Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Monday 30 December 2019 to Sunday 5 January 2020 saw a relatively quiet start to the new year that included quite a bit of gin, and way too much bushfire smoke — though there were no direct threats to me from the fires.
Continue reading “Weekly Wrap 501: A quiet new year with bushfire smoke and a random spider”
Do you wink at powerful men? Apparently winking at powerful men is a thing, and we hear more about this and other tips for success in this rather odd episode of The 9pm Edict.
The panellists are, in order of introduction:
My week of Monday 9 to Sunday 15 February 2015 was hectic. I must learn that the long commute to Sydney, two hours each way, doesn’t mix with doing so to be there before 0900 and starting to return after 1700. Not two days in a row, anyway.
Still, I did get quite a bit done, even if all of the outputs haven’t appeared yet.
There were three editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday, Thursday and Friday. The two missing days where when I had very early starts and very late finishes and, probably more importantly, a conference to pay attention to during the day. Hmmm. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all as they’re released. Subscribe. Just subscribe.
On Monday, I’ve been catching up on all manner of loose ends, including blog posts. Tuesday through Wednesday are writing and production days, though I’ll work out the exact sequence of events as I go along.
On Tuesday, I’ll be re-planning the rest of February, as well as doing shopping and other errands, as well as doing some research and organising some story pitches for those people we call “editors”.
On Wednesday I’m doing a day trip to Sydney to run some errands in Parramatta and the CBD, meet some people, and finally see the sleep physician to get this treatment program started. I may blog about that last point, because some people have expressed interest.
On Thursday I’ll be writing for ZDNet Australia, and perhaps someone else.
On Friday, I’m heading into Sydney on another day trip — for errands and a meeting and then, in the afternoon, NICTA’s Techfest at Australian Technology Park, and then an appointment to rearrange my back and neck.
Saturday is unplanned. Place your bids now.
Sunday is the start of the Tech Leaders Forum, formerly known as Kickstart. This year it isn’t being held on the Gold Coast, but in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, at the Fairmont Resort. The event continues on Monday.
Update 17 February 2015: Edited to include changes to the schedule.
[Photo: The Future is Coal, a standard 45-car coal train passing through Wentworth Falls, photographed on 15 February 2015.]
“That ‘This is Not Art’ thing this weekend, it’s like a fucking freak show walking past,” says the old guy in the yellow-tiled front bar of The Clarendon Hotel.
It’s just gone noon on Saturday. Apart from ’Pong and I having a burger and beer, he’s the only customer. His worldview of what Newcastle‘s Hunter Street should be like is challenged by the stream of paste-white black-clad comic fans, straggly-bearded eco-hippies, random hipsters and nose-ringed alternagothpunkteendykes strolling past the boarded-up shopfronts.
Noticing a skinny guy wearing yellow overalls and a torn red-striped t-shirt, our frowning drinker puts down his VB. “Hey, is there a circus in town? Because I can see a clown”, he calls out to the barman.
The barman smiles politely, but says nothing.
“Hey, is there a circus in town?”, he mutters, and takes another sip. He looks out at the soulless office buildings that replaced the landscape of his memory, in silence.
Yet these weird out-of-towners, with their experimental robotics, knitting and YouTube mashups, have brought more life to this industrial city’s ailing heart than any grandiose “development” plan.
The SMH claims electricity consumption dropped 10.2% during Earth Hour, but Crikey reckons it’s just “mass hysteria” — in a subscriber-only story which I’ll now summarise for you.