Category: Personal

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Images of celebration and degeneration

To everyone who came to my birthday party yesterday, or who sent messages, thank you very much.

Apart from a series of disjointed memories and unexplained bruises, there is also photographic evidence that it was a fun time. There’s this portrait of me by Kate Carruthers, for instance [embiggen]. This crowd scene by Nick Hodge, with Ben Grubb lurking on the left. And a whole series of photos by misswired including one of The Hive Bar’s proprietor Nick hard at work on the Endless Stream of Mojitos™.

If there are any other photos, please let me know.

Special thanks to Nick Hodge for reminding us of this special moment in Australian television, and for providing the little glittery things that imprinted a purple mark on my forehead.

Extra special thanks to Streamer and Balloon Blondie who, by simply existing, ensured that I wouldn’t be the biggest embarrassment of the day.

Do not adjust your set. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

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50th birthday drinks next Saturday

If you’ve been following my 50 to 50 series, you’ll know it’s my 50th birthday very soon. Would you like to help me celebrate it with drinks next Saturday 8 May?

My birthday is actually on 9 May, but for Australians that’s also Mother’s Day this year. That’s inconvenient.

So, drinks (and good food) are on Saturday 9 May 2010 upstairs at one of my favourite haunts, The Hive Bar, 93 Erskineville Road, Erskineville from 2pm. There’s a map over the jump.

I’d like to give Adam some idea of how many people are coming so, if you can, please either RSVP by email or at the truly evil privacy-destroying Facebook event page by Wednesday afternoon. You don’t have to RSVP, you can just turn up. But if we get enough confirmed people we get our own bartender.

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50 to 50 #1: Born in Gawler

Fifty days from today is my 50th birthday. Yes, Five Zero. This is the first in a series of blog posts to celebrate that milestone.

I’m not quite sure how this will unfold, except that each day I’ll find a photo or object or concept that relates to the year of my life in question — in this case that’s, erm, gulp, 1960 — and see what emerges.

Today’s photo was taken when I was just six weeks old.

That’s my father holding me. He was 35 years old. Yes, rather old for that era, but he’d been married before and had a daughter. The fact that he divorced and re-married was so scandalous in rural South Australia that the daughter was taken away to live with her grandparents and they cut off all contact with him. The first time I met anyone from my father’s side of the family was at his funeral a decade later.

And yes, dad is smoking around the baby. Different times, eh? Not the ever-present pipe I remember him for, but a black Bakelite cigarette holder.

The dog’s name was Toby.

The photo would have been taken by my mother using a Kodak Box Brownie camera in the back yard of our house at 43 Adelaide Road, Gawler. The house is still there, but with what looks like a really low-grade renovation.

I’ll also be posting photos at Flickr (there’s another 6-weeks-old image there already) and mapping locations at Google Maps (see over the jump).

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Yes, I wrote about iPad, but not here

Not posting here for a week makes it look like I’ve vanished. But increasingly, more of my work is elsewhere. Like my Crikey piece It’s called iPad, and the Kindle is rooted. Like the 2000-word feature I’m slaving to finish today for ZDNet.com.au. Look in the sidebar under “More Stilgherrian”. My online presence is now scattered amongst so many streams of data!

There’s an essay here about the meaning of all this fragmentation. But if I write that essay, I’ll end up having to admit this is precisely why Facebook has been so successful. So much of your life can happen through Facebook and its myriad third-party data-sucking privacy-perverting applications, from organising a BBQ to marketing a business.

The ease with which Facebook can become your all-encompassing social portal means Facebook will win.

That means I’ll probably never write that essay. I don’t want to admit Facebook will win. Because it’s ugly. And because they’re cunts.