| nin. |
[18 Sep 2007|01:23pm] |
(I'm echoing this from my deviantart page, because I'm lazy and I promised the roundup to people there)
Here's the set list from Sunday night:
HYPERPOWER!
Beginning of the end
Terrible lie
Closer
Heresy
March of the pigs
The Frail
The Wretched
Ruiner
Terrible Lie
Survivalism
Piggy
Gave Up
Me, I'm Not
The Great Destroyer
Eraser
Only
Wish
The Good Soldier
No, You Don't
Reptile
The Day the Whole World Went Away
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Starfuckers, Inc.
Head Like a Hole
Here's some YouTubes:
The Great Destroyer
Talking and TDTWWWA
Reptile
The Good Soldier
I was about three metres to the right and a metre or two in front of the guy taking most of those videos.
Here's my review:
Hardcore NIN fans should look at the set list above and immediately realise how motherfucking awesome the show was last night. For everyone else, I'll go through the night.
After fluffing ourselves up (or down in my case, I didn't want to ruin any of the new stuff I had bought in Sydney, so I wjust threw on a black t-shirt and some scabby pants and I was set), we fumbled our way around Sydney's bus system and managed to find one that took us to the Hordern Pavilion, where the gig was being held. Upon arriving at the Pavilion, we followed the trickle of other black t-shirted individuals to the entrance. After responding to a call out of "DECEPTICONS FOREVER!" (my black t-shirt just so happened to have the Autobots symbol on it) with a quick history of how awesome Optimus Prime is, we joined a queue. We found out about ten minutes later that this wasn't, in fact, the queue that we needed to go into, since it was an exclusive queue for the NIN fan club members. In hindsight, I probably should have realised this, the people more confident and cheerful than in the normal queue.
So we joined the proper queue. Then, five minutes later (oh how I hate queues), we joined the real proper queue that we needed to in order for Louise to have her bag checked and stored. Another half-an-hour of waiting and huzzah! The rollerdoors shuddered open and the crowd was met by the bulk of a dozen or so security guards, behind which was a very bitchy (and when I say 'bitchy', I mean bitchy in the way that signifies that if you were to meet her in a place outside her work, she'd probably be one of the nicest individuals you'd ever be likely to talk to) woman who started insisting that the crowd form one orderly line. It's difficult to describe the way that the lot that we were standing in was laid out, or, to be more precise, how it wasn't, but let me tell you that asking that crowd to form one orderly line was resulted in the kind of military, adherent, well-mannered response you might expect asking a gang of skin heads to host the next annual policeman's ball. Fortunately we were in our own special real proper queue and managed to sidestep most of that nonsense and get in slightly later, but no less fundamentally in than everyone else. Unfortunately, our tickets were taken and thrown into a small Bin Of No Return, and thus when I am around six months older, I will have completely forgotten I've seen NIN. Ah well.
There must be some sort of gap between the fervour levels in Perth and Sydney when a famous band comes to town, because everyone was incredibly nonchalant to getting in the door and getting a good spot in the front centre of the venue. Lou and I ordered a couple of vodka Red Bulls, sipped at them, went to the toilet, and still managed to get about ten metres away from the monolithic, phallic microphone stand that would later be prefaced by a sweaty-faced Trent. We waited around, listening to the bizarrely disco-pop collection of songs that played before the support act came out. The support was a band I hadn't heard of before seeing them on the ticket -- 'White Rose Movement' -- and they played a lot better than I thought, having based my expectations on their name. Louise wants the keyboardist's haircut (it's okay, it was a girl).
Half an hour of waiting around for the set to be changed and then...wham. There they were, striding onto the stage, dressed in grey uniform, confident, calm, ready to rock the fuck out of the place. And rock they did. Louise had to leave the pit because she wasn't really wearing the right shoes for the occasion, but she later said she had an excellent vantage from a few more people back. I was between 5 and 10 people back, front and centre, for the whole gig and, even though I emerged at the end completely soaked in sweat and smelling like a combination of armpit and pot ash, I still had the most fun at a concert I've ever had.
The actual stage set-up was impressive as hell. They have this awesome display that they use for some pretty great special effects that you can see in a couple of the YouTube videos linked above. Smoke was flying everywhere, allowing for some cool moments of the band emerging from the fog, absolutely slamming a section of a song. For the most part the crowd was as a crowd normally is, 80% full of people that want to be there and just experience the music, 20% full of dickheads who have come to be dickheads in pursuing their crown of king dickhead of dickheadsville. A lot of people on the forums that I've browsed thought that the crowd was really off-putting. I didn't find it that bad, but then I've been in a Slipknot mosh pit at the Big Day Out, so I might have higher thresholds of irritation when it comes to these things.
