Weblog> July 2002
020730: Tue
Commonwealth Games
The Commonwealth Games have started. Caught a bit of the 400m men's freestyle heats just now. Saw Hackett's and Thorpe's heats where they both came first in their respective heats. They really are great athletes.
Smallville
Read somewhere that Smallville was like a cross between Buffy and Dawson's Creek. The storywriters decided to use the idea of a kryptonite shower over Smallville when the spaceship lands to explain all the strange happenings/behaviours etc of the characters. I watched the first episode of it a few weeks ago. It was ok and I'm not really into the characters who act really weird etc that is so in now ie in the vein of everything from the X-files to Buffy etc so I think I'll be skipping the Smallville series.
Optus Movie One Channel
I only just discovered that we can get the Movie One channel. I knew that dad had subscribed for the Sports channel but didn't think anything of it. Then I just happened to catch the very last bit of 'High Fidelity' beaming from the TV screen and wondered why that was showing. I thought it was a preview or a short video clip about some director of actor or something. Then I realised we actually have access to that channel. So that was a cool surprise. I then sat and watched the next movie 'Bring it On' - a cheerleader, feel-good, fluffy teen movie starring Kirsten Dunst. Ended up watching the whole movie. I was surprised how both teams that competed in the end were fair and it was very touchy feely. It wasn't even like one team cheated at the cheerleading finals and the other one somehow manages to expose that team to win. Next month they're showing movies like 'Duets' and 'The Replacements' and other movies. May catch a couple of those.
020726: Wed
Aussie weblogs
I come across a lot of weblogs in my web surfing. Many of these are American based and I enjoy reading the adventures and thoughts of these webloggers. I thought would be a directory of Australian webloggers somewhere. Found a list of these at http://australian.weblogs.com. It's great in that if I read a weblogger's entries from Sydney for example, I know where some of the places are that they refer to. I'm starting to have a read of some of the local weblogs. It's good fun.
No Time website
This 'Wired' magazine article features Karin Spitzer - a 27 year old from New York who has set up a business making bracelets, mousepads etc based on the phrase 'No-time' eg "no time for boys" and many other phrases. It's now a very successful business. If you want to check out the products on her website, it's at http://www.no-time.com.
SMH's 'Red' Competition
If you're interested in seeing the work of up and coming young designers ie recent graduates and students of design with the theme of red used to redefine the dining experience, then you go visit the foyer gallery area between the PwC building and the Fairfax building on Sussex St. Once it's been judged, only a selection of the entries will be on display at the Powerhouse Museum.
Save Karyn website - girl in NY with a $20K debt
Saw the 'Save Karyn' website on Memepool recently. You can find out how she saves money in her 'The Daily Buck' column. She writes about saving money by buying 99c macaroni and cheese and not drinking bottled water anymore but refilling the same water bottle. You can help her out by giving her a donation if you so desire.
Bruce Mau Designs design business and philosophy
Came across this article in Fastcompany. He believes in the idea of research for all his design projects. He says "Our object is not to know the answers before we do the work. It's to know them after we do it." You can also check out his 'Incomplete Manifesto for Growth' at http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto/print.html. Read on his website that he's also put out a book called 'Lifestyle'.
Lands End's profitable website sales
Forbes.com feature this article where the 'Lands End' website has an instant messaging feature and online sales increased by 5% and total online sales is now 20%, surpassing its catalogue business.
Got my camera back
It works! so I'll see how it goes. They said in the report that they upgraded the software and did some things to the battery. So hopefully the battery will last a while this time round.
Dark Angel
I read in one of those music/culture magazines that 'Dark Angel' wasn't renewed even though it rated above other shows like 'Angel' and 'Dawson's Creek' as the networks or whoever wanted to make room for another show from the 'Buffy' team. That's a pity as I enjoyed watching 'Dark Angel' - though I haven't seen the next series where a lot of genetic animals/humans feature on the show. Don't know how that changes the storylines etc.
Celebrity Big Brother
I watched a bit of the first night of it to see who the celebrity housemates were. Decided not to follow it though - it's like Big Brother overload. Don't want to spend 3 weeks following what they get up to.
020714: Sun
DigitExpo
There's a digital design conference coming up soon in Sydney. It sounds pretty interesting and is pretty good value. Check out the programme at http://www.digitexpo.com.
Minding Their Own Business
Been
wanting to write up a quick review of this book.
