I downloaded[^] and installed the beta of Windows Media Player 11 today.
Early days yet but I like what I see. The thing I particularly like compared with WMP10 is the search functionality; it narrows the range keystroke by keystroke. Type in a composer name and there are the tracks almost instantly. I found that missing 3rd movement of Scriabin's 3rd Symphony within about 5 seconds. I know it may not work for everyone but it surely does for me and my style of listening.
It also shows you the album cover (if known) in each view against the tracks. Very handy if you're used to handling the physical media; with WMP10 you had to click on the 'More Info' button to display it and half the time it'd take you to an MSN web page that attempted to sell you on music only vaguely related to the item being viewed.
If you're in Artist view and have multiple albums from the one artist it shows not only how many albums but the (approximate) total playing time. You don't want to see the stats[^] against Philip Glass! (But I bet you click anyway) :-)
And they added volume control to the toolbar view! Almost worth the upgrade for that alone!
So, in short, I think WMP11 is a pretty good upgrade from WMP10. It adds some nice new stuff and hasn't, so far as I've discovered with an evenings playing with it, removed anything.
They still insist on calling each track a song but I imagine I'm going to be pretty much in the minority on that point.
The upgrade was painless but strangely, at the office, it wanted to reboot at the end; here at home it didn't. *shrug* The upgrade does what every good upgrade should do; it imports all settings from the previous version that make sense in the context of the new version and it correctly imported my media.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Setting up an alibi
In late 1987 Rod and I, sharing an interest in MIDI music, started spending some time together out of hours. We both worked for Hewlett Packard at the time; I have a vague recollection that he may have been the guy who maintained our servers.
Our interest in MIDI music was mostly shared over the odd beer at a local pub. I was still trying, in vain, to make a synthesiser sound like even a dismal attempt at orchestral string music whilst he was into techno.
After a few nights I was invited over to his place to meet his girlfriend and hear (and play with) his synthesiser setup. Not quite as good as mine was, the synthesiser setup that is. I had no girlfriend at the time and Sue and I had just separated. My synthesiser was a Yamaha DX5[^] which was, given my keyboarding skills, considerable overkill. I could just about manage to play the first movement of Beethovens Moonlight Sonata but that was my apogee! Made no matter; I wrote my scores using a PC editor and played em through the MIDI connection!
I fancy the built in AC3 sound in the PC I'm typing on right now is better for my purposes than that DX5!
So I met his girlfriend. Nice girl as I recall though I couldn't tell you her name to save my life.
A month or so later I met Peta and as might have been expected my focus shifted somewhat and I spent more time with her and less with friends. So much so that I didn't meet Rod's girlfriend a second time.
Half a year or so after that I left Hewlett Packard. Nope, not quite true; they sacked me. One can only tell ones boss[^] to go and have sex with himself so many times before he retaliates!
After a short period of unemployment I started working at Unisys. By now it was early 1989 and Rod and I hadn't seen each other for maybe a third of a year. So it was quite the surprise when the phone at my desk rang and his girlfriend asked me if I'd enjoyed last night with Rod. I had no idea what she was talking about, which was way more than enough for her.
A couple of hours later Rod rang wanting to know why I hadn't backed up his alibi?
Well duh! If you want me to lie to save your sorry arse then the least you can do is make sure I know which set of lies I'm supposed to tell!
Our interest in MIDI music was mostly shared over the odd beer at a local pub. I was still trying, in vain, to make a synthesiser sound like even a dismal attempt at orchestral string music whilst he was into techno.
After a few nights I was invited over to his place to meet his girlfriend and hear (and play with) his synthesiser setup. Not quite as good as mine was, the synthesiser setup that is. I had no girlfriend at the time and Sue and I had just separated. My synthesiser was a Yamaha DX5[^] which was, given my keyboarding skills, considerable overkill. I could just about manage to play the first movement of Beethovens Moonlight Sonata but that was my apogee! Made no matter; I wrote my scores using a PC editor and played em through the MIDI connection!
I fancy the built in AC3 sound in the PC I'm typing on right now is better for my purposes than that DX5!
So I met his girlfriend. Nice girl as I recall though I couldn't tell you her name to save my life.
A month or so later I met Peta and as might have been expected my focus shifted somewhat and I spent more time with her and less with friends. So much so that I didn't meet Rod's girlfriend a second time.
Half a year or so after that I left Hewlett Packard. Nope, not quite true; they sacked me. One can only tell ones boss[^] to go and have sex with himself so many times before he retaliates!
After a short period of unemployment I started working at Unisys. By now it was early 1989 and Rod and I hadn't seen each other for maybe a third of a year. So it was quite the surprise when the phone at my desk rang and his girlfriend asked me if I'd enjoyed last night with Rod. I had no idea what she was talking about, which was way more than enough for her.
A couple of hours later Rod rang wanting to know why I hadn't backed up his alibi?
Well duh! If you want me to lie to save your sorry arse then the least you can do is make sure I know which set of lies I'm supposed to tell!
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
What was behind the fifth tree??
Fair warning to Colin Mac, you might find the punchline disappointing :-)
In addition to nightly trivia games our trivia web/chat site held a monthly tournament. Each players score accumulated over a month and the top 30 players were privileged to compete in the tournament game. In our early days as an independent site we even had prizes! I think we mailed em out the first few months and afterward it slipped. The prize was a rather fine glass trophy engraved with the players name and the month/year. The prizes were supplied by a player who lived in Hawaii. She mailed em parcel post to me in Melbourne and I mailed em by parcel post to whichever country the winner lived in.
Truth be told I was never really happy with the tournament idea; I've always felt that trivia games should be fun and dignifying the concept with a monthly competition injected way too much competition. It certainly led to some acrimonious disputes over a hosts answer to a question. But we added tournaments because a competing site had them. Never a good idea to let the competition force your hand.
One acrimonious dispute that led to some threats against yours truly, threats I never took seriously, involved a question I wrote. The question was, what's the most common rock eaten by humans? My answer was salt. Perhaps an ambiguous question but most people understood it. Not so Cosi. His answer was Castlemaine (maybe it was Brighton) Rock, meaning a hard sugar candy. I disallowed the answer and you'd have thought I'd insulted the purity of his mothers character! I kid you not; a year later he was STILL coming into the chat room when I was hosting and indulging in the ultimate lose lose game; that of baiting the host.
By that time we'd long since migrated away from MSN and were running on an IRCX server in my living room. We had the ability to kick players off the server and ban them for varying periods of time.
You don't last long as a host if you exercise that power arbitrarily. Even though it was a free service from the players point of view if not mine it was still necessary to adhere to a standard procedure no matter how irksome the taunter. Thus, each time Cosi appeared, he'd go into his standard routine and I'd go through the three steps. Warn, warn, warn, bang! It got so that most of the regulars, most of whom had never hosted, wondered why I didn't ban on sight!
In addition to hosting I played. As the author of both the game software and the chat client I felt it advisable to play so I could see how it looked from that side of the fence. And, given that all our hosts were unpaid volunteers, how would it have looked if I hadn't played games?
Who am I kidding? I enjoyed the games and the banter as much as the next player!
I had an unfair advantage that no player ever suspected. Nope, not a backdoor into the game software so I could see the question and answer even before it went to the chat room. Nope, my advantage was that I was 4 feet of cable away from the server and so I saw the question a split second before anyone else, connected through dial up modems halfway around the world, did.
We had some formidable players; Leigh for one, Bruce, Maree, Ewe, Brenda for others. One month, I think it was January 2001, I qualified for the tournament. Bruce volunteered to host the game.
Now the thing you have to understand about Bruce is that he's a dag. I know exactly what I mean by that expression as would most of my Australian friends but it's very hard to define. Try this quote 'Dag, daggy: Dirty lump of wool at the back end of a sheep, also an affectionate or mildly abusive term for a socially inept person.'. You're no wiser huh?
Being a dag Bruce could be relied upon to come up with a wildly tangential game. Where most people, approaching the writing of a trivia game, would come up with questions such as 'In what year was Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame born?' Bruce was perfectly capable of asking how many cents he was holding! Any answer was pure guesswork and the awarding of points similarly haphazard.
To be fair to Bruce, he did stick pretty much to formula for his tournament game except for one category, Trees. Perhaps that innocent word referred to tree species; or perhaps to famous trees in Melbourne, or to trees from which celebrated outlaws dangled?
Not a bit of it! First question in that category was something along the lines of, where was the Drop bear[^].
We all puzzled over this as the clock ticked down (a typical round lasted 30 seconds). Came the answer, 'behind the first tree' and I imagine many a palm slapped against the forehead as we all, on our computers spread around the world, said 'Doh!'.
On went the game.
As we got toward the end of the game it became a competition between Leigh and I. After round 34 of 35 we were still matched with one question to go. First correct got 10 points, second and subsequent correct a mere 7. So the margin was going to be slim.
The last question was from the Tree category. Almost unfair to Leigh because by the fourth question I had seen the pattern. The answer was always 'behind the (question number)th tree'! So when that final question ran I was poised to type 5th! First answer and I won!
I think that was the only MindProbes tournament I won. *shrug* it was hardly sporting for one of the creators of the site to win anyway!
So what was behind the fifth tree? I have no idea; I don't remember.
In addition to nightly trivia games our trivia web/chat site held a monthly tournament. Each players score accumulated over a month and the top 30 players were privileged to compete in the tournament game. In our early days as an independent site we even had prizes! I think we mailed em out the first few months and afterward it slipped. The prize was a rather fine glass trophy engraved with the players name and the month/year. The prizes were supplied by a player who lived in Hawaii. She mailed em parcel post to me in Melbourne and I mailed em by parcel post to whichever country the winner lived in.
Truth be told I was never really happy with the tournament idea; I've always felt that trivia games should be fun and dignifying the concept with a monthly competition injected way too much competition. It certainly led to some acrimonious disputes over a hosts answer to a question. But we added tournaments because a competing site had them. Never a good idea to let the competition force your hand.
One acrimonious dispute that led to some threats against yours truly, threats I never took seriously, involved a question I wrote. The question was, what's the most common rock eaten by humans? My answer was salt. Perhaps an ambiguous question but most people understood it. Not so Cosi. His answer was Castlemaine (maybe it was Brighton) Rock, meaning a hard sugar candy. I disallowed the answer and you'd have thought I'd insulted the purity of his mothers character! I kid you not; a year later he was STILL coming into the chat room when I was hosting and indulging in the ultimate lose lose game; that of baiting the host.
By that time we'd long since migrated away from MSN and were running on an IRCX server in my living room. We had the ability to kick players off the server and ban them for varying periods of time.
You don't last long as a host if you exercise that power arbitrarily. Even though it was a free service from the players point of view if not mine it was still necessary to adhere to a standard procedure no matter how irksome the taunter. Thus, each time Cosi appeared, he'd go into his standard routine and I'd go through the three steps. Warn, warn, warn, bang! It got so that most of the regulars, most of whom had never hosted, wondered why I didn't ban on sight!
In addition to hosting I played. As the author of both the game software and the chat client I felt it advisable to play so I could see how it looked from that side of the fence. And, given that all our hosts were unpaid volunteers, how would it have looked if I hadn't played games?
Who am I kidding? I enjoyed the games and the banter as much as the next player!
