march 27, 2004
lomo on
for a while i've been thinking about buying myself a lomo lca camera (I, II, III, IV, V) and on thursday I gave in and bought myself the deluxe package which comes with a colorsplash flash, hipshot bag, fotoclips and extra film. i also get another actionsampler as a bonus.
to fill in the time until my mum and stepdad come up along with the oh so exciting package, i think that i'll make the dirkon pinhole camera.
pipstar @ 07:18 PM | link | Comments: *
march 27, 2004
a suitable book
texture, smell (missing from the screen)
Danny Gregory recently wrote a post about paper.
I also found a short story called Once In Love With Paper by an Indian author, Amitava Kumar. It sits comfortably into my current literary mindset, a world which is populated by the characters of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.
I'm so caught up in the lives of the characters that when Savita gave birth to her first child, Uma, I actually told my housemate Shae how excited I was.
On a number of occasions I have been moved to tears by the writing in many of my favourite blogs, but that is a form of writing which has grown from the computer and internet medium. Blog entries are written succinctly, encouraging return visits, ultimately developing a virtual, often one-sided relationship between a reader and author.
Yet, however much I appreciate computers and new technology, I don't think that I could ever get that caught up in any 1000+ word story which was presented via an electronic book. The bookness just wouldn't be there - the smells and textures of paper would be missing. And the marks which a reader incidentally leaves on the pages and spine and cover of a book wouldn't remain.
Somewhere, I once read that there is a French word which describes the love of paper. I think that it was papaver, but I might just have dreamt the meaning up.
Coincidentally, papaver is the botanical name for plants within the Poppy family which makes me think, maybe I could make a teeny tiny fairy journal made of poppy petals?
It certainly wouldn't be too hard to make a journal out of paperbark tree bark.
I was just walking back up the hill from the cafe by Coffs Creek when I noticed what almost looked like old newspaper on the ground.
It turned out to be a huge sheet of bark which had fallen from the trunk of a nearby tree.
I'd only just avoided having a overly friendly spider crawl over me while I'd been drinking my coffee, so I chose to only take a small piece of bark home, a piece of bark too small to contain significantly creepy sized arachnids.
The bark is very fine, so the paper in the journal would be like the tissue thin pages of 100 year old novels and family bibles.
Such "India Paper" is in my grandmother's copy of Anna Karenina which I brought with me to Coffs Harbour. It contains over 800 pages, but is just under an inch thick and the book is about 3 inches by 5 inches. It's a beautiful copy, but I'm a little afraid to read it and turn such precious, fine pages.
The copy of Anna Karenina that I read while in Europe (and left in a hostel along the way) was two inches thick and standard novel size. By the time I'd finished it I'd dog-eared the cover, folded over corners to remind me of my page and stuffed it into my backpack as I travelled from town to town. It was very imprinted with my reading process. (Hopefully some other backpacker picked it up and enjoyed it as much as I did).
Even though I borrowed A Suitable Boy, I think that I'll have to buy a new copy for the owner (who had only managed to get a couple of 100 pages through). One of the things that paper will always do better than any e-book medium is to provide a physical vessel in which the memories of its reading are stored. I had to leave Anna, Vronsky, Levin and Kitty and some travel memories behind on a bunk bed, but Lata and Maan and Mrs Rupa Mehra (and Coffs Harbour) are going home to Adelaide with me.
pipstar @ 06:06 PM | link | Comments:
march 21, 2004
reintroduction
today i followed a yoga sequence that i wrote down in august last year. i was finding it a little tough, but when i checked my diary just then, i realised that it was a level two class sequence.
i think that i'm going to ache a little tomorrow.
it's so nice returning to things which you've neglected, even though you know that you shouldn't have avoided them in the first place.
this week the returns have been to yoga, getting a roll of film developed and finding mirror photos and pictures of friends, regular(ish) blogging, cooking, writing in my diary, playing with my own computer, crouching tiger, hidden dragon and making fresh apple and ginger juice.
good new things include finally seeing secretary, acquainting myself with tarot, more poi moves and every page of a suitable boy [i started reading it almost 3 weeks ago!].
i'm also trying to experiment with new recipes.
i tend to get bogged down with the same pasta sauces for a couple of weeks at a time. last year i went through puttanesca and mushroom sauce phases with the occassional return to tuna, lemon and pea pasta from the Take Three cookbook (it honestly is better than it sounds).
