Weblog | Events | Features | Gallery | Links | Consultants directory | Zine | About | Contact Weblog> April 2003 030424: Thu Supermarket shopping nightmare I took today off so I thought I'd be smart and do my grocery shopping before lunch. Will never do that again! All I really wanted to get was some milk and bread (I could've gone across the road to the BP to get that) but then thought I'd also get dinner and food for tomorrow organised. First there was no parking so I parked much further away then I usually need to, then there were no trolleys so I used a hand basket then there were long queues, then with lots of bags on my arms, I tried to find a trolley - they still didn't have any, so went back up to the carpark, then took me a while to find my car again then finally made it home. Don't know where all those people come from but before lunch time is obviously a busy time to shop - at Marrickville Metro anyway. Will stick to my 9pm shopping time in future where there are no crowds, plenty of parking, and often reduced price bread and chicken and other stuff even. Either that or start shopping online at places like ShopFast or GreenGrocer. Time is valuable and you don't want to waste it on shopping for groceries unless you find that a fun activity - which I don't. POL Oxygen Went to the newsagent at Marrickville and did pick up an April/May copy of POL Oxygen though. This one features Deanne Cheuk of NeoMu and who spoke at the Semi-Permanent conference, which I wrote up further down. Buying advance tickets for Matrix Reloaded A Hoyts newsletter a few days ago said that you can buy advance tickets to the 'Matrix Reloaded' movie on the 24th of April. Then I got a Hoyts email around 10pm on 23rd April to say you can buy tickets now. So I tried to get tickets for the 11.59pm session at Broadway. But the site wouldn't process the order. So at 12am just now I tried again and it went through. So that should be fun. Will probably be queueing in a very long queue on the night of Thursday May 15th but hey, it'll be fun to see it with all the other midnight owl fans. Finished writing up my thoughts/review on the Semi-Permanent conference too. See below. Semi-Permanent design conference I went to the Semi-Permanent conference on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th April. There were heaps of people there - over 2000. It was meant to start on Friday morning at 10.45am so I guess people just rocked up like 30 minutes earlier to pick up their tickets to go in. But attendees had to queue for miles. It was interesting to see all the varied fashions, styles, colours etc that the attendees were wearing. Any image brands that target the younger hip demographic should have been there just to observe and absorb! Attendees weren't sent their tickets - just an order confirmation number. So you had to wait in line to get your ticket and then tell them what size t-shirt you want and whether you wanted a men's or a woman's style t-shirt. They quickly ran out of the popular sizes too. But luckily the organisers realised they'd be there till 1 or 2pm if they kept going with their existing system so in the end they just let everyone in and then told us to get our tickets - a sweatband for entry, sometime in the morning or at lunch break. The Semi-Permanent pack came with a Diesel t-shirt and a Semi-Permanent book with the speakers' works in it as well as some other invited artists' work - a lot of the invited works featured graffiti artwork. The stands were pretty packed also. Attendees were buying digital design books, DVDs, t-shirts, plastic figurines and more from the IDNProShop and the Design is Kinky stands. You could get the April edition of 'Desktop' magazine for a gold coin - to be donated to the Red Cross so that was cool and Diesel were handing out chocolate bars. So the conference began. Program was as follows: Day 1 Fri: * One9ine - Matt Owens & Lee Misenheimer - http://www.one9ine.com * The Revolution - http://www.therevolution.com.au * K10K - Toke Nygaard & Michael Schmidt - http://www.k10k.net They spoke about their interactive agency Cuban Council - http://www.cubancouncil.com and the design of the website, the process of thinking of cigars, and wood, and taking photos of the building and adding a large billboard poster in photoshop over what is actually a grocery store or something. They would develop designs and then may end up throwing most or all of it away and then starting again. They're also in the same building as the Future Farmers i.e. Amy Franceschini et al. * 123Klan - Scien & Klor - http://www.123klan.com They're graffiti artists from France who now do graphic design and more. * Animal Logic - http://www.animallogic.com A woman who does titles design spoke about her work on Garage Days. Thought they would talk about some of their high profile projects as they're always interesting to hear about. But they didn't. * Nicola Stumpo - http://www.abnormalbehaviorchild.com Italian designer. He was very energetic, vibrant, and fun and has developed some interesting characters which he continues to experiment with i.e. using different colours, backgrounds etc Day 2 Sat: * Josh Baker and Jon Baker They're twin brothers and their presentation was great! They work at different design companies a couple of blocks from each other in Crows Nest. They talked about their out of hours work including a music video clip they shot over 3 nights for an unsigned artist. They did it for $800! It looked great too - as good as anything on Video Hits. They had a video presentation in the background