Category Archive

So I did my exams, and I passed. Yay!
<little jig of victory>

Wasn’t as bad as i thought’d they be and obviously my scotch habit hasn’t diminished my capacity too much.

OH yes, my blog traffic was very exciting for a while, I thought that my little corner of the web was somehow super interesting but it turns out that simply having the worlds ‘bill henson’ was enough to make this a superstar blog.  I need to preemt the next controversy….

anyways, i ought to go do some busywork - make some more inappropriately reactive software. bah.
Thought puddle was looking a bit empty. And i do apologise that it hasn’t really been a joyful trundle of late - it was supposed to be an entertaining record of adventures.  Hopefully fun times are ahead

bissous

They swing the wrong way. Clearly they should be pull to enter, and push to leave so that after one has theoretically washed one’s hands one doesn’t need to grip a festering door handle coated with the flora left by those less hygenic.
Its not even going to cost extra money, just put the stupid hinges the other freaking way

Ok, time for a rant.
I went to a meeting. It was a meeting and discussion on Close the Gap Day. We had a great speaker who was very down to earth and gave simple, practical things we could do to when we dealt with indigenous patients.  She had a sense of purpose, of hope that it could be done better through co-operation.

So then we went onto discuss how come there were, out of nearly 300 students, less than 20 showed up, and how we could try to improve the teaching of cultural awareness.  And this is where it gets annoying. As in almost all semi politcal ideological groups I’ve found myself in, most everyone there was more concerned with slapping each other on the back for being enlightened and slamming the establishment, and the others for not.
What annoyed the bollocks out of me was that a friend of mine and I proposed some changes to how it could be taught - simple things like a more positive, co-operative tone; as opposed to the ‘us-them’ dichotomy that we were hit with and the very confrontational ‘blaming’.  and about half the group pounced as if we were anti-aboriginals.  They threw up totally spurious straw man arguements like - well I was all inspired so you obviously must be wrong.  But what they in their blinkered chuckleheadedness fail to realise is that I’m not saying that no-one got something out of it, just that many did not and perhaps that we could reshape it so that more people were eager to do something.  I mean come on, I came in, on my holidays to attend a meeting on close the gap day, as if I’m anti.  Face it, those who got something out of it as it was, probably would have gotten something out of it regardless.

Not everyone is going to be a cardcarrying idealogue, not everyone will be inspired to be a champion of  these issues.  Some of the people at the meeting will be and great for them.  But what I’m eager to see is that people, us as potential future doctors, are sensitive to the issues and know how to access  help to ease the process of getting healthcare to indigenous Australians.  It’s progress if, in the future, we have an indigenous patient and we have the thought to contact the liason officers to help ease the process a bit, if we take a bit more time to listen and explain.

If we could stop congratulating ourselves on being teh awesome and actually think about what we can do to make a difference that would be great.

‘I’ve nothing against people (to use a vogue phrase) having ‘emotional intelligence’ as long as it is allied with ‘intelligent intelligence’. What I am less anamoured of is people diving into emotionalism and abandoning anything else at all’

-’How Mumbo Jumbo conquered the world’ Francis Wheen

Very funny, do read it if you have half a chance

To nick a phrase found on Orac’s blog, ‘the stupid, it burns’.
I happen to be a forum and blog junkie and recently on one of the many I visit, an argument appeared as to what a ‘dancer’ is.

Dancers are one of the few groups of people who are so insanely ego-centric that they would get uppity over the correct usage of the designation of dancer. They have elevated it into a hallowed title, conveying an aura of ‘dancerness’, of ability, passion blah blah blah.
So some argue the strictest dictionary application - that dancer is one who dances in public for pay.
Which is patently stupid when considering the rich heritage of other cultures where dance is simply a way of life. The advent of ‘dance’ and indeed ‘art’ as a profession is very recent, these activities have been a part of all human cultures for thousands of years, pretty much as soon as culture developed - from caveman days of rockpainting and jewelry making.
But no, bobbleheads still insist that a professional arts corps is necessary because without it ‘There would be no jane austen, no bach, andy warhol, no great musicians, building would only be functional, walls would all be one colour’ I mean, jeebus, if we didn’t have professional artists, holy jeepers batman, colour would never have been invented!!!!
also highly amusing because one of Warhols ideas was that art is potentially anything one considers to be art. And that art and not art is a blurred distinction

Other knuckleheads content that to be worthy of the term dancer one must have ‘passion’ for it, as if that is a useful definition. You might as well make ‘dancerness’ a criteria.

Interestingly it was only students and non-professional dancers who were all up in arms. My pet theory is that dancers as a whole are so mindboggling insecure that they need a shibboleth to feel secure in themselves and their art. They need a way to differentiate themselves from the mass of the ‘other’.
Or perhaps, as some of them will not assign the title of ‘dancer’ to themselves, feeling themselves unworthy of the title, it is because of the deification of dancers and artists generally - something that John Carey talks about in ‘What good are the Arts?’.
“talk of the immortality of art, in the absence of a belief in God, is childish and self- deceiving”

I was recently at a shindig for dancers and dance artists and had to exert considerable self control not to explode in an indignant mess.
I love the arts, despite being a grouchy bastard, I really believe and enjoy them, but recently I am seeing that we, as artists, could possibly be the worst thing that ever happened to art.

