Sunny Breaks

I finished all my assignment work the other day - and now there’s just a couple of exams and sure I could start studying for them, but I reckon I’d just forget it all again by the time they came around.

-Unexpected backwash re: DJ stuff - there’s a doco on the history of hip-hop tomorrow night on sbs called Scratch.

- Digging on some early Jamaican ska from this is ska, check out the mp3s page.

<%image(20040113-bluelotus.jpg|310|700|from tin-tin)%>

There is indeed a reason for the Alta Vista search engine to keep on existing — and it is its cataloging of audio on the net. Like this for example.
I’d never realised how many wacky DJ names there were out there, from DJ Disc Jockey to DJ Pooh. There’s even a DJ name generator for prospective DJs stuck for a name, but really anything goes — just look around you for inspiration - DJ coffee table, DJ floppy disk, DJ Keens Mustard - and so on and so forth. I bags the reflexive sounding ‘DJ Names’ - if not for me then at least for a fictional character.

From what I looked/listened through, I liked DJ fish finger, DJ Dentist and DJ Sergei/DJ Kalaschnikow in a dodgey kind of way, sort of.
Okay stop saying DJ now.

Dr. Doolittle may be fictional, but David Attenborough is pretty close - and real. He’s not talking to them, but he’s mastered the fine art of Hanging Out with the animals. He’s always just popping up next to them - what a dude.
And in one of those minor magical moments - I saw this image on telly earlier tonight and thought it’d be great if there was a still of that somewhere on the internet.
[[image:damitmeerkat.jpg:meerkat:center:1]]
It’s like the more I’m able to see things from different perspectives, the more I’m spun out by the diversity of weird and wonderful animals on the planet.

“Evans, too, says he has had some concern over this particular trend and what it all means. ”I do worry sometimes that parents are giving the message that children are possessions,“ he says.” - from here (article about using brand names as first names), reminds me a bit of a para in that Salon.com article I linked to a while back about the ‘metrosexual’ and how beckham had got tattoos of his kid(s?) names - ‘wearing them like a trophy’ - if I remember correctly. And, as you can imagine, that’s taken off as a trend bigtime.
And there’s all these people who are making up weblogs and writing them pretending to be their toddler. There’s a bunch of them in the Melbourne Blogs list. Maybe it’s a different issue - but it still seems like a kinda dipppy thing to do. And there was a lot of people subscribing to Triple R FM (during the last radiothon) who were subscribing in their child’s name — not that it got them a discount or anything - just to be cute I s’pose. The Breakfasters made a competition out of it - the youngest subscriber — and someone rang up from hospital and subscribed their 1-2 hour old kid. ?

Ps. - I would relink to that salon article but it’s saying ‘it can’t find that particular article now’ — which is something I’ve been coming across quite a bit with news sites — seriously fast link rot.

Y’know, for the last 14 years or so I’ve been deeply concerned about environmental destruction — and for a while I actually did something about it.
But now that Captain Planet is on the case everything is just dandy.
That’s right kids, relax - everything will now be done for you.
<%image(20040113-planet.jpg|233|150|high five!)%>

A couple of months back the first Gloria Jeans coffee joint opened in downtown Geelong. A little while after the first juice joint opened across the road and a few doors down. Where they have a couple of food processor and (I guess) will make a fresh zuccini juice for you if you so desire. The decor of the place is limey green with bits of orange — dunno its name.
My sources tell me that the way G.J. is operated in Melbourne is that there’s this one woman who has the franchise license for the whole city. Kind of reminds me of fiefdoms. The point I’m trying to make here is that although the brand name is international, the operation isn’t necessarily 100% completely being orchestrated from Corporate Park, EvilTown, USA.
But I still smell a conspiracy because a G.J.s is opening up down the street here in the fabulously cosmopolitan Geelong West … and what do you know? A juice joint is also opening up about 15 numbers down on the same side.

To Be Continued….

comments:
Jon
the spork
date: 2003-10-29-08-48
There is a juice joint near nearly every GJ’s here too - but they didn’t arrive withing months of eachother so I will postpone any conspiracy theories =). For now.

Been flicking through the November issue of LinuxFormat magazine this weekend. There’s an article on PHP5 in it, which would appear to bode well for those of us running weblog systems powered by PHP. This new version will include sqLite - which is good for archiving stuff without needing MySql — which if you’re in the situation of renting webspace on a server - usually costs extra. Also there’s something about XML in there that sounded good. I didn’t really understand it.

