Anotherblog

Good weekend

Ah, but you’ve already heard plenty of times the kind of things I’m going to say.

Archery? Yes. It was excellent; I bought a new set of flanges for the bow and the effect on my shooting was immediate and very positive. It may have been the placebo effect, but I don’t care. Best set at 50m ever, and I got the record despite a shocking third round - my arms had almost given up altogether, and it was all I could do to hit the target for the last couple of shots.
Guitar? Both guitar and Guiter Hero were played in abundance. Improvement, happiness. I have been practicing Bach’s Bouree in E minor (one of the canonical - hah! - easy but nice classical pieces) and despite a bit of futzing towards the end, it’s sounding quite decent, and I can almost play it without the sheet music.

And cooking, and cleaning, and exercise, and mucking around with the Magic draft viewer in php/mySQL. It appears so much less interesting when I write it! But trust me, it was a terrific weekend.

Featured in a podcast

I appeared in one of DMM’s podcasts today - we recorded it on Monday, and he trimmed out some of the ums, and posted it today.  The context was fun - DMM had prepared some questions, and I went in cold and improvised all the answers.  I was rather pleased with how it went.  Although in this version it does seem a little uncannily fast because of the trimming, even the original was pretty decent.

Podcasts, retail therapy

It’s been a busy couple of days. I got a new laptop computer using the company novated lease scheme, I bought a UV filter and bag for my new video camera, I made one of my workmates choke, I watched the Dr Who Christmas special with Jon & Kate, I went to archery and shot some documentary footage, and I edited it on the new system into a five minute short film, and showed it today at work. Also, at lunchtime today, we recorded some audio podcasts for DMM’s new podcast experiment. I also practiced guitar a lot. Feeling very sparky and alive at the moment!

Laos Vegas

I just noticed: I never got around to colour- and gamma-correcting the film.  Oh well, too late now.

Also, in my haze of panic this morning, I suddenly started doubting my spelling.  Is it “Los Vegas” or “Las Vegas”?  This was important, because it was in the title of the film (”3am, L[a|o]s Vegas, a back room.” - well, I had to choose *something*) and therefore too late to change.  I really couldn’t work out whether I had it right or wrong.  How embarassing would it be if I had it wrong?  And my natural pessimism was telling me: of *course* you have it wrong, this is how the world works.
I went to a map shop, just opening at 9:00am across from the coffee shop.  I had it right, of course.  Stupid paranoia.

Submitted to tropfest

Today was the due date for submitting to tropfest 2007, so I pulled a late night and got the short film into some kind of shape (roughly rectangular).

Final Cut Pro chose last night to be an absolute bastard and behave unexpectedly in ways that, if I were to explain them, would make me want to commit violence.  So I won’t explain them.

In any case, I was off to bed by 2:00am with the DVD burning, and woke up at 7am unable to get to sleep again, so I got the other video burned - with no further dramas, hooray - and headed into town early.  One of my work friends Colin D. was also submitting a film (which is excellent, and should get into the top 16, if all is right and fair), and we had agreed to meet on the Town Hall steps at 10:30am and go to the tropfest office and submit our films together.

So I went early and got the production stills printed by a photo place in the city, and filled out the entry form over a cup of coffee (I drink coffee now!  Still haven’t quite stopped with the V yet, though, dammit.)  Wandered around the city and bought a DVD with some classical guitar lessons.  Sat down at the Town Hall steps early, and got interviewed by a chap for the Sydney Morning Herald:

His name is Dougal, and he was doing something about the Town Hall Steps Meeting Spot.  He was happy to discover I was about to submit a tropfest film - human interest + cross-marketing! - and we chatted about the various meeting spots in various cities (Brisbane - Hungry Jacks in the centre of the mall; Adelaide - the Mall’s Balls) and observed that Sydney’s popular meeting spot isn’t terribly central and has no shade.  Curious.  Nice guy, hope the article works out.  A paragraph-worthy nutter was dancing and singing randomly on the top of the steps, which was rather limiting the number of other step-sitters.

Colin and I met up, and we got the films in good and early - no queue - and I vowed that if his film didn’t get into the preselection (40 or 60 films, I forget which) I’d give up on submitting to Tropfest altogether, as it would then be utterly out of reach for anything I could come up with.