On several occasions I’ve been to talks and showings about ‘research’, movement ‘research’ and the like.  As a budding scientist and also just because I have a brain, its pissing me off - I am more than willing to accept the need to discover new things in art practice and that it requires investigation. But what I’ve seen is absolute rubbish which is indulgent, stupid and justifies why people hate contemporary art.

Case A.
A  choreographer and dancer have been given 4 weeks of rehearsal space time to research her project, which was vaguely looking at Communication Technologies, pas and present.  So I dutifully trundled out, as my practice is technologically mediated and I do love a good stickybeak.   I then spent the next hour physically holding myelf in so I didn’t launch myself onto stage and hurt someone - either that or holding in bales of laughter at the sheer idiocy of it.  It was actually offensive how insanely stupid the showing was.   It consisted of 2 dancers in various scenarios looking at communication technologies
*Idea one.  Stand on one leg, balance while wriggling fingers like they do in bad hacker movie. This was supposed to represent SMS-technology.
*Idea two. Hold hand to ear like you had a phone and rush around.
*idea three. Do the same as above but run from the back of the stage to the front of the stage, stopping suddenly and running back
*idea four.  Walk in circles rapidly. Apparently this was to convey the idea of radio wave propagation.
*sitting down while flapping hands - smoke signals

Case B.
this time a 2 week research grant.
Which developed a ‘call and response’ technique using sensors.
I mean WTF? A cellist plays a phrase. the dancer moves a limb hooked up with a bend sensor which triggers a pre-recorded track. Woop. Who the hell cares? Its old, and uninteresting to boot.

Case C.
I overheard two choreographers passionately talking about this ‘research’ they were going to do on tango  dancing.  I like tango dancing. I can’t do it, but it sure is awesome to watch.  However the premise for their research was ‘what if i put my leg here, instead of here’.  I mean, what if? Its exactly the same as tango, except every so often my leg goes on the outside instead of the inside - amazing.

While these may all be necessary stages in their arts practice to develop as artists, I really have to question, does the public purse have a duty to fund them? Perhaps I’m just grouchy, but for me, these projects, answer and deliver nothing of use.  It seems that this sot of thing is better left to dicking about in loungerooms.
A problem is the funding structure that I am talking about in particular - which is specifically for ‘research’ and not to be outcome oriented. But perhaps it should be - maybe it will filter out stupid, if people know they are supposed to put something on.  One thing to say about free market capitalism is that it forces some sort of applicability due to the need for public consumption - it does limit innovation as it means work has to ‘populist’ (not always a bad thing), but the state supported model goes the other way, and lets artists get all carried away with their own importance and encourages them to waffle about directionlessly.

Serving Girl : That’ll be $21

Me: $21? Here
<hands over $21 and gets tray to leave>

Serving Girl: Thanks

Serving Girl 5 seconds later: Excuse me, its $23.50

Me: Excuse me?

Serving Girl: (looking at me like I’m some hitherto unknown toe scum) Its $23.50, you only gave me $21 (slowly and carefully in case her mental gymnastics  prove too much for my feeble brain)

Me: Oh right, (fishing around for extra $2.50 for the sludge from the bain marie of death) (now looking at her with more than mild distaste)

Serving Girl (still speaking very slowly and clearly) You can have the receipt

I would have loved to tell her to shove it up her ample arse, but left it with a disgruntled mumbled and shuffled off unsteadily to consume  my exorbitantly priced sludge. Bring back Spirit 3 with the buffet of death – at least I didn’t have to pay extra for diarrhoea.

The turn out for the anti pulp mill rally was fantastic, with an estimated 10000 turning up in crappy weather.
I’m hopeful that it will have some effect, though I’m dubious how much the government, largely controlled by Gunns, are going to pay attention to it.
more information can be found here on the pulp mill proposition.

On a related note, a series of really horrible ads have been popping up on Tasmanian TV - misinformation about the pulp mill , and the latest, a scare campaign against the Green party, saying that
1. They’ll introduce heroin trials
2.Support gay marriages
3.Create a new gender - intersex
and other bunk which really aren’t a bad thing at all, in fact they’re reasons I’ll vote for the damn party, but done in a hilariously b-grade horror film way.
I’ve even heard of some Bob Brown posters being defaced with ’suspected paedophile’ on it.
Absolutely disgusting.

Perhaps there is a incredibly good reason, but I cannot work out why carparks refuse to issue tickets when they are full.
I mean, on the surface that seems perfectly sensible - there are no spaces so why let more cars in?
The problem is that back OUT of a carpark is very difficult to do, as invariably they back onto a semi-major road, and there is always a few cars with the same idea as you behind you. So you end up stuck waiting until someone sees fit to leave the damn carpark.
Gah!

And yes, I have just succumbed to a minor bout of insomnia probably due to the ongoing stress of med school admissions and hence the catch up posting

So its not to be, and it turns out at least some of my fears are justified.