Gentoo 1.4 is on the mag too — except I haven’t quite figured out how to burn it to a CD.

They had a news article about how IBM will be upping the ‘we love Linux’ ante later this year with a 90 second television commercial (TVC) that attempts to explain Linux to people in a round-about manner.
<%image(20040113-prodigy.jpg|60|60|high five!)%> It portrays Linux as a 9 year old kid who is a super-intense learner. It can be viewed here at the IBM website - in Real, Quicktime or windows media.
Ironically, with my effort and set up of Linux on this computer - I can’t watch it (but there’s a script of it too - more my style anyway) — if my Linux was a kid - it’d be the kid who got his head stuck in between the legs of the in-store “on a park bench” statue of Ronald McDonald at McDonalds.

That model isn’t pictured on this page but I’ll get a foto of one next weekend once I get my new kamera and go on a trek through belmont (aka smelmont).
I notice two of the entries in the “The Misadventures of Ronald McDonald” bit of that page are about australia. Alright! Fight The Power.

Y’know there was car racing at Gold Coast today - and just like last year it was a total demolition derby and ridiculous to watch. There’s one car whose main sponsors are Eli Lily and McDonalds and I’ve mentioned before about how I wish ill upon it — not that I want the driver to die, just for the car to have a bit of a prang or conk out — and it did again today - good you tool of evil car.
But it did win a couple of times - once over in france or germany and there was this freaky bit of footage from after the race where the car pulled up and the driver jumped out for interviews and (a person dressed up/made up as) Ronald McDonald ran up and stood behind the driver because it was a photo-op situation. But damn it looked weird and uh creepy. The clown is yet another indicator of that corporation being a 20th century dinosaur that’s on the way out.

This is another bit that cropped up in the mass media recently that caught my interest.
It’s horse racing season in this part of the world, whooppee-doo, except there’s this one horse come from England called Jardine’s Lookout - and he absolutely refuses to travel without his friend, Henry the pony. And here’s some pictures of them.
It cost 30 or 70 thousand just to bring Henry out here, but J.L. chucks a spaz if Henry’s not around.
J.L. : “Listen, I’m earning you huge wads of cash, you’re constantly flying me round to all these gigs - I never get a break — so just gimme my frikkin’ pony Okay?”

Someone should make Henry the Pony t-shirts.

comments:
Jon
the spork
date: 2003-10-27-19-57
I actually made 2 bucks on the races this weekend - otherwise I’d believe Henry the Pony was running in the races I picked =). (For reference we usually put a dollar on each race at either Sydney or Melbourne each weekend for fun =) )

name: yak sox
date: 2003-10-28-08-06
It’s like footy tipping - the less of an ‘expert’ you are with it, the more chance you have of picking the right one.

I heard the other day that next year’s tour de france is starting in Belgium. And when paying a little more attention to it all this year I found out that they have a tour de spain and and italian version too.
And so I propose that they combine all of these and maybe just call it ‘le tour’ because it was heading that way anyway — and have the cyclists ride around europe all year round. During the height of summer it could cruise up through scandenavia and then in winter it could stick to the southern bits like spain and the bottom of the boot. When riders collapse permenently they could be replaced by others to keep their teams going. It’d be a huge ratings success.

I changed what kind of wiki I’m using because the last one caught on fire.
TipiWiki - is neat because it makes valid xhtml. The codey bit it uses to get bold, italic etc. seem a bit quirky but that’s probably just me who hasn’t used wiki much.

Golly, it almost doesn’t seem right to be switching to daylight savings on sunday. I think satan has taken over my bit-that-I-type-stuff-into because I keep making typos — much more than normal. Maybe it’s just a bug. I may have to report it to Pivot Central Command, dubbing it the Satan-Bug.

comments:
Jon
the spork
date: 2003-10-25-14-20
Hmm yeah there aren’t too many wiki’s out there that produce wiki content in xml and then render it out as xhtml with xslt. <– the fact that that line made sense to me worries me.

