Clagged

Listening to: American Standard - Seven Mary Three

Further to the recurring dream post, last night I got the double variation, trying to get to school fifteen years late, and returning to my job of two years ago for a day, and royally screwing something up.

***

Its now two years since I left my job of seven years at Schering Plough. Its a significant date, as it means my signature will no longer be on any document there as a final reviewer (an industry standard period of review for quality controlled documents is two years). I am now officially relegated to the history section of any procedure I had a hand in authoring or reviewing there.

***

Strangely unconcerned about Charlotte's op tomorrow. More worried that she won't get to go through with it due to her cold than anything else. The concept is a bit stressful sure, but no worse than anything else we have had to go though with her. Relatively speaking its a little finger poke to a place that has been punched often.
I have caught her cold, to the extent that I have forgone all netball this week, and even got sent home from work today. My head is clagged.

***

This post coming to you courtesy of the USB keyboard the Kirsten gave us. Slightly novel, but a lot more comfortable than pounding away on a laptop.


***

Enjoying the film festival at the moment. It has been a while since I was in a position to make a maximum effort to get to the things I wanted to see and I am happy I have been able to get along to a few things this year with good company. More about this later.


***

Self Indulgence

Listening to: Pisces Iscariot - Smashing Pumpkins. A 1994 ish compilation of B-sides and offcuts, it is actually better than some of their albums proper.

Playing around the other day trying to get a good selfie of me and the kid. Note: this is much easier with a compact camera than my D-SLR

Forty Years Ago

Got this in the paper the morning to mark the fortieth anniversary of the first moon landing. Its a reprint of The Dominion's edition for that day.
There is a copy of the original at my parents place. Strange to think that this era defining event occured the better part of half a century ago. Strange also to think this was only seven years before I was born. The last moon landing occured less than four years before I was born. The whole Apollo programme now feels like the last dramatic expression of the technological idealism and innocence that marked the immediate post war era. Nothing in manned spaceflight since has even come close to inspiring the imagination the way Apollo did.
I have been interested in this for as long as I can remember. I grew up poring over the images of dusty astronauts exploring an alien terrain, and I still have the capacity to gaze at them in awe and wonder. Given the chance to time travel, high on the list would be viewing a Saturn V launch. Seeing a contraption the size of the aerial on Mt Kaukau launch itself into the sky alas is something I can only imagine and watch on video. I even have a favourite era of Apollo exploration. The first couple of missions were little more than proof of concept day stays; the first moonwalk lasted only two and a half hours. The later missions after Apollo 13 are much more interesting to me, with mulitple moonwalks lasting hours on end, with the lander remaining on the surface for up to three days, a rover to extend the astronauts reach, and real science being performed. While the historical focus is on the first landing, its easy to forget that there were five others, equally as successful, and equally as dangerous.
In the glory days of 1969, it felt like the start of a new era, which ultimately never came to pass, which is often the way of history. If the sixties were the party, the seventies were the hangover, and there were other and better things to do than build on Apollo's foundation. Rightly or wrongly, NASA is now a pale shadow of the organisation that put men on the moon. The sixties kids had the dramatic Apollo moon rocket as the spacecraft of their generation. Us seventies kids got the much more sensible and grown up Space Shuttle (itself now nearing retirement after 28 years of service). While I missed seeing any of the moon missions as they happened, I do remember a dark early morning in 1981 watching on live television the Columbia land after the first space shuttle flight into orbit. If the chance materialises to get to Florida for one of the few remaining Shuttle launches I'm there. And I still want to grow up to be an Astronaut.

P.S. Don't even get me started on the whole hoax/conspiracy thing. Thats a whole other post / rant in itself. It's depressing and frustrating that the idea has gained enough currency that it can be a topic of serious discussion, or failing that, being the question of the day to breakfast radio callers like I heard this morning. Its the ignorance posing as fact that both annoys and dismays me. The idea is simply not credible, let alone plausible. And the 'evidence' just isnt.

Headlines you really don't expect to see in New Scientist

Including lab studies with willing volunteer erm, demonstrators. Thats one way to get more people into science.

*For anyone wishing to investigate further, the article is in the May 30 2009 edition of 'New Scientist' magazine issue no. 2710. I like New Scientist, it makes science accesible without dumbing anything down. I find something interesting on every issue, and thanks to work get to read it at my leisure for free.

