may 30, 2005
le miroir
I have some new photos up at The Mirror Project.
girl and cat in basket
yet another house
mirrored boxes
pipstar @ 03:30 PM | link | Comments:
may 28, 2005
emergency sex (and other desperate measures) by kenneth cain, heidi postlewait & andrew thomson
About a month ago I saw Andrew Thomson being interviewed on Enough Rope, and then in the space of the next week I heard an awful lot about the stories of three young UN Peacekeepers.
I kept on going into bookshops enquiring if the book had come into stock yet, but was eventually beaten to the cash register by Craig from work. Finally, I’ve borrowed his copy, and in between playing with Fighting Tiger, working, going to a gallery launch and watching Spooks, I’m racing through the book. It’s well paced, interesting, well written and very exciting to read.
My immediate reaction is: you can just apply for a job at the UN? Cool. It’s a thought which ties in rather nicely with the recurring thought of “Hang on, I work in an industry which does a fair bit to glamorise the war machine and very little to improve the lives of the countless starving, oppressed millions.”
Of course, I’m now further into the book, the relative peace of the Cambodian election is now past: Ken and Heidi are in Somalia at the time of Black Hawk Down and Andrew is in Haiti dealing with a seemingly endless amount of mutilated corpses. All of which makes the game industry seem a boring, yet far safer place to work.
I know that later in the book there is far more information about how the UN is primarily a bureaucracy and not actually the gleaming bastion of hope for people around the world that I imagine it to be. But for the moment I’m going to keep on believing that the UN is the only effective tool the world has to ensure people’s safety and health.
pipstar @ 04:55 PM | link | Comments:
may 28, 2005
things i like about my new house
• I have a beautiful mantelpiece in my bedroom.
• There are two large living spaces.
• There’s a washing line and it’s under cover.
• It’s a quick walk to one of my favourite supermarkets (a broad range of continental food, and an excellent deli).
• Along the trellis in the back yard there’s a beautiful pale pink climbing rose that is currently flowering heavily.
• Karen’s cat Sesame is a beautiful, friendly, purring machine.
• It’s two minutes walk from the bottle shop.
• There are friendly and amusing pets in the streets nearby.
• And there are lemons hanging over fences ready for midnight fruit raids.
• The ladies I live with are great. And so far (two weeks may be two early to tell) we seem to be managing with only one bathroom.
pipstar @ 04:54 PM | link | Comments:
may 28, 2005
fighting tiger
I'm currently giving names to stuff that I've bought: the potted cordyline on my desk at work is called Cynthia, my LBE doll is called Artemis (Missy for short) and I've named my new laptop Fighting Tiger.
And while I'm not actually fighting Tiger, I am travelling a bit of a learning curve. It's about four years since I last regularly used a Mac, and in some ways it's kinda good to have to approach an operating system in a more halting, unsure way. I'm much more aware of how other people may find working with any computer overwhelming and a challenge, and I'm also being much more aware of how I interact with a computer and how much I take my skills for granted.
Of course, there is the witty play on words that signals my switch to "The Other Side" but I've also often used the term "Fighting Tiger" clarify what I mean by battlecat.
"Battle what?"
"You know, 'battlecat', like from HeMan and SheRa, like a fighting tiger."
"Oh."
I have to say that I'm very glad that the laptop arrived when it did. I could have waited another two weeks for the laptop itself without being stressed, but I'm really appreciating the toasty warmness it's providing my legs. In fact earlier this evening I was not only fighting Tiger, but also balancing an actual cat on my lap too. The underside of this computer may well be the warmest thing in this house!
pipstar @ 01:07 AM | link | Comments:
may 27, 2005
waiting, waiting, waiting. waiting no more.
but get this… When I rang up I found out that it was arriving today!
And it’s now here.
So all I have to wait for is the final payment to go through from work and then I’m heading home on annual leave to play with my new baby.
On top of the standard 15” SuperDrive Powerbook I’ve added an extra Gigabyte of Ram and doubled the Video memory.
Sweet. I don’t think that I’ll be getting to yoga tonight.
pipstar @ 10:35 AM | link | Comments:
may 23, 2005
me me me
Since Mike was so flattering♥ I will actually participate in this meme. We can only hope that it inspires a virtual torrent of blog posts.
Total Volume Of Music On My Computer
1101 songs, 5.09 GB
This is my work computer, so it's mainly new stuff I've bought in the last year or music that other people have lent me. One day, when I've got a fancy mp3 player which holds more than 256mB, I'll get around to encoding everything and putting the cds and cases into storage.
The Last CD I Bought
I figured I'd list the last week or so of music purchases and arrivals.
The Roger's Sisters - Bad Politics Tour EP
The Postal Service - Give Up.
Jens Lekman - You are the light.
Received - a mix cd of 17 songs from a friend.
A less recent but still notable purchase is Caribou's The Milk of Human Kindness.
Song Playing Right Now
Alone With Me by Wagons, from Draw Blood.
5 songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me
True Dreams of Wichita - Soul Coughing
A Song For You - Gram Parsons
Let's Make A List - The Van Pelt
Sylvia Plath - Ryan Adams
Youth and Beauty Brigade - The Decemberists
Actually, almost anything by The Van Pelt or Gram Parsons could have made it into the list. And I have to note that because I'm not listing influential artists the list is radically different, because there are specific artists who changed my outlook on music even if I rarely listen to them now.
3 people to whom I’m passing the baton
Noranna - In my eyes she's the new Adelaide IT girl of geeks, photography and gigs, and Pete and Sarah.
♥ Apparently, I have indie cred. The 16 year old me is sooo happy to hear that.
© 2002 - 2007 Pippa Buchanan