I had an unfair advantage that no player ever suspected. Nope, not a backdoor into the game software so I could see the question and answer even before it went to the chat room. Nope, my advantage was that I was 4 feet of cable away from the server and so I saw the question a split second before anyone else, connected through dial up modems halfway around the world, did.
We had some formidable players; Leigh for one, Bruce, Maree, Ewe, Brenda for others. One month, I think it was January 2001, I qualified for the tournament. Bruce volunteered to host the game.
Now the thing you have to understand about Bruce is that he's a dag. I know exactly what I mean by that expression as would most of my Australian friends but it's very hard to define. Try this quote 'Dag, daggy: Dirty lump of wool at the back end of a sheep, also an affectionate or mildly abusive term for a socially inept person.'. You're no wiser huh?
Being a dag Bruce could be relied upon to come up with a wildly tangential game. Where most people, approaching the writing of a trivia game, would come up with questions such as 'In what year was Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame born?' Bruce was perfectly capable of asking how many cents he was holding! Any answer was pure guesswork and the awarding of points similarly haphazard.
To be fair to Bruce, he did stick pretty much to formula for his tournament game except for one category, Trees. Perhaps that innocent word referred to tree species; or perhaps to famous trees in Melbourne, or to trees from which celebrated outlaws dangled?
Not a bit of it! First question in that category was something along the lines of, where was the Drop bear[^].
We all puzzled over this as the clock ticked down (a typical round lasted 30 seconds). Came the answer, 'behind the first tree' and I imagine many a palm slapped against the forehead as we all, on our computers spread around the world, said 'Doh!'.
On went the game.
As we got toward the end of the game it became a competition between Leigh and I. After round 34 of 35 we were still matched with one question to go. First correct got 10 points, second and subsequent correct a mere 7. So the margin was going to be slim.
The last question was from the Tree category. Almost unfair to Leigh because by the fourth question I had seen the pattern. The answer was always 'behind the (question number)th tree'! So when that final question ran I was poised to type 5th! First answer and I won!
I think that was the only MindProbes tournament I won. *shrug* it was hardly sporting for one of the creators of the site to win anyway!
So what was behind the fifth tree? I have no idea; I don't remember.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Freebies
As a recent convert to digital music (digital in the sense of storing it on the computer or streaming it across a network connection) you'll understand that I didn't take a lot of notice of Napster back in the day. Didn't much notice Kazaa either unless you count the hours wasted ridding the kids computer of the viruses and spyware that seemed to accompany that software.
iMesh was no better and you'll understand that living in the land of the RIAA and infringement notices sent to grannies who've never owned computers I have considerable incentive in discouraging the kids from downloading pirated music. We both know who they're going to target if they decide to target our IP address don't we!
Want to know one thing that really annoys me about Windows Media Player? They call a 'track' a 'song'. You have no idea how silly it is to see WMP refer to the fourth movement of Mahlers 6th symphony as a 'song'. I'm not sure I know what word I'd have used but it surely wouldn't have been 'song'.
So lately Napster have changed their site a trifle; we can listen to 2 million 'tracks' 5 times each for free. For a trifle under ten bucks a month (though who knows what they'll add as tax) one can get unlimited listening in non stored form and for a further 5 bucks a month you get the option to store to portable devices. I'm still waiting for MY portable device! :-)
Sounds good so I gave it a try. Without considering the question of breadth of coverage I checked first for what would be 'popular'. Of course my idea of popular isn't really. But Pink Floyd should be a safe choice as indeed it proved to be. Gave it a listen for tracks that I'm very very familiar with. Sounded good.
No Beatles but then again no one has Beatles; they haven't yet allowed internet usage of their catalogue. Reaching back into ancient memories of the 60's I tried 'The Small Faces'. Yup, but they don't have Itchykoo Park? You're kidding right?
Whenever Andrew does the 'you're kidding right' thang I say, yep, we're testing your credulity. He still doesn't understand that comment but it'll come with time!
Tried Richard Harris[^] next. They have his 1968 album 'A Tramp Shining' which does include the magnificent 'MacArthur Park'. I don't much care if he'll never have the recipe again; he needed it only the once to record such a wonderful song!
But these are albums I have and on the PC no less. How about the stuff I once had on vinyl? I tried a search for Scriabin[^]; Prometheus, the Poem of Fire. Yup, they had it but it sounded like a mono recording of the premiere performance from 1910. Somehow I could never get it to play more than about 3 minutes before something interrupted the music. This on a 5 Mbits/S downward connection!
So whilst I think Napster at ten bucks or so a month could be a good idea I'm not yet prepared to shell out; heck, I have more than enough music to last a lifetime and their classical music side has to sound a whole lot better and be more reliable before I'll become a subscriber!
iMesh was no better and you'll understand that living in the land of the RIAA and infringement notices sent to grannies who've never owned computers I have considerable incentive in discouraging the kids from downloading pirated music. We both know who they're going to target if they decide to target our IP address don't we!
Want to know one thing that really annoys me about Windows Media Player? They call a 'track' a 'song'. You have no idea how silly it is to see WMP refer to the fourth movement of Mahlers 6th symphony as a 'song'. I'm not sure I know what word I'd have used but it surely wouldn't have been 'song'.
So lately Napster have changed their site a trifle; we can listen to 2 million 'tracks' 5 times each for free. For a trifle under ten bucks a month (though who knows what they'll add as tax) one can get unlimited listening in non stored form and for a further 5 bucks a month you get the option to store to portable devices. I'm still waiting for MY portable device! :-)
Sounds good so I gave it a try. Without considering the question of breadth of coverage I checked first for what would be 'popular'. Of course my idea of popular isn't really. But Pink Floyd should be a safe choice as indeed it proved to be. Gave it a listen for tracks that I'm very very familiar with. Sounded good.
No Beatles but then again no one has Beatles; they haven't yet allowed internet usage of their catalogue. Reaching back into ancient memories of the 60's I tried 'The Small Faces'. Yup, but they don't have Itchykoo Park? You're kidding right?
Whenever Andrew does the 'you're kidding right' thang I say, yep, we're testing your credulity. He still doesn't understand that comment but it'll come with time!
Tried Richard Harris[^] next. They have his 1968 album 'A Tramp Shining' which does include the magnificent 'MacArthur Park'. I don't much care if he'll never have the recipe again; he needed it only the once to record such a wonderful song!
But these are albums I have and on the PC no less. How about the stuff I once had on vinyl? I tried a search for Scriabin[^]; Prometheus, the Poem of Fire. Yup, they had it but it sounded like a mono recording of the premiere performance from 1910. Somehow I could never get it to play more than about 3 minutes before something interrupted the music. This on a 5 Mbits/S downward connection!
So whilst I think Napster at ten bucks or so a month could be a good idea I'm not yet prepared to shell out; heck, I have more than enough music to last a lifetime and their classical music side has to sound a whole lot better and be more reliable before I'll become a subscriber!
Sunday, May 14, 2006
North to Alaska
Was a 'pop' song on the hit parade in 1960. I quote 'pop' because it certainly wasn't rock and I'm not sure it even fit the description for 1960 pop. But then again, what do I really know about the matter? I was 6 at the time and one tends, at that age, to uncritically accept whatever comes spouting out of the radio. It's not as though the adults consult the tastes of 6 year olds when deciding which station to tune to.
You have to remember that this was back in a time when there might be only one radio in the whole house. CD's and MP3 players and the whole rigamarole were not even imagined. Car radios were extremely expensive, consequently relatively rare and based on unbelievably primitive[^] technology!
In our house in 1960 we had an Astor 'Mickey' radio. A decade or so later I was intimately familiar with that kind of technology.
When my wife and I visited the Arizona Historical Society Museum last weekend they had a display I instantly recognised though I doubt Andrew would have recognised it. It was a leather arm chair pulled up beside a (fake) fireplace, with an old fashioned wireless in a wooden case made up to look like a substantial piece of furniture. A card on the wall above the chair invited us to be seated and press the button. I did and heard one of Franklin Delano Roosevelts 'fireside' chats. FDR had an instantly recognisable voice!
One summer afternoon in 1960 - I don't remember if it was the first or the second summer of that year - I was on a visit to my grandparents house in Black Rock, Melbourne. Uncle Ian, the youngest of the uncles, was polishing his Vespa and Uncle Donald was polishing his VW Beetle. Ian on the left hand side of the house; Donald in the carport on the right hand side of the house. Both with radios playing.
I couldn't believe my ears! Uncle Ian's radio was playing North to Alaska but so was Uncle Donalds! I ran breathlessly back and forth between the two sides of the house, hoping to catch em out and discover one radio playing a different song. But nope, try as I might, run as fast as I could, I couldn't find a discrepancy. What a revelation! Two radios could play the exact same song!
You have to remember that this was back in a time when there might be only one radio in the whole house. CD's and MP3 players and the whole rigamarole were not even imagined. Car radios were extremely expensive, consequently relatively rare and based on unbelievably primitive[^] technology!
In our house in 1960 we had an Astor 'Mickey' radio. A decade or so later I was intimately familiar with that kind of technology.
When my wife and I visited the Arizona Historical Society Museum last weekend they had a display I instantly recognised though I doubt Andrew would have recognised it. It was a leather arm chair pulled up beside a (fake) fireplace, with an old fashioned wireless in a wooden case made up to look like a substantial piece of furniture. A card on the wall above the chair invited us to be seated and press the button. I did and heard one of Franklin Delano Roosevelts 'fireside' chats. FDR had an instantly recognisable voice!
One summer afternoon in 1960 - I don't remember if it was the first or the second summer of that year - I was on a visit to my grandparents house in Black Rock, Melbourne. Uncle Ian, the youngest of the uncles, was polishing his Vespa and Uncle Donald was polishing his VW Beetle. Ian on the left hand side of the house; Donald in the carport on the right hand side of the house. Both with radios playing.
I couldn't believe my ears! Uncle Ian's radio was playing North to Alaska but so was Uncle Donalds! I ran breathlessly back and forth between the two sides of the house, hoping to catch em out and discover one radio playing a different song. But nope, try as I might, run as fast as I could, I couldn't find a discrepancy. What a revelation! Two radios could play the exact same song!
Adventures in ADL
ADL[^] is, of course, Adventure Definition Language, a freeware language you can use to write Adventure games similar to the Zork[^] series.
Zork was, if you've never seen the game, the best text game ever! None of those fancy graphics! The graphics were in your head as you read the text descriptions and built your own vision of the Great Underground Empire. A pretty good description of reading any novel of the last 500 years I'd reckon!
I have wonderful memories of playing Zork in the mid 80's; of spending hours trying various combinations of button pressing to solve the dam puzzle; of learning to save early and often! Thus a game teaches us survival patterns for the real world!
In 1987 the internet was a different place; there were no web sites. Everything was either ftp or gopher or usenet. I saw a post in an email about some new C program available on usenet, distributed as encoded chunks within the emails. As I remember, it was distributed as a bunch of ksh self describing scripts which, when run, created a source directory containing the source code. I still have the output of those scripts; it's part of my standard 'burn to DVD when rebuilding' sequence.
The program was ADL and I used it to write a game based on the characters I met at Hewlett Packard.
What game would be complete without a monster? My monster was the memory leak! My game included some examples of leaking source code and the solution to the puzzle was the repairing of the bug!