Yay modern medicine!

Listening to: Apropos of Nothing - Various Artists under the Angry Rabbit banner

We had another consultation with the surgeon who did Charlotte's TOF repair yesterday and got to see the results of Charlotte's Barium Swallow (linky) yesterday. The swallow was done since Charlotte hasn't progressed to solids as fast as she should, and can't in fact eat anything more solid than pureed and sieved vegetables at the moment. On the swallow images the area where the two ends of her esophagus were joined together is quite dramatically visible. At the site of the join her esophagus narrows to a width of about 5mm, which explains why even a grain of rice is too much for her to take.
The theory is that maybe some acid reflux from her stomach (which had to be stretched upward a little to enable the upstream connections to be made) irritated the scar tissue at the join site and stopped it widening with the surrounding tissue. This is a common complication for this surgery. To fix it, in a couple of weeks Charlotte will have a balloon run down her throat under general anaesthetic, which will then be inflated at the join site to stretch and widen the passage to something approaching normal. All going well, she should be able to eat more normally for someone her age. It would be nice to see those little teeth chewing on something we haven't mulched first.
It means some more hospital time for us (hopefully only a day or two), but we are kinda used to that, and we have seen lots of kids far worse off than her in recent times.

NB, for any newish readers unfamiliar with the story so far, my daughter Charlotte was born 9 and a half months ago with a defect known as Esophageal Atresia with tracheo-oesophageal fistula (linky, specifically Type A in the diagram at the top of the page), which was fixed surgically at one day old and kept her in the neo-natal intensive care ward for three weeks after she was born. Still feels wierd writing that down in a normal way.

Recurring Dream

Listening to: Man of Colours - Icehouse. I admit its fully MOR late 80's soft rock, but it scratches a nostalgic itch, and you don't need a psychologist and a thesaurus to understand the lyrics.

Last night I dreamt I was in New York. It wasn't a very realistic New York as far as I can tell (I have never been there in real life), seeming to be a melange of bits of Wellington and perhaps Venice transplanted to a demonstrably exotic location, but I saw the Verrazano Narrows bridge off in the distance, plus I knew I was in New York. For some reason I had my old film camera instead of my digital one, in a decision that was initially dream logical but quickly turned out to be wrong. It was fun being a tourist, but frustrating, as I kept running into my friends who live overseas but wasn't able to catch up beyond a few pleasantries and a hug before they had other places to be. I woke up missing my distant friends. It was also a long dream, playing out in several hours in real time as evidenced by my waking up and seeing the time before returning to New York.

Despite the melancholic ending, it was an interesting dream, incorporating a couple of recurring elements of my nightly subconscious wanderings. I have enough of these to make a list.

1. The Camera Fail
At the moment this one seems to be most common. I'll be somewhere and there will be things crying out to be documented, or great photographs to be had (often at airshows). Except I have forgotten my camera, or I can't get it to work. Another way this happens is I will go to pick up my own camera, only to find it is someone elses and I cannot operate it. I once went through half a dozen cameras in this routine before finding my own, by which time the moment had long gone.

2. The Long Player Epic
The dream that lasts all night, which can be woken from and returned to. Sometimes this is good, and I don't want to wake up. Other times, like the time I dreamt the scenario in On the Beach had been transplanted to my home city its not so much fun. This happened once and the dream was so nasty I cannot remember anything about it, other than it was unpleasant.

3. The Crazy Netball Dream
I will be playing Indoor Netball, except it will be fundamentally nuts in some way. 50 players on the court, a six foot high hoop, using a tennis or squash ball instead of a netball etc. I almost never dream about indoor netball in a conventional sense.

4.The Elevation beyond my skills dream
I will find myself playing rugby for the all blacks, or playing drums at a Foo Fighters concert for example, despite having no demonstrable skills in either discipline.

5. The Study Fail
The standard 'The exam is tomorrow and I haven't studied or even attended lectures for the entire term' dream that a lot of people have I think. I have to wake up and remind myself that I graduated ten years ago.

6. The Bailout
I'll decide that I don't like the particular direction the dream is heading and wake myself up. I'm quite proud of this particular skill, even if I am not always capable of executing it.

