Anotherblog

Being social, and an unexpected opportunity

Yesterday was a big day for being social. I went to archery, then visited Anna’s mum, dropped by to say hello to Andrea (with whom I have not talked in at least a year), and hared off to Iain’s 21st anniversary of his 21st birthday. All very nice, especially the 21st - there were many interesting people, including Dave & Kyla, Rob & Kat, Iain & Llyn, Damian, and a whole lot of people I hadn’t met before, many of whom were writers or involved in television in some way. A chap named Garfield, who runs a short-film festival thing for Channel 31, invited me to submit some short films, so I shall do so next week before things get hectic with Nanowrimo. It seems possible that Once Upon A Time and the other projects will finally get a public showing! Hooray!

Nanowrimo

I must stop working on the magic draft viewer. It’s very tempting to keep pushing it. I’ve written it all from scratch, so far, using php and mySQL, and I keep getting ideas for adding SVG, much as I did for the archery statistics, only more sophisticated. I reckon I could show how the draft worked much more clearly with an SVG round table showing where everyone sat, and which shows more detail as you drag the mouse around. So tempting.

Next week is Nanowrimo. It starts on Wednesday, which (co-incidentally) is the launch day of Richard’s latest beer. So I might be off to a slow start. I’ll hopefully be working on “The Decision Tree”, a co-written effort with Jon B. I’m feeling very querilous about it this year - life feels very unsettled at the moment - but what the hell, why not take a swing; what do I have to lose. As I understand it, Kate is also giving it a go this year, so hopefully we’ll be able to egg each other on.

I went to the Nanowrimo meetup yesterday afternoon. It was odd. Everyone is so young. This has always been the case, but I felt it more this year.

MTG

Had a magic tournament at my place on Friday with the new “Timespiral” expansion, and came equal last. David K came first. I had thought I’d done alright, but in retrospect I was really lacking decent creatures and I had an unsteady mana base despite sticking with two colours. Oh well. That’ll teach me for drafting blue.

I also did some work on putting the draft up on the web. It’s pretty primitive at the moment, but it’ll eventually have some pretty graphics to show what’s going on. You can see how each player drafted. The previous Coldsnap tournament is also up there.

Archery

It was really good to get back to archery after a month away from it. Of course, my arms had atrophied into shrivelled twigs in this time, and it’s all I can do to draw the bow at the moment. I was rather surprised, however, that my deterioration in skill was so pronounced: there were many shots going even wilder than I would have expected. On the offchance that that was not actually a skill thing, I showed it to the instructor. Sure enough, the “button”, a little thingamajig that helps keep the arrow on its rest, was extremely worn and was causing the arrows to point off-centre, which I had been unconsciously compensating for. We replaced it, and put on a new string for good measure - the old one was the wrong length, apparently - and now I’m shooting much better despite the blustery gale conditions of Saturday morning.

Also, I got certificates for winning some of the previous bits of the Saturday tournaments. Like golf, archery competitions can be handicapped, and of course since I’m an improving beginner, I get a fair crack of the whip at winning things even though I am more feeble than most. The little medal on the keyboard is for “All gold” at 20m.

I’m still greatly enjoying archery. I’m still having to restrain myself from going more than twice a week.

Home again

I’m back in Sydney, and still feeling jet-lagged. Of course. I woke up at 4:00am this morning and was unable to get back to sleep despite staying awake all day yesterday and going to sleep late. Instead of making me sleep more, this attempt at sleep management is just making me groggy.

Anyway. Here’s a picture of me giving my talk in Heidelberg.

Heidelberg & The Talk

The talk went pretty well, though I was well short of my allocated 45 minutes - I took 15 minutes to give the talk (which, I must admit, was done at a bit of a gallop, thanks to nervous energy) and five minutes for questions, which eventually meant that we went to afternoon tea early. I like to think that this made me a hero in the eyes of my peers.

Here’s where I gave the talk (before the room filled up)

It seemed somehow like a set from Star Wars or Doctor Who. I was glad I was wearing my “You Will Obey!” dalek t-shirt for the presentation. I had brought a suit and shirt and tie, but they had become crinkled in the weeks of travel, and I only noticed this right before I had to head off. So, t-shirt it was, and that was fine, because it was the w3c where t-shirts and jeans are de riguer (I did wear the suit trousers, though). Several people were wearing sandles, though none were wearing sandles with socks.

After the talk, I had more time to enjoy the Heidelberg Print Academy, the very interesting site for the conference. The whole place was very open and airy, with several smaller buildings within the large glass building. The conference room was at the bottom, a big red apple surrounded by a pond. Then there were two massive vertical cylinders, presumably also filled with rooms. Here’s where we had morning tea.

And a view looking directly up, on the escalator:

and outside:

I had a good long talk with Fujisawa-san afterwards, and then all my important Heidelberg responsibilities were done. Hooray! I’m participating in a workshop today, and then have a bit of tomorrow to run around and enjoy the city tomorrow. Then it’s (finally) time to go home.

Reading & London

First, a daytrip on Friday to see Alix - we met for lunch, and caught up.  Then, the family finally managed to all get together on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Hooray!

Then, it was off to London, for a night of delicious curry at Michael Cort’s place with Kerstin, Svea (her sister) and her boyfriend. But first, I caught up with Elanor, who recently got married, and her friend (who is not pictured, sadly, as she is very pretty too.)

Ah, English beer. We had many a wee dram. The whole experience was weirdly more enjoyable for the fact that I was still doing last-minute preparations for my talk in Heidelberg and it felt like every non-talk moment was all the more precious.

Then, on Monday morning it was off to Heathrow. I’m taking Sebastian’s computer back to Sydney for him. When I was asked “Are you carrying anything for anyone else?” at the baggage check-in, I answered yes, and explained. There is no procedure for this. She rolled her eyes at me - with a smile - and tried again. “Are you carrying anything for anyone else?

“No.”

Me with my sisters

A bit more relaxed

In London

It’s been a busy couple of days.  Marco’s friend Ian was in a preview for a play (it had been workshopped, but wasn’t final yet) that we saw on Saturday night.  They were keen on getting feedback, so I did my Film Forensic thing, and gave great rambling monologues of it.  A very interesting concept - based on one of the stories from “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, dramatised, with many interesting multimedia elements.  Terrific performances from the lead character, and especially from Ian, who I had not previously seen perform.

Then, off to London, staying with Sebastian’s dad, who is an interesting chap.  He was a TV producer/floor manager/director etc. during the 1950s and 1960s, and freelanced for ages after that.  I showed him the film I made with Sebastian (which he liked) and he showed me the other films that Sebastian had shot, which were cool.

By a curious coincidence, he also lives within five minutes walk from where Kerstin lives.  In London.  I caught up with Kerstin on Sunday and Monday, and we went to see Spamalot on Monday night.  A big bunch of fun; steals liberally from Holy Grail, of course, but there are some surprising changes and quite a bit of metatextual stuff, as you might expect from Eric Idle.  We were enormously far from the stage, and it was very hot, but it was also very fine and clever.

Here’s me with Kerstin, after the performance.

They were selling many ripoff tshirts, and I was sorely tempted to get the “Fechez la Vache!” one, but the queue was too long and I was too short of money.