2 great news stories!

got home this evening in time to catch the 530p news. 2 great stories in a row. i love this place!!

first a story of how a bunch of ‘activists’ riding bicycles is currently causing havoc in melbourne tonite. the riders met at the state library and were going to ride past the conference center (which has a motor show this wknd) to protest. after that they were going to drive over the main bridge – the one that u take to get to the airport and to the big sporting arena. but the ‘activists’ aren’t part of any organisation so there’s no leader, no spokesperson, no affiliation so no one to bargain with to get them to protest at another time (instead of rush hour). the footage included interviews with the police and transport folks re: what could be done. and here’s some transport person that said… “they’re just stupid selfish idiots who need to go home, take a shower and get a life’.

can u just imagine some official at home saying something like that????

second was the sad story of a woman who was kept prisoner for something like 2 years by some guy. he made her sleep on a concrete floor with only cardboard boxes to lie on, made her drink motor oil, verbally and physically abused her, etc. the guy has just been convicted on a whole range of charges. the great bit to the story was the video footage of this guy getting out of the cop car. as soon as he’s out he looks at the camera and gives the finger. not just the finger but starts waving his arm back and forth, i guess making sure every news camera there had a good shot of him. and then i realised he’s wearing a 3 stooges tie (w the pix of moe, larry n curly on it). how great!!! what an ass.

along came polly

went to see this movie last nite. the nyc scenes didn’t help my being homesick (yes, after being here a year i think i’m finally getting homesick).

if you havent seen the movie, wait til it’s on video. it’s not THAT funny. there’s some good scenes but not like something about mary or some of his other movies.

my fav scene had to be when he and his best friend are eating pizza. ben is dabbing his pizza with napkins to absorb the grease. man, did that pizza look great. god i could eat an entire pie!! his friend tells him he’s getting rid of the best thing (the grease) and he picks up ben’s slice and lets the grease drip onto his own slice. squeezes the slice to get more grease. ummm.

but the funniest thing is how the theatre crowd went ‘UUUUUUOOOOWWWWWW’ while i was wondering what i had to do to get a slice like that here.

uni of melb

ok, this post probably won’t amuse anyone except myself. but it’s an insight into what excites me these days….

when i went to the new school i rarely used their library. when nyu’s bobst was right there, why use new school’s lame one? the situation here is pretty much the same.

swinburne’s library is lacking not just in resources but they close at like 10pm and aren’t open much on the wknd. i end up using vic uni, RMIT and uni of melb.

uni of melb is the closest thing here to an ivy league school. it’s a real campus as opposed to the city (like NYU) feel that the other schools here have. the campus is also quite european – or boston.

one of my previous roommates went to undergrad at uni melb and warned me the library was not only a mess but filled with ‘unhelpful lesbian student librarians’. um, okaaay. actually the staff is pretty unhelpful. ill agree with that bit.

my normal (and recurring) experience with the library is finding a book i want listed on their online system, showing up, going to where the book should be and not finding it. it’s happened so many times that i’ve decided to give up on them.

i need a book right now that seemed to only be located there (no other schools) so i tried again this am. this time the book was listed in 2 locations. as norm, it wasnt anywhere when i tried the first place. but the 2nd turned out to be the ‘commerce and economics’ department and they had TONS of good stuff!!! including the book i wanted.

so … a good day!!! i feel like i conquered the freaking uni of melb library!!!!

world map

smyles turned me on to the world66 map. it seems i’ve been to 5% of the countries in the world. now that’s depressing, somehow i figured i would have done a bit better than that.

create your own visited country map

skype

i mentioned skype before. it’s this voice over IP software. i tested it with a friend in london and could hear him perfectly. i had some microphone issues but just worked those out this wknd. we just had another test run.

YES! THIS THING ROCKS! AMAZING!

i’m on adsl (and win98 which isnt supported) as is he. there was a slight delay but good quality. u get some of that pausing to see if the other person is talking like you would on a bad quality intl call but none of the crap fuzziness.

so download it and call me!

orange of course

what do you think about the orange headings? i’ve been meaning to give this blog a bit more color (instead of the default moveable type template) so i might just make a few small changes.

don’t worry, ill keep the white good to read from background. am thinking all orange headings (only changed a few now) and more black than the greyish black type.

that might be it for now though.

tropfest

there’s a short film festival here called tropfest. i went last year and remarked on the great nite.

i went again last nite. this time instead of a t-shirt i was wearing a tshirt, a thermal shirt and a sweater and was still chilly. this summer here has been really crap.

the tropfest site seems to have the videos on the site but you have to register to view them and their network or site is screwy at the moment. i think my fav was the ‘confessions of an animation’.

the film festival was pretty good though. one of my friends said we should enter next year (even though neither of us have any clue how to make a film) with a short on speed dating and online personals. something to think about i guess.

while we’re on the movie topic, i saw ‘lost in translation’ this wknd. i thought it was a pretty cool movie that portrayed being alone in a foreign city very well. from the standard but always fun holding money in your open hand and letting some store clerk (bartender in the movie) take what you owe to the becoming friends with someone you’d probably never be friends with at home.

and the tokyo city views made me really happy that a friend of mine is moving there this week. i need to start planning a trip.

new stuff

i’ve realised being over here i don’t hear about all the cool new tech stuff going on. like who knows how long feedster has been around and i only subscribed to it a couple of weeks ago.

part of it is not working in the industry, part of it is not having many friends here in the industry, not talking to my friends at home who are in the industry (cause they only read my blog. and not having a lot of time to read a lot of news.

started reading this article on rss and feeds today. bookmarking it for myself here.

does anyone know of a good site or blog that will keep me up to date on all the really cool new tech stuff? u know… that sort of stuff you’d normally hear about b/c the programmer next to you would be like “hey! ck this out!!”

happy anniversary!

happy anniversary to me! happy anniversary to me! happy anniveeersary dear jen…..

yep. today makes a year i’ve been in melbourne. HOLY SHIT!. it doesnt feel anywhere near like a year. maybe 6 months. maybe. it’s gone so fast.

nyc vs london

a few weeks ago the sunday paper ran an article about andrew wylie, a literary agent, who spends part of his time in london and part in nyc. he had this great quote that i’ve been meaning to post about.

it took wylie 12 years to understand london. he suspects that a lot of the hostility that came his way was conceptual, rather than personal, snobbery. ‘it’s a hard down. it doesnt like americans. it finds them a bewildering mixture of undersophisticated and overagressive”. at the same time, he says americans think brtis are ‘just irrelevant. where the fuck is england? hee hee.’

not commenting now though. tired and have some reading to do.