The game had a description of our office where each 'room' was a desk. One of the desks had a collection of Playboy magazines and if one of the characters, Theo, picked one up and went to the toilet the game would send me email. The surprising thing is that I received many more than one email from that source.
Since I didn't tie the action of taking a playboy to the dunny to a specfic user ID I suspect that Theo was much maligned!
Zork was, if you've never seen the game, the best text game ever! None of those fancy graphics! The graphics were in your head as you read the text descriptions and built your own vision of the Great Underground Empire. A pretty good description of reading any novel of the last 500 years I'd reckon!
I have wonderful memories of playing Zork in the mid 80's; of spending hours trying various combinations of button pressing to solve the dam puzzle; of learning to save early and often! Thus a game teaches us survival patterns for the real world!
In 1987 the internet was a different place; there were no web sites. Everything was either ftp or gopher or usenet. I saw a post in an email about some new C program available on usenet, distributed as encoded chunks within the emails. As I remember, it was distributed as a bunch of ksh self describing scripts which, when run, created a source directory containing the source code. I still have the output of those scripts; it's part of my standard 'burn to DVD when rebuilding' sequence.
The program was ADL and I used it to write a game based on the characters I met at Hewlett Packard.
What game would be complete without a monster? My monster was the memory leak! My game included some examples of leaking source code and the solution to the puzzle was the repairing of the bug!
The game had a description of our office where each 'room' was a desk. One of the desks had a collection of Playboy magazines and if one of the characters, Theo, picked one up and went to the toilet the game would send me email. The surprising thing is that I received many more than one email from that source.
Since I didn't tie the action of taking a playboy to the dunny to a specfic user ID I suspect that Theo was much maligned!
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Observations of the fairer sex
which title itself would pretty much date me.
I've written a couple of times about the meeting from hell that occurs each Tuesday. It seems to be my fate to sit through it even though, of late, my involvement has been limited to a single line item or two of the list of 40 or so for discussion. My line item arises about half way through the meeting and I could disappear if I chose to after mine was done but nowadays, in the post Ed[^] age, I choose to stay to the bitter end.
In part it's because of a running joke about how I choose to attend the meeting because it feels so good when the meeting is over. And in part because it never hurts to know what's going on.
This week there was a most welcome distraction in the form of a very shapely young lady marching up and down outside the building with a mobile phone stuck to her ear. I say young but she would have been 30. She caught my eye and, compared to the specimens sitting around the table talking into the phone, she was quite the visual relief! Ain't nothing wrong with noticing an attractive woman!
About two minutes later one of my colleagues, let's call him Dave, came bustling in, laptop computer tucked under one arm, a sheaf of manila folders under the other. As he took the turn into the room he glanced out the window and did a double take; sure enough he'd noticed her.
For the next ten minutes I was amused to see his eyes swivelling left to right to left as he followed her progress.
I've written a couple of times about the meeting from hell that occurs each Tuesday. It seems to be my fate to sit through it even though, of late, my involvement has been limited to a single line item or two of the list of 40 or so for discussion. My line item arises about half way through the meeting and I could disappear if I chose to after mine was done but nowadays, in the post Ed[^] age, I choose to stay to the bitter end.
In part it's because of a running joke about how I choose to attend the meeting because it feels so good when the meeting is over. And in part because it never hurts to know what's going on.
This week there was a most welcome distraction in the form of a very shapely young lady marching up and down outside the building with a mobile phone stuck to her ear. I say young but she would have been 30. She caught my eye and, compared to the specimens sitting around the table talking into the phone, she was quite the visual relief! Ain't nothing wrong with noticing an attractive woman!
About two minutes later one of my colleagues, let's call him Dave, came bustling in, laptop computer tucked under one arm, a sheaf of manila folders under the other. As he took the turn into the room he glanced out the window and did a double take; sure enough he'd noticed her.
For the next ten minutes I was amused to see his eyes swivelling left to right to left as he followed her progress.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Unknown album
I'm still working my way through the ripped music collection, getting it organised etc.
As a side note the MP3 player I ordered 2 months ago using frequent flyer points still hasn't arrived; United Airlines keep on predicting delivery dates and Toshiba keep on missing em. UA's most recent communication, 3 weeks ago, says it 'should be shipped by May 12'. No sign of it. But I can't blame UA for this; the Gigabeat S series has been delayed and delayed and most online retailers are now predicting a June 1 release. It was released in Japan on April 28th but hasn't hit the US yet. Sigh... :-)
So there's a bunch of tracks at the bottom of the Album view in WMP 10. All of em 'unknown album'. It bothers me that I've paid good money for each of those CD's yet I can't positively identify em. Remember, I'm the bloke who can pick which Mahler symphony it is within the first 3 seconds.
I'm pretty sure the first one is the Patrick Hadley/Philip Stainton 'The trees so high' album. Excellent music. And the second one is surely the finale to Scriabins 2nd symphony plus the first two movements of the third symphony. As for where the third movement of the Scriabin 3rd is? No idea. I know it's hiding there on the hard disk somewhere; just have to winkle the bastard out!
As a side note the MP3 player I ordered 2 months ago using frequent flyer points still hasn't arrived; United Airlines keep on predicting delivery dates and Toshiba keep on missing em. UA's most recent communication, 3 weeks ago, says it 'should be shipped by May 12'. No sign of it. But I can't blame UA for this; the Gigabeat S series has been delayed and delayed and most online retailers are now predicting a June 1 release. It was released in Japan on April 28th but hasn't hit the US yet. Sigh... :-)
So there's a bunch of tracks at the bottom of the Album view in WMP 10. All of em 'unknown album'. It bothers me that I've paid good money for each of those CD's yet I can't positively identify em. Remember, I'm the bloke who can pick which Mahler symphony it is within the first 3 seconds.
I'm pretty sure the first one is the Patrick Hadley/Philip Stainton 'The trees so high' album. Excellent music. And the second one is surely the finale to Scriabins 2nd symphony plus the first two movements of the third symphony. As for where the third movement of the Scriabin 3rd is? No idea. I know it's hiding there on the hard disk somewhere; just have to winkle the bastard out!
In real life
I didn't only sit there before a computer in a dimly lit room with cigarette smoke curling around my head, cat asleep in my lap, as I chatted and moderated away. Nope; we also arranged to meet 'IRL', in real life.
It's difficult to describe the IRL experience to a non-chatter, especially with all those stories doing the rounds about meeting nuts online. Had my share[^] of those!
With just one exception I was never silly enough to meet up with someone for the first time in private; nope, always in public spaces with plenty of witnesses around. I'm not yet willing to talk much about that sole exception; it took place in Dallas a decade ago and I've so managed to suppress it in my memory that I cannot remember even a street name related to the experience despite having been back to Dallas a dozen or so times within the last two years.
Later experiences were much better. Three girlfriends and a wife ain't a bad outcome! :-) For the most part, however, IRL meetings were a group of four or five us living in the same city who decided to go have dinner together at some restaurant in the city and share all the in jokes that only an online community can generate!
Quite an instructive experience. I don't think a single person I met in that way, online first and then in person, ever matched the mental image I'd formed. I'm sure I didn't match their image either!
Occasionally there'd be interstate people and on rarer occasions someone from overseas. One forum I was involved with, Chatgames[^] even staged an annual meetup in Las Vegas.
One of the interstate people was Alice[^], of whom I wrote last night. Freckle faced, painfully thin and 16. A group of us met at Pat O'Briens (sic?) pub at Southgate in Melbourne for dinner and some fun. I reckon I was the oldest by quite a margin; most of em were early 20's.
After dinner we decided to go to Crown Casino[^] and maybe waste 20 bucks on blackjack. Of course Alice posed a problem; at 16 she was too young to be allowed in. But we weren't daunted by a little problem like that; we'd smuggle her in past the bouncers and everything would be allright.
Approached the first entrance. It was a given I'd get in so we tried the idea of Alice holding my arm as we marched in. It didn't work. Ok, regroup and rethink. We moved to a second entrance and tried again. Failed again but we'd worked out why; she made eye contact with the bouncer and smiled. Braces gave her extreme youth away. So we repaired to a third entrance and tried again, this time with admonishments to look either straight ahead or toward the floor. Success!
A year or two later my wife and I started our own online games site, Mindprobes[^] and Alice became one of our 'kids' games hosts. If I was 45 at the time what chance had I of writing a trivia game tuned into 1999 pop or rap? At 18 by then Alice was an ideal choice.
Did I contribute to the corruption of a minor? I doubt it. Alice was glad to have some adults the age of her parents take her seriously and treat her as an equal. Perhaps there's a lesson in there for me with regard to Morgan.
It's difficult to describe the IRL experience to a non-chatter, especially with all those stories doing the rounds about meeting nuts online. Had my share[^] of those!
With just one exception I was never silly enough to meet up with someone for the first time in private; nope, always in public spaces with plenty of witnesses around. I'm not yet willing to talk much about that sole exception; it took place in Dallas a decade ago and I've so managed to suppress it in my memory that I cannot remember even a street name related to the experience despite having been back to Dallas a dozen or so times within the last two years.
Later experiences were much better. Three girlfriends and a wife ain't a bad outcome! :-) For the most part, however, IRL meetings were a group of four or five us living in the same city who decided to go have dinner together at some restaurant in the city and share all the in jokes that only an online community can generate!
Quite an instructive experience. I don't think a single person I met in that way, online first and then in person, ever matched the mental image I'd formed. I'm sure I didn't match their image either!
Occasionally there'd be interstate people and on rarer occasions someone from overseas. One forum I was involved with, Chatgames[^] even staged an annual meetup in Las Vegas.
One of the interstate people was Alice[^], of whom I wrote last night. Freckle faced, painfully thin and 16. A group of us met at Pat O'Briens (sic?) pub at Southgate in Melbourne for dinner and some fun. I reckon I was the oldest by quite a margin; most of em were early 20's.
After dinner we decided to go to Crown Casino[^] and maybe waste 20 bucks on blackjack. Of course Alice posed a problem; at 16 she was too young to be allowed in. But we weren't daunted by a little problem like that; we'd smuggle her in past the bouncers and everything would be allright.
Approached the first entrance. It was a given I'd get in so we tried the idea of Alice holding my arm as we marched in. It didn't work. Ok, regroup and rethink. We moved to a second entrance and tried again. Failed again but we'd worked out why; she made eye contact with the bouncer and smiled. Braces gave her extreme youth away. So we repaired to a third entrance and tried again, this time with admonishments to look either straight ahead or toward the floor. Success!
A year or two later my wife and I started our own online games site, Mindprobes[^] and Alice became one of our 'kids' games hosts. If I was 45 at the time what chance had I of writing a trivia game tuned into 1999 pop or rap? At 18 by then Alice was an ideal choice.
Did I contribute to the corruption of a minor? I doubt it. Alice was glad to have some adults the age of her parents take her seriously and treat her as an equal. Perhaps there's a lesson in there for me with regard to Morgan.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The joys of hosting
Last time I wrote about being a chat host for moderated chat rooms. Interesting job though I can't believe how much time I wasted on it. That's a perspective from 10 years later and it took me a while to get worn down by the (mostly) unpaid job.
