Anotherblog

Redeye

My left eye has turned a rather fetching shade of pink. I think it might be hayfever, possibly combined with constant staring at computers all day. Oh, and the fact that I keep rubbing it absent-mindedly. Aargh!

Demon Lover Diary
Like American Movie, only twenty years or so before, Demon Lover Diary is a real documentary about a hopeless film-maker trying to make a horror film - in this case, “Demon Lover“. While American Movie was kind of life affirming and warm and fuzzy despite the desparation and the pathos, this one adds to the whole mess by being an actively unpleasant experience for everyone involved. Jon & Kate & I watched it at their place last night and had to stop every five minutes or so to excitedly discuss the latest developments, that absolutely perfect line that you couldn’t make up if you tried, or just to laugh and laugh and laugh. The documentary maker in this case is the girlfriend of the cameraman, who gets told that he’s fired even before he arrives at the director’s house. The co-director (”I direct the crew, he directs the cast”) cut off his finger to get workers compensation to pay for the movie. There’s a crew of about 15 people, who are never around. There’s a real-life romance between the sound guy, who’s rather nice, and one of the lead actresses, which is actively encouraged by the documentary team. Amazing. It all ends in tears, of course.

Mild feeling of panic
As work falls further and further behind. Life hard. Life hard!

Ev

So Ev came over on Friday night, and left on Sunday evening. Despite his depression about his current romantic woes - which I don’t think are nearly as bad as he reports - he was good company, even entertaining. We had a lot of long talks, and I like to think that I helped him cheer up to an extent - and I was relieved to hear that he doesn’t consider his swap to computer programming as a mistake (even though the market is bad and he’s a relative newcomer, he actually has a job programming). We introduced him to a couple of board games that Anna and I have been playing a lot recently - Tamsk and Lost Cities. He left us with a CD of two songs he recorded recently, both wonderful guitar ballads that I’m listening to right now.

Tamsk
I finally got Anna into playing Tamsk last week, and we were both delighted to find that it’s an excellent strategy game, and that the time element isn’t just there to speed up play. Each player has three playing pieces, which are three minute hourglasses. When the hourglasses run out, the piece is dead - but each players move involved flipping one of the hourglasses, so it isn’t too hard to keep all three pieces going indefinitely. What is particularly cunning is that board game (which is a little like Go) invites strategies in which you hold a piece in one place for a long time - so the hourglass length can be an integral part of strategy! Anna and I have had games that varied wildly in the results and strategies, and I don’t think we’ve begun to explore the possibilities yet.

Party
I took Ev to the party at Carlos my evil ex-next-desk-workers ex-company party on Saturday, cause I figured his moping around would suit everyone elses moping around. Foolish me! He had - I think - a good time, as did everyone else. It was a bit alarming to find how few jobs there were out there, though - I’m beginning to think seriously about trying harder to stay in the company, at least until the bite of the recession has eased a bit. I’m not convinced that the worst of the employment situation has hit yet, either.

The Abbey
Dinner last night at upmarket restaurant “The Abbey”, a converted church. Lovely. The atmosphere of the place had Anna drooling to buy it and turn it into a massage clinic - or at the very least, have our wedding reception (if not wedding) there. The only trouble is, it only seats 140 comfortably, and Anna’s parent’s list is already at 200, a number that keeps Anna and I from discussing the date for the wedding any time soon.

Gong
Anna’s been keen to get up early in the morning and go cycling, but I’ve been a bit of a spoilsport so far - however, this will all be set to rights this Sunday when Anna, Ted and I (and possibly Keri) go on the City to Wollongong bike ride. I’m looking forward to it - I’ve never done the course before, and I hear it’s pretty nice.

Pool
I thought I’d put a subject header of Pool here in order to throw people off reading this paragraph. Needless to say, I can feel free to put my most secret thoughts and feelings here, safe in the knowledge that it will never be read. So: Airplane food. What’s up with that? Why do people complain about the size of the containers when it tastes so bad? I’m, like: get a life. And while I’m on the topic, what is it with Billy-Bob and Angelina?

Fork
Ev and I made a pact: he’d have his short story finished by the end of November, and I’d have my first-chapter and plot summary of Fork done as well. I made some decent progress on Fork last night, so I’m pretty optimistic of having something ready by then. Actually, I’m beginning to think that it’ll be a very good story indeed, if I can explain it well enough - the pseudo-science is pretty fun and actually holds together reasonably well.

