Another plug for 52 Suburbs

52 Suburbs is a beautiful travel photoblog, well worth a look. Louise Hawson and her 9-year-old daughter Coco, have left Sydney behind and so far have explored the suburbs of 9 cities. Pics below are from Tokyo (of course all © Louise Hawson). I do believe these coloured links I copied/pasted actually work.

• • >HONG KONG
  • >DELHI
  • >ISTANBUL
  • >PARIS
  • >ROME
  • >BERLIN
  • >NEW YORK
  • >LOS ANGELES
  • >TOKYO

Winston F(?) Society

A devious plan from Michael, a few months ago. This is a sketch map of the school and environs.

Middle 2012: Start WFS
Late 2012: First Expantion
Early 2013: First Coat of Arms
Middle-Late 2013: About three times as big
2015: First “bit-by-bit” conqering
Start 2016: Piracy to A on the Rivulet Track (RT)
Late 2019: I give orders to invade the principal's office.

SSJ - Day 2 PM

We arrived at Tasmania Zoo, and piled in at a jog to see the famous meerkats. They are right at the entrance, in fact their glass-fenced enclosure opens on to the zoo cafeteria. You can sit at a table, enjoy meerkat activity and have a Slushee or a fisherman's basket at the same time. The radio is also on, and while we were there the meerkats enjoyed some Midnight Oil, Counting Crows and Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen.

They are completely loveable. They are a bit smaller than I thought, but very active. They were nibbling on scattered bits of stuff when we arrived, so we thought the "feeding" would probably not be a big deal for them, but they jumped to attention when the keeper went in with a bucket of grubs. They did quite a lot of the sitting-up-on-hindquarters thing that we all know and love. One of them was up on a little central perch, keeping a perky weather eye on the primates, Tasmanian devils and the Tasmanian masked owl. As those guys are all also in cages and pens, I don't think he really had much to worry about.

The rest of the zoo was pretty good, although quite bird-heavy. And I don't think I am much of a bird person. The blue and gold macaw thought it was pretty funny to make an appalling beak-squeak on the metal struts of her enclosure. You could tell she thought it was funny as it was followed by a frightening "HA HA HA HA HA HA!" remniscent of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

The Tasmanian devils were in a good mood - well, mostly asleep, but I did get a photo of one looking quite friendly. I think she was just working out how much of my arm she would be able to take off if I just leaned a little closer.

The cage I really couldn't tear myself away from was full of these guys. 

This is a pic from the zoo's facebook page - all my photos were kind of blurry and cagey. They are some kind of ape - I never managed to find out what kind on the day, and looking at the zoo map now I still can't work it out. They are tail-less, so i don't think they could be macaques. Whatever they are, they were eyeballing us very closely, and the message I was getting from that look was "get us out of here and take us into town with you so we can go shopping". They were so human-y. They kept reaching through the wire for handfuls of particular rushy grasses, and failing to uproot them. Marcus would pull up a few and try to share them out equally, but one guy was getting them all. When Marcus held them back out of his reach, he gave him the full teeth-revealing hiss of anger. It was pretty confronting, speaking as a fellow ape.

The cotton-eared marmosets were very engaging - one of them spent a lot of time millimeters from me, hugging his side of the bars. I felt like he really, y'know, understood me? He looked deep into my eyes and also asked me non-verbally if we could get him out of there and perhaps get him a skateboard and some sugary snacks. (I feel like I have just foretold the kids movie blockbuster of the summer, Las Vegas Skatin' Cotton-Eared Marmoset).

The croc house was disappointing. Crocs might be quite happy to have a concrete basin of water and a stretch of fake grass each - they might love it. But I was expecting some mudflats, some vague stab at a natural-ish environment. Maybe this is temporary.

I am merciless with typos. Fatastic indeed - they are thinking of the wombats.

My big gripe applies equally to all zoos and wildlife parks - if an exhibit or cage or enclosure is out of action or empty - put a sign on it. No-one wants to be the kind of zoo visitor who impatiently blows past a whole bunch of enclosures because there doesn't seem to be much happening. But when you have limited time to get around a big zoo, its maddening to find you have been patiently waiting for ... nothing. The nocturnal house, as far as I could tell, had one occupied enclosure out of about 20. I am sure there were at least a few more furry friends in there, but the majority of those glass boxes could have had a standard card in the window that just said "Sorry, nothing to see here right now".

Yellow bucket = mandrill food. Metal bucket = something dead for the devils.

Having had our fill of fauna, we went back into town to suss out the caravan park. How bad would it be? The caravan smelled pretty stale but that didn't last long once we opened everything up. Marcus and I went off to get dinner. After sausages and salad we broke our "no-buddies" rule and went to visit Joe and Jill and William. As usual William, Marcus and Michael had anarchic fun with a lot of ear-splitting laughing from William - again, a bit The Shining-esque. After a few beers, some school talk and half an A-League game, we had to let William get to bed. We went back to face the music at Glen Dhu Treasure Island caravan park.

Glen Dhu is the part of Launceston where my Dad grew up. That was before the expressway cut it in two. Dad's old primary school is now hard by one side of the Southern Outlet, and his father Didds' old workplace Coats Patons woollen mill is hard by the other side. I had never had a close-up look at Coats Patons before - it is really very, very big.

As it happened we had a terrible night, and none of us really slept. We just drifted through the next day in a group mind-fug. The road was so noisy, and the kids in the next caravan had a drunken revel until 3 or 4. I tried to make myself sleep by going through the nations of Africa and putting them in alphabetical order, then singing every Billy Bragg song I could think of to myself. To no avail. 

Sigh. We live and learn. Cheap is not always everything.

