New story!

VISION

I tinkered with this one for a while, but I think that I'm happy with it now. It's part of my ongoing effort to focus on character and internal worlds and, y'know, feelings.

Enjoy!

Sex, as I'm sure you're aware, is used to sell everything. Cars, alcohol...autism awareness?

I have a bed. I have a wooden queen sized bed which I put together myself. I have far fewer injuries than I expected to have sustained by this point. I have a room that smells like pine. I have a manly, frontiersman-like feeling, despite the fact that the only tool employed was an Allen Key.

The modest spoils of Supanova '09. I managed to forget my camera for both days of the con itself, so this will have to suffice.

Not shown: Cassie's back issues and adorable hat, sore feet, the ability to frame and focus a shot at the same time.

Supanova Day One went pretty well, in my semi-informed estimation. It amused me that it was billed as a 'Pop Culture Expo', presumably because 'Bunch of Nerd Shit' wouldn't have looked as good on the posters.

As per usual with these things, the cosplayers were the highlight of the day. I saw an excellent Master Chief, a terrible Batman, a handful of Rorschachs and a bajillion anime characters that I failed to recognise. Pop culture, it seems, is already leaving me behind. I spotted Cloud and Naruto and that was it. The rest were just a wave of giant hair and impossible skirts.

The main plus of the day, as compared to cons that I've been to in the past, was The Lootening. When I was at San Diego I couldn't buy much because I had no job and was about to catch a plane to a city where I didn't have a house, and in Bristol I likewise had no money. Here I was free to spend, and I think that I did pretty well. The major purchase of the day was a boxed set of both series of Ghost in the Shell, as well as the new movie and a heap of extras, though I also love my new Watchmen mug and the Galactica patch which will soon adorn my jacket. Oh, and my Killing Joke Joker. He comes with a camera and garish shirt, but I think that the naked and gutshot Barbara Gordon must be sold separately.

The only actual speaker that we got to see was Dave Gibbons, having arrived too late to see Richard Hatch and not getting in line in time to see Karl Urban. Gibbons was witty, kind and affable, and did his very best with a few utterly execrable questions. He even seemed excited about the Watchmen animated comic, which is one of the greatest exercises in utter redundancy that I've seen in a while.

Tomorrow we take another shot at seeing Mr Urban, and watch the sad little Harry Potter fans cry over Viktor Krum's cancellation. Yes, I know it's not his real name, no I'm not going to bother looking him up. I'm also eyeing off a relatively cheap Darth Vader bust with light-up light sabre, as well as a distinctly-not-cheap-at-all Batman statuette. I don't know. Do I really want to be that guy with more than one Batman statuette? I suspect that I may already be him in spirit. We shall see.

On a totally different, and far less navel-gazing note:

Ten vital citizen-shot videos about the rising protests and violence in Iran surrounding the elections. Challenging, unpleasant, vital viewing. There's one in particular that I don't recommend to the faint of heart, given that it essentially shows a gunshot woman bleeding to death, but it's necessary for anyone with a modicum of interest in the world at large to be aware of what's going on here.

Part of me is fascinated and gladdened to see the rising role of social media in this sort of world event, and part of me is saddened to see the same old story told again.

There have been doings afoot.

First and most importantly, I've finally gotten the internet up and running at my house. I have a shiny sleek modem with pretty blinking lights, and I set it up all on my lonesome. It's exciting having a connection all to myself, with nobody to account to or blame for the usage. I've always shared before, in one scenario or another, and it feels like another step towards become master of my domain.

I've also gone and bought myself a bed. Again, this is not something that I've done before, and something that turned out to be both simpler and more difficult than I anticipated, mostly due to a particularly sleazy South African bed dealer who fancied himself something of a smooth operator. Both of these purchases feel pretty meaningful, concrete and solid events in the hazy rush of days. The bed is big and hard to move, the internet is on a contract. They're bonds, holding me in place, but they're also vital building blocks in this new life of mine. Which one they feel like more varies from moment to moment.

Either way, I'm looking forward to a little more comfort and relaxation in my life, at least my home life. Work is getting more intense and demanding, but that's another whole post. I've only had a small taste of not knowing where I was going to sleep that night, and I don't recommend it. That said, I still don't feel totally comfortable buying manchester.

If you have time to blog, there's not much of interest happening in your life. Conversely if you have lots of interesting and/or important things happening, you don't have time to blog about it. This is the riddle of bloggery, and I'm pretty sure that the solution is to buy more expensive toys with which to do the job.

Anyway.

I have moved. I am no longer the extra party at Cass's place, gracious and wonderful though she was about my rather extended stay. I now have an empty white room with a futon in Marrickville. I can't decide whether it's my clean Kubrick-esque dojo or heroin chic, but either way I need to buy a bed. And a heater. Winter set in quick this year, and it coincided perfectly with my sleeping alone.

What this means, of course, besides a longer commute to work, is that I get to decorate. Well, that's the wrong word for it. Nest? Still wrong. Whatever, I get to let loose with my Ikea nesting instinct and put stuff where I want it to be. This will most likely just end up being a bunch of piles of stuff, but they'll be MY piles of MY stuff, and that's important. Also: an XBox. I've been out of the loop with current generation games for long enough. The great Catching Up of 2009 begins shortly, though I should probably buy a bed first. That would demonstrate some dangerously skewed priorities otherwise. Let me tell you about the time that I bought hosting space when what I actually needed was pants...