which synced with their live presentation. It was really cool! They also shot footage of them working and being lads in their office environment and more. They were just inspiring, really cool guys. Australian InFront - http://www.australianinfront.com Rinzen - http://www.rinzen.com - Australian design collective doing some nice illustration, design work. They did the Moonlight Cinema promotions for example. * Bradley Grosh - http://www.gmunk.com He replaced Nando Costa http://www.hungryfordesign.com as he had visa problems. Bradley was really fun. Showed the audience heaps of his work and showed us some material that didn't get accepted by the clients. The work was good anyway, but he showed us that you can't always 'get' what the client wants, and that's just life. * Deanne Cheuk - http://www.neomu.com Deanne is awesome! She's originally from Perth and is now in New York. She started designing fliers for nightclubs and saved up money to produce her own design magazine called Mu. She produced a few of these over the years. I remember seeing one - probably in 1998? and thought it was great and quite different to anything I'd seen before in a design, layout sense. I would look out for the next one but never saw another one. I was lucky to have come across that one. She has worked for David Carson and is now in great demand working on a number of high profile fashion/design magazines and other projects. Stussy get her to design a range of t-shirts, a denim jacket and she does a whole heap of other stuff. She also does a lot of illustration work and often incorporates this into her design/layout work. She is one very talented and focussed woman! I'm really glad I got to listen to her presentation. She's really just gone and done it and really pushed herself and has created some very interesting and original work. * Insertsilence - James Paterson & Amit Pitaru - http://www.intersilence.com These guys are doing some interesting work syncing music to visual design and developing tools to look at visual art in three dimensions and more. Don't know about the speakers but it felt quite draining after two days of listening, watching, and absorbing all the presentations. It was really inspiring and great to see all this work and to hear the stories behind the work, and to hear how these people got together, how they got into it, what they do, their process etc. The common theme is that these people are talented for sure, but they also put a huge amount of effort into their work and basically live and breathe their work. Design is their life! They keep pushing themselves, pushing boundaries, exploring new ideas, techniques, experimenting etc. They often see the client work as the bread and butter 'annoyance' that has to be done and then after hours, it's onto their own projects and that's where the real 'fun' and challenges begin. They get that brilliant through sheer hard work. They put the time in. They put the energy in. They put their heart and soul into their work and they keep on thinking and working at it and on it. That's how they get to become world beaters! Overall, it was a great 2 days and you leave feeling inspired and wanting to just get on with it so that maybe you too can kick butt! Good on Designiskinky for organising it. Good on IdN for organising the Fresh Conference in September 2001! One final observation: I remember the early digital design presentations focussed on the technology, then it moved onto creating interactive multimedia material, then it moved onto digital art and photography, and then this conference seemed to focus a lot on illustration - it's almost as if the technology has now become a 'tool' again and the focus is now back onto creating 'artwork' but now it's created in the digital medium if you know what I mean. Green Living Book Saw this book on the Yahoo Shopping pages: Green Living: A Practical Guide To Housekeeping For A Healthy Planet by Sarah Callard & DianeMillis. It was published on April 1, 2003. It looks interesting and practical. It's also going for $6.95 with a R.R.P of $35 - don't know how they can offer it at that price as it's a new release but anyway... Noam Chomsky interviewed This article in zmag gives Chomsky's view of why the U.S. invaded Iraq and other questions related to the agendas behind the war. It's an interesting read. Monitoring Web Pages 24 Hours a Day This article in SearchEngineWatch by Chris Sherman, lists 4 web page monitoring services and gives a description of each service: WebSite-Watcher - http://www.aignes.com WatchThatPage - http://www.watchthatpage.com - free to individual users TrackEngine - http://www.trackengine.com - free to individual users InfoMinder - http://www.infominder.com Library tries to ban Harry Potter books The SMH features an article titled 'Judge overrules Harry Potter ban' reporting that the school board of the Cedarville School District in western Arkansas banned Harry Potter books from the school district's library shelves claiming that tales of wizards and spells were harmful. A federal judge ordered the books to be put back onto the library shelves.Wow. Unbelievable. The people in favour of the ban may as well ban TV, movies and other media as the kids may be exposed to things like 'Buffy', 'Bewitched' and 'Sabrina the teenage witch' among other things. 