I find it significant that the charm of hosting waned about the time that internet access became affordable. Remember that I'm talking Australian ISP's in 1995/1997 when it was charged by the hour at significant dollars per hour. If all you're doing with the internet is a bit of random surfing plus some email 5 or 6 bucks an hour isn't a lot. If you're doing much more than that then it can really add up.
MSN took it pretty seriously. I imagine they were concerned with legal liabilities as much as anything else but they required new hosts to undergo training. They provided us with numbers to call all around the world to alert emergency services and we were given guidance on how to handle, for example, the person who threatened suicide online. I know of at least one case (I wasn't involved) where a suicide attempt was thwarted by the timely intervention of emergency services in Perth, Australia.
At the end of each shift we were required to save a transcript of the chat and post it on a private message board. I very much doubt anyone had either the time or the inclination to read those; they were there to back up our decisions in case some specced malefactor complained.
To put this into perspective, in 2000 I hosted my own chat server in my living room and whilst I could have saved complete transcripts automatically (the technology had improved) I didn't bother. Why would I want to spend hours offline reading endless lol's and gmta's and ;-) posts? As the chat server operator I needed hosts but if I couldn't trust my choices to exercise good judgement then it became an exercise in futility.
We also hosted in pairs at a minimum, with a senior host, usually an MSN employee sitting in a private chat room. We'd be in both the public chat room and the private one trading impressions of where TotalHottie's conversation was going whilst keeping an eye on SouthCalGuy, a known troublemaker!
I've hosted four chatrooms simultaneously and let me tell you that's a CPU bound job indeed. I can context switch with the best of them but keeping an eye on up to 200 conversations is quite the task. Fortunately you get to know the regulars and you can rely on Arfur's commonsense; he's never going to be a troublemaker. Lucy211 however, needs to be watched.
I had my own suicide scare one evening. Alice came on and started acting somewhat strangely (as much as anyone in a chat room can be said to act but you know what I mean). This is 10 years ago so I don't remember the exact details but something about what she was typing rang an alarm bell so I 'whispered' to her. She responded, fortunately, and I got the whole story.
As to how much of the story I believed form your own opinion. The measure of my belief isn't all that important. But let me tell you, when you're trying to handle someone who's threatening to slit their wrists the amount of your belief doesn't really matter; what's important at that moment is the attempt to elicit, without being seen to elicit it, the whereabouts of the person whilst persuading them that perhaps life is more attractive than it seems at that moment!
Whether you believe it's a serious attempt or someone jerking your chain you have to behave as if it were real! If it's a jerk, well, so what, so you wasted an hour of your life. If it's real there's the possibility that you may have saved a life.
It was quite the relief the next evening when Alice came into the chat room again; it was quite obviously the same person rather than a coincidence of nicks.
It wasn't always serious stuff though. There was one woman from Houston who came into the chat room nightly (my time, it must have been 6 AM her time) to flirt and brag about how beautiful, sexy, desirable she was. I don't even remember her nick but I started watching for her arrival. When she arrived I'd type,
'Houston, the ego has landed!'. I do believe she looked forward to that comment!
I find it significant that the charm of hosting waned about the time that internet access became affordable. Remember that I'm talking Australian ISP's in 1995/1997 when it was charged by the hour at significant dollars per hour. If all you're doing with the internet is a bit of random surfing plus some email 5 or 6 bucks an hour isn't a lot. If you're doing much more than that then it can really add up.
MSN took it pretty seriously. I imagine they were concerned with legal liabilities as much as anything else but they required new hosts to undergo training. They provided us with numbers to call all around the world to alert emergency services and we were given guidance on how to handle, for example, the person who threatened suicide online. I know of at least one case (I wasn't involved) where a suicide attempt was thwarted by the timely intervention of emergency services in Perth, Australia.
At the end of each shift we were required to save a transcript of the chat and post it on a private message board. I very much doubt anyone had either the time or the inclination to read those; they were there to back up our decisions in case some specced malefactor complained.
To put this into perspective, in 2000 I hosted my own chat server in my living room and whilst I could have saved complete transcripts automatically (the technology had improved) I didn't bother. Why would I want to spend hours offline reading endless lol's and gmta's and ;-) posts? As the chat server operator I needed hosts but if I couldn't trust my choices to exercise good judgement then it became an exercise in futility.
We also hosted in pairs at a minimum, with a senior host, usually an MSN employee sitting in a private chat room. We'd be in both the public chat room and the private one trading impressions of where TotalHottie's conversation was going whilst keeping an eye on SouthCalGuy, a known troublemaker!
I've hosted four chatrooms simultaneously and let me tell you that's a CPU bound job indeed. I can context switch with the best of them but keeping an eye on up to 200 conversations is quite the task. Fortunately you get to know the regulars and you can rely on Arfur's commonsense; he's never going to be a troublemaker. Lucy211 however, needs to be watched.
I had my own suicide scare one evening. Alice came on and started acting somewhat strangely (as much as anyone in a chat room can be said to act but you know what I mean). This is 10 years ago so I don't remember the exact details but something about what she was typing rang an alarm bell so I 'whispered' to her. She responded, fortunately, and I got the whole story.
As to how much of the story I believed form your own opinion. The measure of my belief isn't all that important. But let me tell you, when you're trying to handle someone who's threatening to slit their wrists the amount of your belief doesn't really matter; what's important at that moment is the attempt to elicit, without being seen to elicit it, the whereabouts of the person whilst persuading them that perhaps life is more attractive than it seems at that moment!
Whether you believe it's a serious attempt or someone jerking your chain you have to behave as if it were real! If it's a jerk, well, so what, so you wasted an hour of your life. If it's real there's the possibility that you may have saved a life.
It was quite the relief the next evening when Alice came into the chat room again; it was quite obviously the same person rather than a coincidence of nicks.
It wasn't always serious stuff though. There was one woman from Houston who came into the chat room nightly (my time, it must have been 6 AM her time) to flirt and brag about how beautiful, sexy, desirable she was. I don't even remember her nick but I started watching for her arrival. When she arrived I'd type,
'Houston, the ego has landed!'. I do believe she looked forward to that comment!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Changing goals
As you well know I'm a step-dad to three kids. Well, two really, the third at 21 and about to be married is hardly a kid! And, as I've said more than once, I get on very well with her indeed, most likely because we've never actually lived under the same roof.
If you go into this step-dad thing as I did, with little or no experience, it can be a daunting experience. I don't have any kids of my own. I'll resist the jokes about 'that I know of'. Given the complete lack of pregnancy scares in my life I have to assume that I'm not terribly fecund.
Thus, thrust by choice into a new family, I found myself at a loss; how to communicate with those irrational beings called teenagers? You understand that the most recent experience I had with 15 year old girls was when I was myself 15 and my goal at that time was diametrically opposed to my goal as the step-dad.
Morgan has been the cause of considerable domestic friction of late. Not because she's pregnant; once that horse had bolted and she had decided that this time she would go full term we had little choice but to go along with it. Not only can we not insist on either an abortion or adoption; I don't think we should be able to. Some things must be left to the individual to decide.
But am I wrong in wanting to see some consistency in that decision? Or am I expecting someone to grow up too fast? Morgan, at 8 months pregnant, still imagines that she can shrug off her responsibilities and expect her mother to pick up the pieces behind her. Just this week I've heard her shrieking four letter words and insisting on her 'right to rebel'. I'd have thought she'd pretty much given up that right about the time she decided to go full term.
Nope, the domestic friction arises from the fact that I don't want to find my wife taking on the role of mother to her grandson. If it's Morgans child let Morgan take on all the hard lifting!
This is Morgans third pregnancy; during her second Mum came up with the idea that she and I would adopt the child as our own. I was willing to agree to that provided we also agreed that this would be 'our' child and Morgan would have no contact whatsoever. You think that was unreasonable? Why should I invest 10 or 15 years of my life only to have her come in when it was convenient to her and steal 'my' child away?
Ye gods, I'm starting to sound like a republican. Put down the torch Harold! I promise I'll check the spelling of McDowell Road on the way to the office tomorrow!
If you go into this step-dad thing as I did, with little or no experience, it can be a daunting experience. I don't have any kids of my own. I'll resist the jokes about 'that I know of'. Given the complete lack of pregnancy scares in my life I have to assume that I'm not terribly fecund.
Thus, thrust by choice into a new family, I found myself at a loss; how to communicate with those irrational beings called teenagers? You understand that the most recent experience I had with 15 year old girls was when I was myself 15 and my goal at that time was diametrically opposed to my goal as the step-dad.
Morgan has been the cause of considerable domestic friction of late. Not because she's pregnant; once that horse had bolted and she had decided that this time she would go full term we had little choice but to go along with it. Not only can we not insist on either an abortion or adoption; I don't think we should be able to. Some things must be left to the individual to decide.
But am I wrong in wanting to see some consistency in that decision? Or am I expecting someone to grow up too fast? Morgan, at 8 months pregnant, still imagines that she can shrug off her responsibilities and expect her mother to pick up the pieces behind her. Just this week I've heard her shrieking four letter words and insisting on her 'right to rebel'. I'd have thought she'd pretty much given up that right about the time she decided to go full term.
Nope, the domestic friction arises from the fact that I don't want to find my wife taking on the role of mother to her grandson. If it's Morgans child let Morgan take on all the hard lifting!
This is Morgans third pregnancy; during her second Mum came up with the idea that she and I would adopt the child as our own. I was willing to agree to that provided we also agreed that this would be 'our' child and Morgan would have no contact whatsoever. You think that was unreasonable? Why should I invest 10 or 15 years of my life only to have her come in when it was convenient to her and steal 'my' child away?
Ye gods, I'm starting to sound like a republican. Put down the torch Harold! I promise I'll check the spelling of McDowell Road on the way to the office tomorrow!
Sunday, May 07, 2006
A tender kiss
So as I was writing the last blog entry, at about 3:30 AM my time and perhaps a trifle in my cups who should appear, bright eyed, bushy tailed and in thumb pain but my wife? She doesn't mind that I drink given that I do it when she's asleep and if she's going to arise at the ungodly hour of 3:30 AM, just before I go to bed on her own head be it :-)
A brief explanation from my wife; her thumb hurts! It was wrapped in rags and ice but I was insistent. Let me kiss it! Did it feel better after the kiss? My wife knows me somewhat better than you do; she lied, of course it does!
A brief explanation from my wife; her thumb hurts! It was wrapped in rags and ice but I was insistent. Let me kiss it! Did it feel better after the kiss? My wife knows me somewhat better than you do; she lied, of course it does!
I live and learn
I'd never realised that POW's during WW2 were transported from Europse to the USA, let alone to Arizona. Today we went to the Arizona Historical Society Museum near Papago Park. Fascinating museum and I know I'm going to return more than once. Much too much stuff to see in just one afternoon and it's a good museum; you never feel as though the curator who wrote the captions is talking down at you.
Thus I learned that there was a line drawn through Arizona during the first few months of the American involvement in WW2, roughly following US89 and US60. If you were of Japanese descent and lived north of the line you were ok so long as you didn't cross the line. If you lived south of the line it was internment time.
I've driven a few times east along MacDowell from the Hohokam Expressway toward Scottsdale road; that route takes you through some very scenic countryside with a couple of impressive red rock outcrops (called Buttes here and pronounced Bewtes though I can't resist reading that as Butts :-) ). Just before the first Butte (Barnes BUtte) on the left heading east there's what is obviously Federal land. I've often wondered about it given that it's pretty much empty.
