Anotherblog

Von’s sick

Von’s been sick the last couple of days with flu, and I’ve been lucky enough (so far) to still be OK. But I’m taking today off to care for her, ’cause she’s in the achy muscles, sleeping heaps, not getting out of bed phase.
But since she’s sleeping right now, and I’ve done all the internet browsing and guitar playing I’m gonna do, I’m a bit stuck for things to do. Oh, there’s plenty I *should* be doing – video editing, “Decision Tree” writing, game programming, going for a jog – and plenty I *could* be doing – Half Life 2, Guitar Hero drums (though that’d probably be a bit noisy), etc. – I don’t really feel like it. So I’m just moping around, trying to be reasonably quiet.
I might try the old “sitting in front of the computer not doing anything until I give in and do some programming/editing”.

Editing

I got stuck into the editing on the weekend, got together a rough draft of the science footage for the Cars short film, and also put up all of the gig footage of “The Bowls Club” from the Brisbane trip. So I’m feeling a bit less procrastinaty now.

Also, Jon came over yesterday, and we dug out the bass and electric guitars, and mucked around some. It was fun. We played Free Man in Paris, Circle Sky, and a bit of Life on Mars, led by Von’s beautiful piano playing.

Also, I don’t think I mentioned that we bought the guitar hero drums, following a highly enjoyable session at Mr Irrgang’s place. I haven’t had much chance to play them yet, because we took them over to Kat’s place to play with her, and left them with her. And now it’s been two weeks, dammit. Anyway, my hope is that we can use the guitar hero drums as actual drums when we’re playing with Jon. That’d be cool.

Finally, we went to the Supernova pop culture convention on Saturday with Von’s friends Suri and Sutra, who are very into cosplay (and won one of the competitions, apparently). The cosplay was definitely the most interesting part of the experience. It made the 45 minute wait in the “prepurchased tickets” line slightly bareable, for a start. Von wore a rather lovely Final Fantasy 8 costume. I had vaguely planned to do a “No Name” (Spirited Away) puppet, but ran out of time and was slightly nervous to note the prevalence of “cosplay FAIL” pictures on google images, making me intent on producing something either awesome or nonexistant.

Holy poop!

Turns out, stamp duty on a home (when you’re not a first home buyer) is a lot. More than I was expecting, and I was expecting a lot. Yike!

Anyway, besides that bit of news, we had a good relaxing weekend. I took off Friday to finish the moving. We’ve now cleared out the storage unit and most of Francis St, and moved everything into the unit’s garage.

I went for a one hour jog on Friday night to time the “jog to work from new home” scenario (ie. jog to new home from flat, starting timer as I pass by work), and it’s unfortunately about 25 minutes. Probably a bike ride.

I worked a bit on my web game, finished off Plants vs Zombies (level 34 on Endless mode, which I think will do), did a bit of video editing on the Cars music video, and played a whole lot of guitar. More practically, I made a chicken pie for dinner on Saturday, and mushroom pasta on Sunday. Nommy.

This week, continuing the run of four day weeks, I’m taking Thursday off to deal with the pool table and finish moving stuff out of Francis St.

Oh, and my Francis St next door neighbour Catherine has given birth! I met the new baby on Friday. She was cute, cluck cluck cluck.

New Home!

We have a new home. The vendor exchanged on the contract about half an hour ago. Settlement is 31 July.

Hooray! Now I have to learn about pool maintenance.

Home #6: Stuart St Sth

After a bit of hunting around, Mum & Dad finally bought this lovely old queenslander style home in 1979, or thereabouts. I lived there until 1990, or rather more importantly, for over half my life (at the time). As such, it is a somewhat mythical place to me.

I still remember when Mum & Dad were looking for a home and took us to Stuart St for the first time. Jen and I ran around in the back yard, and found a patch of rather beautiful moss, which was fascinating to me. I thought it was an awesome place right away. It was much larger than any place we’d ever lived in before, bigger even than Grandma & Grandpa’s place in Brisbane. It had a vacant allotment next to it, which we also bought and used as part of the garden.