Highlights for me were definitely Starfuckers, Inc. and The Frail/Wretched. The Great Destroyer was incredible, as was Closer and Trent doing his solo Hurt thing was pretty great too.
Overall, it'd have to rank up there as one of the best musical experiences I've had. Very inspiring, very intense. Can't wait for them to come back, I just hope they deem Perth worthy to stop by at so I don't have to spend a shit load of money to travel to Sydney or Melbourne again.
---
Robert Jordan passed away on the 16th. Though I ended up trailing off the Wheel of Time series at book ten, I still enjoyed the series while I was reading it, and I'm sad at his death.
I'm slowly but surely succeeding in the cutting (or at the very least clamping) of my internet umbilical cord. I'm much more focussed towards getting some real writing done in the next few weeks, along with kicking my arse into higher gear at university. I bought a whole heap of cheap (but good) comics over in Sydney and I've been studying them in order to get a feel for how certain frame transitions go. I'm building a book of good transitions and analysis of how they work in a 300 page visual diary that I hope to fill by the end of the year. I'm also looking around Perth trying to find a decent place to buy a drafting board so I can set that up at my Mum's place when I head back there at the end of the year. Yeah, I'm kind of trying to get serious about things. Call it maturing, call it a change of direction, call it indigestion, but I really want to make some changes in my life. Hopefully they'll be the right ones. We'll see, I guess.
Also, I missed a Kevin J. Anderson signing at my bookstore (i.e. I missed meeting and chatting with Kevin J. Anderson, modern sci-fi legend) by about an hour, due to flying in just that little bit too late from Sydney. Fuck.
---
That's all really. I'll start updating regularly again now that I'm back in Perth.
|
|
| Whirr buzz |
[08 Sep 2007|08:17am] |
|
The washing machine that Pat's grandparents kindly lent us really does sound like it's about to explode very time it does a wash. It builds up a crescendo worthy of any string symphony and, just when you think it's about to destroy itself with the shaking and lurching all over the tiles, it stops. Silence. A full silence, like that of a battlefield before the inevitable artillery fire. I never want to approach it within this silence, but I want my fucking clothes, so I must. I have not yet been obliterated, but one day you will not see me for a few days, and upon investigation of the laundry you will find me coating the walls.
|
|
| The art of seeing |
[07 Sep 2007|10:58am] |
I've been going through all the articles that I used to produce my literature review at the start of my PhD studies, and I gotta say, I must've been high or something. The amount of important information I've missed is astounding. Or perhaps I've just gained enough knowledge of what I'm dealing with to be able to better decide what's important and what's not. In any case, my meeting with Bill this morning went a lot better than previous ones. I knew a lot more of what I was talking about and we discussed a whole bunch of things without me being totally lost. It made it a lot easier to ask questions as well, and I learned more about the process of characterisation of structures through diffraction. The good news is that I have a lot of stuff to do in the next couple of weeks. The bad news is that I have a lot of stuff to do in the next couple of weeks.
Louise and I ordered our Southbound tickets a couple of days ago. Damn that concert is getting expensive nowadays, it's up to the same as the BDO. It'll be great though, I get to see Kings of Leon live which I've been looking forward to. The boys are at the top of their game at the moment (much the same as Muse are -- we'll be seeing them as well later this year) so I'm really looking forward to that.
Oh, and hey, NIN in a week. Fuck yeah. I'll be away from Perth for a week starting this coming Monday for that one. Should be good to get away, and I've got my NDS for the plane this time, so I won't get so bored :) Must get myself a set of headphones for Elite Beat Agents though (I've just cleared the third difficulty and the fourth one looks set to be fucking impossible).
Anyway, time to get to that work I mentioned.
---
He would have cried if his eyes had not just deflated with a sigh and slipped like fried eggs out of their sockets.
|
|
| My dog wears a path on the same line |
[06 Sep 2007|08:51am] |
Found my Ben Folds EPs and CDs lying around the house (in a CD case, funnily enough) and had a great time singing along to them in the car on the way to and from Mum's last night. Brought back a lot of random memories from their endless repetition of them in my CD player from about '95 to '05. Isn't it weird how that can happen; you play a song and, because some silly bastard waved bells in front of a dog eating a few years ago, you remember what you used to do when you played that song constantly for two weeks straight. Sadly, most of them were remembering playing UT_Morbius with my friends at a LAN. Weird actually, when you consider that the game consisted mostly of nailing people through the face with a variety of projectile weapons, and I must have had this happy, piano-filled album playing pretty much the entire time to remember that.