In addition to the above, I am told I also sleep talk, sometimes walk and awake in very confused and agitated states on occasion. I can also remember dreams that were recurrent in my early childhood, but ceased as I got older. Tricksy things subconsciouses.

Work the camera baby

Listening to: Siamese Dream - Smashing Pumpkins. The soundtrack to many parties of my teens, brings back too many memories to recount and often makes me come over all wistful and nostalgic.

Special guest photographer/star for this post is Kirsten after seeing an opportunity and grabbing my camera during an idle moment with Charlotte in the hospital. The pictures span a time frame of about thirty seconds.

The last one is my favourite.

Recent Imagery #5

Listening to: Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind. 1998 feels like a long time ago....

About the only recurring title on this blog, this is at least the 5th iteration. Make of it what you will.

Playing with perspective in Mt Victoria tunnel
Saw this line up while investigating a new photography location at the airport. I like that the aircraft are ordered sizewise bigger to smaller as they progress into the distance.

Low cloud and mist creeping across the hills in front of my house on a cold winter's day

Also in front of my house, high clouds on the horizon at sunset signalling a change in the weather in the next few hours

Hungry beanbag devours baby, NOM NOM NOM

Bucket Fountain on a sunny winter morning. I like how all the water droplets are catching the light.

The recently closed Griffins biscuit factory in Gracefield, awaiting demolition or redevelopment

Late afternoon sunlight piercing a hail shower in the hills

Deja Vu

We spent four days and nights in hospital last week while Charlotte dealt with a bout of Bronchiolitis (wiki link). Her respiration rate doubled and she wound up on oxygen and a fluid drip for a couple of days. Nothing to do with her previous troubles, more of a something that can happen in winter thing. Both of us caught her bug but it only gave us colds.

Along the way it gave my parents and sisters a chance to retell their stories of my stays in hospital as a small child with asthma. My parents spent many long days and nights at my bedside and now I was following in their footsteps with my own child. I grew up hating hospitals, and have only really gotten used to them as an adult. They are strange places at night, simultaneously still and busy, quiet and noisy. Fitful and unsettled sleep is interrupted by strangers coming and going, to be remembered as vague shapes and shadows, and the beeping and other noises of equipment. Overriding your comfort needs is tending the sick child who is your reason for being in this place. If you are lucky they will sleep, and you will only be woken every couple of hours by the beeping of the drip needing resetting. If you are unlucky like Fi was the first night, the need for cuddles and settling will override your need for sleep, and the most you can hope for is that she will eventually settle and not keep the other occupants of the room awake.

On my night in Charlotte slept mostly, and I only had to deal with the drip and one of the other parents snoring. We got our own quiet isolation room after a couple of days while the virus ran its course, until Charlotte was released on Thursday pretty much good as new. We on the other hand were tired and rundown, and coming down with colds.

Four days is better than three weeks though. Charlotte remains awesome. I marvel daily at my luck in being able to call her my daughter, even when she is being a complete baggage. Baggage phases are not often though, and here she is in complete sleeping non baggage mode.

Tributes Flow

Written while watching 'Beverly Hills Cop' on a rainy Sunday night. I know we only ever saw redubbed and edited versions of this film on TV in the 80's, but I don't remember it having so much swearing....

When I heard about Michael Jacksons death on Friday morning, I wondered to myself how often the above phrase would be used by the media when discussing it.
I won't say I was a big fan. There are no Michael Jackson albums in my collection. I had no great love for his output, especially in the 90's. I respected his talent though, and I do like some of his stuff, mostly from the Thriller and Bad era *. I remember one hungover morning in the 90's listening to all of his albums back to back in a post party haze while we played cards (it seemed reasonable enough at the time).
It was impossible to grow up in the 80's and not notice him. My sisters and I just about wore out our copy of 'Thriller' (on tape) by playing it over and over on weekends. Being the first person in your group to see the complete 'Thriller' video made you cool for at least a week. I drummed badly as part of a band lip synching to 'Beat it' as part of a class project making music videos at intermediate. Its weird to think the song was only five years old then.
Watching all the videos on C4 yesterday brought back a lot of memories. There is a great moment at the end of the 'Jam' video, where the cameras kept rolling at the end of the take and caught Jackson trying to teach Michael Jordan some of his dance moves. It showed a playful and patient side of the man not often seen in the media.
As I grew older I appreciated his work more, but also started to see him more and more as a tragic figure, trapped by his own idiosyncrasies. I never formed an opinion on his guilt or innocence of the various things he was accused of. He was acquitted and that was good enough for me, but in this age of guilty until proven innocent, he would be forever tainted by it. His oddity made him an easy target for such accusations, and for all the crude humour associated with it. I never found the jokes all that amusing, and find them even less tasteful now. The guy was certainly weird, but also harmless, and very good at what he did, even if his artistic peak was well behind him.
The forthcoming world tour would have made an interesting spectacle, if only to see if he still had the immense ability to entertain he once possessed. C4 was running a competition to take people to one of the concerts; I thought it would be better to have seen him in his 80's prime.
That's the Michael Jackson I most want to remember. Selfishly, the resonant thing with his death for me is that it marks another piece of my childhood gone forever.

