Weblog | Events | Features | Gallery | Links | Consultants directory | Zine | About | Contact Weblog> June 2003 030629: Sun 7 Ways to Turn a Profit Online Entrepreneur.com has an article titled '7 Ways to Turn a Profit Online'. These are: *Sell your own products, *Sell your own services, *Drop ship products, *Recommend affiliate products, *Sell ad space, *Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses, and *Start an affiliate program. Read the article for an explanation / elaboration of the 7 points. 030626: Thu New ASIO powers means that 16 year olds can now be detained and questioned to 'combat terrorism' Enjoy your freedom, sweet 16, but keep an eye out for ASIO - SMH Senate approves new powers for ASIO - ABC "Under the amended bill, ASIO will be able to detain people as young as 16 and question them over three eight-hour periods before they are either charged or released." Blog entrepreneur - nanopublishing: Nick Denton Wired magazine wrote this article on Nick Denton who started a blog nanopublishing business. His sites include: Gizmodo which the article says registered 232,000 page views in January 2003, and is already making a little money. Article suggests: "Launch 20 or 30 such sites, and you start to have some real income." Denton also has his own blog at http://www.nickdenton.org. Sneaker Freaker magazine I've picked up one of these Sneaker Freaker magazines some time ago along King St, Newtown somewhere. The Age had this article titled: 'Street flyers' which says there are heaps of sneaker collectors out there. A guy called Woody also has a website for Sneaker Freaker at: http://www.sneakerfreaker.com Self Portraits The ABC Online's Visual Art Space section has a feature titled 'Self-Portraits'. It's an interesting, quick read. " 'Self-Portraits' looks at how people who are practicing artists work and live. We find out what motivates them, what they love about it and what they hate. Featured artists this week include Julia Adzuki, Bob Daly and Boo Chapple." Designers' workspaces Metropolismag.com has this article which has photos of 4 New York graphic designers' workspaces/desks. The photos have items on the desk/ shelf space numbered with a brief story of the item. So check out the link if you want to have a peek at what these 4 designers' keep at their desks. Book bag The Commuter Bag is literally a book holder which can be carried like a bag. Not sure how it copes with all the different sized books you can get or if you can easily put a paperback into it ... 030624: Tue Sony Introduces Fingerprint Identity Technology for Computers Appliancemagazine.com reports that Sony is now packaging its FIU-600 Puppy® fingerprint identity device with the Puppy Suite ™ authentication software for MAC and Windows. "The FIU-600 unit connects via a USB port and authenticates users based on their fingertips. Its capacitance sensing technology electronically reads a fingerprint, and cannot be fooled by paper copies and does not require cleaning, Sony said." Young Independent Road Museum (Y.I.R.M.) The Young Independent Road Museum (Y.I.R.M.) was started by graphic artist Vladimir Ivaneanu in 2000. The museum works by having young artists moving around the city and stopping at designated stops so that people walking by from all walks of life can see and enjoy the artwork. It's taking the arts to the streets, making it accessible to all. The cities it operates in include: Brussels, Antwerp and Lier. It's a great idea! "Y.I.R.M.'s principal goals are: 1. Offer art directly and free of charge to anyone on the road, regardless of age, origin or sex. 2. Create a podium for young, undiscovered and talented artists that have just graduated or are still in school. 3. Offer the possibility of gaining the experience of an exhibition. 4. Enhance the dialogue between spectators and people from different artistic fields. 5. Give a sampling of the variation in young art. It is Y.I.R.M.'s intention to offer a wide range of styles and artistic expressions. Any classic, contemporary or directed work of art will be on exhibit, as long as its form and/or content is of superior quality." Coca-Cola CD player giveaway success Was browsing through the June 5, hard copy of the SMH the other day and noticed on p.20 was a snippet in the Spike column that reported Coke's giveaway success. They had a marketing campaign where you had to collect a number of Coke caps or coupons or something and then you get a CD player. This article reported that 50,000 CD players had already been given away and they had to order another shipment of 50,000 and even this lot would not be enough to meet demands. Wow. Saw the 'Life and Debt' film last Saturday Saw the 'Life and Debt' film at the Valhalla Cinemas in Glebe. It was a really well made documentary. It would show American tourists going to Jamaica and drinking away and sunbathing at a luxury resort and then it would cut to some local Jamaicans working on their land against more and more difficult economic conditions and Jamaicans working in the 'Free Trade Zone' - basically v.v.cheap labour and under v. strict conditions and supervision with v.little protection, earning around $4 U.S. for a week's work. The story presented a view of how U.S. and other foreign countries' policies and agendas are geared to help their own economies whilst making it increasingly difficult for the developing countries to survive and grow. The policies are designed to offer the U.S. and other wealthy economies free trade into these developing economies but to put up protectionist policies and tarriffs against these countries