Ahem, anyway, my childhood shiny happy killing tendencies aside, I found myself a gusher the other night. I started with a very simple premise -- young office clerk finds old man in the refection of a photocopier glass and sits down to chat to him, learns a bunch of life lessons at his gruff insistence, has a smoke, sets off a smoke alarm, and gets fired,* -- and ended up writing a thousand words without blinking. The next night I wrote another thousand words, and the following day another five hundred. It's slowed down now, which is a pity, but only because I've not had another occasion to sit down and rap out a good couple more paragraphs. Thom has assured me it has a good hook, though at the moment I'm fairly sure he is sick, which may have impaired his judgement. I don't mind though, this one is fun to write, and I'm hoping it continues to be fun to write. I'm at a point where I am about to have the character discover that he no longer has a face; a joy in any author's life I'm sure.
Writing aside, uni has been fairly good, I've got a meeting with Bill tomorrow to discuss a bunch of stuff, mainly just to stay the course and make sure I've got what I need to do fixed firmly in my mind. I need that every now and again.
Back to work!
---
*Don't ask me where these ideas come from. It's not that I don't know, I do know, but the origins are just so banal that you'll likely fall over.
|
|
| Fire it up |
[04 Sep 2007|01:34pm] |
It seems the power of positive thinking is working already. Wait, no, that would imply that I believe that concepts such as 'The Secret' are something other than a mass-marketed load of bullcrap. I take that first sentence back. In any case, I've been accepted to attend the AINSE/ANSTO school for neutron diffraction. Basically it's the same thing as the x-ray diffraction course that I've recently taken here at Curtin (which was worth its weight in knowledge -- Brian O'Connor and Rob Hart certainly know their shit) except with neutrons rather than x-rays. I'm really glad I got in, even did a bit of a dance around the office, to the amusement of the post-docs across the divide. :)
This morning we (finally) had in introduction by our new director of the Nanotechnology Research Institute, Eric Bakker. He's a pretty yong bloke as far as our faculty go, quite soft spoken but very humourous and obviously very knowledgeable in his area, which is mainly in detection, whether it be potentiometric or kinetic or some other form of determination. Seems like quite a good bloke.
Yesterday after disconnecting my home computer from the internet and, for the first time in months, turning it off, I sat in bed and hammered out an idea that occurred to me while using one of the cardio machines at the gym earlier in the evening. As strange and sad as this may sound, it was nice to be in a different part of the house. I guess that gives a good indication of how drawn I was to the act of sitting down at my computer. I tapped out roughly six-hundred words before my eyes started watering, which I plan to build on tonight after I've visited Louise for dinner.
Speaking of which, we'll be heading off to Sydney for a week starting next Monday, for Nine Inch Nails Part Two*. I'm definitely starting to get excited, more about the change of scenery than anything else, though finally seeing NIN play live will be a dream come true. Apparently they've moved the venue to a larger one that can accomodate 5,000 people. Gonna be a fucking big night. :D
That's all for now, I'd better get back to work, got some calculations running and I also have to prepare myself for the onslaught of questions from my students regarding their somewhat less-than-perfect laboratory marks tomorrow.
---
*Some people that read this may remember that Louise bought me airfares and tickets to go see NIN earlier this year, only to have them cancel the concert a few hours before we (Pamela and I) were due to leave her house and catch a taxi in to the venue.
|
|
| Digitalias Fuckoffus! |
[03 Sep 2007|08:35pm] |
Ironically, updating this journal is my first action in weening myself from the internet.
There was nothing at all special about today, except for the thought that occured to me at around two o'clock in the afternoon. This thought, and I'm very much paraphrasing and collaborating here in order to get it into a single statement, went something along the lines of this:
"Phill*, you're trying too hard to do too many things. You've got about 10 different hobbies on the boil and you know that's never going to work if you want to be great, or even good, at any one of them. You haven't had a good, long look at your priorities in life for a long while and it's high time you did. You need to start being active, willful, and not letting yourself get away with pissing time away idling at your computer. Go make a list and sort yourself out, you bum."
Which is what I started to do. I listed out all the things I have been interested in starting, or have half-started, or have been well-established hobbies for a while, and then struck out all the ones I'm not going to concentrate on. The resulting list was, in order of priority, this one:
1) Graphic Novel
2) Writing
3) Reading
4) Journaling
Probably the most important thing to note is that that list does not include computers or computer games. It doesn't include internet communities, talking for hours on end in chat rooms, or obsessively checking email accounts. It does include journaling as the last priority, and that is because I feel that journaling is complementary to point number 2) in that every day I hope to be writing something, even if it is just random thoughts in this here journal.
