Weblog> October 2002
0201028: Mon
Go out for coffee, come back with a house
The SMH had an article of a woman who bought a delapidated old house in Mackenzie St, Leichhardt for $711,000. Property prices in some areas in Sydney are sure skyrocketing within a relatively short period of time.
Moving
I will be moving in the next couple of days. Yay. Fun, fun, fun. New adventures. All good. Busy packing essentials in boxes.
Breville factory outlet
Was driving past through Wattle St, Ultimo and made a quick stop to check out the Breville factory outlet. Basically the goods could be scratched, superceded, minor fault, demo or all of the above etc but are covered by warranty so in theory you could items fixed for free if they turn out to be not working - not taking into account your time to take it back and pick it up to save say $10. Most of the items couldn't be opened either as you weren't allowed to break the seal to see if you can identify the fault.
You'd think that if it's a factory outlet then maybe they're trying to just make a few bucks and get rid of their remaining stock and it wouldn't hurt to label the items with their 'reason' for being there and let the consumers decide if they want the item. Have a kind of 'first in best dressed' policy but no it's more of a 'lucky dip' if you can call it that.
The Political Compass
Find out if you lean towards the left or the right and if you're an authoritarian or a libertarian. You can also check out where Ghandi, Thatcher, Hitler and others are positioned on the graph. Link is: http://www.politicalcompass.org.
0201022: Tue
Evidence: 2002 Enmore Graphic Design Graduating Students Exhibition
Where: The
Muse, Ground Floor, C Block, Cnr of Harris & Mary Ann Street, Sydney
Open to public, 14th - 22nd November 10am - 5:30pm.
People who have set up websites to ask for money
The SMH wrote an article titled 'Buddy, can you spare a dime' which reviews a number of websites set up by people who 'cyberbeg' or ask for free accomodation... Sites mentioned include the SaveKaryn website and the Letmestayforaday website. According to the article, Karyn has received over $U.S.10,000 in donations so far.
Flashkit conference
This Flash conference is on again this year. It's on 5th December at Dockside, Cockle Bay Wharf, Sydney. For more info on topics go to: http://www.australia.internet.com/events/fk02/agenda.html
0201018: Fri
Women Build
"Women Build is an initiative of Habitat for Humanity International, a global organisation that takes action to eliminate substandard housing. It builds simple, decent and affordable homes in partnership with people that need them.
In May 2001, ‘Women Building A Legacy’ was established by Habitat for Humanity International to bring together groups of women across the globe to actively address the issue of substandard housing and its effects on the health and wellbeing of children."
Read more about this organisation and how you can help at http://www.womenbuild.com.au
Architecture's War on Words
Graham Jahn, President of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects addressed the National Press Club on the 2nd October to mark the launch of the first National Architecture Week. He talked about a number of important issues regarding architecture including: designing for environmental sustainability, the design and planning guidelines and approval process and its effect on new architecture. His critique of the planning process and other arguments are a must read. Transcript of the talk is published is at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/czone/stories/s693219.htm
Jessamyn's experience at being a researcher for Google Answers
Jessamyn West is one cool, hip, intelligent informed librarian living in the States. Her sites http://www.librarian.net and http://www.jessamyn.com are great to read. She recently wrote an article in Searcher magazine of her experience of being a researcher at Google Answers titled Information for Sale: My Experience With Google Answers. I thought it was a very interesting article to read. For services like Google to continue improving their services, one would've thought they'd be open to informed and well written critiques by professional librarians and researchers who use their service.
I had always thought of Google as being a great search engine and being innovative and fun. But then Jessamyn gets fired from being a researcher of Google Answers for not running the publication of the article through their Corporate Communications department first. The people at Google should've taken her comments on board and should employ her as a consultant to improve their services even more. But that didn't happen in this case. You can read about her experience titled 'How I Tried to Resign from Google Answers but Found I Was Already Fired' at her site.
Borrowing more books
A book titled 'Timeshifting' caught my attention. Borrowed it. Haven't read it yet. Also got out 'Property Smart' by Terry Ryder. Just processed a heap of magazines and returned these.
Good Food Month - October
There's a number of food events happening around Sydney as part of Good Food month. Check out http://www.smh.com.au/goodfoodmonth for full list of events. Two that have caught my attention are: 1. the Sydney Food & Wine Fair on Saturday 26 October from 12-3pm. It's at Hyde Park North, and 2. the Sugar Hit on every night in October from 9-11pm. You get a dessert plate and glass of dessert wine for $15. Hotels offering this deal include the Westin, Hotel Inter-Continental, Sheraton on the Park and the ANA. Sounds like a pretty yummy deal to me. I'm a night owl anyway. May try and make it to this one one night. Hmmm.
Writing better entries for your weblog
There's an article titled 'How to write a better weblog' by Dennis A. Mahoney at the Alistapart website.
Bali tragedy
Condolences to all who lost loved ones or were affected by the tragedy. The Sydney Morning Herald has a list of articles on the Bali incident.
0201011: Fri
Correlli's cafe, Erskenville
Was driving through Copeland St and decided to stop and have a look around. Discovered Correlli's cafe. They had corn fritters on their menu. Yum. They give you a salad on the side as well as chilli salsa and sour cream. Great value too at $9.50 for the corn fritter stack. Still haven't got around to trying out that corn fritter recipe. May aim to do it this or next weekend.