Haven't got around to it till now. Gloria Meltzer interviews successful
Australian entrepreneurs about their business. There are 19 case studies
altogether. She asks the entrepreneurs about their background, how they
got started, their problems, their successes, their advice to others and
their thoughts for the future of their business. The book is an interesting
read as the case studies provide practical examples of the process of
how these people got there. The entrepreneurs have varying levels of business
experience and some didn't have previous experience in the industry of
their chosen business. Overall they all had the passion to give it a go
and a belief backed up by sheer persistence, hardwork and continual learning
of all the skills needed to operate their business and to keep evolving
it. Entrepreneurs featured include Huy Truong of Wishlist.com, Alan Wein
of the 'House' homewares chain who had no retail experience but built
up a chain of stores and then in November 2000, sold the business to New
Clicks Holdings to Liz O'Shaughnessy who set up 'Puddings on the Ritz'.
She started off by helping a friend with catering, found a pudding recipe
from a library, started test marketing them at markets, and wanted to
sell them to the airlines who said they needed to inspect the premises
when she had no commercial premises, so quickly went out and rented a
commercial kitchen and so on... Overall, the collection of interviews
are quite inspiring to read and the interviews highlight that are many
different roads to success.
Bic Runga
Listening
to Bic Runga's new
single 'Get Some Sleep'. Pretty cool song. I like her music anyway. Especially
nice to listen to really late at night when you're in a quiet, reflective
mode. Saw her perform the song on 'The Panel' the other night. I wonder
if she performed any shows in Sydney recently. If she did I missed it
anyway. I should keep an eye out on when she performs. Saw her a year
or two ago at the Metro Theatre. She was great! There was a short interview
with her in the latest issue of 'Stu' magazine.
020713: Sat
Processing emails
I subscribe to quite a few online newsletters. If I see a site I like and there's a newsletter facility then I'll most probably sign up for their newsletter. So you can imagine that over the span of a couple of years, I am now subscribed to some 20-40 of them probably. I haven't actually counted them up. So anyway, I spent a couple of days just going through some 9000 emails in my inbox including emails from friends and colleagues saying 'hi' or telling me about some cool item they came across. I am happy to say that I am now down to around 900 emails.
Chocolate recipes
Finished reading/processing the June issue of House and Garden that I borrowed from Stanton last night. It had the 'best 50 Chocolate recipes' from various publications in this one issue. It had everything from tiramisu to all kinds of chocolate cake, muffins, cookies etc. I doubt they would sell this issue at newsagents anymore. Will just have to try out a few recipes before I return the mag.
Lamb Shanks
Cooked the lamb shanks meal tonight. Took around 1.5 hrs. I know I said I was into fast meals but this was dish I did want to try. It turned out pretty well. I had the lamb shank sitting on a bed of mashed potato - yum. Also had a side dish of beans. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal. I had some vanilla ice-cream for dessert.
Broadway Shopping Centre
Had a quick look through the Freedom Excess store. Saw some outdoor furniture but will probably go check out this other outdoor teak furniture place in Alexandria as well. Was thinking that Freedom may also have some cool white dining chairs but didn't see any.
Saw this cool 'Eboy' portfolio book at the Collins bookshop today. Costs $120. I like that kind of pixel art stuff. I saw a url printed in the book. Site is http://www.eboy.com. Definitely worth checking out. Saw their work in an older issue of IdN magazine a while back also. Read their FAQ list and they do all their artwork in Photoshop. It's 4 guys who do all this cool artwork and they don't take on projects that are too big for them to complete as they don't want to expand any further and take on any staff etc. They said this way they could retain their freedom in their creative projects. That's pretty cool. I kind of prefer that kind of work mode as well at the moment. I like the idea of coming together with a team of people for a project but not really interested in setting up a mega company at this stage.
Sent camera off to get fixed
Finally took the digital camera to the Post Office to be sent to Melbourne to get fixed. Hopefully it'll all be fixed and working perfectly when I get it back. Can't wait to use it again and then I can start taking photos of heaps of cool stuff and posting it to the website.
Nigel and Paula's travel logs
Nigel and Paula are two people I worked with who now on big travel adventures.
Nigel's been on the road for a quite a few months now. It's been fun reading about his travel adventures round the world. I'm the virtual armchair traveller. I can see him travelling forever. His site is at http://www.nigelmitchell.com. He's one 'cool' dude. Knows how to have fun and just to live life.
Paula's just started off on her adventure. Will be reading about all the exotic locations she travels too as well. Her travel log is at http://www.paulasbigad.blogspot.com.