The mystery was solved today; it was the site of a POW[^] camp.
The second Butte is a trifle further along on the right heading east. There's an amphitheatre there; google earth shows it quite clearly and it doesn't look natural. Neither I nor my wife can find any information whatsoever on the amphiteatre.
Thus I learned that there was a line drawn through Arizona during the first few months of the American involvement in WW2, roughly following US89 and US60. If you were of Japanese descent and lived north of the line you were ok so long as you didn't cross the line. If you lived south of the line it was internment time.
I've driven a few times east along MacDowell from the Hohokam Expressway toward Scottsdale road; that route takes you through some very scenic countryside with a couple of impressive red rock outcrops (called Buttes here and pronounced Bewtes though I can't resist reading that as Butts :-) ). Just before the first Butte (Barnes BUtte) on the left heading east there's what is obviously Federal land. I've often wondered about it given that it's pretty much empty.
The mystery was solved today; it was the site of a POW[^] camp.
The second Butte is a trifle further along on the right heading east. There's an amphitheatre there; google earth shows it quite clearly and it doesn't look natural. Neither I nor my wife can find any information whatsoever on the amphiteatre.
The birth of a movie
I mentioned[^] way back in December that we held a 'roast Robin' night in January 1990. What I didn't tell you then, because I hadn't written about the background, is that we decided that night, Heino, Robin and I, to make a movie.
What movie would we make? We didn't spend much time debating; the choice was obvious. We'd make a Scarless Pumpernickel[^] movie but this time we'd finish it!
I could say that I argued against that decision, given that it would involve me playing the title role but I'd be lying if I made that claim. :-) If there's one thing you can be sure of, having read the blog so far, it is that I have an ego!
So we went into a phase of arguing about story lines. Robin, ever the impractical dreamer, wanted to do a story involving airplanes and skyscrapers. Yes, more than a decade before 11/9, Robin had visions of us filming the crash of an airliner into a building. I bet the people behind Fight Club[^] were very very glad they got it to theatres before that particular atrocity. Would they have dared release a film with that ending in the months and years since?
While we'd have loved to do something that ambitious Heino and I argued, successfully, against such an ambitious storyline. We were more interested in scoping things down to what we could achieve within a very small budget with the acting talent we could call upon. You understand that the budget was what the three of us were willing to fork out and the acting talent was going to be those friends we could coerce, hoodwink and generally decieve into appearing!
We were very lucky. Heino worked at the time for the National Australia Bank in their long since disbanded video production unit; he had access to broadcast quality equipment and, just as importantly, his boss was willing to let him borrow it on weekends. He was also willing to let us use the edit suites and the studio out of hours.
We once calculated what it would have cost us to use the equipment if we'd paid commercial rates; it worked out at considerably north of a quarter million dollars!
Our script was an eclectic collection of ideas; we wanted to pay tribute to all the Turtle Video Centre productions that had made it as far as at least a few seconds of video. So we stole scenes shamelessly. Fun with Maths, for example, a production by one of Heino's schoolteachers in 1975, which described polygons. 'A polygon is a plane figure bound by straight lines'. We put those exact words into the mouth of The Professor, as he explained that soot sometimes feels smooth and sometimes it's gritty!
Of course Scarless still wore a silly outfit. The panty hose hadn't worked in the 1976 attempt so we decided I'd wear a pair of my girlfriend Peta's jodhpurs and some riding boots. My tailcoat and fake top hat had longs since gone the way of the dinosaur and whilst it was still possible to track down a tailcoat a top hat was impossible. We compromised with Peta's grandfathers hat.
We spent countless hours at my place or Heinos and occasionally at Robins nutting out the knottier points of the screenplay. Since we were trying to be true to the spirit of the original concept we just had to have a dream scene. Our dream scene was a mixture of a scene from Gary's movie Why me[^] and our original sequence from 1976 involving my beheading. I remember one afternoon (we have the discussion on video) at Heino's house where we acted out the scene. I said 'the chief swings his sword, a real sword' pause as Robin play acts a little 'and you gotta stop!'. Followed by the comment that the body wriggles a little 'but not too much!'. Maybe you had to be there!
My sister Debra would play the female lead; she'd been heavily involved in Turtle Video during the 1970's.
Robin would play the police chief, Orville C Fudpucker. That's a real name! In 1980 I bought my first floppy disk drive, A$750 for 143 K of storage! The purchase of a floppy disk drive in those days included floppys containing an operating system (M-DOS, short for Micropolis Disk Operating System) and a copy of Bill Gates MS-BASIC. I joined the M-DOS Users Group in 1981 and received, as part of the membership package, a floppy containing the complete members list. And there he was, Orville C Fudpucker of Alabama. The name just stuck in my head and when it came time to give the chief a name that was the obvious one!
One of the Daves agreed to play my trusty sidekick, Festering Wound; the other Dave was happy to play the professor. Sue would play Backup. Heino, in a cameo role, played Roger aka VK, the voice of Victoria police. The names of the characters should tell you something :-)
So, with the main plotlines in place; most of the actors decided, we went into production.
What movie would we make? We didn't spend much time debating; the choice was obvious. We'd make a Scarless Pumpernickel[^] movie but this time we'd finish it!
I could say that I argued against that decision, given that it would involve me playing the title role but I'd be lying if I made that claim. :-) If there's one thing you can be sure of, having read the blog so far, it is that I have an ego!
So we went into a phase of arguing about story lines. Robin, ever the impractical dreamer, wanted to do a story involving airplanes and skyscrapers. Yes, more than a decade before 11/9, Robin had visions of us filming the crash of an airliner into a building. I bet the people behind Fight Club[^] were very very glad they got it to theatres before that particular atrocity. Would they have dared release a film with that ending in the months and years since?
While we'd have loved to do something that ambitious Heino and I argued, successfully, against such an ambitious storyline. We were more interested in scoping things down to what we could achieve within a very small budget with the acting talent we could call upon. You understand that the budget was what the three of us were willing to fork out and the acting talent was going to be those friends we could coerce, hoodwink and generally decieve into appearing!
We were very lucky. Heino worked at the time for the National Australia Bank in their long since disbanded video production unit; he had access to broadcast quality equipment and, just as importantly, his boss was willing to let him borrow it on weekends. He was also willing to let us use the edit suites and the studio out of hours.
We once calculated what it would have cost us to use the equipment if we'd paid commercial rates; it worked out at considerably north of a quarter million dollars!
Our script was an eclectic collection of ideas; we wanted to pay tribute to all the Turtle Video Centre productions that had made it as far as at least a few seconds of video. So we stole scenes shamelessly. Fun with Maths, for example, a production by one of Heino's schoolteachers in 1975, which described polygons. 'A polygon is a plane figure bound by straight lines'. We put those exact words into the mouth of The Professor, as he explained that soot sometimes feels smooth and sometimes it's gritty!
Of course Scarless still wore a silly outfit. The panty hose hadn't worked in the 1976 attempt so we decided I'd wear a pair of my girlfriend Peta's jodhpurs and some riding boots. My tailcoat and fake top hat had longs since gone the way of the dinosaur and whilst it was still possible to track down a tailcoat a top hat was impossible. We compromised with Peta's grandfathers hat.
We spent countless hours at my place or Heinos and occasionally at Robins nutting out the knottier points of the screenplay. Since we were trying to be true to the spirit of the original concept we just had to have a dream scene. Our dream scene was a mixture of a scene from Gary's movie Why me[^] and our original sequence from 1976 involving my beheading. I remember one afternoon (we have the discussion on video) at Heino's house where we acted out the scene. I said 'the chief swings his sword, a real sword' pause as Robin play acts a little 'and you gotta stop!'. Followed by the comment that the body wriggles a little 'but not too much!'. Maybe you had to be there!
My sister Debra would play the female lead; she'd been heavily involved in Turtle Video during the 1970's.
Robin would play the police chief, Orville C Fudpucker. That's a real name! In 1980 I bought my first floppy disk drive, A$750 for 143 K of storage! The purchase of a floppy disk drive in those days included floppys containing an operating system (M-DOS, short for Micropolis Disk Operating System) and a copy of Bill Gates MS-BASIC. I joined the M-DOS Users Group in 1981 and received, as part of the membership package, a floppy containing the complete members list. And there he was, Orville C Fudpucker of Alabama. The name just stuck in my head and when it came time to give the chief a name that was the obvious one!
One of the Daves agreed to play my trusty sidekick, Festering Wound; the other Dave was happy to play the professor. Sue would play Backup. Heino, in a cameo role, played Roger aka VK, the voice of Victoria police. The names of the characters should tell you something :-)
So, with the main plotlines in place; most of the actors decided, we went into production.
Word to the wise
If your wife has a sore thumb and says, in passing, 'oh, it burns, it burns' it's probably wisest, on the whole, not to reply thusly;
'I warned you about messing with that holy water!' :-)
'I warned you about messing with that holy water!' :-)
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Corny jokes
Though, for a change, not mine!
When I worked on software at Hewlett Packard in 1989 it was on HPUX, their port of UNIX to their hardware. I was a pretty big fan of UNIX in those days and I still reckon the original architects had some great ideas. The idea of piping the output of one program into another is still breathtaking in the range of possibilities. A pity in some ways that they were also lazy typists; ls really doesn't leap out at the newbie as the obvious command to see what files you have!
There was one feature I really liked the first time I saw it and that was the core dump. It's a given that as a developer I'm going to make mistakes; it's also a given that the program is probably going to crash at the most inconvenient time and most likely when not running under the debugger. Having UNIX automatically create a core dump made it a lot easier to find the reason and fix it. In comparison, at the time MS-DOS had no such facility and it was hardly possible to implement it under a real mode operating system where no instruction could ever cause a protection exception. Instead we saw the system hang and most of the time not even the 3 finger salute (Ctrl Alt Delete) would work.
Core dumps were pretty frequent at the time I was on the team; we were moving from the initial 'hot frenzy' of coding into the stabilisation phase and it was usual to arrive at the office in the morning to find half a dozen or more core dumps per team member awaiting analysis from the overnight regression test runs.
Simon took the term literally. At lunch he'd eat an apple and, without fail, having finished the apple he'd drop the core in the bin and announce 'another core dump!'.
Boom boom!!!
When I worked on software at Hewlett Packard in 1989 it was on HPUX, their port of UNIX to their hardware. I was a pretty big fan of UNIX in those days and I still reckon the original architects had some great ideas. The idea of piping the output of one program into another is still breathtaking in the range of possibilities. A pity in some ways that they were also lazy typists; ls really doesn't leap out at the newbie as the obvious command to see what files you have!
There was one feature I really liked the first time I saw it and that was the core dump. It's a given that as a developer I'm going to make mistakes; it's also a given that the program is probably going to crash at the most inconvenient time and most likely when not running under the debugger. Having UNIX automatically create a core dump made it a lot easier to find the reason and fix it. In comparison, at the time MS-DOS had no such facility and it was hardly possible to implement it under a real mode operating system where no instruction could ever cause a protection exception. Instead we saw the system hang and most of the time not even the 3 finger salute (Ctrl Alt Delete) would work.
Core dumps were pretty frequent at the time I was on the team; we were moving from the initial 'hot frenzy' of coding into the stabilisation phase and it was usual to arrive at the office in the morning to find half a dozen or more core dumps per team member awaiting analysis from the overnight regression test runs.