* For the record, those favourite Jackson tracks of mine are, in no particular order, 'Thriller', 'Beat it', 'Dirty Diana', 'Smooth Criminal', 'Give in to me', 'They don't care about us', 'Scream', and purely for sentimental reasons, 'Man in the Mirror'. 'Dirty Diana' would be my favourite of all if asked. Its a bit darker and more intense than the rest of his singles and has a great quiet/loud verse/chorus combination.

Holding

My life on teh interwebz has been on hiatus for the past week or so due to a certain baby daughter needing a holiday of the hospital kind. That has now been resolved succesfully and normal service of the more than two posts in a fortnight kind will be resuming soon, as well as normal service of the cherubic bebe kind.

In the meantime, here is my current new favourite song, courtesy of well put together montage promo for C4:

We Walk In Circles by Computers Want Me Dead (link)

Enjoy

So anyway, 377 posts later

Listening to: So - Peter Gabriel

Amongst all the business lately, the three year blogiversary of this humble portal passed almost unnoticed. Actually, it was unnoticed, hence this is a belated marking of the anniversary.

Here is the first post, linked for posterity linklinklink

Its not an understatement to say the past three years have seen a lot of changes in my life, most of which have been remarked upon here at some point, some of which haven't. When I started this thing Fi and I had been married for 18 months, and were living in a rented house in Waiwhetu. Now we have been married for four and a half years, and live in our own house in Kelson, with a nearly nine month old daughter. I've changed jobs twice, seen a lot of new things, and enjoyed the old familiar things. There have been good and great experiences, as well as ones I'd rather not have had.
Trying to translate everything into sensible text has been a difficult task at times, but always an enjoyable challenge. Having so many inspirations to draw from in the form of friends (some of them fellow bloggers) and experiences helps.

So anyway, to all the regular readers, the new ones, the occasional ones, and even the random ones who will arrive here after googling Peter Gabriel albums, thanks for reading and making this thing worthwhile.

Manly is as manly does

Listening to: Billy Idol - Greatest Hits. Nuff said.

This caught my eye last week. A stuff columnist listing his top five manliest moments. Quite why it caught my eye I have no idea, I was likely checking some news in between my daily facebook and forum visits. Frankly, the columnists look a bit like dweebs, but the concept did get me thinking.

Were I to compile a manliest moments list what ould be on it? To be completely honest, the traditional NZ male manly archteype completely alienates me.

I don't hunt, I don't fish, I don't ski, board, or surf, while not completely unfamiliar with the outdoors I don't spend much time there, I don't play rugby, don't really care who is in the All Blacks as long as they play well, while not unfamiliar with boats haven't messed about in them too much either, I don't drink just for the sake of it, I don't care about Ford vs Holden, don't fix my own car beyond the simple stuff, wear earplugs at concerts, haven't knowingly rescued a damsel in distress etc etc.

A few of my male relatives exemplify some of these traits, and at times it is a little wearying in a I feel I have to somehow compete sort of way, which I can't, since my stories and pastimes are nowhere as interesting as theirs.

At one of my old jobs I often used to sit at the lunch table with the site engineers. After a while I came to refer to it as the 'Bullshit and Bravado' table. No story could be told without a 'better' one following, often prefaced by "Well when I was in (insert exotic sounding foreign locale)...." etc. Since I was there long enough, I heard several of the stories more than once, and can attest they got better each time. It was very Alpha Male-ish, which while I understood, didn't find at all interesting or engaging.