Spontaneous Spring Jaunt - Day 1

We have just had a little 3-day trip up to the East Coast and Launceston. Elf decided we needed a holiday, and we gave the boys a couple of days off school so it wouldn’t have to be done in a big rush.

We set off on Thursday, stopping at Raspins Beach, Triabunna, Mayfield  Beach and arriving at Bicheno, where we stayed at the Silver Sands Motel. I would describe it as “agreeably shabby”. It’s got a great location, right on the headland at one end of the main beach. But the main sign fell down a while ago and hasn’t been replaced, and reception is actually in the White Dog Café which is hidden when you drive up. All that could do with some tidying up. Our room had a feeble plywood door to the outside world - fortunately we are not super security-conscious. All around one side of the motel is a labyrinth of blackberry, heavily populated with rabbits. One the plus side the beds were really comfortable, it was clean, and we were able to stroll from our room onto the beach in two minutes.

We were all keen to see some penguins come ashore in the evening, and the rest of the family thought we might see some before dinner. We found a likely spot, but it was still much too bright, so we went off to look for food instead.

We had an OK seafood dinner at the pub, but Elf’s caesar salad was pretty forgettable, and the “Bad Boy Fries” were just bad. 

We returned to the search for fairy penguins. They are officially called “little penguins” these days but I am stuck on the old name for now. It was still too early for them so we walked the length of the beach. Diamond Island is joined to the mainland at low tide, and we were able to scurry out to it, touch dry land and then get back to the main beach before we got our feet wet. By the time we got back to the car it was quite dim, but still no sign of Eudyptula minors. 

We agreed to sit in the car for another ten minutes, but saw nothing until I started the engine and began to leave - there they were in the headlights. So out we got and enjoyed the company of 6 or 8 or so for the next 20 minutes. I have lived in Tasmania nearly all my life but had never bothered to hang around burrow sites at dusk, so I had never seen them before. They are pretty cute.

Stone houses in Charles St, Triabunna

Marcus wearing Maria Island as a hat.

To take a photo of Michael I have to pretend I am doing no such thing.

View from Room 22,  Silver Sands,  Bicheno. 

Shabby Chic

Startles me how much that looks like my dad on the left. It's me.

¿Donde estas los pinguinos? Where are the penguins?  

Little penguins at Bicheno - a mum and her chick

Box city

On Saturday we took the kids to an activity called We Built This City - (I just want to apologise up front for putting that terrible song by Starship into your heads). A vacant block next to the Theatre Royal was piled with about 5000 boxes, and the kids invited in to build whatever they wanted. It was put on by Polyglot Theatre who have done this all over the world.

The boys both enjoyed themselves a lot, but Michael felt he wanted another crack at it, so I took him and the camera back there on Sunday. He is a bit glass-half-empty lately. Although I have documentary evidence of him having a whale of a time, he needed a lot of cajoling at the end to agree that it had, on balance, been fun.

Dianthus "Rebekah"

One of my new workmates at PMA is Joe Chelkowski, who takes most of the photos. And as you can see, he is pretty damn good. Images like this are a joy to work with.

Baltic Dirty Tanker Index

Like me, I'm sure you are pretty puzzled about what is going on with the Baltic Dirty Tanker Index. It's going through the floor!

The BDTI is "a compilation of international crude oil routes". The plunge

"reflects the terrible pricing tanker companies receive for leasing their vessels. Clearly some of the oil tankers problems have to do with more vessels coming on line, weak capital access and decreased demand. But not all. Dry bulkers face the same issues. It's hard to see how the index can stay down in sharp contrast to a rising demand for the transport of iron, grain, and coal as evidenced by the BDI. After all, oil tankers do participate in a global economy. This last week, the BDTI has seen a fledgling increase. A more sustained strengthening in the BDTI would propel Nordic American (NAT) and Frontline (FRO). If the dry bulking industry is returning, can the BDTI be far behind?" Stephen Rosenman, seekingalpha.com 

If you aren't changing minds, you are wasting your time

THIS IS A BIT OUT OF DATE NOW. OH WELL. THE POINT STILL STANDS I THINK.

I remember having a race between two wooden blocks I called "Labor" and "Liberal", on the carpet in Ibey's hallway. I think that was in 1975 when there a lot of talk about the dismissal of the Whitlam government. So, I think i can say I have been following Australian politics for 37 years.

I have never known a time when the vast bulk of what is said (and there has never been so much being said) is aimed squarely at the already converted.

If you think Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones is a disgrace, as I do, then it's pretty comfortable to listen to other people also saying "the man is a disgrace". [For overseas readers, he is on record saying our Prime Minister should be "sewn up in a chaff bag and thrown in the ocean". Then last week a recording emerged of him at a fundraising dinner saying that her recently deceased father "died of shame" over her policies and conduct as PM]. Looks pretty damning. And my preferred sources of news (The Age and the ABC) have been predictably and rightly scathing.

But if you had a quality national half hour current affairs show, would you bother bringing on a high profile sworn enemy of the bloke, in John Laws, to reiterate that yes, he's still not a fan? I can't see what that achieves. Local radio actually did a better job, getting a well-known Alan supporter in Senator Eric Abetz to try to defend the indefensible. He found a tweet that a union official retweeted, that essentially said 'Cool it - Jones is old - he'll die soon'. Abetz claimed that that was basicallly equivalent. Abetz sounds like a robot, but he had the grace to sound (robotically) embarrassed by own his pissweak argument.

In a wierdly recursive way, Jones' power lies in the perception among politicians that he is powerful. He has a deep hook into a particular segment of the electorate - older males. But they only have one vote each - I have never understood why this particular niche is the holy grail. The perception peddled by Alan and his employers is that he is a kingmaker and also a wise elder of the tribe. Listen to his wisdom gained from his close affinity with the regular Aussies on Struggle Street, otherwise you will lose touch with them, to your detriment. Offend him and you may as well have offfended the gods themselves, for the amount of plagues, smitings and flag-cape-wearing pitchfork mobs he calls down on your head.