(partly inspired by this little ditty.)

goddamnyou charles manson
it’s your fault this column is so slow
and peppered with dud entries
that stare back at me everyday droning mediocrity
goddamnyou charles manson
this fixed width guff is your doing
messing my line lengths
goddamnyou charles manson
long hair and beards went out 25 years ago
and your album really sucked.

comments:
Jon
the spork
date: 2003-10-24-07-29
So any release date for the album =) .. ? Yak’s evil songs Vol1 ?

name: yak sox
date: 2003-10-24-23-36
Just as soon as I can arrange a duet with vanessa williams.

Nothing witty or brief today. Just long, sulf-indulgent and without much point.

I was out walking the other day thinking about possible banner graphics for future site redesigns and got thinking about a photo of me riding that lion that’s in this foto - riding it like it was a bucking bronco - and me holding a flag of some kind. It might work except that I got nobody who would take a foto like that, and those lions are in the sitting down position, which just wouldn’t do.
‘But where would I find a big stone/metal lion that’s in standing up position?’ I thought. And almost as if it was meant to happen, I walked past the house that had this lion (the black one) out the front (It’s one a curcuit I like to walk now and then) and I had a closer look in the gate and Great Snakes! - down the little path and just outside the house’s front door were two similar black metal lions - except standing up and looking menacing to all who would use the path.

It’s too much like a Lame-Arse stunt to invade someone’s frontyard and get pictures of yourself riding their lions, yahooing and carrying on… but boy it’s tempting.

Q.What’s the difference between the present-day australian pop music scene and a black hole?

A. Nothing. They both suck like nothing else and should be avoided at all costs.

Via this google bounceback which this site is implicated in, I just read this freaky little page.. I used t go out of my way to read stuff like that, but not at all in the last 4-5 years. It just gives me the heeby-jeebies needlessly.

comments:
tony
url: the horse’s mouth
date: 2003-10-21-22-46
I take it you’ve been watching the Deltas, ooo, sorry the ARIAs.

name: yak sox
date: 2003-10-21-22-50
3 mins was all I could handle.

Just listened to Madonna’s Like a Prayer album — partly because of the post-mod assignment I’m in the thick of at the moment, and partly because I wanned to.
Reading more tintin, but also attempting to re-read a little Dylan Thomas book of short stories, A prospect of the sea with the idea that if I can’t read all the books in existence then i might as well just try reading three or four really well. Am finding the reverse of something encountered a few years back, where I had trouble really getting into reading something - at the time on computer screen. Now i can do that but absorbing into a book is a challenge. Not with the school stuff, but that gets the prime cut of the daytime concentration.

Was researching a little on The Beatles and music vids - and came across A hard day’s night: a chord heard around the world. Interesting, and nicely sized read. Actually the whole kittens in underpants thing looks kinda groovy (except that one of them’s a freakin’ dentist).

- check out the David Soul interview, and his own website - hehe. “Don’t give up on me baaayy-beee!”

super-liking: DJ Food’s Ninja Walk song. And the Senor Coconut samba-style cover of Smoke on the Water.
(Ooo! Dj food and Aphex Twin are going to be out here this summer! A.T. is playing at the Big day Out but I’m hoping like buggery that he does a couple of stand-alone gigs in town or something because I’ll be damned if I’m going to wade through all those filthy teen-agers at the show grounds.)

comments:
Jon
the spork
date: 2003-10-21-22-22
For me it’s a “depends on the material” - I once bought “The Satori Effect” (http://www.pesci.com) online as a pdf. It was quite a good read and I read it pretty much on-screen ..

name: yak sox
date: 2003-10-21-22-53
Yeah - if it’s gripping enough the medium don’t get noticed.

The most noticable thing about the switch up to Opera 7.21 was that with the (adware version) you now get the choice of sticking with the normal graphical style ad or have the addy rectangle display Google text ads — and so they say “your privacy is protected” but it picks up prompts from the sites you visit and displays similarly themed text ads.
I went the text ads thinking that would draw my attention less than the occasional horoscope thing that shows up in the graphical - that thing’s too much - it flashes and warbles around. But I find myself looking at the text ads and trying to figure out how it’s relating the content of the site to the ad. A couple of times I clicked on them.
I only just found out how the Google text ads work the other day. For about half a second I considered adding them to here, then I realised that they’d actually do little except annoy four people and earn me 14cents american per annum.

