon - this was a most unusual occurrence. The Star of Bethlehem might well have been an eclipse of the Moon over Jupiter, with the Moon moving across to reveal the planet as a morning star. And the wise men from the East might well have been astrologers ;)

There were other enlightening aspects - like Jesus was most probably born in a kind of a cave, quite unlike the Nativity scene depicted on modern Christmas cards. However, caves under the houses of 1 A.D. in Bethlehem were used as stables. The houses of the time were separated mostly into two levels - people slept upstairs, whereas the animals were kept downstairs. Interestingly enough, an old translation of the word 'inn' means 'upstairs'. There was no room at the inn, there was no room upstairs, so they slept in the stable with the animals.

This is documentary in 3-parts - so if you're in Australia, it's on ABC TV for the next two Sunday nights at 9.30pm, if this is your kind of thing.

Posted by sniffles at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2001
Movable Type - review (so far)

A couple of individuals have asked me whether "Movable Type is good" - they ought to know that I don't often give straight answers ;)

Firstly, things to consider. I didn't do the installation, my esteemed sysadmin did - I was thinking that we probably wouldn't want to have copies of the same program littered across the server if it has multi-user capability. So I can't tell you anything about that part. In any case, it seemed relatively painless (I didn't hear any complaints. ;))

However, like many other such journalling software, by default it requires world writable (777) directories because of the kafuddle with user/webserver-user permissions - and we all know that this is NOT a good thing. Anyway, Cos put in a workaround - it's technical, ask me and I might tell you.

The management user interface is pretty swish. I don't have any usability complaints :) There is also a facility for generating a bookmarklet which takes you straight to a 'new entry' form (after prompting you for username and password, of course), which is nice.

So far, I have noticed one bug-like behaviour with customising the templates. Occasionally the HTML is translated into its symbol counterpart (so < into &lt;) upon saving changes. Another thing which would have been nice is for all the CSS to be linked in from one stylesheet as part of the default templates rather than having the rules residing in <style> tags in each template. Having said that, the default CSS/xhtml is tableless - which is very cool for the Web standards conscious.

I haven't yet played around with setting up other templates - I suspect I'll be more motivated when there is enough content here for it to look messy - further news on that for the interested, I expect.

So, in conclusion, so far so good. :)

Posted by sniffles at 06:18 PM | Comments (4)

Geek dreams

New Antipasto entry.

This is what happens when you go to bed at 4 am in the morning after being blasted by songs such as "Unchained Melody", "Locomotion", "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go", "Dancing Queen" from the goings-on next door, whilst setting up this blog :), playing with a wiki, and having deep and meaningful conversations about the nature of education and child development, armed only with a cup of tea.

Don't try this at home.

Posted by sniffles at 05:09 PM | Comments (4)

Way past the witching hour

What do you know, at 2:09 am, it seems that the some people have begun to leave the party next door. Or maybe it's the first lot of people with a car as loud as the music ...

I think I might have gotten to the point of being able to fall asleep regardless of the noise.

Posted by sniffles at 02:16 AM | Comments (0)

Caving in

I've been toying with this idea for a while. A blog as well as the journal. I wasn't sure that I could even write this much. So anyway, we have now one location for continuous junk, one for selective, ornamented junk. ;)

Nanowrimo - I can't help thinking that this activity is so very Kerouac-ish. (Thanks Tara.)

There's a party next door.

Posted by sniffles at 12:20 AM | Comments (2)