But who are ‘Alan's people’? I would love someone to sit down with a representative group of his listeners, and go through the established facts of who Alan is, what he has done and said in the past, and the contradictions therein. And try to change their minds about him.

There is a subject on the national curriculum called Persuasive Writing. It seems to be a dying art, so I am glad they are trying to address that.

My work colleague

"I assume you are here about the silly games? Come this way."

Winston (and Hattie) are my constant companions when I am working at home Tuesday-Friday. Sometimes I will go upstairs to make coffee or grab a piece of toast. I am always keen to get back downstairs and keep working, but it is hard to pass up the invitation to play chasings around the couch with this foolish, foolish, soft-faced dog.

The sheer freedom of my lance is breathaking

I began last week with no work to do after my regular Monday gig. Practically nothing lined up in the future even. And - I was OK with it. Weather is warming up, got some fat books to read. Put the feet up, kick back and live mostly on instant noodles. Nice. But then the phone started ringing and I was run off my feet all week. One of the jobs was some fix ups on a big project that I had worked on at Roar, Founders and Survivors: Storylines. I mumbled about the project back in 2011 and about our family story that was going to be a part of it.

I don’t think I have put any of it up for show and tell before. Here is an animation I did to accompany an original song by Adam Gibson, based on the Beni Griffiths story.

And here is the Griffiths home page, featuring Marcus and a picture of me as a grumpy toddler.

The site is not live yet but I will advise when you can go and look at the whole thing. There are about twenty detailed Storylines like this one. I have put up some more of the home pages I designed here.

Chlorophyll Club

This is one of those stream-of-consciousness updates. You have been warned.

Just been mowing the lawn. Often while I do that Elf is simultaneously vacuuming inside. Then comes the delicate point that I, covered in grass clippings, want to come in to the now spotless house. I brush myself down throughly but still feel that wherever I go I am going to leave a trail of grassiness. (Feel obliged to note that I also vacuum sometimes though I am generally more of a sweeper).

Michael likes to form clubs at school. He likes to do his own thing, and will almost never be found joining in something started by others. But he is always happy to have followers, and the latest crazy scheme is Chlorophyll Club. He and others collect plants, grass (and sometimes small insects) and crush them into a mush. I found a list of members in his schoolbag. He is President and Leader. A girl named Madison is responsible for “Waste Removal”. The last organisation he founded was Ice Club, back in winter.

Marcus currently has all his medals around his neck and just announced to the visiting neighbours “I’m a bro with some blingggg” with an appropriate homeboy hand signal. The boys have been watching a terrible cartoon lately with a character voiced by B Grade celebrity and rapper Flavor Flav, and have picked up a few things. Flav is currently doing a stretch for domestic violence, but I suppose you can’t go pulling a cartoon off air on that basis. Unsurprisingly, his character ‘Father Time’ finds plenty of opportunities to say “Yeaaaaaaaaaah booooooooooooy”.

Marcus scored a new medal today, coming 2nd at a chess tournament. This is the first one he’s attended as an individual, not representing the school. The more seriously chessy kids played in a 2-day tournament, but there was a 1-day alternative and that’s what we went for. While he played I read a fantastic book.

Hilary Mantel just won her second booker prize, for Bring Up The Bodies. It's more or less a sequel to the first prizewinner, Wolf Hall, which is what I am reading now. It's fantastic - an historical novel set in Tudor England, full of bloody treachery, cunning and pragmatism. The main character is Thomas Cromwell, who usually gets written up as a bit of a rotter. In A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt he is a bloodthirsty rat-cunning survivor. The hero of that play is Sir Thomas More, but Mantel is not a fan.

I read an interview with Mantel which I found on Longreads.com. She has had a very difficult and sometimes tragic life, and you have to be happy for her finding success. She said that for a long time it was out of fashion to write historical novels about famous women, you had to write about the ordinary woman in the sixteenth century or in Rome or whatever. 

But she stuck with what was plausible—she couldn’t stand maudlin feminist mythmaking. “There was a time when, truffling around historical fiction for women, I seemed to come across nothing but ordinary women who happened to have a brilliant knowledge of herbs,” she says.

So - I'll do a proper review when I have finished it.

Spring racing season

Michael models a hat of his own design.

Trike trailer

I have been trying to move on this tricycle for about four years now. Michael just loves it and is adept at finding things he can hitch to it. This is my dad’s old golf buggy.

Launceston Cup triumph and a well-earned rest.

Soccer season is finally over. We went to Launceston for the weekend, to see Marcus play for the Central Region again. Having lost the Hobart Cup to the Northern representative side, we were keen to see the boys do well and maybe pinch the Launceston Cup in return.

We drove up on Saturday morning, getting there about an hour before the first game. The tournament was on at Churchill Park by the river. It had been raining for a week beforehand, and I thought the grounds would be terrible but they were surprisingly good. The grassed areas around and between the grounds were saturated though - Michael spent a lot of his time paddling.

Saturday was warm and sunny, and watching the first game I was actually very pleased when I found some shade. Central's first game of four was against Northern - and based on previous results, it was essentially a decider. Marcus played again at right-back, and he was very involved right from the start. Every attack from the home team seemed to come down his side, and he was impassable. After soaking up ten minutes of pressure Central struck on the counterattack to go one up. The boys went wild. There is a lot of showboating in the Central U/10s and the goal celebrations are way over the top.

Shortly after there was a 2nd goal, and they went to the break up 2-0. Marcus was dominating, winning a lot of high balls with his head (you don't see that much in U/10s). He was anticipating and cutting off attacks, then holding and carrying the ball up confidently and passing constructively. More goals came, and by the end Central were up about 5-0. It was a great effort all over the park.