Even posting about this can be fodder for discussion in being both a response to a perceived challenge and not a particularly manly thing to be considering.

So having pondered and established that I am not exactly the embodiment of macho manliness, what could I put on it?

-I have used firearms to kill (rabbits if you are wondering), although my wife was right beside me doing the same thing so that might not count as manly.

-I have destroyed a car while I was driving it, although I think for it to count I would have to be proud of that, which I am not.

-I have used my size and stature to intimidate people into doing things that needed to be done on occasion. Not particulary proud of that either, but it was necessary.

-I have been a witness for the prosecution in a criminal case. That could be considered manly.

-I cut one of my fingertips off with a bandsaw, patched it up and then worked the next five hours of my shift. Definitely manly behaviour. Or daft. A job needed doing though, and there was no-one else to do it.

Thats a start anyway. I think I am a bit confused about what constitutes a manly act. Those of you who have known me for a while are welcome to chip in with suggestions, either with definitions or acts.

I'm a Hustler Baby

Listening to: Against Me! - New Wave. I know almost nothing about this band. I was fossicking around in Real Groovy one day and it was playing in the store, and I liked what I heard so I picked it up. Against Me! is american I think, and sound like a slightly punkier and thrashier version of The Living End, and australian punk/rockabilly band that apart from a couple of singles I have never had much time for. Its nice uncomplicated guitar rock, no samples or overdubs, lyrics you can understand that aren't complicated riddles or metaphors, and nice and noisy. Its not without melody and intelligence, although sometimes there is an evident strain to get a point across at the expense of some pretty clunky lyrical combinations. Most of the time though it is good yell along music that doesn't demand to be taken too deeply or seriously. This band sounds like it would be good live. I listened to it and a bit of AC/DC's 'Back in Black' on the way to and from netball last night and found it nice to get pscyhed up to.

I'm not sure when the 'Listening to' device became a sort of regular mini record review feature, but I like giving some context to the music I enjoy, in case any readers (vague and nebulous concept that readers are) are interested. For those newer readers, I almost always listen to music while I blog, and record what I was listening to at the time of writing at the top of the post. Sometimes its fleshed out like this, and almost serves as a vignette short before getting into the post proper (and is occasionally longer than the post itself). Other times it is simply a listing of album and artist. Almost never does the named music have any direct significance to the post itself. I started 'Listening to' not long after I started blogging, and there are now at least a couple of hundred entries.

This modelling thing

Those paying particular attention to writings here and on facebook over the summer just gone may remember cryptic refererences to such things as 'The Hustler Project', or 'The shiny metal monster'.

Sorry to disappoint, but it is plastic rather than metal, and is a model. I've posted about my hobby of model making before here, there and everywhere. Suffice to say I have been engaging in it on and off since the early 80's. I don't have as much time as I used to to devote to it, and it is now more of an acivity where much is accomplished in bursts of intense activity followed by lulls where nothing happens at all. A lull is just ending at the moment, mostly prompted by a competition I intend to participate in in September. The last project I finished was in February, and here it is. Its a Hustler (wiki history of the real thing here), which in 1:72 measures out at about 40cm long.

Here is the project at about half way, spray painted aluminium to provide a base for the finish that makes the plastic look like metal, which is easier said than done.
After a few days of adding different tints and shades of metallics, you arrive at something looking like this. Since the real things were made of varying kinds of metals, and weren't painted, there is a trick to getting the right look.

Once happy with the metals, decals provided the colouring in.

before final assembly involving all the delicate bits that would get knocked off if you added them earlier.

until finally you arrive at something looking like this, which in terms of how the final finish looks is one of the best looking of all my models.

Its seen as a childish hobby, and is much derided and ridiculed, but I think it can be a bit of an art form when it is done right. I think I am only in the last few years starting to get reasonably competent at it. There are much, much more skilled practitioners of the hobby than me out there.