Essentially I have realised that it's high time that if I want to be considered a writer from 5-9, that I should actually write from 5-9. That I should read for the joy of reading; to recapture that sense of timelessness that I felt when I was a really little kid, that feeling like I could fall into the characters being portrayed and never even notice. That I should purchase literary journals from the Australian scene and keep up to date with what is being produced by new people. In short, though I am a student of Chemistry from 9-5, I should be a student of my chosen hobby from 5-9 (and further). And as long as it doesn't lead me to exhaustion (and even if it does) I am going to endeavour to do so.
Tomorrow I'll be heading out to buy some microns and a big load of paper, and I'm going to make a start on getting right into point 1) there. Wish me luck.
---
*I think of myself as Phill, not Phillip.
|
|
| nifty |
[23 Jul 2007|04:03pm] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Porcupine Tree |
] |
So, Saturday was H-Day. I'm sure a whole bunch of you are in a state of glee at having read the final book. I've been numbed to the concept of reading it by the act of lugging boxes of it around for two hours, and then having the ending spoiled for me no less than four times during the course of the day (thank you random jocks who've come back from watching a movie because your brain can't support the concept of reading text on a page; no really, you're all very original, reading out the final page in a terrible impression of a british accent; I hope your misconceived babies choke you to death with their umbilical cords [harsh, but fair, in my opinion]). So yes, Harry Potter was basically my Saturday. 12 hours of hearing those four blunt syllables repeated over and over again. I doubt I'll have the courage to look at it, let alone read it, for a few months. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing the series. I liked the first six and I daresay I'll enjoy reading the end to it. Just you try breathing the sweat of a hundred cosplayed, rabid fans of something you enjoy, and see how you like it by the end of the day.
Transformers was basically the coolest movie since 300, and ranks up there with it as one of the most enjoyable action movies I've ever seen (earning a coveted spot near Demolition Man, Die Hard, and Starship Troopers). The multitude of references were a delight to me, and Lou had to constantly shush me from emitting the kind of little squeals of delight that would normally emit from, say, a chipmunk. I've been told that Knocked Up is also very enjoyable, so I plan on seeing that this week. Review will follow.
My writing hasn't been physically going at all lately. I'm not terribly distressed by this, as I've been thinking a lot about it. The idea for Trolleys is there, and I'm happy about what I've decided to do with it. However, I did, just now, show it to a writer friend of mine, and he was of the opinion that I was trying too hard to make it complex. Hrm. Going to have to think more on this. In the meantime I might try and re-write an earlier poetry (omg I write poetry?!) piece of mine into prose for the John Marsden prize. Failing that, I'll be entering Toilet Paper, just for the fun of it.
Hrm, what else. Nothing, really. This morning I bent the jack adapter for my (incredibly expensive) headphones, which put me in a crabby mood. I'll have to pick up a new one from Dick Smiths.
My life is rather boring at the moment. :|
|
|
| Clearly. |
[09 Jul 2007|10:14am] |
Skype is pretty cool. I've become addicted to sitting up late having chats to whoever is online at the time. The only criticism I have with it is that I can't seem to find an option to turn off constant receiving by the microphone, such that I have to push a button for it to receive my voice. So whoever I'm talking to gets random comments inserted by my housemates about my virility and state of undress. If anyone would like a chat (and believe me, I can chat with a vengeance) my username on there is 'phill.english' (original, I know).
In between skyping and finally becoming vaguely addicted to the wonders of youtube (I say vaguely because there's really nothing there for me except for the 'SF2 dancer vs. baby' video clip, which is the Mt. Everest of comedy; rarely scaled and inimitable in its splendour) I have been writing a little bit. 'Trolleys' -- which is the working title that replaced the previously used '435 grams of beef' -- is now very close to 10,000 words and a switch in perspective. The latter fact is something I am afraid of, as it's not something I generally practise in my writing, so I'm sceptical as to whether or not I can pull it off. I hope I can, or Jim may be stuck in stasis for a while.
I have also contacted and had some positive response from a young man in Canada who I wish to produce a graphic novel with, which is very exciting for me, given my addiction to the things in the past. I had a coffee-induced brainstorm the other night while waiting for the girl to get back from work, and came up with what I think is a good plotline for his character (a large, pale, four-armed, hairless, slightly pear-shaped giant). I have yet to hear back from him after submitting the storyline notes, so fingers crossed he bites.
Also prevalent in my mind is producing a new story, or cleaning up an old one for submission into the John Marsden short story competition for 2007. It comes with a $2,500 first prize, the digits of which would look just swell if they were combined with those of my current bank account. The unfortunate fact of the John Marsden prize, when looking back at the winning entries from previous years, is that they tend to be very descriptive, to the point of being almost poetic. Poetic isn't something I do particularly well, though perhaps this might be incentive enough to get me thinking of some sweeping similes. And if I can't think of any, I can always enter 'Toilet Paper', for the fun of it.