I did not get entry into medicine for 2008.

This blog has not been the joyful trundle I had hoped it would have been. It has somehow turned into another one of those whingy damn blogs which I generally detest, and so may end up shutting it down.

The thing which has me gutted is that I gave it my best, and even now, I would not change my answers in the interview. Which means that 8 people have decided that I am not capable of studying medicine.
The interview was supposed to be what I’m good at, it turns out that my self perception is incredibly off and I have, obviously, no idea of how I come across.

Its a time to really look hard at myself. I have no plans, no options for next year. Maybe October is my month of pain,this is the 3rd year that it has not worked out, 2006, I get sick, 2005 I miss out on the RYD scholarship. 2004, do not get a contract after working with a company and apparently doing a good job.

I know its all random, and I’m just upset right now, but fuck it, I was really hoping that this would work out, maybe that this was something I was meant to do. But obviously not.

I’m off to my good friend scotch. perhaps i will continue to rant later

But i have to keep it all under control as I have a show to do.  I honestly did not expect it to go this way.  I mean I’m supposed to be good at this, talking, communicating is what I do dammit.

I’m teaching digital architecture at a university here. Its driving me mental on several fronts

1. The Students

Admittedly they are first years, but they show no attack or curiosity. None. Its soppy but I was talking to a friend in early childhood education and she was telling me these wonderful stories of kids with shiny eyes excited to read a book, play with blocks, paint whatever, but with my students, there is nothing. No fire in the belly. I had one with his headphones in the entire time. needless to say he’s failing.
its a programming course, so I show them principals of scripting, and send them away to experiment a bit with them.
And what I get back is my own scripts, with the variable names changed and not even the variable values.

2. The subject itself

Architecture is a tremendous pile of wank. Really. I mean I really like some of it - (see the giant kraken) I think there are really interesting things that could be done. But the subjects premise of mapping variables using an entirely deterministic system seems pointless and needlessly complicated to me.
Basically we are using a ‘turtle’ type program to draw curves. However what is the point of writing a hideously complicated script which tells the turtle to run around pseudo randomly and make extra random lines in certain areas and not to in others?

I mean, something like that is around 60-100+ lines of code, when you could easily draw it yourself for considerably less fuss seeing you know exactly what you want it to do anyways.
And what does it tell you? Its meaningless because all it does is generate random lines - there is no intrinsic meaning to it. It just looks like something important and impressive

I mean they were looking at egress and whatnot, which is a fancy way of saying entrances and exits, so that clump in the front would represent possible paths into the space and blah. but who the frick cares? If you actually knew where people went, you’d use video and track and trace. Or you could use a semi intelligent AI system to simulate it. Whats the point of generating psuedo random lines?

3. An obsession with scripts.
I think its because they have no idea what the point of script is. They seem to think that if it can be scripted, then it must be more ‘authentic’ . There is the idea that the machine can come up with something new, which is probably why they are doing these scripts. But everything the machine does is an explict instruction with some silly arse randomising. John Maeda cleverly outlawed randomising in his class. I may do the same. Its not emergent, its not reactive its just blah.
Anyway. End rant. For now

Word or Phrase of the day

Dunning-Kruger effect -is the phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.

Our techy was a highly annoying man who displayed classic Dunning - Kruger effect.  He pretty much examplified the reason why i dislike some mac users.  Upon learning I used a PC to do graffikal/multimedia work he promptly berated me that Mac was indeed far superior to anything on PC.  When I pointed out that my main applications - Maya and Touch work well on PC. (Maya does run on Mac as of recently) he said that “Bah thats because you use crap PC programs”. Last I checked Maya was a rather well regarded application.
He also boasted that his hearing range was from 2hz to 26khz. Which may be true, though from what I understand of people working in the live music industry thats probably unlikely, who cares? I mean we were doing notes for the show. I couldn’t give a crap if he could hear god himself talking at that point. Ok thats not Dunning-Kruger but still, freaking annoying having someone spending 10 min regaling us his superhuman hearing while we are doing notes.

Continuing on with my stream of conciousness rant - this rant was allowed to continue because our director was incapable of well, directing.  On numerous occasions she should have stepped in and executed directorial decisions and she failed each time.
When a choreographer scheduled new rehearsals outside of official times ‘Talk to him, I had nothing to do about it”
When a choreographer and a dancer had a tiff (rather entertaining too) she didn’t broker a peace or enforce a timeout and mediation. Her solution was to sit at the edge of the studio and say ” I dont know”, then followed by ” she’ll be here”. When it was plainly clear that there was no way those two could actually see each other and not try to kill each other.

Incompetence
A multimedia designer taking photos of shadow play. Simple yes? Well no, it turns out that if you are  bumbling retard and take photos of backlit shadows on a white sheet WITH THE FLASH ON, astonishingly nothing comes out other than a big fat white blarg.
I probably wouldn’t have minded so much if a/ it wasn’t 20:00 on a day i was supposed to finish at 16:00 and b/ having to put up with her constantly reminding us just how damn good she was

Now what else can I rant on about? actually that’ll do for tonight. Good day