Anotherblog

Blah

A fantastic weekend in Canberra visiting Dave & Fiona & Ev & Jimbo & Simon, which included a mighty feast and much wine drinking and playing of music and the odd computer game, but now it’s back to work.

I did the performance review this afternoon, which was all very fine and good, but didn’t do anything to cheer me up. Work is still getting me down. It’s difficult getting motivated.

Anyway. The weekend, yes, was fantastic, so I shall concentrate on it: we did much work towards getting a podcast together (intros and outros for many songs, recording some new material). The company was excellent. Anna and Hannah sang many songs on SingStar, some of which will be faintly audible in the podcast. We vowed to go to Canberra more often.

car
The car worryingly emitted smoke from the engine after the drive to Canberra, but it turned out to be a slow oil leak onto the exhaust pipe, which isn’t anything to be too worried about, so we drove home confident that the car wouldn’t explode, and it didn’t. The car trip in each direction was fine and good, though it was much more fun driving in the morning than in the evening, and the cruise control wasn’t working.

and next…
The folks will be visiting later this week, and then we’re off to Brisbane on Saturday for a week. Hooray. A big holiday: I’m really, really looking forward to that.

Sick again

I was sick yesterday, and therefore missed my archery. Bummer. On the other hand, I did get to lie around the house doing kakuro all day, and watching bad television. I have many work and home projects to do, and the thought of doing any of them is as welcome as gently resting a big concrete brick on my naked brain.

So, writing in the weblog instead. I might as well make this a real exercise in mundanity while you’re not reading it. I lost the final of the “Invented draft” to Steve I. I got 284 and 273 in archery on Sunday, a particularly poor effort caused (I think) by a combination of impatience and an ill-executed adjustment to my anchor point. I’m considering trying out for the Clarion South SF&F workshop, inspired by David C’s mention of it, but I’m not sure which writing sample to submit. Something new, or an existing short story, or a chapter of an existing novel? Perhaps something new. Add one more to my list of projects for this year.

And I’m currently looking forward to a weekend in Canberra with Ev and Dave, and the subsequent week in which my parents will be in town, and the week after that in which I’ll be in Brisbane, with Ev and Jen & Marco & Sophia & Sara and various other relatives. And more trivially, a lunchtime Ravnica/Guildpact draft tomorrow. Not so much looking forward to my performance review on Monday afternoon.

Back, and jetlagged

I don’t get over jetlag particularly well. I got back on Tuesday morning, and I’m still zonked by mid-afternoon every day. Yesterday, I was doing the head-nodding thing that is described as “fishing” in Chinese.

So, although I have much to write about, I’m really not coherent enough to write it. The trip went well, in the end. There were no major stuffups, though there was a near-missed plane on the way back - I misread the departure time, and arrived with 20 minutes before departure, instead of the 1:20 I had thought sensible for the Nice to Paris trip. Fortunately, after initially telling me it was impossible and that I had missed it for sure, the check-in person made a call and I was lucky. In the end, I was waiting around for another half hour waiting for people to get onto the plane anyway, which somewhat alleviated my fears that my baggage wouldn’t make it. The trip home was uncomfortable - most of it in a middle-seat between two people who really liked the armrests - and it no doubt contributed to my soreness and current sense of jetlag.

Also, I arrived back four kilos heavier than when I set out due to all that rich, irrisistable French food. So now I’m on the no sweet-things thing again.

Still, on the whole, a very enjoyable trip, and it made up for a large number of my 6:00am teleconferences.

Dinner with the inventor of the World Wide Web

OK, bit of a thrill: I just had dinner with the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (along with some of the other members of the SVG working group, most closely Doug S., Chaals, and Robin B.). Lovely guy: very enthusiastic and easy-going. Once we realised he was very pleasant, Doug S. and I teased him about his knighthood and plied him with many questions, which lead into one of those fascinating conversations which touches on everything - from Wittgenstein to Dance Dance Revolution to the Semantic Web to the meaning of colour. A highlight of the conference so far, and there have been lots of other highlights. We asked him what he must have heard a million times before - what he thought of the Al “I took the initiative in inventing the internet” Gore, and he said that Gore was completely correct in what he actually said - that he had a huge personal influence in getting the internet up and going, making sure the government continued to fund it and making sure the right people met other right people etc. - in other words, being a good and nurturing manager. Which was also very interesting.

Oh, and last night, rather drunk, I pointed a video camera at him and asked “So, what’s the web supposed to catch?”.

“Programmers and theoreticians, mostly.”

Footage will go up when I get home…

Technical Plenary

So, two and a half days of technical plenary later, I’m feeling a bit vague. The network for the conference was terrible at first (which made me feel better about the bad network in Sydney, though the challenge here, with approximately 500 people, is slightly harder) but now it’s fine and good, and I’ve been frantically looking things up in wikipedia whenever people start talking about things I don’t understand, which is often.

I managed to stay up to 10:30 last night, which I was very pleased with. I think I’m pretty much on top of the jet-lag thing now, though still, y’know, vague. The weather continues to be excellent as I have Come to Expect, and every lunchtime we wander out to the beach and stand around eating great French food and chatting. I don’t think I’m giving a good indication of how hard this is, but trust me: it’s such hard, back-breaking work that I’m rather afraid to give you a true indication lest you start a petition for Australia to invade France. Really, it’s not necessary. We have to become used to the realities of - why not call it for what it is - torture. And we’re invariably released at the end of it all.

Enough. Back to slaving over a hot canape.