Despoja mauled by O’Brian

I watched the TV interview of Natasha Despoja by Kerry O’Brian last night, and was very disappointed, almost to the point of cringing, in her responses. Every politician in Australia has been mauled by O’Brian at some point, but it was still disappointing to see Despoja ducking and weaving around the questions. I’d seen her give straight answers before, when she wasn’t the leader of the Democrats, and was impressed with the policies - but it was a poor effort last night.
He asked her why when so many democrats were making deals for preferences, she was professing that political parties shouldn’t be listing preferences at all. The question on everyone’s lips, and one that she certainly must have known would be coming. And her answer? Well, she reworded the question, affirmed her belief in no-preferences, and then stated that it was a political reality that preference deals have to be made. Which isn’t exactly keeping the bastards honest. I was expecting her to say something along the lines of: Yes, we have to deal preferences to survive, but we would also like them to be less important in politics, and for more people to make their own choices. Some kind of direct answer to the question, something that actually links the two opposing behaviours. It’s a subtle difference, perhaps, but an important one.

Pool
26, 19, and then 3-0 against Donncha. I’m back in 8th position as Paul overtook me again (he challenged someone two positions above me and won). Back and forth, back and forth…

Writing
I’m back into Fork, believe it or not. Got a good bit written last night, in the vain hope of having something to show Evan tonight - well, it isn’t good enough yet. But now that draft 1 of Bullet Hole is out of the way, it’s time to get back to work on Fork.

Lantana

Anna and I saw “Lantana” last night, a rather good Australian film with Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush and Barbera Hershey. What was particularly nice was that the central mystery was well developed, perfectly logical, and based well on characterisation. The film was really an actor’s piece, quite talky. The cast were well up to the task, and there will definitely be AFI awards if there haven’t been already. But, but… it didn’t really strike me. A year from now I will wonder whether I saw it or just read a review. And I don’t think it’s an intrinsic fault of the film itself, but of the kind of films I’ve watched recently - Drunken Master II again (showing off the climactic fight to Jon & Kate), Magnolia, The Usual Suspects. Flashy films, whereas Lantana was subtle and underplayed. Maybe I’ll watch it again later.

Ev
Ev is coming to town! He arrives on Friday evening and leaves Sunday evening - in the intervening time, we’re watching “Sweeney Todd”, going to Carlos my evil ex-next-desk worker’s BBQ, and possibly doing some filming for Jon’s short Dr Who film “Timeless” (which is mostly finished, just needing some touchups) at the art gallery. I’m excited!

Pool
25, 19, 30. Once again, the 19 was off a good break, and felt fairly easy - I missed two quite easy shots. The numbers are quite variable because so much now depends on how good the break is - if it doesn’t leave too many balls clumped in the centre, or on the cushion, then I’ll do well. Other times, it can easily take 30.
I heard of another practice game to set up - one ball set up in front of each of the pockets, and try to pot them all in 4 shots. I’ll give it a try.

Dr Who

Jon & Kate came over last night, and I cooked ‘em dinner and they recorded the short stories (both Dr Who stories involving cats) onto a CD. It was particularly interesting listening to Jonathan doing a kind of Southern American Gothic accent for his piece - he’s a very good voice actor! Apparently, the two stories will end up on a charity anthology of some description - more news if/when this occurs.

Then Anna arrived home and we watched a Dr Who short film made by a bunch of Bris-vegans, that had just been stuck up on the web - Rapture the Heavens(!). Unfortunately, otnay eryvay oodgay. The best I can say for it was that the sound quality was excellent. Most other technical aspects was fine - camerawork a bit wobbly but fine, decent use of natural lighting, and the acting and incidental music were OK - but it was the script and the editing that were the real problem.

Episode 1 is about 15 minutes long but could be cut to less than five minutes with no loss of the plot. There are far too many drawn-out shots of people looking at computers, or walking from room to room, or delivering dialogue that apparently leads nowhere. There was some terrible schtick about the lead actress distracting a guard in just the way that you might imagine if you were a teenage boy with a crush on her. Oh dear.

Bullet Hole
I was very glad we watched Rapture the Heavens first, because I think it helped Bullet Hole, even without dialogue and music, come across very well. I’d deliberately paced most of it quite slow, but after the glacial pacing of RtH, it felt like it was zooming along. I’m relaxed, feeling less craptacular, and ready to move onto the next stages of editing - subtitles, foley, and dubbing.