Thursday:almost Friday

Listening to: Glee - Bran Van 3000. Continuing a theme of listening to albums I haven't listened to for a while while blogging. This one totally reminds me of the summer of 1999-2000, and helping house sit with F+K. This and 'Dig your own hole' by the Chemical Brothers were on high rotate that summer, since I got them both for Christmas that year. Glee is an odd album, with lots of ideas (not all of them good) competing for space and your attention. 'Drinking in L.A. and 'Rainshine' are the standout songs (with 'L.A' being the most well known), but I had forgotten about the acoustic female vocal version of 'Cum on feel the noize' which works better than you might think.
Since this has taken a while to put together, also listening to Roofers - Breaks co-op from 1997 or so. A bit trip hoppy and break beaty, and utterly different from more recent and well known album 'The sound inside'.

Dark and Stormy day

Good weather is fine, but bad weather is much more interesting. We ventured out into the storm on Saturday to have a look around and hopefully get some good storm pics. You can be the judge of the latter. Safety was definitely first and caution was exercised. We missed the portion of high tide where waves were breaking on to the road, but there was still plenty of kelp to drive around.

Island Bay. There were some biiiig waves out there, big enough to stop the ferries sailing. Peak swell height recorded out in Cook Strait was somewhere around 14m / 45ft apparently.

South end of the runway at Wellington Airport. Click to enlarge and spot the two crazy people on the breakwater by the windsock.

People still there, now a bit wetter. I know the area where they are standing pretty well and they aren't in any particular danger, but not fancying a salt water bath I was quite happy to stay in the car.

I eat therefore I am

Charlotte has had her first attempt at self feeding. She knows what she wants to do, and has an idea of how, but the co-ordination isn't quite up to snuff yet......

it turned out to be easier to just smear the food onto the platter than rely on the bowl

...with perhaps inevtiable results (note abundance and surrounding-ness of towels)

Webcomic linky

Since I have been promising at least one of you readers for some time, here is the five part Firefly race from XKCD:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

If you haven't been exposed to this before, I thoroughly recommend exploring via the 'Prev' and 'Next' links. Hovering over the images will produce a caption of sorts.

Share and enjoy

Enjoying The Da Vinci Code

Listening to: Our time in Eden - 10,000 Maniacs.

Apologies to any fans of the book, but firstly I'll admit that the title of this post is something of a misnomer. I didn't enjoy reading the book, and only went to see the movie because Fi wanted to and I had nothing else to do. The book I found to be all action and no substance, with lots of exclamation points and things I was suposed to be amazed (or at least surprised) by, and frankly felt a little Scooby Doo (for lack of a better description and not in a good way). I am still not quite sure what all the fuss was about.

Being of the type to attend bookfairs, and browse the fiction category for my own finds, I have noticed 'The Da Vinci Code' is readily available second hand. So that got me thinking:

Ways to enjoy 'The Da Vinci Code' without having to read or buy it

You will need: A bookfair, and 2 or more players

Option 1 - Its all in the numbers
Players peruse the bookfair as normal, and count the number of copies of 'The Da Vinci Code' they come across. One point for each, with one extra point for each different edition sighted. Two extra points if it is in hardback, three extra if it is an audio book edition, 10 extra if it is an audio edition read by Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.

Option 2 - The evidence is right in front of you
Players disperse to random points of the fiction section. Winner is the player who can see the most copies of 'The Da Vinci Code' from their location (can also be applied to sighting Starmarts on Queen Street in Auckland).

Option 3 - Collect the evidence.
Players gather as many copies of 'The Da Vinci Code' as they can find. Whoever can carry the most without being mistaken for a second-hand bookshop owner wins.

Option 4 - Scatter the evidence
Reposition any copies found so that they appear at regular intervals throughout the stock. At least one per row or box of books. This game is deemed won if a non player notes the distribution and suspects some sort of conspiracy. Expert players can determine the placement according to the fibonacci sequence.

Option 5 - The Gathering
This is more of a long term game that can be played over the course of several bookfairs. After a suitable central point is determined, players must return any copies of 'The Da Vinci Code' to that point. The aim is to find all copies and assemble them in one place, thus acheiving market saturation at the point of sale, or a critical mass, whichever comes first. Once a record is set, try and beat it at the next bookfair.

