so I open this serious-looking book on how the law of defamation applies to the Web and the first thing I see is "Foreword by Lord Bingham of Cornhill."
is that funny? or is my migraine just scrambling words on me?
I couldn't find the words to say "what is planned for (column X)?" just now. things seem remote and words seem slightly disconnected from the objects to which they refer. background noise is dominating my consciousness. someone behind me is talking about Web sites for job recruitment. I need a dark, quiet room.
Sunday, November 18, 2001
Saturday, November 17, 2001
nothing to say today. all my files, which mysteriously disappeared when the main fileserver was changed again (this is at home, not work, btw), have been recovered. my bookmarks, however continue to languish in a stand-alone file. sigh.
here's some Australians in Hong Kong (via that guru of all things Hong Kong for Westerners, Big White Guy)
here's some Australians in Hong Kong (via that guru of all things Hong Kong for Westerners, Big White Guy)
Friday, November 16, 2001
A Eureka!* moment:
My continuing failure to be quite totally fabulous is not due to my lack of silver stretch velvet miniskirts, access to a sexy white sportscar, or inability to play reggae radio on a Saturday afternoon loudly enough to really annoy my unit-building neighbours while grooving around the house. Nor is it caused by my age - at 35 I may be getting on, but I can also still turn it on if I feel like it - or by any lack of a new bright red hairdo or too-cute dog.
No. It's the shoes. These are my favourite shoes:
The ones I'm wearing now are white shiny patent leather sandals I bought in Spain. Could be sexy, but really, they're rather flat and sensible, and incredibly comfortable.
The boots above have taken me dancing at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, walking through markets in Kenya, climbing to the 5th floor of youth hostels in New York, been worn sockless to the pool on hot days, and just about everywhere else.
I just can't get my head around the idea of a $350 pair of spiky, not-quite-there Manola Blahniks (I'm not even sure I can spell them right.) My highest pair of heels are pretty high, and they are kind of sexy - they're also black, with chunky heels. But every fashion icon I see interviewed in the paper (like Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue) has a cupboard full of Blahniks, pointy little objects with lots of sequins and a chiropractor's warning on the sole. Sarah Jessica Parker can RUN in them (then again, she also started that silly flower thing).
So there's no hope. I am doomed to being able to walk more than 10 metres at a time, and to permanent uncoolness.
(*this is in no way related to my recent visit to Ballarat, home of the Eureka Stockade)
My continuing failure to be quite totally fabulous is not due to my lack of silver stretch velvet miniskirts, access to a sexy white sportscar, or inability to play reggae radio on a Saturday afternoon loudly enough to really annoy my unit-building neighbours while grooving around the house. Nor is it caused by my age - at 35 I may be getting on, but I can also still turn it on if I feel like it - or by any lack of a new bright red hairdo or too-cute dog.
No. It's the shoes. These are my favourite shoes:
The ones I'm wearing now are white shiny patent leather sandals I bought in Spain. Could be sexy, but really, they're rather flat and sensible, and incredibly comfortable.
The boots above have taken me dancing at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, walking through markets in Kenya, climbing to the 5th floor of youth hostels in New York, been worn sockless to the pool on hot days, and just about everywhere else.
I just can't get my head around the idea of a $350 pair of spiky, not-quite-there Manola Blahniks (I'm not even sure I can spell them right.) My highest pair of heels are pretty high, and they are kind of sexy - they're also black, with chunky heels. But every fashion icon I see interviewed in the paper (like Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue) has a cupboard full of Blahniks, pointy little objects with lots of sequins and a chiropractor's warning on the sole. Sarah Jessica Parker can RUN in them (then again, she also started that silly flower thing).
So there's no hope. I am doomed to being able to walk more than 10 metres at a time, and to permanent uncoolness.
(*this is in no way related to my recent visit to Ballarat, home of the Eureka Stockade)
Thursday, November 15, 2001
Friday. Sunny day. 23 degrees celsius outside. My husband's Honda Integra at my disposal. 100 kilometres of open road between here and Ballarat.
"I'm going outside now. I may be some time."