Residents of Erskenville probably don't think of their area as being like Berry - country NSW down south. But for some reason I felt like I was in Berry country in Erskenville. Felt very tranquil and pleasant. Maybe it's the flower shop there and the sort of relaxed, artsy but earthy feeling cafes on that part of the street.
0201010: Thu
Blogging frequency
I come across many links and interesting items all the time. I used to and still do keep an evergrowing list of links with the intention of writing all these cool links up in the weblog column when I get some time. But what happens is that the list just keeps getting longer and some of the items are slightly time sensitive ie the event may have already taken place if I don't write it soon after. So I'm going to try and start writing more frequently as I find the links.
Australian Effects & Animation Festival
It's on December 1-4 at the Sydney Convention Centre, Darling Harbour. This conference will include a whole day looking at "Creating the Digital Cast of Star Wars Episode II: A team from ILM will provide an in-depth behind-the-scenes look at the making of this landmark in digital filmmaking."
A Living Library
This article looks at a mixed-use development in Portland, Oregon which has a library on the ground floor with apartments above. Pretty cool!! If there were apartment blocks with a library as part of the complex, I'd be trying to rent a place there. It'd be a great community resource.
Philosophy and Literature
A site started by Denis Dutton a few years ago called 'Arts and Letters Daily' which was then sold to University Business LLC went bust. Now Denis has started up a new site - pretty much the same ideas for linking as the old site but now at this new address under his own banner once again. New site is at http://www.philosophyandliterature.com and its tagline is: arts, ideas, debate.
0201009: Wed
Experience Design 1
Just
finished reading/scanning through this book by Nathan Shedroff. The website
for the book is: http://www.experiencedesignbooks.com.
He writes about creating an experience through design. He says: "The
most important aspect of any design is how it is understood in the mind
of the audience." One thing he writes which I really believe in is
that "There is no such thing as objectivity... Every part of the
process of communicating is subject to the values, perspectives, and understandings
of those creating the content." He writes about the progression of
content from: data to information to knowledge to wisdom. He says that
when you get to the wisdom stage, it's a lot harder to explain things
to others as wisdom is a personal experience and it is based on your interpretations
of the knowledge you've acquired and your thinking through of that knowledge.
The resulting wisdom is also based around your own life experiences and
values which help you make sense of all the knowledge which is valid and
real for you. He illustrates examples of experience design with various
websites he's found on the web. It's an interesting book to read through
with lots of philosophies and thoughts about design and it's nicely laid
out.
Graphis Design Annual 2002
Finished looking through this annual on graphic design work. There was an interesting concept where there was a sheet of paper folded like a fan and on each of the panels there was some design on it - so it looks like mini vertical panels of a publication. I've seen book publishers do something similar. It's quite effective. Doubles as a bookmark. It's good also in that you can just read snippets of information very quickly.
There was also one interesting image/illustration. It had a man looking out from behind vertical bars and you could also see the back of a policeman's head looking in through horizontal bars which made it look like he was looking through blinds in a window to the prisoner. The conventions we attribute to lines, shapes is interesting.
I read a while back in one of those home magazines, that a woman wanted security for her doors and windows but didn't want vertical bars as she felt it looked slightly jail like. So she got the horizontal bars installed instead and there was a photograph of it and it looked quite elegant yet offered security.
There was also a photo of different coloured gummy bears for some company's annual report arranged in a semi-arc.
Gummy bears and tiny teddies
That's one thing I don't understand about lolly makers and biscuit makers. Like seriously - how could anyone possibly think about eating tiny teddy biscuits - even if they come chocolate coated as they are these days. All the bears who live on my bed, on my keyboard, and on top of drawers and tables would never forgive me.
TV timeshifting
Sometimes I tape shows with a view to watch them quickly later ie fast forward the commercials and some of boring parts or scary parts.
Sideline: another thing you can do to minimise the scary bits is to turn down the volume real low and turn up the lights. That always works as well. If you tune out one of your senses, it's like you're not getting the full effect so you don't get to feel the scary bits as much either.
Another sideline: I used to work at a place where the partitions were quite high in some places so you couldn't see the person over the other side and because you're not working on the same project, they may as well be on the other side of the planet. Anyway I remember that silly as it may sound, the people on this side often just chatted away merrily about anything and everything not realising that the visual barrier and is not a sound barrier. So sometimes when we saw the colleague who sits on the other side of the partition, she'd give us strange looks. But then we also heard all her complaints and life story when she was having deep and meaningfuls on the phones with whoever.
So anyway back to TV timeshifting. I don't watch things in sequence either so I may already know what happens say in the show '24 hours' a few episodes later which makes me even less in a hurry to watch the earlier episodes. Then I think hey to save even more time - why not just read the episode guides online. But hey why not just not watch it at all - after all you just watch TV to have some chill out time.
Catching up with friends over a movie
There's a funny thing about getting together with friends to watch a movie. It's like you're all focussed on the big screen. So you're not catching up with each other and talking away. But then I guess that activity happens before and after the movie...
0201002: Wed
Chaos Generation Zine October issue now online!
It's been a few months since the last issue. Just generally been very busy with various projects. Anyway, I put together another issue and have put it up so go and check it out at http://www.chaosgeneration.com/zine.
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2002
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2002
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June
2002
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2002
March
2002
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2002
January
2002
December 2001
November
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October
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July 2001
June 2001
About CG | Editor: Kirsten Lowe | PO Box 559, Broadway 2007, Sydney, Australia
Ph: 0410 310 238 | Fax: +61 2 9555 1752 | Email: kirsten@chaosgeneration.com