030420: Sun Freebie magazines It's been raining on and off throughout the day over the last few days. I like this kind of weather - also we need the rain! It's also been getting colder. Was after some dinner. Drove along King St, Newtown, parked the car, then started walking to see what was open on Easter Sunday. Ended up going back to Doytao and getting take-away. All their tables were taken. But before getting back into the car, we went into a music store. Picked up some cool goodies. The street press is pretty diverse these days. So picked up a copy of: RealTime + OnScreen, The (Sydney) Magazine - this is a SMH production but I missed it in the paper. Was really hoping to see it again or just to buy it from Fairfax so that I could check it out, and ended up seeing a copy tonight!, Travellers Map magazine - hadn't seen this one before, Cyclic Defrost No. 3 - this issue's packaged in a cool way - I actually thought for a second it was one of those old records, Scope and Out4Fame No. 20. So ate the Thai take-away - pad thai and yellow chicken curry with steamed rice and apple cider then settled in to flick through some of these magazines with a cup of tea close by. I have way too many books out from the library and returned a whole batch today - maybe 7. Was reading madly yesterday trying to process some of these before returning them. But then I couldn't help myself. Got another 6 or so out including: The Wisdom of Thoreau, Cartooning for Kids, and Contemporary Chinese women painters. Saw my first 'Bookcrossing' book today at the library. It was pretty cool. But didn't pick it up. Had too many other things to read already. Photo blog Saw Brendan McKitrick's photo blog on the Aussie weblogs site. It's cool to have photos to go with the text. His layout is quite simple and elegant too. Can't buy me love 'Can't buy me love' is a cool article featured on the Moneymanager.com.au website, outlining the concept of 'enough' and that money doesn't bring you more happiness after a certain level of having your needs met. The article also features a few people who have opted out of the rat race to a more casual and simpler lifestyle or who have chosen another career path which is their passion, despite earning less money. Semi Permanent conference It was a great conference. Have been meaning to write it up. Will write up my observations/thoughts of it soon. 030413: Sun They just did it This article in the online version of AFR Boss features some successful business people and tells how they just got started - often with no capital and no experience in that particular field. They had passion, drive and determination. The people featured are: People featured in Part 1: - John Symond managing director, Aussie Home Loans - Gillian Franklin managing director, the Heat Group - cosmetics - Lindsay Fox founder, Fox Group Holdings - trucking/transport services - Dare Jennings founder and creative director, Mambo People featured in Part 2: - Darrell Wade & Geoff Manchester co-founders, Intrepid Travel - Patria Jafferies director, Dome Group - coffee - Dr Jurgen Klein founder, managing director, Jurlique International - natural beauty products - John Schaeffer executive chairman, Tempo Services - corporate cleaning services - Antonio & Karen Zeccola founders, Palace Cinemas and Palace Films - Zareh Nalbandian, managing director, & Chris Godfrey, senior visual effects supervisor, Animal Logic Blood, sweat and ideas AFR Boss interviews Richard Donkin about some of the ideas and observations in his book titled 'Blood, Sweat & Tears: The evolution of work' "an analysis of the evolution of work, from the Stone Age to the first real “jobs”, the Protestant work ethic and beyond." These include: the observation that a lot of people are motivated to go to work by fear i.e. mortgages, regular income etc. The article notes that "People tend to live to their means, and if they get a pay rise they go on holidays or renovate the house rather than build a buffer. Freelance living needs a financial buffer. You need to be able to say no, to have money in the bank; then you can increase the quality of the work you do and hopefully the income you are earning." Another cool idea relates to change where people have to be introduced to it gradually and so that people have a chance to understand it and to get comfortable with it and then it goes on from there. One other really cool idea is that workers should be judged by results: "it seems ridiculous to say you should work a 40-hour week if you can get the work done in 20 hours. But there seems to be a sort of managerial greed there that says “Ah well, if you can do it in 20 hours you can do twice as much in 40 hours,” but the deal doesn’t work like that. No entrepreneur works that way and I think people have got to become much more entrepreneurial and individualistic in their thinking." Donkin took a year off from FT to work on his book and then he realised he didn't want to go back. He now works as a freelancer. Workers 'want art inspiration' The BBC News (UK) site has this article that says the Arts and Business organisation quizzed over 1000 workers and found that "while 41% said they would like discounted tickets (for art events), 32% opted for corporate gym membership and 29% for a subsidised canteen." "Companies perceived as being successful by their employees were more likely to have art on their walls, said 52% of respondents, than those viewed as unsuccessful companies." Have a cuppa for Cancer Research Organise a morning tea at your workplace and donate the proceeds to Cancer Research. For more details go to: http://www.biggestmorningtea.com.au. 030409: Wed 34 ideas for promoting your intranet James Robertson of Step Two Designs lists 34 ideas for promoting your company's intranet. Knowledge management seminar Thu night - FREE