It went through many changes over the years, and I have many memories of the place. I could write a book about them, but it would be dull to anyone but the family. It was a wonderful place to grow up, and I still dream about it every now and then, and I still miss it. One of my first thoughts when I became a temporary optionaire was to buy up the Stuart St place, which Mum & Dad were then selling to move to England.

Huh

Otherleg changed servers recently, and I didn’t realise I had to tell my domain registrar. As a long-winded consequence, it went down for a day or two, and so mail to *@otherleg.com has been bouncing, and the website has been unavailable.
Also, it seems that transferring the website to the new host computer meant I lost some changes to the weblog. I lost (and recreated) the post on memes. If you’ve posted a recent comment, it might have disappeared.
Sorry!

Cowboys no longer A-icons

After three months of deliberation, the memepool cabal have relegated cowboys to B-icon status. While cowboys were never able to break into the ninja-robot-monkey-pirate canon, the “Deadwood” resurrection had some cowboys reclaiming iconic status for the first time since Toy Story.
“We’re A-list,” said saloon keeper Tom Nutall, “Those who doubt me, suck cock by choice.”
However, Deadwood’s cancellation and the rise of competing zombie and sparkle vampire memes have moved the wild west to the backbrain for many. The zombies’ mindless catchcry resonates for many, and despite the sparkle vampire demographic being almost exclusively teenage girls, its domination there forms a powerful iconic/ironic mindspace.
Cultists, as usual, remain inexplicably absent from the charts, and all data on ninjas are extrapolated.

Home #5: Townsville, Gilbert Crescent

This was a very boxy house on a very steep slope, such that the house touched the ground at one side and was maybe five or six metres from the ground on the other. There was a varandah on the right, and my room was on the left. I remember it getting tremendously hot and the portable fan in my room barely keeping up. I remember the blue semi-opaque blades on the fan, because I’d be up late at night due to the heat (and reading books, of course). When it rained in Townsville, it rained hard. Gutters would overflow quickly and instant creeks would form on the hill. We would sit in the gutters in our togs and block off as much as we could, and let the water wash us downhill. Jen reminded me of the time early on when we missed the stop at the adjoining Styx St, and Mum, waiting at the bus stop, watched on in horror as we went past. Gilbert Crescent was on what is known as “Snob hill”, so a lot of our neighbours were rather rich. From my recollection, we definitely weren’t. Dad’s practice was only just beginning, and we didn’t have much in savings because we had done so much travel. There were quite a few economy measures when we were young.
I think we were at Gilbert Crescent for about a year. We were looking for a house to buy as soon as Mum and Dad had gotten together a deposit – easier in those days – and I remember Dad talking about buying the Gilbert Crescent place, but Mum wasn’t interested.

Weekend o’ filming

Went to Brisbane for a long weekend to see Ev, and did a bunch of filming for the Cars short film and got some live footage from Ev’s band “The People People” playing at a local pub. It’ll all end up on youtube at some point, I’m sure. I’m very pleased with the Cars footage. We filmed for three or four hours and got a really good, clean science-lab kind of look from what was essentially someone’s basement. There’s lots more filming to do, and lots of footage to edit, but we’re back on track!

Home #4: Townsville, flat on Paxton St (I think)

When we moved from Canada to Australia (after a few weeks in Fiji, at which I lost Lawwie, my sheepskin blankie and favoritest thing ever, though dignity may well prevent me from whispering it on my deathbed) we ended up in Townsville.
I know, I know!
As I understand it, there was a position for a pediatrician there. For years in Townsville, there were three pediatricians in the whole place, which seems low for a place that had over 50k people even in ‘77. Dad worked very hard, and was often on call.
The first flat was temporary, but I don’t remember how long we were there. I do remember breaking a glass louvre next to my bed and being very embarassed about it. The flats were constructed of bright orange-red bricks, and had palm trees out the front. Townsville was a distinctly tropical change from Winnipeg.