Pool
19, 19, 26, 24, 24, 21, 31. There was nobody on the table at lunchtime so I knocked off seven practice games in about 25 minutes. The quality was deteriorating severely by the end of it, but it was still enjoyable. The first game was easily the best - it was lining up to be 17 but I panicked a bit. In other pool news, I beat Hugh yesterday to move to 7th place on the table, and beat JT in a “friendly” game. Getting back on track for a challenge to #1…

The cough got a lot better

…at infecting me over the weekend, and I was knocked out for most of it, lying in bed coughing. Finally, yesterday, it kind of revealed itself - I got a runny nose and a headache after 2(!) weeks or so, and it turned into a conventional cold. I went home early yesterday, and feel a lot better now, even kind of able to concentrate for more than a minute at a time.

Bullet Hole
Despite the headache and cough and so on, I did some good work on Bullet Hole over the weekend and finished a very rough first draft. Next step: subtitles, foley effects, dubbing, colour correction, etc. I decided to ignore the “closing the curtains” continuity gaffe, cause it didn’t leap out at Anna what the problem was when she saw it.

Tonight Jon & Kate come over and Kate narrates a short story she wrote, using my sound equipment. If we have time, I’ll show them Draft 1 of Bullet Hole - 17 minutes long!

The cough got better

…at infecting me and knocked me out from work yesterday, after a couple of days of quiescence. Sore throat, James Earl Jones voice, gobs of snot, the works. So I slept a bit and did some editing of Bullet Hole…

The hole caused by a bullet being propelled from a gun through a window at very high velocity
…which is starting to fall into shape now, and is looking pretty sharp. Sharp, that is, except for the real problems we were having with white-balance and low-light focus in various places - there are alternating shots that have warm and cool tones to them, and I’m taking advantage of some of the colour-balance filters in Final Cut Pro. It’s much easier to go from cool to warm so the picture gets progressively warmer looking as it goes along. I wish I could say that was an intentional effect, and I’m trying to work it in as a theme somehow - but there are other problems to worry about. Like, a scene where a guitar string snaps in the direct sunlight - except the other shots have me standing right where the sun should be coming in, closing the curtains. You can’t do worse than that.

Might have to reshoot somehow - find somewhere at home that looks roughly the same. No, wait, we don’t have any carpet. Bugger. More thinking to be done here. You may well be amazed at how big an oversight this was, that we got through all the shooting and didn’t catch it - but there were only two of us for most of the shoot (Jon and me) and we had lots of other stuff to worry about, so I’m not really banging my head about it.

Upsy-downsy
Pool today has been good, then bad, then good. First, I played a quick game against Paul S., and thrashed him - we had three turns each. He was left with five balls on the table. Then, I got challenged by Paul N., who is fairly good but not exceptional, and got handily beaten with no excuses at all. He was placing the ball very well - I was playing OK, but was behind for pretty much the whole game. Then, moved down to 10th place in the challenge ladder, I was within Mitch’s reach so he challenged me as well. Surprisingly, I handily won that game, again leaving five of his balls on the table. So, still on tenth place. I’ve played thirteen challenge matches, more than anyone else on the table. John P., the company head in Sydney, has noticed and commented - he didn’t mean it seriously I think - he’s on the challenge ladder as well - but still…

Who will rid me of this muddlesome cough?

It would be really nice if when you pass a cold on to someone, you then don’t have it any more. It’d really give people an incentive to go out and infect people. How about it, germs? Not that I’ve passed it to anyone - Anna is in glowingly good health as always - but it’d give me something to aim for, besides lurching at the floating black spots before my eyes after I cough.

Role-playing
More exciting role-playing with Jon, Kate and Andrew Orman last night. Kate’s game continues to thrill, with Goblin problems all round - my first-level “Friends” spell proving extremely handy in stopping us from being skewered and thrown to the giant ants.

Walking to Babylon
I also finished off Kate’s book “Walking to Babylon” on the train on the way home. Someday I will write that well. It’s a sequel of sorts to a Dr. Who book set in the Culture (but with different names to prevent lawsuits), from Iain M. Banks’ novels Player Of Games, Use Of Weapons, etc. Actually, Kate hadn’t read the Culture novels when she wrote her book, and when she read them much later, she was rather embarrassed - she didn’t realise how close the borrowing was. In any case, Walking To Babylon is one of Kate’s best, right up there with “Sleepy” and “The Year of Intelligent Tigers”. It contains several “of course” moments - bits where she throws up a situation - philosophical, emotional or plot - and then resolves it so beautifully it brings tears to your eyes (for those who have read it, I’m thinking in particular of Lafayette’s eventual choice, and the shower scene in particular). Even as good as it was, there were still bits that seemed fairly poorly motivated. Benny is told there is a five-day deadline at the beginning, but doesn’t really attack her problem with any ferocity until the last minute - the procrastination seems a little out of character given what was at stake.