If for some reason (likely to be conspiratorial in nature), 'The Da Vinci Code' isn't present at a bookfair in signifcant numbers, substitute authors such as Wilbur Smith or Patricia Cornwell can be used.

not quite friday

Listening to: Songs 1993-1998 - Moby. Another CD I haven't listened to in a while. 'God moving over the face of the water's is in my top five favourite instrumental tracks, and has been ever since it was used in the final scene and credits of 'Heat'

This post was intended to be a bit longer (and ironically about injuries), but typing with a couple of fingers taped together after spraining a finger last night (not actually realised at the time, although admittedly it was a little sore) is just too damned annoying.

I took a day off today to rest and immobilise it, since while 'QA Officer' is a grand title, it is essentially a secretarial position, with lots of writing and typing, which is a bit tricky with two fingers taped together, not to mention painful when you forget you have a finger you are not supposed to be using.

So I hung out with Charlotte all day, which was much more fun. I met her Linmark contact, went to Chirping Cherubs with her, and took her to school to watch mum run the school cross country, which is all weekday stuff I don't normally get to do.

Rescue service

Listening to: 40 Licks Disc 2 - The Rolling Stones. Drinking some kind of white wine.

Been playing with cropping and colour. Compressing for the blog trashes the resolution on these images; the originals are much finer:

Angle is nice and dramatic, but not exactly filling the frame (anyone got a spare $2500 I can drop on a decent longer lens?), and a little dark due to me not quite having got the hang of exposure settings yet.
Cropped to emphasise the angle, kept a bit of ground for an attitude reference and lightened a little

Not a terrible original, little dark again, and shutter slightly too fast meaning prop blur is minimal, although the airframe is nice and sharp.

Cropped and lightened, moves the cockpit right into the frame centre and pops out the markings a bit.

Plain off centre, although I was performing a nice pirouette as I panned the camera. This is almost looking over my left shoulder.

Fixed.

Aside from not needing to buy, cart around, look after, and develop film, being able to edit and manipulate on your own is the most useful aspect of the digital SLR. Haven't got it fully sussed yet. This is the second airshow season I have shot with the digital camera, but it was only in the latter part of this season I started to figure out how to use the thing really effectively. There are noticeable improvements in this years shots compared to last years, and I cringe a little when I look at some of my older stuff. No doubt I will look at these sometime later in the same light.

Book season

Listening to: Boys for Pele - Tori Amos. Haven't listened to this in a long long time. A bit of rediscovery is in order.

As the Airshow season ends, so the bookfair begins. I like reading, always have, and bookfairs are an excellent place to score fresh material. Apart from the library sale, the first big fair of the season is the Bookfest in Upper Hutt, with smaller fairs dotted around the winter, culminating in the season finale second hand orgy that is the Downtown Community Ministry fair on the waterfront in September. Sometimes the fairs can be spectacles in themselves, as summarised in this post by the able judge, but the best thing is browsing without knowing quite what you will find, even if you can't find the particular book you were looking for (yes, I hunt for specifics as well as gather).

Biggest score from the Upper Hutt fair two weeks ago was this, for the princely sum of $4:
The day in question was in 1987, when the Cold War was still very much a going concern, and mystery about life on the other side was still rife. No-one at the time had any idea that the whole enterprise would come tumbling down four years later, but the new policies of Glasnost and Perestroika put in place by a certain Mr Gorbachev were hinting that things might be changing. Given that the Cold War was prominent in my childhood, I find this sort of stuff immensely interesting.

Occasionally due to the nature of the books, some unexpected items are found within:

I think this book was bought in Australia as a gift for a girlfriend. The card and paper are by a then prominent Australian artist, and the beautiful (seriously) inscription in the card mentions a trip to the country. What happened to you 'Princess' and 'Froggy'? How did your life together work out I wonder?

There are some great and revealing pictures in the book, but this from a Soviet maternity ward is my fave:

Also interesting in my childhood (and now) were volcanoes, and scored for the sum of $1 was this little book:

Despite the somewhat strange title, this is a really neat little guide to the Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro volcanoes.

Its 25 years old, so doesn't include the most recent eruptions, but has a ton of interesting information about the geology involved. And lots of pretty picures of past events:

It will make the Tongariro crossing even more interesting when I do it eventually (next summer hopefully. At the third attempt. Stupid mountain weather).

Getting an honourable mention is the Usborne Mysteries of the Unknown omnibus. Originally published as three volumes (two of which found their way to my sisters), I devoured these as a child, fuelling a continuing fascination with the unexplained:

I mean, how can you go past gatefolds like these?

