independence : inspiration : ideas : lifestyle : sustainability : humanity : well-being : fun

Weblog | Events | Features | Gallery | Links | Consultants directory | Zine | About | Contact Weblog> July 2003 030728: Mon Weekend On Friday night, went to the 3 Monkeys then onto Spanish Terrazas for tapas for friend's birthday. It was a fun night. Decided to leave the car overnight in the parking station. I'm not a big drinker but it was quite easy to drink the sangria. Didn't think I was over the limit but wasn't absolutely sure. Then got up earlyish on Saturday morning. Got 2 buses to get to the Australian Centre of Photography on Oxford St, Paddington for a talk titled 'My Xerox Weighs a Tonne' at 1pm - it was a talk about zines. Speakers were artist Lucas Ihlein, artist and publisher Max Doyle and ACP director Alasdair Foster. It was a really great talk! I was really interested in the content of the talk. Misha Hollenbach and Shauna Toohey of Perks&Mini curated the exhibition. The exhibition features black and white blown up photocopies plastered over the walls with a couple of video screens. The exhibit is on till 31st August if you want to catch it. Then went to lunch at a cafe along Oxford St. Then bussed back into town, picked up the car, then went to the Performance Space in Cleveland St as I heard that Lucas Ihlein had an exhibit there and it was the last day. There were 4 artists' works being shown there. Then went to the Boutwell Draper Gallery and saw Darren Sylvester's photographic work. Interesting comments about society. Wanted to see David M Thomas' work there but walked about before realising this - maybe there was another room at the back. May go back during the week to check out his work. Then went over to the folks place and cooked dinner whilst the Rugby match was playing. The All Blacks won. Oh well. On Sunday, I finished reading Justin Herald's book titled 'Would you like Attitude with that?'. It's a great motivational book. Gives you a boost, reminds you to just get on with it and to stay focussed, and to keep going as it takes time and effort. Also you're not meant to worry about obstacles as everyone encounters them, you just work your way through them, around them and get onto the next thing. Also keep your eye on your bigger goals and just keep inching towards those goals. It was a well written book and very easy to read. Then did a few hours of client work. Then went to the Red Carpet film festival in Glebe. The theme was Freedom and it was run in partnership with Amnesty International. The films were great - some very thought provoking, and some were also very heart wrenching, emotional stories. There were also a couple of fun ones as well which was good. More on the films later. Then went home. Had some dinner. Watched the first Australian Idol show - more like auditions show. Don't know why but I have a real interest in these types of shows. And now it's already 12.49am. So I'd better get some shut eye if I want to be alert for work tomorrow. 030724: Thu Blogging for Bucks Read this article titled 'Blogging for Bucks' from 'Wired News'. Very interesting read about Rafat Ali making around U.S. $60-80K in advertising and sponsorship for his weblog Paidcontent.org this year. He updates it all by himself throughout the day. He started it in June 2002. It's an interesting read! Metadata Mark II Webmonkey has an article titled 'Metadata Mark II' which may be of interest to anyone knowing more about metadata. Sections of the article are: 1 Metadata, Mark II, 2 Metadata Background, 3 Getting on the Map with GeoURL, 4 Getting Busy with SMBmeta, 5 Dublin Core, Curriculum, 6 Resource Description Framework, 7 You've Got a Friend Of A Friend. 'Happy and Clean' show with Martin Murphy Martin Murphy gets into his Bob Honking character for this one man comedy show titled 'Happy and Clean'. I saw it on Tuesday night at the Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomooloo. It's worth seeing! He's funny! I especially love the bear! You can get tickets online at Lastminute.com.au. But hurry as season ends on July 27, 2003. Saturday Indesign Showrooms Tour Went to the Saturday Indesign Showrooms Tour last Saturday. It was a great idea in that interior and furniture design showrooms opened their doors to the public. Some of these outlets are open during the week and weekends anyway, but to have a day with free shuttle buses carting people around with free fine food, drink and entertainment at the various showrooms made it into a festive occasion. It's also a lot less intimidating walking into these showrooms when there are heaps of other people walking through at the same time. The day attracted a lot of architects, interior designers, and anyone interested in looking at designed products visiting the showrooms. Another great outcome for the suppliers is that it often costs the suppliers a lot of time, resources and money to have their architectural reps go out to the firms to show a couple of designers their products, or to provide a free lunch to the staff of a firm in order to have an opportunity to show their products. This was a great way to get the designers coming to the showrooms to look at the products. Very clever! Indesign did a great job as the whole day ran very smoothly and was very well organised. 