Now I am tired.

Morris Dancing

I almost forgot the coolest part of the Woodford folk festival. Cousin Kathleen is a keen dancer, and somehow managed to convince me to go along to two dance thingys: Capoeira, which is a South American dance/martial art, and Morris Dancing.

I was reluctant. I really hate dancing. I was very pleased when I read on Neil Gaiman’s journal that he never dances: I felt somehow vindicated, or at least, less isolated. Many people like dancing and feel compelled to point out that it’s all about individual expression, and that you should never feel embarassed about expressing yourself. Also, who cares if you look like an idiot? Unfortunately, I cringe when I see other people dancing badly. I think they look like idiots. I don’t have the moral high-ground, and I don’t like to dance.

But I also resolved to say “Yes” more often, and what the heck, I *would* like to get over this hating to dance thing. It’s not a conscious or pleasant instinct; I would honestly like to not think bad thoughts when I see people dancing like idiots and chipping their teeth, breaking their legs, etc. I figured Capoeira might be an exception because it’s partially a martial art, and I’ve never tried that either (my subconscious has no opinion either way about martial arts; I just haven’t tried any yet. More on this later.) And I figure Morris Dancing might be different because looking silly is the whole point - I would have no trouble doing the fish-slapping dance either.

Capoeira was OK but a little disappointing. As martial arts go, I’m sure it’s better than random flailing, but I also suspect a boxer would make very short work of them. I realised that I’d already seen Capoeira in fighting computer games, where they seem to do OK, but in real life it looked rather more like dancing than fighting. It was a pleasant workout and not mightily embarassing, but it didn’t really appeal.

Morris Dancing, on the other hand, was superb; exactly as silly as I was hoping, with the instructors fully in the spirit of the absurdity of it all. We learned a stupidly complicated arcane set of moves, and performed them quite satisfactorily. Delightful.

Unco!

I set a record for uncoordination for this year that is unlikely to be matched for the rest of the year. I hope. I managed to chip two teeth while eating a curry. Somehow, I had my lower jaw extended, and brought it back suddenly and violently so that my teeth gave a lovely loud “clack” sound, and bits flew off. Hooray! My front top right tooth already had some notches in it from my university years (undergraduate Electrical Engineer tip #1: don’t wire-strip with your teeth! Just don’t!) and the other somewhat damaged tooth was the lower one, which is kind of snaggly anyway. Not a huge loss, but it’s going to lead to teeth-falling-out nightmares now, I just know it…

The upper left and bottom teeth are the ones that were chipped.  The upper right one (my left) has a wire-stripping notch from Uni days.  The bottom tooth is malformed anyway - it has a reverse snaggle.

Cousin Kathleen

One exciting new possibility is that my cousin Kathleen may end up getting a job in Sydney, and if she does, she will likely stay with me.  We had a tremendously fun time in Brisbane - she’s a computer and board game player par excellence, and a fun-loving and easy-going person too.  And messy!  It’s a perfect house-mate match.

Back again

Back from holidays in Brisbane - what a fantastically relaxing time!  My aunt Alison and cousin Kathleen were excellent hosts and company, and I’ve never felt so happy to sit back and do nothing.  I didn’t work on the short film at all.  I did a tiny bit of Film Forensicing, but wasn’t too concerned without getting it out quickly (Winston has posted a new FF on Underworld:Evolution, by the way.  It’s good!)  We went to the Woodford Folk Festival, much more interesting that I was expecting (and I *was* expecting it to be good).  I sat next to Peter Garrett and Kerry O’Brien at a Vegetarian restaurant.  Did a lot of juggling and stick twirling. Saw Foreplay perform some new material (and was suitably rapt).
I read, played computer games, played a bit of piano, and went out a whole lot with Evan.  We ate roughly our own body weight in desserts over two weeks, talked a lot, played a couple of games of tennis, came up with half a Spit song, had New Years celebrations together, and swore eternal vengence on David Versace and his minions for destroying the holy catheter of St. Erik the Too-Ready.  Good times!  The near-midnight golf-buggy race was one of those memories that’ll keep returning, always bringing a smile to my face and a twinge to my knee.

Also caught up with many lovely relatives, and David Astley & friends and Simon Abernethy.  Such sociability!