"I'm going outside now. I may be some time."
I can't understand why there are still fewer than 30 pics at the wonderful project chopsticks.
are you all fork-users out there?
are you all fork-users out there?
3:00:00 am, huh? funny, I thought it was just after 10pm. either way, it must be time to sleep. and maybe have more weird dreams
we have now been without hot water for four days.
it looks like going on for some time, while features and benefits of solar, on-demand, etc, are considered ad infinitum by someone else who lives here.
I have refined my boil-water-on-the-stove bath to a two-step method. I find a brisk crunchy towel is also useful.
my next innovation will involve a soup ladle or camping foot pump shower to achieve a true rinsing effect.
I am flexible. I CAN COPE!!!
it looks like going on for some time, while features and benefits of solar, on-demand, etc, are considered ad infinitum by someone else who lives here.
I have refined my boil-water-on-the-stove bath to a two-step method. I find a brisk crunchy towel is also useful.
my next innovation will involve a soup ladle or camping foot pump shower to achieve a true rinsing effect.
I am flexible. I CAN COPE!!!
of course, you'd be using your returned q-bit to talk to a future version of the q-bit that was still with you, in your time.
I didn't say time travel was simple.
Andrew has asked if you couldn't just send one round and round very fast, say in a particle accelerator. But I don' t think that works. I think it would have to go away - something about "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."
I didn't say time travel was simple.
Andrew has asked if you couldn't just send one round and round very fast, say in a particle accelerator. But I don' t think that works. I think it would have to go away - something about "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
a quick time machine blog before I go home:
1) quantum computing theory says you can entangle two q-bits and they will stay synchronised as long as you don't look at them. this effect can be used for long-distance, instantaneous communication. it has been done.
(btw, I have no references etc for all this. it's Big Picture stuff. that will come later.)
2) objects that travel away from the Earth long enough, for fast enough, come back slightly less aged than their counterparts on earth. in theory, something that went far enough, long enough, would be well into the future, relatively speaking.
so what happens if you entangle two q-bits, & send one into the future? wouldn't you, once the second one arrived, have a q-bit that could "talk" to something in the future? it might taken a thousand years for it to start to work, I don't know. and you could maybe talk to the operators of the future device by leaving, say, sticky yellow notes in a safe place for future operators to read.
I admit this is rather sketchy. but dammit, so were da Vinci's helicopter drawings.
1) quantum computing theory says you can entangle two q-bits and they will stay synchronised as long as you don't look at them. this effect can be used for long-distance, instantaneous communication. it has been done.
(btw, I have no references etc for all this. it's Big Picture stuff. that will come later.)
2) objects that travel away from the Earth long enough, for fast enough, come back slightly less aged than their counterparts on earth. in theory, something that went far enough, long enough, would be well into the future, relatively speaking.
so what happens if you entangle two q-bits, & send one into the future? wouldn't you, once the second one arrived, have a q-bit that could "talk" to something in the future? it might taken a thousand years for it to start to work, I don't know. and you could maybe talk to the operators of the future device by leaving, say, sticky yellow notes in a safe place for future operators to read.
I admit this is rather sketchy. but dammit, so were da Vinci's helicopter drawings.
today's BlogOn from The Age's Green Guide. Gawd, I wish they'd put them online so I wouldn't have to do this every Thursday.
Writers and journals are almost synonymous; these blogs give an insight into the creative process
Robert Olen Butler
Until November 20, Robert Olen Butler will be performance-writing: producing a novel on the Internet, with real-time views of his screen, and audio and video of his hair-pulling and out-loud musings about plot and character.
It might sound goofy, but as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a professor of English at Florida State University, Butler has some serious reasons for his project.
He believes the Internet is a perfect medium for seeing into each other's lives, citing Jenni of Jennicam fame as a true pioneer and role model for the new way of living.
Butler is also answering questions online about his writing process.
NaNoWriMo
(National Novel Writing Month)
It's more like Global Novel Writing Month at this tongue-in-cheek site, tracking the efforts of more than a thousand wannabe novelists to produce a book, no matter how bad, in one short month.