030720: Sun RedCarpet Night launches its third short film program for 2003 on Sunday, July 27 at 7.15pm at the Valhalla Cinemas on Glebe Point Road, Glebe. "We are really proud to partner for the first time with Amnesty International. Given that this is the first time that RedCarpet Night has a specific theme, the theme of 'Freedom', we have received a really good response from filmmakers..." said Founding Director, Betty King. "We have a fantastic programme of short films that deal with a variety of aspects of freedom - from satire to drama to documentary, from stories from refugees in Australia to the experience of political repression in other countries. Again, the program is eclectic and showcases a wide variety of experience and ideas - from the beginner to the established filmmaker. That diversity is our method and thematic meaning - freedom," said Sarah Runcie. The July screening will include Anna Tow's outstanding animation Pending, Annie Slater's St Kilda entrant, The Ball, Elissa Down's delightful comedy The Bathers and a host of excellent films from up and coming filmmakers. All profits of the 'Freedom' screening will go to Amnesty International Australia, a charity tackling worldwide human rights violations and encouraging the development of a 'civil society' through education, intervention and activism. Each filmmaker goes into the draw for a fantastic prize. To book your tickets, call Amnesty International Australia on 02 9217 7670. All tickets are $13. To submit your short film, email: redcarpetnight@hotmail.com or phone: 0425 757 468. For Media Queries: Sarah Runcie 0402 107 043 s.runcie@afc.gov.au For more info and program of the films, go to: http://www.chaosgeneration.com/redcarpet_freedom.htm 030716: Wed Metadata workshop Went to an 'Introduction to Metadata' workshop today. It was organised by EdNA Online (Education Network Australia). What I understand of the session is that metadata is like cataloguing web pages, kind of like a librarian cataloguing books and other items using a commonly agreed classification system. This information can then be submitted to search engines and shared with other organisations or end users wanting to look up this 'metadata' or bibliographic information if it were a book. Metadata name and keyword or description is apparently still being used by Yahoo and Alta Vista. But they haven't incorporated the use of the Dublin Core standard as yet: http://www.dublincore.org. Other links mentioned were: http://www.edna.edu.au/metadata and http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12. Google on the other hand have developed their own algorithms for indexing web pages and they use robots to look at the content on the web page and then bring that information back to their own inhouse system. They figure that people can spam the metadata fields otherwise making that data useless. Metadata in html pages is straight forward but if your web pages are stored in a database or content management system and generated dynamically then the robots probably can't access that easily anyway. Then there was also a very brief mention that some organisations store their metadata records in a database and there are tools where people can submit their metadata databases to the search engines for them to use via XML. YourAmigo was mentioned. I just came across http://www.intology.com.au/30solutions/30search where a couple of others are listed. Kerrie (workshop presenter) said that Metadata consists of: Elements, Encoding Schemas and values. It was mentioned that it can take a lot of resources to fill out metadata information for each web page and that furthermore, there's often no resources to do QA audits on the quality of the metadata. You also have to think about who you're compiling the metadata for? Who's the end user? etc. The National Office for the Information Economy also has information on Metadata. She then mentioned that you can join a meta tagger's email list if you're interested in ongoing discussion and more about metadata. The one she mentioned was: join-meta-taggers@edna.edu.au. Lunch After this I had lunch at the Sydney Dance Company cafe. Had the pasta with mushrooms and spinach. It was pretty