The other upshot, of course, is the lack of internet. iinet are in the process of setting me up (employee discount be damned, I'm still not going with Bigpond) but until then I have only what I can steal from Cass, battery issues with my laptop preventing me from any decent attempt at wardriving. So let it be known that for the two weeks or so to come I am Not Dead, merely Disconnected. It may amount to the same thing, but I'm hopeful.

Tonight found me at a hipster party. To be more precise, a Gossip Girl themed hipster party. These are not our people, and conditions were not favourable. I feel fortunate to have escaped with my sanity intact.

I had, of course, taken the precaution of getting drunk first, and once there got progressively drunker on the free champagne that the host had made available. Only my thick armour of alcohol assholery got me through the harrowing experience, as wave after wave of tragic glasses, trendy coats and ridiculous headbands assaulted my senses.

"Do you watch much Gossip Girl?"

"Does it have spaceships in it?"

Awkward pause

"No."

"Then no."

Further awkward pause

"We have nothing in common."

"Yes. That's clear."

A lesser man, I feel sure, would have been destroyed by the experience.

Another new story, Victoria, makes its way aboard the good ship Volatile Memory. I'm particularly proud of this one, focusing as it does on character rather than ramblings about technology and internet culture. I know, right. I think that I did a pretty good job of it, too, though of course your mileage may vary.

Read, critique, do as you will.

EDIT - Link fixed. I was updating at 2 in the morning. Be kind.

I just got propositioned by a middle aged man outside the train station. I don't THINK I look like a rentboy...right?

New story up on www.volatile-memory.com at long last. Enjoy, critique, print out and wear as hat.

Cass and I got all dressed up pretty and pretended to be middle class with all the fancy losers and pretty ladies, at the Ruby Revue cabaret and burlesque show. A good time was had by all, especially those of us who enjoy sultry brunettes and adorable redheads. Cass even knew

Look at me, blogging like some sort of blogger.

Sydney is an interesting city. It feels, somehow, a lot more spontaneous than other places that I've lived. In Perth there was nothing happening, and in London there was far too much, mostly on the other side of an hour long journey. In Sydney, I can get a text message about a random gathering and be there in ten minutes. It's reasonable for me to hear about an event one night and be there the following night.

Much of this, I realise, is the people that I'm spending time with, but one's experience of a city is always going to be coloured by the people that you share it with. Perth is home because my family and oldest friends are there, London is a drunken haze because I spent my time with Irish and South Africans. Sydney is something new, something that I'm still learning how to operate. I think that I'm going to get the hang of it, though, and that I'm going to like it.

I've been accused of writing too abstractly here, when people want concrete facts, so lets throw a few more of those out. I'm still dossing with Cass and Keiran, which is not quite ideal for anyone concerned, and keeping my eyes peeled for something more permanent. This is hampered by the weak state of the housing market and the fact that I'm now doing the workday grind, which eats up a lot of house-looking-at time. I am, for various reasons, once more looking for a place in a share house, so I beg all and sundry to please let me know if they know of anything coming up.

I do, however, finally have a job deep within the belly of the corporate beast. I'm doing inbound calls at BigPond, which is actually cooler than it sounds. The atmosphere is very relaxed and very cool, and I'm pretty excited by the prospect of working in a geeky environment at last. At my last office I was the only person who even knew what a LOLcat was, and it drove me insane.

I haven't been writing much lately, which makes me sad, but I'm doing my best to get some stuff down tonight. The bloggage which you are presently reading is, of course, procrastination from same. I'm telling myself that I'm somehow 'limbering up' for it, but I know that that's a lie.

Okay. You're updated. You may return to your lives.

...never noticed Jean "Moebius" Giraud's credit in Masters of the Universe before.

Robot Scientist Makes Discoveries Without Human Help

What're you going to do after the singularity? I call biological incubator for nanomachines. I'll be able to earn my food ration in my sleep!

Conroy Bingo

The fun game to play at home. Next time you're listening to Senator Conroy try desperately to justify censoring the internet, cross off each asinine and constantly repeated phrase. First one to five wins!

EDIT: Now you can buy Senator Conroy for yourself and play at home!

Thanks to Keiran and Dahna respectively for bringing these wonderful services to my attention.

Just in case you weren't tired of my writing, there's a short piece up on homepageDAILY by the name of Networks.

Thanks to Rachel Soma for making this happen.

Volatile Memory has finally been updated with a new story. ENTITY.

http://www.volatile-memory.com/newstoryindex.html

A rogue contractor is hired to oversee the development of a spontaneous machine intelligence in deep space, though he may not be entirely in control of the things that curl and hiss inside his own head.

Hope you enjoy, please comment if you do.

If it's real, this video makes a powerful case against JPEGs. It purports to show a stop motion image of a JPEG image as it's opened and saved 600 times. Each time this is done the file is re-compressed and re-extracted, as is the nature of the format. The results are striking.


Generation Loss from hadto on Vimeo

Yanked, as usual, from Boing Boing.