last week i added a new variation on pasta sauce to my repetoire - asparagus and rocket pasta.
this week i am going to cook fish. i'm going to walk down the road to the fishery co-op and buy fish caught that morning. my cooking repetoire will have something beyond pasta sauce.
pipstar @ 09:43 PM | link | Comments: **
march 20, 2004
[there's tomato soup on the stove]
after years of playing with newton's spread at corax.com, i've finally purchased the aleister crowley thoth deck.
i saved up the change i've collected over the last month and went up to a store in bellingen where i'd seen the deck. and i met a lovely lady (or faerie?) called laura.
next on the list of things to buy with shrapnel is a beautiful felted handbag in the steiner store on the main street of bellingen. there's also some beautiful brightly coloured hand-dyed and spun wool in skeins which i'll buy before i return to adelaide.
---------------------------
(sorry i should have said, the thoth deck is a tarot deck commissioned by aleister crowley. a spooky british guy)
pipstar @ 06:49 PM | link | Comments: ***
march 20, 2004
new mirror shots
adelaide > coffs harbour
aliese's glasses
henna
pipstar @ 06:22 PM | link | Comments: *
march 19, 2004
you mean i have to work full time for the next 35 years?
after 24 years of poor sleep patterns I'm finally waking up early without much difficulty.
on the weekend i'm waking up before my alarm.
on thursday morning, after a spontaneous night of heavy drinking and hennaing workmates' hair i still managed to wake up and get to work. and by midday i was able to concentrate.
in fact i'm so good at this sleep pattern thing that i have regularly gone "eleven o'clock on a weeknight? i should go to bed." and off i responsibly toddle.
that has never happened before. i'm hoping that despite the many fun people i'll return to in adelaide, i'll still be sensible about my sleep pattern.
mick! you're on fire!
i've learnt that you shouldn't yell the above compliment to someone mid-fire twirl. that's not responsible behaviour. especially when you are Super Official Fire Safety Officer for the evening.
i've ordered a set of orange and pink poi. hopefully i'll have attempted a couple of fire twirls by the end of my time in coffs harbour. though the list of potential moves is quite long and i'm only just feeling confident with butterfly, chasing and the weave.
[distracted by news of the adelaide blogs meetup - sorry, i obviously can't be there!]
look! it's 12:20.
i must go to bed.
pipstar @ 11:18 PM | link | Comments: *
march 19, 2004
hélène, the new gidget
pipstar @ 09:57 PM | link | Comments:
march 19, 2004
hélène, middleton
pipstar @ 09:55 PM | link | Comments:
march 19, 2004
long day, long shadow (north eastern nsw)
pipstar @ 09:53 PM | link | Comments:
march 17, 2004
booya!
how glorious life is.
especially when you look out of your work window to see a campervan with ali-g painted on the side.
it seems that it's a "wicked camper". if you're thinking about visiting australia and driving around, the vans sound like a good deal.
pipstar @ 04:11 PM | link | Comments:
march 17, 2004
tasty and cute
i'm obsessed with nudies.
pipstar @ 01:47 PM | link | Comments: *
march 13, 2004
nitty gritty
i can just tell that games programming is going to be so difficult and so confusing at first, and then slowly (as i grasp what's meant to be going on) it's going to become very rewarding.
when you think about it, i'm entering the industry in a fairly unusual way. with no games programming experience (either professional or hobby) i have applied for a job and been successful.
yet it seems that around the world, kids are growing up with one dream, to be a games programmer. websites provide information about getting a job in the games industry, and most seem to suggest that the hopeful game programmer should spend all their spare time learning about different APIs and developing sample apps.
whereas i've always wanted to work for ratbag, and haven't been obsessed enough to play computer games regularly, let alone program a quake mod for fun. i like the company and i like programming, but there are other things i could do (and almost did) with my life.
so while I went well at uni and have a strong, broad, theoretical understanding about software development in general, i'm only just unearthing the nitty gritty of what a game programmer does.
unfortunately my friend (and now work colleague!) tim will be setting off to travel for a couple of months when i start at ratbag, so i'll be without an immediate source of information.
luckily, another tim (from my work here) has lent me some copies of game developer magazine and told me about gamasutra and the game american mcgee's alice which (as it incorporates literary references) i think i may enjoy.
my good friend zoe (who now resides in canada) also sent me a link about open gl which should become very useful.
i've also found a couple of links and potential book purchases.