020710: Wed
Orson and Blake
Checked out the Orson and Blake shop in Surry Hills yesterday. I have seen this shop featured in numerous places and heard that it had this great reputation for retailing designer goods. So thought I'd go and have a look for myself. It has many of the label designers' products in stock and it was slickly presented. I guess I'd seen a lot of what they showcase in the magazines already anyway so there wasn't anything in particular that was really out there new. Or perhaps they're so good at marketing themselves in the magazines and that's why I've seen it all before. They were having a sale anyway. Saw the plastic/ silver metallic looking Philippe Starck chairs going for $150 each. They usually retail there for $300 so that was cool. I quite like that chair. They had them in the Hudson Hotel in NY and that's where I first saw them. Except the Hudson version was the full metal chair version which I would think is a lot more expensive. The cafe was quite bright and airy and the hot chocolate was pretty nice.
Bronte Beach
It was a beautiful day yesterday so I drove to Bronte Beach and had lunch out there. It was great to just watch the waves, the cliffs, the blue skies and have a 'big brekkie' meal at about 1.30 in the afternoon. It wasn't that I actually left brekkie till that late - it's just that I felt like a cafe brekkie meal for lunch even though I'd already had brekkie around 7 that morning. If my digital camera was working, I would've taken some photos to post up. Note to self: will get digital camera sent off to get fixed tomorrow.
Toasted marshmallows
Bought a packet of strawberry and vanilla marshmallows the other day - for the purposes of toasting. Never had a toasted one before. So did a modern version. Stood over the gas oven top and put a chopstick through the centre and kept rotating it until small bubbles started to form on the surface of the marshmallow. A few of them also caught fire during the experiment as they got too close to the flame. Then came the taste test. It was pretty yummy. The centre of it literally oozes and melts into your mouth like a really soft guey centre. Yum. One day I may even go out into the wild and have a proper campfire going and toast marshmallows over a hot drink and stories. Who knows.
Cooking
Starting to get into the cooking thing a bit lately. I focus on simple meals ie ones that I can prepare and eat in under 1/2 hr or less if possible. I'll leave the elaborate 100 exotic spices and flavours to the 'chefs'. I can now make a pretty yummy beef stroganoff. I think my parents really do like it rather than just saying it to encourage me to cook more often :-). I think it's pretty yummy anyway and I'm pretty objective about my own cooking. I'd never had that meal before and saw it in a recipe book so thought hey I'll cook it to find out what it is.
Mum mentioned that she wants to try lamb shanks. Saw a Jamie Oliver recipe but it still looks like it has a number of steps to it so I found another recipe in the Donna Hay book which I'll try out tonight most probably if I can get myself organised.
Borrowed this book titled 'In Just 10 Minutes'. The recipes look pretty good. It's meant to include preparation and cooking time. Haven't tried any recipes in that yet but the pictures look good so will give it a go sometime. Looks like my kind of cookbook anyway.
Updating weblogs and websites
I really admire the webloggers who can update their weblogs on a frequent, often daily basis. I want to but just don't seem to find the time. Perhaps they're more organised than I am and actually schedule it into their daily activities. Some of them update more than one weblog even - they have one diary type one and one professional type one like Jessamyn or Zannah.
Stressed out society
I'm generally quite chilled out these days. I resigned from a corporate job late last year. You know it's time to leave when you know you no longer want to be there anymore and you're no longer having fun there for whatever reasons they may be.
Now I've got more things on that ever - my regular gigs for various companies/clients as well as my own projects that I'm developing and spending quite a lot of time on. I'm having the time of my life. I'm busy as ever but I'm having heaps of fun and learning lots of new things. I now have the time to work on my own projects and to devote some time to learning the things I want to learn, to read the books I've been meaning to read, to go and check the exhibitions and talks I want to see and hear, to spend time cooking, taking nice long walks in the middle of the day and all that kind of cool simple stuff. Even just going out to have a nice cup of hot chocolate somewhere and to brainstorm some ideas or to have a quiet moment to myself. I now get to focus on the things I want to do and the ideas I want to develop so that's pretty cool.
I often see people exhibiting signs of stress for whatever reason. Things like road rage or people just being outright meanies on the road, or just to strangers for no reason I can fathom. Perhaps they're stressed out. Anyway, when I encounter this kind of behaviour I just generally let it go over my head and don't take it personally. You'd go crazy if you let it affect you. Maybe if people realise that life is the journey a bit more and just take a breather every now and then then we'd all be bit happier and nicer to each other overall.
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About CG | Editor: Kirsten Lowe | PO Box 559, Broadway 2007, Sydney, Australia
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