Unfortunately Marcus didn't see out the game. Ten minutes from time he went for a 50-50 ball and limped off in pain with a damaged ankle. It was an hour until the next game, and Atef the coach was insistent he would need Marcus, but Marcus wasn't able to put any weight on his leg at all. (Various people later said they thought he was best on ground)

We consulted the St John's ambulance ladies, who gave Marcus a bag of ice and said that he really needed an x-ray. So I piggybacked him to the car and the four of us went looking for the Launceston General. Emergency was not particularly busy, but we were still there a long time. The doctor who unwrapped the bandages winced when he saw the swelling though, but Marcus was cleared of damage and released. We sped back to Churchill Park to let the team know that he was OK, but sadly would not be playing any more that weekend. In his absence they had won a spiteful game against Western Schools 4-2. The Western U/10 coach is a real problem - I believe Central and Eastern Region have put in a joint complaint about his behaviour and his instructions to his team.

After a quick catchup with the team we went across to Joe and Jill's nearby for a cuppa. Their boy William is 5 now, and he and Michael had a whale of a time on the floor doing something with action figures and Lego. Their renovation is 95% finished - they actually have some insulated rooms now, which make a difference in a Launceston winter. We then farewelled them and went off to our billet for the night, with Lindy, Ellen and Tristan in Blackstone Heights. Tristan was delighted to have boys to bounce around with, but Ellen is now in full moody teen mode, and was on Facebook with headphones on for our entire visit.

The kids and Elf read and watched footy while Lindy cooked and I grilled her about everything going on up there. We went to high school and college together and have a lot of mutual friends around, so it was very good to be able to swap news about what they are all up to.

We had decided to stay and support the team rather than making an early departure for home. The first kickoff was at 9.00 so we had to bolt breakfast and get out of there. Sunday was a darker day with all sorts of weather predicted. Joe had lent us a folding chair for Marcus, so he joined the coaching panel on the halfway line while I did my usual stalking up and down the sideline. The goals were not long in coming, and Central had another good win, fortunately with no further injuries.

The last game was played in steadily worsening weather. It was blowing a gale so umbrellas were useless. We had disposable rain capes, which did a good job of keeping most of us dry. The sleeves are very short though, and I had that horrible uncomfortable wet-sleeve feeling until we got home to Hobart. The conditions were dreadful for soccer, and the boys looked very tired, but they won the last game 2-0. Sam scored the second with a header but was too tired to and wet to even celebrate it.

We had to return the chair to Joe, which gave us an excuse to bring our bags in, and change into every dry thing we had remaining. Then we had one more commitment before we left town: visiting Elf's father's old friend Jill Green. Jill was at our wedding but I hadn't seen her since, and I don't think she had met the boys. Her house in Riverside is amazing - she grew up in it. When she was a girl the West Tamar Highway that roars past her door was a dirt road.

Once we had a cuppa with Jill we hopped back in the car, pointed it south and cruised slowly and patiently home though the rain squalls.

Marcus is recovering now very well, and in fact has to be be reminded constantly to go easy on his ankle. It's a shame he missed so much of the tournament, but if he could only play 45 minutes of it, he was certainly there for the 45 minutes that counted.

Last Days of the Mill by Pete Hay and Tony Thorne

I bought myself a book the other day! Not something that happens very often. The soccer kids gave me a voucher as a thank you at the end of the season, so I went and grabbed a copy of Last Days of the Mill by Pete Hay and Tony Thorne, as it's just come out and I have heard people talking about it. I know both Pete and Tony slightly.

It's about the APPM pulp and paper mill in Burnie, the town where I grew up. (I mentioned it once before when it was the subject of a contemporary opera, for heavens sake) It was generally called the Pulp. Generations worked there alongside one another - grandparents, parents and kids. We were not a Pulp family, although I did have a brother-in-law working there during the dark days towards the end of the mill's life. It was a very unhappy place to work then.

APPM  was the big employer in town, and at the time I was in high school, it was still where the average Burnie lad could expect to spend his working life. My dad was a teacher, and so as a middle-class kid I didn't have as much to do with the place. It stank, and we would wind up the windows when we drove past it in summer. It had a cloying odour that somehow combined bacon with burnt sugar and burnt hair. I could rabbit on more about my recollections but this is a book review.

The book is a collection of stories based on interviews Pete Hay conducted with former mill workers. A lot of them talk about the strike that happened 20 years ago. It was a very nasty strike with a lot of militancy on both sides. Hardline union outsiders and hardline free-marketers on the company side decided to make it a test case, and the locals were caught in the middle having to choose to strike or scab. 

Pete Hay has tried to reflect the way working men of that generation speak, and I think he's done a good job. These are men with dignity and self-respect, who are quite eloquent in their way. Here is an example - this is from a time before OH&S had much real importance on the shop floor.

I went through th machine

Clean through. 13 April 1968.

Four operations.

That was no-one's fault but me own.

I seen a fault in th paper go through

and I look up t'see where th break was

and put th ticket in without watchin.

And through I went.

There wasn't guards and things like there was by th finish

but it were still my fault.

And th company looked after me –

brought me pay in, and when I was back fr skin grafts and that

someone frm th mill come in every week …

In the early days, although safety was pretty rough and ready, the company was very paternal, and looked after it's people. I remember the annual Christmas party for all the mill kids was a big thing in town, although we never went of course.

I really like this bit;

Now, a lot 'f th drives had carbon brushes

and they was bloody high maintenance.

Y'cleaned em with compressed air

'brush n blow' it was called,

shitty stuff, bastard 'f a job.

This bloke, he'd been on th brush n blow and he was filthy.