Simon took the term literally. At lunch he'd eat an apple and, without fail, having finished the apple he'd drop the core in the bin and announce 'another core dump!'.
Boom boom!!!
Friday, May 05, 2006
I can do this and I can do that part 2
You remember part 1[^] of course!
Now be honest; you didn't remember it at all did you! :-)
Andrew's in the final few weeks of middle school. End of the month the little bastard gets to take two and a half months away from school, which is way more than enough time for him to completely lose the habit he never really wanted to acquire, that of going to school. When he does return to school it's as a 'freshman'.
It's taken a while but I think I've finally got the hang of the US naming conventions. Freshman, sophomore, junior and then senior. I'm in two minds about it; on the one hand the names we gave the same years (form 3, 4, 5 and 6) do seem a trifle pedestrian. On the other hand, freshman???
Come the first week of August when the return to school looms large on the horizon he'll be trying to milk sympathy for the ordeal he faces. I fear I won't be all that sympathetic. It's his misfortune that, for the most part, I actually enjoyed school.
Of course, we didn't, in Australia, have all the crap one sees in the worst of American school movies. I never really believed it existed until I met Morgan and saw with my own eyes someone trying so desperately to steer the right course between dweeb, nerd, geek, jock whilst on the treadmill of trying to be a part of the 'in' group and win homecoming prom points.
Even my wife, product of the Los Angeles Valley and of Pacific Palisades, entitled to be called a Daughter of the American Revolution, is at a loss to explain the whole homecoming/prom thing and she's very interested in social history!
A few weeks ago Andrew joined the school wrestling team. He came home from his first match a winner. I wasn't there to see it; they do insist on holding the matches at the most inconvenient times. I fear my boss would be nonplussed were I to demand the chance to see a match.
He came home full of it! I reckon he could have stood outside in a stiff breeze and the tickets wouldn't have been blown off him! 30 seconds go to whoa!
The second week he was as chirpy as ever even though the second victory had taken 40 seconds! I couldn't resist pointing out that the 33% reduction in speed bespoke, I feared, of a slowing down that could only be attributed to his getting older! Cheeky bastard makes jokes about my white hair; I retaliate as I can :-)
Tonight was his third week! Poor bastard landed badly and fractured his radius. I was at the office when my wife rang to pass on the news; it was couched in such basic terms as 'you'll have to look after your own dinner, Andrew and I are at the hospital'. Well, I've lived alone for 15 or so years in total so I'm certainly up to the task of looking after my own dinner.
Dinner looked after I went asearching for the emergency department. Somewhere over near East Shea and Loop 101. Fronted at the desk, asked for Andrew blahblah (what, you thought I'd mention his full name? His surname isn't the same as mine). Directions through such and such a door and look for bed X. We've all heard the drill.
And there he was, looking as relaxed as I've ever seen him! A few relaxed questions. Heck all he's done is broken a bone in his arm. It's hardly life threatening is it? I say that having never broken a bone in my life! My wife tells me he's fractured his radius. Naturally I couldn't resist a joke or two; 'what's that? He's cracked his circumference?'. They don't come a lot cornier than that!
He'd been given a pain killer; I had to test it. A gentle rap of the knuckles on his head and no owww in response! 'He's feeling no pain' I said.
Lest my behaviour and attitude seem a trifle cavalier I record that Andrew and I are now getting along very well indeed. He knows when I'm joking and when I'm not.
He was released a couple of hours after being admitted, arm not set in plaster as unnecessary but with a sling and strict instructions about exercising extremities and testing for unnatural coldness and numbness.
He was impatient to leave and we had to explain the concept of triage; he was going on the fifo principle.
Following release we dined across the road at Applebees. Mum went to the dunny, leaving the two of us alone as we waited for the food to arrive. She cracked up laughing when she returned; I was stretching my left arm out and saying 'I can do this', followed by a stretch of my right arm 'and I can do this'. And Andrew was laughing!
Now be honest; you didn't remember it at all did you! :-)
Andrew's in the final few weeks of middle school. End of the month the little bastard gets to take two and a half months away from school, which is way more than enough time for him to completely lose the habit he never really wanted to acquire, that of going to school. When he does return to school it's as a 'freshman'.
It's taken a while but I think I've finally got the hang of the US naming conventions. Freshman, sophomore, junior and then senior. I'm in two minds about it; on the one hand the names we gave the same years (form 3, 4, 5 and 6) do seem a trifle pedestrian. On the other hand, freshman???
Come the first week of August when the return to school looms large on the horizon he'll be trying to milk sympathy for the ordeal he faces. I fear I won't be all that sympathetic. It's his misfortune that, for the most part, I actually enjoyed school.
Of course, we didn't, in Australia, have all the crap one sees in the worst of American school movies. I never really believed it existed until I met Morgan and saw with my own eyes someone trying so desperately to steer the right course between dweeb, nerd, geek, jock whilst on the treadmill of trying to be a part of the 'in' group and win homecoming prom points.
Even my wife, product of the Los Angeles Valley and of Pacific Palisades, entitled to be called a Daughter of the American Revolution, is at a loss to explain the whole homecoming/prom thing and she's very interested in social history!
A few weeks ago Andrew joined the school wrestling team. He came home from his first match a winner. I wasn't there to see it; they do insist on holding the matches at the most inconvenient times. I fear my boss would be nonplussed were I to demand the chance to see a match.
He came home full of it! I reckon he could have stood outside in a stiff breeze and the tickets wouldn't have been blown off him! 30 seconds go to whoa!
The second week he was as chirpy as ever even though the second victory had taken 40 seconds! I couldn't resist pointing out that the 33% reduction in speed bespoke, I feared, of a slowing down that could only be attributed to his getting older! Cheeky bastard makes jokes about my white hair; I retaliate as I can :-)
Tonight was his third week! Poor bastard landed badly and fractured his radius. I was at the office when my wife rang to pass on the news; it was couched in such basic terms as 'you'll have to look after your own dinner, Andrew and I are at the hospital'. Well, I've lived alone for 15 or so years in total so I'm certainly up to the task of looking after my own dinner.
Dinner looked after I went asearching for the emergency department. Somewhere over near East Shea and Loop 101. Fronted at the desk, asked for Andrew blahblah (what, you thought I'd mention his full name? His surname isn't the same as mine). Directions through such and such a door and look for bed X. We've all heard the drill.
And there he was, looking as relaxed as I've ever seen him! A few relaxed questions. Heck all he's done is broken a bone in his arm. It's hardly life threatening is it? I say that having never broken a bone in my life! My wife tells me he's fractured his radius. Naturally I couldn't resist a joke or two; 'what's that? He's cracked his circumference?'. They don't come a lot cornier than that!
He'd been given a pain killer; I had to test it. A gentle rap of the knuckles on his head and no owww in response! 'He's feeling no pain' I said.
Lest my behaviour and attitude seem a trifle cavalier I record that Andrew and I are now getting along very well indeed. He knows when I'm joking and when I'm not.
He was released a couple of hours after being admitted, arm not set in plaster as unnecessary but with a sling and strict instructions about exercising extremities and testing for unnatural coldness and numbness.
He was impatient to leave and we had to explain the concept of triage; he was going on the fifo principle.
Following release we dined across the road at Applebees. Mum went to the dunny, leaving the two of us alone as we waited for the food to arrive. She cracked up laughing when she returned; I was stretching my left arm out and saying 'I can do this', followed by a stretch of my right arm 'and I can do this'. And Andrew was laughing!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Digital music surprises
You'll remember that recently I ripped my entire CD collection to the hard disk. It's all done now though there are a few discs that didn't rip correctly; using the trial version of Easy CD-DA Extractor[^] I see many thousands of C2[^] errors.
Easy CDDA (for short) does a much better job of extracting the problematic CD's. A suffciently better job compared to Windows Media that I paid for the program.
Now, of course, I have to go through the entire collection again listening for glitches then search out the CD and rerip it. Oh the things I do for art! :-)
So as I sat down to tonights blogging session I opened up Windows Media Player (WMP) and went through the album view looking for the something to play that would exactly match tonights mood. Hmmm, I don't remember owning an album called 'Mysterium: Sacred Arias'. Of course, I still can't explain why my copy of Pink Floyd's 'Dark side of the moon' clearly has a publication date of 1994 on the disc yet I'm completely certain Sue gave me that CD for my birthday in 1987, along with my first ever CD player!
Ok, so I'll give it a play. Quite the surprise when the first track of 'Mysterium: Sacred Arias' turned out to be a 1930's British Dance Band song called 'Choo Choo' (the artist is Ambrose).
A little searching on Google revealed the secret and something I didn't know before. I'd always thought that each audio CD had some kind of unique identifier in the datastream, something that identified this as such and such a CD and no other. It turns out that it ain't so! Instead, the way freedb.org and other CD databases[^] identify an audio CD is a combination of the total playing time for the CD, the number of tracks and the playing time of each track. Thus, you can have two completely different CD's that resolve to the same identifier if they match on playing time and track count.
Well that explains why WMP insists that I have two Christmas albums that I would not, on principle own! They happen to be CD's 3 and 4 of the Solti recording of Wagners Siegfried.
Another mysterium solved! And, as I write this I'm listening to this[^]. Deliberate choice, it seemed appropriate. And yes, it really does sound like late Scriabin. Good album and well worth the 50 bucks!
Easy CDDA (for short) does a much better job of extracting the problematic CD's. A suffciently better job compared to Windows Media that I paid for the program.
Now, of course, I have to go through the entire collection again listening for glitches then search out the CD and rerip it. Oh the things I do for art! :-)
So as I sat down to tonights blogging session I opened up Windows Media Player (WMP) and went through the album view looking for the something to play that would exactly match tonights mood. Hmmm, I don't remember owning an album called 'Mysterium: Sacred Arias'. Of course, I still can't explain why my copy of Pink Floyd's 'Dark side of the moon' clearly has a publication date of 1994 on the disc yet I'm completely certain Sue gave me that CD for my birthday in 1987, along with my first ever CD player!
Ok, so I'll give it a play. Quite the surprise when the first track of 'Mysterium: Sacred Arias' turned out to be a 1930's British Dance Band song called 'Choo Choo' (the artist is Ambrose).
A little searching on Google revealed the secret and something I didn't know before. I'd always thought that each audio CD had some kind of unique identifier in the datastream, something that identified this as such and such a CD and no other. It turns out that it ain't so! Instead, the way freedb.org and other CD databases[^] identify an audio CD is a combination of the total playing time for the CD, the number of tracks and the playing time of each track. Thus, you can have two completely different CD's that resolve to the same identifier if they match on playing time and track count.
Well that explains why WMP insists that I have two Christmas albums that I would not, on principle own! They happen to be CD's 3 and 4 of the Solti recording of Wagners Siegfried.
Another mysterium solved! And, as I write this I'm listening to this[^]. Deliberate choice, it seemed appropriate. And yes, it really does sound like late Scriabin. Good album and well worth the 50 bucks!
Polite conversation
I tend at times to be somewhat literal in my responses to people. I might be having a conversation with someone and a third party waltzes up and says 'may I join you?'. To which the only sane reply is 'why, am I coming apart?'. I love that moment of puzzlement that often stretches into incomprehension.