exporting to the U.S. and other wealthy economies. There's more info about this at the film's website. The Globalisation of Poverty Was at the library the other day and saw a book titled 'The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms' by Michel Chossudovsky. Borrowed it. Haven't read it yet. Centre for Research on Globalization But then did a google search on the author's name and found that Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa as well as Director for the Centre for Research on Globalization which has lots of articles on the topic of globalization and much more. David Katon's talk at Source 490 last Wednesday night Went to the Source 490 talk with David Katon of BKH which stands for Burton Katon Halliday. They've designed a few apartment blocks in the inner eastern suburbs and Surry Hills including 'The Republic' in East Sydney, as well as a couple of boat interiors, and houses. It was a talk looking at their last 5 years of work. Got to see slides of Siimon Reynold's place (advertising guy), and other clients' apartment fitouts etc. Lots of white used, mirrors to make the spaces look larger etc. Didn't end up seeing Zoe Wishart's talk last Tuesday night Wanted to catch Zoe Wishart at the Slidenight presentations last Tuesday night but didn't get there in the end. Wasn't feeling too crash hot beforehand. Was shivering. Then it started to rain. Much later, I realised that all I probably needed was a hot cup of tea and a hot toastie pie sandwich or something, and to get up from the computer and jog up and down for a couple of minutes. I don't usually like turning the heater on - if I'm cold I generally wear my big grey woollen coat indoors. That way it's portable too! as well as saving electricity. Anyway, I felt heaps better after dinner. TV 'Charlie's Angels' is on this Sunday night for those who want a fun night in. It's going to be on Channel 10 at 8.30pm. I like watching Andrew Denton's Enough Rope show. They had The Wiggles on last night. I was suprised to hear that Jeff Fatt is almost 50! I guess being in The Wiggles keeps you young or something. Andrew Denton also interviewed Dr Helen Caldicott - an anti-nuclear campaigner (who has also been awarded a Nobel Prize for her efforts) who talked about the need for education of the effects of nuclear weapons and said that the population should lead the leaders in their decision making etc. She said some pretty scary and important stuff. Watched 'The Road Home' on SBS last week. It was such beautiful film. Movies like 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' must've been a walk in the park for Zhang Ziyi acting wise. She really carried the film 'The Road Home'. She was just so expressive with her movements, her facial expressions. It's such a simple story yet she holds our interest through the whole film and then you feel uplifted for having watched it. Zhang Yimou directed it beautifully. Watched 'The Replacement Killers' on TV also. Almost missed noticing it in the TV Guide. It was on one night recently around 11.30pm. I thought it may be an ok shoot em up action flick and almost got it on sale at Grace Bros last week. Glad I didn't. I even thought 'Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever' was kind of funny with Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas but this one wasn't even funny. All the usual cliches except for the one where the hero kisses the girl at the end. So many cliches that it's not even worth mentioning any of them here. I thought Choy Yun Fat was pretty good in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' but not sure about this film choice. Also read somewhere but lost track of the source that he had turned down the role of Morpheus in 'The Matrix'. Don't know if that is truth or fiction but after seeing Laurence Fishburne, I can't imagine Choy Yun Fat in that role. 030618: Wed Chaos Generation Zine Issue #4 June 18, 2003 now live Check it out at http://www.chaosgeneration.com/zine. Have been busy and so hadn't put one out for a while but will produce an issue every fortnight from now on. Will add interviews and other features to the zine and website soon! The Road Home movie - on SBS tonight at 10pm There's a movie festival on SBS on Wednesday nights for the next 6 weeks. Tonight's movie is The Road Home starring Zhang Ziyi and Sin Honglei. It's one of those stay at home by the log fire heater (not that I have one of those but anyway it's the imagery that's important ...) munching on freshly popped popcorn, caramello chocolate, salt + vinegar chips and drinking hot chocolates with marshmallows kind of night :-). the (sydney) magazine July issue - is out today. Free with today's SMH I quite like this freebie, well free if you get today's paper or wait for the extras that make their way into various music shops etc. July's issue has got Simon Baker on the cover. Article/ad for it here. 030617: Tue Slidenight 1.9 Zoe Wishart Zoe Wishart will be the speaker at tonight's Slidenight at the Spanish Club. The site cites here as a "Brilliant and understated graphic designer from Wishart Design. Check out her work at www.wishartdesign.com". Will go to that tonight. So many logins and passwords to remember Thought I'd better pay my mobile phone bill and so logged into the website but then didn't get the combination right and had to ring the phone company. Put on hold for a while. Then got a temporary password smsed to my phone. Go in and found that I had actually set my payment to automatically deduct the amount every month anyway. So I needn't have done anything. I find