In any case, it's time for me to finish up a presentation for the NRI group meeting tomorrow. Woo.
|
|
| Winter Daze |
[27 Jun 2007|10:02pm] |
Today was actually rather pleasant. Despite waking up with a head full of cotton wool, and a nose like a faucet leaking tar, I managed to wobble to the shower and relieve my head of its burden of dead cells without so much as a sniffle. I think the double hit of Nurofen and Panadol is doing the trick. The guys in the terminal room at uni (incidentally, 'terminal' in this case does not borrow its name from anything to do with death, it just means there's a lot of terminals, computers, in there) all recoiled in horror upon seeing me walk into the room looking like a Grim Reaper. They've all just gotten over their own respective colds, flus and coughs, so me walking in, like a person arriving late to a funeral with a big grin on his face, elicited a general barricading of office space against the space invaders flying from my nose.
Strangely enough though, I managed to get more work done today than the previous two days. This may be because I had the first coffee that I've had for quite a while, so I buzzed for about four hours. Perfectly timed on the end of that buzz was Andrew calling me to help him push some mulch around his place for his rent inspection tomorrow. We grabbed a 50kg bag from Bunnings and then proceeded to sit at his place and swap music while it pissed down outside. Eventually I grabbed an umbrella and ran to the car, drove home, and played God of War 2.
Some people have condemned that game for being too graphic, too bloody. This is completely true. It revels in its gore. You will see more limbs fly, more heads tumble, and more legs broken in this game than any other. But until you see a man jump onto the back of a gryphon, rip its wings off, stick a knife through its chest, and throw it to the distant Earth, you cannot condemn it.
And off I go.
---
The tangled threads roiled and hissed like the snakes of Medusa as they approached.
|
|
| Bread & soup |
[25 Jun 2007|12:45pm] |
Okay, alright. I admit it. Finally, after what seems like weeks of watching the shadows, ducking between doorways, and hiding with my brim way down, they found me.
I'm sick.
My co-workers in the terminal room have been sick on rotation for what seems like a few months now. My house mates and their respective boyfriends have been sick (twice, in one case), my girlfriend has been sick, and my workmates at Dymocks have been sick all within the last couple of months or so. Somehow I had managed to dodge a million-billion tiny bacterial bullets in this period of time. Sadly, one of those little bastards has wormed its way into my body and is currently making me feel quite wretched as I sit at this computer and wait for the end of one of the forty or so computational runs that I have planned for today.
So in the meantime, let's talk about the Melbourne shooting. The news stories go that a young lady was struggling with a man that was dragging her, with a gun, through the middle of Melbourne. Three people tried to assist, all three of which were shot, with one (Brendan Keilar) dying from his injuries. So the question is, if you had been walking to work that day, would you have tried to help? If no, why not? If yes, how?
---
There was a rippling of small sucker pops, as well as a sliding sound of wet-on-wet movement. And underneath that, the sound phlegm-filled breathing.
|
|
| switched |
[20 Jun 2007|08:50am] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm |
] |
Been a while since I updated one of these things. Somehow I fell out of the journal updating loop. This is due in most part by my heightened involvement in the deviantART community which has seen a marked increase in the quality of my writing. I've got a bunch of people that I can rely on for constructive critique, which is incredibly important and has helped me a lot. I even managed to grab a daily deviation (a feature in the main part of the site for a 24 hour period, it's pretty nice) for a short story of mine, 'Toilet Paper', which has given me a lot of confidence.
I think I'm just about ready to give up video games. This is a rather large step for me, since they've occupied so much of my life, and provided a means of escapism when the environment around me (especially as a young kid) was less than ideal. But nowadays, rather than enjoying the experience, I'm using it only as a distraction from things I should really be doing. Like writing, or study, or creativity in other forms. I haven't surprised Louise in what seems like ages, and that makes me sadface. Almost time to move on, methinks. Plus there's the issue of constantly having to upgrade my computer to play the latest. Instead of spending three-thousand dollars on a new computer, I could be investing that, or spending it on more practical things.
Let's see, what have I done since the last update. Got into my PhD, dropped my job at Dymocks down to one day, wrote a lot, went to Sydney to see NIN courtesy of my incredible girlfriend (and although it got cancelled had an awesome time), learned a lot of computational chemistry theory, got addicted to Chuck Palahniuk, wrote a lot, and generally just lived day-to-day. There's probably a lot more to it, but them's the main highlights. The PhD takes up a lot of my time (it's basically a job, without the glamour or good pay). I'm going away with Louise to Margaret River in a week or so for a weekend, just to get away from it all for a couple of days and gather myself up. Pretty much all I plan on taking with me is a notepad, a fountain pen, three ink refills, my wallet, vodka, apple juice and a set of clothes. Should be great fun.