event This month's NSW KM Forum sounds interesting. It's on tomorrow night. Speaker 1: James Dellow - Ernst and Young on Linking Knowledge Mapping theory to practice Speaker 2: Christena Singh - Office of Small Business - Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources. Christena will outline the development of a knowledge management strategy for the Office of Small Business.and describes a knowledge audit that was undertaken using a social network analysis technique. Details are at: http://www.knowledge.standards.com.au/KM/INFO/NSWFORUM/NSWFORUM.HTM Arrive at 286 Sussex St before 5:30pm in order to get into the building. Proceed to level 6. Meeting to finish by 7pm Buying a second hand car Moneymanager has an article titled 'Driving a bargain' and discusses what you can get for between $5 - $10k and what to look out for. It's a good article to read if you're looking to get a set of wheels. Madonna special on TV Watched the Madonna interview by Richard Wilkins on Monday night. I think she's one mega smart and awesome woman. Wilkins asked her how she was able to predict fashion trends or something, and she said it was intuition. My view is that she tunes into what's happening in the world, analyses and interprets it and conveys her understanding and feelings about those issues through her music. The reason she can predict these trends is that she's a leader - she sets the trends and others identify with her and follow her trends. I loved the music video 'American Dream'. It was visually very interesting and the music and lyrics were great. Got the new Charlton Hill CD Went to Broadway last night and got the Charlton Hill CD from Fish records, picked up some mail, bought ingredients for dinner then went home. 030407: Mon Charlton Hill I heard him sing an acoustic version of 'Deep' I think it was, on Sunrise a couple of weeks ago. I listened to bits of his songs at his site http://www.charltonhill.com and like his music. Will get it next time I go into a music store. I like the acoustic versions of his songs better. More on 'What Should I Do with My Life' by Po Bronson In the Feb 2003 weblog, I linked to a Fastcompany article about Bronson's book. Have since found more articles on the book. NPR did an interview with Bronson titled 'What Should I Do With My Life?' Book Chronicles Quest to Answer 'Ultimate' Question. NPR also have a link to one of the interviewee's story - Rick Olson, a lawyer turned truck driver titled 'What Should I Do With My Life?' One Man's Answer. You can read a bit about six of the people featured in his book at his site here. His site in general is at http://www.pobroson.com. I plan on getting the book when it hits the retail bookshelves here in mid April. Third Annual Weblog Awards The winners of each category were announced in March. Check out the nominees' and winners' websites of the 2003 Bloggies. 030406: Sun Google stuff Google has a page on search tips to get the most out of the Google search engine. The article is titled 'Building a better query'. Also you can check out the Google weblog for more Google news. Australian Financial Review (AFR) Boss Club Transcripts You can read the transcripts of the AFR Club events here. Speakers at these events have included: David Huttner of Virgin Blue and Robert Morgan of Clemenger Communications. I went to the AFR Adam Spencer interviews CEOs presentation at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney last Thursday night. There were probably around 1000 people in the audience that night. It was kind of interesting but I felt like I'd heard most of the business 'wisdom' before - probably from other interviews, books etc. I also didn't find the presentation as interesting as I thought it would be. I guess part of the reason is that I'm no longer working in the 'corporate' world as such. These days, I'm generally much more interested in hearing about people doing their own thing, starting their own businesses, zines, having fun with their hobbies, passions, being environmentally and socially conscious etc. 030405: Sat The Ladies Room - book review Laura Demasi interviews the following women in this book: - Collette Dinnigan - fashion designer - Donna Hay - chef, author - Elizabeth MacGregor - director of the MCA - Gale Edwards - theatre director - Jan Chapman - film producer - Kirsty Sword Gusmao - activist and East Timor's first lady - Lee Tulloch - editor, writer - Libbi Gorr - satirist, writer, presenter - Liz Broderick - Testra NSW Business Woman and Corporate Woman of the Year, lawyer - Marion Hume - fashion journalist, editor - Rachel Perkins - aboriginal activist - Simone Young - Music director of Opera Australia, conductor This book was a great read! Demasi interviews these amazing women with amazing stories to tell. You learn about their aspirations, their attitudes to life, their courage, their passion, the way they deal with obstacles and setbacks, their support networks, their background, their environment and their journey to get to where they are today. Each has achieved what they have in their own unique way. It's a book well worth reading, buying and keeping. It's a book you can refer to for inspiration as these women's stories are truly inspiring. Your Money or Your Life - book review It was a good read! It's based around the idea that: "Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for". So for example, if you're slogging away 9-5 trying to make a buck doing work you don't enjoy to earn money then you're essentially trading your life energy for money. But then what if you can reduce