it hard to remember so many different logins and passwords for everything - especially if you don't access some things regularly. And you're not meant to write some of these down for security reasons. Also if you work at more than one place, and the IT department have set up the systems to prompt you to change your password every month or so, it makes it even harder. You end up resorting to use sequential number increments but then you forget what number you're up to sometimes. Just off the top of my head there's login/passwords for ATMs, logging into various email accounts, logging onto the intranet, to view your bank accounts, to pay bills for different suppliers, to access your control panel page for your website, to renew your domain name or to update your details, to log into various online communities and groups, blah blah blah... Also, you can't even use the same login and password for everything because your words/numbers plus 3 or 4 other variations of your preferred login name have already been used by someone else and different providers specify different minimum and maximum number of characters and some require a mix of letters and numbers etc etc Charlton Hill performing at Bar Broadway He's going to peforming at Bar Broadway on Thursday June 19. Haven't ever seen perform his songs live yet so will try and go to this. Whitlams Saw a posters stuck to telegraph poles advertising the Whitlams will be playing a show at the Metro theatre on August 1. I haven't seen them live yet either. Back issues of magazines for sale In the States, newsagents etc seem to keep a few back issues of a magazine for sale. This is great! In Sydney, you can only get the current issue. The retailers send the previous one back pretty much straight away. Website Site back up again. Yay! Would've been nice if customer service had just simply contacted me to check/verify some record details, rather than just deciding to take the site offline for a few days with no explanation, no warning and no way for me to contact them over the weekend to find out what the problem was and to sort it out. 030612: Thu Too much coffee man Saw this magazine at Borders in the city. Saw that they have a website listed. It's: http://www.toomuchcoffeeman.com. It is GREEAAT! I love the website. There's a really cool interview in Issue #15 - 'The Small Press Issue' with Dan Sinker of Punk Planet about Punk Planet, zine and independent publishing and heaps more. It's an inspiring read! You can get to the article by going to 'the magazine' then clicking 'archives' then selecting issue #15, then clicking 'Dan Sinker - Punk Planet [full article]' or you can go there directly here but the article will be unframed. I want to get this issue. #17 is at Borders so I may get that also. Winter Sales have started The Winter Sales started today. Thought I'd walk to the city after work to see if there was much happening. Grace Bros was really busy. David Jones was pretty busy too from what I gather. Didn't stay there too long. There were crowds of city workers browsing the tables and racks of clothes etc. Thought I'd go home and have some dinner instead. Looks like retailers are quite happy to sell videos quite cheaply these days figuring that people generally go for DVDs. At the Grace Bros city store, I saw heaps of newish videos going for around $10 - don't quite remember exactly. But this included a double set of Dogma + Good Will Hunting for around $13 or so. There was Kiss of the Dragon - Jet Li and Bridget Fonda, Someone Like you - Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd, The Replacement Killers wtih Chow Yun Fat, lots of old James Bond titles, and heaps and heaps of other stuff! all going for around $10 or maybe it was cheaper because I remember thinking that instead of renting a video you could buy a new one for around the same price. Didn't get anything in the end. May go back some other time. The Madonna American Life CD was going for $20.95 as well as other Top 40 CDs. 030611: Wed Sam Marshall slide night presentation Went to the Sam Marshall (another link from 'Houses' magazine) Slide Night at the Spanish Club last night. It was great! He is so enthusiastic and he talked about his process, his love of geometric shapes, appreciating the raw materials rather than trying to cover it, function, using elements for various purposes eg a pond in the courtyard also functions as additonal seating on the edge, a bed head also extends along the wall to become shelving etc. He also said he liked how a client who were film makers said that they wouldn't expect him to tell them how to make a film so they weren't going to try and be the architect and basically left him to the design of the building. That's cool. It was a good turnout of people. Sam Marshall spoke for 2 hours and the time just seemed to whizz by. He was a great presenter and inspires you to just go for it and get on with it as well. Great value too at $5. Got out at 9.30pm. Was feeling pretty hungry by then so got a bus home and had some pumpkin soup for a late night snack. 