My wife might suggest it's time she fixed dinner; I reply 'why, what's wrong with it?'. Or she says she's going to straighten the house. 'Why, is it tilted?'. After more than three years of that she's become used to the idiot responses! :-)
One of the guys at the office has a habit of asking what's up. To which query I always look up and answer with whatever happens to be over our heads. The ceiling, the sky, treetops, you name it. He suggested the answer was getting a trifle tired. How little he knows me! Heino could tell him that, if he should have the misfortune to know me for 30 years, I'll still be making that reply.
Today he tried a new tack. 'How's it hanging?'.
I replied, 'all the way to the ground mate, and it's making furrows!'. He had no idea how to respond to that! :-)
My wife might suggest it's time she fixed dinner; I reply 'why, what's wrong with it?'. Or she says she's going to straighten the house. 'Why, is it tilted?'. After more than three years of that she's become used to the idiot responses! :-)
One of the guys at the office has a habit of asking what's up. To which query I always look up and answer with whatever happens to be over our heads. The ceiling, the sky, treetops, you name it. He suggested the answer was getting a trifle tired. How little he knows me! Heino could tell him that, if he should have the misfortune to know me for 30 years, I'll still be making that reply.
Today he tried a new tack. 'How's it hanging?'.
I replied, 'all the way to the ground mate, and it's making furrows!'. He had no idea how to respond to that! :-)
A freudian slip
Today we were having one of those conversations at the office. You know the ones, the ones where the boss is saying something completely insane and you're trying your best to inject a reality check.
So the boss came out with something or other (I remember the exact details but they are irrelevant to this post) and I said... 'but Andrew' and stopped! My bosses name is NOT Andrew! Fortunately we all laughed.
So the boss came out with something or other (I remember the exact details but they are irrelevant to this post) and I said... 'but Andrew' and stopped! My bosses name is NOT Andrew! Fortunately we all laughed.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
An innocent milk carton
I'm certainly old enough to remember the days when milk was delivered to the house each morning, in real glass bottles with a tinfoil cap. The local magpies loved it; what simpler than to perch on the side of the bottle, peck through the cap and drink the cream right off the top!
Not a problem in winter, too damn cold for em. But come spring and it was my task to rise at sparrows fart (dawn) and fetch the milk in for brekky. Misery wanted the cream to pour over his cornflakes. Can't blame him for that; occasionally I'll settle down to a bowl of cornflakes; a very very light sprinkle of sugar over the top, pour on some heavy cream and follow it with a little milk. My heart probably doesn't thank me for it but I reckon the smokes are doing more damage!
And I reckon there's nothing wrong with enjoying food!
Come summer and there was a more urgent reason to rise early; the milk was delivered during the morning twilight and it really was better to get it into the fridge before it warmed up. I have no idea if there were milk deliveries to Phoenix houses during the summer but if there were I can picture many many early risers anxious to get the milk in before it curdled!
Sometime in the early 70's we lost both the milk bottles and the morning deliveries. Those new fangled milk cartons were hard to open! Heck, they defeated me more than once until I learned to read the 'open this side' symbol! It's symmetrical, why on earth should one side be easier than the other?
The necessity of fetching the milk from the local milk bar or the supermarket or, in later years, the local petrol station, ensured that it was usually transferred from refrigerator to refrigerator in a short time.
In late March of 1975 I had to move out of the house I'd been living in. A long and complex story I may essay sometime; suffice it for now that I had worn out a welcome by a considerable stretch and it was time to move on.
So I spent a couple of weeks sleeping in my car. This was a few months before Turtle Video moved from Altona to Williamstown; the Altona location was just a shop front; the Williamstown location was a house and, if we'd been located there at the time, I'd have probably been able to spend half a year or more living out of the car. As it was, personal hygiene in the form of showering was problematic. I can't imagine how it was possible for King Louis the 14th (or was it the 16th?) to have gone through his entire life bathing a mere three times. I no longer remember but I probably turned up at my folks house a few times asking to shower.
Sleeping in a car was a lot easier then than it is now. We didn't have cops roaming the streets looking for cars that looked out of place and flashing their torches (flashlights) into the back seat! Well mostly we didn't, but one night I chose the wrong place to park. So this cop flashes his torch in my face; wakes me up and motions that I should exit the vehicle.
Victoria Police weren't armed in those days; this should tell of a change in attitude in the 30 or so years since...
I now share with you the secret of getting away with nicking a car. Of course it was my car. But he asked me what the registration date was. As far as I remember it was May 24th. He compared my answer with the date on the sticker on the window. A match. No further questions but a very strong recommendation that I take myself and the car elsewhere!
A few days later the minister at my church offered to let me stay in the caravan parked at the far end of his yard. 'Only for a few days'. Where have I heard those words lately? I was more than happy to take up the offer and a month later I'd completely worn the welcome out. Not that I intended to but...
Thus it was that I found a room to rent for fifteen bucks a week! Not a very good room but it did have an outside door so I didn't have to pass through the house to get to my bed. The landlord graciously allowed me to use the outside toilet but using his shower was out of the question. On the other hand, it had a real bed and that was a damn sight more comfortable than the back seat of my Morris 1100[^]!
On more than one Friday night Heino, I, Graeme and the two Daves retired to my room, with much shhhhhing, to drink Brandovino and joke.
By this time it was June, wintertime and much too cold to use the outside toilet. Yep, you guessed it, an innocent milk carton was pressed into service and, once filled, it was placed under the bed. To my shame it wasn't a solitary carton.
A few days later I happened to be at the local hamburger shop. The guys name is long since forgotten but not his generosity when he noticed that I was hungry; he asked me if I'd like a burger. I would but had not the price. He cooked me one up anyway, with the lot! And it turned out that he was the real landlord of the house in which I was a subtenant. He couldn't believe his ears when he learned that I was paying 15 bucks a week for the room; the entire house was rented at 11 bucks a week!
What a coincidence that a day later I was kicked out. I'm guessing that words were exchanged. Well, if I was going to be kicked out on no notice whatsoever it was hardly surprising that in the mad scramble to collect my clothes and books those abused milk cartons were forgotten!
A couple of weeks later, having found new living quarters, I was leaving the church (the one who's minister had allowed me stay in his caravan) when the gracious landlord, he of 11 bucks rent, caught sight of me! Apparently he'd found the cartons! If you weighed 125 pounds and a meathead of 270 pounds was running at you roaring for your blood what would you do???
Not a problem in winter, too damn cold for em. But come spring and it was my task to rise at sparrows fart (dawn) and fetch the milk in for brekky. Misery wanted the cream to pour over his cornflakes. Can't blame him for that; occasionally I'll settle down to a bowl of cornflakes; a very very light sprinkle of sugar over the top, pour on some heavy cream and follow it with a little milk. My heart probably doesn't thank me for it but I reckon the smokes are doing more damage!
And I reckon there's nothing wrong with enjoying food!
Come summer and there was a more urgent reason to rise early; the milk was delivered during the morning twilight and it really was better to get it into the fridge before it warmed up. I have no idea if there were milk deliveries to Phoenix houses during the summer but if there were I can picture many many early risers anxious to get the milk in before it curdled!
Sometime in the early 70's we lost both the milk bottles and the morning deliveries. Those new fangled milk cartons were hard to open! Heck, they defeated me more than once until I learned to read the 'open this side' symbol! It's symmetrical, why on earth should one side be easier than the other?
The necessity of fetching the milk from the local milk bar or the supermarket or, in later years, the local petrol station, ensured that it was usually transferred from refrigerator to refrigerator in a short time.
In late March of 1975 I had to move out of the house I'd been living in. A long and complex story I may essay sometime; suffice it for now that I had worn out a welcome by a considerable stretch and it was time to move on.
So I spent a couple of weeks sleeping in my car. This was a few months before Turtle Video moved from Altona to Williamstown; the Altona location was just a shop front; the Williamstown location was a house and, if we'd been located there at the time, I'd have probably been able to spend half a year or more living out of the car. As it was, personal hygiene in the form of showering was problematic. I can't imagine how it was possible for King Louis the 14th (or was it the 16th?) to have gone through his entire life bathing a mere three times. I no longer remember but I probably turned up at my folks house a few times asking to shower.
Sleeping in a car was a lot easier then than it is now. We didn't have cops roaming the streets looking for cars that looked out of place and flashing their torches (flashlights) into the back seat! Well mostly we didn't, but one night I chose the wrong place to park. So this cop flashes his torch in my face; wakes me up and motions that I should exit the vehicle.
Victoria Police weren't armed in those days; this should tell of a change in attitude in the 30 or so years since...
I now share with you the secret of getting away with nicking a car. Of course it was my car. But he asked me what the registration date was. As far as I remember it was May 24th. He compared my answer with the date on the sticker on the window. A match. No further questions but a very strong recommendation that I take myself and the car elsewhere!
A few days later the minister at my church offered to let me stay in the caravan parked at the far end of his yard. 'Only for a few days'. Where have I heard those words lately? I was more than happy to take up the offer and a month later I'd completely worn the welcome out. Not that I intended to but...
Thus it was that I found a room to rent for fifteen bucks a week! Not a very good room but it did have an outside door so I didn't have to pass through the house to get to my bed. The landlord graciously allowed me to use the outside toilet but using his shower was out of the question. On the other hand, it had a real bed and that was a damn sight more comfortable than the back seat of my Morris 1100[^]!
On more than one Friday night Heino, I, Graeme and the two Daves retired to my room, with much shhhhhing, to drink Brandovino and joke.
By this time it was June, wintertime and much too cold to use the outside toilet. Yep, you guessed it, an innocent milk carton was pressed into service and, once filled, it was placed under the bed. To my shame it wasn't a solitary carton.
A few days later I happened to be at the local hamburger shop. The guys name is long since forgotten but not his generosity when he noticed that I was hungry; he asked me if I'd like a burger. I would but had not the price. He cooked me one up anyway, with the lot! And it turned out that he was the real landlord of the house in which I was a subtenant. He couldn't believe his ears when he learned that I was paying 15 bucks a week for the room; the entire house was rented at 11 bucks a week!
What a coincidence that a day later I was kicked out. I'm guessing that words were exchanged. Well, if I was going to be kicked out on no notice whatsoever it was hardly surprising that in the mad scramble to collect my clothes and books those abused milk cartons were forgotten!
A couple of weeks later, having found new living quarters, I was leaving the church (the one who's minister had allowed me stay in his caravan) when the gracious landlord, he of 11 bucks rent, caught sight of me! Apparently he'd found the cartons! If you weighed 125 pounds and a meathead of 270 pounds was running at you roaring for your blood what would you do???
Monday, May 01, 2006
Someone really screwed up
by allowing Kapò[^] to run this week on Turner Classic Movies.
I caught maybe 5 words in English, for the rest it was mainly in Italian but with some French, Polish, German and Russian. Oh, and right at the end, some Hebrew! I can't tell you what a pleasure it was to find a movie running on cable with English subtitles! It felt almost as though I was back in Australia watching SBS[^].
Given that it's rare enough that a British movie or an Australian movie runs on American TV this is an unforgivable lapse! :-)
During the opening minutes of the movie, as Jews were herded into the concentration camps, I was thinking how incredible it was that millions of people had gone through that experience. The numbers are mind boggling. 6 million Jews. Another million or so gypsies, homosexuals, cripples. 30 million or so through the Gulag. A million and a half or so in Kampuchea in the 1970s. What's the count for Rwanda? Bosnia?