good! Then did a bit of browsing/shopping in town. Magazines Saw a couple of cool zines at Red Eye Records. May go back and get them. Went to Borders and got a copy of Punk Planet and Giant Robot. Saw Gary Larson's 'The Prehistory of the Far Side : A 10th Anniversary Exhibit' on sale for $10 so got that as well. There's still a lot of copies left of it on the ground floor if anyone still wants to buy a copy of it. It's good in that it shows some of his early work and how he's evolved his cartoons and ideas and more. Also got the latest (Sydney) Magazine that came out today with the SMH. So lots of cool stuff to read! 030715: Tue Some books on my current reading list + Realms of impossibility: Ground by cj lim. He's done a series of three of these books. The other two are Air and Water. The dust jacket says: "A hall of suspended goldfish. An elastic-powered flying suit. An inhabitable cloud. Realms of Impossibility: Air, Ground + Water is a celebration of unlikely things in a likely world. This three-volume series tells the parallel story of man's occupation of the skies, earth and oceans, dovetailing between environments to shape a composite graphic narrative. Part anthology, part guidebook and part fable, these books represent a new breed of architectural publication, interfacing with the worlds of the internet, film, literature and travel." I like looking at the layout and graphic design of the pages of the book - each page is laid out differently. Also he's just used two colours kind of - yellow and shades of olive brown throughout. His site is: http://www.cjlim-studio8.com Other books/magazines on my current reading list are: + Surf culture : the art history of surfing by Colburn, Bolton T. This book has been designed by Deanne Cheuk so I wanted to have a closer look at it. + Oyster magazine June/July 2003 + Pulp magazine No. 33 + Great casual food by Australian Women's Weekly + Four ingredient cookbook : fabulous, fast recipes with only four ingredients by Joanna Farrow + The ties that bind : six journeys of a lifetime by Julietta Jameson 030714: Mon Walked along King St on Saturday afternoon Picked up a copy of Vice magazine. It's a freebie mag and it's the first time I've come across it. The website for the Australian version is at: http://www.viceland.com/index_au.php. Looks pretty glossy for a freebie mag. Also picked up a copy of Prat magazine. It's the first issue. They're based in Queensland. Website is: http://www.pratmagazine.com. Both kind of cover fashion, design etc. Vice has more of a 'street' sort of feel. Prat on first glance looks like it covers design, culture, fashion etc with attention to detail and getting it looking 'designed'. Lunch with Warren Buffett went for $250k A lunch with Warren Buffett was up for auction on Ebay.com. Bids closed 2pm last Friday Sydney time. It went for $250,100. The money goes to the Glide Foundation charity. 030710: Thu 24 hour comic challenge Bill Barnes who does the 'Unshelved' comic set in a library recently undertook the 24 hour comic challenge along with 23 other cartoonists at a public event. The 24 hour comic was originally developed by Scott McCloud in 1990. Check out Bill Barnes' 24 effort titled 'Whippersnappers'. You can also check out Scott McCloud's original effort titled 'A Day's Work' and the rest of his website is at http://www.scottmccloud.com, which is well worth checking out as well! Also have a look at 'House of Stairs' by Jack Masters. Pretty cool! Planning a dinner for 6 with recipes by Luke Mangan The SMH has this article titled 'Warm to a theme' with the following menu for a dinner party for 6. Recipes included in the article. Sounds yummy. Canape: Celeriac tartlets with truffle oil Entree: Jerusalem artichoke soup with gruyere cheese Main: Beef with red wine, mushrooms and bacon Dessert: Rhubarb and chocolate crumble Beyond the beer nut The SMH also has an article titled 'Beyond the beer nut' of restaurants/bars now offering tasting plates and bar food that is cooked by the famous chefs and are of top quality, without having to pay for the top dine at the table prices. 