I found this site, adland, which had a little bit on the ‘bloody volvo drivers’ tv ads. We agree that they don’t really work. I’d say that the campaign strategy of embracing the whole “volvo drivers are bad drivers” thing is a good idea (at least it’s distinctive). People want to identified as something, anything these days, and if volvo can’t distiguish itself from the rest then whey the fuck not just buy a BMW? That’s what I think anyway — particularly now that Ford owns volvo.

And via adland I looked at this collection of print ads on this guy Zeldman’s site. Apparently he some kind of bigwig on the net. Never’eardof’im.

comments:
�sk
url: adland
date: 2003-11-03-00-39
that Volvo campaign is distinctive - and that is risky. would love to hear what people who have seen it think about it, and how it turns out.

name: yak sox
date: 2003-11-03-09-10
I haven’t bought the local trade journal for the last while so I don’t know that they had anything on it.

To me, the actual ads vary - one involving a motorcyclist and a volvo 4WD is too much like the hardball TAC road safety ad. campaign here. The others a little more quirky — and in this situation — the more quirky the better I think.

<%image(20040113-biken.jpg|250|172|beep! beep!)%>
There was some cycle racing at the Eastern Gardens yesterday. Great day for it, great place for it. Anywhere is good for a bike race once you kick out the cars.
Kick out the cars!

Once I saw portraits of
cats in cravats,
big frilly collars and
sailor suits or monocles
on the wall of a darkened little giftshop
in Echuca.

I was just looking for pictures of train crashes, as is my want - and came across this article — check out the zoomed foto of the incident. I could swear it’s of a model train set. What is this oober-surreality called cincinnati where people live within radiowaves (’I'm livin’ on the air at WKRP cincinnati’) and outdoor life is in HO scale???

comments:
tony
url: the horse’s mouth
date: 2003-10-19-05-38
It *SO* does look like a model train set scene too. Pugsley Addams is back at work,

I too can’t wait to get hold of a new camera. I was planning on visiting melvourne today to get it, but they are out of stock, and frankly I’m sick of dealing with them. There seems to be this correlational law that they who have the lowest prices will also be the rudest arseholes in the business — when it comes to device sellers. When a fella rings up your business on daytime STD rates, he don’t like to be sent straight to commercial radio Hold.
So what price decent service? I’m still on a budget, but I think I’d pay an extra $30 to not deal with Computer World in Richmond.

Up to my nose in browsers. I grabbed Mozilla 1.5 and installed it, but it’s not picking up the anti-aliasing which is a bit of a shame. Firebird 0.7 is the same but I knew it would be — just nice to have a go of. Switching back to Opera (7.21 Final for Linux) for a main browser. It always manages to pick up the a-a-ing.

Having a little squiz at nucleus weblog system. I’ve got no intention of switiching, but I’ve had this MySQL database as part of this webspace, sitting here for the last 6 months and I haven’t done anything with it. Nucleus has a fairly large range of plugins.

I had to shut off the commenting system for all the old movable type entries because they were collecting comment-spam. My definition of a comment-spammer has sharpened a little — they’re the ones that leave odd little “shopping catalogue” paragraphs for two-bit products, and they have yahoo email addresses. They’re different to (geez is it different to, than or from??? fuck I’m tired) bozos - who may waltz through leave a dumb comment, but have no profit-motive.

I haven’t been a dazzling chimp-with-a-space-helmet (i.e. beta-tester) for Pivot lately. Just got no time for it. There’s so many things that need tweaking. The best weblogging system is always the one that I’m not using. More time goes to that in a month.

Further on the Pirate Video store thing. I’ll go to one of the other video stores and take fotos of the videos sitting on the shelves then print them out on the bubble-jet and then put them on the front of the boxes in my store. A printed out foto of another video, sitting on another shelf. If any of the customers asks me about it I’ll say, “Hey listen pal are you gonna rent it or not?” and if they keep hassling me then I’ll say it’s the director’s art-house cut version of the movie.

Further on the “where did the ’sure, just cut them up like regular chickens’, quote come from?” mystery, according to jazzmonkey in wizconsin it’s from David Lynch’s Eraserhead — which I haven’t seen since I was 16 or something.

Wow, who would’ve thought the theme to ‘The Love Boat’ would be 4.1megabytes long?

comments:
Jon
the spork
date: 2003-10-17-09-33
Can’t say I have ever watched it .. which I think is a character flaw so I shall try to rectify it asap.

name: yak sox
date: 2003-10-17-09-48
It’s a very strange movie. That’s for sure.