I'm not sure if I think it lucky or not that I was born not very long after the holocaust came to an end. Close enough to the holocaust for it to have been the occasional subject of conversation among the adults though, to be completely accurate, they were more often inclined to talk about the Pacific War; that had been a lot closer to home!
There was also an anti-semitic streak in some of the adults I had contact with; I well remember Misery Guts (my stepfather) strenuously denying any Jewish connection (as far as I remember his mother was Jewish but that's based on what I heard, I never met her and she's dead these many years). I was 8 years old at the time; into what context could I put the denial? I can remember being driven past Harry Hanks pawn shop on Buckley Street Footscray and Misery making comments about how Harry was a Jew, said in a way that was unmistakably derogatory. How about the time we were sitting at the traffic lights at the corner of Williamstown Road and Francis Street and an old man was poking at an orange in the gutter with his walking stick. Once convinced that it was safe he picked it up and proceeded on his way, orange safely ensconced in his pocket. Misery said 'what a Jew'.
To this day, whenever I drive past the building that Harry Hanks used as his business I remember Misery Guts comments.
I took what might reasonably be expected away from such comments given my age and experience. Yet my experience even then included seeing my best friend in 1961 being insulted because he was Italian. How could Mario be my best friend and yet a worthy target of spittle? Add in the fact that Misery was rather more fond of using his belt on my bum than I was and it should come as no surprise that I decided he was wrong.
We watched movies on Sunday nights and it wasn't entirely possible to hide the ugly truth from us; horrific things had happened on an organised basis involving the deliberate destruction of people based on race. Throw in a childhood friend whose parents[^] had survived the death camps and it came close to home even if we were talking things that had happened 20 years before!
All of that said, it still boggles the mind that people could have carried out such crimes. Could I? I surely hope not. Could you? I'm less certain of that but again, I surely hope not!
I caught maybe 5 words in English, for the rest it was mainly in Italian but with some French, Polish, German and Russian. Oh, and right at the end, some Hebrew! I can't tell you what a pleasure it was to find a movie running on cable with English subtitles! It felt almost as though I was back in Australia watching SBS[^].
Given that it's rare enough that a British movie or an Australian movie runs on American TV this is an unforgivable lapse! :-)
During the opening minutes of the movie, as Jews were herded into the concentration camps, I was thinking how incredible it was that millions of people had gone through that experience. The numbers are mind boggling. 6 million Jews. Another million or so gypsies, homosexuals, cripples. 30 million or so through the Gulag. A million and a half or so in Kampuchea in the 1970s. What's the count for Rwanda? Bosnia?
I'm not sure if I think it lucky or not that I was born not very long after the holocaust came to an end. Close enough to the holocaust for it to have been the occasional subject of conversation among the adults though, to be completely accurate, they were more often inclined to talk about the Pacific War; that had been a lot closer to home!
There was also an anti-semitic streak in some of the adults I had contact with; I well remember Misery Guts (my stepfather) strenuously denying any Jewish connection (as far as I remember his mother was Jewish but that's based on what I heard, I never met her and she's dead these many years). I was 8 years old at the time; into what context could I put the denial? I can remember being driven past Harry Hanks pawn shop on Buckley Street Footscray and Misery making comments about how Harry was a Jew, said in a way that was unmistakably derogatory. How about the time we were sitting at the traffic lights at the corner of Williamstown Road and Francis Street and an old man was poking at an orange in the gutter with his walking stick. Once convinced that it was safe he picked it up and proceeded on his way, orange safely ensconced in his pocket. Misery said 'what a Jew'.
To this day, whenever I drive past the building that Harry Hanks used as his business I remember Misery Guts comments.
I took what might reasonably be expected away from such comments given my age and experience. Yet my experience even then included seeing my best friend in 1961 being insulted because he was Italian. How could Mario be my best friend and yet a worthy target of spittle? Add in the fact that Misery was rather more fond of using his belt on my bum than I was and it should come as no surprise that I decided he was wrong.
We watched movies on Sunday nights and it wasn't entirely possible to hide the ugly truth from us; horrific things had happened on an organised basis involving the deliberate destruction of people based on race. Throw in a childhood friend whose parents[^] had survived the death camps and it came close to home even if we were talking things that had happened 20 years before!
All of that said, it still boggles the mind that people could have carried out such crimes. Could I? I surely hope not. Could you? I'm less certain of that but again, I surely hope not!
Underpants on the head day
I had to forgo the usual Sunday night ritual. What point if Andrew and Morgan aren't at dinner?
Today my wife and I have been married for four years. For me that's a record; my first marriage lasted 2 years and 2 weeks; my second 1 year and 1 week. I've already said it but I fully expected the third to last 6 months 3 and a half days. An unrealistic expectation thankfully. I didn't even get to live with my wife for slightly longer than that; such are the hoops and hurdles a legal immigrant to the USA has to circumvent. And I had it easy; there are very few hurdles thrown in the path of an Australian.
We were married at the registry office in Melbourne, on Lonsdale Street. The building used, many many years ago, to be part of the Queen Victoria Womens Hospital. They demolished all but one tiny wing and the spaces on either side were variously waste land, a skateboard park and are now what appears to be a swanky apartment building on the one side and office buildings on the other. Across the road is the Greek quarter.
Sonya flew into Tullamarine airport on Saturday April 27th 2002. We went out to dinner that night on Lygon Street. I'm pretty sure we dined at Borsaris but I wouldn't swear to it in a court of law. Some cemetery walking and so on...
On the Monday we fronted up at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. I'd applied for a marriage license and booked the ceremony with a civil celebrant for the Tuesday, April 30th. Let no one point out that that is the anniversary of Hitlers suicide. There was a problem; Victorian law usually requires a few days notice and the sighting of documentation regarding the brides (and the grooms) marital status. Mine was good to go but Sonya's wasn't. A few days before Sonya flew to Australia I received a phone call from the registry; could I have Sonya fax her divorce papers? Of course I could! Never mind the 17 hour time difference. For whatever reason the fax didn't arrive and we found ourselves on the Monday morning trying to convince a public servant that it was all kosher. Some nervous moments given that we were on a very tight time budget!
On the Tuesday we were more relaxed. I'm not sure why. I think that by then I was resigned to the fact that either it was going to happen or it wouldn't and there was precious little either of us could do about it at that late hour. So we breakfasted. I combed my hair (much shorter four years ago than it is now) and Sonya did her makeup. We'd booked a cab and he turned up on time and off we set.
Arrived at the corner of Swanston Street and Lonsdale Street we paid the cabbie off and emerged into the world. Only to see a bunch of friends who'd kept it very quiet that they were going to drive from Central New South Wales down to Melbourne to be at our wedding. Uh huh, people you loyal blog readers have never heard of. Bruce, the Aussie Dag, Ree, Ewe, Brenda, the people who had been the backbone of our online trivia site MindProbes[^]. I have to say that I was completely surprised and totally delighted to see Bruce the Galah!
And so a nervous half hour or so. That was the wedding! :-) We emerged into Lonsdale Street again and adjourned to the Greek Restaurant across the road. Not quite the casual choice it appears; we'd checked it out the day before and it looked good.
A wonderful afternoon with friends.
Tonight we dined at 'My big fat Greek Restaurant' close to the corner of Tatum and Shea. The food wasn't great! I ordered the lamb chops; it tasted exactly like it had been cooked at the Baguio Country Club, Philippines! Sonya ordered the salmon cooked in foil. I have to admit I was a bit worried about that; one of my specialities is Salmon in olive oil and dill; would this dethrone me? Not a bit of it; I was safe. We were both unhappy enough with our choices that we swapped. Sonya liked my lamb chops (but what does she know? she's from a beef country). The salmon was a little better but way overcooked.
I was happy to not do underpants on the head day. A wedding anniversary happens just once a year and it's rightly a special day.
Today my wife and I have been married for four years. For me that's a record; my first marriage lasted 2 years and 2 weeks; my second 1 year and 1 week. I've already said it but I fully expected the third to last 6 months 3 and a half days. An unrealistic expectation thankfully. I didn't even get to live with my wife for slightly longer than that; such are the hoops and hurdles a legal immigrant to the USA has to circumvent. And I had it easy; there are very few hurdles thrown in the path of an Australian.
We were married at the registry office in Melbourne, on Lonsdale Street. The building used, many many years ago, to be part of the Queen Victoria Womens Hospital. They demolished all but one tiny wing and the spaces on either side were variously waste land, a skateboard park and are now what appears to be a swanky apartment building on the one side and office buildings on the other. Across the road is the Greek quarter.
Sonya flew into Tullamarine airport on Saturday April 27th 2002. We went out to dinner that night on Lygon Street. I'm pretty sure we dined at Borsaris but I wouldn't swear to it in a court of law. Some cemetery walking and so on...
On the Monday we fronted up at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. I'd applied for a marriage license and booked the ceremony with a civil celebrant for the Tuesday, April 30th. Let no one point out that that is the anniversary of Hitlers suicide. There was a problem; Victorian law usually requires a few days notice and the sighting of documentation regarding the brides (and the grooms) marital status. Mine was good to go but Sonya's wasn't. A few days before Sonya flew to Australia I received a phone call from the registry; could I have Sonya fax her divorce papers? Of course I could! Never mind the 17 hour time difference. For whatever reason the fax didn't arrive and we found ourselves on the Monday morning trying to convince a public servant that it was all kosher. Some nervous moments given that we were on a very tight time budget!
On the Tuesday we were more relaxed. I'm not sure why. I think that by then I was resigned to the fact that either it was going to happen or it wouldn't and there was precious little either of us could do about it at that late hour. So we breakfasted. I combed my hair (much shorter four years ago than it is now) and Sonya did her makeup. We'd booked a cab and he turned up on time and off we set.
Arrived at the corner of Swanston Street and Lonsdale Street we paid the cabbie off and emerged into the world. Only to see a bunch of friends who'd kept it very quiet that they were going to drive from Central New South Wales down to Melbourne to be at our wedding. Uh huh, people you loyal blog readers have never heard of. Bruce, the Aussie Dag, Ree, Ewe, Brenda, the people who had been the backbone of our online trivia site MindProbes[^]. I have to say that I was completely surprised and totally delighted to see Bruce the Galah!
And so a nervous half hour or so. That was the wedding! :-) We emerged into Lonsdale Street again and adjourned to the Greek Restaurant across the road. Not quite the casual choice it appears; we'd checked it out the day before and it looked good.
A wonderful afternoon with friends.
Tonight we dined at 'My big fat Greek Restaurant' close to the corner of Tatum and Shea. The food wasn't great! I ordered the lamb chops; it tasted exactly like it had been cooked at the Baguio Country Club, Philippines! Sonya ordered the salmon cooked in foil. I have to admit I was a bit worried about that; one of my specialities is Salmon in olive oil and dill; would this dethrone me? Not a bit of it; I was safe. We were both unhappy enough with our choices that we swapped. Sonya liked my lamb chops (but what does she know? she's from a beef country). The salmon was a little better but way overcooked.
I was happy to not do underpants on the head day. A wedding anniversary happens just once a year and it's rightly a special day.
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