030709: Wed Added heaps of events to the Events page. 030708: Tue Henry Thornton website Came across the Henry Thornton website today. The website quotes Joseph Schumpeter's description: "Henry Thornton (1760-1815) was a banker, M.P., philanthropist, and a leading figure in the influential group of Evangelicals that was known as the Clapham set ..." An economist is behind this website and goes by the nom de plume of Henry Thronton. There are also a list of contributors to the website who go by their real names including Digital Eve girls Sarah Owen and Fiona Prior. It's a pretty cool website with news, commentary, reviews, and articles of things ranging from investment to politics to food and wine in Australia. Andrew Ashton Slidenight presentation Went to the Slidenight event at the Spanish Club to hear/see graphic designer Andrew Ashton's presentation tonight. Thought I'd be seeing some examples of his graphic design work and hear a bit about his inspirations and his design process. I guess his inspiration is photography or he just decided to show his photographic work only tonight. He didn't show any of his other work tonight. He mentioned that he takes hundreds and thousands of photos and picks out the best ones. Today went by too quickly... Why is it that when you're working on your own projects or thinking about your own stuff that time just literally disappears? Usually I'm quite aware of time passing by but today it was 12.47pm before I even knew it then the next time I checked the time, it was 4pm. Now it's 11.21pm. Sometimes I feel like time secretly speeds up when you're doing your own thing. Same with weekends. It's like before you know it, day has already turned into night. Not fair. 030702: Wed Upcoming events summary listing Have decided to add an events summary listing section at the top of the events page to make it easier to ssee what's happening around town. Then if you're interested in any of the events, you can either click on the title to go straight to their website or scroll down and read a short description of the events listed. July 3: Melbourne AFC Guideline Information Session July 3-13: Melbourne The Melbourne Underground Film Festival [MUFF] July 4-6: Sydney Channel 9 Money Expo in association with Australian Stock Exchange July 8: Sydney Slidenight 1.12 Andrew Ashton July 11: Applications Close British Council Australia is offering 3 $10k awards for Australians aged 18-24 years to spend up to 4 weeks in the UK realising their dream July 14-18: Sydney Sourgrapes Screenings and Workshops - FREE July 15: Sydney Slidenight 1.13 Mixed Dozen - series01 finale July 19: Sydney Sydney InDesign Showrooms Tour July 19: Sydney Sourgrapes Finals Film Festival Screening - FREE July 28: Sydney Producing for Broadband August 11: Sydney Monday Night Talk: Alec Tzannes, An Urban & Residential Tour - link to organiser's website only as event not posted up on their site August 30: Hawkesbury, Blue Mountains Sustainable Design House Tour September 30: Entries Close Digital Wallpaper Design Competition - Prize: $5000 Cash Slidenight request Final 3 films as part of the Piazza D'Oro Movie Festival on SBS Wednesday July 9 at 10pm A Pornographic Affair (Une Liaison Pornographique) Wednesday July 16 at 10pm Harry He's Here to Help Wednesday July 23 July at 10pm Ignorant Fairies (Le Fate Ignoranti) 030701: Tue British Council Australia is offering 3 $10k awards for Australians aged 18-24 years to spend up to 4 weeks in the UK realising their dream "The application procedure has two requirements: 1) Fill in and submit our on-line application form. AND 2) Post us a 3 minute video (VHS) of you telling us: a) what your dream is. b) why a short trip to the UK will help you achieve that dream. The application period opens at 10am, 10 June 2003 and closes on 11 July 2003. All videos must be posted on or before the due date. Applications postmarked or received after 11 July 2003 will NOT be accepted. Your online application will not be confirmed until your video has been received by British Council Australia." For full details go to: http://www.britishcouncil.org.au/Realise-Your-Dream.htm John Safran interview transcript John Safran was interviewed by Andrew Denton on Enough Rope in last night's show. I've thought John Safran was great ever since I saw his stories/reports as a contestant on the 'Race Around the World' program. Weblog Index Have set up a weblog index page at http://www.chaosgeneration.com/weblog_index.htm which lists the title of each post under each month so you can quickly scan through each month's posts to see if there's anything you want to read. I'll probably be using it a lot as a quick links/bookmarks type index. The weblog page is basically a bookmark of links, articles etc I find interesting and may want to refer back to someday anyway. Another method I've used to find a link that I've blogged again is to use Google's advanced search page at: http://www.google.com.au/advanced_search?hl=en and then restrict the search by going to the Domain heading and then restricting the search to 'Only' return results from the site or domain and then put in chaosgeneration.com as the domain. In the main Google search page, you can also simply type in your keywords then a space then site:chaosgeneration.com. (no full stop required - I've just used it as punctuation here). 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