I'm reading 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov and finding it pretty darn amusing. Humbert Humbert is just such a tragic character, it's hard not to laugh at his helpless slavery to a desire he considers totally and utterly inappropriate. The style is difficult to get used to at first, it's very rambling and filled with tangents, but once you get used to it it's incredibly readable. More when I finish it.
So, I promise to update this more often, that way I'll be writing something, at least. I'm going to switch to livejournal now, rather than insanejournal. Mainly because of the implied emo-ness that my brain associates with the latter.
Ta-ta.
|
|
| No hell and no Hiroshima |
[21 Dec 2006|05:14pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 pleased |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Mrs. O - Dresden Dolls |
] |
The usual condolences apply -- this journal was long thought by many as dead, but I'm here to rectify that with a post of largish proportions. Read on and be bored amazed.
Okay, important-ish news first before the rambling. First up is my brand spankin' new job. That's right, it's curtains for ye olde video shop, a workplace that has served me well for the four years of my university bachelor degree. For all my bitching to some of my friends about crap pay and working weekend nights, I don't have anything bad to say about looking back. I have made some awesome friends and learned how to communicate with people so much better through working there, and the workmates that I have had there (Jen, Kate and the old crew as well as Daniel and the newbies) have always made me feel that it was less a job and more a family. I'm a bit sad to be leaving, really. The new job involves pretty much the exact same responsibilities, just more intense and pertaining to books. I'm now going to be serving, reading and making aloof elitist comments on your choices over at Dymocks in Carousel, so feel free to drop on by and say hello if you're ever in the area. If you buy anything by Dan Brown or the accompanying book to 'What the Bleep Do We Know' I will smite you.
I got a phone call this afternoon by Bill Richmond, my unit coordinator for my final two years just one at Curtin. Seems I managed to get myself a PhD position. Yeap, that's right, sometime in the future I'll be known as Dr. Phillip English. I'd love to add Esq. to the end of that, oh yes. So yeah, lots of excitement over that. I'll have to let Dymocks know that I'll need to tone down my hours to allow for it. But they've always said that they allow a lot of movement when it comes to education issues, so it's reassuring to know that I'll be able to trust them with not burning me out with too many hours.
I've been seeing a lot of my girlfriend lately. Events have conspired* to throw us together pretty much every day for the last two weeks. It's been interesting, or not interesting rather, since the transition from seeing each other two days a week before uni finished to the current every day thing has been almost unnoticeable. I haven't had the time/space/absence-of-Louise to plan/execute any of my small romantic gestures, which I've missed doing, but it's been interesting seeing how we manage to see each other constantly over that long a period of time. I don't think we could have done it six months ago, which makes me wonder what has happened since then. What subtle shift in the dynamics of the relationship has enabled us to bear with each other on an everyday basis? One answer, and I'm musing out loud here, is the development of a fond (loving?) distance from reality produced by understanding the other person more. As if by knowing all the faults of someone you can ignore them, become blind to them in the face of the image you have built of them, brick by neuronic brick. Or perhaps not. Anyway, it's been good. Comfortable.
If you are without a book to read and enjoy metaphorical (and not so metaphorical) exploration of the human psyche, go out and grab yourself Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson. It's quite an interesting read about a man exploring the different sections (humours) of his psychological state as he moves through a near future U.K. that has been 'rearranged' into countries according to psychological behaviour (Serena, this would be right up your alley). Also, for those of similar taste to mine, I am midway reading The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliot. It's a tale of an otherwordly circus and a guy that gets dragged into it to be a clown. It's very darkly comic and quite graphic.
I have written two very nerdy articles. Check '8 Things Guaranteed to Make a Nerd Cry' and 'I Met My gf on teh Intarwebs'. I think they are amusing. Tell me what you think.
Christmas has driven me crazy. I've managed to find a few unique gifts for my family, but for the most part I've just spotted books as I run around the book store. The advantage of this is that I have a whole lot of very easy to wrap presents to put under the tree *grins*. I have asked for a Wii from my Mum, which I have managed to wheedle info out of from the guy at EB and hopefully I will be purchasing it tomorrow in the afternoon sometime.