030610: Tue Bic Runga playing at the Basement Bic Runga's going to be playing some shows at the Basement, Sydney from Monday 16 - Friday 20 June. Cost $30. Walk down King St Went for a walk down King St yesterday. It was such a beautiful day and almost all the shops and cafes were open on the Queen's birthday Monday public holiday. Picked up some free press magazines from various record/clothing shops: Fresh, Stu, the (sydney) magazine, New Metro Times, Lucky, The Brag, and RealTime + OnScreen. Art/Design/Architecture bookshops Had come across the 'Published Art' bookshop online and thought I'd check it out on Saturday afternoon. It's at Shop 2, 23-33 Mary St, Surry Hills. It was pretty good. There were a few publications I hadn't seen anywhere else before. It was basically 3 walls lined with display shelves so you could see the cover of each item being displayed with a table in the middle. Worth a look if you haven't been already. It's been open for 3.5 years already. Then went to the Building Bookshop at 525 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills. Hadn't been to that one either even though I drive along Elizabeth St at least 3 or 4 times a week. This bookshop has a lot of books and magazines as well, and also sells Australian Building Standards and Building Contracts etc. It also had tables of reduce priced books. The vibe at this bookshop was a little more chaotic, busy feeling, whereas the other one was more a display, designy feel. You can get a chance to win the Eames lounge valued at over $7k if you spend $50 or more. I usually go to the Ariel bookshop on Oxford St, Paddington when I want to browse design/art/architecture books. Now I have another two places I can go to. There is also the Dome Bookshop at the top of William St, Kings Cross but I don't know if that one is still operational. Driving past, I couldn't see the book shelves upstairs anymore. Will find out for sure some time. Upcoming events Have updated the events page. Still have heaps more to add as soon as I find some time ... Added 12 items so far. Sam Marshall - architect is giving a slide night presentation tonight. I wanted to check out his work at a Source 490 talk last year but had something else on so will try and make it tonight. If you want the details, go to the events page. 030603: Tue AGDA Student Lab website The AGDA Student Lab website is a great resource for graphic design students with news, competitions, event notices and more for students. Coloring Outside the Lines 'Coloring Outside the Lines' is a nice article written by Erin Malone reminds us all to live life and smell the roses. Here here! Webby Awards nominees The Webby Award winners for 2003 will be announced on June 5th. Check out the nominees' websites at http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html. Free Metadata workshops If you're interested in attending a free workshop on metadata in your city, then click here for more info and to register to attend. Unraveling the Mysteries of metadata and taxonomies If you want to understand more about information architecture, metadata, taxonomies and more then check out this article titled 'Unraveling the Mysteries of metadata an taxonomies' where "Christina Wodtke of Boxes and Arrows interviews Samantha Bailey (former Argonaut and current lead IA for Wachovia Corporation's Wachovia.com website) about Information Architecture, her dream process and the mysteries of metadata and taxonomies." Trimming back the chilli forest The chilli plants are getting really big! A lot of them had already fallen onto the white pebbles. So today, I cut back the chilli forest and then cut off the chillis and put them into a shopping bag. There's a whole bag full of them now, and there's still plenty left on the tree. Will take them to work to see if any of my colleagues want to take them home to spice up their meals. Maybe I could start growing them in separate pots and sell them or give them away or something. Maybe I could give them to the local Thai restaurants and see if they want them. 030602: Mon The Skateboard, The City, and Socio-Spatial Censorship This is an interesting article by Iain Borden, Prof. of Architecture and Urban Culture at the Univeristy College of London. Borden sees skateboarding as a creative use of public space. He sees that they shun the conventions of urban life and the capitalist society through their use of the space. They use and "occupy urban space without engaging in economic activity of interiors... Further, skateboarding produce no things, no services, and instead disrupts the apparent 'efficiency' and 'economic' logic of urban space, undertaking an activity which, by business standards, has an entirely different rationale... The triumph of non-labour, however, does not entail an absence of effort but an even more profound redefinition of what 'production' might mean, and it is here too that skateboarding strikes at the heart of the business city. At first sight, skateboarders' labour produces no 'products' beyond the moves skaters make, a 'commodity' exchangeable only by means of performative action. Furthermore, skateboarders, like students, offer a potential labour force but they deny this by undertaking seemingly meaningless productions, and so appear to waste effort and time. But that 'principle of economy' which sees a 'waste' of energy as abnormal is itself a reduction of life to mere survival. Skateboarding, in contrast, undertakes a release of energy that either creates or modifies space, espousing play, art and festival." Digital Wallpaper Design Competition - Prize: $5000 Cash This competition has been organised by Flash Photobition. Entries close September 2003. For more info go to: http://www.flash.com.au/images/entry.pdf Saturday InDesign - showrooms tour - July 19 in Sydney If you're interested in checking out some of Sydney's leading design showrooms, then go to: http://www.saturday.indesign.com.au/saturday/index.html and register your interest in the event. Weblog Index June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 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