so, it seems that what i don't know will be easily researchable and then learnt. after all, i am entering gaming as a graduate programmer, i don't need to know everything.
i am a teeny bit worried that i might not be obsessed enough.
the other day a couple of the guys at work were telling me about an ASCII version of quake. i was already pretty astounded to see the 64K demos that technically brilliant, german programmers have been doing for fun, that i almost cried.
i was incredibly impressed, but i also thought that all that energy and intelligence could have been focussed on something else. (saving the world, face-to-face social interaction and reading books all came to mind.)
obviously there are many different understandings of what the word fun means. because, i'll be quite happy to work long hours getting things done by deadline, but after work's over, i will not, (i repeat) will not program for fun.
luckily for you dear readers, i do not count the upkeep of battlecat.net as programming.
i will continue to do fun things like hang out with friends and go dancing, read novels, go to yoga, garden, make and eat food, draw pictures and buy things at the market. in fact, if i ever start surfing lessons i may start driving south to surf on the weekends. or maybe not.
but before i can start surfing i should move into the flat which will be my home for the next 9 or so weeks.
it's got a killer view.
pipstar @ 10:42 AM | link | Comments:
march 09, 2004
topsy-turvy
By the end of this post, some of you may be a little confused. Because I'm going to be moving back to Adelaide at the end of May.
And you're probably thinking, surely two weeks into a move is too early to make a decision?
Well, you might remember that I wrote this just a month ago...
And as I mentioned before I am free to leave if I'm unhappy. (Or if hip games development companies / visual effects companies / national broadcasters offer me a cooler job).
Well, an offer came - I've got a job with ratbag games!
Now don't get me wrong, Coffs Harbour is pretty nice so far, and the job and the pay are excellent and would continue to improve anyway. It was truly the most difficult decision I've ever had to make.
I've wanted to work at ratbag for a long time (I, II, III), yet half an hour before I accepted the Ratbag offer I was on the phone to Mum telling her I'd pretty much decided to stay in Coffs Harbour. And it wasn't until one of the guys I work with up here said "Well, you said you've always wanted to work there, why don't you do what you've always wanted?", that I actually picked up the phone and made the call.
Now of course I am freaking out as the work up here is way easier than the crazy C++ programming I'll be doing at Ratbag (I'm going to have to read some big, fat books).
And it's lucky that I own a headtorch, as the Ratbag offices are very, very dark. They don't seem to turn any lights on.
Not that I'm planning on posting about work, as that could be very, very bad if I ever got upset and carried away.
:::...
There's a full moon at the moment (as it's been rising it's been a bright yellow colour) and I think that it's affecting the previously sedate cat, Pandy. For the last couple of days she's been positively evil and will specifically sneak up to me with the intention of biting me. At first I thought she just wanted food, but now I think that Pand may well be suffering from a personality disorder.
Panda's also got extremely fancy tastes in kitty treats. The other day I caught it attacking a sealed packet of sushi Nori, and it was later witnessed tearing the bag open.
Now we've discovered that she loves the taste of seaweed. Does anyone else have a cat like that?
mariachi band of the caribbean
I went to see Once Upon A Time In Mexico tonight. It has to be seen to be believed.
I didn't have a clue about what was going on, and even though Johnny Depp is a supercool man, I really had to wonder at his character's pain tolerance.
I'm so glad it was tightarse tuesday.
pipstar @ 10:26 PM | link | Comments: *************
march 02, 2004
dolphins and boats
Goodness gracious me. I just went to see george and The Boat People play and they were both excellent.
And Katie Noonan's voice is amazing. It must be so much fun to be able to sing like that. Soaring and [seemingly] effortlessly.
Going and seeing (good) live music made me sad. (Remember, I saw a not so good cover band on Saturday night.) Seeing bands play is the environment in which I spend most of my social time back in Adelaide. While it was an excellent gig it would have been nice to have some of my peoples there [sic].
Luckily Trisha from work is being lovely about having me tag along with her. But it isn't nearly the same as hanging out with my ladies and gentlemen in Adelaide.
I have plans to undertake the creation of easyish craft projects and a zine over the next couple of weeks.
According to the members of george, visiting the Pet Porpoise Pool is one of the highlights of a visit to Coffs Harbour. Ellie and Aliese, is it a date?
And next Tuesday I'll hopefully make my way up to Bellingen for a yoga class.
© 2002 - 2007 Pippa Buchanan