Pool
I could hardly leave out today’s pool results, could I? Well, I beat Elanor and moved up to seventh place, and challenged Richard A. right away. Unfortunately, there’s a big rush at the top now as good (but initially lowly ranked) players start jumping upwards. If you don’t play, or are being constantly challenged, you’ll find yourself slowly sliding down the ladder. I also played Donncha in a couple of games (lost, 1-2) and JT, who I handily beat this time round. Him left with 5 balls on the table.

Pool

I realise I didn’t talk about pool yesterday - it was an honest mistake, won’t happen again. Today was interesting for pool. My second practice game started with 12 balls potted in 12 shots - only 3 balls to pot, nothing particularly easy, but rather than set them up with a shot, I decided to go for glory. Needless to say, it failed and I ended up with 21 - an average of three shots each for the remaining three balls. This was followed by an hilarious game with John F. In the first game, he potted the black and the white, losing. In the second game, I was leading by a fair way and potted one of his balls while going for the black, thus losing. In the third and final game, we were both on the black and I had an extremely awkward shot to win the game, requiring an extreme angle very close to the hole - imagine a corner pocket, the black and the white forming a triangle. I figured I could get it - of course, if I didn’t, I’d be dead meat. So I smacked the white very, very hard, it nicked the black at an inperceptible angle, rolling it about a centimetre closer to the hole. Then the white hit the cushion, and flew off the table, straight at John F. who was watching, leaning with the cue on his chin and his foot. He jerked his foot up and his head down, and painfully skewered himself with the cue-tip. Fortunately, this extraordinary injury didn’t draw blood - but there will be a bruise, that’s for sure…

Plague Zone

I have catched another cold, as of Friday. Even though there were all those reports of panic about anthrax, it didn’t even occur to me as a wild fantasy of a nightmarish possibility. Happily, I suffered an extreme failure of imagination in this case. I think it’s partly because there have been other sick people around the office for weeks now, and I always catch what’s going around as my immune system is feeble due to repeated lack of exposure to vitamins and healthy living. So: sore throat, bit of a runny nose, feeling run down. Hm, the I wonder if that expression - run down - was originally intended to have the implication of “being run over by a large vehicle?”. Anyway, not that bad.

Editing
Despite the misery etc. of the cold, I managed a good chunk of editing and realised that there were vast chunks of footage missing from the computer. What’s going on? Turned out I had never imported tape 3 (of 4). Hey, that footage looks great! And look, here’s heaps of extra footage of me playing guitar and looking like much less of an idiot! Happy joy! Suffice to say, Bullet Hole is looking better than I’d feared, and is getting up to as good as I’d hoped, though quite a bit longer than I’d wanted. But it progresses, and Jon’s camerawork is (so far) its proud outstanding feature. This one will look quite good, a lot better than anything we’ve done so far. The only down-side is how much work there is yet to do - all the subtitles, all the dubbing and the foley effects and atmospheric effects and studio time for my guitar tutor and back-and-forth with Ev for the soundtrack… oh well. One thing at a time. “Once Upon A Time” was a much bigger project than this one, and we got through that alright.

Fillum
Watched “Proof Of Life” (bleugh), “Croupier” again (yay!) and “Magnolia” on the weekend, in a binge that was prompted my my less than stellar state. I was impressed with Magnolia, but egad it was a long film, more like a mini-series. And after the first ten minutes of (basically) collage and music video I was beginning to panic that it’d all be like that, like a version of Koyaanisqatsi run through a Koyaanisqatsi filter, and that my brain was going to explode. Fortunately, it settled into some reasonably conventionalish narrative after that. A good film, which I will damn with faint praise by saying that it may well really hit home to some people and be a personal favorite of the decade/ever (cf. The Godfather, Citizen Kane, etc) but not for me. 3 hours, 15 minutes of film, and an entire DVD of bonus footage, which took up Saturday from about 1:00pm to 8:00pm or so.