On my 'holidays' I haven't really had the time to put anything down on the page with regards to stories, apart from the aforementioned articles (which were basically a bit of fun and didn't involve much thinking at all really). I'm trying to rectify that with a story of the Aussie outback with a subtle twist. I'm 2.5k words down and moving into the conflict stage at the moment. I really want to get it done before I lose the feel of the story. So I'll be trying to get that done in the next few days. I'll edit it and update when it gets done so that people can have a quick squiz.
Andy is moving out of the house today. I think we're all on good terms, sometimes the dynamics of a house is just not right. Moving in will be Shani, but not until next year at the end of January. So for a little while it'll only be myself and Amy living here, which will give us a bit of space to move around.
I have been dabbling with Linux. I installed Linux after a frustrating period of Windows XP hanging continuously. It was really fun and educational in terms of problem solving and the things that computers can actually do. But in the end it comes down to what I actually want to use the computer for and what is easier for me on a daily basis with regards to the environment I am using it in. For me that means going back to XP so that I can network more easily and use applications such as photoshop and games. I won't tell everyone to go out and get one or the other OS, but now I have definitely got a broadened appreciation for what computers can actually do when people put their minds to it in a community.
Okay, I'm updated. Time to go and play some more Diablo 2 before the annual decoration of our Christmas tree.
Phill
* I know that 'conjured' is a word that gives an air of bad feeling towards the fact, but I couldn't think of anything better
|
|
| Let me go off |
[30 Nov 2006|11:07am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 accomplished |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Muse - Knights of Cydonia |
] |
I have, it seems, an obligation to update this journal nowadays, since a lot of people have been bugging me for a new splash screen of text when they visit this page. My mother leading the charge of the gatherers -- they demand new information, seemingly needing it to sate some vast hunger regarding my well being and their very souls.
Anyway. I've now finished my course at university, landing me with a rather lengthy (and hopefully bloody impressive) Bachelor of Science (Nanotechnology)(Hons). I'm not sure how this makes me feel; I guess I'm happy that it's finally finished and I never have to sit an exam or worry about an assignment deadline for the rest of my life if I so choose. But I don't think it's really going to sink in properly until I actually get the final marks, get the piece of paper and get to dress up in a funny looking cloak with a green sash across the shoulder. Until that day I feel I'll be in a kind of limbo -- not quite sure what I should be doing, but knowing that whatever it is, it sure isn't going to be as stressful as the last month of hell university I just went through. So I've made up with my on-again off-again relationship with writing (which I've been careful to cultivate in small doses during the semester) and started producing some longer pieces, now that I have the time to do so. I've written an article for the fantastically geeky Nerds Gone Wild! magazine, which will hopefully appear in issue three due out very soon. If you live in Melbourne, you can pick up a hard copy from the list of outlets on their website, otherwise you'll have to be technologically advanced like the rest of us and download the .pdf. What's the article about? It's a secret, but you'll probably laugh with at me as soon as you find out.
So yes, writing. With me it's always been a fickle thing, somewhat of a hobby. If I could manage to find the time to feed its gelatinous form, it usually solidifies briefly into something which a few passers-by might appreciate and give good comment to. Unfortunately that sort of time is not available to me, so its usual state is a strange and hideous lump, crying gently for even the smallest meal of witty dialogue or creative description. I'm hoping to give it at least a semblance of beauty these holidays -- if not a stunning chest and pins to die for, then a freckly face and an honest smile. My involvement in deviantART has reached a nice level at the moment. Not too involved, but involved enough to be known to and to know a lot of the usual suspects. Writing gets a whole lot more enjoyable and a lot easier when you have a good cross-section of people that are willing to help you with comments and critiques on how to improve.
I had my 21st birthday party on the 24th -- big ups to whoever came and helped me finally celebrate the completely arbitrary (in this country) turning of 21 years of age. There was beer, there was cake, there was laughs, there was possibly the best (in a worst kind of way) party mix ever (thanks to Patrick for that, you are truly the man when it comes to parties). The police were called twice, which I think indicates definitively that it was a good party. Since the party there has been a clean-up operation that continues to this day -- mainly because of the fact that no-one really wants to touch the toilet. I think I'm going to have to suck it up and go in there, armed with holy water and blessings given from on high by the Pope himself in order to maintain face in its gaping maw. Oh, and giant bottle of Ajax.
Better go do that now, while I'm still of the mind that it needs doing.
EDIT: Not to go too much on about the toilet cleaning, but when you utter the words "I'm going to need steel wool for this", you know there is something desperately wrong.
|
|
| sparrow song |
[20 Nov 2006|10:18pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
cheerful |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
You Think I Ain't Worth A Doller, But I Feel Like A Milliona |
] |
Oh don't worry, I'm still alive. Exams continue, as is their tendency. I've knocked one over (Nanochemistry 302) and the remaining one (Nanocharacterisation 401) will be completed sometime around high noon, Wednesday. I've started studying for it today and kicked on through half of the material, so the other half remains to be completed tomorrow, just in time to squeeze it from my head and onto the paper, in an ink blot of smug knowledge.