your expenditure by eating out less in restaurants because it was more of a convenience thing anyway, or buying one less pair of shoes because you don't really need it and it doesn't make you any happier etc, then you essentially don't need to earn as much money to pay for all these things. Then maybe you don't need to work all those hours, and you have more time to do other activities and to work on other projects that you are passionate about and which makes you happy. It also looks at aligning your values and passions with what you do so you're happy and feel a sense of fulfilment at work and at play. The book consists of 9 steps to get yourself onto the path of financial independence by: keeping track of your income and expenses and how to maxmise your income and minimise your expenses, getting you thinking about what you want to be doing with your life, and then to think about investments so that you can be on your way to achieving financial independence. Then you can do whatever you want without having to worry about earning money to live. The 9 steps outlined in the book are: Step 1: Making Peace With The Past Step 2: Being In The Present -- Tracking Your Life Energy Step 3: Where Is It All Going? (The Monthly Tabulation) Step 4: Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life Step 5: Making Life Energy Visible Step 6: Valuing Your Life Energy -- Minimizing Spending Step 7: Valuing Your Life Energy -- Maximizing Income Step 8: Capital And The Crossover Point Step 9: Managing Your Finances You can read the summary of the book here at the Simpleliving.net site. So if you want to achieve financial independence and use your life energy to do what you want to do then this book provides a good introductory overview of how to get there. 030403: Thu Michael Moore Good on you Michael! Read the details in an article in The Age titled 'Why I made that speech'. He says: "And, as I walked up to the stage, I was still thinking about the lessons that morning at Mass. About how silence, when you observe wrongs being committed, is the same as committing those wrongs yourself. And so I followed my conscience and my heart." You can also check out his website at: http://www.michaelmoore.com. Supanova 2003 Supanova is a pop culture expo and includes comicfest. If you want to know more, go to: http://www.supanova.com.au. It's on Saturday April 5 and Sunday April 6 at Wharf 8, 53-59 Hickson Rd, Sydney. Open from 10am - 6pm. $15 at the door for a single day seems a bit expensive though. Abby Dobson Saw posters around light poles in Enmore of Abby Dobson performing at the Hopetoun in Surry Hills tomorrow night! Tickets are $7. I thought she was excellent in Leonardo's Bride and she's sung with Paul Mac in more recent times. Catch her if you can. Sarah-Jane clothing sale "Sarah-Jane will be selling off all remaining Summer 2002 clothing and accessories at ridiculous prices!!!" Fabrics will be on sale too. - quoted from their email newsletter. It's on again Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th April from 10am - 4pm. It's at the rear of Sarah-Jane Newtown, Enter via lane off Missenden Road - opposite Campos Coffee. Cash only. Sarah-Jane clothes are pretty nice. I like their range of skirts. But you really do have to get in there really early to get the good stuff, and fight your way through that narrow driveway path. Darling Harbour CD and book sale Was working in the area so checked it out after work. There are rows of trestle tables with mainly CDs and books on the tables taking up the whole of Hall 4 at the Sydney Exhibition and Convention centre. There were some titles I probably would've bought had they been cheaper. I found the items a bit expensive for 'sale items'. The really cheap ones are ones they can't move. There were a few 'hangover' (not that I am often found in that state, I just like that type of music), loungey chillout CDs I would've bought if they were like $10 but they were hovering around the $20 mark. I don't consider that a bargain, considering that you can get chart CDs from the Kmarts and Metro Woolworths etc for a few dollars more usually, plus you get the latest releases rather than the slightly dated ones. The left half of the hall was the books section. I was called away for dinner before I had a chance to check these out. The books might be more promising. May check it out next time I'm in the area. I was told the 'sale' goes on for 4 weeks. Borrowed books on my current reading list - Making the most of small spaces by Crafti, Stephen - Living in Sydney by Boisi, Antonella - internet.au magazine - One space living by Inions, Cynthia - The Sydney Morning Herald good food guide 2003 by Evans, Matthew - Big questions in science by Swain, Harriet - Country houses of Tuscany by Stoeltie, Barbara - Nickel and dimed : undercover in low-wage USA by Ehrenreich, Barbara - Concrete design by Gaventa, Sarah - Sonic graphics : seeing sound by Woolman, Matt - Tibet : the secret continent by Peissel, Michel - Furniture & architecture by Heathcote, Edwin - Realms of impossibility : air by Lim, C.J - Ainsley Harriott's low fat meals in minutes by Harriott, Ainsley - Trust me : I'm a real estate agent by Wood, Ray - The great sales book by Collis, Jack - Bread by Hensperger, Beth Borrowed music on my current listening list: - Garage mahal by Taxiride - 3000 feet high by Paul Mac - White lilies island by Imbruglia, Natalie March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 October 2001 September 2001 August 2001 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