Actual text is not posted, but there are nifty counters so you can watch the progress of what really matters: sheer volume of words written.
Several Australians have joined this mad quest "To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from your novel at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work."
Journal of a Writing Man
Old Grey Poet
With a vaguely Ernest Hemingway-like photo and a couple of cool titles, John Bailey's journals promise tough but deliver a pleasantly soft and contemplative view of life in the British countryside.
There are several years worth of journals, and Bailey manages to do what many blogs don't: bang on about the trivia of his life without being self-obsessed or boring.
It isn't clear whether Bailey is a published writer, but that's part of the point of the Internet, isn't it?
Writers and journals are almost synonymous; these blogs give an insight into the creative process
Robert Olen Butler
Until November 20, Robert Olen Butler will be performance-writing: producing a novel on the Internet, with real-time views of his screen, and audio and video of his hair-pulling and out-loud musings about plot and character.
It might sound goofy, but as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a professor of English at Florida State University, Butler has some serious reasons for his project.
He believes the Internet is a perfect medium for seeing into each other's lives, citing Jenni of Jennicam fame as a true pioneer and role model for the new way of living.
Butler is also answering questions online about his writing process.
NaNoWriMo
(National Novel Writing Month)
It's more like Global Novel Writing Month at this tongue-in-cheek site, tracking the efforts of more than a thousand wannabe novelists to produce a book, no matter how bad, in one short month.
Actual text is not posted, but there are nifty counters so you can watch the progress of what really matters: sheer volume of words written.
Several Australians have joined this mad quest "To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from your novel at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work."
Journal of a Writing Man
Old Grey Poet
With a vaguely Ernest Hemingway-like photo and a couple of cool titles, John Bailey's journals promise tough but deliver a pleasantly soft and contemplative view of life in the British countryside.
There are several years worth of journals, and Bailey manages to do what many blogs don't: bang on about the trivia of his life without being self-obsessed or boring.
It isn't clear whether Bailey is a published writer, but that's part of the point of the Internet, isn't it?
don't you hate it when you go to a conference session, realise they've switched speakers on you, and that the next two hours are almost, but not completely, useless to you: and the organiser is standing at the rear door watching and knows you, so you have NO CHANCE of sneaking out.
I now have some fine hand-drawn redesigns of my blog to show for my morning. just have to work out how to do a background image.
I now have some fine hand-drawn redesigns of my blog to show for my morning. just have to work out how to do a background image.
it's hard rubbish night in North Fitzroy
this is the night when everyone drags their unwanted junk onto the kerb, and everyone else walks around collecting it.
it's very environmentally sound, really.
by the time the rubbish collectors come, there will be nothing left but some wet phone books and unidentifiable bits of wood.
I personally have harvested a new roll of fencing wire - at least ten feet of it - a 12" terracotta pot and a keyboard that doesn't fit my pc.
the keyboard is going out. now.
Andrew won't let me go and get the fine 1960s, only slightly ripped, recliner chair that is just begging to be rescued.
this is the night when everyone drags their unwanted junk onto the kerb, and everyone else walks around collecting it.
it's very environmentally sound, really.
by the time the rubbish collectors come, there will be nothing left but some wet phone books and unidentifiable bits of wood.
I personally have harvested a new roll of fencing wire - at least ten feet of it - a 12" terracotta pot and a keyboard that doesn't fit my pc.
the keyboard is going out. now.
Andrew won't let me go and get the fine 1960s, only slightly ripped, recliner chair that is just begging to be rescued.
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
I don't wish to sound negative here, but sometimes lately my job is like walking - you know how walking is actually a process of constantly being about to fall, and catching yourself?
well, I'm constantly setting up things I have to do - appointments, promised stories - then having to actually fulfil my promises. and that's what's keeping it rolling, not any inherent joy, not right now.
but I'm not always this down on it. it comes and goes.
well, I'm constantly setting up things I have to do - appointments, promised stories - then having to actually fulfil my promises. and that's what's keeping it rolling, not any inherent joy, not right now.
but I'm not always this down on it. it comes and goes.
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