I've been writing a bit more poetry. I think I'm getting a little bit better at it. There's another piece lurking in my scraps as well, but I've changed it heavily since I wrote it, so I'll link that in a later entry. I also wrote a (necessarily) small drabble (100 word piece of prose) for a contest that the group that I am staff for is running. I'm pretty sure this means that I can't win anything, but it was fun and only took five minutes to conceive and execute.
My computer still remains in its broken state. I've made a rather enterprising bet with Louise over the date until which I can remain computer-less. I've said that I shall not fix it until such a time as the date reads with an '07 at the end of it. She reckons I'll definitely snap before then. She has pledged a three-course meal. I've pledged a summer dress. I think she underestimated my love for girls in dresses, leaving me in a win-win situation.
Not a great deal more has happened than that. It's all been study, writing and, recently, working at the video store. There will be a party at my place this coming friday - an understated affair consisting of a group of adults politely induling in alcohol and not making much of a fuss (hi mum). I'm looking forward to it.
Adios.</div>
|
|
| You're no fun |
[09 Nov 2006|12:58pm] |
| [ |
music |
| |
fear of Sleep - The Strokes |
] |
As (semi) promised, I'm going to start mirroring my IJ here on LJ.
Good morning all,
I apologise for the recent break in transmission. Obviously if you've been living under a rock for the past two weeks you'd not know that I was involved in a gargantuan effort to try and fashion a dissertation out of -as it would eventually become apparent - an æther of pseudo-results and misty possibilities. Fortunately that rather dismal affair is complete; relegated to the backside of caring like a piece of paper thrown arcing into a waste-paper bin. Which really wouldn't be a bad place to put the actual, physical thing, but let's not get into that. It's finished and there's not a damn thing I can do to change the path of the scuttle of the red pen across it, so let's talk about other things, shall we?
If you haven't heard me or others crowing about it, go and check out this little riddle game called (completely appropriately) "not pr0n". It is, as it says, the hardest riddle available on the internet. It involves the use of computer-related programs such as photoshop, looking at some source code and unzipping files, so if you're not comfortable with that sort of thing you can quite safely put the idea of trying it out back down into it's little cocoon and walk, whistling, away. Anyone that does do it, let me know when you get up to level 11, that muther's a hard one.
I recently went to the movies with Louise to see "Children of Men" and I was pretty darn impressed. The picture that they paint of post-infertility London is impressively bleak, the camera work is brilliant, the actors fit perfectly and the special effects were only ever used realistically. Andrew disagrees, saying that people might find the ending unnecessary or disappointing. Oh well, bugger them. If you've seen The Departed (which I'm told is great) and want something else to see, go see Children of Men.
I've been having computer troubles lately. Thankfully I'm posting from my own revitalised computer and not some evil physics doppelganger. I needed to grab a new hard-drive, move all my stuff over and format the old one, but it's all good now. Although I do still get some random BSODs which are annoying as shite. Hopefully fixing that up today while I wait for the washing (oh dear LORD the washing!) to finish tumbling through the machine.
That's about it. I'm okay now, just got to concentrate on exams and I'm done.
p.
|
|
| nix |
[05 Nov 2006|03:39pm] |
|
Okay, so I haven't updated this journal as a mirror to my IJ. This is down to a lack of time, a lack of motivation and/or mutant space pirates invading my house. If y'all really want to read it, go here and catch up on my amazing adventures.
|
|
| Pistol |
[14 Aug 2006|09:19am] |
This is a story I had planned out a long time ago but never actually got around to finishing. I'd appreciate input as to action realisation and character believability (but I don't suspect that anyone will actually read it). Cut for convenience :)
( Read more... )
|
|
| Handy |
[01 Jun 2006|09:10am] |
I moused a hand this morning, because I had been typing all day and I wanted to do something different.
And look! I have a watch on!
( Handy man )
|
|
| Four hundred more |
[23 May 2006|10:34pm] |
Oh and there's also this, something I wrote in a strange mood that I placed in a letter to Louise.
( Four hundred wor(l)ds )
And yes, the change from my LJ layout is very minimal. Or it's as far away from it as you can possibly get, depending on which way you look at it.
|
|
| Several hundred words |
[23 May 2006|10:33pm] |
These are my contributions to the 100 words community over at insanejournal, reproduced here because it looks so sad with nothing in it. They are in reverse chronological order (i.e. newest first)
( Seven hundred words )
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
|
|
|
|