And here he was, sittin in th canteen eatin cream buns.

And he was black –

th only white on him was th tips 'f his fingers

where he'd been lickin the cream off …

I learned a lot about life at the Pulp from this book. Having grown up there, surrounded by people for whom the Pulp was their life, I suppose I have a deeper understanding of those people now.

I met Tony in about 1984, when he was taking a school holiday cartooning course at the Burnie Adult Ed. He is an amazingly talented illustrator and animator - I believe he worked on some of the Harry Potter films. He arranged to spend time drawing at the mill before it finally closed for good in June 2010. He was supposed to have 2 weeks but ended up having only four days, as different processes shut down forever around him. 

Tony, his father and grandfather all worked at the Pulp or on the docks shipping paper. Tony's mum Pam worked with my mum for years as paper artists. The works in the book are mostly digital prints - which I guess he has done from sketches using a graphics tablet. The 2nd image above is the exception, its a big watercolour wash/ink number. If you'd like to know more, the book has its' own blog here.

I think it's a real treasure of a book, and a model of how this sort of vernacular history ought to be done.

A tough day at the Showgrounds

The Central Region U/10s were knocked off their perch today. They won the last tournament in Devonport in fine style, and came into this one fairly confident. The boys won both games yesterday (against Eastern Suburbs and Devonport) fairly comfortably, but the coach Atef saw a few things he didn't like. He warned the boys they would have to change their ways today or they would lose their 3rd game to the big threat, the representative team from Launceston.

And he was right. There was not the usual teamwork - too many boys deciding to do it all themselves. There is a some immense talent in the team but a few egos to match. They had shots from miles out, or acute angles. The keeper did a good job but he wasn't often required to stop shots on target. Our keeper Ethan made a really stunning save, tipping the ball over when it was destined for the top corner. A few minutes later another shot dipped under the crossbar, caught by the wind, and he just couldn't reach it. The wind was horrendous throughout the two days (and is still howling about the eaves as I write). Down 0-1 at half time, a few boys dropped their heads and we never looked like equalising really. It finished 0-2.

The result in the 4th game against Western Schools was much better, about 7-1 in the end, but I didn't think that the lesson of game 3 was really learned. Boys were still attempting goal-of-the-year with their backs to goal rather than laying it off to a better-placed teammate.

Launceston won the Hobart Cup with 4 wins from 4 games. Our Central Region development squad went through unbeaten to win their division, which is great for those kids who have worked equally hard as Marcus's team. In two weeks the Launceston Cup will wrap up the regional series.

Marcus played very well in defence in all four games. He has really made a step forward since the Devonport Cup. He took possession, looked up and used the ball constructively - which takes more confidence than just getting to the ball first then biffing it away up field. The defence have really become a good cohesive unit, with Ethan the keeper, and I thought could all hold their heads up despite the disappointing result.

Blizzard

The boys and I went up the mountain on the spur of the moment to enjoy the fresh snow, mid afternoon yesterday. We had a great time, although the snow was too powdery for snowballs or snowmen. My hands were in agony from the cold when I said OK, that's it - lets quit while we are having fun. (I've learnt from experience you don't wait for the sobbing to start before coming back down).

The car was only 50 metres away, but as we came out into the carpark a genuine blizzard whipped up. The road was caked with ice and incredibly slippery - we had to walk backwards otherwise the wind was etching our faces with tiny ice crystals. I asked Michael to hang onto the wire rope, and just work his way backwards along it. It was actually pretty terrifying. I picked him up and carried him the last 20 metres.

I was so glad I hadn't locked the car so we didn't have to muck about, just dived in. We just hunkered down and experienced the blizzard for a while. The last photo here is us thawing.

Then I put on the hazard lights and drove down the mountain at about 15kmh with my nose pressed to the windscreen.

Marimbistas

I mentioned a few weeks back that the boys did very well in the Science Competition. They have just backed that up with the only High Distinctions in the school in the UNSW Maths Competition. I was at assembly today when they were presented with their Science Competition certificates (there is always a big lag between results and certificates).

As a bonus I got to hear both boys participate in marimba performances. The grade 4-5 group started hesitantly, struggled on gamely but then the music teacher, brave Mrs Stronach, stepped in and put tthe tune out of its' misery. The 2 kids on the bass marimba were going so slooooooow, everyone else had wisely decided to leave them behind. It sounded pretty chaotic.

So they took it from the top. And exactly the same thing happened. Mrs S recognised she was up against something too big to fight, and she and we rode it out to the end. Not pretty. If you ask me, when you start with the bass part soloing and everyone else has to follow it, you want your gun marimbistas on the bass. Surely?

[Note, the ch in Mrs Stronach's name is meant to be pronounced like stomach, but our dear principal always pronounces it like spinach. Just another of various crosses she has to bear]

Then the grade 3 marimba group came out and nailed their (admittedly simpler) piece beautifully. Michael was paired on a marimba with Corey, a famous loose cannon. I was expecting the unexpected, but they both laid down a disciplined groove. Once their bit was over they kept playing it in mime form, but managed not to clonk any unwanted clonks.

This evening we went out to the opening of a group exhibition of book and paper art, in which Mum has some work. Driving home with our superscientists in the back, one of them said, seriously; "Wow - look, there is like a star in the sky located right above each house!" This boy could probably name you the nearest five stars to us, in order. He can rattle off the moons of Jupiter. He probably has a theory about dark matter.

But streetlights are a whole new thing to him, apparently.

Marcus plays footy

I have been getting to a few more events at school since I have been working from home. Yesterday I was there to see Marcus play football (as opposed to soccer) for the first time. Not the first time he has played, but the first time I have seen it. School soccer has finished, and I now have the luxury of simply picking the kids up on Wednesdays after school, rather than running soccer practice.

