What a week! I’ve written five articles. Another two are due for Monday. I’ve done my usual Patch Monday podcast. I’ve done five radio appearances on five different topics. I’ve been interviewed for Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, and that’ll appear next week.

I’ve even been interviewed by an anthropologist for his PhD project. I’m talking to a new editor about more writing. And even — this is weird — to a television production company about a TV project.

That all comes after a month or, really, six weeks or more of travel, intense work, intense and deeply personal events and the tightly-tangled ball of stress, depression and anxiety that can trigger. Which it did.

I’m knackered.

And there’s still plenty of work to do and decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.

I mention all this for a variety of reasons…

• While I do have Weekly Wrap posts, I’ll also do individual posts linking to things like major articles and radio spots. This should make it easier for people to find things they’re interested in, and quite frankly it’s better Google juice. It also gives me more of an opportunity to reflect on each item — like adding a quick personal view to supplement a story that was a straight-news piece.
• There’s about to be a flurry of small posts as I process the week’s radio spots. Consider that a warning.
• I wanted to post at least part of the background before more reflective posts started appearing. I haven’t written much from a deeply personal perspective lately — certainly not like the essays that I was doing a couple years back. This is part of the head-clearing process before I return to that.

I write in so many places these days — ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC’s The Drum, even occasionally at places like CRN Australia. And, as I mentioned, there’s probably more to come. That’s all writing for other people.

This here is my place, and it’ll be about writing for me.

No, I’m not sure what form that’ll take.

I’m not sure what it even means.

Do those bullet points flow from the intro? No, not really. But that’s where my head is this morning. I’m sure things will become clearer as the day unfolds.

[Photo: That's me (embiggen) photographed with my webcam just now at Rosella Cottage, the somewhat bigger house that's the "family home" of the owners of Bunjaree Cottages. It isn't normally rented out to punters. I've been here at the cottages alone for a week, and I haven't bothered shaving. I'm staring to look like I did before ’Pong and I shot that short film The Shave back in 2008. It's not a good look.]

If the embedded video isn’t visible, watch it directly on YouTube.

For me previous Australia Day posts, try Happy Aussie-Ox Day from 2009, my photographic post Great Australian Dreaming 1, sing our new national anthem and my essay Are you proud of your culture? That last one has an excellent photo.

Artemis breathed her last breath at 12.37pm AEDT today. It was a peaceful moment. I held her while she moved from this world into the next. I cried. I am crying now.

Artemis led a gloriously adventurous life, if perhaps short at a little over seven years. She hunted everything from moths and grasshoppers to rats and noisy miner birds, eating most of them. She even brought us the striped marsh frog from the garden pond — three times before she learned, the hard way, that it’s poisonous. She never did catch a currawong, and I’m glad of that.

Artemis used up one of her nine lives when her tail was crushed and eventually amputated.

Today I chose to take her ninth.

Dr Emily Payne from Pet Vets had shown me the ultrasound images and we’d discussed the questions I had this morning. Further imagery would be unlikely to give us any further information.

Artemis’ remaining kidney function was at most 50%. The left kidney was clearly not working at all, otherwise it would have been doing something useful while the right kidney was blocked by that kidney stone.

There’s no way to measure the function of the remaining kidney. There’s no magic test. One could perhaps conduct a biopsy and deduce the functioning, but the biopsy itself would cause damage. And if you’re going in for a biopsy, you might as well go in and tackle that kidney stone.

But even if surgery successfully removed the kidney stone — and obviously surgery brings it own risks, including damage or even destruction of that remaining kidney — what kidney function would remain? Most problems affecting one kidney also affect the other, either now or later. And as I mentioned yesterday, that the right kidney was a decent size was probably just because it was inflated by a back-up of urine. The urethra, for example, was bloated from a normal 0.4mm diameter to somewhere between 2 and 3mm!

All this had already been discussed with people at the University of Sydney. Everyone had agreed that the prognosis was “poor”. That’s one step above “grave”, when it’s three wishes and magic unicorn time, but only one small step.

I chose to end the story here because of that prognosis.

While I am moved by the outpourings of generosity, and I understand that some people want to “never give up” and “try every option”, I would prefer that such efforts were directed where they have more likelihood of producing a result. In Artemis’ case even the very best possible outcome, with that right kidney still somehow magically perfect, she’d still be only 20 percentage points of kidney function above serious long-term problems.

I don’t imagine for a moment that that kidney was somehow perfect. In all likelihood, it was the opposite.

At the risk of severe repetition, thank you again — thank you so much! — for all of your support. I could not have handled the last week without it.

The costs have been $109.10 for Pet Vets’ initial work, $558.85 for the emergency hospital visit, and $1453.15 more at Pet Vets, a total of $2121.10. There was also an $11 cab fare. Your donations have covered this and more, thank you. They totalled, as I’ve mentioned before, somewhere around $3500. I will update this post tomorrow with the exact figures. Total donations were $3,714.48, and I have published the full accounting.