A lot of effort went into making these things look good (without a hint of sarcasm). These are quality publications, even at 30 years old.

They were originally published in 1977, which I remember thinking was a long time ago when I first encountered these books in 1983 or so. Endearingly, the UFO volume makes no mention of Roswell, or any hint of cover up or conspiracy, bless its sweet little heart. I'll have to find modern day equivalents for Charlotte when she is old enough to read them. Or she can just read these.

Also they make a great companion for this from the same era and publisher, which I picked up at a fair last year:

I love how colour pictures are advertised as a selling point. Does it have experiments? Yes, lots. Did I try them all as a child? You bet.

Top of the table

Netball was more interesting than usual last night. Ever since the centres started posting their points ladders and draws on line, the statisticians in the team have had a field day, as well as drawing useful information about the nights opposition.

Mostly useful anyway. Last night my current Monday night team 'Artless Zen' (occasionally known as 'The mighty Zen' encountered the top of the table 'Silver Perms' (the randomness of social Indoor Netball team names hasn't really gotten old yet, even after 13 years (Crikey!) in the game).

I often partake in a little on line research before the game to get an idea of form, and figure out what sort of game we might expect, which is probably counter productive when an 'easy' team turns out to be 'hard' due to false expectations, but satisfies idle curiosity anyway. Also I tend to remember what the other teams in our grade were like the last time we played them without recourse to the internet.

The Perms though were a mystery in the latter regard, since we hadn't played them yet this season. They had however beaten every other team in the grade, and averaged a respectable 40ish points per game in the process. Zen on the other hand had only lost one game so far, but had lots of narrow (by less than 6 point) wins. Knowing that this was a top of the table game added a certain frisson to things. I don't take the game as seriously as I used to, but I still like to win. On paper our opposition looked intimidating

Further frissonage was added courtside when they turned up for the game. You can get a rough idea about how clued up and good a team is by checking them out before the game. They looked good, and I wasn't too confident about our chances of victory. My normal underrating of myself added to the feeling - "they look like better players than me" etc etc.

So we get the game started, and it was a bit messy. Both teams defended well, but their offenses took a little time to get organised. Meanwhile I realised early on that while the guy I was marking looked capable (and was) I could mark him out of the game most of the time. The first chink in the armour of formidability was noted. They were also going for 2 shots and missing, and fouling a lot in the circle.

A little later on I noticed we were going point for point and I thought "hey these guys aren't as good as I expected". The chink was turning into a crack. Far from adding to the oppositions list of victories, we were competing, and leading a lot of the time.

That changed in the third quarter though when they started landing some 2's and lifted their game a little, and opened up a 5 point lead and I thought "this is why they are top of the table". We weren't landing our 2's, and the game was slowly being taken away from us. We were staying in touch though by ticking over the 1's nearly everytime we got the ball to the circle.

Still, at the start of the last quarter we were still four points down and I thought "We can make that up but its an ask the way they are scoring at the other end" and resolved to lift my game a bit and play as hard as I could to the end of the game. Turns out the rest of my team had the same idea, and basically shut the opposition 2 point shooters down. With them missing, the game was anyone's. We took the lead with about a minute to go, and looked good to extend it only to lose the ball and go level with about 30 seconds to go. The last thirty seconds passed with a wild combination of dropped passes, fumbled ball, missed shots, everybody yelling advice and encouragement (including other teams in our grade on adjacent courts who had finished before us and were watching) before the game ended.

In a draw. We could have won, we didn't win, but we didn't lose either, and I am happy enough with being in the only team the Perms haven't beaten this season, holding them to one of their lowest scores of the season in the process. Plus I know that they are very beatable now, which is good since I think we will be rematching in a final not too long from now. Looking forward to it.

****

Exemplifying the randomness, here are some of the Indoor Netball team names I have played for over the years. I can't begin to remember them all:

Fully Flavoured (named after something read on a beer label), The Ramons, Artless Zen, Random, The Screaming Orgasms, Suspect, Spahtanz, Teachers Pet, I Pity The Fool, Sparkle Motion, Tigers go Grrr, Guns go Bang, Cows go Moo, Balls on Top.