If you have never watched Australian Rules football, there are 18 players on each side, arrayed all over an oval field. The taller kids play in central positions, "down the spine", and the slighter or shorter players out wide. I don't usually think of Marcus as slight, but in this company he did look quite fragile. I was the only parent there, and I tried manfully to keep my yelling to a minimum. As someone who has played one (1) game of competitive Aussie Rules, I really don't know what I am talking about anyway.

This was the last week of the Winter Sports roster. Six of the ten planned games were actually called off due to weather, or flu epidemics. South Hobart lost all of their previous three games, and this one was against the strongest footy school, Taroona, so there was a sense of foreboding.

At quarter time things were going as predicted, but South had a great second quarter, winning it out of the centre about five times in a row for as many goals. I think they were just 4 points down at half time. Soon after, the natural order reasserted itself and they ended up going down something like 10.6.66 to 7.8.50, their best effort yet.

Bearing in mind that a lot of readers of the blog are in the Phillipines and Moldova and whatnot, and this won't make much sense to them, I still am going to mention that Marcus kicked an unlucky behind and made a few terrific smothers.

City of Samba - small work of genius

This is quite the most entertaining, beautiful and impressive thing I have seen/heard for ages.

Tilt shift of the Carnaval party in Rio de Janeiro.

Soundtrack available here: tinyurl.com/6mrzndl

Made by Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli.

Captured during Carnaval of 2011.

Music by Jarbas Agnelli.

Rees Design Showreel

My showreel! Any feedback would be much appreciated.

 

Another bragfest

“Those Rees boys must be simply stuffed full of science all day by their parents”.

“But she just works in an office, and he doesn’t really do ... well, anything!”

- An imagined conversation between other parents at our school. 

The boys entered the University of NSW Science Competition, and were 2 of the 3 students at school to gain High Distinctions. (Well done to the other one, Keiren Black). The questions ranged “from egg incubation to the direction of gears, from electrical circuits to food webs”.

The mid-year reports came in last week, now in a back-to-the-future “A = excellent, E = poor” format, after 5 or so years of the most byzantine and poorly explained system of dots and circles. Both boys are going very well, and Michael has really surged in maths in the last year or so. It has caught his imagination.

While Marcus and I were watching the football, he called over “Dad, what would 1000 be if you were using base 7 instead of base 10?” Marcus and I both lazily agreed it would be 7x7x7, or 343. I realised later that this was backwards to the right way to work it out, and showed Michael how he could work it out himself. He needed to be reminded how long division works.

Our friends Peter and Fleur dropped in and were impressed that Michael was sitting there doing long divisions on a Sunday evening, presuming that we were making him. I explained that he was doing them of his own volition, in fact as tool to solve a more complex problem that he had posed himself. He got halfway to the answer (2626) before getting lost in his tiny scribblings.

Towards the end of the footy, Michael returned to the fray, and asked me what 0.5 would be in base 7. I wasn’t even able to get my head around the question while willing the Tigers to kick another goal before the siren, so I asked him to give me a moment. He came out with a few answers he worked out in his head while I was stalling him. When I sat down to work it out, his first answer (0.33333...) was correct! Possibly just lucky.

3 Pants Day

Work has drifted into the doldrums over the last couple of weeks. I have two large projects which are hanging, waiting for my client to move. I would dearly love to have a schedule for completing them, which my client must have worked out, but is not sharing with me at this stage. Sigh.

So, I am working through a list of various desk and non-desk jobs each day. Yesterday I presented my folio to a prospective client, them went home and mowed the lawn. I didn't feel like getting into my Good Pants again to go to the dentist, so I put on the fairly shabby Good Jeans instead. It was a three-pants type of day. I also bought a large bag of gravel, and collected the mail from over at my parents place.

That was relatively productive compared with today. I have been trying to nail a little problem I have with an animation special effect - three of my figures look good with it and three look pretty crummy. And I can't work out why. I have banged my head on that wall for a few hours today, but also eaten toast and read too much Olympic news online. 

Why???

In the + column, I did walk Winston before the rain came, and I bought some gravel. Yeah!

I am feeling a little anxious about the future of freelancing. My regular Monday job starts next week - then at least I will be out from under my own feet for one day a week.

The weak link

Speaking of a conspicuous lack of sporting success - my outdoor soccer career has hit the rocks. My last couple of games have been horrid. We had a very important game last Saturday - essentially the title decider. We won 2-1, and are untouchable on top of the ladder now. There were no goals in a very tense 2nd half, most of which I watched from the bench. Our usually democratic rotation policy was shelved for the day, and it was very much a case of keeping the best 11 on the park with just occasional rests on account of age.

In my 30 minutes or so on field I first slipped in the mud and let my man get away in the penalty box - he scored. Then I was moved to midfield, ran in support as Nigel went on a surging run, received a pass from Nigel approximately 2 meters out, and failed to beat the keeper. I was nervous about hitting it first time in the mud, and tried to gently place it rather than just wellying it into the net. The keeper got a foot to it.

I have replayed it about 100 times in my mind since. At least we won the game. We have 2 games left in the season, and my first reaction after the game was to just say that’s it for me. I have felt this season like the weak link in an otherwise formidable team of blokes with a lot of first team soccer behind them. I was never a firsts player and haven’t got any better from playing six years of indoor, which encourages bad habits.

However - I would like to strive to finish the season on a good note. There is less pressure in these remaining games, and I can hopefully go out there, run about and do some good things I can use as inspiration for another season next winter. But I think then I will offer my services to the Uni 4ths, who are more my level.