Some friends and even strangers have insisted that their donation was to me as much as to Artemis, given my need to move house at a difficult time, and for that I say another thank you.

Once I have deducted those personal gifts from the total, the remainder will be donated to the Cat Protection Society of NSW. It was they who gave Artemis her life, and I’d like to support their continuing work.

If for whatever reason you would prefer this not to happen, please just let me know and I will refund your donation immediately. If you paid via PayPal, please make sure you email using the same address you use for PayPal so I can find your donation quickly. If you paid by bank transfer, please send me the account details so I can transfer the funds back. You do not have to explain why. I understand this story did not end as we wished. I understand if you do not agree with my choices.

My sincere thanks also to Drs Emily Payne, Glen Kolenc and Meredith Gibbs and your team at Pet Vets. Your honesty and humanity has made an enormous difference this week.

Thanks also to Dr Helsa Teh and Dr Dharshinee Rajkumar and your colleagues at Sydney After-hours Veterinary Emergency Service for giving Artemis this unexpected extra week of life. I’m sorry I can’t thank everyone by name, but I forgot to gather them all.

I believe you will understand if I take the rest of the day off, although I will be reading your comments.

[Photo: Artemis photographed on 19 January 2009 by Trinn ('Pong) Suwannapha. There are more images from this day.]

[Update 15 January 2011: Post edited to include final totals of both costs and donations, and link to the accounting.]

Last year ’Pong wrapped up his Masters of Digital Media at UNSW’s College of Fine Art by making the short film Memory of You | Reflection of Me, winning the prize for the schools “best video” that year. I’ve previously shown you a photo. Now you can finally watch it online.

It’s a powerful nine minutes about depression and maternal strength, and was certainly a worthy winner. It had stayed hidden until now because ’Pong had been entering it into film festivals, many of which have this arsehatted notion that you can’t enter if your film previously been posted online. But time marches on…

’Pong is now seeking support for his next film, Exist.

Exist explores our part of psychological mechanism that alerts us of treats and dangers — anxiety. It is the second instalment of DASS (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales) trilogy, which is a common test to assess mental illness in modern society.

You can watch the teaser video, then head over to FundBreak to hand over your money.

Epping seemed strangely bleak. This was far from being the only empty shop on Beecroft Road. Signs were dilapidated. In the alley behind the shops, magpies rummaged through restaurant garbage bins in search of food. The eucalypt smoke enshrouding the suburb — the result of back-burning operation before summer — didn’t help.

Two years ago posts referencing John Howard dominated this website’s tag cloud. It’s been a long time since he was Prime Minister, but he’s still prominent here and in the mainstream media through things like his Menzies Lecture — and that was a strange attempt to stamp his own rhetoric onto Australia’s political history.

I wonder how long it’ll be until we stop hearing about the miserable old toad?

[Photo: A Space for Howard ©2009 Trinn (’Pong) Suwannapha. All rights reserved.]

’Pong is currently directing a short film, Memory of You | Reflection of Me, as part of his Masters of Digital Media at the College of Fine Arts. I’m helping, so you won’t see much of me for a few days. But here’s a photo.

Here, actress Fay Akrivou (left) discusses her character, a depressed mother, with ’Pong during a break in shooting at a terrace house in Surry Hills, Sydney. She’s not really that tired, that’s the make-up. It’s also a fairly dodgy version of the photo. I’ll post something better later.

Tomorrow morning we’re shooting at Coogee Beach, and then in the afternoon it’s at our house in Enmore. It’s a 6-minute film, but there’s seven scenes containing something like 35 individuals shots, for some of which they’re doing a dozen takes. ’Pong is both a hard taskmaster and a perfectionist.

My role? Um, I’m organising the sandwiches and beer. Well, someone’s got to do it…

[Update 21 September 2010: You can now watch Memory of You | Reflection of Me online, and ’Pong is seeking support for his next film.]

Putting together the Stilgherrian Live (Metro Screen) Special Edition in a proper multi-camera TV studio is very different from a regular Stilgherrian Live.

For a start, there’s all these other people around. Then there’s the waiting. And the presenter gets to wait the most, as everyone else is working on camera angles and movement, lighting design, cues… ah, but this is the magic of television!

Supposedly.

Anyway, I hope you’re all busy nominating people for “Cnut of the Week” over at that other blog post, ‘cos nominations close at 8pm Sydney time. That’s in about three hours.

Oh, and the photo was taken by Trinn (’Pong) Suwannapha.

There’s a very special edition of Stilgherrian Live this Friday afternoon at 2pm Sydney time. ’Pong and his classmates at Metro Screen are producing a full multi-camera episode with a quiz and interviews and other entertainments.