In the waiting room, waiting for gold medals

Once again I am in the dentist’s carpark. I can never quite judge how long it will take to get out here, and I keep finding myself 20 minutes early. Last time I refused to take the laptop out in the waiting room, and was kept waiting (as advertised,  I guess) for about 35 minutes. And the magazines there are either Hello! or very worthy and dull eco-shelter periodicals.

I have to say I have turned into a bit of an Olympic hypocrite. In the early days of this nation’s gold medal drought, I expressed the view that medal tables are nationalistic nonsense, and that the athletes are competing as individuals. That is the Olympic spirit, and how it was meant to be. Furthermore, there are too many ridiculous sports that ought to be chucked out. Messing about in boats, for instance. And hopping on a horse for a bit of clippity-clop around a paddock, leaping over amusing pastiches of London landmarks.

Now, however, it is day 12 and we have only just won our first individual gold medal, in the Laser class sailing. We, Australia. Our proud sports-mad nation which has been lagging behind Kazakhstan and 17 other countries. And our prospects of more depend on a bunch of sunburnt North Shore-y boatie types in about 27 different classes of ketch, yawl and wave ski. Also hopefully Ffiona Tops-Forpington might snag another gold in either the Pony Race or her other event, Horse Dancing. And if we come by a couple more in the Sawn-Off Shotgun or the BMX Race To The Shops - you will not hear any carping from me. Any more.

Things have come to head, and I realise that all my high-minded idealism is just thinly painted over a standard-issue Aussie win-anything-at-any-cost mentality.

STOP PRESS: BRAVE AUSSIE GIRLS SCOOP GOLD IN OBSTACLE RACE AND DODGE/WEAVE CYCLING.

1904 St Louis Olympics - an entertaining shambles

I have just been reading about the 1904 Olympics, which were hardly Olympics at all. (Either were the 1900 version actually). It was supposed to happen in Chicago, while St Louis was holding the World's Fair. Then the World's Fair organisers announced their intention to hold their own sporting tournament that would blow Chicago's off the map. They had the IOC over a barrel and the Baron himself, Pierre de Courbetin, officially awarded them the games.

Some fun facts from St Louis quoted from Wikipedia;

• Various indigenous men from around the world, who were at the World's Fair as part of the Department of Ethnology exhibits, competed in various events for anthropologists to see how they compared to the white man.
• One of the most remarkable athletes was the American gymnast George Eyser, who won six medals even though his left leg was made of wood.
• A Cuban postman named Felix Carbajal joined the marathon, arriving at the last minute. He had to run in street clothes that he cut around the legs to make them look like shorts. He stopped off in an orchard en route to have a snack on some apples, which turned out to be rotten. The rotten apples caused him to have to lie down and take a nap. Despite falling ill to apples he finished in fourth place.

Showreel time

I am making a showreel. I've never had one before. I have done lots of different kinds of moving pictures over the years, and now its time to wrap them up in a pacy greatest-hits combo with some kind of upbeat dance track - that seems to be what people do.

Then again - I would like to hold it down to around 80 seconds, and when I did a quick spin through iTunes looking for briefer tracks I came across Trio Bulgarka. They were a bit of a World Music sensation in the early 90s, and appeared on a Kate Bush album The Sensual World. They hail from Bulgaria and sound a bit like they are singing backwards - lots of "Veep vooooop vvvit vvvvap" sounds, in very strange time signatures. They often stop singing, then in unison squeal "Yip!". It's quite strange but endearing and might be just the thing.

Of course I have no right to use their music and that is a bit of a concern. I would quite like to cook up my own soundtrack but that will take ages and stop me getting the thing just done - perhaps I will aim to replace the music ASAP.

I have quite enjoyed opening up old files from 2006 or 2008 and seeing again the Photoshop layers that never made it to the finished piece, and the animation versions that I preferred but the client did not. I have just rebuilt a build-the-Sydney-Harbour-Bridge interactive I made, to make it more impressive in this new era of High Definition and massive screens. I can do that, you know.

I have been doing special effects for a documentary, this last week. I probably shouldn't blab about it, as the director is presenting my augmentations as reality. I did sign something at some point, which probably said "You will never reveal that the stuff that looks like night was filmed during the daytime". So - you didn't hear it from me. And I probably shouldn't put before 'n' after pics in my showreel.

Working from home

I have been working from home for a month now, and I really love it. If I could have my job back I would really love that too, but that isn't going to happen, so I am embracing the new life.

On clear days Elf walks the boys down the rivulet track to school and continues into town to work. If it's wet or just freezing I drop them all off, then come back to base to start work. Just before my job at Roar ended, Elf's workplace moved from New Town into the centre of the city, which has enabled me to have the car at home each day.

I am still doing quite a bit of work for Roar, and I am driving down there most days to pick up and drop off big movie files. I have just increased our home upload/download quota, so I will probably just send the files that way more often now. But it's nice to see the people you are working with, and it's good for communication to actually get five minutes face to face now and then as you work through a project.

My office is set up in the front room downstairs. Winston has a big cushion to sit on beside me, but he prefers the sunnier space upstairs, where he has a choice of his ridiculously large doggie futon, or the front deck. The sun warms upstairs so effectively that on most days I can actually afford to leave the front and back deck doors open. Winston loves to survey the neighbourhood from the front, and can take himself out the back into the yard when he wants to.

It has taken me a few weeks to relax, and not try to do everything at once. I have a year planner on the wall, and a spreadsheet of work invoiced and jobs in the pipeline. All that is very reassuring - helps me feel that I do not have to squeeze billable work into every waking hour. I have been pretty disciplined about making a list for each day and working through it.

Things are quiet enough this week that I have had a chance to drop my main work computer in for overdue repairs and also get a start on my showreel. I know from experience at Roar that important things like those are carried on the Work In Progress list for months waiting for some "quiet time". When quiet time arrives everyone feels they have earned the right to just put their feet up and have a few beers. While I hope to be busy, and I have to maintain my gear and spend time on self-promotion whether I like it or not, I am looking forward to the time in spring or summer when I can just join Winston on the front deck with a foaming ale in the sun. Maybe on a Tuesday morning - why not?