The program is the end result of their full-week course, Produce live-streamed multi-cam television. ’Pong pitched doing Stilgherrian Live as his segment — as if he wasn’t busy enough doing his Masters of Digital Media at COFA and being DOP for some SEKRIT soap opera — and somehow that’s morphed into me presenting the whole program.

The program will be streamed live from Metro Screen’s page at Viocorp.

Now, I know 2pm Friday is when many people are meant to be working, but it’d be great to have a few of you watching, commenting back, and even providing the students with some feedback.

So to encourage your participation, we’ll have our usual offer of a t-shirt of your choice from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing. Just nominate a “Cnut of the Week” and be watching the program when we draw a name from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.

“Cnut of the Week” is where we remember the example set by King Cnut the Great, who proved to his sycophantic courtiers that trying to hold back the tide is pointless.

We’re looking for people, organisations or other entities who are futilely trying to hold back the tide of change — especially the changes being wrought by the Big Bad Digital Hyperconnected Internet. It has to be something in the news in the last week, and you have to explain yourself. Nominees have to be not merely doing bad things, but failing to notice or adapt to the change around them. And you have to nominate here, in a comment on this post, for your entry to count.

(Of course, neither me nor King Cnut Ethical Clothing are as lame and unethical as to share your email address with anyone else. I for one have site policies about this sort of thing, and so do they.)

Who do you nominate, and why?

I’ll have to tell you the closing time for nominations later. Normally it’s an hour before the program starts, but with a multi-person production team — especially one in training — we’ll need to give everyone a bit more time. We’re having rehearsals on Thursday afternoon, but I think we can use “substitute Cnuts” until the real ones come in.

[Update, Thursday 30 July 2009: Nominations will close at 8pm Sydney time tonight.]

We also need a better method of confirming that the winner is watching the program when we draw their name. With a tighter program timeline, we can’t just waffle on for three minutes until you email, or not. Any suggestions?

Thanks heaps to ’Pong for the video work (although I did the cutaways which allowed him to edit it). Apologies to Mark Pesce, whose to-camera piece wasn’t recorded properly — although we can see him lurking in the background in his lovely red jumper, and raising his eyebrows quizzically.

Also, I am too fat.

It’s D-1. I depart from Sydney airport in just 29.5 hours. I still have a million things to do. I am incredibly stressed. I hope to write more later today. My Twitter stream will reveal more, however.

Photographic evidence of Saturday’s Farewell Party for Project TOTO — or the going-away-and-maybe-not-coming-back-party as it was dubbed — has started to emerge at the Project TOTO Flickr Group.

Note especially one aspect of geek nature: of the five humans in the foreground, only one is not using a mobile computing device, and he’s reaching for a beer. And yet we’re all still connected with each other in the room, as well as with everyone else.

Note also the Sony Z1P HD video camera in the foreground: apparently video evidence will emerge later too.

Just for the record, from left to right that’s business analyst Jodie Miners; futurist and minor TV personality Mark Pesce; my partner ’Pong; and founders of Open Australia, katska and Matthew Landauer.

[Photo: Going away may be not coming back party by Kate Carruthers. But if she's in the photo, who took it?]

Click through for the full-sized image.

Yes, I still have thousands of things to do. But it’s Friday night and I’m exhausted, so I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Probably.

Meanwhile, I’d live to know what you’re thinking about Project TOTO, so have a look at the previous posts and say stuff and ask questions and things.

And if you’re wondering who the people quoted are, try @mpesce, @snarkyplatypus, @kcarruthers and @apostrophepong. And also click through to ActionAid Australia for The Good Cause.

This afternoon I’m off to The Travel Doctor to get vaccinations for Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, Rabies, Cholera, Malaria, Yellow Fever, Tetanus and Influenza. And I just get told about Dengue Fever, because there’s no vaccine.

’Pong is filming the whole process in glorious HD TV, so we’ll be able to post some of that footage down the track.

Meanwhile, let’s all be thankful for western medicine!

It’s my birthday. To mark the occasion, ’Pong took a photo the other day which reflects a self-portrait it took many years ago — possibly in 1980 though I can’t be sure. Nothing’s changed.

Since every blog post should link to at least one other thing, do consider whether I look like Ja’mie King, whether you like the unshaven version, or the scary version.

For background information, read yesterday’s preview.

There’s a video feed and chat via Ustream.tv, and a liveblog. You can watch all of the elements on one page, rendered in glorious HTML 4.01 with tables. (Oh shut up, you CSS zealots!) Or you can watch the video and chat on Ustream.tv and the liveblog below the fold.

If you can’t see the CoveritLive tool immediately below, then you’re not using a compatible browser. Anything written without attribution will be from me.

If I post stuff onto my Twitter stream, I’ll use the hashtag #rtyass, and I encourage any backchannel commenters to use the same.

Transport is being provided by Nick Hodge and Microsoft, and bandwidth by Telstra’s Next G mobile broadband network.