Flames leaping in the living room

Today our new woodstove arrived, and I am now sitting in front of it, with dog, cat and glass of cheap muscat. 

About the muscat - I recently inherited a beautiful decanter that was my grandmother's. Obviously needing something to decant, I went looking in the fortified wine section, and came out with a 2-litre glass flagon of muscat. This cost all of ten bucks, and I declined a paper bag in case the bottleshop attendant thought I was a hopeless case heading straight for the nearest park bench - which he did anyway. It's a bit like sweet grapey metho, but it's a beautiful colour in the decanter.

The woodstove has long been a dream of Elf's, ever since we were designing the house. Ideally we would have had a built-in fireplace with a mantelpiece and crossed blunderbusses (blunderbi, sorry) hanging on the wall - but we have a standalone unit with a flue going up to the slopey cathedral ceiling. Looks quite nice, and its doing a great job. It's probably 1/3 about (A) giving the room a focus and 2/3 about (B) keeping us warm. A 100 watt column heater doesn't have quite the same welcoming ambience.

So - if you are in the neighbourhood, come by and burn some wood with us.

Peep

I'm blogging from the dentist's carpark in Moonah, home of all-you-can-eat food, ten pin bowling and ... dentists. Most of the dentists in the metropolitan area are either here or in one street in Kingston. Odd.

This tiny blog-from-the-car is just to say I am still alive, working hard at establishing myself as a freelance designer, and generally pretty pleased with my progress on that front.

I have a Work In Progress list of projects, the phone is ringing fairly frequently, and my first set of invoices from the start of July ought to paid over the next couple of weeks. Ought.

If you have anything you'd like me to do in the wide gamut of work between motion graphics, graphic design, laying out publications, illustration, (video clean-ups are currently a speciality) etc and so forth - please drop me an email.

And now, time to go for some drill and fill.

Knackered 4 d Abstract 2, Indoor Soccer Grand Final

We surprised ourselves by getting to the Grand Final and winning it on Friday night. Three weeks ago we were out of the top four, then we beat the top team Wilkins in our last roster game to sneak in.

Last week in the semi final we came from behind to beat Eskimo Pie. Ed and Paul won it for us with outstanding goalkeeping. Meanwhile Wilkins unexpectedly lost their semi to Abstract.

The final was incredibly tight - we were down 1-0 at halftime. Brett equalised just after halftime, then I found Ed twice in about 3 minutes for 2 more goals. One pass was a square ball across the goal circle, and the other was actually a backheel. Cam is dismayed at the thought it going to encourage more backheel attempts in future. Ed's finishing was perfect each time.

Abstract got a goal back, and I was feeling pretty tense (and wondering about it going to penalties if they scored again). Then Paul wriggled free to score and made it 4-2, and that was it. Everyone played well and Josh (our recent Balinese recruit) had his best game ever, and really worked hard defensively.

Going into a shared weekend away with Ed and his family, it felt great to have combined to pull off this win that looked out of the question a few weeks back.

RIP Bill Fullagar 1928 – 2012

My friend and father-in-law Bill passed away peacefully early yesterday morning, at home. He had done everything that he wanted to do, and once he was ready the end came quickly. His heart had been beating irregularly for a few weeks, and there were a few other things wrong, but what took him in the end was cancer which spread from his lungs (he wasn't interested in chemotherapy). He was listening to Beethoven's ninth.

I met Bill not long after I met his daughter Elf, who I married. We stayed with Bill and Felicity in Canberra over Christmas, and we were all required to play a handbell in a team rendition of Joy to the World. Felicity had written out the music for us so we could all see when it was our turn to play. Bill may have had his wrong glasses on - every time his bell was required Felicity had to say "Bill … BILL!!".

As time went by I heard from Elf more and more impressive stories about Bill's exploits as a merchant seaman, diplomat and intelligence analyst. (Bill would expand on the stories if pressed but he was modest to a fault). In his days as first mate on British India company ships, he had travelled the world. He could tell you about the tricky navigation hazards of Valparaiso, Vancouver or Valetta, Malta.

Bill came from a thoroughly lawyerly family, but he turned his back on that life to go to sea. His father Sir Wilfred was Chief Justice of Victoria, and took a dim view of his middle of son of five, declining to continue the family trade.

Bill was 2^nd-in-command of a merchant vessel for a long time, and one day realised the shipping company was slowly going bust. He was ashore in Singapore at the time. He posted his resignation, made his own way back to Australia, and resumed studying classics. Like most educated people of his generation, Bill spoke and read Ancient Greek and Latin, and his love of the classics lasted until the end of his life.

At some point in his studies he was talent-scouted by the Department of Foreign Affairs. When Elf was eight (with three younger siblings) he was posted to the Australian High Commission in Delhi. Later he held a similar post in Seoul. I believe it is customary to have officers with titles such as Third Assistant Secretary who are simply there to keep their eyes and ears open.

I don't know a lot about Bill's work, but he often served us drinks out of engraved Australian Secret Intelligence Service whisky glasses, and later gave us our own set. They all mysteriously broke within a couple of years. Cheap workmanship – or cunningly planned self-destruction to avoid leaving behind clues?

When I met Bill he was in his seventies, and still required at the Department two days a week to analyse intelligence, as he had irreplaceable knowledge. As his health declined, and eye and knee operations slowed him down, he finally retired fully.

He is survived by Felicity; his children Elf, Fred, Imp, and Chonk; and grandchildren Karri, Marcus, Miah, Michael, Beatrice and Eric.